NEW YORK (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's uncle, William H.T. "Bucky" Bush, was part of a group of outside directors at a defense contractor who realized about $6 million in unauthorized pay from an options backdating scheme, according to U.S. securities investigators...
"As a result, the company provided significant additional compensation to its outside directors beyond what shareholders had approved," the SEC complaint said. "These same directors later realized approximately $6 million from the exercise of their addtional stock options."
The complaint did not break out how much Bush and the other outside directors received from a total of 132,000 shares of unauthorized shares.
Bush, whose brother is former President George H.W. Bush, was unavailable for comment. He served on St. Louis-based ESSI's board from 2000 until the St. Louis defense contractor was acquired last year for nearly $2 billion by DRS, which sells engineering services to the U.S. military.
Read the rest here.
Bush's Uncle Makes $$$ in Defense Scam
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Doug
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Bush's Uncle Makes $$$ in Defense Scam
"We could have done something important Max. We could have fought child abuse or Republicans!" --Oona Hart (played by Victoria Foyt), in the 1995 movie "Last Summer in the Hamptons."
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Barbara Fitzpatrick
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Anyone posting on this blog site is not surprised. Lash & Co - if their blog is still active - don't believe it, anyway. Why the entire Bush family isn't behind bars for one or more legal infractions I really do not know (or rather I do know and wish I could have my idealistic view of America back).
Barbara Fitzpatrick
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Dardedar
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DAR
Again, US military spending is truly breathtaking. Truly reminds one of Rome in the last days. Note what I have bolded below:
***
On Federal Budget Priorities
Does the U.S. budget reflect the best investments for our future?
Ben Cohen
Thursday, February 8, 2007
When Congress debates how much to spend on programs such as "education" and the "environment," lawmakers are really deciding how to carve up America's discretionary budget pie, depicted [below], as proposed by President Bush on Monday. The Pentagon would receive $481 billion, and that's not including funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As you can see, more than half of the money Congress votes to spend this year would go to the Pentagon, leaving budget scraps for everything else." link
DAR
Now consider:
But this does not take into account that about 10% of US GDP goes directly for interest on the debt (the highly fudged $481 billion number above is only about 4% of GDP). And most of that debt was racked up with this insane military spending. Also, "veteran benefits" should also go in with military spending.
D.
Edited by Savonarola 20070210 1837: Fixed link
Again, US military spending is truly breathtaking. Truly reminds one of Rome in the last days. Note what I have bolded below:
***
On Federal Budget Priorities
Does the U.S. budget reflect the best investments for our future?
Ben Cohen
Thursday, February 8, 2007
When Congress debates how much to spend on programs such as "education" and the "environment," lawmakers are really deciding how to carve up America's discretionary budget pie, depicted [below], as proposed by President Bush on Monday. The Pentagon would receive $481 billion, and that's not including funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As you can see, more than half of the money Congress votes to spend this year would go to the Pentagon, leaving budget scraps for everything else." link
DAR
Now consider:
But this does not take into account that about 10% of US GDP goes directly for interest on the debt (the highly fudged $481 billion number above is only about 4% of GDP). And most of that debt was racked up with this insane military spending. Also, "veteran benefits" should also go in with military spending.
D.
Edited by Savonarola 20070210 1837: Fixed link
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Barbara Fitzpatrick
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We're also not supposed to count the military money hidden in the education portion of the budget in the guise of research grants and scholarships/grants/loans. If we added in the Afghanistan and Iraqi military actions (neither of them technically wars, since congress didn't declare war on either one of them) the military would be getting more like 75% of discretionary spending.
Debt maintenace is not part of discretionary spending (which is one of the reasons social security isn't in trouble - or at least any trouble short of totally busting the government - congress doesn't have a choice about paying back the money they've borrowed from it), but is a sizeable chunk of the government's outgo. Something like 18% of the 2006 budget was borrowed money.
The problem with the military budget is that most of it is going for "star wars" and "cold war" weaponry. Congress has many excuses for it (we have to stay "ready" in case China attacks us in 2025 is one I've read - you know, borrow money from China now to build weapons to fight China with later), but what it comes down to is if we stop making these weapons, factories will shut down and whole communities will be waxed. It's worse than the American auto industries closing plants, because there are so many more "defense" plants. Until somebody comes up with a viable way to convert these plants to something non-military in nature, we will keep spending our tax dollars enriching war profiteers. (I'd love to see some of this turned "spaceward" myself. Folks who design and build atomic submarines surely can design and build units for a Moon base and later a Mars base - and we could at least get some scientific research out of each of those. All we get out of the products of war plants is an edgier world - and the knowledge that someday somebody is going to use them.)
Debt maintenace is not part of discretionary spending (which is one of the reasons social security isn't in trouble - or at least any trouble short of totally busting the government - congress doesn't have a choice about paying back the money they've borrowed from it), but is a sizeable chunk of the government's outgo. Something like 18% of the 2006 budget was borrowed money.
The problem with the military budget is that most of it is going for "star wars" and "cold war" weaponry. Congress has many excuses for it (we have to stay "ready" in case China attacks us in 2025 is one I've read - you know, borrow money from China now to build weapons to fight China with later), but what it comes down to is if we stop making these weapons, factories will shut down and whole communities will be waxed. It's worse than the American auto industries closing plants, because there are so many more "defense" plants. Until somebody comes up with a viable way to convert these plants to something non-military in nature, we will keep spending our tax dollars enriching war profiteers. (I'd love to see some of this turned "spaceward" myself. Folks who design and build atomic submarines surely can design and build units for a Moon base and later a Mars base - and we could at least get some scientific research out of each of those. All we get out of the products of war plants is an edgier world - and the knowledge that someday somebody is going to use them.)
Barbara Fitzpatrick