Paul O'Neill confesses

[Lil Kim]

Not that any of this is at all surprising at this point, but hear it is from a high up inside source (shades of David Stockman?).

If anyone would listen to him, Paul O'Neill thought, Dick Cheney would. The two had served together during the Ford Administration, and now as the Treasury Secretary fought a losing battle against another round of tax cuts, he figured that his longtime colleague would give him a hearing.

O'Neill had been preaching that a fiscal crisis was looming and more tax cuts would exacerbate it. But others in the White House saw a chance to capitalize on the historic Republican congressional gains in the 2002 elections. Surely, Cheney would not be so smug. He would hear O'Neill out. In an economic meeting in the Vice President's office, O'Neill started pitching, describing how the numbers showed that growing budget deficits threatened the economy. Cheney cut him off. "Reagan proved deficits don't matter," he said. O'Neill was too dumbfounded to respond. Cheney continued: "We won the midterms. This is our due."

A month later, Paul O'Neill was fired, ending the rocky two-year tenure of Bush's first Treasury Secretary, who became known for his candid statements and the controversies that followed them. Rarely had a person who spoke so freely been embedded so high in an Administration that valued frank public remarks so little.

Full article: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040119-574809,00.html

[lcordero]

1. LMAO

I hope this turns out to be the year of the disgruntled employee:evilgrin:

[Gysgt213]

2. If you lie to the american people you keep your job. If you tell Bush the

truth your out of there and fast.

[izzie]

4. Powell may as well be gone. He, Bush, has a nice yes man in Rice.

Bad business to always hear what you want to hear. We have Saddam and Hitler that ruled like that also.Many do rule like that and it never turns out good for them or their 'subjects"

[johnlal]

5. Investigations

The White House has been dragging its feet in the investigation of the Valerie Plame leak. Now, after Paul O'Neill told us everything we already knew (or suspected) about Bush, they want a full scale investigation. Hypocrisy!

[doubleyoi]

3. bush's token "real businessman"

you can just hear the behind the scenes talk when O'Neill's name was being floated for Treasury Secretary: "Let's be careful here, this guy is an actual SUCCESSFUL businessman, can we really count on him? I mean, he's gonna know when we're full of it, and let's face it, none of us could run a real honest-to-goodness, non-crony capitalism, non-government connection/government trough kind of business."
Cheney, Snow, Bush, Ted White, etc. The whole administration is oozing bad businessmen or businessmen who owe all their success to their political lives, you KNEW O'Neill was not going to last.