Evelyn Pringle December 8, 2004
This article is the first in an investigative series covering the Amway Scandal.
Former Amway insider, Eric Scheibeler, has written a must read new book called "Merchants Of Deception." This one time member of the Amway motivational cult has turned whistleblower and FBI witness and boy does he have some tales to tell.
In the book, Scheibeler exposes an Enron sized fraud with Amway raking In billions of dollars annually, and the billionaire founding families Being the largest soft money contributors to the GOP, with funds that have Been generated from what may turn out to be one of the largest consumer fraud scandals in history, perpetrated by the world's largest multi-level marketing company (MLM).
The former Federal Auditor has also has a website, www.merchantsofdeception.com, that reveals the close ties between Amway and Republicans.
As a life long conservative, Scheibeler was discouraged to both discover and document that "the GOP seems to have been hijacked by political payoffs from an industry that is rife with consumer deception, and bogus 'business opportunity' selling."
He goes on to say that it's "time this secret influence peddling and the harm it causes consumers and our democracy are revealed. I was on the inside for nine years. I saw it with my own eyes. I also have the internal documents, financials, and the audio and video tapes to prove it."
Merchants of Deception exposes the company's deceptive marketing of phony business opportunities and other secret scams by Amway's top promoters to sell so-called success tools to unsuspecting recruits all over the world. It also contains first hand accounts of the Kingpin's fraudulent recruitment practices that have led to an endless stream of lawsuits.
Scheibeler and Dateline Team Up In Sting Operation
In addition to writing a book and setting up a web site, Scheibeler provided key documentation for the May 7, 2004, NBC Dateline program that televised an expose of the secretive and illegal pyramid business run by Amway & Quixtar kingpins.
During its investigation, Dateline smuggled hidden cameras into recruitment meetings in order to document the company's deceptive claims and promises, and to expose its multi-million dollar 'secret' business. The expose verified the common allegation made in numerous consumer lawsuits, that the company is merely a front for a hidden pyramid business based on selling books, tapes, and registrations to seminars and rallies to new recruits, with nearly all participants losing money.
According to Dateline, the FBI and the IRS are conducting investigations into the scheme.
Republicans Will Do Anything For A Buck
Amway's billionaire founders, Rich DeVos and Jay VanAndel, have been the largest soft money contributors to the GOP on and off for the past 20 years. Together, DeVos and VanAndel gave $4,000,000 to a 527, just 45 days prior to the last election. And you can bet that they demand (and get) a bang for every red cent.
Scheibeler's book reveals how GOP donations and corporate promotion have resulted in a trade off for political protection and tax reduction benefits for the MLM. His web site provides a goldmine of documentation to back up his claims, including audiotapes.
By going to the site, you can hear Newt Gingrich promoting Amway at a large event, or you can listen to audio clips of then Texas Governor George W Bush. There is even a clip sent by high-level kingpin distributors from a private meeting within the White House.
Scheibeler tells how some members of the GOP have been paid as much as $100,000 for a single promotional appearance at an Amway seminar. The list of high-paid Republican speakers who have appeared at rallies over the years, reads like a list of who's who in the GOP. It includes former Presidents George Bush, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and former Vice Presidents Bob Dole and Dan Quayle, along with other GOP heavyweights like Gingrich, Oliver North, Senator Rick Santorum and even the latest SE Regional Chairman for the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign, Ralph Reed.
Scheibeler reveals just how much Republican law makers have given back to Amway in return for the large speaking fees and contributions, which includes tax breaks and a blanket of immunity from investigations into the company's illegal business practices. In hindsight, it is more than evident that the money bought a whole lot of regulatory protection for Amway.
Merchant's of Deception provides a good example of how the racket works in the case of Newt Gingrich. His speaking fees are reported to be in the $50,000 range. The books explains how, after accepting speaking fees, Gingrich arranged a reported last-minute modification in a comprehensive tax bill that allegedly provided a $283 million tax break to just one company -- Amway.
One report called the tax break a $283 million payoff. "The payoff for Amway was not in the original House or Senate version of the tax bill. House Speaker Newt Gingrich intervened at the last minute to help get the special tax break inserted in the bill." (San Antonio Express-News Aug 12,1997).
Who Else Is Involved In The Amway Scandal?
Back in 1997, syndicated columnist Molly Ivins described Amway's Lobbying power in Congress. "Amway has its own caucus in Congress. Yes, the Amway caucus. Five Republican House members are also Amway distributors: Reps. Sue Myrick of North Carolina, Jon Christensen of Nebraska, Dick Chrysler of Michigan, Richard Rombo of California and John Ensign of Nevada. Their informal caucus meets several times a year with Amway bigwigs to discuss policy matters affecting the company, including China's trade status," she said.
Ivins also noted that, "House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, a onetime Amway salesman, also remains close to the company."
Which figures, because everybody knows that if there's a buck to be made from a scam, DeLay is sure to be lurking around in the shadows somewhere nearby.
And the fund-raising power of this pyramid company is not limited to the company's top dogs. The downline distributors are often pressured to produce large sums of money by soliciting small contributions from a great number of people. And that money can add up fast, considering that in 2000, Amway reportedly had over 700,000 distributors.
In 1997, a request from Congresswoman Sue Myrick to Amway Kingpin, Dexter Yager, for help in her fund raising events, increased her campaign war chest by more than $20,000 with small contributions from distributors. The next year, another fundraiser aimed at distributors brought in over $35,000.
W and Amway Are Tight
When it comes to W and Amway, it's a give and take situation. They mutually provide "quid pro quo" favors to each other. For instance, during the 2000 campaign, W used the company's voicemail network to reach thousands of Kingpin Dexter Yager's distributors with a personalized message from none other than Bush himself.
Then last summer, when Amway co-founder Rich DeVos attended a dinner party at the home of a friend in Grand Rapids, MI, he got seated right across the dinner table from W, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
DeVos isn't shy about discussing his contributions to Bush. "People ask Me sometimes why I support Bush, "DeVos said, "I just tell them, 'Because When I walk into the room, he says, "Hi, Rich." 'I've been a friend to the family for a long time.'"
"I give the max," DeVos said proudly.
"People talk about buying access, But all I can tell you is that politicians know the people who support them," he told the Sentinel.
And DeVos ain't lying, he has been very generous to W over the years. The $2,000 campaign Limit that he gives directly to Bush, is but a fraction of what he actually contributes. His wife, kids, and their spouses, also make large donations to W and other members of the GOP.
During the 2000 election cycle, DeVos, his wife, and son contributed a combined sum of $760,000 to Republican candidates and causes, and according to FEC records, Amway itself contributed a whopping $1.3 million, with every dime going to Republicans.
Favored politicians are also aware that the Amway perks don't necessarily end once they leave office. For example, DeVos has remained such great friends with President Ford over the years, that when Ford travels, it's often on DeVos' private jet.
How Much Does W Protect Amway - Let Me Count The Ways
Scheibeler's reporting provides a well documented expose of the Bush administration's direct involvement in the regulatory protection of Amway, and verifies that DeVos does get a lot of bang for every buck.
As we all know, there are rampant cases of improper influence in the Bush White House. Right off the top my head, energy and drug companies come to mind.
But Amway is different; its primary goal is not merely to rip off tax payers. It's to literally protect its very existence. The MLM completely relies on political protection to prevent it from being shut down by regulators and law enforcement.
And Bush has demonstrated that he was more than willing to engage in the protection racket.
On his web site, Scheibeler is highly critical of the FTC, and its current chairman, Bush appointee, Timothy Muris, mainly because of the agency's utter refusal to properly investigate and/or prosecute pyramid schemes, despite the overwhelming number of well documented complaints that have been filed with the agency.
Without a doubt, Amway's business practices are flagrant violations of FTC rules. Three separate federal court rulings have defined these types of pyramid sales as illegal schemes, and there are any number of websites on the internet that document the financial harm caused to millions of people by Amway's deceptive recruitment schemes. Yet, the Bush administration has consistently ignored the company's violations.
Scheibeler's web site attracts testimonials from Amway victims all over the world. Complaints have come in from Australia, New Zealand, UK, Germany, France, Canada, and Slovakia. And the whole world watches as the FTC turns a blind eye to the blatant exportation of this "American" fraud.
In fact, it could be said that Bush has aided and abetted Amway's criminal behavior. To begin with, appointing Tim Muris to head the FTC was the equivalent of setting a fox loose in the chicken coup. Before his appointment, Muris was as an attorney with the antitrust division of the law firm Howrey, Simon, Arnold and White, LLP. And guess who the firm's antitrust division counts as one of its largest clients? Amway.
So here we have it, while Muris was at Howrey, and while he was in charge of the FTC, his former law partners were representing Amway in a class action lawsuit initiated by a former Amway distributor that alleged that the MLM's recruitment program was an illegal pyramid scheme.
And there's more. The MLM's influence with the FTC doesn't end with Muris, it extends beyond him. During the Clinton administration, a company named Equinox (an Amway clone), was prosecuted for violating the pyramid scheme fraud statutes. One of Equinox's expert witnesses was David Scheffman, and he testified against the FTC and defended the scheme.
Scheffman claimed that the company's business model was legitimate and not a pyramid scheme, based on the assertion that company operated just like Amway. In the end, Equinox lost the court battle and was shut down, but guess where Scheffman ended up? Muris made him the Chief Economist at the FTC.
Does the information above indicate any conflict of interest violations within the Bush administration? Probably not, since the term conflict of interest was obviously deleted from the White House vocabulary when Bush moved in.
Showing posts with label 2004. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2004. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Amway, Republicans & That Old Time Religion
Evelyn Pringle December 14, 2004
Eric Scheibeler's book new, Merchants of Deception,[*] is a first hand account of the author’s recruitment into the Amway cult, his rapid advancement as a recruiter of others, and his final awakening after many years of mind-dulling dedication to the cult ideology. The book evidences Eric's deep personal resolve to try and stop what happened to him from happening to others.
For decades, Amway has used its political clout within the extreme Right Wing of the Republican party to gain access to foreign markets, obtain special tax breaks, and most importantly, to retain immunity from prosecution for pyramid scheme fraud. The giant MLM is able to generates funds all over the globe, simply by using some of those funds to buy protection against regulation and oversight. It has unprecedented influence with the current White House. But worst of all, it has the reach and ability to recruit, manipulate, and misinform millions of new people each year.
The Amway Snow Job - How It Works
Over the past 20 years, more than 10 million Americans have been lured into the trap of investing vast amounts of time and money in Amway’s pyramid sales scheme. And each new recruit was subjected to its radical conservative propaganda campaign as a key component of the motivational training that their up-line recruiters insisted they must have in order to be successful with Amway.
To that end, millions of Amway audiotapes, CDs and videos are sold each year. The main message they expound is that success is achieved by emulating the Amway beliefs and values, characterized by political conservatism, disdain for the poor, extreme distrust of government social programs, and adherence to the rules of right-wing Christianity.
To date, there have been no studies done on the political leanings of recruits entering the Amway program. But it is known that many recruits who may not have embraced the radical right-wing agenda going in, adopt it soon after being exposed to Amway's indoctrination. If even half of the recruits believe the propaganda they are exposed to, it means millions of people are converted each year as a direct result of their involvement with the MLM.
Eric is a good example of this kind of conversion. Before he came into Amway, politics had never been an issue with him, and he was not a deeply religious person. But he soon came to believe that he was dealing with people of great faith and integrity, in part because the tapes he was instructed to listen to.
Unbeknownst to Eric, an educational process had begun that would eventually alter and control nearly all of his values and beliefs. As part of that process, he was instructed to (1) attend choreographed Amway rallies where it delivers its message, often over 2 or three days; (2) read politically charged books; (3) listen to hours of politically slanted audiotapes and voicemail messages; and (4) pay large amounts of money to listen to Right Wing Religious and Republican spokespersons at seminars around the nation.
While attending these seminars, Eric began to learn about the supposed evils of liberalism and the Democratic Party and how the liberals wanted to take from the hardworking, honest people and give to the nonproductive members of society, who were only poor because they were lazy.
Distributors were also pushed to contribute money to the campaigns of conservative Republicans who were brought in to speak. It they were not from their home state, they were urged to help get them elected anyways in order to make the whole country better.
When speaking, top promoters constantly linked the Amway teachings to religion, with comments such as, “When you’re loyal to the upline, it’s being loyal to God. It’s being loyal to your husband and loyal to your children,” by Amway Double Diamond Linda Harteis at a Ladies Meeting.
When Republicans spoke at rallies, they were often introduced as great Americans, while their Democratic counterparts were portrayed as godless, anti-family, anti-business, and anti-success. Mother Jones magazine correctly described the Amway distributor force as "heavily influenced by the company's dual themes of Christian morality and free enterprise" and operating "like a private political army."
A typical example of the kind of derogatory political messages that are broadcast to Amway members, is one sent by Dexter Yager a few years back. The entire message was a condemnation of Hillary Clinton, disguised as a prayer. At one point, Yager says, “God, melt that woman’s brain,” and that was one of the milder prayer lines.
The comments made by these people can only be described as bizarre. For instance, they claimed that women who chose a career over staying home and raising their children, either lacked values or were just plain stupid. They'd make other comments like, "Why do you think she's working, because she hates her kids?"
According to Eric, these kinds of remarks were often followed with a disclaimer such as, "I certainly understand the bad position that these women are in. Some are forced into the workplace, because they are married to a man that just isn't a man."
After a thorough brainwashing, Eric came to believe that Amway had given him and his wife the gift of membership in a group of like-minded people who believed in God, America, and the family. He reached the point where he bought into what co-founder DeVos claimed in his book, Believe! "This country was built on a religious heritage, and we had better get back to it. We had better start telling people that faith in God is the real strength of America!" DeVos wrote.
The Bush Family & Religious Heathens
Several members of the media have looked into the relationship between the two Bush Presidencies and members of the extreme Religious Right Wing. After reading up on that gang, the only thing I know for sure, is that there is not a single honest person in the whole bunch.
First off, lets take a look at evangelist Doug Wead, a divorced Baptist Minister, and former Diamond distributer, who is still a regular speaker at Amway conventions.
Wead was the first President Bush's liaison to the Christian Right and he later served as Special Assistant to the President in the first Bush White House. Time magazine referred to him as "the man who coined the phrase the compassionate conservative."
He was linked to the second President Bush early on as well. US News and World Report described Wead as an "old friend and advisor" to George W Bush. In the book, First Son, Author and Dallas Morning News Reporter, Bill Mintuglio, said that Wead was a man who had spent years "preparing strategy reports" for both President Bush and GW.
The book claims W was the “family liaison to hard-edged conservatives and to Christian evangelical leaders, developing close ties to (among others) defeated ... congressional candidate Doug Wead, with his Amway and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker connections.”
In 1998, W decided it was his turn. Within days of his reelection as governor, W was secretly planning to run for President, because, as he said, he felt certain he had been called. He was encouraged in this belief by evangelical friends like Doug Wead and by his mother, who called him “the Chosen One," according to Kitty Kelly's book, the Family.
Anticipating W’s reelection, Wead had already written a memo encouraging him to run, “You have been given a great opportunity, an opportunity that has been denied to many who have sought it. It is a gift that has rarely been extended. It might not ever be extended again,” Wead wrote.
Years earlier, Wead had lost his own Congressional bid after Republican Senator Barry Goldwater, threw his support behind Wead's Democratic opponent, and stunned the Christian community with the remark, "I don't think God should be sold for money."
Goldwater was obviously a good judge of character and realized that it would be better to have a Democrat in office than a charlatan like Wead. And he was absolutely right, because as it turns out, Wead's past with Amway is even shadier than most people know.
At one time, Wead and his ex-wife Gloria, were both Diamond distributors, sponsored by Dexter and Birdie Yager. Wead earned large sums of money by speaking at Amway functions throughout the Yager organization.
Wead and another kingpin, Jean Godzich, eventually branched out and set up an Amway in France. In 1986, the French government began investigating it and decided the company was a dangerous mind-control cult, and a fraudulent business. Amway France terminated the distributorship of Godzich, from whose group most of the complaints had originated.
So what do Wead and Godzich do next? They set up a new MLM in France, called Groupement or GEPM. Its product line consisted of Amway products, its business structure was identical to Amway France, and its cultic activities were just as blatant as they were in the first operation.
After receiving numerous complaints about GEPM, French authorities moved in to shut it down, but this time it issued criminal arrest warrants, 13 for the company’s distributors, and 2 for Godzich and Wead. Godzich took all the cash and fled the country and Wead never returned to France.
This man is the same Doug Wead, who 2 years later, would become a White House Aide to the first President Bush, and spiritual adviser to the second. God help us!!!
Some Religious Top Guns Need Extra Protection
The Amway pyramid fraud scheme seems to offer steady employment. If you are being investigated or arrested in one country or state, all you have to do is move along to another and set up shop again. Defrocked religious zealots seem to get away with doing this time and time again.
For example, Don Storms is an Executive Diamond with Amway. He is also an ex-minister, who spent 13 years traveling the country with a gospel quartet, before teaming up with Jim Bakker and becoming a senior vice president at the PTL Club. In 1979, he and wife Ruth started their Amway business. Today, Storms is a real estate developer, in addition to his Amway business, according to MLM Survior.com on July 13, 1999.
Don’s buddy, Kevin Trudeau, is a prolific marketer, but with a vary shady past. He is a twice-convicted felon and has served time in prison for credit card fraud. The FTC has prosecuted him a couple times for concocting fraudulent infomercials and at one time or another, he has been under investigations by 18 state Attorneys General, and the US Postal Service.
Trudeau was once involved with the MLM company, Nutrition for Life, Inc (NFLI). But that involvement came to an abrupt halt, after the SEC began investigating his recruitment practices. On April 17, 1996, the Illinois Attorney General filed a lawsuit against Trudeau, and his partner, for running an illegal pyramid scheme that was set up to peddle motivational books and tapes. The State of Michigan also ordered him to stop all marketing in that state related to his business the Trudeau Marketing Group (TMG).
So what do the Ex-Pastor and Ex-Con have in common? Quixtar. Their Quixtar/Trudeau connection was revealed in a spam e-mail, which stated in part:
"PLEASE CONTACT ME RIGHT AWAY! URGENT! URGENT! URGENT! DON'T LET THIS ONE GET AWAY FROM YOU. THE LARGEST, MOST EXPLOSIVE MLM OPPORTUNITY OF ALL TIME IS NOW UNDERWAY. IT IS UNIMAGINABLY HUGE. HUGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY ARE BEHIND IT, HUGE CORPORATIONS LIKE MICROSOFT AND IBM,. . .
"IT IS VITALLY IMPORTANT THAT YOU RESERVE YOUR POSITION NOW IN THE TRUDEAU TRAINING TEAM ORGANIZATION, WHICH NOW WITHOUT QUESTION THE MOST UNBELIEVABLE MLM MARKETING GROUP IN HISTORY. KEVIN TRUDEAU, WHO IS THE HUGE IN THE TV INFOMERCIAL BUSINESS WORLDWIDE, AND HIS ORGANIZATION OF INFORMERCIAL DISTRIBUTORS (TO WHICH I BELONG) ARE BUILDING AN EXCLUSIVE MARKETING ORGANIZATION IN COOPERATION WITH AND DIRECTLY DOWNLINE FROM THE BIGGEST LEADERS IN THE NETWORK MARKETING INDUSTRY TODAY, THE JODY VICTOR, DEXTER YAGER, DON STORMS, BLAINE ATHORN GROUP."
How's that for Amway name-dropping? A little research by MLM Survivor.com, revealed the following: On June 30, 1999, Trudeau placed an announcement on the TMG's voicemail system. It seems that his long-time buddy and ex-business associate, Blaine Athorne, (who fired him after his 1989 credit card fraud) hired the TMG in an exclusive relationship with his Amway/Quixtar organization.
