Jeb Bush's Ties to Terrorists and Corrupt Cuban Exiles

   

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Today, President Obama announced the historic news that he is moving to normalize relations with Cuba. This move comes after 50 years of failed U.S. policy that attempted to undermine the Cuban Revolution by isolating the island and keeping Cubans and Americans apart. It didn't work, ensured Cuba would remain economically dependent on the Soviet Union for decades, and delayed the day when the revolution's original promise will be fulfilled and true democracy will come to Cuba.

The wealthy, right-wing Cuban exiles who fled the revolution have had outsized influence on U.S. politics ever since the early 1960s. And Republican politicians in Florida have long cozied up to them. Which brings us to almost-declared GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush. Jeb's political connections are as shady as his father's and brother's were before him. While building his political and financial career in Florida, Jeb Bush became tightly linked to some of the most corrupt, far-right members of the Cuban exile community.

As reported by award-winning investigative journalist Ann Louise Bardach in the book Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana (2002):

"The Bush family connections go back to 1984 when Jeb Bush began a close association with Camilo Padreda, a former intelligence officer with the Batista dictatorship overthrown by Fidel Castro. Jeb Bush was then the chairman of the Dade county Republican party and Padreda its finance chairman. Padreda had earlier been indicted on a $500,000 embezzlement charge along with a fellow exile, Hernandez Cartaya, but the charges were dropped, reportedly after the CIA stated that Cartaya had worked for them. Padreda later pleaded guilty to defrauding the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development of millions of dollars during the 1980s.

Jeb Bush was also on the payroll in the 80s of the prominent Cuban exile Miguel Recarey, who had earlier assisted the CIA in attempts to assassinate President Castro. Recarey, who ran International Medical Centres (IMC), employed Bush as a real estate consultant and paid him a $75,000 fee for finding the company a new location, although the move never took place, which raised questions at the time. Jeb Bush did, however, lobby the Reagan/Bush administration vigorously and successfully on behalf of Recarey and IMC. "I want to be very wealthy," Jeb Bush told the Miami News when questioned during that period.

In 1985, Jeb Bush acted as a conduit on behalf of supporters of the Nicaraguan contras with his father, then the vice-president, and helped arrange for IMC to provide free medical treatment for the contras. Recarey was later charged with massive Medicare fraud but fled the US before his trial and is now a fugitive."

Jeb Bush's most controversial connection to right-wing Cuban exiles may be convicted terrorist Orlando Bosch, who died in 2011.

"At the request of Jeb, President George H.W. Bush intervened in 1989 to release the convicted Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch from prison and then granted him US residency. According to the Justice Department in George Bush Sr's administration, Bosch had participated in more than 30 terrorist acts. He was convicted of firing a rocket into a Polish ship which was on passage to Cuba. He was also implicated in the 1976 blowing-up of a Cubana plane flying to Havana from Venezuela in which all 73 civilians on board were killed.

CIA memorandums strongly suggest, according to Bardach's book, that Bosch was one of the conspirators, and quotes the then secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, as writing that the "US government had been planning to suggest Bosch's deportation before Cubana airlines crash took place for his suspected involvement in other terrorist acts and violation of his parole."

This is the company Jeb Bush kept during his rise to political power. It shows a stunning lack of judgment and tolerance for corruption that by itself should be enough to disqualify him from high office. But most voters will never hear of these episodes from Jeb's past. His last name alone ensures he can't be ruled out as a serious contender for the 2016 GOP nomination.

#cuba #jebbush #havana #orlandobosch #election2016 #florida #BushClintonDynasties

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The Skeletons in Jeb Bush's Closet

   

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Jeb Bush is gearing up for his own presidential run, hoping to take advantage of Hillary Clinton being the likely Democratic nominee in 2016. Analysts predict a Bush-Clinton dynasty rematch will be seen as stale and boring by voters, and depress turnout to the extent that a GOP candidate could win nationwide again, despite the nation's browner, less Republican-friendly, changing demographics.

