Yes, we are talking about the presidency of the United States but no, it is has nothing to do with Frank Underwood, not this time (even if you can spot a young Derek Cecil, don’t be confused).
In the movie Recount (2008) Kevin Spacey is Ron Klain, the former chief of Staff to Vice President Al Gore, who tries to uncover the truth during the 2000 presidential election which lead to the historical controversy about irregularities in the Florida vote count.
“No matter how hard the loss, defeat may serve as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out” Al Gore
All the MK-Ultra experiments were done in the PNW and parts of Canada right north of the PNW border, including dropping aerosolized LSD on the local population. American politics has been controlled by the thoughts and opinions of the PNW collective intelligence since 2000, starting with the wealthy academics, and finally ending with the poorly educated abused children whose parents never stopped experimenting on them.
NEW YORK (AP) — Former U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who nearly won the vice presidency on the Democratic ticket with Al Gore in t
AP, via NewsNation Now:
NEW YORK (AP) — Former U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who nearly won the vice presidency on the Democratic ticket with Al Gore in the disputed 2000 election and who almost became Republican John McCain’s running mate eight years later, has died, according to a statement issued by his family.
Lieberman died in New York City on Wednesday due to complications from a fall, the statement said. He was 82.
The Democrat-turned-independent was never shy about veering from the party line.
Lieberman’s independent streak and especially his needling of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential contest rankled many Democrats, the party he aligned with in the Senate. Yet his support for gay rights, civil rights, abortion rights and environmental causes at times won him the praise of many liberals over the years.
Lieberman came tantalizingly close to winning the vice presidency in the contentious 2000 presidential contest that was decided by a 537-vote margin victory for George W. Bush in Florida after a drawn-out recount, legal challenges and a Supreme Court decision. He was the first Jewish candidate on a major party’s presidential ticket and would have been the first Jewish vice president.
He was also the first national Democrat to publicly criticize President Bill Clinton for his extramarital affair with a White House intern.
Lieberman sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 but dropped out after a weak showing in the early primaries. Four years later, he was an independent who was nearly chosen to be McCain’s running mate. He and McCain were close pals who shared hawkish views on military and national security matters.
McCain was leaning strongly toward choosing Lieberman for the ticket as the 2008 GOP convention neared, but he chose Sarah Palin at the last minute after “ferocious” blowback from conservatives over Lieberman’s liberal record, according to Steve Schmidt, who managed McCain’s campaign.
Lieberman generated controversy in 1998 when he scolded Clinton, his friend of many years, for “disgraceful behavior” in an explosive speech on the Senate floor during the height of the scandal over his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Yet Lieberman later voted against the impeachment of Clinton.
[...]
Privately, some Democrats were often less charitable about Lieberman’s forays across party lines, which they saw as disloyal. He bolted his party and turned independent after a 2006 Senate primary loss in Connecticut.
Lieberman’s strong support of the Iraq War hurt his statewide popularity. Democrats rejected Lieberman and handed the 2006 primary to a political newcomer and an anti-war candidate, Ned Lamont.
Defying Democratic leaders and friends, Lieberman ran successfully for reelection as an independent and drew support from some Republican allies. Lieberman won praise from the White House and fundraising help from prominent Republicans, such as then-New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who himself later ran as an independent.
Lieberman made his Senate experience and congressional clout a strong selling point, saying he’d fight hard for the state’s defense jobs and its fair share of federal largesse. The strategy paid off.
Lieberman won reelection to a fourth term, even though many of his Democratic allies and longtime friends, including former Sen. Chris Dodd, supported Lamont. Lieberman was candid about what he considered a betrayal by old pals such as Dodd, but the two men later reconciled.
After his rebound reelection in 2006, Lieberman decided to caucus with Democrats in the Senate, who let him head a committee in return because they needed his vote to help keep control of the closely divided chamber. But it wasn’t long until Lieberman was showing his independent streak and ruffling his Democratic caucus colleagues.
