Did The Bush Family Murder Michael Wise Last Week?

Dead Republican predator

You may not remember who Michael Wise even is was. Many of us lost track of Neil Bush's former Silverado crony while he was serving three and a half years in prison for looting the shady Aspen-based mortgage company after he got away with the 1988 Silverado Savings and Loan scandal. Officially, Wise committed suicide on April 8 by jumping off the ninth floor of a parking garage at Tampa International Airport. Another in a long, long, long list of coincidences in the life of George H.W. Bush? Possibly. I have to admit I'm more than a little weirded out being in the middle of reading Russ Baker's new book, Family of Secrets, which makes a strong case that Poppy was, in short, the Vladamir Putin of America, an intelligence operative who took over the government by hook and crook. That he had some kind of involvement with the assassination of John F. Kennedy looks like a sure bet. Did he have Wise killed? It wouldn't surprise me.

Before Wise went to prison for the Cornerstone Private Capital heist, there was a great deal of unwanted publicity for the Bush family because of Neil Bush's involvement in the Silverado scandal-- which cost taxpayers $1.3 billion. Bush was found to have engaged in numerous "breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest" and forced to pay a $50,000 fine plus an undisclosed portion of a $26.5 million out of court settlement, but was never indicted, let alone imprisoned. Wise was soon bilking investors again. An early and mini-version of Bernie Madoff, Wise had been banned from banking for life but found his next predatory niche in the unregulated world-- thanks, as usual, GOP-- of real estate finance, i.e., mortgages. (By the way, Wise wasn't just an early Madoff, he was also a model for crooked banksters who feel it's fair game to take huge bonuses, 9 million in his case, out of collapsing businesses.)

Supposedly there were "witnesses" to the suicide. Funny how the Bushes work; there are always witnesses for them. There was no suicide note. But there are plenty of trails to follow-- if anyone was interested to see where they led (unlike the Warren Commission, which steered clear of all trails but the pre-determined one). Time Magazine spent more time investigating Wise's relationship to the Bushes than the feds did.

Was Neil Bush a guileless victim of Denver's hard-charging financial sharpies or a willing accomplice? In the view of government regulators, Bush and 10 other former directors and officers of Denver's failed Silverado Banking, Savings and Loan are guilty of "gross negligence" and should pay $200 million in restitution for contributing to the S&L's collapse. As the President's outgoing, personable third son faces a separate disciplinary hearing this week in a Denver courthouse, federal investigators will accuse him of violating conflict-of-interest regulations while serving as a $12,000- a-year Silverado director. The 35-year-old oilman was widely perceived as a mere pawn of manipulators bent on cultivating political protection from federal regulators. Yet that sympathetic view now seems to fall far short of the full story.

A different portrait of the likable young Bush emerges from Time interviews with former Silverado executives and real estate developers with whom the S&L had cozy and possibly illegal dealings. Citing Bush's M.B.A. from Tulane University, Denver insiders contend that he had to be aware of his own vulnerability to the go-go bankers and developers with whom he dealt. More significantly, they insist that Bush did not fall innocently into the clutches of the shrewd operators. Bush, they say, was as enthusiastic as Denver's highflyers in arranging their financing of his upstart JNB oil company, which he had the bad timing to start just after the petroboom had peaked.

The crafty moneymen not only bought stock in Bush's company and gave him a $100,000 loan he did not have to repay but also consented to lavish compensation that Bush awarded himself from his failing company. According to thrift and real estate sources, Bush drew a salary of $120,000 a year, earned undisclosed bonuses and had a comfortable expense account.

In the lawsuit filed last week, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is trying to recoup some of the $1 billion that the government spent to bail out the failed Silverado. "Our conclusion is that Silverado was the victim of sophisticated schemes and abuses by insiders and of gross negligence by its directors and outside professionals," said Douglas Jones, the FDIC's senior deputy general counsel. In the Denver hearing this week, the Office of Thrift Supervision aims to persuade an administrative-law judge that Bush should be banned in effect from ever again serving on the board of a financial institution. Bush contends he is innocent of the charges, in which he is accused of failing to disclose his business relationships with developers who sought loans from Silverado.