Veteran political journalist Joe Conason recently reminded us there are many things voters don't know yet about Jeb's years in Florida, from his shady business dealings to his tenure as an extremely right-wing Governor. For example:

"If Bush runs, extremism and corruption in the Sunshine State during his tenure will provide ample fodder for investigative reporters and primary opponents, as will many episodes in his long business career. Five months after he left the governor's mansion in 2007, he joined Lehman Brothers as a 'consultant.' No doubt he was well-compensated, as reporters may learn if and when he releases his tax returns someday. The following year, Lehman infamously went bust—and left the state of Florida holding about $1 billion worth of bad mortgage investments.

There are many equally fascinating chapters in the Jeb dossier, rooted in his declaration three decades ago that he intended to become 'very wealthy' as a developer and, yes, a 'consultant.' His partners back then included a certain Miguel Recarey, whose International Medical Centers allegedly perpetrated one of history’s biggest Medicare frauds. Indicted by the feds, Recarey fled the country—but not before Jeb placed a call on his behalf to his presidential dad’s health and human services secretary, Margaret Heckler. For serving as the flunky of a crook, he received a generous tip of $75,000 from Recarey, a mob associate."

Today's announcement by Jeb that he would "actively explore" running for President comes as no surprise. The Bush family has been grooming him for the presidency for the past quarter century, and originally planned for him to run in 2000. Until something called democracy got in the way when Jeb lost his first race for Governor of Florida in 1994, thanks to legendary Florida Democrat Lawton Chiles. Jeb had to wait to win until his second try in 1998, the same year George W. was re-elected to the top job in Texas. Which is how W. ended up with just enough experience mis-governing a large red state to be a credible GOP contender for the 2000 nomination.

And we all know how that turned out. After the debacle of W.'s presidency, why would anyone vote for another Bush? Unfortunately, history fades fast in America, even more so now that we're living in a 24-7 news cycle when the latest shiny distraction is all that seems to matter. As Conason warns, "If Jeb runs for president, it will be fascinating to see whether the mainstream press, which vetted his brother George W. so inadequately during the 2000 presidential race, performs any better this time." America shouldn't count on it.

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Abbie Hoffman, Gone Too Soon: 20 Years Later

   

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Is it surprising that the 20th anniversary of Abbie Hoffman's death this month received scant mention in the media? At a time of economic turmoil, continuing war, and widespread newsroom downsizing and press layoffs, reporters and columnists have other things on their minds.

But it still shows how far back in time the sixties seem in 2009. In the past few weeks, the only passing mention of Abbie Hoffman that a Google search reveals in any major media was a reference to Abbie killing himself in a snide NY Daily News column about the impending 40th anniversary of Woodstock.

It's true that Hoffman was at Woodstock, and his resulting book Woodstock Nation was a crucial artifact of the sixties' most seminal countercultural event. He was shoved off the stage by the Who's Pete Townshend, impatient for him to relinquish the microphone. At the time, Abbie was doing what he did best, rabble rousing the crowd about John Sinclair, a Michigan activist who had been sentenced to ten years in jail for possession of two joints.

But it was two decades ago this month, on April 12, 1989, that Abbie was found dead in his New Hope, PA apartment. The cause was apparently suicide, an estimated 150 phenobarbital pills in his system. Hoffman was only 52.

Abbie was not only the most celebrated and irreverent activist of the 1960s New Left, but a dedicated community organizer and civil rights movement veteran who never gave up trying to change the world.

Relatives and close friends initially rejected the idea that Abbie killed himself, holding out other possibilities. One was that the overdose was accidental.

"Abbie, as many of you know, was somewhat careless with pills, and we always warned him about this kind of thing," his brother Jack Hoffman told the Associated Press. David Dellinger, one of his Chicago Seven co-defendants, voiced doubts at Hoffman's memorial service. "I don't believe for one moment the suicide thing." Dellinger said he had been in fairly frequent touch with Hoffman, who had "numerous plans for the future."

As reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Abbie's daughter Ilya "felt that the absence of a note was a telling sign that her father did not kill himself." "For a writer not to leave a note...I mean, he wrote everything down, everything," she said. "No one in our family believes he committed suicide," added Abbie's son Andrew at the Bucks County, PA coroner's news conference where the preliminary autopsy results were announced.