Despite the decision of Democrats to let him join their caucus as an independent, Lieberman was an enthusiastic backer of McCain in the 2008 presidential contest.
Lieberman’s speech at the 2008 GOP presidential nominating convention criticizing Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, struck a deep nerve with many Democrats.
Lieberman cast Obama as a political show horse, a lightweight with a thin record of accomplishment in the Senate despite his soaring eloquence as a speaker.
[...]
Lieberman tended to vote with Democrats on most issues and was a longtime supporter of abortion rights, a stance that would have proved problematic with conservatives had McCain chosen him as his running mate in 2008.
Former Senator and 2000 Democratic VP pick Joe Lieberman died at 82 today after complications from a fall. In the Senate, Lieberman initially was a Democrat, then became an Independent that caucused with the Democrats as an Independent Democrat. He was the first Jew to run for VP for a major party.
As Trump stokes misinformation and armed supporters take to the streets, observers warn of vigilante violence
Adam Gabbatt at The Guardian:
In late November 2000, hundreds of mostly middle-aged male protesters, dressed in off-the-peg suits and cautious ties, descended on the Miami-Dade polling headquarters in Florida. Shouting, jostling, and punching, they demanded that a recount of ballots for the presidential election be stopped.
The protesters, many of whom were paid Republican operatives, succeeded. A recount of ballots in Florida was abandoned. What became known as the Brooks Brothers riot went down in infamy, and George W Bush became president after a supreme court decision.
In 2020, fears are growing that the US could see an unwanted sequel to the Brooks Brothers debacle – but with more violent participants.
After a year in which armed Donald Trump supporters have besieged state houses across the country and shot and killed Black Lives Matter protesters – and in which Trump has said he will only lose if the election is rigged – a 2020 reboot of the Brooks Brothers stunt could be dangerous.
“Everything is far more amplified or exaggerated than it was 20 years ago,” said Joe Lowndes, professor of political science at the University of Oregon and co-author of Producers, Parasites, Patriots, a book about the changing role of race in rightwing politics.
“In terms of party polarizations, in terms of the Republican shift to the far right and in terms of the Republican party’s open relationship with and courting of far-right groups. This puts us on entirely different grounds.”
Trump supporters have been fed a “steady diet” of misinformation that the election is likely to be stolen by Democrats, Lowndes said. Trump has encouraged supporters to go to voting places to act as “poll watchers”, and on Sunday a group of Trump supporters intimidated early voters at a polling location in Fairfax, Virginia.
“You’ve got thousands of armed vigilantes on the streets this summer, first around these reopen demands [protests clamoring for coronavirus lockdown restrictions to be lifted] at state capitols.”
“Then after that many more of these vigilante far right groups, who are declaring themselves as pro-Trump groups, come out to confront and sometimes menace Black Lives Matter protesters and in a couple of cases kill them,” Lowndes said.
“You can imagine them showing up at election sites or where votes are being counted in election districts in contested states in Michigan, or Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida or wherever else.”
The “Brooks Brothers” moniker for the 2000 agitators came from the sober clothing chain that has clad US presidents. The mostly white, mostly male protesters punched and kicked those in their way, including some Democrats, as they fought to stop the recount in Miami-Dade.
“These were brownshirt tactics,” the Miami-Dade Democratic chairman, Joe Geller, told Time magazine in the days following the riot.
The Miami-Dade county canvassing board shut down its hand recount of presidential election ballots, with at least one of the board’s three members attributing his decision to stop to the Brooks Brothers riots, the New York Times reported.
The Republicans, many of whom had been flown to Florida from Washington, had succeeded. A number of participants were rewarded with jobs at the top levels of Republican politics. Matt Schlapp went on to serve as White House political director under Bush. Garry Malphrus became associate director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. Rory Cooper picked up numerous roles within the Bush administration. Some are still active within GOP politics.