The Silverado disaster might be dismissed as ancient history, except for the fact that if we don't learn from history-- in this case "a tale of interlocking relationships and sweet deals among S&Ls and their biggest customers, the possible impact of political contributions in delaying crackdowns by regulators"-- we are doomed to repeat it. As we are now-- only much worse. Wise poured millions of dollars-- his own and his industry's PAC's-- into the careers of the politicians who offered him protection and the kind of environment condusive to the predatory nature of his business. Hiring Bush's son was part of that racket. As Time wrote in a feature two months before the one quoted above...

The collapse of Denver's Silverado Banking has exposed much more than just the questionable business relationships of President Bush's son Neil. The fall of Colorado's No. 3 savings and loan has put the spotlight on a group of go-go bankers and developers who, with access to Silverado's money, built political influence in Colorado and even Washington.

Congressional investigators are just beginning to probe the way in which Silverado was entwined in dubious deals with M.D.C. Holdings, the state's largest home builder. Former employees of Silverado and M.D.C. have told Time that the home builder made improper campaign contributions to
local and national politicians. Among those donations were payments made to the 1987 re-election campaign of Denver Mayor Frederico Pena in the hope of ensuring that key portions of a hugh new $ 2.9 billion airport, then still on the drawing board, would be located on land owned by Silverado and M.D.C.

Most Denver residents welcome the 52-sq-mi. project, not only to ease air-traffic congestion but also to provide an economic stimulant to a city that has been nearly paralyzed since the oil bust of the mid- 1980s. When Pena first ran for office in 1983, he opposed the new airport, advocating instead an expansion of Denver's Stapleton International Airport. But after he was elected, Pena became a supporter of the popular project.

Throughout 1984, as Denver secretly negotiated with neighboring Adams County for a new site, M.D.C. and Silverado quietly began buying up farmland that would eventually be selected as part of the development corridor leading to the airport. "Despite all the millions of profits they were showing
on paper, M.D.C. and Silverado had been running on empty for a long time, and they looked at potential profits from the new airport as a savior," says a former key employee of M.D.C.'s housing arm. (Richmond Homes/Richmond American) The new owners of the potentially valuable land were members of an emerging power elite in Denver, who proceeded to orchestrate formidable civic support for the airport project.

The main boosters: developer Bill Walters, a colleague of Neil Bush's and then president of the Denver Chamber of Commerce; Michael Wise, then chairman of Silverado: and Larry Mizel, chairman of M.D.C.
Mizel met with Pena in 1986 to urge an accelerated time-table for the airport construction. Pena, citing a study forecasting the creation of 20,000 new jobs, announced a plan to move up the airport's opening date more than a year, to 1992. When Pena entered a tight race for re-election in 1987, M.D.C. was a principal backer.

Public records show that M.D.C. and its executives contributed $ 34,000 to his campaign. In fact, the company funneled additional thousands to Pena through back channels. To disguise the extent of its political influence, former employees say, M.D.C. coerced many of its building subcontractors into making contributions to Pena and then allowed them to recoup the money by submitting phony bills for construction work. Asked about these contributions, a Pena spokesman said, "We have absolutely no
knowledge of this."

Local contractors went along with the arrangement because M.D.C., relying heavily on junk bonds and a series of loans from Silverado, was one of the last big developers to continue building projects in Denver after the oil boom collapsed. "There was little work in Denver, and M.D.C. said we would be blackballed if we didn't go along," a contractor participant says. According to a major building contractor, the contribution scheme was not limited to local politics. The contractor told Time that M.D.C. directed their company to contribute thousands of dollars to Senators, to the Republican National Committee and to a 1986 senatorial fund raiser at which Mizel was the host and President Reagan was a guest. Asked about these illegal contributions, M.D.C. said it "recently became aware of assertions that some of its employees were involved in using corporate funds to reimburse subcontractors for political contributions." The company said it was investigating the allegations.

M.D.C.'s Mizel and Silverado's Wise were major, aboveboard fund raisers for Bush and Reagan, and were hosts for dinners that netted as much as $1 million for the candidates. Congressional investigators aim to find out whether, the hefty fund raising by the Denver executives influenced federal regulators to postpone the seizure of Silverado for almost two years.