Trudeau briefly noted his earlier job with network marketing, but claimed it was the changing dynamics in the company, which made it impossible for him to continue as a distributor. "I no longer could promote that business. . . [because of] disagreement in management."
Oh really? Could that disagreement have had something to do with his conviction for pyramid fraud, or the $1 million fine that he had to pay as a result of his infomercial fraud?
Or maybe it was about the Postal Service investigation or the umpteen investigations by state Attorneys General. Who knows?
About Quixtar, Trudeau says: "I believe in my heart of hearts is the ultimate network marketing opportunity of all times. . ." One of the claims he makes on behalf of Quixtar is: "You'll be able to buy hundreds of thousands and eventually millions of products at very good pricing -- similar to Sam's Club." Then comes the big push!
"I have chosen after multiple meetings with corporate executives, top distributors and lawyers that it would be in the best interests of everyone if I did not become a distributor in Amway or Quixtar. I have formed a company called the Trudeau Training Team. The Trudeau Training Team has signed an exclusive marketing and sales arrangement with Storms Enterprises Inc. . . Don Storms has personally sponsored my long-time friend and business associate Blaine Athorne. Blaine Athorne is going to be the founding distributor in our downline organization. . . My company has signed an exclusive marketing and sales training contract with Blaine Athorne’s distributorship and downline, and Don Storms.
"Many of the marketing strategies that I've employed in the past will be utilized in this organization."
What marketing strategy is he referring to here? Is there any other, besides the old standard run-of-the-mill pyramid scheme?
Trudeau says Don Storms is "one of the greatest network marketers of all time," and Storms says, "Kevin Trudeau's training [is] the best in the world."
So here it is for all to see, a prime example of the quality of ethical and legal behavior we can expect from Amway/Quixtar and its distributors.
More Secretive Religious Groups
Amway founder Richard DeVos is a member of the Council for National Policy (CNP). A group described as "the Most Powerful Conservative Group You've Never Heard Of," by ABC News in a May, 2004 report that noted the group's extraordinary secrecy.
If you want to do a little Republican name-dropping, just recite the names of the 500 or so members of the CNP. They include Christian Coalition president Pat Robertson; political strategist Ralph Reed; Sen Jesse Helms; Congressmen Dick Armey and Tom Delay; Gun Owners of America head Larry Pratt; Oliver North; Texas billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt; Focus on the Family head James Dobson; and former presidential candidate Gary Bauer.
"According to a membership roster ... other notable former and current members include: Attorney General John Ashcroft and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson. (Both are no longer members); Christian businessmen like Holland and Jeffrey Coors, of the brewing company; two of fundamentalist Christianity's most prominent end-of-the-world theologists: John Ankerberg, and Dave Breese," ABC noted.
DeVos is also a major supporter of a right-wing, Christian non-profit entity called Gospel Communications International, which has annual revenues of $6.7 million. Its Board of Directors reads like a Who’s Who of Amway kingpins, with DeVos as Chairman and his son, Doug DeVos, as Vice-Chairman. Out of 15 Directors, 10 are from Amway.
Launched in 1995, Gospel.com, claims to be the largest Christian website on the Internet. In 1999, it claimed that it had more than 780 million hits from people in 216 different countries and territories around the world.
During 1998, Gospel was responsible for showing videos and films to over 200 million people in schools, churches, homes, prisons, hospitals, and on television. To give you an idea of what kind of information was contained in those films, consider that 2 books that were being promoted on its website as of September 14, 2004, included, From Reveler to Revelation - the Journey of President George W Bush; and A Greater Freedom: Stories of Faith from Operation Iraqi Freedom, by Oliver North.
And of course no religious nutcase tale would be complete if Jerry Falwell wasn‘t mentioned. Not to worry, ole Jerry is in the loop. Amway Kingpin, Dexter Yager, not only financially supports Falwell’s Liberty University, one of Yager's sons sits on the University’s board of directors.
Dexter Yager is such a prince, that years ago, he even let Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker broadcast their religious show from his home, after they lost the PTL ministry, according to Mother Jones Magazine. What a guy.
So How Much Money Are We Talking About?
How much money are we talking about? Well first of all, Amway perks are not limited to money contributions. For example, when describing the events at the 2000 Republican Convention, the New York Times wrote, “For the party’s top underwriters, there will be an array of gold-plated events in Philadelphia, including cocktails with Gen. Colin L. Powell and an evening cruise on the Delaware River aboard the ‘Enterprise,’ the yacht owned by Richard M. DeVos, the Amway founder, who is a Bush supporter.”
Four years later on September 2, 2004, the Detroit Free Press described another boat ride. Insiders were feted aboard Dick and Betsy DeVos’ yacht at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York, as well as Jay Van Andel’s lavish 169-footer.
Besides yachts trips, we are looking at a whole lot of money being passed around. For example, in 1994, Amway and Anschutz were the top two donors, each giving $250,000 toward a $2.5-million soft money contribution to the RNC. It was the largest single political donation on record.
In return, the Amway big-wigs are treated very well. On July 18, 1996, DeVos was honored at a $3 million Republican fundraiser, where keynote speaker, Bob Dole, paid tribute to him. A week later it was reported that Amway had donated $1.3 million to the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau, to pay for Republican infomercials airing on Pat Robertson's Family Channel during the convention, according to the Sept/Oct 1996, issue of Mother Jones magazine.
Although the Democrats filed a complaint and blocked the payoff, it demonstrates how one hand washes the other when it comes to Amway, the Religious Right Wing, and the Republican Party.
In the Bush/Cheney campaign 2000, Betsy DeVos, daughter-in-law of Richard DeVos, became a so-called Bush Pioneer by raising over $100,000. And overall, in 2000, Amway was the second largest contributor of soft money to the RNC, with donations totaling $1,138,500, second only to Reynolds Tobacco.
In 2004, the 527 “Progress for America” received a bundle. “The latest crop of donors includes Amway founders Richard DeVos and Jay Van Andel, who each chipped in $2 million,” reports Newsweek, “The Secret Money War,” Sept 20, 2004.
So what does Amway get in return for all this money? A lot. But most importantly, it allows Amway to operate with political protection against criminal investigations that would lead to the collapse of not only Amway, but the entire MLM industry.
Pyramid Scheme Alert Takes On The MLM
In June 2000, the first consumer advocacy group was formed that focuses directly on pyramid scheme fraud. Pyramid Scheme Alert, Inc (PSA) is a non-profit organization, founded by three activist/authors, with support and encouragement from attorneys, former regulators and private citizens all over the world.
PSA Directors, Robert FitzPatrick and Susanna Perkins, have written an excellent white paper report entitled, "The Amway Industry," which details the damaging and corrupting influence of the MLM industry on consumers and democracy. It is by far, the most thorough and comprehensive report available for people looking for information about the MLM industry. [**]
PSA also has a website that is full of information, which receives more than 150,000 hits per month. The organization provides answers to a stream of consumer inquiries each day. Several of its directors have served as expert witnesses in private and government sponsored court proceedings involving MLM companies. PSA's findings has been referenced, quoted, and featured in reports on NBC, ABC, BBC and in many newspapers and magazines around the world.
It was surely a welcome sight for consumers. For decades now, people have went up against Amway with very little success, and for good reason. Amway attorneys routinely threaten website publishers with libel suits. State Attorney General offices say they are too small and financially strapped to take on MLMs in court, and appeals to the FTC have consistently gone unanswered.
Amway Will Be In Business Until Bush Leaves Office
In light of the above, you can bet that Amway will not be closing its doors anytime soon. Its illegal scheme will remain in tact for at least as long as Bush is in the White House.
But there is one oddity about the Bush-Amway gang that Eric recently pointed out. In most cases of fraud, crooks don’t steal from their own. So this makes Amway unique, because it pays the current administration to protect a multi-billion dollar fraud that targets Conservative Christian Republicans almost exclusively.
Eric said he wondered what kind of animals would eat their own? If my memory serves me correctly, I think pigs do that.
(Second Article In A Series On Amway Scandal)
* With prior permission, this article contains a large amount of information taken directly from Eric Scheibeler's website, www.merchantsofdeception.com, and his book, Merchants of Deception.
** With prior permission, this article contains an extensive amount of information taken directly from "The Amway Industry" white paper written by Robert FitzPatrick and Susanna Perkins, Directors of PSA, and the PSA website.
Eric Scheibeler's book new, Merchants of Deception,[*] is a first hand account of the author’s recruitment into the Amway cult, his rapid advancement as a recruiter of others, and his final awakening after many years of mind-dulling dedication to the cult ideology. The book evidences Eric's deep personal resolve to try and stop what happened to him from happening to others.
For decades, Amway has used its political clout within the extreme Right Wing of the Republican party to gain access to foreign markets, obtain special tax breaks, and most importantly, to retain immunity from prosecution for pyramid scheme fraud. The giant MLM is able to generates funds all over the globe, simply by using some of those funds to buy protection against regulation and oversight. It has unprecedented influence with the current White House. But worst of all, it has the reach and ability to recruit, manipulate, and misinform millions of new people each year.
The Amway Snow Job - How It Works
Over the past 20 years, more than 10 million Americans have been lured into the trap of investing vast amounts of time and money in Amway’s pyramid sales scheme. And each new recruit was subjected to its radical conservative propaganda campaign as a key component of the motivational training that their up-line recruiters insisted they must have in order to be successful with Amway.
To that end, millions of Amway audiotapes, CDs and videos are sold each year. The main message they expound is that success is achieved by emulating the Amway beliefs and values, characterized by political conservatism, disdain for the poor, extreme distrust of government social programs, and adherence to the rules of right-wing Christianity.
To date, there have been no studies done on the political leanings of recruits entering the Amway program. But it is known that many recruits who may not have embraced the radical right-wing agenda going in, adopt it soon after being exposed to Amway's indoctrination. If even half of the recruits believe the propaganda they are exposed to, it means millions of people are converted each year as a direct result of their involvement with the MLM.
Eric is a good example of this kind of conversion. Before he came into Amway, politics had never been an issue with him, and he was not a deeply religious person. But he soon came to believe that he was dealing with people of great faith and integrity, in part because the tapes he was instructed to listen to.
Unbeknownst to Eric, an educational process had begun that would eventually alter and control nearly all of his values and beliefs. As part of that process, he was instructed to (1) attend choreographed Amway rallies where it delivers its message, often over 2 or three days; (2) read politically charged books; (3) listen to hours of politically slanted audiotapes and voicemail messages; and (4) pay large amounts of money to listen to Right Wing Religious and Republican spokespersons at seminars around the nation.
While attending these seminars, Eric began to learn about the supposed evils of liberalism and the Democratic Party and how the liberals wanted to take from the hardworking, honest people and give to the nonproductive members of society, who were only poor because they were lazy.
Distributors were also pushed to contribute money to the campaigns of conservative Republicans who were brought in to speak. It they were not from their home state, they were urged to help get them elected anyways in order to make the whole country better.
When speaking, top promoters constantly linked the Amway teachings to religion, with comments such as, “When you’re loyal to the upline, it’s being loyal to God. It’s being loyal to your husband and loyal to your children,” by Amway Double Diamond Linda Harteis at a Ladies Meeting.
When Republicans spoke at rallies, they were often introduced as great Americans, while their Democratic counterparts were portrayed as godless, anti-family, anti-business, and anti-success. Mother Jones magazine correctly described the Amway distributor force as "heavily influenced by the company's dual themes of Christian morality and free enterprise" and operating "like a private political army."
A typical example of the kind of derogatory political messages that are broadcast to Amway members, is one sent by Dexter Yager a few years back. The entire message was a condemnation of Hillary Clinton, disguised as a prayer. At one point, Yager says, “God, melt that woman’s brain,” and that was one of the milder prayer lines.
The comments made by these people can only be described as bizarre. For instance, they claimed that women who chose a career over staying home and raising their children, either lacked values or were just plain stupid. They'd make other comments like, "Why do you think she's working, because she hates her kids?"
According to Eric, these kinds of remarks were often followed with a disclaimer such as, "I certainly understand the bad position that these women are in. Some are forced into the workplace, because they are married to a man that just isn't a man."
After a thorough brainwashing, Eric came to believe that Amway had given him and his wife the gift of membership in a group of like-minded people who believed in God, America, and the family. He reached the point where he bought into what co-founder DeVos claimed in his book, Believe! "This country was built on a religious heritage, and we had better get back to it. We had better start telling people that faith in God is the real strength of America!" DeVos wrote.
The Bush Family & Religious Heathens
Several members of the media have looked into the relationship between the two Bush Presidencies and members of the extreme Religious Right Wing. After reading up on that gang, the only thing I know for sure, is that there is not a single honest person in the whole bunch.
First off, lets take a look at evangelist Doug Wead, a divorced Baptist Minister, and former Diamond distributer, who is still a regular speaker at Amway conventions.
Wead was the first President Bush's liaison to the Christian Right and he later served as Special Assistant to the President in the first Bush White House. Time magazine referred to him as "the man who coined the phrase the compassionate conservative."
He was linked to the second President Bush early on as well. US News and World Report described Wead as an "old friend and advisor" to George W Bush. In the book, First Son, Author and Dallas Morning News Reporter, Bill Mintuglio, said that Wead was a man who had spent years "preparing strategy reports" for both President Bush and GW.
The book claims W was the “family liaison to hard-edged conservatives and to Christian evangelical leaders, developing close ties to (among others) defeated ... congressional candidate Doug Wead, with his Amway and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker connections.”
In 1998, W decided it was his turn. Within days of his reelection as governor, W was secretly planning to run for President, because, as he said, he felt certain he had been called. He was encouraged in this belief by evangelical friends like Doug Wead and by his mother, who called him “the Chosen One," according to Kitty Kelly's book, the Family.
Anticipating W’s reelection, Wead had already written a memo encouraging him to run, “You have been given a great opportunity, an opportunity that has been denied to many who have sought it. It is a gift that has rarely been extended. It might not ever be extended again,” Wead wrote.
Years earlier, Wead had lost his own Congressional bid after Republican Senator Barry Goldwater, threw his support behind Wead's Democratic opponent, and stunned the Christian community with the remark, "I don't think God should be sold for money."
Goldwater was obviously a good judge of character and realized that it would be better to have a Democrat in office than a charlatan like Wead. And he was absolutely right, because as it turns out, Wead's past with Amway is even shadier than most people know.
At one time, Wead and his ex-wife Gloria, were both Diamond distributors, sponsored by Dexter and Birdie Yager. Wead earned large sums of money by speaking at Amway functions throughout the Yager organization.
Wead and another kingpin, Jean Godzich, eventually branched out and set up an Amway in France. In 1986, the French government began investigating it and decided the company was a dangerous mind-control cult, and a fraudulent business. Amway France terminated the distributorship of Godzich, from whose group most of the complaints had originated.
So what do Wead and Godzich do next? They set up a new MLM in France, called Groupement or GEPM. Its product line consisted of Amway products, its business structure was identical to Amway France, and its cultic activities were just as blatant as they were in the first operation.
After receiving numerous complaints about GEPM, French authorities moved in to shut it down, but this time it issued criminal arrest warrants, 13 for the company’s distributors, and 2 for Godzich and Wead. Godzich took all the cash and fled the country and Wead never returned to France.
This man is the same Doug Wead, who 2 years later, would become a White House Aide to the first President Bush, and spiritual adviser to the second. God help us!!!
Some Religious Top Guns Need Extra Protection
The Amway pyramid fraud scheme seems to offer steady employment. If you are being investigated or arrested in one country or state, all you have to do is move along to another and set up shop again. Defrocked religious zealots seem to get away with doing this time and time again.
For example, Don Storms is an Executive Diamond with Amway. He is also an ex-minister, who spent 13 years traveling the country with a gospel quartet, before teaming up with Jim Bakker and becoming a senior vice president at the PTL Club. In 1979, he and wife Ruth started their Amway business. Today, Storms is a real estate developer, in addition to his Amway business, according to MLM Survior.com on July 13, 1999.
Don’s buddy, Kevin Trudeau, is a prolific marketer, but with a vary shady past. He is a twice-convicted felon and has served time in prison for credit card fraud. The FTC has prosecuted him a couple times for concocting fraudulent infomercials and at one time or another, he has been under investigations by 18 state Attorneys General, and the US Postal Service.
Trudeau was once involved with the MLM company, Nutrition for Life, Inc (NFLI). But that involvement came to an abrupt halt, after the SEC began investigating his recruitment practices. On April 17, 1996, the Illinois Attorney General filed a lawsuit against Trudeau, and his partner, for running an illegal pyramid scheme that was set up to peddle motivational books and tapes. The State of Michigan also ordered him to stop all marketing in that state related to his business the Trudeau Marketing Group (TMG).
So what do the Ex-Pastor and Ex-Con have in common? Quixtar. Their Quixtar/Trudeau connection was revealed in a spam e-mail, which stated in part:
"PLEASE CONTACT ME RIGHT AWAY! URGENT! URGENT! URGENT! DON'T LET THIS ONE GET AWAY FROM YOU. THE LARGEST, MOST EXPLOSIVE MLM OPPORTUNITY OF ALL TIME IS NOW UNDERWAY. IT IS UNIMAGINABLY HUGE. HUGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY ARE BEHIND IT, HUGE CORPORATIONS LIKE MICROSOFT AND IBM,. . .
"IT IS VITALLY IMPORTANT THAT YOU RESERVE YOUR POSITION NOW IN THE TRUDEAU TRAINING TEAM ORGANIZATION, WHICH NOW WITHOUT QUESTION THE MOST UNBELIEVABLE MLM MARKETING GROUP IN HISTORY. KEVIN TRUDEAU, WHO IS THE HUGE IN THE TV INFOMERCIAL BUSINESS WORLDWIDE, AND HIS ORGANIZATION OF INFORMERCIAL DISTRIBUTORS (TO WHICH I BELONG) ARE BUILDING AN EXCLUSIVE MARKETING ORGANIZATION IN COOPERATION WITH AND DIRECTLY DOWNLINE FROM THE BIGGEST LEADERS IN THE NETWORK MARKETING INDUSTRY TODAY, THE JODY VICTOR, DEXTER YAGER, DON STORMS, BLAINE ATHORN GROUP."
How's that for Amway name-dropping? A little research by MLM Survivor.com, revealed the following: On June 30, 1999, Trudeau placed an announcement on the TMG's voicemail system. It seems that his long-time buddy and ex-business associate, Blaine Athorne, (who fired him after his 1989 credit card fraud) hired the TMG in an exclusive relationship with his Amway/Quixtar organization.
Trudeau briefly noted his earlier job with network marketing, but claimed it was the changing dynamics in the company, which made it impossible for him to continue as a distributor. "I no longer could promote that business. . . [because of] disagreement in management."
Oh really? Could that disagreement have had something to do with his conviction for pyramid fraud, or the $1 million fine that he had to pay as a result of his infomercial fraud?
Or maybe it was about the Postal Service investigation or the umpteen investigations by state Attorneys General. Who knows?
About Quixtar, Trudeau says: "I believe in my heart of hearts is the ultimate network marketing opportunity of all times. . ." One of the claims he makes on behalf of Quixtar is: "You'll be able to buy hundreds of thousands and eventually millions of products at very good pricing -- similar to Sam's Club." Then comes the big push!
"I have chosen after multiple meetings with corporate executives, top distributors and lawyers that it would be in the best interests of everyone if I did not become a distributor in Amway or Quixtar. I have formed a company called the Trudeau Training Team. The Trudeau Training Team has signed an exclusive marketing and sales arrangement with Storms Enterprises Inc. . . Don Storms has personally sponsored my long-time friend and business associate Blaine Athorne. Blaine Athorne is going to be the founding distributor in our downline organization. . . My company has signed an exclusive marketing and sales training contract with Blaine Athorne’s distributorship and downline, and Don Storms.
"Many of the marketing strategies that I've employed in the past will be utilized in this organization."
What marketing strategy is he referring to here? Is there any other, besides the old standard run-of-the-mill pyramid scheme?