The kinds of Trump supporters who have traveled to protests and statehouses, and might respond to the president’s calls to monitor polling stations, may not enjoy future careers in politics – although there may be some similarities.
“The 2020 version of the Brooks Brothers could potentially be white men, ages between 18 and 40, who are staunch Trump supporters,” said Emmitt Riley, a political scientist and director of the Africana Studies Program at DePauw university.
Riley added: “I think these are the individuals who are warm toward Confederate imagery, toward images like the Confederate flag. These are individuals who are highly racially resentful and individuals who also see whiteness as being under attack.”
The winner of November’s election may not be clear on the night of the vote, given what is expected to be a vast number of postal ballots, adding to what Riley said could be a “perfect storm”.
The 2013 repeal of part of the Voting Rights Act – a historic law designed to eliminate racial discrimination in elections – combined with a president “who continues to undermine the principles of American democracy”, all adds up to a dangerous scenario for the election and the days thereafter, Riley said.
“As a political scientist, I am sounding the alarm that America’s political institutions are at their weakest point that I have ever seen or read about in my life,” he said.
“In the backdrop of not having the protections of the Voting Rights Act, it is highly conceivable that armed militias show up at polling stations in an effort to eliminate voting.”
Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause, an elections watchdog group, said she believes disruption of the voting process is unlikely, but she shared the concerns of others that the counting process could be at risk.
“There are strong laws on voter intimidation,” said Albert. “Counting comes into regular laws around disturbing the police or being in a group; there’s nothing specific on that issue. That’s not to say laws don’t cover it, they do – various laws cover being a nuisance but how that’s interpreted in the situation is going to vary by location.”
Albert stressed that she did not believe it was probable there would be altercations at vote-counting sites, but she said: “I’m fearful of violence in a way that I was not in 2000.”
“We have seen that the rhetoric on the right, both from the president and Republican lawmakers, has encouraged people to take up arms. And whether directly or indirectly, encouraged violence. And that was not happening from George Bush.”
The Brooks Brothers riot of 2000 scenario could be rearing its head again, as the likelihood of right-wing vigilante violence to support keeping Trump in office is pretty high, especially if the election is close.
He made millions in corporate board fees, speaking gigs, and consulting payments from companies that have found their way into legal or financial quagmires.
In 1986, John Ellis Bush joined the five-person board of directors of a new Swiss-owned bank with the fitting name of The Private Bank and Trust. The institution, which was described that year by the Miami Herald as a place “where the money of wealthy foreigners is managed — very discreetly,” served as a fee-based investment bank for wealthy, mostly-Latino investors. The newspaper detailed the firm’s extreme secrecy, noting that upon arriving at the bank, “the general manager or one of his aides will lead you to one of three sparsely furnished conference rooms and will close the door. Under the bank’s rules, officers must meet with clients in secluded offices, not at their desks, where outsiders could see confidential papers.”
Bush, whose father happened to be the vice president of the United States at the time, received $1,200 for his board service before resigning in 1987 to become Florida’s state commerce secretary. Four years later, federal regulators seized The Private Bank. According to the St. Petersburg Times, the government determined it had been “making investments contrary to client instructions and putting funds in companies affiliated with or managed by the bank.” Bush defended his prior tenure, saying, “There were no financial problems for me to be aware of when I was a director.”
A “self-made man”
Eight years ago, Bush — best known by the acronym “Jeb” — departed from Florida’s governor’s mansion determined to boost his $1,288,000 net worth in the private sector. Since, he has made millions in corporate board fees, speaking gigs, and consulting payments — but, much like his tenure before getting into public life, has done so with a series of companies that have found their way into legal or financial quagmires.
Jeb Bush has often been portrayed as a “successful businessman,” but ThinkProgress reviewed Bush’s current and past business record and found a great deal of controversy and struggle. In some cases, the companies have faced financial problems during or after his tenure. In others, people with whom he has had business dealings have ended up in legal hot water. While Bush’s corporate work has not always been publicly disclosed, a substantial percentage of that which has been revealed has proven problematic. Bush’s spokeswoman did not respond to a ThinkProgress request for comment.
