the Skinny on Neil Bush

[donsu]

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2241139

Maybe the president of Taiwan did pay presidential younger brother Neil Bush a million bucks for a recent 30-minute meeting in New York.

-snip-

The exhibit is a two-page contract between Bush and Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which recently opened a $1.6 billion computer chip production plant in Shanghai.

-snip-

For this the contract provides that Bush be paid $400,000 a year in company preferred stock for five years -- a total of $2 million worth of stock.

In addition, he is to get $10,000 to cover expenses for each board of directors meeting he attends.

-snip-

In the deposition, Sharon Bush's attorney, David Brown, put it directly:

"Now, you have absolutely no educational background in semiconductors, do you Mr. Bush?"
-snip-
--------------------------

I'd love to post more of this but you will have to click the link

[maddezmom]

1. huh

this line sums it up for me:

"Bush said 60 percent of the $23 million came from overseas -- much of it from the Middle East and Asia."

The BFEE is alive and well. :(

[SpiralHawk]

2. An extra-juicy snippet:

"Another theory is simpler...In some parts of the world it is assumed that members of the Royal Family have influence. And in those regions, anyone who has had both a father and a brother as presidents of the United States is a member of a Royal Family.

"Membership is good for business. (Neil) Bush, for example, ...

[Octafish]

6. BRFEE

Bush Royal Family Evil Empire



They're going to have to change all the
stationar-statirour-stashuna-business cards.

[glarius]

3. It is so unfair...When Clinton was in office, the populace was never

allowed to forget the exploits of his brother Roger...(Which, incidentally weren't all that serious), but Bush has his brother Neil (and isn't there another brother in the same boat?)embroiled in several shady and even illegal deals and I don't believe I have EVER heard this mentioned....No doubt most Americans believe the Bushes are all upstanding, lawful citizens.....I repeat...It's so unfair!

[0007]

5. Roger never had his hand in your pocket...junior's brother, Neil...

has been in each and everyone's pocket. Daddy pooper kept junior from being drafted and sent to Vietnam and daddy pooper kept Neil from being butt fucked in the big house.

[KharmaTrain]

27. Noelle Bush Makes Roger Look Like A Saint

BTW...any word on how the dear girl's rehab is going?

[burythehatchet]

4. Say hello to President Bush the fourth

Its too bad he has to wait for Jeb's turn

[Octafish]

7. "Silverado" Neil Bush has a history as a real Desperado...

The guy was a Director of Silverado savings and loan, a crooked S&L that sent multi-million dollar loans to friends and family that were never repaid. The bailout cost taxpayers more than $1 billion.


O, BROTHER! WHERE ART THOU?
Like Hugh Rodham, the Bush Bros. Have Capitalized on Family Ties

BY LOUIS DUBOSE
March 16, 2001:

Unless you've been reading the Houston Chronicle society page, it's unlikely you've seen any current news about Neil Bush. The third Bush sibling has been almost as invisible as his apolitical brother Marvin, a venture capitalist living in northern Virginia, and his sister Dorothy "Doro" Koch, the youngest of the five Bush siblings, who quietly raises funds for charities in a Maryland suburb near Washington. While Jeb was governor of Florida and George W. was twice elected governor of Texas, Neil was either part of the late Maxine Mesinger's "crème de la crème crowd" at a Houston social event, or a stale S&L footnote: "the director of Silverado Banking, Savings and Loan when it crashed in 1988 at a cost of $1 billion to taxpayers."

In 1990, Bush paid a $50,000 fine and was banned from banking activities for his role in taking down Silverado, which actually cost taxpayers $1.3 billion. A Resolution Trust Corporation Suit against Bush and other officers of Silverado was settled in 1991 for $26.5 million. And the fine wasn't exactly paid by Neil Bush. A Republican fundraiser set up a fund to help defer costs Neil incurred in his S&L dealings. Friends and relatives contributed -- but not then-President and Barbara Bush, which would have been unseemly. Since then, the Bush political combine has done such a remarkable job keeping Neil in the background that what seemed like a 10-year news blackout didn't end until mid-February, when the Austin Business Journal reported that Bush "quietly is heading a local start-up that's raising at least $10 million in second-round funding." According to the business newsweekly, Bush has already raised $7.1 million from 53 investors underwriting Ignite! Inc., an educational software company. After being banned from banking and all but airbrushed out of the family portrait -- or at least the family news profile -- Neil Bush is back.