Trudeau says Don Storms is "one of the greatest network marketers of all time," and Storms says, "Kevin Trudeau's training [is] the best in the world."
So here it is for all to see, a prime example of the quality of ethical and legal behavior we can expect from Amway/Quixtar and its distributors.
More Secretive Religious Groups
Amway founder Richard DeVos is a member of the Council for National Policy (CNP). A group described as "the Most Powerful Conservative Group You've Never Heard Of," by ABC News in a May, 2004 report that noted the group's extraordinary secrecy.
If you want to do a little Republican name-dropping, just recite the names of the 500 or so members of the CNP. They include Christian Coalition president Pat Robertson; political strategist Ralph Reed; Sen Jesse Helms; Congressmen Dick Armey and Tom Delay; Gun Owners of America head Larry Pratt; Oliver North; Texas billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt; Focus on the Family head James Dobson; and former presidential candidate Gary Bauer.
"According to a membership roster ... other notable former and current members include: Attorney General John Ashcroft and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson. (Both are no longer members); Christian businessmen like Holland and Jeffrey Coors, of the brewing company; two of fundamentalist Christianity's most prominent end-of-the-world theologists: John Ankerberg, and Dave Breese," ABC noted.
DeVos is also a major supporter of a right-wing, Christian non-profit entity called Gospel Communications International, which has annual revenues of $6.7 million. Its Board of Directors reads like a Who’s Who of Amway kingpins, with DeVos as Chairman and his son, Doug DeVos, as Vice-Chairman. Out of 15 Directors, 10 are from Amway.
Launched in 1995, Gospel.com, claims to be the largest Christian website on the Internet. In 1999, it claimed that it had more than 780 million hits from people in 216 different countries and territories around the world.
During 1998, Gospel was responsible for showing videos and films to over 200 million people in schools, churches, homes, prisons, hospitals, and on television. To give you an idea of what kind of information was contained in those films, consider that 2 books that were being promoted on its website as of September 14, 2004, included, From Reveler to Revelation - the Journey of President George W Bush; and A Greater Freedom: Stories of Faith from Operation Iraqi Freedom, by Oliver North.
And of course no religious nutcase tale would be complete if Jerry Falwell wasn‘t mentioned. Not to worry, ole Jerry is in the loop. Amway Kingpin, Dexter Yager, not only financially supports Falwell’s Liberty University, one of Yager's sons sits on the University’s board of directors.
Dexter Yager is such a prince, that years ago, he even let Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker broadcast their religious show from his home, after they lost the PTL ministry, according to Mother Jones Magazine. What a guy.
So How Much Money Are We Talking About?
How much money are we talking about? Well first of all, Amway perks are not limited to money contributions. For example, when describing the events at the 2000 Republican Convention, the New York Times wrote, “For the party’s top underwriters, there will be an array of gold-plated events in Philadelphia, including cocktails with Gen. Colin L. Powell and an evening cruise on the Delaware River aboard the ‘Enterprise,’ the yacht owned by Richard M. DeVos, the Amway founder, who is a Bush supporter.”
Four years later on September 2, 2004, the Detroit Free Press described another boat ride. Insiders were feted aboard Dick and Betsy DeVos’ yacht at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York, as well as Jay Van Andel’s lavish 169-footer.
Besides yachts trips, we are looking at a whole lot of money being passed around. For example, in 1994, Amway and Anschutz were the top two donors, each giving $250,000 toward a $2.5-million soft money contribution to the RNC. It was the largest single political donation on record.
In return, the Amway big-wigs are treated very well. On July 18, 1996, DeVos was honored at a $3 million Republican fundraiser, where keynote speaker, Bob Dole, paid tribute to him. A week later it was reported that Amway had donated $1.3 million to the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau, to pay for Republican infomercials airing on Pat Robertson's Family Channel during the convention, according to the Sept/Oct 1996, issue of Mother Jones magazine.
Although the Democrats filed a complaint and blocked the payoff, it demonstrates how one hand washes the other when it comes to Amway, the Religious Right Wing, and the Republican Party.
In the Bush/Cheney campaign 2000, Betsy DeVos, daughter-in-law of Richard DeVos, became a so-called Bush Pioneer by raising over $100,000. And overall, in 2000, Amway was the second largest contributor of soft money to the RNC, with donations totaling $1,138,500, second only to Reynolds Tobacco.
In 2004, the 527 “Progress for America” received a bundle. “The latest crop of donors includes Amway founders Richard DeVos and Jay Van Andel, who each chipped in $2 million,” reports Newsweek, “The Secret Money War,” Sept 20, 2004.
So what does Amway get in return for all this money? A lot. But most importantly, it allows Amway to operate with political protection against criminal investigations that would lead to the collapse of not only Amway, but the entire MLM industry.
Pyramid Scheme Alert Takes On The MLM
In June 2000, the first consumer advocacy group was formed that focuses directly on pyramid scheme fraud. Pyramid Scheme Alert, Inc (PSA) is a non-profit organization, founded by three activist/authors, with support and encouragement from attorneys, former regulators and private citizens all over the world.
PSA Directors, Robert FitzPatrick and Susanna Perkins, have written an excellent white paper report entitled, "The Amway Industry," which details the damaging and corrupting influence of the MLM industry on consumers and democracy. It is by far, the most thorough and comprehensive report available for people looking for information about the MLM industry. [**]
PSA also has a website that is full of information, which receives more than 150,000 hits per month. The organization provides answers to a stream of consumer inquiries each day. Several of its directors have served as expert witnesses in private and government sponsored court proceedings involving MLM companies. PSA's findings has been referenced, quoted, and featured in reports on NBC, ABC, BBC and in many newspapers and magazines around the world.
It was surely a welcome sight for consumers. For decades now, people have went up against Amway with very little success, and for good reason. Amway attorneys routinely threaten website publishers with libel suits. State Attorney General offices say they are too small and financially strapped to take on MLMs in court, and appeals to the FTC have consistently gone unanswered.
Amway Will Be In Business Until Bush Leaves Office
In light of the above, you can bet that Amway will not be closing its doors anytime soon. Its illegal scheme will remain in tact for at least as long as Bush is in the White House.
But there is one oddity about the Bush-Amway gang that Eric recently pointed out. In most cases of fraud, crooks don’t steal from their own. So this makes Amway unique, because it pays the current administration to protect a multi-billion dollar fraud that targets Conservative Christian Republicans almost exclusively.
Eric said he wondered what kind of animals would eat their own? If my memory serves me correctly, I think pigs do that.
(Second Article In A Series On Amway Scandal)
* With prior permission, this article contains a large amount of information taken directly from Eric Scheibeler's website, www.merchantsofdeception.com, and his book, Merchants of Deception.
** With prior permission, this article contains an extensive amount of information taken directly from "The Amway Industry" white paper written by Robert FitzPatrick and Susanna Perkins, Directors of PSA, and the PSA website.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Why Are We In Iraq?
Evelyn Pringle November 2004
Bush Family $$$ Signs
After Dick Cheney's tenure at the Pentagon ended in 1993, he spent much of the next two years deciding whether to run for President. He formed a political-action committee, and crossed the country making speeches and raising money. (Contact Sport, The New Yorker, 2/16/04).
Records from the FEC show that Cheney's PAC contributors included executives of the companies that have since won the largest contracts in Iraq. Among them were Thomas Cruikshank, Halliburton's CEO at the time; Stephen Bechtel, whose family's firm now has a contract in Iraq worth as much as $2.8 billion; and Duane Andrews, then senior VP of Science Applications International Corporation, which has won seven contracts in Iraq.
However, while Cheney and his pals may well be the most blatant profiteers in Iraq, they are by no means the only ones involved in this grand war profiteering scheme commonly referred to as the "War on Terror." The #1 spot on the list belongs to the First Family.
War Is Family Business
Here's where the web of deceit really gets complicated. There are so many ties between the Bush family, the defense industry, and the global arms trade, that it’s almost impossible to keep track of them all. But yet the widespread ties are hardly ever even mentioned in the mainstream media. Or a revelation might show up for a day or two and then it's like oh well, what's new.
Lets Start At The Top - The First President Bush
When Jr. took office, Bush (Sr.) was a member of the Carlyle Group. The firm is almost entirely made up of ex-government officials and it is said to be the world's most politically connected private equity firm.
The complaints about the Bush family connections with the Carlyle Group began long before 9/11. As early as March 3, 2001, shortly after Bush Jr.’s inauguration, Judicial Watch issued a press release that said:
"Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes government abuse and corruption, called on former President George Herbert Walker Bush to resign immediately from the Carlyle Group, a private investment firm, while his son President George W. Bush is in office. Today's New York Times reported that the elder Bush is an "ambassador" for the $12 billion private investment firm and last year traveled to the Middle East on its behalf. The former president also helped the firm in South Korea.
The New York Times reported that as compensation, the elder Bush is allowed to buy a stake in the Carlyle Group's investments, which include ownership in at least 164 companies throughout the world (thereby by giving the current president an indirect benefit). James Baker, the former Secretary of State who served as President George W. Bush's point man in Florida's election dispute, is a partner in the firm. The firm also gave George W. Bush help in the early 1990's when it placed him on one of its subsidiary's board of directors.
This is simply inappropriate. Former President Bush should immediately resign from the Carlyle Group because it is an obvious conflict of interest. Any foreign government or foreign investor trying to curry favor with the current Bush Administration is sure to throw business to the Carlyle Group. And with the former President Bush promoting the firm's investments abroad, foreign nationals could understandably confuse the Carlyle Group's interests with the interests of the United States government," stated Larry Klayman, Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel.
"Questions are now bound to be raised if the recent Bush Administration change in policy towards Iraq has the fingerprints of the Carlyle Group, which is trying to gain investments from other Arab countries who [sic] would presumably benefit from the new policy," stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
As a rule, I'm not a major fan of Judicial Watch; however in this case their comments are almost prophetic.
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, it became known that Bush Sr. was financially linked to the bin Laden family. The September 28, 2001 Wall Street Journal reported that, "George H.W. Bush, the father of President Bush, works for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia through the Carlyle Group, an international consulting firm."
When Sr. hooked up with the Carlyle Group, his special area of influence was the Middle East, and especially Saudi Arabia investors. One of the investors that he brought to Carlyle was the Bin Laden Group, a construction company owned by the family of none other than future US #1 enemy Osama bin Laden.
According to an investigation by the WSJ, Sr. convinced Osama's brother, Shafiq bin Laden, to invest $2 million of Bin Laden Group money with Carlyle.
"The senior Bush had met with the bin Laden family at least twice in the last three years -- 1998 and 2000 -- as a representative of Carlyle, seeking to expand business dealings with one of the wealthiest Saudi families which, some experts argue, has never fully severed its ties with black sheep Osama in spite of current reports in a mainstream press that is afraid of offending the current administration," the Journal reported.
I'm no expert, but I even knew that 6 months prior to 9/11, Osama appeared in a video taken at his son's wedding, along with his mother, his son, and his son's new wife. I guess the family must have got into a tiff after the wedding.
The WSJ went on to outline the details of the family's investment. The bin Laden firm invested $2 million in Carlyle Partners II Fund, which raised a total of $1.3 billion overall. The fund purchased several aerospace companies among 29 deals. "So far, the family has received $1.3 million back in completed investments and should ultimately realize a 40% annualized rate of return," a Carlyle executive told the WSJ.
On September 27, the WSJ said it confirmed that a meeting took place between Sr. and the bin Laden family through Sr's Chief of Staff Jean Becker, but only after the WSJ showed Becker a personal thank you note that Bush Sr. sent to the bin Ladens after the meeting.
Here's a little known fact that may bring goose bumps to some. On 9/11, Shafiq bin Laden was at a meeting in the office of the Carlyle Group, and stood watching TV as the WTC was destroyed under the instruction of his brother.
So in a nutshell, Osama's attacks on the WTC and Pentagon, which led to a massive increase in defense spending, most likely made the Bush family a great deal of money. And the real kicker is that the attack may have even enriched his own family.
How Does Carlyle Make Its Money?
It's been estimated that Carlyle has investments in over 300 companies, and the majority of them derive revenues from military and security contracts. In fact, Carlyle is the country’s 11th largest defense contractor. In 2002, it received $677 million in government contracts, and in 2003, it was awarded contracts worth another $2.1 billion.
Business has definitely improved for the firm since Jr. took office. For example, one of its subsidiaries, Vought Aircraft, now holds over $1 billion in defense contracts. Prior to 2001, the company's future was iffy at best. Right before 9/11, it had actually laid off 20% of its workforce. But low and behold, business picked right back up with the air strikes on Afghanistan and the war in Iraq.
Carlyle's ties go directly into the Oval Office. In fact, a list of past employees has Jr.'s name on it. He was actually employed by Carlyle at on point in his life. According to a story in Harper's Magazine, Jr. held a position as a corporate director on the board of the Carlyle subsidiary, Caterair. Until he was politely told to hit the road because he didn't have anything to offer the company.
In addition, in March 1995, while Jr. was governor of Texas governor and a senior Trustee of the University of Texas, the University of Texas Endowment placed $10 million in investments with the Carlyle Group. Who knows how much of that investment money benefited the bin Ladens.
Side-Kick James Baker
Sr.'s top sidekick, James Baker, is also a player with the Carlyle Group. He joined the firm immediately after his stint as Sr.'s Secretary of State ended, bringing a briefcase packed full of global connections to the firm. Carlyle's revenues tripled after Baker came on board
Much like Bush Sr., Baker's main duty was to manage the firm's relationships with Saudi clients. He not only handled investment deals, it was also his job to look after the key interests of Saudi investors. For instance, when the Justice Department began an investigation into the financial dealings of Saudi Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, guess who the prince turned to for help? You got it, Baker.
And get this, Baker is currently defending the prince in a trillion dollar lawsuit brought by the families of the victims of the 9/11. The suit accuses the prince of using Islamic charities to funnel millions of dollars to known terrorist groups linked to al-Qaeda.
Carlyle is also cashing in on the Homeland Security front and the enactment of the Patriot Act. Two Carlyle companies, Federal Data Systems and US Investigations Services, hold multi-billion dollar contracts to provide background checks for airlines, the Pentagon, the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security. USIS used to be a federal agency, until it was privatized in 1996 and snatched up by Carlyle. Needless to say, it's now making money hand over fist.
Baker and Carlyle Hard At It
Baker and Carlyle have been hard at it behind the scenes, profiting in ways so blatant that a secret deal revealed by The Nation magazine (and since reported in most major newspapers) gives a whole new meaning to the term war profiteering.
As most people know, Bush Jr. appointed Baker to be his special envoy on Iraq's debt. His mission was to meet with presidents and prime ministers around the world and ask them to forgive Iraq's debt in the name of the reparation needs of the country.
When Baker was appointed, questions about conflict of interest were raised because of his ties to the Carlyle Group, which has extensive business interests in the Middle East. His law firm, Baker Botts, was also brought up because both firms have strong links to the Saudi Royal Family, which happens to hold a great deal of Iraq's debt.
In fact, the New York Times published an editorial upon the announcement of Baker being appointed special envoy that called for Baker to resign from both Carlyle because he was a partner, and Baker Botts.
In response to the editorial, Jr. said he doesn't read editorials, but assured the world that Baker was a man of high integrity. Carlyle submitted a signed statement that said: "Carlyle does not engage in lobbying or consulting," and "Carlyle does not have any investment in Iraqi public or private debt."
Well that was then and this now. According to confidential documents obtained by The Nation, including a 65-page proposal to the Kuwaiti government, Carlyle has sought to secure a $1 billion investment from Kuwait using Baker's influence as debt envoy. The secret deal involved a plan to transfer ownership of up to $57 billion in unpaid Iraqi debts owed to Kuwait. The debts would be assigned to a foundation created by a consortium in which the key players are the Carlyle Group and the Albright Group, headed by former secretary of state Madeline Albright, along with several other well-connected firms.
So it boils down to this, the Carlyle Group was engaged in lobbying to secure Iraq's debt at the same time that Baker was asking the world to forgive those debts. Under the deal, Kuwait would give the consortium $2 billion up front to invest in a private equity fund, with half of it going to Carlyle.
The Nation showed the documents to Jerome Levinson, an international lawyer and expert on political and corporate corruption at American University. He called it "one of the greatest cons of all time. The consortium is saying to the Kuwaiti government, 'Through us, you have the only chance to realize a substantial part of the debt. Why? Because of who we are and who we know.' It's influence peddling of the crassest kind."
Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University and a leading expert on government ethics and regulations, told The Nation that this means Baker is in a "classic conflict of interest. Baker is on two sides of this transaction: He is supposed to be representing the interests of the United States, but he is also a senior counselor at Carlyle, and Carlyle wants to get paid to help Kuwait recover its debts from Iraq," she said. "Carlyle and the other companies are exploiting Baker's current position to try to land a deal with Kuwait that would undermine the interests of the US government."
Just listen how they described The Carlyle Group, "a private equity team, has earned its reputation by successfully consummating deals at the intersection of politics and finance, with its roster of political stars, including, among others, former US Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, former British Prime Minister John Major, and until recently, former US President George Bush."
I like that "stars." Is that kind of like Hollywood stars except they are from Washington?
The document goes on to state: "The extent to which these individuals can plan an instrumental rule in fashioning strategies is now more limited ... due to the recent appointment of Secretary Baker as the President's envoy on international debt, and the need to avoid an apparent conflict of interest."
Yet it goes on to say that this will soon change: "We believe that with Secretary Baker's retirement from his temporary position, that Carlyle and those leading individuals associated with Carlyle will then once again be free to play a more decisive role..." according to The Nation.
I wonder if this means we're going to lose our special envoy. Retirement?
The proposal goes on to tell Kuwait that in the near future, 40 state-owned Iraqi enterprises will be available for leasing and management contracts. Is that kind of like privatizing public utilities? 40 of them, huh? You mean we are going to do all that for Iraq? Does that mean that the Iraqis might have clean water, and not have raw sewage in their streets anytime soon? I suppose that would be a good thing.
Now where in the world did the Iraqis ever get the idea that we wanted to take over their country? I've never been able to figure out why they would ever think that.
For those readers wondering about how much progress Baker has made in the 10 months in his position as special envoy, I'd have to say not much. The negotiations apparently are kind of stalled.
Senator Joe Biden recently asked Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq, about the status of the international negotiations to get other countries to forgive Iraq's debts. He asked, "Has a single nation in the G8 ... formally said or requested of their parliaments to forgive Iraqi debt?"
"Not yet. No sir," Schlicher answered.
According to The Nation: "Not only has Baker failed to deliver any firm commitments for debt forgiveness; at the annual meeting of the International Fund on October 2, it emerged that France had done an end run around Washington and was pushing a debt-relief deal of its own. ... a plan to cancel only 50% of Iraq's debts -- a far cry from the 90-95 % cancellation Washington had been demanding. Yet Baker was nowhere to be found."
Bush Family $$$ Signs
After Dick Cheney's tenure at the Pentagon ended in 1993, he spent much of the next two years deciding whether to run for President. He formed a political-action committee, and crossed the country making speeches and raising money. (Contact Sport, The New Yorker, 2/16/04).
Records from the FEC show that Cheney's PAC contributors included executives of the companies that have since won the largest contracts in Iraq. Among them were Thomas Cruikshank, Halliburton's CEO at the time; Stephen Bechtel, whose family's firm now has a contract in Iraq worth as much as $2.8 billion; and Duane Andrews, then senior VP of Science Applications International Corporation, which has won seven contracts in Iraq.
However, while Cheney and his pals may well be the most blatant profiteers in Iraq, they are by no means the only ones involved in this grand war profiteering scheme commonly referred to as the "War on Terror." The #1 spot on the list belongs to the First Family.
