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-Caveat Lector-
G.W. Bush, George Soros and Other "Malefactors of Great Wealth"
http://www.observer.com/pages/story.asp?ID=6128
August 17, 2002 | 10:13 AM
George W. Bush cannot raise his hand against the Œmalefactors of great
wealth,¹ because they¹re his backers, his friends. Bush¹s Tangled Past Is
Relevant Today
by Joe Conason
People who never wondered about the "relevance" of the Whitewater story now
claim to be puzzled by journalistic interest in Arbusto Oil, Spectrum 7,
Harken Energy, the Texas Rangers and other curious artifacts of George W.
Bush¹s business career. These same people, who once obsessed over the
details of an obscure Arkansas land development from the 1970¹s, ask why
anyone should care today how the President made money 10 or 15 years ago.
(Actually, the sale of the Rangers to a powerful Texas investor‹which made
Mr. Bush a multimillionaire‹occurred just four years ago.)
Let¹s assume, perhaps naïvely, that these peevish questions are sincere. And
let¹s try to answer them by starting with a few general observations.
This country has not one but two economic systems: free enterprise for the
many, and crony capitalism for the few. This is hardly a new discovery;
crooked and connected insiders have always fattened their wallets at public
expense, as Kevin Phillips illustrates in great detail in Wealth and
Democracy.
But the decay of the crony system is suddenly strangling free enterprise and
endangering the nation¹s future. The sanctions that were expected to
discourage excessive indebtedness, management self-dealing and fraudulent
accounting have failed; the insiders sidestepped the risks and assigned them
to the rest of us. That¹s what ordinary investors are learning every day
when they glance up from their horrifying mutual-fund statements to read how
much the white-collar looters took when they absconded.
For those burned small investors, and for their fellow citizens whose jobs
are at risk and whose wages are again declining, the salient issue is how
government can regain a measure of authority to reform this forked economy.
The authority needed is not only legal and administrative, but also moral.
In these critical circumstances, the President must not only act to restore
credibility and growth. He must also believe in what he is doing and be
believed when he explains why.
Unfortunately, Mr. Bush and his insider-infested administration meet none of
these criteria. He is a lifelong beneficiary of crony capitalism, as were
his father and grandfather before him. He has no quarrel with that system
and is blind to its defects. He cannot raise his hand against what Teddy
Roosevelt called the "malefactors of great wealth," because they¹re his
backers, his colleagues, his friends and his family.
Two years ago, I wrote approximately 10,000 words about Mr. Bush¹s charmed
life in Harper¹s Magazine, and have since learned how much more still
remains to be revealed.
Briefly, it is a tale that opens with a series of tax-sheltered
limited-partnership investments in Arbusto by political friends and family
members from Park Avenue and Greenwich to K Street and Houston, all eager to
help young Dubya make his way in the Texas oil fields. It concludes almost
two decades later when Governor George W. Bush and his partners sell their
baseball team to a man who had been awarded control over billions of public
dollars by the governor¹s appointees.
The Harken affair occurs midway through this financial epic. Having twice
unloaded his dry-hole enterprises on his father¹s friends and would-be
friends, Mr. Bush shows up as a director of Harken Energy, a peculiar Dallas
operation that counts Harvard Management, the Soros interests and a
mysterious Saudi tycoon as its largest stockholders. As George Soros
explained recently to David Corn of The Nation magazine, the eldest son of
George Herbert Walker Bush was brought on board as a lavishly compensated
director and "consultant" to facilitate ties with the Gulf sheikdoms.
Eventually Harken did achieve a lucrative connection with the sheiks of
Bahrain, who gave the tiny, ill-managed company an astonishing exclusive
contract to explore its offshore fields. Despite Harken¹s continual
insolvency, the Bahrain deal drove up its stock price long enough for Mr.
Bush to offload 212,140 shares on an unidentified buyer.
And as The Washington Post¹s Mike Allen demonstrated, in an article
strangely buried on page A7, Mr. Bush had plenty of inside information that
indicated the value of Harken¹s stock would soon plunge. He may also have
gleaned, in the spring of 1990, that Saddam Hussein planned to invade Kuwait
and badly disrupt the oil "bidness" in the Gulf. That event proved
disastrous for Harken¹s shares.
For reasons that Mr. Bush has had great difficulty explaining, he neglected
to file the required notification of his Harken trade with the Securities
and Exchange Commission until March 1991. That happens to have been just
after his father¹s famous victory over the Iraqi dictator, which helped
Harken to rise again (however briefly). The S.E.C., under the purview of his
father¹s loyal appointees, saw nothing amiss in Dubya¹s dealings.
Mr. Bush is surely a lucky man. But he has been just a bit too lucky to
inspire trust in his promises to clean up cronyism so that free enterprise
can breathe again.
back to top
This column ran on page 5 in the 7/29/02 edition of The New York Observer.
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DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
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