Bush wasn't just an average S&L exec drawing a big salary and recklessly pushing a federally insured institution beyond its lending limits. As a director of a failing thrift in Denver, Bush voted to approve $100 million in what were ultimately bad loans to two of his business partners. And in voting for the loans, he failed to inform fellow board members at Silverado Savings & Loan that the loan applicants were his business partners. Federal banking regulators later followed the trail of defaulted loans to Neil Bush oil ventures, in particular JNB International, an oil and gas exploration company 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.

CONTINUED...

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2001-03-16/pols_feature3.html

[Bozita]

8. more stink on America's greatest crime family

Has any Bush ever worked a day in his/her life?

[SharonAnn]

18. Nope, they just "reallocate" your money into their pockets.

They do "financial engineering".

They don't actually do anything constructive. They don't actually build anything.

Even *'s deal with the baseball team involved setting up a "Sports Authority". He then got the Texas Legislature to give the "Sports Authority" the right of eminent domain so they could take over valuable land without having to pay a high price for it. Then they transferred the land to the baseball team so that when the "Authority" was sued and had to pay full market value, the "Authority" had no assets.

Just a bunch of thieves.

[slaveplanet]

24. It's called

Strategery

[mitchum]

9. kick for Fredo

[Octafish]

10. Kick for an organized crime family with three Fredos!

Poppy said Jebthro was the smart one.

[seemslikeadream]

11. Octafish, a reminder who owned Home Savings and Loan

Howard Ahmanson. Where Howie Jr. got all his money. Howie the Theonomic Reconstructionist, One God, One Vote. "My purpose is total integration of biblical law into our lives." Howie parlayed his fortune into the majority stock of a business called American Information Systems (AIS) started by two enterprising brothers,Todd and Bob Urosevich. AIS later merged with Business Records Corporation (BRC) and became Election Systems & Solutions (ES&S). ES&S is the number one provider of touch-screen voting machines. Their website claims that their products were used in collecting 56% of the national vote in the last presidental elections.
Todd Urosecich is now Vice President of ES&S. Strangely enough, brother Bob moved on to head the second largest computerized vote-counting business, Global Election Systems, recently purchased by ATM and security giant Diebold. In a round talbe swap of incestuous patronage the previous executives of Global moved on to head the third largest vote-counting company in the nation, Advanced Voting Systems. Combined, these three corporations will process nearly 80% of the next elections.

[SpiralHawk]

12. The tentacles of the Octopus are everywhere

“What used to be done on the high seas under the skull and crossbones is now done by accountants and lawyers and investment bankers with phony numbers and rigged partnerships. And that's a threat to ordinary Americans.”
- Kevin Phillips

[seemslikeadream]

13. "without tanks in the streets"

America's media leaders insist there was no coup because power was transferred "without tanks in the streets."

But of course, a classic coup is "not necessarily assisted by either the intervention of the masses or, to any significant degree, by military-type force." It's an inside job, carried out by factions within the elite.

In 1968, Luttwak penned "Coup d'Etat: A Pratcial Handbook," which could be the text of the 2000 Bush campaign, as John Dee reports in Lumpen magazine. Drawing on the extensive experience of the CIA in such pranks, Luttwak says that "a coup consists of the infiltration of a small but critical segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder." True coupsters "want to seize power within the present system", then use the existing lines of authority and habits of obedience inherent in legitimate government to advance their own illegitmate aims.