In 1994, Bush mounted his unsuccessful maiden campaign for Florida governor, promising an “entrepreneurial” approach to government and offering himself as a “self-made man.” When his Democratic opponent brought up his business record, Bush cried foul. But, a spokeswoman for incumbent Gov. Lawton Chiles (D), who would narrowly narrowly prevail on Election Day, responded: “What [Jeb Bush] calls mudslinging is just shining a light on his past. His record is his business dealings.”
Two decades later, as Bush reportedly considers a potential 2016 presidential run, he is once again focused on making money. In April, Bush’s spokeswoman told the New York Times: “Jeb Bush had a successful career in commercial real estate and business before serving as Florida’s governor. After eight rewarding years in public service leading the state, he is enjoying running his own business again.”
International Medical Centers
In 1992, as President George H. W. Bush was unsuccessfully running for a second term in the White House, Mother Jones did an examination of the his family and its business dealings. In looking into Jeb’s business relationship with Miguel G. Recarey, Jr., the International Medical Centers (IMC) president-turned-international fugitive, a former federal prosecutor told the magazine that “he considered two possibilities — Jeb was either crooked or stupid. At the time, he concluded Jeb was merely stupid.”
Former HHS Secretary Margaret Heckler reportedly contradicted Bush’s claim
CREDIT: U.S. SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
According to the St. Petersburg Times, Recarey paid Bush’s real estate firm $75,000 in 1985, ostensibly for realty work. But IMC never actually purchased a building shown by Bush — who claimed he was unaware of Recarey’s previous arrest record and history of income tax evasion. Bush came to Recarey’s aid in a different way. Under a pilot program, IMC had received an temporary waiver from a rule limiting its maximum percentage of its receipts could come from Medicare and Recarey wanted to renew it. At his request, Bush — whose father was the U.S. Vice President at the time — agreed to contact the Department of HHS to encourage a “fair hearing” for the firm.
Bush has repeatedly claimed that he only contacted a low-level official and sought no special treatment for his client. But two HHS officials testified in 1987 to Congress that Bush had in fact contacted then-HHS Secretary Margaret “Peg” Heckler. In 2012, Heckler herself told the Huffington Post that Jeb Bush had lobbied her and that it had weighed heavily on her thinking on the matter: “He was involved, and I know that his compassion and my sense of conscience and his, I thought, matched, and therefore I was positive, acting upon this.” Federal regulators shut down the insolvent IMC in 1987 and Recarey was indicted for Medicare fraud. He left the country before he could be arrested and remains an international fugitive. In 1998, Bush told the St. Petersburg Times he was not as gullible at 45 as he had been 13 years earlier: “I have to have better radar.”
Bush-El
After helping elect his father president of the United States, Jeb Bush teamed in 1989 with then-Moving Water Industries, Corp. (MWI) president and CEO J. David Eller, to create Bush-El. The eponymous partnership aimed to market MWI’s water pumps internationally. In 2002, the Miami Herald revealed that on one of Bush’s trips to Nigeria to help sell them MWI pumps in 1991, that company’s corporate pilot claimed he saw a suitcase full of cash — an apparent bribe for Nigerian officials. The pilot did not implicate Bush and a Bush spokesman noted inconsistencies in the claims. ”The governor was adamant he was not on an airplane with a suitcase full of cash,” the spokesman said, adding Bush was “unaware of any plane he was on with luggage on it full of cash.”
I made money. That’s the only benefit I can see… Otherwise, it’s been unmitigated grief.
