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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (337318)	1/3/2003 5:35:37 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

<<...Sweetheart deals to buy political influence. You could write a book on it...>> Why is Bob Woodward playing softball with Bush...? He did great investigative work to uncover and expose The Watergate Scandal...Yet, it seems like he's been on vacation since then...;-) I think he's comfortable in Washington and likes his contacts. If he wanted to do this country a great service he would dig deep (eg. find a couple of new 'deepthroats') and write a book on the background and motivations of the radical right wing NeoCons who are running the current Administration...Look how secretive Cheney is -- we all know he has QUITE A BIT to hide --> it would be better if it was completely exposed - AND sooner rather than later.

To: American Spirit who wrote (337318)	1/3/2003 10:20:03 PM
From: steve dietrich	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Here's part an article on Bush and Harken I found in the WSJ archives: At a White House news conference, Mr. Bush dismissed questions about his actions at Harken Energy Corp. as "recycled stuff" that political opponents have repeatedly -- but unsuccessfully -- tried to use against him. "There's no there there," the president insisted to reporters, repeatedly saying that the Securities and Exchange Commission had found that "there is no case." But Mr. Bush and his aides have been forced to respond by fresh scrutiny in the wake of scandals besetting large companies such as Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. Last week, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer offered a new explanation for the months-late filing to the SEC of a form reporting Mr. Bush's sale of 212,140 shares of Harken stock at $4 a share. Mr. Fleischer blamed a "mix-up" between Mr. Bush and his lawyer, though Mr. Bush himself previously had blamed the SEC for misplacing the document. On Monday, Mr. Bush said he wasn't sure what occurred. "I still haven't figured it out completely," Mr. Bush said. The president noted that he earlier had filed a form declaring his "intention to sell" the shares. National Democratic Chairman Terry McAuliffe promptly blasted the president for "his third and latest explanation over his role in Harken Energy's questionable business practices." Mr. McAuliffe said Mr. Bush should "release his SEC files" to the public. At the news conference, Mr. Bush had shrugged off a suggestion that he do that, noting that reporters and members of Congress "have seen the relevant documents." Eight days after he sold the stock, on June 22, 1990, Harken reported a $23.2 million loss from the second quarter of the previous year. That triggered a sharp decline in the company's share price. Mr. Bush noted Monday that the stock climbed to $8 a share within 14 months of the time he sold it. The SEC investigation of that stock sale began in April 1991, when his father was the U.S. president, after The Wall Street Journal reported that he had failed to report the transaction on time. Mr. Bush long has been dogged by questions about his days as a Texas businessman, which Democrats say undermines his standing to lead the reforms needed today. His early forays into the oil business came up dry in the mid-1980s. His first company was merged into another one, which was rescued in 1986 by Harken, on whose board Mr. Bush subsequently served. Harken gave Mr. Bush, whose father was then the U.S. vice president, 200,000 shares of stock and a $120,000-a-year consulting salary. In 1989, company officials crafted a deal that would later draw SEC scrutiny: Harken sold 80% of a subsidiary, Aloha Petroleum Ltd., to a partnership formed by Harken insiders, according to SEC documents. Harken financed most of the loan the buyers needed, allowing Harken to reduce the amount of debt on its publicly disclosed balance sheet and to claim the proceeds of the sale as income, a maneuver Bush critics have likened to more-recent corporate transactions that have drawn sharp criticism. After months of back and forth with the SEC, Harken restated its 1989 annual report to show a much larger loss than it initially reported. "In this case, the system worked," Mr. Bush insisted Monday, rejecting parallels between Harken and other companies under fire for accounting abuses. "There was an honest difference of opinion as to how to account for a complicated transaction. ... In the corporate world, sometimes things aren't exactly black and white when it comes to accounting procedures."