We know that Bush never reads any book that doesn't have pictures of goats in it, but it's clear that Dick Cheney had had a well-thumbed copy of Luttwak's handbook in his back poclet for years. The 2000 coup was carried out along Luttwakian lines by a small group of ideologues and elitists -- the latter drawn largely from the energy and defense industries -- seeking to advance their illegitimate aim of global domination by military force and control of the world's energy resources.

So yes there will be an "election" -- with conventions, debates, ads, voting, the whole schmeer. But as Josef Stalin once said: "Its not the votes that count, it's who counts the votes." And in 2004, most votes will be "counted" by paperless, unverifiable, eminemtly hackable computer systems, privately owned and secretly programmed by Bush supporters from the Religious Right and the military-intelligence complex.

http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2003/09/12/120.html

[donsu]

14. miami cops used tank-like vehicles during the protests

america's cops have been using the same training manuals/videos, etc. concerning protests and now they all dress alike and follow the same directions. they dress all in black with faces covered - like robots (like cowards)

this brings chills to anyone who was alive during WWII -visions of storm troopers/brown shirts.

we are doomed.

[DemBones DemBones]

32. So I wasn't the only one mumbling

"Bloodless coup, bloodless coup," at the talking heads?

[buycitgo]

31. holy mother of paper ballots!

is this new news?

makes me sicker than I thought I could be

Danny Casolaro must be REALLY pissed that he's dead.

does it ever stop?

frickin media is WORSE than BFEE, cause they NEVER EVER talk about it, even, in this case with the hilariously Clinton-like sex games.

"the pppppp-prostitue just appeared at my door, magic-like!"

"and I had NO idea she was even a prostitute!"

sort of like him not even knowing he was MARRIED when he was having that affair?

WHERE ARE THE FFFFFFFFFing MEDIA on this?????????????????????????

where are the unnamed DEM SOURCES, pushing this story????????????

[SpiralHawk]

15. Nightsurfers might well want to know

about all this. Kick.

[cosmicdot]

16. I reckon Neil has this Ignite! gig still going as well

http://www.ignitelearning.com/index.shtml


Neil Bush, a younger brother of US President George W. Bush (news - web sites), has a 400,000-dollar-a-year consulting contract with a Chinese computer chip manufacturing firm, The Los Angeles Times reported(AFP/File/Eddy Pado)

Financial investment for Grace Semiconductor is coming from off-shore favorite The Cayman Islands? What's up with that?

But this is not the end, since so far the output of China's IC can only supply 20% of the increasing demand, particularly the high-level. Even it is estimated that the demand for IC will grow from last year's 20 billion pieces to 33.5 billion pieces by the year 2003. Just in the last two months of 2000, another two large chip plants: Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., laid down the groundstone at the Pudong Zhangjiang Hi-tech Park in Shanghai. This zone is a special zone that the city envisions as its ground-zero for becoming one of the world's major "information ports." With investment of over USD1 billion each, both of the wholly foreign-owned projects were directly approved by the central government. In fact, both have Taiwan fingerprints, although the investments come from Cayman Islands. When SMIC's full plans is realized years from now, it would build itself into China's largest producer of cutting-edge integrated circuits to supply the computer and communications industries.
http://www.sinoptic.ch/shanghaiflash/2001/200101.htm

About VeriSilicon
Founded in 2001, VeriSilicon Holding is a Cayman Islands Company. It has a subsidiary in Santa Clara, USA( VeriSilicon, Inc.), as well as subsidiaries in Shanghai, China, and Taipei, Taiwan. Its mission is to become a leading ASIC Design Foundry, providing design services and turn-key services including design, manufacturing, packaging, testing, and delivery. To establish the infrastructure for ASIC design foundry, VeriSilicon offers Standard Design Platforms including standard cell libraries, I/O cell libraries, and memory compilers, optimized specifically for emerging semiconductor wafer foundries. Currently VeriSilicon provides the Standard Design Platforms for Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (GSMC), Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation of Shanghai (ASMC), and Shanghai Hua Hong NEC Electronics Co., Ltd. (HHNEC), covering 0.15 ¦Ìm, 0.18 ¦Ìm, 0.25 ¦Ìm, 0.35 ¦Ìm, and 0.6 ¦Ìm process technologies.
http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:2OpwunV_W4cJ:www.verisilicon.com/e-event5.htm+grace+semiconductor+manufacturing+and+cayman&hl=en&ie=UTF-8



What was the real reason Neil visited Saudia Arabia in January 2002? just a boondoggle to write off a vacation?