Bush has reportedly said his involvement in the Nigeria effort was conditioned on a private loan being secured (as his father was president at the time and he wanted to avoid any appearance of impropriety). But the company instead went to the U.S. Export-Import Bank for the $74.3 million it needed for the deal. In 1998, after a whistleblower alleged “knowingly false or fraudulent claims” connected to that financing, the Department of Justice filed suit against MWI. The company has steadfastly denied the allegations, but was found liable by a jury last year and fined $580,000 (the MWI has appealed the verdict). Bush was not implicated and was never forced to testify in the case after a federal judge ruled him irrelevant to the case.
Bush said later that the bad publicity from Bush-El had proven highly troublesome for him: “I made money. That’s the only benefit I can see… Otherwise, it’s been unmitigated grief.” While he said he took no money on the Nigeria deal, he made $648,250 on the Bush-El venture, between pump sales in other countries and selling his half-share in the partnership to Eller in 1994, prior to his gubernatorial campaign.
An MWI company spokesman declined to comment for this story.
Ideon
In 1995, Jeb joined the board of directors of Ideon Group, a credit card registry service company run by Paul Kahn. Kahn, who had raised tens of thousands of dollars for Bush’s unsuccessful 1994 campaign, “had grandiose plans for a quirky array of new services — selling credit card perks for golfers, a “Family Protection Network” membership club to help find missing children and a line of Vatican-approved art objects,” as well as a potential Pope-blessed credit card for Catholics, according to the St. Petersburg Times. But the company paid its directors $50,000 annually, plus additional fees for meetings and conference calls and stock options – well above most other companies in Florida were paying at the time. Bush served on the company’s audit committee.
Things headed south for the company, leading to significant layoffs. In 1996, Kahn was removed as CEO and Bush and the board voted to sell Ideon to CUC International. Bush resigned soon after that. And the shareholders of Ideon filed suit against Bush and other directors, alleging stock manipulation. The successor company settled the lawsuits for about $15 million and the Ideon directors avoided having to admit any wrongdoing or pay any of the damages. Bush claimed he did not know of the company’s problems when he joined the board and did everything he could do to save the company.
Lehman Brothers
CREDIT: AP PHOTO/MARK LENNIHAN
In June 2007, five months after his tenure as governor came to an end, Jeb Bush joined the world financial services behemoth Lehman Brothers as a paid consultant. According to the Tampa Bay Times, two months later, Florida’s State Board of Administration’s “$1.4 billion of risky, mortgage-related securities,” predominantly sold by Lehman Brothers, began to tank. A Bush spokeswoman told the paper that his role at the bank did not include any work relating to those investments.
As the company’s financial situation became increasingly precarious, due in large part to the firm’s investments in subprime loans, Bush was dispatched for an unsuccessful last-ditch effort to save Lehman Brothers: he traveled to Mexico to ask billionaire Carlos Slim Helú to make a major investment in the firm. This failed mission was identified in internal emails as “Project Verde.” Lehman Brothers failed in 2008, Florida lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in investments, and the United States economy nearly collapsed as a result of the subprime market implosion — but Bush reaped millions in fees from it and Barclays (which acquired much of its assets after Lehman’s bankruptcy). A bankruptcy examiner in 2010 alleged balance-sheet manipulation by Lehman Brothers. Jeb remains with Barclays today, reportedly receiving a seven-figure compensation.
InnoVida
Late in 2007, co-founder and co-CEO Claudio Osorio recruited Jeb Bush to join InnoVida, a building construction material manufacturer. Though, according to the New York Times, a background check by Bush found that Osorio’s previous company (CHS Electronics) had gone bankrupt, Bush agreed to join the board and his consulting company signed on to represent Osorio’s companies. Between 2007 and 2010, they paid Jeb Bush & Associates $15,000 a month, plus expenses — $468,901.71 in total, according to court filings. Concerned about the company’s practices, Bush and his company ended the arrangement in 2010.
By 2011, things had gone south for the company and it filed for bankruptcy protection. The Securities and Exchange Commission charged InnoVida and Osorio in 2012 with “defrauding investors in an offering fraud scheme,” and a U.S. Attorney indicted Osorio on multiple counts of fraud. Accused of using investors’ funds to pay for a mansion and a Maserati, Osorio ultimately pleaded guilty to three counts of conspiracy. He is serving a sentence in federal prison and is not scheduled to be released until 2023.
