Mean Genes - the Dark Side of the Bushes Check the new WhoseFlorida for updates

Background Stories:

• Kitty set to beat around the Bushes  

  'WHEN GOSSIP grows old, it becomes myth," said one Stanislaw Lec.

  Kitty Kelley took the cake the other night on Larry King's show about the British royals, specifically Diana's boys. The infamous biographer of the world-famous was wearing a huge white corsage that continuously brushed her cheek, and when she mentioned working on a book about the Bush family dynasty, the genial host was more or less dismissive, asking her to stick to the subject at hand.

  But this column is interested in Kitty's work-in-progress, which will go all the way back to W's grandpa, Prescott Bush, and move through two presidencies plus attendant relatives, such as the also-famous Jeb, governor of Florida. There is the shuddering thought, too, of her treatment to come of the twin daughters of the president and first lady.

  Kitty's publisher and her editor, the distinguished Peter Gethers, have yet to see one written word of Kitty's new obsession, which is still untitled. But as this book is expected to be published before the next presidential election, it is a matter of some concern to avid Bush supporters and the GOP. After all, Kitty Kelley has, in the past, unearthed unnerving details about Jackie Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Reagan and the British royals. (Kitty doesn't fool around with nobodies or semi-celebrities.)

  So this will be one of those in-depth, no-holds-barred books about a dynasty that has been described as one of the underanalyzed families of the 20th and 21st centuries. In many ways, from an influence standpoint, the Bushes are perhaps more important and have exercised more effect and sway than the juicy, gossipy, sexy Kennedys. Kitty should be the first notable author out of the gate, and as she is an intrepid reporter who usually burns her bridges, her work will have impact.

  The Bush dynasty has somehow kept itself rather well-shrouded in secrecy, going back through Skull & Bones at Yale and on through the CIA and, of course, they've put two men in the White House. Kitty will no doubt attempt to unshroud this famous and very popular family. Wait for it!
  .... from Liz Smith, NY Post 8/16/01
  
  

• BuSH Girlfriends..American Family Morals -- here's a little bulletin board thread that your readers might find interesting
  .... CIV, 9/19/02

  
  

• Did JEB recuse himself during the election?
  
  The official story is that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has stayed out of his state's electoral fray. But his father thinks otherwise. Written December 2000.   A Bush Family Slip-Up  8/8

• Trust or Hustle:the Bush record 

  JEB BUSH (George W’s brother) and a partner defaulted on a $4.5 million loan from a Florida S&L in 1988.  The default helped trigger the S&L’s collapse, which cost taxpayers $285 million.  Bush and partner repaid only ten percent of the irregular loan and, incredibly, also got to keep the real estate that collateralized it.⁴
  In 1985, Jeb lobbied the federal government on behalf of Miami HMO owner Miguel Recarey to increase Recarey’s Medicare business ultimately to a total of $1 billion.  The following year, Jeb received $75,000 from Recarey.  Recarey, who had longstanding business ties to the late Florida Mafia boss Santos Trafficante, subsequently fled the U.S. under indictment, suspected of up to $100 million in Medicare fraud.⁵  Details  .... JD 8/11/01 

  Miguel Recarey Jr., a former HMO executive from Miami now living in Spain, was the head of International Medical Centers, a fast growing HMO, when Jeb Bush met him.
  Miguel Recarey, who had an arrest record and served 30 days in jail for tax evasion, was looking for a well-connected, eager businessman to help him with some tough federal rules. Recarey complained to Bush that tightened federal rules would hurt business by capping IMC's enrollment of Medicare patients. Recarey was seeking a waiver of a federal law that prevented an HMO from having more than 50 percent of its clients who were Medicare recipients. Jeb Bush, being the helpful son of then Vice President George Bush, placed a call to the Department of Health and Human Services on Recarey's behalf.