War Is Family Business
Here's where the web of deceit really gets complicated. There are so many ties between the Bush family, the defense industry, and the global arms trade, that it’s almost impossible to keep track of them all. But yet the widespread ties are hardly ever even mentioned in the mainstream media. Or a revelation might show up for a day or two and then it's like oh well, what's new.
Lets Start At The Top - The First President Bush
When Jr. took office, Bush (Sr.) was a member of the Carlyle Group. The firm is almost entirely made up of ex-government officials and it is said to be the world's most politically connected private equity firm.
The complaints about the Bush family connections with the Carlyle Group began long before 9/11. As early as March 3, 2001, shortly after Bush Jr.’s inauguration, Judicial Watch issued a press release that said:
"Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes government abuse and corruption, called on former President George Herbert Walker Bush to resign immediately from the Carlyle Group, a private investment firm, while his son President George W. Bush is in office. Today's New York Times reported that the elder Bush is an "ambassador" for the $12 billion private investment firm and last year traveled to the Middle East on its behalf. The former president also helped the firm in South Korea.
The New York Times reported that as compensation, the elder Bush is allowed to buy a stake in the Carlyle Group's investments, which include ownership in at least 164 companies throughout the world (thereby by giving the current president an indirect benefit). James Baker, the former Secretary of State who served as President George W. Bush's point man in Florida's election dispute, is a partner in the firm. The firm also gave George W. Bush help in the early 1990's when it placed him on one of its subsidiary's board of directors.
This is simply inappropriate. Former President Bush should immediately resign from the Carlyle Group because it is an obvious conflict of interest. Any foreign government or foreign investor trying to curry favor with the current Bush Administration is sure to throw business to the Carlyle Group. And with the former President Bush promoting the firm's investments abroad, foreign nationals could understandably confuse the Carlyle Group's interests with the interests of the United States government," stated Larry Klayman, Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel.
"Questions are now bound to be raised if the recent Bush Administration change in policy towards Iraq has the fingerprints of the Carlyle Group, which is trying to gain investments from other Arab countries who [sic] would presumably benefit from the new policy," stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
As a rule, I'm not a major fan of Judicial Watch; however in this case their comments are almost prophetic.
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, it became known that Bush Sr. was financially linked to the bin Laden family. The September 28, 2001 Wall Street Journal reported that, "George H.W. Bush, the father of President Bush, works for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia through the Carlyle Group, an international consulting firm."
When Sr. hooked up with the Carlyle Group, his special area of influence was the Middle East, and especially Saudi Arabia investors. One of the investors that he brought to Carlyle was the Bin Laden Group, a construction company owned by the family of none other than future US #1 enemy Osama bin Laden.
According to an investigation by the WSJ, Sr. convinced Osama's brother, Shafiq bin Laden, to invest $2 million of Bin Laden Group money with Carlyle.
"The senior Bush had met with the bin Laden family at least twice in the last three years -- 1998 and 2000 -- as a representative of Carlyle, seeking to expand business dealings with one of the wealthiest Saudi families which, some experts argue, has never fully severed its ties with black sheep Osama in spite of current reports in a mainstream press that is afraid of offending the current administration," the Journal reported.
I'm no expert, but I even knew that 6 months prior to 9/11, Osama appeared in a video taken at his son's wedding, along with his mother, his son, and his son's new wife. I guess the family must have got into a tiff after the wedding.
The WSJ went on to outline the details of the family's investment. The bin Laden firm invested $2 million in Carlyle Partners II Fund, which raised a total of $1.3 billion overall. The fund purchased several aerospace companies among 29 deals. "So far, the family has received $1.3 million back in completed investments and should ultimately realize a 40% annualized rate of return," a Carlyle executive told the WSJ.
On September 27, the WSJ said it confirmed that a meeting took place between Sr. and the bin Laden family through Sr's Chief of Staff Jean Becker, but only after the WSJ showed Becker a personal thank you note that Bush Sr. sent to the bin Ladens after the meeting.
Here's a little known fact that may bring goose bumps to some. On 9/11, Shafiq bin Laden was at a meeting in the office of the Carlyle Group, and stood watching TV as the WTC was destroyed under the instruction of his brother.
So in a nutshell, Osama's attacks on the WTC and Pentagon, which led to a massive increase in defense spending, most likely made the Bush family a great deal of money. And the real kicker is that the attack may have even enriched his own family.
How Does Carlyle Make Its Money?
It's been estimated that Carlyle has investments in over 300 companies, and the majority of them derive revenues from military and security contracts. In fact, Carlyle is the country’s 11th largest defense contractor. In 2002, it received $677 million in government contracts, and in 2003, it was awarded contracts worth another $2.1 billion.
Business has definitely improved for the firm since Jr. took office. For example, one of its subsidiaries, Vought Aircraft, now holds over $1 billion in defense contracts. Prior to 2001, the company's future was iffy at best. Right before 9/11, it had actually laid off 20% of its workforce. But low and behold, business picked right back up with the air strikes on Afghanistan and the war in Iraq.
Carlyle's ties go directly into the Oval Office. In fact, a list of past employees has Jr.'s name on it. He was actually employed by Carlyle at on point in his life. According to a story in Harper's Magazine, Jr. held a position as a corporate director on the board of the Carlyle subsidiary, Caterair. Until he was politely told to hit the road because he didn't have anything to offer the company.
In addition, in March 1995, while Jr. was governor of Texas governor and a senior Trustee of the University of Texas, the University of Texas Endowment placed $10 million in investments with the Carlyle Group. Who knows how much of that investment money benefited the bin Ladens.
Side-Kick James Baker
Sr.'s top sidekick, James Baker, is also a player with the Carlyle Group. He joined the firm immediately after his stint as Sr.'s Secretary of State ended, bringing a briefcase packed full of global connections to the firm. Carlyle's revenues tripled after Baker came on board
Much like Bush Sr., Baker's main duty was to manage the firm's relationships with Saudi clients. He not only handled investment deals, it was also his job to look after the key interests of Saudi investors. For instance, when the Justice Department began an investigation into the financial dealings of Saudi Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, guess who the prince turned to for help? You got it, Baker.
And get this, Baker is currently defending the prince in a trillion dollar lawsuit brought by the families of the victims of the 9/11. The suit accuses the prince of using Islamic charities to funnel millions of dollars to known terrorist groups linked to al-Qaeda.
Carlyle is also cashing in on the Homeland Security front and the enactment of the Patriot Act. Two Carlyle companies, Federal Data Systems and US Investigations Services, hold multi-billion dollar contracts to provide background checks for airlines, the Pentagon, the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security. USIS used to be a federal agency, until it was privatized in 1996 and snatched up by Carlyle. Needless to say, it's now making money hand over fist.
Baker and Carlyle Hard At It
Baker and Carlyle have been hard at it behind the scenes, profiting in ways so blatant that a secret deal revealed by The Nation magazine (and since reported in most major newspapers) gives a whole new meaning to the term war profiteering.
As most people know, Bush Jr. appointed Baker to be his special envoy on Iraq's debt. His mission was to meet with presidents and prime ministers around the world and ask them to forgive Iraq's debt in the name of the reparation needs of the country.
When Baker was appointed, questions about conflict of interest were raised because of his ties to the Carlyle Group, which has extensive business interests in the Middle East. His law firm, Baker Botts, was also brought up because both firms have strong links to the Saudi Royal Family, which happens to hold a great deal of Iraq's debt.
In fact, the New York Times published an editorial upon the announcement of Baker being appointed special envoy that called for Baker to resign from both Carlyle because he was a partner, and Baker Botts.
In response to the editorial, Jr. said he doesn't read editorials, but assured the world that Baker was a man of high integrity. Carlyle submitted a signed statement that said: "Carlyle does not engage in lobbying or consulting," and "Carlyle does not have any investment in Iraqi public or private debt."
Well that was then and this now. According to confidential documents obtained by The Nation, including a 65-page proposal to the Kuwaiti government, Carlyle has sought to secure a $1 billion investment from Kuwait using Baker's influence as debt envoy. The secret deal involved a plan to transfer ownership of up to $57 billion in unpaid Iraqi debts owed to Kuwait. The debts would be assigned to a foundation created by a consortium in which the key players are the Carlyle Group and the Albright Group, headed by former secretary of state Madeline Albright, along with several other well-connected firms.
So it boils down to this, the Carlyle Group was engaged in lobbying to secure Iraq's debt at the same time that Baker was asking the world to forgive those debts. Under the deal, Kuwait would give the consortium $2 billion up front to invest in a private equity fund, with half of it going to Carlyle.
The Nation showed the documents to Jerome Levinson, an international lawyer and expert on political and corporate corruption at American University. He called it "one of the greatest cons of all time. The consortium is saying to the Kuwaiti government, 'Through us, you have the only chance to realize a substantial part of the debt. Why? Because of who we are and who we know.' It's influence peddling of the crassest kind."
Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University and a leading expert on government ethics and regulations, told The Nation that this means Baker is in a "classic conflict of interest. Baker is on two sides of this transaction: He is supposed to be representing the interests of the United States, but he is also a senior counselor at Carlyle, and Carlyle wants to get paid to help Kuwait recover its debts from Iraq," she said. "Carlyle and the other companies are exploiting Baker's current position to try to land a deal with Kuwait that would undermine the interests of the US government."
Just listen how they described The Carlyle Group, "a private equity team, has earned its reputation by successfully consummating deals at the intersection of politics and finance, with its roster of political stars, including, among others, former US Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, former British Prime Minister John Major, and until recently, former US President George Bush."
I like that "stars." Is that kind of like Hollywood stars except they are from Washington?
The document goes on to state: "The extent to which these individuals can plan an instrumental rule in fashioning strategies is now more limited ... due to the recent appointment of Secretary Baker as the President's envoy on international debt, and the need to avoid an apparent conflict of interest."
Yet it goes on to say that this will soon change: "We believe that with Secretary Baker's retirement from his temporary position, that Carlyle and those leading individuals associated with Carlyle will then once again be free to play a more decisive role..." according to The Nation.
I wonder if this means we're going to lose our special envoy. Retirement?
The proposal goes on to tell Kuwait that in the near future, 40 state-owned Iraqi enterprises will be available for leasing and management contracts. Is that kind of like privatizing public utilities? 40 of them, huh? You mean we are going to do all that for Iraq? Does that mean that the Iraqis might have clean water, and not have raw sewage in their streets anytime soon? I suppose that would be a good thing.
Now where in the world did the Iraqis ever get the idea that we wanted to take over their country? I've never been able to figure out why they would ever think that.
For those readers wondering about how much progress Baker has made in the 10 months in his position as special envoy, I'd have to say not much. The negotiations apparently are kind of stalled.
Senator Joe Biden recently asked Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq, about the status of the international negotiations to get other countries to forgive Iraq's debts. He asked, "Has a single nation in the G8 ... formally said or requested of their parliaments to forgive Iraqi debt?"
"Not yet. No sir," Schlicher answered.
According to The Nation: "Not only has Baker failed to deliver any firm commitments for debt forgiveness; at the annual meeting of the International Fund on October 2, it emerged that France had done an end run around Washington and was pushing a debt-relief deal of its own. ... a plan to cancel only 50% of Iraq's debts -- a far cry from the 90-95 % cancellation Washington had been demanding. Yet Baker was nowhere to be found."
Prince Neil Bush & Silverado
Evelyn Pringle December 2004
One upon a time in 1980, Neil Bush married his sweetheart, Sharon, and they moved to Denver, Colorado, away from all the other members of the Bush family. “Neil got a $30,000 job negotiating mineral leases for Amoco. Denver was an oil-fueled boomtown, and soon the handsome son of the vice president was charming the swells at the soirees of Denver's social set,” according to the Dec 28, 03 Washington Post.
In 1982, Neil and 2 of his co-workers quit Amoco and formed their own oil company, JNB Exploration. According to the Oct 29, 2000 St Petersburg Times, although Neil put up only a few hundred dollars, the other two partners made him president. They decided to put Neil in charge of raising money, because "Neil knew people because of his name," partner, Evans Nash, said.
Among the people that Neil hit up for cash were a couple of Denver real estate high-rollers, Bill Walters and Ken Good. Walters was a flamboyant "mogul known as "the Donald Trump of Denver." Good owned the largest home in Colorado, a $10 million mansion with a special plumbing system that pumped Scotch, gin and vodka throughout the house," according to the WP.
Initially Walters invested $150,000 and set up a $1.75 million line of credit for JNB at a bank he owned. Good invested $10,000 and pledged loans worth $1.5 million. Good also lent Neil $100,000 and said it didn't have to be paid back unless Neil made money.
As President of the company, Neil decided to pay himself a salary of $66,000 a year, more than 2 times what he made at Amoco. Over a period of 5 years, JNB drilled over 25 wells in four states, without finding a drop of oil. The company would have definitely went under if not for the money that Good and Walters poured into it.
The good friend that he was, Bush soon positioned himself in a way that would allow him to repay his 2 buddies. In 1985 he accepted an invitation to sit on the board of directors at Silverado Savings & Loan, which by that time had already lent millions to Walters and Good. As a director, Neil voted to approve loans of over $100 million for his 2 partners.
Neil was on the board from 1985 to 1988, and during that time, Silverado lent Walters an additional $106 million and Good another $35 million, even as it became obvious that their real estate empires were crashing.
Good used some of the money to buy JNB, at a time when it too was losing money. But the sale came with great news for Neil. Good doubled his salary to $120,000 and gave him a $22,000 bonus. He also made Neil a director of one of his other companies which paid him a salary of $100,000 a year.
Life was grand for the Neil Bush family. The coffers were skyrocketing.
What The Hell Happened?
The failure of hundreds of Savings and Loans during the 1980s, as detailed in such sources as Stephen Pizzo's Inside Job, cost taxpayers an estimated $500 billion, according to the July 31, 1990 LA Times.
A US House committee concluded that over three-quarters of all S&L insolvencies appeared to be linked to serious misconduct by senior insiders or outsiders. In 1988, the comptroller of the currency found that less than 10 percent of recent bank failures had been caused solely by economic factors, according to Inside Job, p 305.
One thing is for sure, Neil Bush was one of those insiders. Good and Walters never repaid a dime of their loans, and in 1988 Silverado collapsed. The main reason cited for its demise was their failure to repay the $132 million.
And come to find out, the team’s money-making efforts were not limited to the US. According to the March 16, 2001 Austin Chronicle, Federal banking regulators later followed the trail of defaulted loans to Neil’s oil ventures, in particular JNB International, which was awarded drilling concessions in Argentina -- despite its complete lack of experience in international oil and gas drilling. It probably helped that the Bush family had cultivated close ties with the fabulously corrupt Carlos Menem, former president of Argentina, the Chronicle noted.
When JNB's rights and obligations were assumed by other investors, Neil tried to get another company, Plains Resources, to invest in Argentina. Plains wasn't buying. But it was hiring, and picked up Neil as a consultant for its Argentine market -- because, as Plains executive Carlos Garibaldi told The New York Times' Jeff Gerth in 1992, Neil had "traveled [in Argentina] and played tennis with President Menem," the Chronicle reported.
Learning to play tennis is definitely going to be added to my things to-do list.
For God’s Sake Quit Whining!
When regulators determined that Neil's deals with Good and Walters constituted "multiple conflicts of interest," Neil answered the charge by telling reporters that "self-serving regulators" were persecuting him because he was the President's son.
Nobody bought his "poor me" line and in fact, it didn’t take long for Neil to become the Poster Boy for the entire S&L scandal once "Jail Neil Bush" signs started popping up in Washington and Denver.
To this day, Neil claims he did nothing wrong. "I happened to be one of hundreds of other American businessmen and women who served as an outside director on the board of a savings and loan institution that failed during the 1980s," he wrote in an e-mail. "I regret that the institution's failure cost taxpayers so much money," according to the December 28, 2003 WP.
Well I’ve got news for him, as a taxpayer so do I regret it.
According to Stephen Pizzo in Mother Jones on September 1, 1992, "After almost two years of hand-wringing had passed, an expert hired by regulators declared that Neil suffered from an "ethical disability," and he was required to pay a $50,000 fine for his ethical lapses at Silverado."
The deal was so good that Neil decided to drop his appeal of the case. As usual, "family friends" raised money to pay the $50,000 fine.
While 5 other Silverado directors were barred from working for any federally insured institution for life, Neil was only ordered to "desist from any acts, omissions or practices involving any conflicts of interest, unsafe or unsound practices or breaches of fiduciary duty."
In other words, quit being a crook. Big deal.
Neil suffered absolutely no consequences. Thomas "Lud" Ashley ... "came to the rescue," Barbara Bush said in her book, and raised money for his legal bills.
And Lud sure did. An estimated $250,000 was reportedly paid by the banking-industry lobbyist who was fighting to get banks deregulated, according to Pizzo in Mother Jones. So whether or not it was out of friendship is debatable.
In the end, the fiasco cost taxpayers $1.3 billion all total. But Neil’s now ex-wife Sharon, claims it cost the family as well.
"I remember having one chair in the whole living room," said Sharon. "It was a tough time. We had to move and sell the house," according to the October 10, 2004 ABC News.
It sounds to me like she should have bought more furniture with our money.
About That $100,000 Loan
Neil ultimately admitted that his seat on the board at Silverado had nothing to do with his expertise. He told Time Magazine, "(I)f I were to sit here and deny that the Bush name didn't have something to do with it," while trying to explain why, at the young age of 30, he was invited to sit on the board of a federally insured institution, at a time when the average age of a director was 57 and only about 1% were under 35.
I think the purpose of the invite is more than obvious and requires no further explanation.
In what I’m sure was an oversight, it seems that Neil forgot to list his business relationship with Good on his Silverado conflict-of-interest form when he accepted the $100,000. But then $100,000 probably didn’t seem like a significant amount of cash, considering that by the time he filled out the form he had already helped approve over $100 million worth of loans for Good.
Another thing Neil apparently forgot to mention was that by the time the form was filled out, he was completely dependent on Good and Walters as his main source of income.
"I know it sounds a little fishy," he said when he testified before members of Congress and told them that the $100,000 did not have to be repaid. What it was, "was an incredibly sweet deal," he said.
In 1990, Neil finally got around to reporting the $100,000 as income on his tax return, 6 years late.
A sideline to this tale that is rarely mentioned, is that Neil’s dad directly benefited from the Silverado looting right along with his son. Good gave the old man $100,000 too, for his 1988 campaign, at a time when Bush was not only the VP, but chairman of the Reagan’s Task Force on Regulation of Financial Services as well.
This cozy little set up renders a whole new meaning to the line about the "fox in the henhouse." Apparently $100,000 was the going rate for Bush bribes in the 80s.
How Did Neil Stay Out Of Jail?
Another interesting aside to the story is how the public closure of Silverado was delayed until after the 1988 election. Shortly before the event, when regulators wanted to close the doors, a call from Washington delayed the closing for 45 days which meant the public would not learn about its newly acquired $1.3 billion debt until after Bush won.
So the question remains, how did Neil manage to stay out of jail after regulators determined that his conduct "involved significant conflicts of interest and constituted multiple breaches" of his fiduciary duties?
The answer to that question involves a story within a story, and one cover-up covered-up by a second.
To be able to follow this scheme, partial knowledge of the cast and characters is necessary. The Federal regulatory agencies in place during the S&L debacle were the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) and its successor agencies, the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) and the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS).
Of course those agencies were stacked with Bush political appointees. For instance, Secretary of the Treasury, Nicholas Brady, was a longtime Bush friend. The guy picked to head the OTS was Timothy Ryan, who served in the 1988 Bush campaign, and whose appointment got approved despite intense Congressional opposition.
The cast of characters includes Neil, Good, and Walters, and others involved were, Michael Wise, Chairman and CEO of Silverado; Kermit Mowbray, President of the Topeka Kansas Federal Home Loan Bank (directed by the FHLBB in Washington); Dorothy van Cleave, S&L Examiner; and Terry Sandefur, S&L Analyst.
