O, Brother! Where Art Thou?..(Bush brothers )

[SoCalDem]

This is old, but since everything old is new again with this crew.. Enjoy.. Be sure to read the whole thing.. The Austin Chronicle archives are RICH with this stuff :)

HOME: VOL.20 NO.29: POLITICS: O, BROTHER! WHERE ART THOU?

Like Hugh Rodham, the Bush Bros. Have Capitalized on Family Ties
O, Brother! Where Art Thou?
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.

...snip... read the whole thing.. It gets "better and better"

you will not be disappointed :)

[9215]

1. Strange thing happened to me.

I got an e-mail about a year ago with Silverado as an investment opportunity. They are back in business. (slvo.ob)

[SpiralHawk]

2. A view of the Oily Bush Bros from Free Repubic

Hey, this is from Free Republic of all places:
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1030808/posts

"On the other hand, Neil Bush, 48, would seem to be a bona fide turkey, served up trussed and roasted by his ex-wife's divorce lawyers. "Mr Bush admitted that he had sex with several women during trips to Thailand and Hong Kong," reported The Times. "The women, he said, simply knocked on the door of his hotel room, entered and had sex with him. He said that he did not know if they were prostitutes because they never asked for money and he did not pay them."

(snip)

Mr Bush's answers were even less convincing when he was asked why a semiconductor business would give him a $2 million contract when he knew even less about semiconductors than about why Thai chicks were lining up outside his bedroom door. But the business was controlled by the son of the then Chinese President. In other words, Neil Bush is doing a pretty good impression of the Left's caricature of George W: a dimwit son of privilege riding his father's contacts to some sweetheart business deals.

"While I am loath to categorise any man as a "moron", Neil's behaviour four months after September 11 certainly gets him through the preliminary qualifying round: he accepted an invitation to go to Jeddah and speak at an "economic forum" organised by Prince Talal ibn Abdul Aziz, who got his money's worth.

"The President's brother laid the blame for tensions in Saudi/American relations squarely at the door of the "US media campaign against the interests of Arabs and Muslims". Like Noam Chomsky and Co, he thought "the root causes of terror" were poverty and the plight of the Palestinians. And, he added, while "in the US for years we believed in Israel's right to exist", public opinion could be changed by a "sustained lobbying and PR effort", which the Saudis promptly launched. If I were President, I'd have had the Feds meet Neil's return flight and cart him off to Guantanamo, where he could study the "root causes" at close quarters."