  Recarey was granted an exemption from the rule, which resulted in IMC's Medicare income soaring to $1 billion.
  When the HMO collapsed amid a sprawling bribery and fraud scandal, Recarey, charged with embezzlement and phony invoicing, fled to Spain.
  The Challenge - How to let a tax evader know that Jeb cares.
  The Bush Solution - Use family influence and connections to give Recarey an exemption from federal rules that helped him receive over $1 billion in Medicare payments while everyday Floridians suffer.
  •  It was Jeb Bush's recommendations of Recarey that decided the issue, one former senior Health and Human Services official told the subcommittee. Expanding on his congressional testimony, C. McClain Haddow, at the time Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler's chief of staff, said in an interview with Newsday that Jeb Bush called him and Heckler twice."  [Newsday, 10/3/88]
  • Florida Commerce Secretary Jeb Bush made calls to federal officials in late 1984 on behalf of International Medical Centers (IMC), according to testimony before a U.S. House Subcommittee Tuesday.  Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Margaret Heckler ordered a waiver from certain regulations for IMC after the call from Bush, the son of Vice President George Bush, said C. McClain Haddow, Heckler's former chief of staff.  The waiver freed IMC from requirements that it have an equal number of Medicare and non-Medicare patients and allowed the Miami health maintenance organization to expand quickly.  The rapid expansion led to its financial collapse last May, top Medicare officials say. [St. Petersburg Times, 12/17/87]
  • Although Bush's small real estate firm failed to produce under either contract, it received $75,000 in real estate fees from one of the businessmen, Miguel Recarey, Jr., after Bush called a federal agency to help win waivers of Medicare rules for Recarey worth tens of millions of dollars." [Newsday, Nassau & Suffolk Edition, 10/3/88]
  • Hedwig Trostl of Gibsonton and her husband, Arturo, said the court's ruling was unfair to victims of the HMO scheme ... She needed a hip replacement in the 1980s, but the HMO had declined to pay for the doctor to perform the operation. The insurance was supposed to help, but instead she was almost strangled by red tape. [St. Petersburg Times, 2/18/95]
  • The state of Florida, meanwhile, sorted through millions in unpaid claims - money owed to medical providers, trade firms, taxpayers and elderly people such as Kenneth and Doris Brownlow of Spring Hill.  For years, the Brownlows followed news accounts of Recarey after he fled the country.  'We lost track of him in Venezuela,' Mr. Brownlow said.  All the while, they kept an 8 inch stack of documents about their former HMO, hoping one day to be reimbursed $6,314 for an operation on Mrs. Brownlow's shoulder.  Last month, 10 years later, the Florida Insurance Department sent them a check.  But they still want to see Recarey behind bars. [St. Petersburg Times, 2/18/95]

  Additional Sources: Miami Herald, October 6, 2002; Miami Herald, April 26, 1992; St. Petersburg Times, February 18, 1995; St. Petersburg Times. September 20, 1998; St. Petersburg Times. December 17, 1987
  .... posted 10/28/02 by ryanB

  
  

• The Bush Family
  A closer look at the Bush record  

• Here's a site your readers might be interested in:
  http://www.bk2k.com/bushbodycount/home.html
  

• Influence and bailouts a business tradition in Bush family
  Once upon a time, a rich and powerful father gathered his four young sons and urged them to become rich and powerful, too. Take risks. Push yourselves. Influence others, he ordered in a bold voice.
  Then he whispered, "And if you muck things up, a fairy godfather will always appear to make things better."
  By ROBERT TRIGAUX St Petersburg Times, (10/29/00)
  
  
• Bushology Interactive: Bush dynasty Investigative reporter Dan Moldea's collection of articles about the Bush family

• Bush Family Value$
  The Bush clan's family business by Stephen Pizzo
  September/October 1992 MOJO 

• Behind the Bushes - family history
  
  

• Behind the Bushes: the new generation

• Some JEB background from Behind the bushes

  • 1983 - Jeb Bush's business partner, Alberto Duque, goes bankrupt, is eventually convicted of fraud and is sentenced to 15 years in prison.
  • 1984 - Jeb Bush lobbies the Department of Health & Human Services on behalf of Cuban-American businessman Miguel Recarey, Jr., whose medical firm later collapses. Recarey, who was close to mobster Santos Trafficante, later flees the US under indictment with at least $12 million in federal funds.
  • 1988 - Jeb Bush and a partner default on a $4.5 million loan from a Florida S&L. The default will cost taxpayers' millions. Bush and his partners will repay only ten percent of the loan but will keep all real estate collateralized by it.
  • "Jeb's the smart one" -- George Bush Sr. to dinner partner

  •  .... from Behind the bushes - 80 year history of Bush family activities & political ties
    

• Brother Neil back in the news - selling FCAT related testing to Florida -- he's an old hand at conflict of interest enterprises:

  • Bush brother trying to sell FCAT software to Florida schools
    A software company run by Neil Bush, a younger brother of Gov. Jeb Bush, hopes to sell a program to Florida schools that students would use to prepare for the test that is key to the governor's education policy. Texas-based Ignite Inc. makes software being used in a pilot program at an Orlando-area middle school to help students prepare for the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which the governor has championed as a yardstick for school performance.
  • Some Neil Bush History:
    ... What did Neil Bush do in 1985 after he became a director of the Silverado Banking, Savings & Loan Association that went bust three years later at a cost to taxpayers of at least $1.6 billion? Among other improprieties involving "some of the worst kinds of conflicts of interest" according to federal regulators, he admits that he failed to list his business relationship on a conflict-of-interest form when he got a $100,000 loan from a developer who was a partner in his oil company. That was after he helped approve more than $100 million worth of loans to that business partner. When he wrote "None" on that form, he actually was dependent on one of the thrift's biggest borrowers for the entire $75,000 annual salary that was his main source of income. "I know it sounds a little fishy," he admitted when he testified that the loan was not to be repaid unless JNB Exploration was successful, which it wasn't. What it was, he said in one of the classic understatements of our time,"was an incredibly sweet deal." One bemused expert observed that it "may have been the first completed loan in financial history in which the creditor defaulted." ...  
    (did you know that in the millions of words written in the national news media about Neil Bush and his part in the Silverado Savings & Loan scandal, no reference has been made to an extremely significant fact of his life.-- Neil Bush, son of the then vice president of the United States, was scheduled to have dinner on March 31, 1981, with Scott Hinckley, brother of John Hinckley, the day after a bullet came within an inch of making Neil Bush's father the new president of the United States.) ....much more
    • Note that the Neil Bush section on my web site covers only the 1990s. My 1984 book, "The Afternoon of March 30," contains a large number of facts about the Bushes that never have appeared in the mainstream press. I'd be especially pleased if you would report on the availability of this book, for which I still regularly get orders, especially since the "election" of George W. Bush. It has become an underground classic on the Internet and by word of mouth. 