Although the media, for whatever reasons, let the public believe that President Bush had remained neutral while his son's shady dealings were bubbling under the radar, the old man’s fingerprints were all over the mess from start to finish.
At the time, Steven Wilmsen, the Denver Post financial reporter, did write several key stories about the scandal for the Post and the Denver Business Journal, and he later wrote the book, "Silverado, Neil Bush and the Savings and Loan Scandal."
Wilmsen says Silverado was engaged in fraud as early as 1984, and that Kansas Federal Home Loan Bank "actually approved most of Silverado's illegal and wildly imprudent transactions" from 1984 to 1988. The man responsible for "those approvals was Kermit Mowbray, president of the Topeka bank," Wilmsen says. (p 150)
Regulators actually discovered the illegalities in late 1986, when Dorothy van Cleave and Terry Sandefur were assigned to look at Silverado’s books. That’s when the whole scheme began to unravel. The two regulators soon realized that Silverado had been on the edge for years and wondered why it hadn't been caught before then.
Based upon the documents they had examined, van Cleave and Sandefur began a full-scale investigation with 20 examiners allotted for the task. They later deemed the situation so critical that they could not wait for the examination to be completed, and decided to issue a cease and desist order which would have put Silverado under tight government control.
Then something very strange happened. After a meeting with Silverado's management, and a phone call to Topeka, van Cleave and Sandefur were told that Mowbray said to drop the order.
And more strange things kept on happening. In August 1988 the Colorado savings and loan commissioner issued a capital call, which is the first step in a government takeover. When that happened, Neil resigned immediately, saying that he did not want regulators to be constrained by his presence on the board.
Neil being considerate about not trying to wield influence through his position of power with a father in the WH? What a joke! It was a little late in the game for that phony act. "The truth of the matter," Wilmsen writes, "was that Neil already was under investigation by the regulators." (p 182)
On January 27, 1987, van Cleave had asked investigators in Washington to look into insider trading at Silverado. That’s when regulators began discovering all the conflicts of interest between Neil, Walters, and Good.
As it turns out, having Neil on the board allowed Silverado to get away with murder for years. According to testimony by the top gun of the banking regulators in June, 1990, his presence on the board was "a material part of the unconscionable delays in taking over Silverado" as far back as 1986.
Neil should have known that the scam couldn’t go on forever. I mean it's not like they didn’t know they were being watched. Greed must be a more powerful emotion than fear.
By the fall of 1988, Neil, and his dad, knew they were in deep trouble. Wilmsen believes the Bush campaign would have been seriously damaged if the American people had found out that his son "was in the thick of the greatest financial scandal in the nation's history."
He notes "some troubling coincidences in the events that unfolded in the months between Neil's resignation and Silverado's closing" on December 9, 1988. (p 182).
For instance, on October 21, 1988, the Colorado S&L commissioner called Mowbray and told him of the plan to close Silverado before the end of October. Mowbray ordered a halt to the proceedings saying a call had come from Washington telling him to hold off closing Silverado for 45 days. No one seemed to know why. Mowbray later told the House Banking Committee that he could not remember who called him or the reasons given by the caller for requesting the 45 day delay. (p 183)
Oh well, that’s understandable in the last days of a presidential campaign with all the excitement. I guess we shouldn’t have expected the poor guy to remember every little conversation he had with people in Washington. But perhaps members of the committee should have at least tried to help jog his memory with phone records from the oval office.
Where was Ken Starr when we needed him?
That 45-day extension cost taxpayers a bundle. According to Wilmsen, the "cost of that delay is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. In late September, regulators estimated the cost of Silverado's closure to be between $400 million and $600 million. When the thrift was finally closed December 9, it cost $1 billion." (p 184)
Cover-Up of the Cover-Up
In 1990, the Bush Treasury Department declared it was mounting a thorough investigation of the entire S&L matter. Here’s what the President told the country about his plans to deal with the S&L scoundrels on June 22, 1990: "We will not rest until the cheats and the chiselers and the charlatans spend a large chunk of their lives behind the bars of a federal prison," he said.
I guess he meant every cheat, chiseler and charlatan except for his son.
The truth is that by using the power of the White House, Bush was able find ways to sabotage both the investigations and the prosecutions of wrongdoers in order to keep Neil out of prison. When FBI field offices said they needed 400 more agents to help with the 21,000 uninvestigated S&L fraud referrals in their files, Bush only approved half the number of agents requested and he actually reduced the amount of money Congress had authorized to spend on criminal prosecutions.
Not long after Clinton took office, it became obvious that high ranking people in the Bush regulatory agencies had engaged in activities that definitely warranted investigation. However, because of the Republican smoke-screen thrown up with Whitewater, Clinton’s hands were tied. Any attempt to investigate the RTC and OTC would have been touted as an attempt to interfere with the Whitewater investigation.
At one point, the Treasury Department did ask the FBI for an investigation into the Bush White House pressure put on federal regulators to delay the closing of Silverado until after the election. But it went nowhere once it was presented to Bush's good friend, Attorney General Dick Thornburgh.
In the end, Bush was able to block every attempt to hold Neil responsible for his action.
Neil (but not his wife) lived happily ever after (free from prison), and the moral of the story is, contrary to what many people believe, crime does pay. At least for corporate crooks named Bush.
One upon a time in 1980, Neil Bush married his sweetheart, Sharon, and they moved to Denver, Colorado, away from all the other members of the Bush family. “Neil got a $30,000 job negotiating mineral leases for Amoco. Denver was an oil-fueled boomtown, and soon the handsome son of the vice president was charming the swells at the soirees of Denver's social set,” according to the Dec 28, 03 Washington Post.
In 1982, Neil and 2 of his co-workers quit Amoco and formed their own oil company, JNB Exploration. According to the Oct 29, 2000 St Petersburg Times, although Neil put up only a few hundred dollars, the other two partners made him president. They decided to put Neil in charge of raising money, because "Neil knew people because of his name," partner, Evans Nash, said.
Among the people that Neil hit up for cash were a couple of Denver real estate high-rollers, Bill Walters and Ken Good. Walters was a flamboyant "mogul known as "the Donald Trump of Denver." Good owned the largest home in Colorado, a $10 million mansion with a special plumbing system that pumped Scotch, gin and vodka throughout the house," according to the WP.
Initially Walters invested $150,000 and set up a $1.75 million line of credit for JNB at a bank he owned. Good invested $10,000 and pledged loans worth $1.5 million. Good also lent Neil $100,000 and said it didn't have to be paid back unless Neil made money.
As President of the company, Neil decided to pay himself a salary of $66,000 a year, more than 2 times what he made at Amoco. Over a period of 5 years, JNB drilled over 25 wells in four states, without finding a drop of oil. The company would have definitely went under if not for the money that Good and Walters poured into it.
The good friend that he was, Bush soon positioned himself in a way that would allow him to repay his 2 buddies. In 1985 he accepted an invitation to sit on the board of directors at Silverado Savings & Loan, which by that time had already lent millions to Walters and Good. As a director, Neil voted to approve loans of over $100 million for his 2 partners.
Neil was on the board from 1985 to 1988, and during that time, Silverado lent Walters an additional $106 million and Good another $35 million, even as it became obvious that their real estate empires were crashing.
Good used some of the money to buy JNB, at a time when it too was losing money. But the sale came with great news for Neil. Good doubled his salary to $120,000 and gave him a $22,000 bonus. He also made Neil a director of one of his other companies which paid him a salary of $100,000 a year.
Life was grand for the Neil Bush family. The coffers were skyrocketing.
What The Hell Happened?
The failure of hundreds of Savings and Loans during the 1980s, as detailed in such sources as Stephen Pizzo's Inside Job, cost taxpayers an estimated $500 billion, according to the July 31, 1990 LA Times.
A US House committee concluded that over three-quarters of all S&L insolvencies appeared to be linked to serious misconduct by senior insiders or outsiders. In 1988, the comptroller of the currency found that less than 10 percent of recent bank failures had been caused solely by economic factors, according to Inside Job, p 305.
One thing is for sure, Neil Bush was one of those insiders. Good and Walters never repaid a dime of their loans, and in 1988 Silverado collapsed. The main reason cited for its demise was their failure to repay the $132 million.
And come to find out, the team’s money-making efforts were not limited to the US. According to the March 16, 2001 Austin Chronicle, Federal banking regulators later followed the trail of defaulted loans to Neil’s oil ventures, in particular JNB International, which was awarded drilling concessions in Argentina -- despite its complete lack of experience in international oil and gas drilling. It probably helped that the Bush family had cultivated close ties with the fabulously corrupt Carlos Menem, former president of Argentina, the Chronicle noted.
When JNB's rights and obligations were assumed by other investors, Neil tried to get another company, Plains Resources, to invest in Argentina. Plains wasn't buying. But it was hiring, and picked up Neil as a consultant for its Argentine market -- because, as Plains executive Carlos Garibaldi told The New York Times' Jeff Gerth in 1992, Neil had "traveled [in Argentina] and played tennis with President Menem," the Chronicle reported.
Learning to play tennis is definitely going to be added to my things to-do list.
For God’s Sake Quit Whining!
When regulators determined that Neil's deals with Good and Walters constituted "multiple conflicts of interest," Neil answered the charge by telling reporters that "self-serving regulators" were persecuting him because he was the President's son.
Nobody bought his "poor me" line and in fact, it didn’t take long for Neil to become the Poster Boy for the entire S&L scandal once "Jail Neil Bush" signs started popping up in Washington and Denver.
To this day, Neil claims he did nothing wrong. "I happened to be one of hundreds of other American businessmen and women who served as an outside director on the board of a savings and loan institution that failed during the 1980s," he wrote in an e-mail. "I regret that the institution's failure cost taxpayers so much money," according to the December 28, 2003 WP.
Well I’ve got news for him, as a taxpayer so do I regret it.
According to Stephen Pizzo in Mother Jones on September 1, 1992, "After almost two years of hand-wringing had passed, an expert hired by regulators declared that Neil suffered from an "ethical disability," and he was required to pay a $50,000 fine for his ethical lapses at Silverado."
The deal was so good that Neil decided to drop his appeal of the case. As usual, "family friends" raised money to pay the $50,000 fine.
While 5 other Silverado directors were barred from working for any federally insured institution for life, Neil was only ordered to "desist from any acts, omissions or practices involving any conflicts of interest, unsafe or unsound practices or breaches of fiduciary duty."
In other words, quit being a crook. Big deal.
Neil suffered absolutely no consequences. Thomas "Lud" Ashley ... "came to the rescue," Barbara Bush said in her book, and raised money for his legal bills.
And Lud sure did. An estimated $250,000 was reportedly paid by the banking-industry lobbyist who was fighting to get banks deregulated, according to Pizzo in Mother Jones. So whether or not it was out of friendship is debatable.
In the end, the fiasco cost taxpayers $1.3 billion all total. But Neil’s now ex-wife Sharon, claims it cost the family as well.
"I remember having one chair in the whole living room," said Sharon. "It was a tough time. We had to move and sell the house," according to the October 10, 2004 ABC News.
It sounds to me like she should have bought more furniture with our money.
About That $100,000 Loan
Neil ultimately admitted that his seat on the board at Silverado had nothing to do with his expertise. He told Time Magazine, "(I)f I were to sit here and deny that the Bush name didn't have something to do with it," while trying to explain why, at the young age of 30, he was invited to sit on the board of a federally insured institution, at a time when the average age of a director was 57 and only about 1% were under 35.
I think the purpose of the invite is more than obvious and requires no further explanation.
In what I’m sure was an oversight, it seems that Neil forgot to list his business relationship with Good on his Silverado conflict-of-interest form when he accepted the $100,000. But then $100,000 probably didn’t seem like a significant amount of cash, considering that by the time he filled out the form he had already helped approve over $100 million worth of loans for Good.
Another thing Neil apparently forgot to mention was that by the time the form was filled out, he was completely dependent on Good and Walters as his main source of income.
"I know it sounds a little fishy," he said when he testified before members of Congress and told them that the $100,000 did not have to be repaid. What it was, "was an incredibly sweet deal," he said.
In 1990, Neil finally got around to reporting the $100,000 as income on his tax return, 6 years late.
A sideline to this tale that is rarely mentioned, is that Neil’s dad directly benefited from the Silverado looting right along with his son. Good gave the old man $100,000 too, for his 1988 campaign, at a time when Bush was not only the VP, but chairman of the Reagan’s Task Force on Regulation of Financial Services as well.
This cozy little set up renders a whole new meaning to the line about the "fox in the henhouse." Apparently $100,000 was the going rate for Bush bribes in the 80s.
How Did Neil Stay Out Of Jail?
Another interesting aside to the story is how the public closure of Silverado was delayed until after the 1988 election. Shortly before the event, when regulators wanted to close the doors, a call from Washington delayed the closing for 45 days which meant the public would not learn about its newly acquired $1.3 billion debt until after Bush won.
So the question remains, how did Neil manage to stay out of jail after regulators determined that his conduct "involved significant conflicts of interest and constituted multiple breaches" of his fiduciary duties?
The answer to that question involves a story within a story, and one cover-up covered-up by a second.
To be able to follow this scheme, partial knowledge of the cast and characters is necessary. The Federal regulatory agencies in place during the S&L debacle were the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) and its successor agencies, the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) and the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS).
Of course those agencies were stacked with Bush political appointees. For instance, Secretary of the Treasury, Nicholas Brady, was a longtime Bush friend. The guy picked to head the OTS was Timothy Ryan, who served in the 1988 Bush campaign, and whose appointment got approved despite intense Congressional opposition.
The cast of characters includes Neil, Good, and Walters, and others involved were, Michael Wise, Chairman and CEO of Silverado; Kermit Mowbray, President of the Topeka Kansas Federal Home Loan Bank (directed by the FHLBB in Washington); Dorothy van Cleave, S&L Examiner; and Terry Sandefur, S&L Analyst.
Although the media, for whatever reasons, let the public believe that President Bush had remained neutral while his son's shady dealings were bubbling under the radar, the old man’s fingerprints were all over the mess from start to finish.
At the time, Steven Wilmsen, the Denver Post financial reporter, did write several key stories about the scandal for the Post and the Denver Business Journal, and he later wrote the book, "Silverado, Neil Bush and the Savings and Loan Scandal."
Wilmsen says Silverado was engaged in fraud as early as 1984, and that Kansas Federal Home Loan Bank "actually approved most of Silverado's illegal and wildly imprudent transactions" from 1984 to 1988. The man responsible for "those approvals was Kermit Mowbray, president of the Topeka bank," Wilmsen says. (p 150)
Regulators actually discovered the illegalities in late 1986, when Dorothy van Cleave and Terry Sandefur were assigned to look at Silverado’s books. That’s when the whole scheme began to unravel. The two regulators soon realized that Silverado had been on the edge for years and wondered why it hadn't been caught before then.
Based upon the documents they had examined, van Cleave and Sandefur began a full-scale investigation with 20 examiners allotted for the task. They later deemed the situation so critical that they could not wait for the examination to be completed, and decided to issue a cease and desist order which would have put Silverado under tight government control.
Then something very strange happened. After a meeting with Silverado's management, and a phone call to Topeka, van Cleave and Sandefur were told that Mowbray said to drop the order.
And more strange things kept on happening. In August 1988 the Colorado savings and loan commissioner issued a capital call, which is the first step in a government takeover. When that happened, Neil resigned immediately, saying that he did not want regulators to be constrained by his presence on the board.
Neil being considerate about not trying to wield influence through his position of power with a father in the WH? What a joke! It was a little late in the game for that phony act. "The truth of the matter," Wilmsen writes, "was that Neil already was under investigation by the regulators." (p 182)
On January 27, 1987, van Cleave had asked investigators in Washington to look into insider trading at Silverado. That’s when regulators began discovering all the conflicts of interest between Neil, Walters, and Good.
As it turns out, having Neil on the board allowed Silverado to get away with murder for years. According to testimony by the top gun of the banking regulators in June, 1990, his presence on the board was "a material part of the unconscionable delays in taking over Silverado" as far back as 1986.
Neil should have known that the scam couldn’t go on forever. I mean it's not like they didn’t know they were being watched. Greed must be a more powerful emotion than fear.
By the fall of 1988, Neil, and his dad, knew they were in deep trouble. Wilmsen believes the Bush campaign would have been seriously damaged if the American people had found out that his son "was in the thick of the greatest financial scandal in the nation's history."
He notes "some troubling coincidences in the events that unfolded in the months between Neil's resignation and Silverado's closing" on December 9, 1988. (p 182).
For instance, on October 21, 1988, the Colorado S&L commissioner called Mowbray and told him of the plan to close Silverado before the end of October. Mowbray ordered a halt to the proceedings saying a call had come from Washington telling him to hold off closing Silverado for 45 days. No one seemed to know why. Mowbray later told the House Banking Committee that he could not remember who called him or the reasons given by the caller for requesting the 45 day delay. (p 183)
Oh well, that’s understandable in the last days of a presidential campaign with all the excitement. I guess we shouldn’t have expected the poor guy to remember every little conversation he had with people in Washington. But perhaps members of the committee should have at least tried to help jog his memory with phone records from the oval office.
Where was Ken Starr when we needed him?
That 45-day extension cost taxpayers a bundle. According to Wilmsen, the "cost of that delay is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. In late September, regulators estimated the cost of Silverado's closure to be between $400 million and $600 million. When the thrift was finally closed December 9, it cost $1 billion." (p 184)
Cover-Up of the Cover-Up
In 1990, the Bush Treasury Department declared it was mounting a thorough investigation of the entire S&L matter. Here’s what the President told the country about his plans to deal with the S&L scoundrels on June 22, 1990: "We will not rest until the cheats and the chiselers and the charlatans spend a large chunk of their lives behind the bars of a federal prison," he said.
I guess he meant every cheat, chiseler and charlatan except for his son.
The truth is that by using the power of the White House, Bush was able find ways to sabotage both the investigations and the prosecutions of wrongdoers in order to keep Neil out of prison. When FBI field offices said they needed 400 more agents to help with the 21,000 uninvestigated S&L fraud referrals in their files, Bush only approved half the number of agents requested and he actually reduced the amount of money Congress had authorized to spend on criminal prosecutions.
Not long after Clinton took office, it became obvious that high ranking people in the Bush regulatory agencies had engaged in activities that definitely warranted investigation. However, because of the Republican smoke-screen thrown up with Whitewater, Clinton’s hands were tied. Any attempt to investigate the RTC and OTC would have been touted as an attempt to interfere with the Whitewater investigation.
At one point, the Treasury Department did ask the FBI for an investigation into the Bush White House pressure put on federal regulators to delay the closing of Silverado until after the election. But it went nowhere once it was presented to Bush's good friend, Attorney General Dick Thornburgh.
In the end, Bush was able to block every attempt to hold Neil responsible for his action.
Neil (but not his wife) lived happily ever after (free from prison), and the moral of the story is, contrary to what many people believe, crime does pay. At least for corporate crooks named Bush.
Prince Neil Bush Far From Charming
Evelyn Pringle December 2004
Once upon a time, Prince Neil Bush was best-known for his role in the collapse of the Silverado Savings and Loan. But here come to find out, he is actually the romeo of the Bush Royal Family.
I say this because last year his videotaped divorce deposition became public and quite frankly, the revelations in it do not paint a picture of strong moral values. As it turns out, while still married to his wife, Princess Sharon, Neil had what can only be described as random sex with a number of women, contracted a venereal disease, had an affair with his mother’s married secretary, and was accused of fathering a child out of wedlock.
I guess the lectures delivered by Neil's "I'm not an obnoxious drunk anymore" brother, George, missed the mark. So much for abstinence and safe sex in the First Royal Family.
Although Neil also testified about several highly questionable business deals in which he received huge amounts of money for little (if any) effort, they were completely overshadowed by the tales of his sexual liaisons with the gals in Thailand and Hong Kong.