According to writer Marc Catone, some friends "claim that it was side effects from a new medication that may have contributed to the state of mind leading to his death. Others suspect a more sinister situation in which Abbie was murdered, but made to look as if he had taken his own life."

It is undeniable that Abbie was a thorn in the side of the US power structure as one of CIA's most prominent critics. As Catone puts it, "in the late 1980s, Abbie became quite a visible figure on the lecture circuit, detailing the illegal activities of the CIA, particularly in the wake of the Iran/Contra 'arms for drugs' scandal of the Reagan Administration." His brother Jack echoed these feelings, reminding the Philadelphia Inquirer that "his brother's controversial life led him to take many risks and earned him some powerful enemies."

"Hoffman's brother, Jack, was adamant yesterday in his refusal to believe Abbie would have gone without a word, at a time when their elderly mother, Florence, 83, was suffering from a recurrence of lymphatic cancer...'He played with death a lot. Look who he was. There was always someone around the corner,' Jack Hoffman said. 'It's not a simple suicide in my mind, in my heart, in my head,' he said. 'There are too many unanswered questions.'"

In 1994, Jack Hoffman released a book about Abbie, titled Run, Run, Run: The Lives of Abbie Hoffman. After exhaustive research, he concluded Abbie probably did kill himself, overwhelmed by his poorly-medicated bipolar disorder during a particularly bleak state of depression. "This book is a coming to terms with the contradictory emotions and the questions I had after Abbie committed suicide," said Jack Hoffman, "and the guilt."

I met Abbie in 1987, when I shook his hand after hearing him speak at Brown University alongside Timothy Leary, and will always regret not taking him up on his offer to come rap with him and some other young activists at a nearby coffeehouse. Not content to rest on his legendary sixties laurels, during his last few years he tried to help spark a revival of the student left. The thing that shook Abbie up the most about the 1988 presidential race was how, in his words, "Students went three to one for Bush. That was the most depressing part of the election for me."

Barely six months after his death, in October 1989, his dream was partially realized when 1,700 student environmental activists came to UNC-Chapel Hill for Threshold, the Student Environmental Action Coalition's first national conference. It was the largest gathering of student activists since the demise of SDS in 1969. SEAC chapters sprung up at 2000 colleges and high schools around the country, and SEAC spent the next several years helping rebuild student organizing on US campuses.

The Student Action Union, a national student activist group that Abbie advised and promoted, had brought organizers to Chapel Hill the previous year, in July, 1988, for a "Unity Meeting" that followed on the heels of the SAU's National Student Convention, held at Rutgers in February, 1988. That meeting was one of the inspirations in the minds of SEAC activists when they began planning for their own national conference the following year, and the rest was history.

In what may have been his last print interview, conducted in February, 1989, Abbie said he'd like to be remembered as "An American teacher. Teaching by the act."

On April 6, 1989, six days before he died, Abbie spoke to a crowd of students at Vanderbilt University and delivered a powerful message about how people who care enough can bring about change:

"In the 1960s, apartheid was driven out of America...We didn't end racism, but we ended legal segregation. We ended the idea that you can send a million soldiers ten thousand miles away to fight in a war that the people do not support. We ended the idea that women are second-class citizens. The big battles that were won in that period of civil war and strife you cannot reverse. We were young, we were reckless, we were arrogant, silly, headstrong...and we were right. I regret nothing!"

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Top 5 Reasons Not To Re-Elect George H.W. Bush

No. 5 - His doctor says he should get some rest.

No. 4 - The Lying-About-Being-A-War-Hero Thing.

No. 3 - He cheats on his wife.

No. 2 - Harry Blackmun is 84 years old.

No. 1 - If we vote him out, that's one new job created.

The State of the Economy is Lousy

The state of the economy is lousy. Businesses are scaling back their workforces left and right. IBM. General Motors. Xerox. TRW.

500,000 less homes were built this year (1991) than in 1988. 2.2 million less cars were sold. 1.7 more million people are out of work.

And as for the polls? According to a Time/CNN poll conducted November 26, 1991, only 46% of Americans approve of the way George Bush is handling his job as President. A paltry 18% think Bush is doing a good job of handling the economy.

