Reply #78: Bush's timber company [View All]

Seems this LSTF LLC could be the "Lone Star Tree Farm", did a search on Google, and found this:

Root of mystery is tree farm
http://www.testycopyeditors.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3034&sid=acfea79fe1c231445a0afab3df8d6c01

Web Posted: 10/13/2004 12:00 AM CDT
Joseph S. Stroud
San Antonio Express-News

President Bush doesn't own a timber company, it turns out, but he can make good on the wood he offered during last week's debate with Sen. John Kerry.

But not for lumber, only for shade. And the trees won't be available until 2007.

Bush entered into a partnership several years ago with John Taylor, who had moved with his family to Jonesboro from San Antonio, and wound up in business with the president of the United States.

Bush, Taylor said, helped him fulfill a dream of starting a tree farm after a brief conversation at the president's ranch near Crawford. The deal came together after Bush hired Taylor's construction company to do some remodeling work.

"I think that he heard through the grapevine that that was kind of a goal of mine was to start a tree farm operation," Taylor said. "And he kind of brought it up with me one day, and I think I popped off and said 'Well, you want to go into business or something doing it?' And he said 'Well, let's look at it.'"

Under terms of the partnership, owned equally by Taylor and Bush, the president put up some $225,000 to finance the Lone Star Tree Farm, according to Robert McCleskey, a Midland accountant who runs the president's personal trust fund and helped set up the tree farm.

Taylor manages the farm — not a timber company at all, but 50 to 70 acres of oaks, elms and cypress trees intended for commercial sale and replanting — on the president's ranch.

At last week's debate in St. Louis, in one of the strangest exchanges of the campaign so far, Kerry suggested during a discussion about tax policy that the Republican incumbent "got $84 from a timber company that (he) owns, and he's counted as a small business."

Bush couldn't have looked more stunned if Kerry had said he had been brainwashed by Martians.

"I own a timber company?" the president said. "That's news to me."

Then, after a pause, Bush drew the biggest laugh of the night when he shrugged and said: "Want some wood?"

The exchange drew scarcely a mention in television "fact-checking" segments broadcast after the debate. Nobody seemed to have a clue what Kerry was talking about.

Turns out Kerry didn't either, though it may not have been his fault entirely.

The source of the error was a nonpartisan Web site at the University of Pennsylvania, factcheck.org, which had posted an item saying Bush would have qualified as a small business owner based on $84 worth of income listed on his 2001 federal income tax returns "from a timber growing enterprise."

That income came from an oil and gas well Bush owns, McCleskey said, and had nothing to do with the tree farm.

Factcheck.org, which has been cited by both sides as an authority on campaign claims, later corrected the item, noting Bush had listed the income as being from "oil and gas production" on his 2001 tax return.

As they watched the debate at home, John and Elizabeth Taylor didn't realize initially that Kerry might have been referring to the tree farm.

"We didn't even connect the two," Elizabeth Taylor said. "A timber company and growing live trees is such an opposite thing that it didn't click right away. It kind of took a few minutes, and we were just kind of like, 'Surely he's not talking about the tree farm where we're growing trees.'"

Kerry's larger point — that as a small business owner Bush might benefit from the lower taxes he was promoting — was correct, although it had nothing to do with the $84.

The Taylors, who have three children, moved from San Antonio to Jonesboro around 1998. Elizabeth Taylor's father lived near there, and they were looking for a place where John Taylor could pursue his dream of starting a tree farm.

"That's where we found some land," John Taylor said. "My goal was to buy some land and raise my kids in the country on a ranch."

The connection with the Bushes began after a realtor suggested Taylor's company for some remodeling work on a guest house at the ranch.