In the end, time ran out for the bug-clout club formed by Denver's go-go boys. They failed to benefit from the airport's progress because the Federal Government finally seized Silverado six months before Denver voters gave final approval for the giant project.

Time's running out for our democracy thanks to predators like Michael Wise-- the later day ones you've been reading about here at DWT everyday-- and, of course, the equally vile politicians who make it possible for them to rob the rest of us. This afternoon, I spent some time on the phone calling my congresswoman, a reliable progressive named Diane Watson. She didn't come to the phone but an assistant promised he'd give her my message. And that message goes to the root of everything that is wrong with the American system and everything we should have learbned from the cautionary tale of Michael Wise and the Bush Family: big money dominating politics. I asked Congresswoman Watson to co-sponsor the Fair Elections Now Act, the way the best congressmembers (like Donna Edwards, Alan Grayson, Jared Polis, Steve Cohen and Jerrold Nadler) already have. Here's the simple tool I used to do it; you can do the same thing with your own congresscritter.


UPDATE: And About That Campaign Finance Reform Thing...

Randy "Duke" Cunningham's district was on the lovely Pacific Ocean between San Diego and Los Angeles. And he was given a yacht or two in return for some favors he did-- with millions in taxpayer money-- for some Republican war contractors. He kept the yacht in the Washington, DC Yacht Basin, though, not in the Pacific. When now there's another right-wing Randy with a yacht situation.

Randy Neugebauer is one of the most extremist members of Congress-- and one of the more corrupt. Since 2003 he's gobbled up $5,756,426 in campaign contributions, much of it from special interests looking for the kinds of special favors they got from the other Randy-- the ones that landed the other Randy in federal prison in fact. In fact, $1,253,775 of that has come from the finance/insurance/real estate sector, the authors of the current economic collapse, and Neugebauer was an enthusiastic supporter of every single deregulation they asked for in return for the fat contributions-- called bribes in plain English-- they gave him.

Neugebauer, who represents a landlocked west Texas district centered on Lubbock also has a yacht. And he also thinks it shouldn't be him paying for it. According to Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Neugebauer thinks his campaign funders should pay for his yacht-- which, like the other Randy's, is also based in DC. You see, he uses it to wine and dine the people who bribe him so he says it's a "legitimate" campaign expenditure that should come out of his campaign coffers.

2008: A YEAR ON STEROIDS, Part 2

December 2006: Time's (in)famous "You" Person of

the Year cover. What a difference two years makes!

Random observations, thoughts, and rants on 2008,
Part 2 (of 3)


by Noah


1. PARDONS, PARDONS, WHO'S GETTING PARDONS?

There has been justifiable concern about who so-called President Bush might pardon before he says "My work is done here" and smirks, slithers, and slinks off into the rest of his life of failure. There's even speculation as to whether he might try to pardon himself along with the rest of the sleazoids in his administration. Not much talk about it at all in the MSM, though, and even less talk about the pardons Bush issued for Thanksgiving.

That's right. Although Dubya has been stingier with pardons than any president in memory, he quietly issued several you may not have heard about, among them five issued to people convicted of crimes related to the mid-1980s S&L scandal, including John Smith (if that's his real name), a former Dallas banker; David McCall Jr. from Plano, Texas; Mark Hale of Henderson, Texas, who went for the gold to the tune of $5 million; and one William Hoyle McCright Jr. of Midland, Texas. The last one there just happened to be a McCain donor. Gee, look at all these guys from Texas. What a coincidence!

Of course, the MSM's blanket of secrecy continues to protect the Bush Crime Family. It's like the S&L crimes never happened. No mention of Neil Bush's role, and still no mention of Jeb Bush's default on a $4.5 million "loan" from Broward Federal Savings. Some guys took a fall. Smaller fish, perhaps. Now they get pardons for keeping silent, I suppose. That's the way it works. The Bush Crime Family sure knows how to get its hands on money, especially our money. Still lots of mention about Clinton's seedy pardon of Marc Rich, but these? Not so much.