Even more sobering for those who think government can do something about this crisis is that the estimated budget deficit for 1992 is $348 billion, more than twice the $155 billion deficit our country faced when Ronald Reagan left office three years ago.

What's to be done?

One solution is to shift more of the tax burden from middle and working class taxpayers to the wealthy, who can afford a slightly larger tax bite. Businesses are saying don't increase our corporate taxes, or else we'll cut back on jobs. But it's foolish to assume a minor increase in personal taxes for wealthy business owners would cause such financial ruin that their businesses would in turn be shut down. What harms business the most is a decrease in the demand for its products and services, caused by a loss of discretionary spending power by the broader middle and working classes.

SEAC members lobby against Bush's National Energy Strategy

"18 SEAC members travel to Washington to lobby against National Energy Strategy," Daily Tar Heel, 4/16/91

By Natarsha Witherspoon, Staff Writer

Eighteen members of the UNC Student Environmental Action Coalition lobbied on Capitol Hill on Friday against President Bush's energy strategy. Lisa Abbott, co-chairwoman of SEAC, said the National Day of Action involved students from across the country. "I think it was the first time many UNC students lobbied on the Capitol and said what they believed in and were listened to," she said. Ericka Kurz, SEAC's national campaign coordinator, said about 150 students attended the rally, which was part of SEAC's "Energy Independence" campaign.

Part of Bush's National Energy Strategy calls for opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and coastal areas of North Carolina for oil drilling. Abbott said the strategy also includes deregulating the nuclear industry, which would take away the power of citizens to prevent the operation of nuclear waste dumps and sites. SEAC members want Congress to make energy conservation and finding renewable energy sources their priority, she said. "The strategy never mentions fuel efficiency," she said. "It is lip service. There is no specific funding for the conservation of energy." Randy Viscio, SEAC's national outreach coordinator, said the group wanted Congress to pass the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency Bill, which would raise the average fuel mileage of new cars from 26 miles per gallon to 40-45 miles per gallon.

Abbott said, "We asked our representatives to co-sponsor a bill in the House and Senate saying our country needs to reduce our dependency on oil. It was exciting to see students from all over the country," she said. A training session gave the students tips on lobbying, she said.

The students from UNC met with environmental aides of Sen. Terry .Sanford, Rep. David Price and Rep. Charlie Rose, all of North Carolina, Abbott said. Other students from UNC-Greensboro spoke with N.C. Sen. Jesse Helms' aides, she said. "The representatives were receptive and knowledgeable about the issues," she said.

"I think the strategy Bush has proposed, the National Energy Strategy, will be passed piece by piece," she said. "If it was to be adopted we could have one of the biggest disasters we could ever imagine in this country. It would destroy our land and leave us more dependent on fossil fuels and nuclear power." Viscio said the lobbying efforts included letters, phone calls and petitions. The rally was really a small part of the campaign, he said. Kurz said SEAC was considering holding a national conference that would concentrate on the energy campaign. "Students at UNC have done a great job locally, writing 30 letters," she said. SEAC has more than 200 chapters at colleges nationwide, with its national office located in Chapel Hill on Franklin Street.

Tell the Bush Administration what we think about his National Energy Tragedy!

Threshold (SEAC national magazine), pages 24-25 (centerfold), March 1991

poster designed by Ericka Kurz
SEAC National Campaign Coordinator

WE DEMAND:
conservation
renewables
energy efficiency
RIGHT NOW.

SEAC's Energy Independence Campaign (by Ericka Kurz)

Threshold (SEAC national magazine), page 10, March 1991

by Ericka Kurz
SEAC National Campaign Coordinator

Getting as many people as possible to sign onto the Declaration of Energy Independence (an economics and energy equivalent to the original Declaration of Independence) will serve as a petition for citizens' input into our National Energy Strategy (NES), which has been denied by the President and his administration...

NATIONAL ACTION FOR ENERGY INDEPENDENCE
In D.C. plus other locations (Friday, April 12)
AND WEEKEND GATHERING (Sat/Sun, Apr. 13/14)

We SEACsters will be gathering in D.C. for some stunts, marching, speaking-out, and grassroots lobbying.