Win American hearts through sustained lobbying: Neil Bush

By Khalil Hanware & K.S. Ramkumar, Arab News Staff

http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=12207 (link broken; also, broken in Salon piece)

JEDDAH, 22 January, 2002— Neil Bush, brother of US President George Bush, said here yesterday that the distorted image of the Arab world could be removed through the sustained lobbying of US politicians.

"The US media campaign against the interests of Arabs and Muslims and the American public opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be influenced through a sustained lobbying and PR effort," Bush, chairman and chief executive officer of Ignite! Inc., said in his keynote address on the concluding day of the three-day Jeddah Economic Forum at Hilton Hotel here.



Neil Bush says Arab P.R. machine not as good as Israel's: In a controversial speech, the president's younger brother tells Saudi audience Arabs must play U.S. media game better.

By Jake Tapper

http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2002/01/24/neil_bush/index_np.html

Jan. 24, 2002 | Presidential brother Neil Bush, while giving a speech Monday in Saudi Arabia, condemned the American media for stereotyping the Arab world and urged Arab leaders to hire lobbyists and public relations representatives to combat these negative images as well as to sway public opinion to a more sympathetic view of Arabs in the Arab-Israeli conflict, according to reports in foreign media outlets. Bush implied that Israel has done a better job of getting its message across in the American media.

"The U.S. media campaign against the interests of Arabs and Muslims, and the American public opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, could be influenced through a sustained lobbying and P.R. effort," said the younger Bush, according to the Arab News, Saudi Arabia's first English-language daily. "Public opinion shapes public policy dramatically. It's true in the U.S., in this part of the world and elsewhere."

[11 Bravo]

17. Based on recently breaking news...

shouldn't this thread be entitled "The bush on Neil's skinny"?

[fairfaxvadem]

19. hahahaha! But for pete's sakes, what gives with the BFEE

I mean, Eric Alterman was giving democrats.com grief for not giving the Hitler/Bush story a rest, but isn't it all of a piece? I mean, isn't that connection just the beginning of how that family decided to operate on a global scale?? I think it is perfectly relevant and not "old news", they just have to connect the dots....

[Octafish]

22. Meet the Men Who Rule the World.

Meet the Men Who Rule the WorId

by Alexander Cockburn

The Nation magazine, July 2, 2001

Where's the fashionable rendezvous for the World Secret Government? In the good old days when the Illuminati had a firm grip on things, it was wherever the Bilderbergers decided to pitch their tents. Then Nelson and David Rockefeller horned their way in, and the spotlight moved to the Trilateral Commission. Was there one Secret Government or two? Some said all the big decisions were taken in England, at Ditchley, not so far from the Appeasers' former haunts at Cliveden and only an hour by Learjet from Davos, which is where jumped-up finance ministers and arriviste tycoons merely pretend they rule the world.

Secret World Rulers spend a good deal of time in the air, whisking from Davos to APEC meetings somewhere in Asia, to Ditchley, to Sun Valley, Idaho, though mercifully no longer to the Clinton-favored Renaissance Weekend in Hilton Head, South Carolina. But comes next July 14 and every self-respecting member of the Secret World Government will be in a gloomy grove of redwoods in northern California, preparing to Banish Care for the hundred and twenty-second time, prelude to three weeks hashing out the future of the world.

If the avenging posses mustered by the Bohemian Grove Action Network manage this year to burst through the security gates at the Bohemian Grove, they will (to extrapolate from numerous eyewitness accounts of past sessions) find proofs most convincing to them that here indeed is the ruling crowd in executive session: hundreds of near-dead white men sitting by a lake listening to Henry Kissinger, plus many other near-dead white men in adjacent landscape in a state of intoxication so advanced that many of them have fallen insensible among the ferns, gin fizz glasses gripped firmly till the last.