2. SPEAKING OF MOVING MONEY AROUND: HANK THE GRIFTER

Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is pulling off what those bankers who plotted to overthrow FDR back in the '30s wanted to do. Everyone wants a crack at Bernie Madoff for making $50 billion disappear. Why not Hank the Grifter for making who-knows-how-many-times that disappear? (And I mean that as a question. Does anyone have any idea how many billions have vanished down the Grifter's rathole?) He is turning over a major percentage of our GDP to a few cigar-chomping, meth-snorting fat cats. He is the master enabler. It's thievery that any two-bit Middle Eastern or Latin American dictator can only dream about, all being done before our eyes while politicians and media whores call it something else.

I remember when Saddam Hussein was being shocked and awed, he took a couple of trailer trucks to the bank and loaded up the cash and gold. What's the difference? Where'd the "bailout" money go? It was sold to us as money that would go to people looking for loans to purchase homes and cars. In reality, it went to buy up smaller banks, pay bonuses for bankers (over $1.6 billion to date), and pay stockholder dividends. Understand this: They took our tax dollars and redistributed them -- to themselves. Car and home loans? Nope. The new bank mantra is "Just Say NO."

With the S&L scandal, the participants in the scam took out loans from banks which they had no intention of repaying. Investors and depositors be damned. This time they take it from the U.S. Treasury and hand it over to their slimy buddies. Poppy Bush once described the goal as to get more money into the hands of fewer people. Saddam was known to give the contents of his country's treasury and foreign aid to himself, his family, and a small circle of friends. He created a class of the superwealthy. The Bush Crime Family has aimed at the same goal for decades, across generations. Strip away all the "he tried to kill my daddy nonsense," and you're left with this: Saddam was merely a very nasty rival -- they didn't hate Saddam, they envied him. He wasn't an enemy, he was a role model.


3. BUSH'S EXIT INTERVIEWS

When asked what he would miss most about not being (playing) president, El Heinisio replied wistfully that he would most miss riding on Air Force One and having the White House chef at his call. Oh well, maybe missing the opportunity to make the country and the world a better place finishes a close third. With most people on the way out, we'd say, "Don't let the door hit you where the good lord split ya," but in this case it might be nice if the door had some extra snap in its springs. He used to talk about catapulting the propaganda. Maybe there's an idea here.


4. TIME MAGAZINE'S PERSON OF THE YEAR

A few weeks ago, Time's Mark Halperin spoke out from his cuckoo-clock rest home about how some perceived "extreme pro-Obama bias" on the part of the mainstream media had -- shock, horror -- fooled the public into electing Senator "That One." That Halperin witnessed this imaginary bias may, in fact, be the long-sought proof of parallel universes and previously unknown dimensions that top physicists have theorized. However, on this planet, in this dimension, the 2008 election may just be the watershed moment where the public took a lead from the classic '70s movie Network and started to really scream, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore," back at the MSM talking heads, jive-ass spinmeisters, and assorted foaming-at-the-mouth, rotating-head right-wing sideshow attractions.

Halperin must be totally beside himself with sputtering rage and frustration at the naming of President-elect Obama as Person of the Year by his obviously biased employer. His own employer! What a betrayal! Hopefully, someone at Time will film Halperin's near convulsions and upload it to YouTube asap.

Note to Mark Halperin: The tide may be moving the other way. You are obsolete, a caricature of the past. The MSM has always spewed little but the propaganda of the neocon artists, memos from the desk of Karl Rove, and the semicoherent mumblings of religious goons like Pat Robertson, who has become a multigazillionaire off of his "nonprofit" organization. Even when the MSM has a dreaded liberal on one of its political chat shows, they make sure to "balance" the token liberal with two to four screaming ditzbrains who start yelling every time the alleged liberal-commie-terrorist sympathizer tries to get a word in edgewise.

It's time to just turn these loons off. Hell, in my parallel universes I'd make them walk the plank off the lip of an active volcano. Now, that would be a reality show! Kudos to Ed Schultz for actually just getting up and walking off in the middle of one show (the execrable Fox and Friends) this year, leaving the shrieking, hooting, jumping-up-and-down, armpit-scratching righty monkeys to throw their monkey poop at each other in their mass confusion. It was a beautiful thing to behold.


