I'm Crazy Georgie! My prices are I-N-S-A-N-E!

[arendt]

I'm Crazy Georgie! My prices are I-N-S-A-N-E!
by arendt

...."I'm Crazy Eddie! My prices are I-N-S-A-N-E!"

....If you were anywhere near the East Coast in the 1980s, you undoubtedly saw those TV
....commercials. The raucous ads saturated the airwaves in the tri-state area and helped
....Crazy Eddie's quickly become the dominant consumer electronics retailer in New York,
....New Jersey and Connecticut.

....As it turned out, "Crazy" Eddie Antar, who was behind one of the twentieth century's
....most infamous financial statement frauds, wasn't crazy at all—just crooked...The real
....Eddie Antar didn't have time for acting. He and members of his family were too busy
....engineering a $120 million rip-off. Much of the ill-gotten loot was placed in secret
....overseas bank accounts. Once discovered, Antar spent several years on the lam and
....another several behind bars. According to a senior SEC official, "This may not be the
....biggest fraud of all time, but for outrageousness, it is going to be very hard to beat."

- Joseph T. Wells, "So That's Why its Called a Pyramid Scheme"
....at the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, October, 2000.
....http://www.acfe.com/fraud/view.asp?ArticleID=31

Well, it looks like the folks at the ACFE have a new winner for outrageous pyramid scheming:
George W. Bush and his I-N-S-A-N-E giveaway prices on the American government and the
American middle class. He is literally giving away the fruits of 200 years of American labor to transnational corporations and insider billionaires - to anyone who can pay his insanely low prices.
Now, Jill Consumer (nee Citizen) can't afford these prices, but the rich and powerful can.

As the saying goes in Washington: a million buys a billion. That is, a million dollars of lobbying
buys a billion dollars worth of government largesse. That largesse may be corporate welfare, bridges
to nowhere, targeted tax exemptions, R&D credits, whatever. Its all a big pig trough to Crazy
Georgie.

Just like any Pyramid Scheme, the customers get a good deal, too good a deal; and the
creditors get screwed. In Georgie's case, the screwees are the American middle class and
their SOL descendents ad infinitum.

As Josh Marshall noted during the 2003 Medicare Bill, Georgie is running a "bustout". A bustout happens
when the mob gets control of a legitimate business. They immediately start giving inventory away to
their partners in crime. Then they use the good credit of the existing business to stock up on lots more
inventory, which they have no intention of paying for. Having handled the input side, they now
move to the output side. They stop paying their bills. They milk this scheme as long as possible,
then bail out, leaving the gutted husk of the business behind.

If I had more time, I would do a commercial:

....Weather Service Privatization - a few million to Rick Santorum
....Energy Ponzi Schemes ala Enron - a few tens of milliions from Ken Lay
....Get out of Jail Free card for above - price yet to be determined
....$250M bridges to nowhere - whatever it costs to medicate Ted Stevens
....$50B more tax cuts for the rich - $70B of program cuts for the rest of us
....(feel free to add your item here!! - arendt)

....All these deals and more. Make me an offer. No offer is too crazy to reject. After all, I'm in
....a bit of a jam right now, and I need some more cash to buy my way out.

----

I think that Bush as a sweet-talking, "just folks" con man should resonate with even the dumbest WalMart shopper. They sure see enough of that type in their wretched existence. I guess they are
resigned to always being cheated. So ends the American middle class. Democracy stolen and their
treasury looted because they were too busy getting a deal on a toaster oven at Target.

You want some real irony? It turns out that Michael Chertoff, the new head of Fatherland Security,
made his name as the prosecutor of Crazy Eddie. It appears that, in the tradition of self-made
con-men everywhere, he has put to good use the lessons he learned from those who went
before him. By published accounts, DHS is a morass of style-over-substance bureaucracy busy
handing out no-oversight contracts to the usual suspects in the Bush Crime Family.

Stick in a fork. America is done.

[brokensymmetry]

1. Nominated. Everyone needs to see this.

I think you've analyzed the situation perfectly. When * is finished, we'll have
nothing but a husk left.

[Octafish]

2. Bush Crime Family did it during the Savings and Loan fiasco.

That cost US taxpayers over a trillion dollars, with interest.

http://www.williambowles.info/bush/Silverado.htm


The beneficiaries were the usual suspects: the politically connected (from both parties), the CIA and the Mafia.

Gee. One name runs in all those circles.


The Family that Preys Together

http://mediafilter.org/caq/BushFamilyPreys.html

[arendt]

3. Just a coincidence. Nothing to see here. Move along. n/t

[Karenina]

5. Funny how that works...

[Octafish]

16. ...It's the way of the world.

Their hell.

Our sandbox.

Big Money, The Far Right Agenda, and Neo-Nazism: Part One of a Two-Part Series

Introduction

George Walker Bush may very well be the next president of the United States. Yet a recent poll in Texas shows that few people here can think of a good reason why he should be. Few of those polled could cite a single thing he's accomplished as Governor of Texas that counts as a good reason why he should be President of the United States. Other than looking good and sounding good with his serviceable Spanish, Governor Bush just doesn't seem to have much more to show for his experience as Governor of Texas, his only real political experience.

Of course, Real Power in Texas is just not found in the Governor's Mansion, so one might excuse George W. for his lack of actual governing experience. Real Power is found in the Big Money behind Texas Legislators who end up representing the Big Money that helped them get to the State Legislature in the first place. These Big Money Legislators go their merry way, making decisions effectively channeling billions of dollars of state and federal funds one way or another to make their Big Money supporters even richer. All along, of course, the poor in Texas just keep getting poorer, and civil rights for minorities and women keep getting lost in every shuffle with the State of Texas.

