Jeb Bush’s REVERSE MIDAS TOUCH

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Sure, lets elect but another privileged Bush business-lunatic to the presidency............




In 1986, John Ellis Bush joined the five-person board of directors of a new Swiss-owned bank with the fitting name of The Private Bank and Trust. The institution, which was described that year by the Miami Herald as a place “where the money of wealthy foreigners is managed — very discreetly,” served as a fee-based investment bank for wealthy, mostly-Latino investors. The newspaper detailed the firm’s extreme secrecy, noting that upon arriving at the bank, “the general manager or one of his aides will lead you to one of three sparsely furnished conference rooms and will close the door. Under the bank’s rules, officers must meet with clients in secluded offices, not at their desks, where outsiders could see confidential papers.” Bush, whose father happened to be the vice president of the United States at the time, received $1,200 for his board service before resigning in 1987 to become Florida’s state commerce secretary. Four years later, federal regulators seized The Private Bank. According to the St. Petersburg Times, the government determined it had been “making investments contrary to client instructions and putting funds in companies affiliated with or managed by the bank.” Bush defended his prior tenure, saying, “There were no financial problems for me to be aware of when I was a director.”

A “self-made man”

Eight years ago, Bush — best known by the acronym “Jeb” — departed from Florida’s governor’s mansion determined to boost his $1,288,000 net worth in the private sector. Since, he has made millions in corporate board fees, speaking gigs, and consulting payments — but, much like his tenure before getting into public life, has done so with a series of companies that have found their way into legal or financial quagmires. Jeb Bush has often been portrayed as a “successful businessman,” but ThinkProgress reviewed Bush’s current and past business record and found a great deal of controversy and struggle. In some cases, the companies have faced financial problems during or after his tenure. In others, people with whom he has had business dealings have ended up in legal hot water. While Bush’s corporate work has not always been publicly disclosed, a substantial percentage of that which has been revealed has proven problematic. Bush’s spokeswoman did not respond to a ThinkProgress request for comment. In 1994, Bush mounted his unsuccessful maiden campaign for Florida governor, promising an “entrepreneurial” approach to government and offering himself as a “self-made man.” When his Democratic opponent brought up his business record, Bush cried foul. But, a spokeswoman for incumbent Gov. Lawton Chiles (D), who would narrowly narrowly prevail on Election Day, responded: “What [Jeb Bush] calls mudslinging is just shining a light on his past. His record is his business dealings.” Two decades later, as Bush reportedly considers a potential 2016 presidential run, he is once again focused on making money. In April, Bush’s spokeswoman told the New York Times: “Jeb Bush had a successful career in commercial real estate and business before serving as Florida’s governor. After eight rewarding years in public service leading the state, he is enjoying running his own business again.”


International Medical Centers

In 1992, as President George H. W. Bush was unsuccessfully running for a second term in the White House, Mother Jones did an examination of the his family and its business dealings. In looking into Jeb’s business relationship with Miguel G. Recarey, Jr., the International Medical Centers (IMC) president-turned-international fugitive, a former federal prosecutor told the magazine that “he considered two possibilities — Jeb was either crooked or stupid. At the time, he concluded Jeb was merely stupid.” According to the St. Petersburg Times, Recarey paid Bush’s real estate firm $75,000 in 1985, ostensibly for realty work. But IMC never actually purchased a building shown by Bush — who claimed he was unaware of Recarey’s previous arrest record and history of income tax evasion. Bush came to Recarey’s aid in a different way. Under a pilot program, IMC had received an temporary waiver from a rule limiting its maximum percentage of its receipts could come from Medicare and Recarey wanted to renew it. At his request, Bush — whose father was the U.S. Vice President at the time — agreed to contact the Department of HHS to encourage a “fair hearing” for the firm. Bush has repeatedly claimed that he only contacted a low-level official and sought no special treatment for his client. But two HHS officials testified in 1987 to Congress that Bush had in fact contacted then-HHS Secretary Margaret “Peg” Heckler. In 2012, Heckler herself told the Huffington Post that Jeb Bush had lobbied her and that it had weighed heavily on her thinking on the matter: “He was involved, and I know that his compassion and my sense of conscience and his, I thought, matched, and therefore I was positive, acting upon this.” Federal regulators shut down the insolvent IMC in 1987 and Recarey was indicted for Medicare fraud. He left the country before he could be arrested and remains an international fugitive. In 1998, Bush told the St. Petersburg Times he was not as gullible at 45 as he had been 13 years earlier: “I have to have better radar.”


Bush-El

After helping elect his father president of the United States, Jeb Bush teamed in 1989 with then-Moving Water Industries, Corp. (MWI) president and CEO J. David Eller, to create Bush-El. The eponymous partnership aimed to market MWI’s water pumps internationally. In 2002, the Miami Herald revealed that on one of Bush’s trips to Nigeria to help sell them MWI pumps in 1991, that company’s corporate pilot claimed he saw a suitcase full of cash — an apparent bribe for Nigerian officials. The pilot did not implicate Bush and a Bush spokesman noted inconsistencies in the claims. ”The governor was adamant he was not on an airplane with a suitcase full of cash,” the spokesman said, adding Bush was “unaware of any plane he was on with luggage on it full of cash.” Bush has reportedly said his involvement in the Nigeria effort was conditioned on a private loan being secured (as his father was president at the time and he wanted to avoid any appearance of impropriety). But the company instead went to the U.S. Export-Import Bank for the $74.3 million it needed for the deal. In 1998, after a whistleblower alleged “knowingly false or fraudulent claims” connected to that financing, the Department of Justice filed suit against MWI. The company has steadfastly denied the allegations, but was found liable by a jury last year and fined $580,000 (the MWI has appealed the verdict). Bush was not implicated and was never forced to testify in the case after a federal judge ruled him irrelevant to the case. Bush said later that the bad publicity from Bush-El had proven highly troublesome for him: “I made money. That’s the only benefit I can see… Otherwise, it’s been unmitigated grief.” While he said he took no money on the Nigeria deal, he made $648,250 on the Bush-El venture, between pump sales in other countries and selling his half-share in the partnership to Eller in 1994, prior to his gubernatorial campaign. An MWI company spokesman declined to comment for this story.






cont'

http://thinkprogress.org/election/2014/11/21/3591619/jeb-bush-business-failures/

[Mnemosyne]

1. Entire family, crooks. nt

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2. And the nation keeps putting them back into the WH...

Their attitude is...'SURE, OK....WHY NOT,...IF YOU INSIST!'

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3. After researching election fraud for quite a few years, not so sure they actually 'win';

but guess it's just the conspiracy theorist in me coming out.

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4. "..According to the New York Times,..

".....Swisher Hygiene executives acknowledged that during Bush’s tenure, “their financial statements were unreliable and their accounting practices inadequate.” As the company’s accounting problems became public, its stock prices dropped precipitously — losing “more than three-quarters of Swisher’s value.” Shareholder lawsuits followed against Bush and his colleagues, “accusing him and fellow board members of insufficient oversight.” A lawsuit naming Bush was combined with other lawsuits against the the company itself and Swisher Hygiene agreed to a class-action settlement in February, with no admission of fault. Swisher Hygiene did not immediately respond to a ThinkProgress request for comment.