10-18-2004, 07:35 PM
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#10 (permalink)
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Banned
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Originally Posted by onetime2
Just as it's alright for Kerry and his wife to avoid paying taxes through all legal means available, it is legal for Bush to do the same. The difference of course, is that Kerry is on the stump saying that the rich should be paying more while he chooses not to.
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No, onetime2, the difference is that there is considerable evidence that Bush
used the authority and influence of his office of Governor of Texas to trade what was in the best interest of the people of Texas whose interest should have been first and foremost to him, for personal enrichment. The entirety of Bush's wealth comes from the sale of that baseball team. Did you review the linked copy of Bush's 1998 tax return, he filed a return that misrepresented his earned income as a lower tax rated long term capital gain. Here is some more reporting on this accusation.......where are your linked excerpts to refute this ?
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FORTUNE'S CHILD
As George W. Bush's wealthy admirers continue to pack cash into the largest presidential war chest in American history (at last count a staggering $58 million). perhaps the time is ripe to examine how the would-be president became rich himself--quite rich, in fact, if not by the standards of H. Ross Perot or Steve Forbes, at least by the measure of most Americans. Bush, who received $15 million for his share of the Texas Rangers franchise, would be the richest Democratic or Republican nominee since Lyndon Johnson. On the June 1998 day that the baseball team was sold, Bush told reporters, "When it is all said and done, I will have made more money than I ever dreamed ..."
Indeed. The sum represented an enviable 2,400 percent increase on the $606,000 investment Bush had made in the team nine years earlier, with borrowed money, and a considerable improvement on his own record of losing millions invested by others. Together with his elation about the windfall there may also have been a feeling of vindication for the eldest scion of the Bush family. Although twice elected governor of Texas (in 1994 and again in 1998), the son known as "Dubya" had lived through nearly two decades of business failures, embarrassing bailouts, and eyebrow-raising favors that had besmirched his family's reputation..................(Long article, but it covers UTIMCO and Bush's relationship with Tom Hicks and wealthy Texas Bush campaign contributors <a href="http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1111/is_1797_300/ai_59086099">Notes On A Native Son</a>
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How Is Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Like George W. Bush?
When it comes to real estate, he likes to play crony capitalism, too.
By Jack Shafer
Posted Tuesday, July 16, 2002, at 2:39 PM PT
New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof properly excoriates George W. Bush today ("Bush and the Texas Land Grab") as a practitioner of "crony capitalism." In the early '90s, Bush and his Texas Rangers business partners convinced local government to help them acquire land at a steep discount and to subsidize the actual construction of their new ballpark. Kristof writes:
Essentially, Mr. Bush and the owners' group he led bullied and misled the city into raising taxes to build a $200 million stadium that in effect would be handed over to the Rangers. As part of the deal, the city would even confiscate land from private owners so that the Rangers owners could engage in real estate speculation.
"It was a $200 million transfer to Bush and Rangers owners," complains Jim Runzheimer, an anti-tax campaigner in Arlington.
Elsewhere on the same page, Paul Krugman similarly chronicles the Bush and Rangers shakedown of local government in "Steps to Wealth."
Kristof and Krugman, I must say, have Bush dead to rights. And I can only hope that the columnists will continue their muckraking by publicizing a similar case of crony capitalism being practiced in New York City by Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s New York Times Co., which publishes the Times, and its real estate partner Forest City Ratner Companies. <a href="http://slate.msn.com/?id=2068127">http://slate.msn.com/?id=2068127</a>
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