• Like Hugh Rodham, the Bush Bros. Have Capitalized on Family Ties-- O, Brother! Where Art Thou? 
  "...Jeb missed that junket, but the current governor of Florida isn't above taking the family name abroad to make a buck. In 1989, Bush and his wife traveled to Nigeria with a executives of M&W Pump, a Florida-based company that had been selling agricultural pumps to Nigeria. Jeb and Columba Bush were received by Nigerian President Ibrahim Babangida and celebrated by tens of thousands of Nigerians who turned out to see the son of the U.S. president. President Babangida expressed his interest in visiting the White House -- a request Jeb promised to pass along to his father -- and by 1992 the Florida pump company had secured $74 million in financing from the Export-Import Bank of the United States. It was by far the largest Ex-Im deal M&W had ever done in Nigeria -- a country Ex-Im loan officers considered a bad risk. "I didn't get paid for the Nigeria business," Bush told The Palm Beach Post in 1994. "I have not made a dime on business with Nigeria." Yet the Post found tax records that revealed Bush and earned at least $300,000 through his association with the owner of the same company for which he had done a pro-bono sales trip to Nigeria. Bush-El, a 50-50 partnership with the owner of M&W, paid Bush at least $300,000 for his participation in a separate venture, marketing agricultural hand pumps. Why would Bush suddenly find himself involved with a company selling agricultural hand pumps around the world? the Post asked. "I know how to sell things," responded Bush. "I know international sales. I know how to get people to put together tenders because I financed a lot of them when I was working at Texas Commerce Bank."
  
  
• Bush Jr.'s Skeleton Closet
  
  
• Veterans request George W Bush Military record
  
  

• The Old Family Ranch

  PHONY TO THE CORE: The "Ole Family Ranch" in Crawford is a Set Completed the Same Day the Election was Stolen
  By Cheryl Seal

  Have you seen all those article and pictures of Bush "at home on the ranch" in Crawford - the ones that imply that he is "just an ole ranch hand" more comfortable on the family homestead than in the "Big City," be it Austin or D.C.? Well, if you bought this image, you've been royally snuckered. The Bush family homestead in Crawford is nothing more than an elaborate set. The house, built in 2000, was designed to be ready for Bush to step into - like a set awaiting an actor - during the 2000 presidential election. Not only was the "ranch" created in 2000 - so, essentially, was the "town" of Crawford! Before then only about 400 people lived in the area. The Crawford Chamber of Commerce and Agriculture were formed shortly after the ranch was finished. ... More

• George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin

 

FORTUNATE SON: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President, second edition J.H. Hatfield

Although it's easy to laugh at President Bush's gaffes, "we misunderestimate him at our peril." 

...Mark Crispin Miller The Bush Dyslexicon

"Although he has some drastic intellectual limitations (to put it mildly), Bush is not the drooling cretin who's been so derisively lampooned in the political cartoons, stand-up routines and quickie books. Despite his patent awkwardness before the cameras, Bush does possess a certain nasty shrewdness, which has often served him well at the combative kind of politics. As the late Jim Hatfield pointed out in Fortunate Son, this Bush was centrally involved in his dad's filthy presidential drive in 1988. The on-air counterblast against Dan Rather, the Willie Horton gambit and the outing of Jimmy Swaggart were moves that Bush the Younger helped devise and orchestrate. This is why Mary Matalin has admiringly deemed W "a political campaign terrorist"--not a mere tool of, say, Karl Rove, but a full-fledged collaborator.

In any case, to cast Bush as an utter moron only does him an enormous favor, since it helps his propagandists, and the major media, to keep hailing his embarrassing performance as a great success: "much better than expected." If anyone has ever benefited from what Bush has called "the bigotry of soft expectations," it's George W. Bush himself.
The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder

Call-in show critical of JEB is taken off the air

TALLAHASSEE -- For six years, Robert Kerrigan, a Pensacola trial lawyer, spent freely of his money to produce and star on a statewide consumer call-in show, Law Talk Live, on the Sunshine cable television network. By accounts, it was very popular. -- But then Kerrigan began attacking Gov. Jeb Bush, the Legislature and other Republican targets. He's no longer on the network, and the choice wasn't his....(his website is www.lawtalklive.com) 
 .... Martin Dyckman in St Petersburg Times - 8/19/01 Sunshine Network's popular show has abrupt ending in politics

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