Thank you!! I have to go to the eye doctor today, won't be home until the afternoon. I found the Bass/Rainwater connection to GTech and decided to put this together for now.
I’m not saying Harriet Miers has taken a penny from GTECH, Guy Snowden or anybody else. Let me make that clear. But she, and the whole cabal from Texas, absolutely reek from the GTech Lottery flow of money.
Ms. Miers’ time on the Texas Lottery Commission has been well reported, usually with Ms. Miers as the driving force who rooted out corruption and helped the Texas Lottery turn over a new leaf. “In other circles, the Texas Lottery Commission is known as the incident that permanently sealed Bush’s Texas Air National Guard records. As I earlier reported, “Miers was also Chairwoman of the Texas Lottery Commission and responsible for a chain of events involving GTech, which ran the Texas Lottery, former Lt. Governor Ben Barnes, and accusations of kick-backs and illegal contracts. Yes, that Ben Barnes, who says he helped George Bush get into the National Guard. His original deposition on that subject was given in 1999, during this Texas Lottery Commission investigation, and has been permanently sealed.”
Littwin has claimed that GTECH paid Ben Barnes for his silence as the basis for his wrongful dismissal lawsuit against the Commission. But “control of the Texas Lottery Commission” as stated in the lawsuit seems to me to hit the mark more closely, “interference by GTECH with Mr. Littwin's employment relationship with the Texas Lottery Commission which caused him to be removed as the Executive Director; alleged conspiracy with unspecified third parties to maintain control of the Texas Lottery Commission and the Texas lottery; and various alleged civil violations by GTECH of the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization Act (18 Sections 1961(4) and 1962(b), (c) and (d)) ('RICO').”
GTech was founded in 1981 and backed by the Texas Bass brothers and none other than Richard Rainwater. I think one could literally start writing now and not stop for twenty years and still not touch on everything the Bass Brothers and Richard Rainwater have been involved in. In fact, Rainwater was the Bass Brothers money manager for many years and had put up the money to buy out Bush’s Spectrum 7 oil and for Harken Energy to drill in Bahrain. And, of course, Richard Rainwater also stepped up to the plate, literally, and put up a good portion of the $86 million to purchase the Texas Rangers. Bush bought in by borrowing $500,000 from a bank he had once directed, and a millionaire was born.
By 1995, allegations of GTECH’s underhanded practices were beginning to surface. In 1993, Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Records, accused Guy Snowden of GTech of bribery. He later sued Snowden for libel, a case which he won in 1998. In 1994 GTech's national sales manager resigned amid charges that he received kickbacks, although the charges against Ben Barnes in that matter were subsequently dropped. In addition, GTech is part owner of the Retama race track in San Antonio, race track owners having contributed some $3.1 million to Texas politicians, along with the $4.1 million of slot money. This is the same Retama race track where instant game tickets went missing in 1996, followed by :more than 180 files regarding bingo and lottery security investigations.” And the same Retama race track that is also partially owned by Red McCombs, former Vikings owner and Bush Ranger.
It is amid this bedlam that Harriet Miers came to chair the Texas Lottery Commission in 1995. She was joined by John L. Hill, appointed by Bush in 1997. Perhaps these two are the kinds of Democrats Bush always claimed to have unity with, Democrats who campaign for and donate to Republicans. In any event, this former Texas Attorney General, Secretary of State and Supreme Court Justice went to serve on the Texas Lottery Commission. Two years later, in December 1998, he resigned to avoid any appearance of impropriety when his law firm and Harriet’s law firm merged to become Locke, Liddell & Sapp.
In the meantime, for all the talk of cleaning up the Texas Lottery and rebidding the GTech contract, the new Lottery director, Linda Cloud, signed a contract with GTech in 1998. She said, “the commission may change its bid requirements and try again to find a new operator or may try to renegotiate Gtech's current contract, which expires in 2002.” If you’re wondering, no, that didn’t happen. Gtech has the Texas Lottery contract today.
In fact, GTech runs “all five of the country's biggest state lottery systems - New York, Texas, Georgia, California and Florida. Altogether, GTech will operate 26 of the 36 state lottery systems, plus the Washington, D.C., system.” The campaign contributions have flowed with $30,000 given to Republicans in Florida during Jeb Bush’s campaign and a recent $50,000 to the Democratic Governor’s Association. Its shady dealings don’t appear to be history either, as “the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission opened a formal investigation after Brazilian prosecutors recommended bribery charges against two GTECH employees -- one of whom is still with the company.”
So now the Supreme Court of the United States is going to be seated with someone who chose not to bring down one of the sleaziest outfits ever to be set loose to prey upon the American people. Sadly, too many politicians have been sullied by GTech money as well. But a Supreme Court Justice, above all others, should have a proven record of being above the influence political money buys. Harriet Miers had 5 years on the Texas Lottery Commission to prove that her character was, indeed, above such influence. She clearly failed.
http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/default.asp?view=plink&id=1397
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