by James Glaser
July 12, 2002

No kidding, President Bush was off the killing of every Iraqi or Muslim and on to the economy. George was coming out with strong medicine to get American's faith restored, when it came to major corporations. I listened to both the press conference and his speech to the thousand business men. I was looking for good things to say, honest.

What I heard was the press hammering George to no end on the Harken Energy deal, where George made close to a million, the little guy got shafted, and George still to this day, twelve years later, has no idea of what he did ("you will have to look at the board minutes") nor can he figure out why he filed his legal papers 34 weeks late. All through this press conference, the President kept talking about "confidence and responsibility."

You could tell that bringing up the Presidents past was really getting to him. Everything was blamed on the Democrats and the election year. Everything about this as far as the President was concerned, was in the past and had been covered many times. He was innocent of all wrong doing and it was all in how you interpret the Principals of Accounting. I almost thought he would have fallen back on "it depends on what the definition of 'is' is." Oh yeah, that was that other guy.

This thing with George and the word "confidence" was getting like Sesame Street, where each day one word was picked and used as often as possible. Here are a couple confidence builders. The average CEO is paid 531 times, what the average employee gets and if the minimum wage had risen between 1990 and 2000 at the same rate as the rise in CEO pay, it would now stand at $25.20/hr. I got those two from Charlie Cray and Lee Drutman from "Citizen Works."

During George's Speech on Wednesday, he continued to use the word "confidence" even more than at the press conference. So it was the word of the day two days running. George said "I challenge every CEO in America to describe in the company's annual report - prominently, and in plain English- details of his or her compensation package, including salary and bonus and benefits." Now remember this is just a challenge, no one has to do this and a year from now most CEOs will blow it off and new reports will already be at the printer so "I wanted to do that, but we would of had to reprint."

George also said that he established by Executive Order, a Corporate Fraud Task Force. Of course he forgot about funding and staff. Just this Executive order that agencies talk to each other more often about securities fraud, mail and wire fraud, money laundering and tax fraud. The President also put $100 million into the SEC budget which just covers the money commissioner Harvey Pitt wanted last March for increased staff and pay. By the way George turned that March request down.

One thing that came to light this week about the President's money making deal at Harken Energy Corp., True that George was found innocent of any wrong doing. He was found innocent of any wrongdoing by James Doty, the SEC's general counsel and get this George W. Bush's lawyer. He was George W's lawyer when he bought the Texas Rangers baseball team. Now does this sound to be on the up and up or what?

If the President of the United States is coming out to tell the citizens of this world that American business is a safe and secure place to invest your money in, then that President should be squeaky clean. George kept saying to the press that all of this Harken stuff was old news, but I never heard of it and most Americans haven't.

Maybe everything the President said about his money making deals are true and he didn't do anything wrong. Just the fact that he was 34 weeks late in filing a mandatory report sounds bad and think what would have happened to you or me or any one else whose Dad was not President at the time. It just out and out looks bad and President George W. Bush is not the person to instill trust in these matters.

Lets face it, George Bush's credibility is shot when it comes to confidence in business dealings and his proposals for fixing our troubles just don't make sense. Mandatory requirements are what is needed. Enron and World Com and all the rest could of done things right, but they didn't and to "Challenge" them to change, but not require them to, will not work. We are talking about the American Economy here, lets get serious..

Addendum............

According to National Public Radio, President Bush, who came out against CEOs getting "sweetheart" loans from their corporations, received one of those same "sweetheart" loans, while on the board for Harken Energy Corporation. This report stated that George W. Bush received $180,000 at 5% interest with no interest for the first eight years. The loan was to buy stock in Harken. The White House said that the President was against the really big loans of this type and small loans were not the problem.

Being just a average American, $180,000.00 is a "big" loan as far as I am concerned and to go to my local bank and tell them that I want that much money to buy stock and that stock would be the collateral, would not work very well. Banks don't loan money to buy stocks and that is a good thing.

This same NPR report talked about how Vice-president Dick Chaney was also under investigation and that a lawsuit had been filed against him for his stint as CEO of Hallaburtan corporation. So I don't know who in this Administration would be good to have talk about business ethics, but the President and the VP are not without taint at this time.