5. GOP ELECTION-STEALING: A TICKING TIME BOMB

In all of the discussion of Barack Obama's victory, something has been ignored. It's a time bomb waiting to blow up in our faces on some future Election Day. It's a voting-machine time bomb. Diebold, a company so heinous, it had to change the name of its voting-machine division to Premier, is still in control of a huge percentage of our election tabulating. Diebold whistle-blower Christopher Hood has provided information as to how the Georgia 2002 Senate election was rigged in favor of Saxby Chambliss; more specifically, how he was ordered by Bob Urosevich, the president of Diebold, to secretly install software "patches" in clear violation of state law on voting machines in Democratic-leaning counties.

Stephen Spoonamore, a talented cyber expert who has done much work for our government (and who is a lifelong Republican) has stated publicly that he believes the 2002 Georgia election was rigged. "If you look at the case of Saxby Chmablis, that's ridiculous. The man was not elected. He lost that election by five points. Max Cleland won. They flipped the votes, clear as day." You can watch him say it on YouTube if you like.

Funny how YouTube provides us with more real information now than the so-called news networks. Was Georgia 2002 just a test for Ohio 2004? You decide. A RICO case is in motion in Ohio. Depositions have been taken, and the Georgia secretary of state was told to save everything -- every hard drive, every memory card, every document relating to Georgia's more recent runoff election. Cliff Arnebeck, lead attorney in the case, has said, "Karl Rove has made a career out of rigging elections. Electronic voting machines like those being used in Georgia are his favorite tool."

Now, just last week, the key Rove IT guy, Mike Connell, who began testifying seven weeks ago in an Ohio vote-tampering case, died in a plane crash on a clear, good-weather night. Spoonamore called him "vital to uncovering the truth" about missing White House e-mails and related things, including the firings of nine U.S. Attorneys who held legal principle above Rovian politics. According to Spoonamore, Connell had asked him about ways to "permanently destroy hard drives." Connell also did IT work for the infamous Ohio secretary of state, Kenneth Blackwell, designing a program for him that enabled him to see the 2004 election results in real time, as they were counted.

Connell's other dubious accomplishments include being computer guy for the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, RNC.org and numerous House committees and building and managing congressional servers and George W. Bush's election websites and communication networks. This includes the nongovernment e-mail systems that Rove used for virtually all his important e-mail communication, much of which is now -- surprise, surprise! -- mysteriously missing. Connell was an extreme Bush loyalist and also a Christian extremist, an anti-choice zealot who, along with his wife, spoke of electing Bush as a mission from God which no law of man should get in the way of. He was doing God's work, after all!

This guy was the man who knew too much. Talk about knowing where the bodies were buried! But since he was forced to testify, he and his wife have been receiving threats, and now he has gone to his great reward, although it's probably not the one he was expecting. His death is a very convenient one, to say the least.

Remember how confident Rove was going into Election Day 2006? Then remember how completely shocked the White House was by the massive Democratic turnout? Even then, there were dozens of suspicious results, the most famous of which was in Katherine Harris's old congressional district in Florida. I guess the Repugs thought they had it all set up. Things would look close again, but they would prevail again and keep their majorities.

Sigh! There's only so much tampering you can do. Just like in November, the only way to beat machine tampering is with massive turnout. One wonders what the election results would be with no tampering! How one-sided could the Obama and congressional victories have been? There were reports of vote-flipping this time in West Virginia and upstate New York, to name two. What happens the next time there is a tight election, an election where vote-flipping in just one state can change who gets in the White House or who gets to be your Senator?

It's a time bomb, and it needs to be addressed and disarmed, now. It threatens democracy itself. The excuse often given for not acting on this matter runs something like this: "Well, the people might lose faith in their electoral system." Either Washington is the last to know, yet again, or they like things just fine the way they are.


6. TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN

Bush's final looting of the treasury, the Halliburton no-bid deals, the tax cuts for the wealthy, and bailouts to nowhere are all about starving the government while stealing as much as they can. The easiest way to starve out funds for things like education, health care, infrastructure, enforcement of environmental laws, etc. is to just take the money, all under the guise of fiscal conservatism. This is what "conservatism" is about now -- conserving your money for the few at the top, while we buy into media myths like "trickle-down economics."