We'll be letting Congress, President Bush and the nation know that our generation demands an end to the oil and nuclear empires and the beginning of a system of democratic, efficient, renewable energy!

We'll present Congress with our Declaration of Energy Independence, then spend Saturday and Sunday in D.C. strategizing for the future of our Energy Independence Campaign...

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Why the Children of the 80s Will Make The 90s Look Like the 60s

(Editor's note from 2013: this analysis got the demographics wrong, because in 1987 I didn't realize I was smack dab in the middle of Gen X, the children of the baby bust, and smallest generational cohort of modern times. The millennials were the kids I was unwittingly referring to, and their influence wouldn't be felt until the year 2000. I got the name of Reagan's successor wrong, but not the fact that it would be another conservative Republican. I predicted military involvement in Panama two years ahead of our 1989 invasion, and intervention in the Middle East, although George H.W. Bush plunged us into war with Iraq, not Iran. Also, AIDS never became a health crisis that threatened the hetrosexual majority in the U.S., but I based that prediction on information available at the time. But for all the mass media stereotypes about our generation being a slacker nation, the early to mid 90s saw more student activism flower than at any time since the 60s, so in that respect I called it right.)

Born to the most populous generation our country has ever known, the sons and daughters of most "baby boomers" are only now amidst their stormy adolescence. I feel that a definite parallel can be drawn between American social conditions of the 1950s and 1980s, and therefore see no reason why large numbers of this "boomlet" might not soon participate in another wide ranging and significant counterculture explosion. Hey, the signs are there....and in the wake of eight long years of Reaganism a double-barreled blast of radicalism may be just what is needed to rid this country of irrationalism and injustice.

For the youth of this country, the 1950s were smothered by an atmosphere of overwhelming conformity, apathy and boredom. Many Americans of this period viewed themselves as living in an affluent, stable society, in which success was guaranteed to those who ingrained themselves within the system. This attitude stifled both creativity and dissent, in addition to fostering a society founded on materialistic ideals. A look at our own time reveals that recently, these conditions have reappeared within our nation. Young people of the 1980s are passive observers, uninformed about matters of concern. Like their predecessors of the 1950s, they are pre-beatnik, pre-radical, pre-hippie youngsters who within ten years, assuming all goes as predicted here, will play an active role in this country's next wave of mass rebellion/resistance.

The youthful idealism of many baby boomers was shattered during the 1960s by several key events, not the least of which were the massive and continuous U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. I do not think that the turbulent 1990s will explode in reaction to either a catalyzing event the likes of JFK's untimely death, nor a common cause such as a straightforward desire to end a specific war. Rather, children of the 1980s will rebel when the tide of irrationality is simply too much to bear....or rather, in response to a combination of unfortunate conditions. I foresee the conservative policies and measures which will be implemented by the Dole administration following the Senator's ascension to our presidency in 1988 as one of these conditions; the crisis which will arise as the AIDS virus completely infiltrates our nation's heterosexual population (and deaths multiply tenfold, into the hundreds of thousands) as another; and direct military involvement in many global areas (including the Phillipines, Iran, and Panama) as still more developments which might radicalize the youth of our time.

So, will (among other things) a backlash against the realization that we have elected another leader in pursuit of ill-minded policies spark this next rebellious wave of which I speak? Obviously the American Left is currently but a shriveled ghost of its past, and certainly in no position to pose a serious threat to any misguided champion of conservatism in 1988. Returning to our 1950s-1980s parallel, I would place the state of our nation in A.D. 1987 as corresponding approximately with that of 1960. Only recently has the renewed voice of youthful (and not-so-youthful) protest begun to be heard, and as the next few years unfold, other conditions which fostered the spirit of rebellion may duplicate themselves as well. Already there are other student revolutions taking place in far-flung nations for American radicals of tomorrow to emulate....witness South Korea, for one. Young, bearded visionaries make good, liberate homelands....sound familiar? Is Nicaragua another Cuba in its salad days, before Fidel lost his mind....in other words, a working socialist society which may inspire countless numbers of disaffected youth? Born and raised in the 1980s, American youth of today will come of age in the 1990s amidst an explosion the likes of which has been absent from our society for far too long.