I will never forget what W said back when the Clinton pardon scandal hit the headlines with charges that brother-in-law Hugh Rodham had accepted $400,000 to lobby for clemency for two felons. When reporters asked W what advice he would give to his own family members, he said: "My guidance to them is, 'Behave yourself.' And they will."
Oh is that right? ha.ha.ha.ha.ha. The absurdity of that statement is almost as funny as the jokes made about their dad's "read my lips" comment.
A Match Made In Heaven
Prince Neil met Sharon during the 1980 presidential campaign. After a brief courtship, they married, moved to Colorado, had 3 children and remained happily married (or at least Sharon did) for 23 years.
The whole divorce saga began in May, 2002, when Neil informed Sharon that he wanted a divorce in an e-mail. The actual email makes for one hell of a "Dear John" letter. The following is in part, what he had to say to Sharon:
"Your comments at our pool-side dinner with the kids that you and I should race to see who could make a million dollars faster, your belief expressed in different ways that I have not made enough money, your belief that it was easy to make money, and that Jamal Daniel's plotting or Dad's influence will be the magic answer to our financial woes all cause me consternation and reflect the bitterness and anger that has come from the loneliness you described Friday," Neil wrote.
"It is very clear that we are failing to meet each other's core needs. We're almost out of money and I've lost my patience for being compared to my brothers, for being put down for my inability to make money, and tired of not being loved. I'm sure you have felt abandoned and a deep sense of loneliness," he wrote.
Of course, Neil forgot to mention a few things in the email. Like he didn't tell Sharon about his Asian sex romps or that he was already having an affair with Maria Anderson, wife of Robert Andrews, a woman Sharon once regarded as a friend, but who she would later call "Neil's Mexican whore."
In fact, he forgot to mention quite a few things. A review of exhibits from Maria's divorce deposition, reveals that at the same time that Neil penning the Dear John email to Sharon, he was also writing love letters to Maria, evidently looking to get his “core needs“ met with her. In one email he tells Maria, "My heart is breaking with solitude. I can't wait to be free to dedicate all of my passion to love you. I hurt to have you in my arms, to make love with you and be a part of your life.” Prince Neil almost puts Prince Charles to shame.
Neil said he met Maria in 2001 while she was working in his mother’s office. He claims the affair did not begin until January 2002, when they ended up together at a fundraiser for brother Jeb. A few weeks later Neil went to the Maria's house looking to raise money for his new company and I guess it was Andrew’s unlucky day. For when Neil left that day, he not only walked out with $100,000 of Andrew’s money, he also bagged his wife, Maria.
A few weeks later, Maria and Neil took a pre-divorce Honeymoon to Mexico and the rest is history. Neil soon fired off his parting email to Sharon and when he returned to the US from Dubai, he set up a bachelor pad in Houston.
And get this, court records show that Neil and Maria both filed for divorce on the same day, August 26, 2002. What a sentimental couple.
In a July, 2002 interview on KHOU TV in Texas, Sharon said that she had never expected a divorce, "It was totally out of the blue,” she said.
However, Neil told a different tale. Apparently unbeknownst to Sharon, the marriage had been on the rocks for years. In his 270 page deposition, Neil testified that there was "no affection" and "very little sexual activity over the past 10 or 12 years." He told Sharon‘s attorney, "Our marriage has been broken. It's loveless. And there is nothing left to it.”
When she got the email, Sharon says she was taken off guard because 2 days earlier, Neil had given her a ring and said he loved her. When she reached out to her in-laws she claims, "I just really basically was turned off, turned away," Sharon said.
She talked about a conversation between her and Queen Barbara Bush, "I said I think Neil is having a mid-life crisis. You know, I'm worried about his business and maybe stress was leading to this e-mail. And she basically said, you talk to your mother and Neilsy will talk to me. And Neilsy will never abandon his children. And that was it,” according to ABC News on Oct 10, 2004.
As late as April 28, 2003, the day the divorce became finalize, Sharon was telling the judge that she wasn't sure she wanted the divorce. "I believe in working through a marriage," she testified, "and I don't believe in divorce with three children." The judge showed no sympathy and granted the divorce anyways.
All Out War
After Sharon learned of Neil’s affair with Maria, she went on a rampage. She made no secret of the fact that she did not want a divorce, and launched an all out attack on the 2 love-birds. She hired top PR man Lou Colasuonno, a former editor of both the New York Post and the New York Daily News.
Colasuonno's first move was to announce that Sharon was looking for a publisher for a book she planned to write. "This is a woman who has had some wonderful times with the Bushes," Colasuonno told the New York Observer. "But she has seen the dark side, too. And she intends to provide a view of the family that everyone will want to read."
Next he set up a lunch date for his client to meet with the famous author, Kitty Kelley, who was already working on a book about the Bush family. Then he hinted that Sharon might be feeding Kelley Bush family secrets.
Sharon and Kelley enjoyed a 4 hour lunch and Kelley couldn't say enough about how badly poor Sharon was being treated. "I learned a great deal about the Bush family from Sharon," Kelley told The Washington Post. "She told me he's only offering $1,000 a month in support -- take it or leave it. . . . She said that when she told Neil she needs more to live on, Neil Bush said, 'Just get remarried.' Sharon was sobbing as she told me, 'Kitty, I just won't sell my body!' "
PR guy Colasuonno claims that Kelley's disclosure to the Post, prompted the Prince to more than double his offer of settlement to about $30,000 a year. In her interview with ABC on Oct 10, 2004, Sharon said her final divorce settlement allowed for 4 years of alimony at $2,500 a month, and that she may soon have to sell the family home in Houston.
When it was released this year, Kelley’s book contained quotes attributed to Sharon that included the allegation that W snorted cocaine with his brother at Camp David during the first Bush presidency. Sharon quickly denied making that allegation but her PR guy Colasuonno, and 2 others who were at the lunch, backed Kelley’s version of the conversations.
Sharon also told Kelly that at one point, she had even received an implied death threat from Neil. According to Sharon, he left a message on her answering machine telling her that if she didn't shut her mouth, she would find herself "in a dark alley."
So here we have the brother of the current president and the son of an ex-president threatening his soon to be ex-wife with death if she doesn't keep quiet about the family secrets. Are we talking about the Royal First Family here? Or the Mafia?
Kelley and Sharon were both interviewed by Matt Lauer on NBC's Today Show on Sept 13 and 14, 2004, and both ladies stuck to their story, as far as what was said at their 4 hour lunch.
The April 22, 2003 Washington Post, reported that Sharon also met with another author, Julie McCarron, in Houston on April 14, 2003, to explore writing a memoir of her life in the Bush family.
McCarron wrote a memo about their day long session together to Michael Viner, who had agreed to a $200,000-plus book deal to publish Sharon's book "First Family." According to McCarron, they ran into Neil's mistress Maria that day at a restaurant called Grotto. "This was very upsetting to Sharon," McCarron wrote in the memo. In the end, Viner withdrew from the book deal, according to the Post.
McCarron memo said that she met Sharon at the Bush family home in Houston. "She was very teary as we toured her house and looked at the hundreds of framed family photos on the wall," McCarron wrote. "She swore that she had been an excellent wife and mother for more than twenty years. . . . She was very upset that the woman her husband was having an affair with had been on Barbara Bush's staff -- how could she not have known?"
According to McCarron, Sharon "stated that the only thing the Bush family cares about is their money and their public image," McCarron continued. "She was devastated over the end of her marriage and the emotional state of her children. As far as writing a book went, she hadn't thought too much about specifics. She did not want to be perceived as a woman scorned. . . . She wanted to write the story of . . . how a 'perfect' marriage can explode after 22 years . . . how she bought into the image of the perfect family, but couldn't cope when everyone in that family turned against her. The Bush family preached family values while she practiced them," wrote McCarron, as reported in the Post.
"They were my family for almost a quarter-century," Sharon said of the Bushes. "I believed in families, and I believed in the family values. And I thought they did, too. So, I thought I would get help from them," according to ABC News.
I guess poor Sharon thought wrong.
What? No Pillow Talk?
During the deposition, when asked by his wife's attorney whether he'd had affairs during his marriage, Neil disclosed a string of sexcapades that could almost put Bill Clinton to shame. And they were all by chance.
During his business trips to Hong Kong and Thailand, Neil said that he would be sitting in his hotel room, just minding his own business, when all of a sudden there would be a knock at the door and a woman would be standing there wanting to have sex with him. He testified that he had no idea who they were or why they showed up.
Neil told his wife's attorney, "I had sexual intercourse with perhaps three or four, I don't remember the exact number, women, at different times. In Thailand once, I have a pretty clear recollection that there was one time in Thailand and in Hong Kong."
I wonder why he has "a pretty clear recollection" of certain encounters. Is it because they were such memorable events or is it because he caught a venereal disease during one of those particular trists?
Attorney Brown asked Neil about this, "Is that where you caught the venereal diseases?" and Neil said, "No."
Brown asked, "Where did you catch those?" And Neil replied, "Diseases plural? I didn't catch..."
Brown apologized, I guess for being insensitive and said: "Well, I'm sorry. How ... how many venereal diseases do you suffer from?"
"I've had one venereal disease," Neil replied.
To which Brown asked, "Which was?"
"Herpes," Neil said.
Had is past tense. Somebody better inform Neil that once you have Herpes, it's a life-long affliction.
A little later, Sharon’s attorney tried to get Neil to explain more about who these women were. "Were they prostitutes?" he asked.
"I don't -- I don't know," Neil replied.
Brown asked, "Did you pay them for that sex?"
"No, I did not," Neil said.
Brown then asked did you, "Pick them up in a sushi house?"
"No," Neil said. "My recollection is, where I can recall, they came to my room."
You can tell that Brown is having a good time at Neil's expense by the way he ridicules him. "Do you know the name of that hotel? I may go to Thailand sometime," Brown said.
I think it's fairly obviously that some of Neil’s foreign business deals came with perks that he was more than happy to take advantage of.
When asked how he knew what to do when a woman came to the door, Neil replied, "Whatever happened, happened."
That snide comment could lead the mind to any number of visions. If need be, Prince Neil could probably make a few extra bucks by publishing his deposition and marketing it as a soft porn novel.
Sharon's attorney was amazed at Neil's Asian romps. "You have to admit that it's a pretty remarkable thing for a man just to go to a hotel room door and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her," he said.
"It was very unusual," Neil replied.
That right there was lie under oath in a civil deposition. Also known as perjury during the Clinton years. How can Neil claim the events were unusual, when by his own admission, they happened at least 3 or 4 times? I say arrest the Prince for lying under oath, and if by any chance he holds a license to practice anything, revoke it.
For those wondering how Sharon felt sitting there listening to the details of Neil's sexcapades, she said, "I was totally devastated, and so were our children upon learning this," reported the New York Post’s PAGE SIX. "I trusted him while he was on all those foreign trips and kept the home fires burning while raising three great children . . . His behavior has been appalling. Where are the family values?"
That's a very good question. Where's the moral outrage from the Bush family over Neil’s behavior?
In fairness to Neil, the Asian trips were not all play and no work. It's just that the sex stories overshadow the curious financial deals that were discussed in the same deposition.
So if these women were not perks from foreign investors seeking to gain influence through the President's brother, who were they? Wasn't there any pillow talk whatsoever?
What does Neil expect us to believe? That 3 or 4 different women spotted him in a hotel lobby and found him so irresistible that they slipped a bellhop $50 to get his room number? For anyone even considering this scenario, go take a good look at Neil and decide whether anyone would willingly pay one dime for a romp in the sack with him.
In July 2002, Sharon appeared for a live interview on KHOU-TV News. By that time, the TV station had obtained a copy of Neil’s videotaped deposition and played excerpts from the deposition that contained his own accounts of the Asian sexcapades.
After that, an all-out publicity war began. Neil's Attorney, John Spalding, called reporters with a story that Sharon had yanked hair out of Neil's head so she could make a voodoo doll and put a curse on him.
"It was bizarre," Spalding said, "She literally pulled his hair and yanked it out of his head. He told me about it."
Sharon admitted that she took some of Neil’s hair, but said it came from his barber's floor and it was not for a voodoo doll. She told the Houston Chronicle that because Neil was acting so erratic, she wanted to test the hair for drug use. The tests were inconclusive, she said.
Three-Some Gangs Up On Princess Sharon
When Sharon found out about Neil and Maria's affair, she began claiming that Neil and Maria had been sleeping together for years and that Neil was the father of Maria's 2-year-old son.
Next thing you know, Maria’s husband, Robert, who just happened to also be a business associate of Neil's, claimed that Sharon defamed his son by saying the boy was fathered by Neil and filed a defamation lawsuit against her.
This set off a sandstorm of accusations and demands from all sides. A Texas judge granted Sharon’s demand for DNA samples from Andrews and his son, and even though Neil had already given one DNA sample, Sharon’s attorney got the judge to make him give another. "We require he be forced to give a sample under court supervision," Attorney, David Berg, told UPI on Nov 26, 2003.
"He voluntarily did it before we got to court but not under court supervision," Berg said. "It was a good first step, but we want it under court supervised conditions."
The Houston Chronicle reported the story that, "Neil provided a tissue sample Friday that will be used to determine whether he fathered a child by his girlfriend while she was still married to another man. He hopes the results will settle a paternity question that is at the core of an $850,000 defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife," according to a statement issued by Neil's attorney, John Spalding.
The suit alleged that Sharon had spread the rumor to news outlets, friends and "fast food restaurant employees."
The amount that Andrews demanded from Sharon in damages was significant for 2 reasons. First of all, as part of the divorce settlement, Sharon was allowed to buy the family home from Neil for $850,000. On the exact same day that she closed on the house, Andrews filed the lawsuit and guess how much he asked for? $850,000.
The second reason the demand was significant was that Andrews apparently decided to team up with the guy who stole his wife and help Neil and Maria kill 2 birds with one stone. To stop Sharon from writing a book, Andrews asked that he be awarded all royalties that she might earn from writing any book about the case, according to UPI.
Sharon's attorney was quick to call foul. "We consider it (the suit) vindictive and an attempt to shut her up," Berg said.
"You'd have to be blind not to understand the message when they sued her on the same day that she closed on the house for the same amount of money, an identical amount,” he claimed. "They are sending a message ... It sounds like Andrews is a stalking horse for Bush."
Then Andrew's attorney, Dale Jefferson, thought he'd drive the lets-humiliate-Sharon-knife a little deeper, and went public with a "put-up-or-shut-up" settlement offer:
"We'll put up $850,000 and Sharon Bush can put up $850,000," Jefferson said. "And if she's right and Neil Bush is the father of that child, she gets Mr. Andrews's $850,000, and if we're right, we get her $850,000."
Today, Sharon is not only divorced from Neil, she told 20/20, but completely cut out of the larger Bush clan, what she calls the Bush corporation. She say it is a tight-knit family that sticks together financially, socially, and of course, politically. "Well, you know, we all work together to support George and get him elected. And my father-in-law, to get him elected. It's a family affair. You work hard," Sharon recalled.
All I can say is that I think the Princess deserved a much better retirement package for 23 years of service in the Bush Corporation.
As for the happy couple, on March 6, 2004, Neil and Maria tied the knot. The wedding took place in Houston with most of the Bush clan there to celebrate. Described as a Dom Perignon affair, the wedding was attended by family patriarch and former President George H.W. Bush, as well as prominent guests from the Middle East and China, according to ABC New on Oct 10, 2004.
Jeb, George, and Laura apparently had other plans because they were no shows.
As always with the Bush family, and especially when folks from foreign countries attend a Bush Bash, the Prince and his new Princess were showered with presents. "There were also very lavish gifts," said Mimi Swartz, of Texas Monthly. "I think the couple got matching Bulgari watches, I think someone else gave them an SUV."
Meanwhile, Neil and his new wife are building a multi-million dollar house next door to his parents, reports ABC, where I assume they plan to live happily ever after, or at least until Neil travels to Asia again.
The moral of this story is I guess it's better if half of a couple lives happily ever after than no one at all.
Once upon a time, Prince Neil Bush was best-known for his role in the collapse of the Silverado Savings and Loan. But here come to find out, he is actually the romeo of the Bush Royal Family.
I say this because last year his videotaped divorce deposition became public and quite frankly, the revelations in it do not paint a picture of strong moral values. As it turns out, while still married to his wife, Princess Sharon, Neil had what can only be described as random sex with a number of women, contracted a venereal disease, had an affair with his mother’s married secretary, and was accused of fathering a child out of wedlock.
I guess the lectures delivered by Neil's "I'm not an obnoxious drunk anymore" brother, George, missed the mark. So much for abstinence and safe sex in the First Royal Family.
Although Neil also testified about several highly questionable business deals in which he received huge amounts of money for little (if any) effort, they were completely overshadowed by the tales of his sexual liaisons with the gals in Thailand and Hong Kong.
I will never forget what W said back when the Clinton pardon scandal hit the headlines with charges that brother-in-law Hugh Rodham had accepted $400,000 to lobby for clemency for two felons. When reporters asked W what advice he would give to his own family members, he said: "My guidance to them is, 'Behave yourself.' And they will."
Oh is that right? ha.ha.ha.ha.ha. The absurdity of that statement is almost as funny as the jokes made about their dad's "read my lips" comment.
A Match Made In Heaven
Prince Neil met Sharon during the 1980 presidential campaign. After a brief courtship, they married, moved to Colorado, had 3 children and remained happily married (or at least Sharon did) for 23 years.
The whole divorce saga began in May, 2002, when Neil informed Sharon that he wanted a divorce in an e-mail. The actual email makes for one hell of a "Dear John" letter. The following is in part, what he had to say to Sharon:
"Your comments at our pool-side dinner with the kids that you and I should race to see who could make a million dollars faster, your belief expressed in different ways that I have not made enough money, your belief that it was easy to make money, and that Jamal Daniel's plotting or Dad's influence will be the magic answer to our financial woes all cause me consternation and reflect the bitterness and anger that has come from the loneliness you described Friday," Neil wrote.
"It is very clear that we are failing to meet each other's core needs. We're almost out of money and I've lost my patience for being compared to my brothers, for being put down for my inability to make money, and tired of not being loved. I'm sure you have felt abandoned and a deep sense of loneliness," he wrote.
Of course, Neil forgot to mention a few things in the email. Like he didn't tell Sharon about his Asian sex romps or that he was already having an affair with Maria Anderson, wife of Robert Andrews, a woman Sharon once regarded as a friend, but who she would later call "Neil's Mexican whore."
In fact, he forgot to mention quite a few things. A review of exhibits from Maria's divorce deposition, reveals that at the same time that Neil penning the Dear John email to Sharon, he was also writing love letters to Maria, evidently looking to get his “core needs“ met with her. In one email he tells Maria, "My heart is breaking with solitude. I can't wait to be free to dedicate all of my passion to love you. I hurt to have you in my arms, to make love with you and be a part of your life.” Prince Neil almost puts Prince Charles to shame.
Neil said he met Maria in 2001 while she was working in his mother’s office. He claims the affair did not begin until January 2002, when they ended up together at a fundraiser for brother Jeb. A few weeks later Neil went to the Maria's house looking to raise money for his new company and I guess it was Andrew’s unlucky day. For when Neil left that day, he not only walked out with $100,000 of Andrew’s money, he also bagged his wife, Maria.
A few weeks later, Maria and Neil took a pre-divorce Honeymoon to Mexico and the rest is history. Neil soon fired off his parting email to Sharon and when he returned to the US from Dubai, he set up a bachelor pad in Houston.
And get this, court records show that Neil and Maria both filed for divorce on the same day, August 26, 2002. What a sentimental couple.
In a July, 2002 interview on KHOU TV in Texas, Sharon said that she had never expected a divorce, "It was totally out of the blue,” she said.
However, Neil told a different tale. Apparently unbeknownst to Sharon, the marriage had been on the rocks for years. In his 270 page deposition, Neil testified that there was "no affection" and "very little sexual activity over the past 10 or 12 years." He told Sharon‘s attorney, "Our marriage has been broken. It's loveless. And there is nothing left to it.”
