July 8, 2002
WHY DASCHLE WON'T THROW THE FIRST STONE :
Words are very unnecessary, they can only do harm. (Charles Murtaugh)Today's free advice to Tom Daschle (apart from trying harder to get John McCain to switch parties): Harkengate should spell the end of Bush's Social Security privatization plan, even if it doesn't end his presidency.
The normally sensible Charles Murtaugh today strays into Cloud-Cuckoo land, having apparently drunk at least one too many glasses of water from the Charles River. We've already spelled out some of the problems with his Harkengate as Whitewater theory, so we'll not run through them again. But the sentence above raises two other issues. First, what conceivable bearing can President Bush's Harken dealings from thirteen years ago have on the privatization of Social Security today? This is like saying Republicans can kill car emissions standards because of Ted Kennedy's Chappaquiddick scandal. Harken and privatization both involve stocks and politics just as Chappaquiddick and emissions both involve cars and politics, but what else does one have to do with the other in either case?
And here's the other thing, maybe the free advice should go to someone other than Senator Daschle if we're going to start looking into old scandals. Because Mr. Daschle himself is implicated in a more recent scandal that's far sexier than Harken, though less sexy than Chappaquiddick, because he too appears to have been responsible for accidental death and to have tried covering it up, Tom Daschle Covered up Deaths in Pals Airline (NewsMax.com, January 4, 2002) :
[E]ven the ethically lethargic GOP may not be able to resist examining a far more riveting imbroglio: Daschlegate, the 1994 deaths of three government doctors in the crash of a plane owned by one of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's close friends who had just gotten a free pass from FAA inspectors.Predictably, the Clinton Justice Department and the then-Democrat-controlled Senate Ethics Committee didn't give allegations of Daschle influence peddling, wrongful death and cover-up a second look--despite a blockbuster "60 Minutes" expose where greiving widows expressly blamed the South Dakota Democrat in spades.
Heightening the Daschlegate intrigue, an FAA office manager at the time said she was ordered by superiors to destroy documents relevant to the fatal crash to protect the Senator's wife, Linda, who was then second in command at the agency.
The three government physicians were killed when a plane operated by B&L Aviation crashed in Minot, N.D., on Feb. 24, 1994. B&L was owned by longtime Daschle crony Murl Bellew, who, before the crash, had asked his senator friend to help when the Forest Service found numerous safety violations with his aircraft.
According to the New York Times, the Senator then began "a two-year effort to strip the U.S. Forest Service of authority to inspect air charter companies." What's more, it appears Daschle tried to cover up his attempt to undermine the Forest Service.
Add to this the ongoing scandal of his wife being an active lobbyist--including for the airlines, which just received that huge 9-11 bailout--while he's the deciding voice on most legislation and one suspects you've got a guy who'd just as soon not start yanking skeletons out of closets, or out of the North Dakota soil as the case may be.
UPDATE :
WELCOME TO CLEVELAND :
Old Business in New Light (RICHARD W. STEVENSON, July 9, 2002, NY Times)
By 1989, Mr. Bush's business efforts were focused on acquiring and running the Texas Rangers baseball team. He began selling some of his other investments, and in June 1990, he received a call from a broker asking if he was interested in selling 212,140 Harken shares.He did so on June 22, 1990, receiving $4 a share, or a total of $848,560.
At the time, Harken was struggling. It had had big trading losses, it was having trouble with its banks, its long-term debt had more than doubled, and it was trying to sell some of its assets.
In August 1990, Harken reported that it lost $23.2 million in the second quarter, a far worse performance than investors had expected. The stock plunged from $3 a share to $2.37 in a day before rebounding.
The next winter Mr. Bush filed--34 weeks late--a required form with the S.E.C. about his sale of Harken stock. The commission then began investigating whether Mr. Bush had sold on the basis of inside information. It ultimately concluded that while he knew about many financial problems at Harken, he did not know at the time of the scale of the loss that would be announced two months after his stock sale.
Given that by the time the folks who bought his shares could sell them they'd have gotten $8 a share for them, it's awfully hard to see how you can make this dog hunt. Not that Democrats won't try. We would note though that, apropos our note about Tom Daschle's own ethical problems, they trotted out Harry Reid (D, NV) to attack the President yesterday instead. Mr. Reid, though he seems like a nice enough fellow, is decidedly the B Team and, despite being the Democrat Whip, is about to lose even his own members on the Yucca Flats nuclear waste site vote. It's kind of like having Barney Fife lead an investigation in Mayberry.
MORE DASCHLE :
*Daschle Intervened With FAA on Behalf of Sleeping Pilot Crony (NewsMax, , Jan. 10, 2002)
*Tom Daschle's Hillary Problem : If the Senate Majority Leader runs for president what will voters think of his lobbyist wife? (Stephanie Mencimer, January/February 2002, Washington Monthly)
*Mrs. Daschle, Big Business Lobbyist (David Freddoso, 5/20/02, Human Events)
*Daschle: No Conflict, Won't Release Tax Returns (Human Events, 5/20/02)
MORE BUSH FINANCES :
*The Democrats' Latest Hit Job : They're trying to portray George W. Bush as a corrupt corporate CEO. (Byron York, July 3, 2002, National Review)
*Everyone Is Outraged (Paul Krugman, July 2, 2002, New York Times)
*Investigstive Report : Bush Violated Security Laws Four Times, SEC Report Says (Knut Royce, July 8, 2002, Center for Public Integrity)
*G.W. Bush = Ken Lay (SETH GITELL, JANUARY 24, 2002, Boston Phoenix)
*W's Corporate-Improvement Plan: Breaking with an Enron-ish Past (David Corn, 03/14/2002, The Nation)
*Bush's Insider Connections Preceded Huge Profit On Stock Deal (Knut Royce, April 4, 2000, The Center for Public Integrity)
*How George W. Bush Scored Big With the Texas Rangers (Charles Lewis, Jan. 18, 2000, Center for Public Integrity)
*The Harken-Bahrain Deal: A Baseless Suspicion (George Lardner Jr., July 30, 1999, Washington Post)
*Bush as businessman : How the Texas governor made his millions (Brooks Jackson, May 13, 1999, CNN)
*THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION : Corporate Connections (OpenSecrets.org)
*George W. Bush : The Making of a Candidate (Washington Post)
*The Bush Files (Texas Observer)
*FRONTLINE : The Choice 2000 (PBS)
*Harken Energy Corp.