I met Amy Goodman yesterday!

[DeposeTheBoyKing]

I was attending a civil rights symposium at the Association of Pakistani Physicians of North America meeting in Washington, D.C., and she was on the panel. I wasn't expecting it because she wasn't listed on the speaker panel. She was so personable! We bought her book and got her autograph.

Also, one of my husband's classmates, a Texas physician, was jailed several months ago for alleged Medicare fraud after his daughter drew a doodle of an anti-Bush protest on an exam and her teacher turned it in to the FBI. The FBI investigated this young woman, then ransacked her father's office, and a grand jury indicted him for Medicare fraud because of some $14,000 discrepancies over SEVEN YEARS (there is an allowable discrepancy rate of 6.5%; his total rate is about 0.1%, but he was arrested and tried anyway). The family has talked to Amy, as well as the NAACP and ACLU, and hopefully they can appear on Democracy Now! or get the help they need to at least get him a new trial, if not freed entirely.

[NMDemDist2]

1. cool you met Amy, crappy story about your friend

Asscroft strikes again

[wryter2000]

2. Good grief!

And that old bastard Frist is guilty of Medicare fraud, as I understand it. His punishment? Majority Leader of the Senata.

[fdr_hst_fan]

4. People on other sites

give me a hard time about comparing the Bush crowd to the Nazis, but here it is, in our faces, and what are we going to do about it?

[SharonAnn]

7. His family business settle for $1.2 Billion in Medicare fines for

defrauding Medicare.

That's not a typo. It was $1.2 BILLION!!

[wryter2000]

8. Thanks!

I wasn't too aware of the details of the case.

[AP]

3. The lesson: don't give medical care to the poor

unless of course you put all the money you'd make into hiring an accountant to make sure you're not even off by .1%.

Oh, yeah. And don't have dark skin and don't point out the emperor has no clothes.

Lord.

[camero]

5. I listen to her alot

Glad she could get the word out and help him.

[wtmusic]

6. Was your husband's classmate Pakistani?

That sounds like outright racism. I hope they get a big fat check from the Feds.

[latebloomer]

9. I met her once in a Ladies' Room

right before she was giving a speech.

She didn't even look in the mirror.

That impressed me.

[sandnsea]

10. Bush Profiteers

Ran across this, there's 100, here's 20:
http://pearlyabraham.tripod.com/htmls/bush-profiteers.html

1. *Charles & Sam Wyly (Dallas): $210,273
These brothers own diverse companies, including Maverick Capital Fund, which received a lucrative University of Texas Investment Management Co. contract to invest UT funds in ’98. Both were members of GHWB’s Team 100, a precursor of Bush’s fundraising “Pioneers.”
2. *Louis Beecherl, Jr & III (Dallas): $154,000
Louis Beecherl, Jr., was a top cheerleader for a record $380 million Dallas bond initiative to dam the Trinity River. Critics call it a boondoggle that will line the pockets of Beecherl and the other project boosters who own adjacent lands.

3. *Tom & R. Steven Hicks (Dallas): $146,000
Tom Hicks is a corporate raider at Hicks Muse Tate & Furst (other name partners gave GWB $58,000). He made GWB’s fortune when he bought the Texas Rangers for $250 million in ’99. After GWB’s election, UT Regents set up the University of Texas Investment Management Co. and made Hicks chair; lucrative UT investment contracts then flowed to firms tied to Hicks and his brother, who headed Capstar Broadcasting.

4. *Tom Loeffler (San Antonio): $141,000
This Arter & Hadden lobbyist co-chaired GHWB’s Team 100, a Pioneers precursor. A University of Texas Investment Management Co. (UTIMCO) director, Loeffler voted for the UTIMCO contract for Maverick Capital (see the Wylies above) at a UTIMCO meeting that Tom Hicks hosted on symbolic ground: the Rangers’ Ballpark. To see what GWB’s administration did for an Arter & Hadden client, see W. James Jonas, No. 50.

5. Peter O’Donnell, Jr. (Dallas): $141,000
A retired banker who once chaired the Texas GOP, O’Donnell has acknowledged that the CIA used his O’Donnell Foundation as a secret funding conduit.

6. Lonnie ‘Bo’ Pilgrim (Pittsburg, TX): $125,000
This poultry king doled out $10,000 checks to state senators on the Senate floor in ’89 to gut workers’ compensation laws. His company has attracted more than $500,000 in pollution fines in the last decade. Now Pilgrim wants to inject 500 gallons of chicken waste a minute into underground wells. Critics say it will endanger local water quality.

7. *Kenneth & Linda Lay (Houston): $122,500
Lay’s Enron gas hired two GHWB cabinet members as they left office (see James Baker, No. 56, and Robert Mosbacher, No. 30). After GHWB’s ’93 Gulf War victory tour of Kuwait, several members of his entourage, including Baker, stayed on to hustle Enron contracts. The Clinton administration also threatened to cut Mozambique’s aid in ’95 if it did not give Enron a contract. Former Enron president Richard Kinder also gave GWB $119,409.