Right now, Real Power and Big Money interests, particularly those in Texas, see ways of getting their man elected President of the United States. George W. is their man, even though he sometimes gives the appearance of someone who isn’t entirely sure he really wants to be President. Nonetheless, just as his father before him, George W. dances to the tune of those Big Money interests. Those Big Money interests have used the latest Texas Legislative session to "punch" George W.'s "ticket" to give him the appearance of having the political experience necessary to be President of the United States. They have punched his ticket with legislation designed to appeal especially to the Far Right--over the bodies of young pregnant women seeking abortions, and over the bodies of the poor and minorities, especially children.

In terms of personal and political appearances, right now George W. stands head and shoulders above his nearest Republican and Democratic contenders. But the name of the presidential high stakes game is "bait and switch"; it is a game of appearances versus reality and manipulating appearances so that one side wins. It's actually a game of figuring out how to sell a "pig in a poke" to the majority of voters. And George W. is a pig in a poke that Big Money in Texas wants to sell to America, especially to women, the burgeoning Hispanic population, and to the vast Middle Class.

But women, the poor, and minorities had better take a hard look at what George W. Bush does and listen less to what he says, particularly when he talks about being a "compassionate conservative." All of us had better look very closely at those who effectively call his tune–even while he claims to be "his own man." We'd all better look behind George W. to see exactly who those Real Power interests are that really pull his strings to see very clearly what they stand for.

CONTINUED...

http://www.feminista.com/archives/v3n3/estep.html

<.div>

Frog march them all.

[arendt]

7. Why did the usage of BCF drop off? Its truer than ever...

the Bush Administration is full of bagmen, lobbyists, house-boat and Jaguar grabbing
Congressmen, insider trading Senators,...and they all pay their tithe to the "capo di tutti capi",
that is the Bush/Cheney campaign to rule America.

Washington looks like Cicero, IL, except that they've had the goods on Bush many times
and let him get away:
...insider trading at Harken Energy
...illegal transaction to get control of Houston Astros
...lying to start a war of aggression
...lying about spying on Americans

The fix is in for this guy - a big, fat Federalist Society fix. Let's make the President a King.

Traitors and gangsters all.

arendt

[Octafish]

15. BCF. BFEE. BTCE. BushCo. Bush Mafia.

They're all just tentacles of the Octopus they serve.

Hey, arendt! Bet ya know that Bush got a federal prosecutor removed who was investigating Abramoff in the South Pacific...

Demotion of a Prosecutor Is Investigated

By Philip Shenon, The New York Times
September 27, 2005

The Justice Department's inspector general and the F.B.I. are looking into the demotion of a veteran federal prosecutor whose reassignment nearly three years ago shut down a criminal investigation of the Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, current and former department officials report.

They said investigators had questioned whether the demotion of the prosecutor, Frederick A. Black, in November 2002 was related to his alert to Justice Department officials days earlier that he was investigating Mr. Abramoff. The lobbyist is a major Republican Party fund-raiser and a close friend of several Congressional leaders.

Colleagues said the demotion of Mr. Black, the acting United States attorney in Guam, and a subsequent order barring him from pursuing public corruption cases brought an end to his inquiry into Mr. Abramoff's lobbying work for some Guam judges.

Colleagues of Mr. Black, who had run the federal prosecutor's office in Guam for 12 years, spoke on condition of anonymity because of Justice Department rules that bar employees from talking to reporters. They said F.B.I. agents questioned several people in Guam and Washington this summer about whether Mr. Abramoff or his friends in the Bush administration had pushed for Mr. Black's removal. Mr. Abramoff's internal e-mail messages show that he boasted to clients about what he described as his close ties to John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, and others at the department.

Mr. Black's colleagues said that similar questions had been raised by investigators for the Justice Department's inspector general's office, which serves as the department's internal watchdog.

Spokesmen for the department in Washington have said there was nothing unusual about the timing of Mr. Black's reassignment in 2002. They said it was appropriate for the Bush administration to want to replace him with a permanent, Senate-confirmed United States attorney.

http://www.citizensforethics.org/press/pressclip.php?view=747

CONTINUED...

The best money government can swipe.

[peekaloo]

4. kick nt

[ninkasi]

6. Nominated...

I'm afraid you're right.

[arendt]

8. Bedtime kick n/t

[earth mom]

9. Once the U.S. is totally gutted then the World Bank takes over...

and lays claim to all our natural resources. There was a thread about this months and months ago...don't know if I can find it now.

Welcome to the new U.S. of A: a third world country rife with poverty. :grr:

[arendt]

10. Missed that thread, but it goes along with my corporate/fundie thesis...

corporations loot America; fundies get to rule over the wreckage.

Coming closer to reality every day. Makes me sick. Especially the moron
30% who cheer as Georgie fucks them in the ass.

arendt

[Karenina]

14. THAT'S the part I don't get.

All kinds of Americans must be feeling the searing pain of unwanted sodomy right about these times...

I'm always wondering just WHAT it will take having truly believed Enron and BCCI would take it down. Dumb me. :shrug:

[ComerPerro]

11. Great post

[SammyWinstonJack]

12. Mission Accomplished.

:grr:

[arendt]

13. one last kick n/t

[Karenina]

17. And another!

The Rolling Stones been doin' this for decades! :kick:

[linazelle]

18. .