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Bush Wants To Fight Corporate Corruption By Making Tax Cuts To The Richest 1% Permanent.
FROM CORPORATE CORRUPTION SPEECH: "Last year, we passed the biggest tax cut in a generation which encouraged job creation and boosted consumer spending at just the right time. For the sake of long-term growth, I'm asking Congress to make the tax reductions permanent."
BOROWITZ: BUSH, IN TOUGH WALL STREET SPEECH, VOWS TO MAKE MORE TOUGH WALL STREET SPEECHES
Bush Ushers In His "Responsibility Era" By Blaming His Lawyers
A decade ago, [Bush] blamed the SEC for losing the relevant document. But at a news conference last week, his spokesman blamed the company's lawyers for a "mix-up."
I was ready to hear what "Firing Squad" made of Bush's actions when I realized the TV discussion was ever so slightly different. It was exactly the same story, but the president under fire was Bill Clinton.
An oddly familiar Clinton spokesman called Lanny Begalaville was trying to defend his man. "The president has denied any wrongdoing, and I believe him," Begalaville was saying. "This is like getting caught driving 60 miles an hour in a 55-mile-an-hour zone."
Begalaville was facing off against a southern Republican congressman called Tom Starrbarr. Starrbarr, who also looked familiar, was having none of this.
"What happened here is so typical of Clinton," Starrbarr said. "He tells one story and when that one proves false, he tells a completely different story."
Reilly, the host, clearly didn't like Clinton, and he egged Starrbarr on. "Isn't this a story about a president who never takes responsibility for anything?"
"Chris, you're absolutely right," Starrbarr said with a big smile. "I'd contrast this president with George W. Bush. Remember what Bush said when he was running for reelection as governor of Texas back in 1998?"
"Actually, we have tape of that, congressman," Reilly said. "Let's run it." And they ran a real Bush ad from his 1998 campaign.
"For too long," Bush said, "we've encouraged a culture that says if it feels good, do it, and blame somebody else if you've got a problem. We've got to change our culture to one based on responsibility."
The screen went back to a triumphant-looking Starrbarr. "Bush would take responsibility for something like this," Starrbarr said. "He'd never try to blame the SEC or a bunch of lawyers for his problem."
Begalaville, Clinton's defender, was steaming. "Governor Bush was talking about the '60s counterculture back then," he said. "He never thought that sort of thinking applied to people on corporate boards. He knows those people. He was one of them. This is about a 12-year-old stock deal, an old, tired issue that the president's opponents keep dredging up."
"No, Lanny, this is an issue of holding the president accountable to high standards," Starrbarr replied. "We have a moral crisis in the corporate world and the president should set the right example."
Begalaville snapped back: "You know perfectly well that the SEC cleared the president on this thing. It's been used as an issue by every political opponent in every campaign in which he's run. This is an old, old story."
The host came back in high, man-of-the-people dudgeon. "Yeah," Reilly snarled, "it's an old story that the insiders make a pile and get cleared because they have connections. Right, Congressman Starrbarr?"
"Exactly, Chris," he said. "And that's why I'm demanding that an independent counsel look into this, and that Congress subpoena all the SEC records, all the Harken Energy records, and every one of the president's stock sales going back 20 years. At this moment of moral relativism in business, we need the president to live up to the standards. . . . "
Begalaville was turning purple and shouted: "That's an outrageous fishing expedition!"
Undeterred, Starrbarr kept going. "If President Clinton refuses to make all the relevant material public, he's obviously hiding something. And if citizens don't care how the president led his business life, we're talking about the death of outrage in this country."
"Our time is running out," said Reilly.
"Just 15 seconds Chris," said Starrbarr. "I want you to know I'd say everything I said tonight if a Republican president were involved in something like this."
"I know you would, congressman," Reilly replied. "I feel exactly the same way."
--E.J. Dionne, Jr., WP, 07.09.02
BACKGROUND
http://www.bushwatch.net/moneytree.htm
http://www.bushwatch.net/bushmillions.html
http://www.bushwatch.net/bushwhitewater.htm
Documents Show Bush Violated SEC Insider Trading Law Four Times, Not Once. His Lawyer Ran The SEC Investigation On Late Harken Report And His Father's Gave The SEC Clearance Of Wrongdoing During Bush Presidency.
According to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission records, on four separate occasions Gov. George W. Bush disregarded federal statutes by failing to file insider stock trade reports on a timely basis, back-dating one trade by some four months. Moreover, one key trade just a few weeks before Iraq invaded Kuwait -- but reported some eight months late after the Gulf War was over -- netted Bush close to $1 million in profit as he sold stock in Harken Energy, an oil company doing business in the Middle East wherein some of his father's largest contributors also maintained substantial positions.
The SEC under President Bush carried out an incomplete investigation of the younger Bush's pre-Gulf War trade in 1991 after key presidential advisor George Jr. claimed that he filed a report, but that the SEC had most likely lost it. (No one has really asked whether the governor bothered to use registered mail to verify receipt of the documents.)
