The LNS is not posting this article because it reveals
some dirt on the Bush family. We do not care about
Neil Bush's family life or his sex life. We really
don't care. The LNS is posting this story -- because
it reveals the utter hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of
the "US mainstream news media." Why? Well, this story
has received widespread coverage in the news media
outside the US. But here in US, no one in the
"mainstream" has touched this story. And if it were
Roger Clinton or Billy Carter you would have heard
every sordid detail, night after night, on SeeNotNews,
AnythingButSee, SeeBS, NotBeSeen and Faux..."It's the
Media, Stupid."
The Age: "Mr Bush," said lawyer Marshall Davis Brown, "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."
Break the Bush Cabal's Stranglehold on the US News
Media, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush
(again!)
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/08/1073437410662.html
Oh, brother!
January 9, 2004
Ah, it's nice to be Neil Bush. When you’re Neil Bush,
rich people are eager to invest in your businesses,
even though your businesses have a history of crashing
in spectacular fashion.
When you're Neil Bush, you'll be sitting in a hotel
room in Thailand or Hong Kong, minding your own
business, when suddenly there's a knock at the door.
You answer it and a comely woman strolls in and has
sex with you. Life sure is fun when you’re Neil Bush,
son of one president, brother of another.
Just how much fun was revealed in a deposition taken
last March, during Bush’s nasty divorce. Asked by his
wife’s lawyer whether he’d had any extramarital
affairs, Bush told the story of his Asian hotel room
escapades.
"Mr Bush," said lawyer Marshall Davis Brown, "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."
"It was very unusual," Bush replied. Actually, it
wasn't that unusual. It happened at least three or
four times during Bush's business trips to Asia, he
said. "Were they prostitutes?" asked Brown. "I don’t —
I don't know," Bush replied.
"Did you pay them?" "No." Unsurprisingly, the
revelation made headlines worldwide. Equally
unsurprisingly, the sex story overshadowed the curious
financial revelations that came out in the same
deposition.
In 2002, for instance, Bush signed a consulting
contract with Grace Semiconductor — a Shanghai
company. He is to be paid $US2 million ($A2.6 million)
in company stock over five years, plus $US10,000 for
every board meeting he attends.
"Now, you have absolutely no educational background in
semiconductors, do you, Mr Bush?" Brown asked.
"That's correct," Bush responded. Ah, it's nice to be
Neil Bush. Bush is the latest manifestation of an
American tradition: the president's embarrassing
relative.
There was Sam Houston Johnson, who used to get drunk
and blab to the press until his brother, Lyndon,
sicced the Secret Service on him. And Donald Nixon,
who dreamed of founding a fast-food chain called
Nixonburgers and who accepted, but never repaid, a
$US200,000 loan from billionaire Howard Hughes.
And Billy Carter, who drank prodigious quantities of
beer, wrote a book called Redneck Power and took
$US200,000 from the government of Libya. And Roger
Clinton, who spent a year in prison for cocaine
dealing. But Neil Bush has surpassed them all: He has
become the embarrassing relative of two presidents.
In the late ’80s and early ’90s, Bush embarrassed his
father, George Bush snr, with his dealings as board
member of the infamous Silverado Savings and Loan,
whose collapse cost American taxpayers $US1 billion.
Now Bush has embarrassed his brother George with a
divorce that featured paternity rumours, a defamation
suit and even allegations of voodoo.
Born in 1955 as third of the five Bush children, Neil
has a degree in international economics and an MBA. In
1979, while working on his father's unsuccessful
campaign for the 1980 Republican presidential
nomination, Neil met Sharon Smith. They married and
moved to Denver, where Bush got a $US30,000 job
negotiating mineral leases for Amoco.
In 1982, Neil and two co-workers quit and formed an
oil exploration company, JNB Exploration. Bush was in
charge of raising money. "Neil knew people because of
his name," one partner, Evans Nash, said later.
Among those Bush knew were two real estate barons,
Bill Walters and Ken Good. Walters invested $US150,000
and set up a $US1.75 million line of credit for JNB at
a bank he owned. Good invested $US10,000 and pledged
loans worth $US1.5 million. Good also lent Bush
$US100,000 to gamble in the commodities market and
said Neil didn't have to repay it unless he made
money.
Bush paid himself $US66,000 a year. In five years JNB
drilled 26 wells but found not a drop of exploitable
oil. It would have gone bankrupt if not for Walters
and Good.
But Bush was able to help the men who helped him. In
1985 he joined the board of Silverado Savings and
Loan. Over the next three years, Silverado lent
another $US106 million to Walters and $US35 million to
Good.
Good used some of that money to buy JNB, raising
Bush's salary and awarding him a $US22,000 bonus. He
also hired Bush as a director of one of his companies,
at a $US100,000 salary. Neither Good nor Walters ever
repaid their loans. In 1988 Silverado went belly up.
Regulators from the federal Office of Thrift
Supervision concluded in 1991 that Bush's deals with
Good and Walters constituted "multiple conflicts of
interest". Bush became a public symbol of the $US500
billion savings and loan scandal. Bush then started
Apex Energy, a methane gas exploration company. He
invested $US3000 himself and got $US2.3 million from
companies run by his father's friend Louis Marx, heir
to the Marx toy fortune.
Neil paid himself a salary of $US160,000 and sold a
Wyoming gas lease he owned to Apex. The lease proved
worthless. Apex went broke after two years.
An investigation by the House Small Business Committee
found nothing illegal or improper but noted that a
$US2 million federally guaranteed investment to an
applicant who risked only $US3000 of his own money
seemed like "a very high leveraging of funds".
For several years, Bush's main business interest has
been Ignite!, a software company he cofounded in 1999.
To fund it, Bush has raised $US23 million. Last year,
Ignite! entered into a partnership with a Mexican
company. The partnership enabled Ignite! to lay off
half of its 70 employees and outsource their jobs to
Mexico.
"That's turned out to be great," says Ignite!
president Ken Leonard.
"He's incorrigible," says historian Kevin Phillips,
author of the forthcoming book American Dynasty:
Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the
House of Bush. "He seems to be crawling through the
underbelly of crony capitalism."
Bush vehemently denies that. "I have never used my
family name to 'cash-in'," he wrote by email.
"Unfortunately, such ridiculous charges come with the
territory of coming from a famous and public family."
The territory of divorce can be troublesome, too. In
2002, Bush told Sharon that he wanted to separate. He
took up with Maria Andrews, who was an aide to his
mother. The divorce was a candidate for the Nasty
Break-up Hall of Fame. Among claims aired was that
Sharon had yanked hair out of Bush’s head to make a
voodoo doll and put a curse on him.
These days Bush divides his time between Texas — home
of his children and Ignite! — and Paris, where Maria
lives.
Somehow, even after all his travails, it's still nice
to be Neil Bush.
This story was found at:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/08/1073437410662.html