These same gaping posses would find evidence of bizarre rites, though not perhaps the Satanic sacrifice of children, as proposed in one new documentary. Why so many games of dominoes? Why the evidence that a significant portion of the Secret Government appeared to be involved in some theatrical production involving the use of women's clothes and lavish application of makeup?

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ruling_Elites/MenWhoRuleWorld.html

[seemslikeadream]

23. Octafish - can you tell me anything about W.R. Grace's

J Peter Grace? I hear he's in with the Nazis and is the chair of the Knights of Malta in the U.S.

[Octafish]

26. Wow. Didn't know how effective he became after Dallas...

From Third World Traveler:

U.S. Capitalism and The Multinationals

excerpted from the book

Cry of the People

The struggle for human rights in Latin America
and the Catholic Church in conflict with US policy

by Penny Lernoux

Penguin Books, 1980, paper

EXCERPT...

President Kennedy chose Peter Grace, the archconservative chairman of W. R. Grace, to head a group of businessmen from twenty-five major corporations who were to evaluate the Alliance and recommend useful projects. They did their job so well that by 1964 David Rockefeller detected a "marked change in the attitude of those responsible for the Alliance" and could praise the State Department for recognizing that the Alliance "had had too much emphasis on social reform." AID orders accounted for one third of all U.S. steel exports by 1969; the following year, AID-financed fertilizer exports ran to just under $100 million. According to AID officials, some $2 billion per year in U.S. exports were financed by the foreign aid program.

U.S. aid buttressed corporate interests in America in a host of ways. It was a marvelous stick to hold over recalcitrant governments. Bolivia, for instance, was gradually forced to abandon the reforms begun by its 1952 revolution as the country fell increasingly into debt to the United States. By 1967 AID could boast that "the adoption of reforms . . . in the nationalized tin mines, a revised mining code favorable to private investments . . . and a new investment code and a revised and more equitable royalties schedule designed to encourage private investment is largely attributable to AID assistance." AID could also take credit for undermining Bolivia's attempts to become self-sufficient in wheat and quinoa, a hardy grain grown since pre-Columbian times in the high Andes. Under the P.L. 480 (Food for Peace) program, which was a convenient way to dump surplus U.S. commodities on the world market, Bolivian wheat and quinoa were gradually replaced by cheaper U.S. flour. Of course, when the market for U.S. wheat improved, there were no more handouts, and wheat and flour now represent 43 percent of Bolivia's agricultural imports. That is exactly what the proponents of P.L. 480 had in mind. Said Senator Hubert Humphry, one of its most enthusiastic supporters:

I have heard . . . that people may become dependent on us for food. I know that was not supposed to be good news. To me that was good news, because before people can do anything they have got to eat. And if you am looking for a way to get people to lean on you and to be dependent on you, in terms of their co-operation with you, it seems to me that food dependence would be terrific.

p210
None of the high-sounding goals of the Alliance for Progress were achieved, including income redistribution or tax reform- and not just because the local elites opposed such reforms. Had the tax loopholes been closed and the labor force been given a greater share of national wealth, foreign companies could not possibly have developed lucrative new markets in Latin America. During the Alliance years, according to U. S. Department of Commerce statistics, three dollars went back to the United States for every dollar invested. Foreign subsidiaries compensated for the smallness of the consumer market-in Brazil, for example, it was only a fourth of the 110 million population-with enormous markups that gave these companies twice the margin of profit they earned in the United States. When the Alliance was finally buried at the end of the 1960s, about the only thing the Latin-American countries had to show for it was an enormous foreign debt-$19.3 billion, compared to $8.8 billion in 1961, when the program was launched.