Your 401(k)? As if an evil worm like Bush even cares. Ten to one he had to ask what a 401(k) was when it came up in September during the market crash. Bush leaves office snickering and smirking, muttering "Let them eat rum cake" under his reeking-of-alcohol breath. The crashing economy is the end result of 30 years of deregulation, destruction of a balanced tax code, and destruction of a balanced tariff mechanism, which built the middle class and led to a prosperity that deprived the upper class of their favorite weapon against the rest of us, fear. To them, prosperity had to go. It was an anathema that stood in the way of greed. Too much was never enough. The needs of the greedy outweighed the needs of the needy.

Dems like former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin shouldn't get off the hook either. He says he didn't know it was coming. He didn't see it. "I saw nothing. I see nothing." Drop the Sergeant Schultz act, bozo.


7. FINALLY, AN OPEN LETTER TO ALAN COLMES

Dear Alan,

I hate to think that you actually enjoyed your last job. The money must have been really good, but you were just a sideshow geek to the rest of the people (and I use the word "people" loosely) on the show. You were, at best, a professional patsy, a punching bag for total jerks. Maybe you could go on Dirty Jobs. I used to hope that just once you would go postal on-air, but you always disappointed me.

Then again, conspiracy buffs might notice the timing of the announcement of your leaving, matching up with word that Ann Coultergeist has a broken jaw. If that's what happened, you have redeemed yourself and taken The Man's money at the same time. Not bad!

Yours,
Noah


YESTERDAY IN PART 1: Sarah P and Joe the P, Gov. Spritzer, Keith and Rachel, the Repugs stuck in mid-20th century, and more

TOMORROW IN PART 3: CNN and the illusion of news, piggies everywhere, the Supremes who gave us Pres. Dubya, and more

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HAS NEIL BUSH BEEN A BAGMAN FOR THE BUSH CLAN? OR JUST A CROOKED INDEPENDENT OPERATOR?

I'm trying to remember which Bush brother was the bank-robber. It was Neil, wasn't it? Let's see... Google... "Bush" plus "Silverado"... Yes indeed. It took me right to a Washington Post story from 2003 entitled The Relatively Charmed Life Of Neil Bush-- Despite Silverado and Voodoo, Fortune Still Smiles on the President's Brother. Oh, I had forgotten he's also a sleazy pervert.

Ah, it's nice to be Neil Bush.

When you're Neil Bush, rich people from all over the world are eager to invest money in your businesses, even though your businesses have a history of crashing and burning 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.

Yep, I forgot all about that messy, messy divorce. Oh, and I forgot about the millions of dollars in bribes the Chinese funneled into the Bush family through Neil. See, and you thought all that poison being shipped into America from China was just Miss McConnell's fault. The Bushes are as compromised as McConnell.

Anyway, like most of us I forgot all about that stuff. But a story in this morning's NY Times is bringing unwanted attention back to the someone almost as black a sheep in the Bush Family as George W. (Well... that's an exaggeration; he only cost the American  taxpayers a measly billion dollars from his malfeasance at Silverado Savings and Loan.) After gambling in the commodities markets and losing at everything he's put his hand to-- or at least losing his hapless (or shrewd) investors' money-- he decided to get into the lucrative No Child Left Behind business. Is it any wonder edumacation is all mucked up under the Bush Regime?

The inspector general of the Department of Education has said he will examine whether federal money was inappropriately used by three states to buy educational products from a company owned by Neil Bush, the president’s brother.

John P. Higgins Jr., the inspector general, said he would review the matter after a group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, detailed at least $1 million in spending from the No Child Left Behind program by school districts in Texas, Florida and Nevada to buy products made by Mr. Bush’s company, Ignite Learning of Austin, Tex...

Members of the group and other critics in Texas contend that school districts are buying Ignite’s signature product, the Curriculum on Wheels, because of political considerations. The product, they said, does not meet standards for financing under the No Child Left Behind Act, which allocates federal money to help students raise their achievement levels, particularly in elementary school reading.

Surprised?