When she got the email, Sharon says she was taken off guard because 2 days earlier, Neil had given her a ring and said he loved her. When she reached out to her in-laws she claims, "I just really basically was turned off, turned away," Sharon said.
She talked about a conversation between her and Queen Barbara Bush, "I said I think Neil is having a mid-life crisis. You know, I'm worried about his business and maybe stress was leading to this e-mail. And she basically said, you talk to your mother and Neilsy will talk to me. And Neilsy will never abandon his children. And that was it,” according to ABC News on Oct 10, 2004.
As late as April 28, 2003, the day the divorce became finalize, Sharon was telling the judge that she wasn't sure she wanted the divorce. "I believe in working through a marriage," she testified, "and I don't believe in divorce with three children." The judge showed no sympathy and granted the divorce anyways.
All Out War
After Sharon learned of Neil’s affair with Maria, she went on a rampage. She made no secret of the fact that she did not want a divorce, and launched an all out attack on the 2 love-birds. She hired top PR man Lou Colasuonno, a former editor of both the New York Post and the New York Daily News.
Colasuonno's first move was to announce that Sharon was looking for a publisher for a book she planned to write. "This is a woman who has had some wonderful times with the Bushes," Colasuonno told the New York Observer. "But she has seen the dark side, too. And she intends to provide a view of the family that everyone will want to read."
Next he set up a lunch date for his client to meet with the famous author, Kitty Kelley, who was already working on a book about the Bush family. Then he hinted that Sharon might be feeding Kelley Bush family secrets.
Sharon and Kelley enjoyed a 4 hour lunch and Kelley couldn't say enough about how badly poor Sharon was being treated. "I learned a great deal about the Bush family from Sharon," Kelley told The Washington Post. "She told me he's only offering $1,000 a month in support -- take it or leave it. . . . She said that when she told Neil she needs more to live on, Neil Bush said, 'Just get remarried.' Sharon was sobbing as she told me, 'Kitty, I just won't sell my body!' "
PR guy Colasuonno claims that Kelley's disclosure to the Post, prompted the Prince to more than double his offer of settlement to about $30,000 a year. In her interview with ABC on Oct 10, 2004, Sharon said her final divorce settlement allowed for 4 years of alimony at $2,500 a month, and that she may soon have to sell the family home in Houston.
When it was released this year, Kelley’s book contained quotes attributed to Sharon that included the allegation that W snorted cocaine with his brother at Camp David during the first Bush presidency. Sharon quickly denied making that allegation but her PR guy Colasuonno, and 2 others who were at the lunch, backed Kelley’s version of the conversations.
Sharon also told Kelly that at one point, she had even received an implied death threat from Neil. According to Sharon, he left a message on her answering machine telling her that if she didn't shut her mouth, she would find herself "in a dark alley."
So here we have the brother of the current president and the son of an ex-president threatening his soon to be ex-wife with death if she doesn't keep quiet about the family secrets. Are we talking about the Royal First Family here? Or the Mafia?
Kelley and Sharon were both interviewed by Matt Lauer on NBC's Today Show on Sept 13 and 14, 2004, and both ladies stuck to their story, as far as what was said at their 4 hour lunch.
The April 22, 2003 Washington Post, reported that Sharon also met with another author, Julie McCarron, in Houston on April 14, 2003, to explore writing a memoir of her life in the Bush family.
McCarron wrote a memo about their day long session together to Michael Viner, who had agreed to a $200,000-plus book deal to publish Sharon's book "First Family." According to McCarron, they ran into Neil's mistress Maria that day at a restaurant called Grotto. "This was very upsetting to Sharon," McCarron wrote in the memo. In the end, Viner withdrew from the book deal, according to the Post.
McCarron memo said that she met Sharon at the Bush family home in Houston. "She was very teary as we toured her house and looked at the hundreds of framed family photos on the wall," McCarron wrote. "She swore that she had been an excellent wife and mother for more than twenty years. . . . She was very upset that the woman her husband was having an affair with had been on Barbara Bush's staff -- how could she not have known?"
According to McCarron, Sharon "stated that the only thing the Bush family cares about is their money and their public image," McCarron continued. "She was devastated over the end of her marriage and the emotional state of her children. As far as writing a book went, she hadn't thought too much about specifics. She did not want to be perceived as a woman scorned. . . . She wanted to write the story of . . . how a 'perfect' marriage can explode after 22 years . . . how she bought into the image of the perfect family, but couldn't cope when everyone in that family turned against her. The Bush family preached family values while she practiced them," wrote McCarron, as reported in the Post.
"They were my family for almost a quarter-century," Sharon said of the Bushes. "I believed in families, and I believed in the family values. And I thought they did, too. So, I thought I would get help from them," according to ABC News.
I guess poor Sharon thought wrong.
What? No Pillow Talk?
During the deposition, when asked by his wife's attorney whether he'd had affairs during his marriage, Neil disclosed a string of sexcapades that could almost put Bill Clinton to shame. And they were all by chance.
During his business trips to Hong Kong and Thailand, Neil said that he would be sitting in his hotel room, just minding his own business, when all of a sudden there would be a knock at the door and a woman would be standing there wanting to have sex with him. He testified that he had no idea who they were or why they showed up.
Neil told his wife's attorney, "I had sexual intercourse with perhaps three or four, I don't remember the exact number, women, at different times. In Thailand once, I have a pretty clear recollection that there was one time in Thailand and in Hong Kong."
I wonder why he has "a pretty clear recollection" of certain encounters. Is it because they were such memorable events or is it because he caught a venereal disease during one of those particular trists?
Attorney Brown asked Neil about this, "Is that where you caught the venereal diseases?" and Neil said, "No."
Brown asked, "Where did you catch those?" And Neil replied, "Diseases plural? I didn't catch..."
Brown apologized, I guess for being insensitive and said: "Well, I'm sorry. How ... how many venereal diseases do you suffer from?"
"I've had one venereal disease," Neil replied.
To which Brown asked, "Which was?"
"Herpes," Neil said.
Had is past tense. Somebody better inform Neil that once you have Herpes, it's a life-long affliction.
A little later, Sharon’s attorney tried to get Neil to explain more about who these women were. "Were they prostitutes?" he asked.
"I don't -- I don't know," Neil replied.
Brown asked, "Did you pay them for that sex?"
"No, I did not," Neil said.
Brown then asked did you, "Pick them up in a sushi house?"
"No," Neil said. "My recollection is, where I can recall, they came to my room."
You can tell that Brown is having a good time at Neil's expense by the way he ridicules him. "Do you know the name of that hotel? I may go to Thailand sometime," Brown said.
I think it's fairly obviously that some of Neil’s foreign business deals came with perks that he was more than happy to take advantage of.
When asked how he knew what to do when a woman came to the door, Neil replied, "Whatever happened, happened."
That snide comment could lead the mind to any number of visions. If need be, Prince Neil could probably make a few extra bucks by publishing his deposition and marketing it as a soft porn novel.
Sharon's attorney was amazed at Neil's Asian romps. "You have to admit that it's a pretty remarkable thing for a man just to go to a hotel room door and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her," he said.
"It was very unusual," Neil replied.
That right there was lie under oath in a civil deposition. Also known as perjury during the Clinton years. How can Neil claim the events were unusual, when by his own admission, they happened at least 3 or 4 times? I say arrest the Prince for lying under oath, and if by any chance he holds a license to practice anything, revoke it.
For those wondering how Sharon felt sitting there listening to the details of Neil's sexcapades, she said, "I was totally devastated, and so were our children upon learning this," reported the New York Post’s PAGE SIX. "I trusted him while he was on all those foreign trips and kept the home fires burning while raising three great children . . . His behavior has been appalling. Where are the family values?"
That's a very good question. Where's the moral outrage from the Bush family over Neil’s behavior?
In fairness to Neil, the Asian trips were not all play and no work. It's just that the sex stories overshadow the curious financial deals that were discussed in the same deposition.
So if these women were not perks from foreign investors seeking to gain influence through the President's brother, who were they? Wasn't there any pillow talk whatsoever?
What does Neil expect us to believe? That 3 or 4 different women spotted him in a hotel lobby and found him so irresistible that they slipped a bellhop $50 to get his room number? For anyone even considering this scenario, go take a good look at Neil and decide whether anyone would willingly pay one dime for a romp in the sack with him.
In July 2002, Sharon appeared for a live interview on KHOU-TV News. By that time, the TV station had obtained a copy of Neil’s videotaped deposition and played excerpts from the deposition that contained his own accounts of the Asian sexcapades.
After that, an all-out publicity war began. Neil's Attorney, John Spalding, called reporters with a story that Sharon had yanked hair out of Neil's head so she could make a voodoo doll and put a curse on him.
"It was bizarre," Spalding said, "She literally pulled his hair and yanked it out of his head. He told me about it."
Sharon admitted that she took some of Neil’s hair, but said it came from his barber's floor and it was not for a voodoo doll. She told the Houston Chronicle that because Neil was acting so erratic, she wanted to test the hair for drug use. The tests were inconclusive, she said.
Three-Some Gangs Up On Princess Sharon
When Sharon found out about Neil and Maria's affair, she began claiming that Neil and Maria had been sleeping together for years and that Neil was the father of Maria's 2-year-old son.
Next thing you know, Maria’s husband, Robert, who just happened to also be a business associate of Neil's, claimed that Sharon defamed his son by saying the boy was fathered by Neil and filed a defamation lawsuit against her.
This set off a sandstorm of accusations and demands from all sides. A Texas judge granted Sharon’s demand for DNA samples from Andrews and his son, and even though Neil had already given one DNA sample, Sharon’s attorney got the judge to make him give another. "We require he be forced to give a sample under court supervision," Attorney, David Berg, told UPI on Nov 26, 2003.
"He voluntarily did it before we got to court but not under court supervision," Berg said. "It was a good first step, but we want it under court supervised conditions."
The Houston Chronicle reported the story that, "Neil provided a tissue sample Friday that will be used to determine whether he fathered a child by his girlfriend while she was still married to another man. He hopes the results will settle a paternity question that is at the core of an $850,000 defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife," according to a statement issued by Neil's attorney, John Spalding.
The suit alleged that Sharon had spread the rumor to news outlets, friends and "fast food restaurant employees."
The amount that Andrews demanded from Sharon in damages was significant for 2 reasons. First of all, as part of the divorce settlement, Sharon was allowed to buy the family home from Neil for $850,000. On the exact same day that she closed on the house, Andrews filed the lawsuit and guess how much he asked for? $850,000.
The second reason the demand was significant was that Andrews apparently decided to team up with the guy who stole his wife and help Neil and Maria kill 2 birds with one stone. To stop Sharon from writing a book, Andrews asked that he be awarded all royalties that she might earn from writing any book about the case, according to UPI.
Sharon's attorney was quick to call foul. "We consider it (the suit) vindictive and an attempt to shut her up," Berg said.
"You'd have to be blind not to understand the message when they sued her on the same day that she closed on the house for the same amount of money, an identical amount,” he claimed. "They are sending a message ... It sounds like Andrews is a stalking horse for Bush."
Then Andrew's attorney, Dale Jefferson, thought he'd drive the lets-humiliate-Sharon-knife a little deeper, and went public with a "put-up-or-shut-up" settlement offer:
"We'll put up $850,000 and Sharon Bush can put up $850,000," Jefferson said. "And if she's right and Neil Bush is the father of that child, she gets Mr. Andrews's $850,000, and if we're right, we get her $850,000."
Today, Sharon is not only divorced from Neil, she told 20/20, but completely cut out of the larger Bush clan, what she calls the Bush corporation. She say it is a tight-knit family that sticks together financially, socially, and of course, politically. "Well, you know, we all work together to support George and get him elected. And my father-in-law, to get him elected. It's a family affair. You work hard," Sharon recalled.
All I can say is that I think the Princess deserved a much better retirement package for 23 years of service in the Bush Corporation.
As for the happy couple, on March 6, 2004, Neil and Maria tied the knot. The wedding took place in Houston with most of the Bush clan there to celebrate. Described as a Dom Perignon affair, the wedding was attended by family patriarch and former President George H.W. Bush, as well as prominent guests from the Middle East and China, according to ABC New on Oct 10, 2004.
Jeb, George, and Laura apparently had other plans because they were no shows.
As always with the Bush family, and especially when folks from foreign countries attend a Bush Bash, the Prince and his new Princess were showered with presents. "There were also very lavish gifts," said Mimi Swartz, of Texas Monthly. "I think the couple got matching Bulgari watches, I think someone else gave them an SUV."
Meanwhile, Neil and his new wife are building a multi-million dollar house next door to his parents, reports ABC, where I assume they plan to live happily ever after, or at least until Neil travels to Asia again.
The moral of this story is I guess it's better if half of a couple lives happily ever after than no one at all.
Bush Needs Funnels - Any Senior Citizens Will Do
Evelyn Pringle October 2004
Bush and his cronies in the drug and insurance industries have a major problem. Although they developed and implemented a brilliant Medicare profiteering scheme by which they could funnel billions of tax dollars to themselves, they cannot get their hands on the money because they can't get enough seniors to sign up for the prescription drug discount card program.
They are in dire need of senior funnels.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had projected that about 7 million senior citizens, out of the 41 million Medicare beneficiaries, would sign up for cards. However, much to the Bush gang's dismay, that has not happened.
In order to get Congress to pass the underlying bill that contains the scheme, Bush, the industry, and their allies in Congress went to great lengths. They lobbied, lied, coerced members of Congress, and threatened a Medicare Actuary with termination if he told Congress the true cost of the bill, before it passed. And in the end, the bill was passed.
That's why I think it's so funny that they now find themselves in desperate need of seniors willing to sign up for the program to act as funnels. I guess they really thought that elderly people were so gullible that they wouldn't figure out what they were up to, and that mistake is turning out to be their worst miscalculation.
Although the Bush gang will accept applications from all seniors, they are particularly interested in getting the poorest seniors into the program; because those seniors can get an automatic $1200 subsidy between now and 2006 that can be funneled back to the crooks with no questions asked.
The Lobbying, Lies, And Coercion
In order to ensure the passage of their favored version of the Medicare prescription drug bill, Bush said it would only cost $395 billion, because he was warned by Republicans that it would not pass a vote in Congress if it went over $400 billion.
As far back as 5 months before the vote, Bush knew that the top Medicare Actuary, Richard Foster, estimated it would cost as much as $551 billion. He knew that Foster said the bill would actually boost payments to private health plans by $46 billion, more than 3 times the $14 billion estimate given to Congress. He also knew that Foster determined that drugmakers would receive $100 billion more than the estimate provided to Congress while lawmakers were debating whether or not to pass the bill.
Plain and simple, Bush not only deceived seniors and members of Congress, he lied to the American tax payers and ripped off $170 billion.
Only after the bill was passed, did we find out that the thugs threatened to fire Foster, if he told lawmakers about the true cost of the bill. And only after it was passed, did tax payers find out about its $534 billion price tag.
On top of all that, this month we found out that the cost of the bill has gone up another $42 billion.
Bottom line. As a result of Bush's Medicare scam, the drug and insurance industries will receive an additional $139.2 billion in profits over the next eight years with 61% of it going for prescription drugs and $14 billion going to HMOs. (Alan Sager, Boston University School of Public Health, 4/12/04)
It's Not So Easy To Con Seniors
I can see why the Bush gang thought it could make a bundle off this scheme. About 7 million low-income Medicare beneficiaries are eligible to enroll in the prescription drug discount card program and receive the accompanying $600 annual subsidy, according to the AP/Omaha World-Herald, 9/23.
However, it looks like seniors have refused to be conned because very few signed up. While Bush stuck to his part of the bargain and spent millions of tax dollars to promote the new bill, attempts by insurance providers to lure low-income recipients into the trap with a cash subsidy even failed to increase enrollment.
So far, only 4.3 million seniors have enrolled in the program since enrollment began on June 1, according to Peter Ashkenaz of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). But even that number is deceiving because only 25% of those 4.3 million enrolled in the program voluntarily. A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, determined that millions of people were automatically enrolled because they are participants in HMO-style Medicare plans or state pharmacy assistance programs.
Missouri Democratic candidate for Congress, Jim Newberry, says seniors aren't signing up because the program provides no savings and its too confusing. "Talk to seniors. They'll tell you," he said. "The drug companies don't have to negotiate or compete. Seniors have to choose a card. It's harder than choosing a cell-phone plan."
He calls the program "corporate welfare for pharmaceutical companies rather than financial help for seniors."
He's right, millions of seniors are confused, and for good reason. Peter Rost is my designated expert on the subject of prescription drugs (unbeknownst to him). He has 20 years of experience marketing drugs.
Rost told Independent Media why the program is not working, "the system we have today to provide discounted or free drugs to seniors and low-income families is a patch-work, that not even a highly educated person can easily master," he said.
Rost thinks the applications may be too difficult to fill out. "According to press reports some drug firms require applications that are longer than a tax return. And our government implements a system for discount cards that is so complex that very few sign up for this," he noted.
New York Congressman Joseph Crowley agrees. "Most people in my district are not signed up for a discount drug card because they do not see a value to the plan," he says.
"The (Medicare) reform bill has done zero to lower the cost of prescription drugs for American seniors and has in fact raised premiums and created a confusing system of Medicare drug discount cards," Crowly said. "This bill was passed by the pharmaceutical industry."
Sen Edward Kennedy has weighed in with his opinion of the Bush discount card scam. "Only in this administration would the words `discount card' mean seniors get the card while corporations get the discounts,'' he said.
This Escalating Cost Of Drugs
Two separate reports from Families USA and AARP, have determined that price increases for prescription drugs over the past year have offset any savings that may have been gained from drug card program.
Seniors had better not count on saving money by signing up for the program. A report released by Crowley, called "Medicare Prescription Drug Cards," analyzed the 33 discount cards available in his district in mid-August, 2004 and the prices charged for the 10 top brand-name drugs used by seniors.
The report's findings were detailed in the Howard Beach Times.com on 9/23/04. The study calculated the cost of 10 drugs using the cards and then compared it with the prices of the same drugs from three other sources: a popular online pharmacy Web site, the market rate in Canada and the price negotiated by the US Department of Veterans' Affairs.
According to the report, card prices "are significantly higher than prices for the same drugs in Canada." In fact, the average prices were 62% higher using the cards than if they were purchased in Canada. For example, a 30-day supply of the arthritis drug Celebrex was $38.69 in Canada, but $74.14 or more with a card.
The report also found card prices much higher than the prices negotiated by the Dept for Veterans Affairs. In comparison, drugs with the cards were 64% higher.
And the card prices were nearly identical to prices charged by the internet pharmacy Drugstore.com. The report even found that some prices with the cards were comparable to the prices offered to Medicare beneficiaries without the cards.
Bush Decides To Force Seniors To Enter The Program
As it gets closer to the election, Bush knows he needs to get this show on the road. So due to his dire need of funnels, he apparently has decided to try and force low-income seniors into the program.
On Sepember 23, 2004, HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson announced that federal officials will mail Medicare prescription drug discount cards to about 1.8 million low-income seniors who already receive some government assistance with Medicare expenses, the New York Times reports.
The NYTs says beneficiaries who receive the cards will be assigned to one of the 17 companies that have agreed to issue drug discount cards to low-income beneficiaries.
I wonder which companies agreed to "help" these poor soles. Let's see now, for starters, how much is 1.8 million times $1,200? And then we have to divide that amount by 17. So how much money can each company count on from the get-go?
Another funny story is that card providers initially planned to charge seniors $30 for a card as part of the scam. How much is 7 million times $30? That money's lost. They tried to make mega bucks off our elderly from every angle. Too bad their house of cards is collapsing (no pun intended). When I think about it, this is just too funny.