Not only did the Latin-American people fail to benefit from the generosity of the U.S. taxpayer; AID-and CIA-money was also used to help destroy one of the few established outlets of popular opinion, the free trade unions. Not content with funneling Alliance funds into corporate industry, Peter Grace promoted the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), a Trojan horse for the multinationals sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Created in 1962 with the financial support of AID, the State Department, W. R. Grace, IIT, Exxon, Shell, Kennecott, Anaconda, American Smelting and Refining, IBM, Koppers, Gillette, and 85 other large corporations with interests in Latin America, the AIFLD was organized, ostensibly, to combat the threat of Castroite influence in Latin-American labor unions; in reality it was a way for U.S. companies, working in cahoots with repressive governments, to replace independent unions with company ones. Explained Peter Grace, AIFLD's board chairman, the Institute "teaches workers to increase their company's business."

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Latin_America/US_Capitalism_COTP.html

[seemslikeadream]

28. He's in the PaperClip Club!

Oh, silly me I thought W.R. Grace was all about being the biggest polluter on the face of the earth. Now I see its much much more than that. And my suspicions about a connection between Grace and 9/11 grow stronger.

William Russell Grace founded W.R. Grace in Peru in 1854.The long history of W R Grace & Co. chronicles its global expansion and penetration of Latin America, in which region the Knights of Malta would later rebuild the Nazi network to conduct fascist operations.

CFR member J. Peter Grace's collusion with Rockefeller exploitation of Latin America was documented in 'Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockerfeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil.'
http://watch.pair.com/jbs-cnp.html

Frederick Flick, the single greatest power behind the nazi military muscle. He was close to W.R. Grace Company and invested over $400,000 in partnership with J.Peter Grace in the US. During the war Grace was accused in a military report of protecting a certain nazi Colonel Brite in Bolivia.In 1951, when the CIA smuggled Barbie out of Germany, he was sent to join the same Colonel Brite. George de Mohrenschidt befriended Lee and Marina Oswald) was a close associate of the company's founder, William Grace.
http://www.maebrussell.com/Mae%20Brussell%20Articles/Nazi%20Connection%20to20JFK%20Assass.html

[Octafish]

29. Seems the NAZIs (and their BFEE Division) won the war.

The company they keep

By nessie

EXCERPT...

If one overlooks its narrow threshold to LD50 range, its price, and its addictive properties, heroin does indeed make a dandy cough remedy. It is the only known cure for the common cold. In the long run, though, you're better off with the cold. Cocaine is totally useless.

"In October 1978 the Marshall Foundation was utilized as a platform for Dr. Herman J. Abs, now honorary president of Deutsche Bank A.G. as he addressed a meeting of businessmen and Bankers and members of the Foreign Policy Association in New York City on the 'Problems and Prospects of American-German Economic Co-operation.' This luncheon was chaired by his old friend, John J. McCloy, Wall Street banker and lawyer, who had worked closely with Dr. Abs when McCloy served as U.S. High Commissioner for Germany during those postwar reconstruction years. At that time, Hermann Abs, as chief executive of Deutsche Bank was also directing the spending of America's Marshall Plan money in West Germany as the chairman of the Reconstruction Loan Corporation of the Federal Republic of Germany."

– Manning, p 261

This is the same McCloy who designed the Pentagon building and served on the Warren Commission. While Undersecretary of War, he had forbidden bombing of the rail lines to Auschwitz on the grounds that it might provoke retaliation against the Jews. One cannot but wonder what he had in mind.

Auschwitz was intended, first and foremost, to be a synthetic rubber and synthetic fuel factory complex. The more well-known dead Jews were to be merely a byproduct. Abs had arranged the financing of its construction. In charge of synthetic rubber production was Otto Ambros, who also developed the root technology on which magnetic data storage is based. He was convicted of 25,000 counts of slavery and mass murder, and was sentenced to eight years in prison. After three and a half years, McCloy freed him. The head of the W.R. Grace & Co., J. Peter Grace (a Knight of Malta) hired Ambros as a research chemist and petitioned Congress to allow his emigration to the United States. This is the same J. Peter Grace who President Reagan appointed to head the so-called "Grace Commission" to make the United States government more "efficient."

