Ethics -- Bush For Sale

July 14, 2008

by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Ali Frick, and Benjamin Armbruster

ETHICS

Bush For Sale

In February, Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, TX announced that the university will be home to President Bush's $200 million library. The announcement has been met with widespread protests from faculty, administrators, staff, and even Methodist ministers. The library will sponsor programs designed to "promote the vision of the president" and "celebrate" Bush's presidency, while minimizing the involvement of historians. Former Bush adviser Karl Rove is reportedly advising the project in "an informal capacity." On Sunday, the Times of London reported that Stephen Payne, a major Bush-Cheney campaign fundraiser, was caught on tape offering access to key members of the Bush administration inner circle in exchange for "six-figure donations to the private library being set up to commemorate Bush's presidency." As the Times notes, "The revelation confirms long-held suspicions that favours are being offered in return for donations to the libraries which outgoing presidents set up to house their archives and safeguard their political legacies." Asked about the report, White House spokesman Tony Fratto simply responded, "[T]here's no connection between any official administration actions and the library."

MONEY = ACCESS: In the Times' video, Payne is seen promising to arrange a meeting for an exiled Kyrgyzstan leader with Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, or Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, in return for a payment of $250,000 towards the Bush library. When asked whether he could arrange a meeting for the former central Asian president, Payne solicited a bribe. "The exact budget I will come up with," he said. "But it will be somewhere between $600,000 and $750,000, with about a third of it going directly to the Bush library." Payne said the remainder of the $750,000 would go to his lobbying firm, Worldwide Strategic Partners (WSP), which has worked closely with several Bush administration agencies, including the White House, Departments of State, Defense, Justice, Homeland Security, and Treasury, and the FBI. Payne is a political appointee to the Homeland Security Advisory Council and was George W. Bush's "personal travel aide" during his father's 1988 presidential campaign. He currently "assists the White House as a Senior Advance Representative" for Bush and Cheney. In a lengthy statement alleging that "that the Times attempted to entrap me," Payne responded that "isolated comments can be taken out of context."

LIBRARY'S SHADY DONATIONS: Payne told the Times' undercover investigators that publicly, the donation would be made in the politician's name "unless he wants to be anonymous for some reason." In February, Bush said he was considering keeping foreign donors' names to the library confidential. "There's some people who like to give and don't particularly want their names disclosed," Bush said. In November 2006, the New York Daily News reported that Bush hoped to get roughly $250 million in "megadonations" from some key allies, including "wealthy heiresses, Arab nations and captains of industry." The Bush administration has also given special favors to some library donors. Dallas billionaire Ray Hunt was listed as a Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign "Pioneer" and previously served on the board of Halliburton. Hunt donated $35 million to SMU to help build the library. When Bush announced he would extend the U.S.-Mexico border fence by 700 miles in 2006, he apparently granted a favor to Hunt: the border fence would "abruptly end" at Hunt's property in the small town of Granjeno, TX.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: The revelations about the Bush library uncovered by the Times further confirm the legacy of corruption that the Bush administration will leave behind. Recently, the New York Times reported that the State Department actually had an "integral role" in the awarding of no-bid contracts to develop Iraq's oil fields, despite the White House denying the adminstration had a role. One of those donors was Hunt Oil (owned by the same Ray Hunt). In 2007, Bush nominated Sam Fox, a major right-wing donor who gave $50,000 to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, to be the U.S. ambassador to Belgium. Randal Tobias, who until recently led U.S. foreign aid efforts but resigned in connection to the DC Madam, was a former pharmaceutical executive and Bush campaign donor. The list of Bush donors with special privileges granted by the administration goes on and on -- and will apparently continue at the Bush library as well.

MILITARY -- SPENDING BILL SUGGESTS LONG TERM MILITARY PRESENCE IN AFGHANISTAN: Congress recently approved a spending bill that suggests that the U.S. will have a long-term military presence in Afghanistan. The $162 billion bill, which funds the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through the end of President Bush's final term, includes "construction of a $62 million ammunition storage facility at Afghanistan's Bagram Air Base, where 12 planned 'igloos' will support Army and Air Force needs," as well as "$41 million for a 30-megawatt power plant at Bagram." The power plant will be "capable of generating enough electricity for a town of more than 20,000 homes." In its money request, the Army explained that "as a forward operating site, Bagram must be able to provide for a long term, steady state presence which is able to surge to meet theater contingency requirements." In the same bill, Congress refused a request for "$184 million to build power plants at five bases in Iraq," because it "did not want to do anything in Iraq that seemed long-term, and the power plants would have taken up to two years to complete." The shift in money comes amidst increasing calls from lawmakers to shift troops from Iraq to Afghanistan.