Besides, there is still another little problem with trying to force low-income seniors into the program. To receive the subsidy, seniors must call a toll-free number and confirm their eligibility by answering questions about existing prescription drug coverage and annual income levels, according to the New York Times.
I know that this may be incomprehensible to the profiteers in this scheme, but some seniors not only do not have phones, many can't even use one due to any number of health problems. I wonder if Bush will sit there himself waiting for calls from seniors?
In this instance, I love being the bearer of bad news. I don't think the Bush gang is going to get enough funnels signed up for the card program before Bush is hit with an eviction notice at the White House on November 2.
Industry Was Drooling Over Long Term Profits
The primary groups that offer the cards are HMOs, pharmaceutical benefits managers (PBMs), insurance companies, and groups of insurers and drug companies combined.
According to a July 5, 2004 article in Business Week, players of every description are scrambling to get a foothold in the new business created when the prescription drug law was passed. "Insurance companies, drugstores, drugmakers, and distribution middlemen called pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) have all jumped in."
Business Week points out that the focus is on 2006, when the card is due to expire. At that point, it will be replaced by the more lucrative drug insurance that Congress agreed to fund, which will pay a set proportion of seniors' drug costs. "The key is for card sponsors to position themselves for '06," says Vicki Gottlisch, a lawyer at the nonprofit Center for Medicare Advocacy.
Business Week, says companies are aiming at 2006 and beyond. It details how "First Health Services Corp ... runs six state programs that already provide discount drugs for low-income people. Because Congress agreed to pay for $600 in free drugs through the Medicare card for many of these same seniors, First Health is offering its card to more than 250,000 elderly in three of those states -- Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania.
"The payoff: The Medicare law allows these low-income seniors to be automatically enrolled in a card -- and First Health has negotiated to sponsor it. That will help position First Health with these customers for 2006," says First Health CEO Teresa DiMarco.
When Kerry takes over the White House the industry won't have to worry about what will happen in 2006, because I suspect that one of his first moves in office will be to find a way to dismantle Bush's Medicare profiteering scheme.
What Are Lawmakers Doing To Help?
Currently, between 1 and 2 million Americans are breaking the law by using the Internet to buy drugs from Canadian pharmacies, and many more would like to. According to a poll done by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University School of Public Health, about 80% of Americans support importing drugs from Canada.
And who can blame them? In 2002, Americans paid 67% more than Canadians for prescription drugs and in 2004, it's estimated that US consumers will spend $210 billion.
John Kerry has said that under his health care proposal, "all Americans will be able to buy less expensive prescription drugs from countries like Canada."
Under pressure from voters, many governors and state officials are ignoring Bush's ban on importing drugs, and are creating websites that link consumers to Canadian pharmacies. For instance, New Hampshire has a link to Canadadrugs.com on its website, which is supported by its Republican Governor Craig Benson. The FDA has not moved to shut the sites down so far.
Minnesota Republican Gov Tim Pawlenty, also set up a state web site and explained, "We search the world market for the best deal for American consumers and I don't think we should carve out and make an exception for prescription drugs."
Illinois and Wisconsin recently launched "I-Saverk," the first state-sponsored program to help people buy cheaper drugs from both Europe and Canada. Some 24 other states are said to be considering legislation that would permit importation from other countries. Connecticut, West Virginia and Vermont have already enacted pro-importation laws.
However, I've always known that drug makers wouldn't sit back and allow this to go on for too long. They are already starting to cut shipments sent to Canada when the orders appear to exceed local needs.
When asked about this situation, Pawlenty said, "We'll have to look at other opportunities in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany, and other countries we know are potential safe providers of prescription medicines. In the end they (U.S. drug makers ) can't suffocate the supply to the rest of the developed world."
I really like Gov Pawlenty's attitude (even if he is a Republican).
Peter Rost blames most of the problem on politics. "The objective does not appear to be to provide drugs, but to score political and public relations victories," he says. "We need comprehensive healthcare reform. Reimportation of drugs is a first step on the right way."
Along with importation, some lawmakers are trying to pass legislation that would allow the government to negotiate for lower prices like the Dept of Veteran's Affairs does. Rost believes a law should be enacted immediately.
He told Independent Media: "I'm very concerned about the fact that Medicare will not be allowed to negotiate drug prices. I think this is Un-American. This is the country in which we believe we have a God given right to clip coupons and get low grocery prices, haggle with car dealers and buy clothes only on sale," he noted.
"To forbid us from negotiating drug prices will raise taxes which is even more Un-American. And this is done to us by a Republican president! I'm shocked," he said.
For whatever its worth, I agree with Rost 100%.
Cut To The Chase - How Much Will Seniors Have To Pay In 2006?
In January 2006, Medicare Part D will offer seniors enrolled in a managed care program prescription drug coverage that will include premiums, co-payments, and a donut hole, or a gap in coverage between certain levels of drug expenses.
How much will seniors have to pay in 2006? To begin with, they will pay a premium of $35 a month ($420 a year), and for the first $250 in drug costs. For the next $2,000 in costs they will pay 25% and Medicare will cover the other 75%.
Once the drug costs reach $2,250, coverage will completely stop. Seniors then have to pay for the next $2,850 in drug expenses on their own (the doughnut hole). Coverage does not begin again until the total costs reach $5,100. Once drug expenses reach that level, Medicare will pay for 95% of the cost for the rest of the year.
Then in 2007, the process begins all over again, but with the likely possibility that both the deductible and the gap in coverage will increase, depending on how much the price of drugs go up. That is not good news because we all know how fast drug prices can rise in 12 months.
For example, Families USA did a study and found that, "Among the top 30 brand-name drugs, prices, on average, rose by 4.3 times the rate of inflation from January 2003 to January 2004," ("Sticker Shock" June, 2004)
In light of this report, I think we can safely assume that the rising drug prices will probably negate any savings that may result from the prescription drug bill in 2007.
I agree with Sen Kennedy, and I think as president, Kerry should follow his advice. "The Bush administration's drug discount card program has been a monumental failure," said Kennedy. "It's time to scrap and replace the administration's whole flawed Medicare bill with a program designed to meet the needs of seniors instead of designed to fatten the profits of drug companies and HMOs."
Seniors Will Give Bush The Boot
The group of voters with the highest prescription drug costs is made up of Americans over the age of 65. Seniors make up 13% of the population. This group also happens have the best record for voter participation. 72% of its members cast ballots in
2000.
Although its more than obvious that Bush is not the sharpest tool in the shed, one of his many minions should have forced him to at least consider these statistics before he tried to con the elderly. Mark my word, pay-backs are hell. On Nov 2, seniors are going to show up to vote in record numbers and cause Bush to lose the election.
Bush and his cronies in the drug and insurance industries have a major problem. Although they developed and implemented a brilliant Medicare profiteering scheme by which they could funnel billions of tax dollars to themselves, they cannot get their hands on the money because they can't get enough seniors to sign up for the prescription drug discount card program.
They are in dire need of senior funnels.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had projected that about 7 million senior citizens, out of the 41 million Medicare beneficiaries, would sign up for cards. However, much to the Bush gang's dismay, that has not happened.
In order to get Congress to pass the underlying bill that contains the scheme, Bush, the industry, and their allies in Congress went to great lengths. They lobbied, lied, coerced members of Congress, and threatened a Medicare Actuary with termination if he told Congress the true cost of the bill, before it passed. And in the end, the bill was passed.
That's why I think it's so funny that they now find themselves in desperate need of seniors willing to sign up for the program to act as funnels. I guess they really thought that elderly people were so gullible that they wouldn't figure out what they were up to, and that mistake is turning out to be their worst miscalculation.
Although the Bush gang will accept applications from all seniors, they are particularly interested in getting the poorest seniors into the program; because those seniors can get an automatic $1200 subsidy between now and 2006 that can be funneled back to the crooks with no questions asked.
The Lobbying, Lies, And Coercion
In order to ensure the passage of their favored version of the Medicare prescription drug bill, Bush said it would only cost $395 billion, because he was warned by Republicans that it would not pass a vote in Congress if it went over $400 billion.
As far back as 5 months before the vote, Bush knew that the top Medicare Actuary, Richard Foster, estimated it would cost as much as $551 billion. He knew that Foster said the bill would actually boost payments to private health plans by $46 billion, more than 3 times the $14 billion estimate given to Congress. He also knew that Foster determined that drugmakers would receive $100 billion more than the estimate provided to Congress while lawmakers were debating whether or not to pass the bill.
Plain and simple, Bush not only deceived seniors and members of Congress, he lied to the American tax payers and ripped off $170 billion.
Only after the bill was passed, did we find out that the thugs threatened to fire Foster, if he told lawmakers about the true cost of the bill. And only after it was passed, did tax payers find out about its $534 billion price tag.
On top of all that, this month we found out that the cost of the bill has gone up another $42 billion.
Bottom line. As a result of Bush's Medicare scam, the drug and insurance industries will receive an additional $139.2 billion in profits over the next eight years with 61% of it going for prescription drugs and $14 billion going to HMOs. (Alan Sager, Boston University School of Public Health, 4/12/04)
It's Not So Easy To Con Seniors
I can see why the Bush gang thought it could make a bundle off this scheme. About 7 million low-income Medicare beneficiaries are eligible to enroll in the prescription drug discount card program and receive the accompanying $600 annual subsidy, according to the AP/Omaha World-Herald, 9/23.
However, it looks like seniors have refused to be conned because very few signed up. While Bush stuck to his part of the bargain and spent millions of tax dollars to promote the new bill, attempts by insurance providers to lure low-income recipients into the trap with a cash subsidy even failed to increase enrollment.
So far, only 4.3 million seniors have enrolled in the program since enrollment began on June 1, according to Peter Ashkenaz of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). But even that number is deceiving because only 25% of those 4.3 million enrolled in the program voluntarily. A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, determined that millions of people were automatically enrolled because they are participants in HMO-style Medicare plans or state pharmacy assistance programs.
Missouri Democratic candidate for Congress, Jim Newberry, says seniors aren't signing up because the program provides no savings and its too confusing. "Talk to seniors. They'll tell you," he said. "The drug companies don't have to negotiate or compete. Seniors have to choose a card. It's harder than choosing a cell-phone plan."
He calls the program "corporate welfare for pharmaceutical companies rather than financial help for seniors."
He's right, millions of seniors are confused, and for good reason. Peter Rost is my designated expert on the subject of prescription drugs (unbeknownst to him). He has 20 years of experience marketing drugs.
Rost told Independent Media why the program is not working, "the system we have today to provide discounted or free drugs to seniors and low-income families is a patch-work, that not even a highly educated person can easily master," he said.
Rost thinks the applications may be too difficult to fill out. "According to press reports some drug firms require applications that are longer than a tax return. And our government implements a system for discount cards that is so complex that very few sign up for this," he noted.
New York Congressman Joseph Crowley agrees. "Most people in my district are not signed up for a discount drug card because they do not see a value to the plan," he says.
"The (Medicare) reform bill has done zero to lower the cost of prescription drugs for American seniors and has in fact raised premiums and created a confusing system of Medicare drug discount cards," Crowly said. "This bill was passed by the pharmaceutical industry."
Sen Edward Kennedy has weighed in with his opinion of the Bush discount card scam. "Only in this administration would the words `discount card' mean seniors get the card while corporations get the discounts,'' he said.
This Escalating Cost Of Drugs
Two separate reports from Families USA and AARP, have determined that price increases for prescription drugs over the past year have offset any savings that may have been gained from drug card program.
Seniors had better not count on saving money by signing up for the program. A report released by Crowley, called "Medicare Prescription Drug Cards," analyzed the 33 discount cards available in his district in mid-August, 2004 and the prices charged for the 10 top brand-name drugs used by seniors.
The report's findings were detailed in the Howard Beach Times.com on 9/23/04. The study calculated the cost of 10 drugs using the cards and then compared it with the prices of the same drugs from three other sources: a popular online pharmacy Web site, the market rate in Canada and the price negotiated by the US Department of Veterans' Affairs.
According to the report, card prices "are significantly higher than prices for the same drugs in Canada." In fact, the average prices were 62% higher using the cards than if they were purchased in Canada. For example, a 30-day supply of the arthritis drug Celebrex was $38.69 in Canada, but $74.14 or more with a card.
The report also found card prices much higher than the prices negotiated by the Dept for Veterans Affairs. In comparison, drugs with the cards were 64% higher.
And the card prices were nearly identical to prices charged by the internet pharmacy Drugstore.com. The report even found that some prices with the cards were comparable to the prices offered to Medicare beneficiaries without the cards.
Bush Decides To Force Seniors To Enter The Program
As it gets closer to the election, Bush knows he needs to get this show on the road. So due to his dire need of funnels, he apparently has decided to try and force low-income seniors into the program.
On Sepember 23, 2004, HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson announced that federal officials will mail Medicare prescription drug discount cards to about 1.8 million low-income seniors who already receive some government assistance with Medicare expenses, the New York Times reports.
The NYTs says beneficiaries who receive the cards will be assigned to one of the 17 companies that have agreed to issue drug discount cards to low-income beneficiaries.
I wonder which companies agreed to "help" these poor soles. Let's see now, for starters, how much is 1.8 million times $1,200? And then we have to divide that amount by 17. So how much money can each company count on from the get-go?
Another funny story is that card providers initially planned to charge seniors $30 for a card as part of the scam. How much is 7 million times $30? That money's lost. They tried to make mega bucks off our elderly from every angle. Too bad their house of cards is collapsing (no pun intended). When I think about it, this is just too funny.
Besides, there is still another little problem with trying to force low-income seniors into the program. To receive the subsidy, seniors must call a toll-free number and confirm their eligibility by answering questions about existing prescription drug coverage and annual income levels, according to the New York Times.
I know that this may be incomprehensible to the profiteers in this scheme, but some seniors not only do not have phones, many can't even use one due to any number of health problems. I wonder if Bush will sit there himself waiting for calls from seniors?
In this instance, I love being the bearer of bad news. I don't think the Bush gang is going to get enough funnels signed up for the card program before Bush is hit with an eviction notice at the White House on November 2.
Industry Was Drooling Over Long Term Profits
The primary groups that offer the cards are HMOs, pharmaceutical benefits managers (PBMs), insurance companies, and groups of insurers and drug companies combined.
According to a July 5, 2004 article in Business Week, players of every description are scrambling to get a foothold in the new business created when the prescription drug law was passed. "Insurance companies, drugstores, drugmakers, and distribution middlemen called pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) have all jumped in."
Business Week points out that the focus is on 2006, when the card is due to expire. At that point, it will be replaced by the more lucrative drug insurance that Congress agreed to fund, which will pay a set proportion of seniors' drug costs. "The key is for card sponsors to position themselves for '06," says Vicki Gottlisch, a lawyer at the nonprofit Center for Medicare Advocacy.
Business Week, says companies are aiming at 2006 and beyond. It details how "First Health Services Corp ... runs six state programs that already provide discount drugs for low-income people. Because Congress agreed to pay for $600 in free drugs through the Medicare card for many of these same seniors, First Health is offering its card to more than 250,000 elderly in three of those states -- Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania.
"The payoff: The Medicare law allows these low-income seniors to be automatically enrolled in a card -- and First Health has negotiated to sponsor it. That will help position First Health with these customers for 2006," says First Health CEO Teresa DiMarco.
When Kerry takes over the White House the industry won't have to worry about what will happen in 2006, because I suspect that one of his first moves in office will be to find a way to dismantle Bush's Medicare profiteering scheme.
What Are Lawmakers Doing To Help?
Currently, between 1 and 2 million Americans are breaking the law by using the Internet to buy drugs from Canadian pharmacies, and many more would like to. According to a poll done by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University School of Public Health, about 80% of Americans support importing drugs from Canada.
And who can blame them? In 2002, Americans paid 67% more than Canadians for prescription drugs and in 2004, it's estimated that US consumers will spend $210 billion.
John Kerry has said that under his health care proposal, "all Americans will be able to buy less expensive prescription drugs from countries like Canada."
Under pressure from voters, many governors and state officials are ignoring Bush's ban on importing drugs, and are creating websites that link consumers to Canadian pharmacies. For instance, New Hampshire has a link to Canadadrugs.com on its website, which is supported by its Republican Governor Craig Benson. The FDA has not moved to shut the sites down so far.
Minnesota Republican Gov Tim Pawlenty, also set up a state web site and explained, "We search the world market for the best deal for American consumers and I don't think we should carve out and make an exception for prescription drugs."
Illinois and Wisconsin recently launched "I-Saverk," the first state-sponsored program to help people buy cheaper drugs from both Europe and Canada. Some 24 other states are said to be considering legislation that would permit importation from other countries. Connecticut, West Virginia and Vermont have already enacted pro-importation laws.
However, I've always known that drug makers wouldn't sit back and allow this to go on for too long. They are already starting to cut shipments sent to Canada when the orders appear to exceed local needs.
When asked about this situation, Pawlenty said, "We'll have to look at other opportunities in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany, and other countries we know are potential safe providers of prescription medicines. In the end they (U.S. drug makers ) can't suffocate the supply to the rest of the developed world."
I really like Gov Pawlenty's attitude (even if he is a Republican).
Peter Rost blames most of the problem on politics. "The objective does not appear to be to provide drugs, but to score political and public relations victories," he says. "We need comprehensive healthcare reform. Reimportation of drugs is a first step on the right way."
Along with importation, some lawmakers are trying to pass legislation that would allow the government to negotiate for lower prices like the Dept of Veteran's Affairs does. Rost believes a law should be enacted immediately.
He told Independent Media: "I'm very concerned about the fact that Medicare will not be allowed to negotiate drug prices. I think this is Un-American. This is the country in which we believe we have a God given right to clip coupons and get low grocery prices, haggle with car dealers and buy clothes only on sale," he noted.
"To forbid us from negotiating drug prices will raise taxes which is even more Un-American. And this is done to us by a Republican president! I'm shocked," he said.
For whatever its worth, I agree with Rost 100%.
Cut To The Chase - How Much Will Seniors Have To Pay In 2006?
In January 2006, Medicare Part D will offer seniors enrolled in a managed care program prescription drug coverage that will include premiums, co-payments, and a donut hole, or a gap in coverage between certain levels of drug expenses.
How much will seniors have to pay in 2006? To begin with, they will pay a premium of $35 a month ($420 a year), and for the first $250 in drug costs. For the next $2,000 in costs they will pay 25% and Medicare will cover the other 75%.
Once the drug costs reach $2,250, coverage will completely stop. Seniors then have to pay for the next $2,850 in drug expenses on their own (the doughnut hole). Coverage does not begin again until the total costs reach $5,100. Once drug expenses reach that level, Medicare will pay for 95% of the cost for the rest of the year.
Then in 2007, the process begins all over again, but with the likely possibility that both the deductible and the gap in coverage will increase, depending on how much the price of drugs go up. That is not good news because we all know how fast drug prices can rise in 12 months.
For example, Families USA did a study and found that, "Among the top 30 brand-name drugs, prices, on average, rose by 4.3 times the rate of inflation from January 2003 to January 2004," ("Sticker Shock" June, 2004)
In light of this report, I think we can safely assume that the rising drug prices will probably negate any savings that may result from the prescription drug bill in 2007.
I agree with Sen Kennedy, and I think as president, Kerry should follow his advice. "The Bush administration's drug discount card program has been a monumental failure," said Kennedy. "It's time to scrap and replace the administration's whole flawed Medicare bill with a program designed to meet the needs of seniors instead of designed to fatten the profits of drug companies and HMOs."
Seniors Will Give Bush The Boot
The group of voters with the highest prescription drug costs is made up of Americans over the age of 65. Seniors make up 13% of the population. This group also happens have the best record for voter participation. 72% of its members cast ballots in
2000.
Although its more than obvious that Bush is not the sharpest tool in the shed, one of his many minions should have forced him to at least consider these statistics before he tried to con the elderly. Mark my word, pay-backs are hell. On Nov 2, seniors are going to show up to vote in record numbers and cause Bush to lose the election.
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