"Grace: 'I admire Ambros's integrity.'" ]/i]

– Esquire, 12/19/78

CONTINUED...

http://www.sfbg.com/nessie/company.html

[slaveplanet]

25. And whom else of recent interest is a Grover?

Der Gropinator

[Octafish]

30. Ja! Vot ahr yoo asskink dat qvestyin foor?

Enron's Ken Lay is a good bet for his nominating sponsor in the Club. Probably seemed a good investment at the time. — Octafish

Enron E-mails Confirm Schwarzenegger-Ken Lay Meeting

Enron E-Mails Show Arnold Met With Ken Lay During Energy Crisis

Santa Monica, CA -- Internal Enron e-mails confirm that Arnold Schwarzenegger was among a small group of executives who met with Lay at the posh Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel in May of 2001, in the midst of California's energy crisis. View the e-mails. The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, which obtained the e-mails, is calling on Schwarzenegger to acknowledge the meetings and disclose the information that was presented and discussed. The meeting with Enron occurred ten days after rolling blackouts darkened California for two consecutive days; Schwarzenegger has previously said that he does not remember such a meeting.

"You don't meet with America's most well-known corporate crook in the middle of California's biggest financial disaster and not remember," said FTCR's senior consumer advocate Douglas Heller. "Mr. Schwarzenegger should come clean about what happened at that meeting and if he shares Ken Lay's views on energy regulation."

The documents provide a list of invitees to the hastily arranged meeting and a list of those who actually attended. Only eleven of the 45 invitees attended, including Schwarzenegger. The meeting was meant to be an opportunity to gain business community support for Enron's "comprehensive solution" to the energy crisis. In one e-mail, Enron's VP of Public Relations wrote: "We'd like to position this meeting as an insider's conversation of what's going on with the energy situation. This meeting should be for principals only." (emphasis in original)

FTCR contends that Enron policies were responsible for the severe energy crisis California faced in 2000 and 2001. The group noted that the crisis had dramatic implications on the state economy and state budget and will continue to impact consumers for years to come. FTCR has called for a repeal of the deregulation and supported SB 888 (Dunn) to re-regulate the state's electricity system. FTCR has been critical of Enron's involvement in the California energy crisis, in which the company developed schemes for manipulating the power market that forced massive price spikes in the state.

CONTINUED...

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/utilities/pr/pr003708.php3

[seemslikeadream]

21. a kick for

The bush on Neil's skinny.

And I'd really like to know more about Grace Semi-conductor Manufacturing, company founded in Nov 2000. Total investment 7.5 billion, total foreign capitol, off shore. What ever happened to W R Grace Mining, they filled bankruptcy to get out of all those asbestos claims, I wonder where all their money went but it's probably all a coincidence

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

20. Shades Of Uncle Prescott Bush?

Check out this USA Today article describing the long history of the Bush family in China. It mentions several shady deals of George Bush's uncle Prescott. It seems that while George H.W. Bush (no. 41) was President and right after Tiananmen Square, his brother Prescott brokered a deal between the Chinese government and Hughes Aircraft for the sale of $300 million worth of restricted satellite technology. This was while Prescott was on the payroll of Asset Management Corporation. He purportedly received a $250,000 payoff for his work. At the time, the technology had been tightly restricted by the U.S. Congress. President Bush, however, specially lifted those restrictions due to "national interest" considerations.

When asked about these events, George Bush simply replied that it was ancient history and refused further comment.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2002/02/19/usat-prescott-bush.htm

[RBHam]

33. Where's the "sensationalist" media on this?

Funny, ain't it? This story has everything : a messy celebrity divorce, sex, lies, innuendo...!!!

Hey Larry King, you decrepit old sleazebag! I want to know what the F^%$ Jeffrey Toobin and Nancy Grace have to say about THIS wild and wooly legal case!!! What? No freaking opinion!!! What? Another hour on Scott Peterson and Michael Jackson???

What a freaking joke...

Left wing media my ass.