According to an Oct. 28, 1991, Time Magazine report, SEC spokesman John Heine said, "as far as I know, nobody ever found the 'lost' filing." And, strangely, Bush refused comment to Time regarding either the incident or his involvement with Harken.
The governor also did not reveal the blatant conflicts of interest involved, since the chairman of the SEC was Richard Breedon, former lawyer with Houston firm Baker and Botts and deputy counsel to Bush's father when he was vice president. Breedon received his SEC appointment after the elder Bush became president.
The SEC investigation of George W. was led by general counsel James R. Doty who, according to a UPI report, mysteriously neglected to interview any of the Harken directors. Moreover, Doty had previously served as George W. Bush's personal lawyer in the deal involving his Texas Rangers purchase. So, in the end, the younger Bush was cleared of insider trade wrongdoing by his personal attorney and by his father's vice-presidential counsel, a virtual impossibility for the average U.S. citizen....
Most reports involving Bush's insider oil stock trades refer only to his highly controversial June 22, 1990, million dollar trade made six weeks before Gulf War hostilities broke out in Kuwait -- a trade which was reported eight months later. However, SEC documents between 1986 and 1993 show that Bush acquired 212,152 shares of Harken stock on Nov. 1, 1986, at the time he merged his Spectrum 7 company with Harken. But the future governor did not report the transaction until April 7, 1987 -- more than five months later.
When Bush filed late on April 7,1987, SEC filings show he had purchased another 80,000 shares on March 10, 1987. But strangely, two weeks later, an April 22 filing noted that the 80,000-share purchase was backdated to Dec. 10, 1986. When questioned by the media, Bush's attorney said it was the same 80,000 shares but he could not explain the discrepancy regarding the purchase dates or why Bush even reported the trade two times.
Another SEC filing, this from June 6, 1989, showed that Bush purchased another 25,000 shares of Harken but again waited more than four months to report the transaction.
The Houston Post, recognizing Bush's late SEC filings, noted that he "took eight months to notify the government of his sale of stock in a company on whose board he served" and "also missed the filing deadline for reporting other insider trades involving Harken Energy."
Documents obtained by the Post showed "additional instances in which Bush ... ran afoul of the SEC rule requiring notification." And George W. described himself as a "small, insignificant" Harken stockholder; but news reports examining SEC documents identified Bush as the third largest non-institutional investor.
--Tom Flocco, WND, 02.18.00
Bush Tuesday Speech: "Don't Do As I Did, Do As I Say." Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge.
"On Tuesday, George W. Bush is scheduled to give a speech intended to put him in front of the growing national outrage over corporate malfeasance. He will sternly lecture Wall Street executives about ethics and will doubtless portray himself as a believer in old-fashioned business probity.
Yet this pose is surreal, given the way top officials like Secretary of the Army Thomas White, Dick Cheney and Mr. Bush himself acquired their wealth. As Joshua Green says in The Washington Monthly, in a must-read article written just before the administration suddenly became such an exponent of corporate ethics: "The `new tone' that George W. Bush brought to Washington isn't one of integrity, but of permissiveness. . . . In this administration, enriching oneself while one's business goes bust isn't necessarily frowned upon."
Unfortunately, the administration has so far gotten the press to focus on the least important question about Mr. Bush's business dealings: his failure to obey the law by promptly reporting his insider stock sales. It's true that Mr. Bush's story about that failure has suddenly changed, from "the dog ate my homework" to "my lawyer ate my homework — four times." But the administration hopes that a narrow focus on the reporting lapses will divert attention from the larger point: Mr. Bush profited personally from aggressive accounting identical to the recent scams that have shocked the nation.
"
--Paul Krugman, NYT, 07.07.02
"Something changed when George W. Bush became president. The current administration has not lacked questionable behavior: Karl Rove met with Intel executives in the White House even as he held a significant amount of Intel stock; Deputy Interior Secretary J. Stephen Griles, a former coal-industry lobbyist, intervened in an energy-exploration dispute on behalf of former clients; Dick Cheney met repeatedly with energy company officials who appear to have had a strong hand in formulating the administration's energy policy; and, of course, there is [Enron's Sec. of Army] White. Yet each retains his job. Eighteen months into Bush's term, his only appointee to resign under a cloud is Michael Parker, the former civilian chief of the Army Corps of Engineers, and not over allegations of corruption, but for what this administration views as the one true deadly sin: disloyalty. (Parker publicly criticized the president's budget.) By contrast, two years into the Clinton administration, 10 political appointees had resigned; under the elder Bush, eight; under Reagan, 13. What has changed isn't so much the conduct of officials, but the standards by which they're judged. The "new tone" that George W. Bush brought to Washington isn't one of integrity, but of permissiveness." --Joshua Green, WM, 07/08.02
The views expressed are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect those of Bush Watch.