8. Ray L. Hunt (Dallas): $105,000
Oil heir Hunt and Dallas’ city manager secretly planned the $210 million Reunion development for a year before briefing the city council. Hunt was the sole bidder for this private-public deal that appeared to be written by Hunt’s lawyers. Hunt hired John Scovell ($1,000 to GWB) to head his development company. Scovell’s father sat on Dallas committees that selected Reunion as the site of a new sports arena.

9. David H. Dewhurst III (Houston): $105,000
An ex-CIA operative, Dewhurst made a fortune at Falcon Seaboard oil, where he paid $1 million to settle fraud and embezzlement charges by business partners. Dewhurst personally guaranteed $4 million in loans to his successful ’98 Texas General Land Commissioner campaign. His primary opponent said Dewhurst offered to bankroll his campaign, too—if he would run for another office.

10. Richard E. Rainwater (Ft. Worth): $100,000
Rainwater was a key investor in the Texas Rangers and Columbia/HCA Healthcare, which the government is investigating on Medicare fraud charges (see Richard Scott, No. 65). GWB received $37,500 from executives of Rainwater’s Crescent Real Estate (see Gerald Haddock, No. 33), which bought two buildings from the state in ’96 at bargain-basement prices. GWB’s personal blind trust invested in Crescent during his first term.

11. William A. McMinn (Brenham): $100,000
McMinn works with Sterling Chemical and the Sterling Group, whose principals have contributed $251,000 to GWB. The Sterling Group buys and sells chemical companies. Sterling Chemical releases 11 million pounds of toxic chemicals a year, chiefly from its Texas City plant, which is in a neighborhood that is 88 percent African American.

12. William L. Hutchison (Dallas): $100,000
This head of Hutchison Energy conspired with ex-Governor Bill Clements (No. 23) and others in a scandal involving six-figure payments to Southern Methodist University athletes. The scandal triggered the toughest enforcement penalties in NCAA history.

13. Harold Simmons (Dallas): $90,000
This corporate raider is a recidivist violator of federal campaign contribution limits. His companies have a history of raiding worker pension funds and despoiling the environment. Simmons’ chemical arm, NL Industries, has been named as potentially responsible for three Superfund sites. His Waste Control Specialists wants to dump nuclear waste in West Texas (see Kent Hance, No. 18).

14. J. Virgil Waggoner (Houston): $85,000
Waggoner is vice chair of toxic polluter Sterling Chemical (see William McMinn, No. 11).

15. James Leininger (San Antonio): $82,750
A maker of oscillating hospital beds, Leininger became a “tort reformer” when plaintiffs said the beds dropped them, crushed them or sprayed them with silicone. A fundraising letter revealed in ’98 that his school voucher PAC was working with Texans for Lawsuit Reform to topple Texas’ House Speaker. Leininger’s Christian–right telemarketing firm got corporate welfare from Canton, Texas as a condition of locating there.

16. “Tex” Moncrief, Jr. (Ft. Worth): $75,927
IRS agents raided Moncrief Oil in ’94, seeking evidence of an alleged $100 million tax fraud. U.S. Senators made donor Moncrief a star witness in a ’98 hearing on IRS abuses. The senators failed to mention that Tex had agreed to one of the largest individual tax settlements in history.

17. S. Reed Morian (Houston): $56,050
Morian’s Dixie Chemical spewed 68,343 pounds of toxic waste into Texas skies in ‘97. The EPA sued Dixie—and Harold Simmons’ (No. 13) Baroid Corp and NL Industries—in ‘91 as “potentially responsible” for a 70-million-gallon toxic Superfund site.

18. *Kent Hance (Austin): $51,000
Hance is a lobbyist and ex-Congressman who invested in Waste Control Specialists (WCS). WCS lost a’95 battle for permission to dump nuclear waste in West Texas. After Harold Simmons (No. 13) bought a controlling interest, however, WCS won a victory. In ’99, GWB’s Natural Resource Conservation Commissioners nixed plans for a competing state-run nuclear dump.

19. Dan W. Cook, III (Dallas): $49,600
A Goldman Sachs partner, Cook was a top fundraiser for Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison’s ‘90 state treasurer race. When Hutchison became treasurer she gave Cook’s firm a $300 million contract to sell state bonds.

20. *J. Huffines, Jr. & Family (Dallas): $42,500
J.L. Huffines, Jr. and family own a string of Dallas-area car dealerships and part of the Dallas Cowboys. Huffines and Thomas A. O’Dwyer ($1,000 to GWB) were accused of meeting to organize a secret Texas A&M “slush fund” for football players. The men denied the accusations, but the NCAA severely punished the team for the scandal. James Huffines is a GWB Pioneer.