ENVIRONMENT -- SCHWARZENEGGER CRITICIZES BUSH'S INACTION ON GLOBAL WARMING: Yesterday, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) appeared on ABC's This Week and hit the Bush administration for refusing to act on climate change. "It just really means basically this administration did not believe in global warming, or they do not believe that they should do anything about it," he said. Schwarzenegger slammed the administration for delaying action throughout its eight years in office, saying that even if Bush decided to do something about global warming now, it would be "bogus" because "you don't change global warming and you don't really have an effect by doing something six months before you leave office." Schwarzenegger also discussed the massive wildfires burning in California, saying, "I'm sure partially it has something to do with global warming." Schwarzenegger has leveled stinging criticism at the Bush administration on climate change in the past. After Bush announced a "national goal" to halt the growth of carbon emissions by 2025, Schwarzenegger declared that "by that time we'll have no more glacier left."

ECONOMY -- REGULATORS PREPARE FOR 'DOZENS OF AMERICAN BANKS TO FAIL': Just days after the "second largest" bank failure in U.S. history, and on the heals of the federal government's commitment to "bolster troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac" by "extending unprecedented support to the companies," some analysts now predict that "as many as 150 out of the 7,500 banks nationwide could fail over the next 12 to 18 months." Over the next three years, that number could exceed 300. The at-risk banks "vary in size and location, but their common woe is the collapsed real estate market and souring mortgage loans." As the Wall Street Journal reports, depositors today are at greater risk than in previous years because "the percentage of uninsured deposits has doubled since 1992, climbing to about 37 [percent] of the nation's $7.07 trillion in deposits." The former president of the American Bankers Association, Donald G. Ogilvie, said of the expected failures, "This is a very serious banking crisis. There's just no question about that."

Nine American soldiers died yesterday, in "the worst against Americans in Afghanistan in three years." The killings "illustrated the growing threat of Taliban militants and their associates, who in recent months have made Afghanistan a far deadlier war zone for American-led forces than Iraq."

As a result of eroding confidence in the nation's two largest mortgage finance companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the administration "asked Congress to approve a sweeping rescue package that would give officials the power to inject billions of federal dollars into the beleaguered companies." Paul Krugman writes that the storm of concern over these lenders "is overblown."

$4.109: The average price of a gallon of gasoline today, setting a new record. According to AAA, gas prices have risen 40 percent in the last year.

"U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have abandoned efforts to conclude a comprehensive agreement governing the long-term status of U.S troops in Iraq before the end of the Bush presidency." Instead, the two governments are now working on a "bridge" document that would "allow basic U.S. military operations to continue beyond the expiration of a U.N. mandate at the end of the year."

The "memorial to an estimated 1,600 fatalities" and "the resting place for 85 bodies that remain unclaimed nearly three years after" Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast has "dissolved into a project that is forgotten, frustrated and delayed -- much like the Katrina recovery itself."

The ACLU will today announce that the federal government has added the millionth name to its terrorist watch list. The estimate "stems from a Justice Department inspector general’s report last year that put the watch list roster -- four years after its creation -- at more than 720,000 in April 2007, and growing by 20,000 records a month."

And finally: Where in the world is Vice President Cheney? Evidently, he's spending time at pony camps. U.S. News caught Cheney recently at a pony camp in Maryland, where "lots of kids and parents approached him for snapshots and he stayed until everybody got their picture." (See a photo of Cheney looking sunburnt and posing with campers here.) "It's quite nice to see that he is just like us sometimes," said Jeanne Coley, a mom of the campers.

"More than 40 nations, including Israel and Arab states, agreed Sunday to work for a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East."

NEW YORK: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Sunday "unveiled a new method that he and his aides said gives a more accurate picture of the poor."

COLORADO: "A proposal to define a fertilized human egg as a person will land on Colorado's ballot this November, marking the first time that the question of when life begins will go before voters anywhere in the nation."

CALIFORNIA: Proposed budget cuts could could hurt California First Lady Maria Shriver's plan to find employment for the disabled.

THINK PROGRESS: Former Vice President Cheney adviser: The odds of Israel attacking Iran are ’slightly, slightly above 50-50.’

WONK ROOM: Tax cuts for the rich -- not even good for the rich.

DAILY DISH: Jane Mayer's new book "adds new, dreadful detail" about the Bush administration's efforts to legalize and use torture.

MEDIA MATTERS: John McLaughlin: Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) "fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo -- a black on the outside, a white on the inside."

"To say that John McCain was aligned with President Bush on the prosecution of the war in Iraq is to change history."
-- Carly Fiorina, top adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), 7/13/08

VERSUS

"For his determination to undertake [the war in Iraq], and for his unflagging resolve to see it through to a just end, President Bush deserves not only our support, but our admiration."
-- McCain, 8/30/04

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