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Politics : The Donkey's Inn -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Patricia Trinchero who wrote (6060)	2/6/2003 8:08:56 PM
From: Skywatcher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15516

Don't forget who W put in charge of the economy! Another DUPE Once Again, We're Being Railroaded By Arianna Huffington, Arianna Huffington writes a syndicated column. Watching freshly minted Treasury Secretary John Snow, a longtime promoter of balanced budgets, hit the Hill this week to flack for the president's new red-ink-drenched budget, I felt as if I had stumbled across a Richard Simmons infomercial pitching Big Macs. Or Secretary of State Colin Powell shredding the Powell Doctrine in order to sell the war on Iraq to the United Nations. Of course, saying one thing and doing another is a way of life in the Bush administration. Take the president's outrageous assertion during his State of the Union address that one of the greatest accomplishments of his presidency was "holding corporate criminals to account." He didn't even burst out laughing. Not only is the president not holding corporate Capones to account, he's putting them in his Cabinet. Exhibit A is Snow. During his 12-year tenure as chief executive at railroad giant CSX, Snow helped himself to a vast array of corporate indulgences. If CEO perks were pills, Snow would have overdosed. He was paid a king's ransom -- $10.1 million in 2001 alone -- for doing a downright lousy job. With Snow at the helm, CSX's profits shriveled and its stock underperformed its competitors' by two-thirds since 1991. His reign is a case study in one of the greatest abuses of corporate America -- the de-linking of performance and reward. Snow was also the lucky winner of a $24.5-million sweetheart loan from CSX -- precisely the kind of insider loan made illegal by Congress last summer. But his good fortune didn't stop there: CSX eventually forgave the massive loan entirely. Snow also will be rewarded for his mediocre tenure at CSX with an extremely generous pension agreement. No need to worry about his being forced to clip coupons on his $161,200 Cabinet salary -- CSX will pay him $2.47 million a year for life. His retirement windfall will be greatly enhanced by a pension accounting scheme that gives him credit for having put in 44 years at the company, even though he'd actually been workin' on the railroad for only 25. Last year, at a conference on retirement savings, President Bush said: "What's fair on the top floor should be fair on the shop floor." I guess Snow didn't get the memo. At the same time that Snow was stitching together his golden parachute, he was cutting the health benefits of newly hired employees and, according to a lawsuit, revoking life insurance benefits for some CSX retirees. This two-track take on retirement benefits is no small matter, because one of Snow's first tasks as Treasury secretary will be overseeing new pension rules that the Bush administration wants to enact that could lead to a serious loss in benefits for older workers. During his warm-and-cozy confirmation hearing, much was made of the fact that Snow is giving up pay and benefits worth $15 million to, as Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) put it, "serve the people of the United States of America." I don't know about you, but the idea of a man with a reported net worth of close to $100 million being forced by government ethics rules to forgo a series of lavish retirement perks -- including lifetime country club memberships, annual physical checkups, free rides on the CSX jet and special room rates at the Greenbrier, a company-owned resort in West Virginia -- doesn't exactly put a patriotic lump in my throat. Sorry, Sen. Grassley, but it turns out the only executive task at which Snow truly excelled was ripping off the very same Treasury Department that he now heads. Despite raking in close to a billion dollars in pretax profits since 1998, CSX paid no federal income taxes in three of the last four years. What's more, thanks to a combination of accounting gimmicks and tax shelters, the company was even able to score a hefty $164 million in tax rebates during that time. Having Snow, a world-class tax dodger and the lamest railroad man since Casey Jones, at the controls of our sputtering economy -- the Disorient Express -- has all the makings of a world-class train wreck. CC

To: Patricia Trinchero who wrote (6060)	2/11/2003 6:03:10 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 15516

Bush-Linked Company Handled Security for the WTC, Dulles and United " Marvin P. Bush, the president's youngest brother, was a director at Stratesec from 1993 to fiscal year 2000. But the White House has not publicly disclosed Bush connections in any of its responses to 9/11, nor has it mentioned that another Bush-linked business had done security work for the facilities attacked." Above exerpt from article by: by Margie Burns Published on Tuesday, February 4, 2003 by the Prince George's Journal (Maryland) SI Reference: Message 18542992 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> George W. Bush brought to the White House the worst excesses of business: greed and corruption. I had not heard about Marvin Bush's connection either, but I am not surprised at anything that the Bush family would do if it would increase their personal wealth and power. JMOP