While there is no evidence that Bush or members of the board knew of Osorio’s actions, investors complained that the directors exercised no meaningful oversight. Admitting no liability and asserting that it “provided services in good faith for reasonably equivalent value in exchange for such Consulting Payments,” Jeb Bush & Associates agreed last year to return $270,000 to InnoVida’s creditors, as part of a settlement in the bankruptcy proceedings.
Swisher Hygiene
Jeb Bush got another tony corporate board appointment in November of 2010: he was elected director for Swisher Hygiene Inc., a sanitation and cleaning supply company. For his service on the company’s board and its compensation committee, Bush received $313,825 in cash and stock over his four-year term.
According to the New York Times, Swisher Hygiene executives acknowledged that during Bush’s tenure, “their financial statements were unreliable and their accounting practices inadequate.” As the company’s accounting problems became public, its stock prices dropped precipitously — losing “more than three-quarters of Swisher’s value.” Shareholder lawsuits followed against Bush and his colleagues, “accusing him and fellow board members of insufficient oversight.” A lawsuit naming Bush was combined with other lawsuits against the the company itself and Swisher Hygiene agreed to a class-action settlement in February, with no admission of fault.
Swisher Hygiene did not immediately respond to a ThinkProgress request for comment.
Tenet Healthcare
CREDIT: TENETHEALTH.COM
Since joining the board of directors of Tenet Healthcare in April 2007, Jeb Bush has received more than $2 million in fees and stock awards. The Dallas-based company owns dozens of hospitals and outpatient medical facilities and offers health insurance plans. In its 2014 SEC filings, Tenet notes that Bush serves on both the board’s nominating and corporate governance committee and its quality, compliance and ethics committee — and that he received $128,500 in cash (including deferred 2006 compensation) and $170,000 in stock in 2013. The company’s revenue that year: an impressive $11.1 billion — and despite Jeb Bush’s fervent personal opposition to Obamacare, the company’s chief executive told the New York Times he expects it will earn $100 million in new earnings in 2014 thanks to the landmark legislation.
But Tenet’s corporate history has not been without problems. In 2006, Tenet paid $900 million in fees to settle claims that it overbilled Medicare in the 1990s. CEO Trevor Fetter told the Wall Street Journal, “I hope we have changed the culture… because ultimately your culture is your only protection.” But six years later, it agreed to pay $42.75 million to settle allegations of Medicare overbilling between 2005 and 2007. And last December, Tenet paid another $5 million to settle a whistle-blower lawsuit alleging that the company paid kickbacks to doctors, in violation of the False Claims Act. A Connecticut newspaper noted in 2013 that, all totaled, Tenet Healthcare has paid “more than $1 billion over the last decade to settle a series of fraud, overbilling, kickback, and other allegations by its biggest customer: the federal government.”
Tenet did not immediately respond to a ThinkProgress request for comment.
Creating the right business climate
Bush’s tenure as governor of Florida was pretty consistently one of supporting businesses. A 2007 South Florida Sun-Sentinel analysis of his two-terms noted that he “championed tax cuts that chiefly benefited business and the wealthy, trimmed the state’s payroll, [and] stripped job protection from thousands of mid-level civil servants.” And, it noted, “while Florida led the nation in job creation, much of that was in low-paid service industry jobs that left many Floridians without health insurance and scrambling for affordable housing amid a real estate boom that helped fuel business-friendly tax breaks.”
In a 2012 campaign appearance in support of Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush talked about his “hope and dream” for America. That, he said, was that “we create the right business climate and allow [entrepreneurs] to pursue their dreams with a vengeance, because that will restore American greatness and sustained economic growth.” He blasted President Obama as someone who believes in “massive new regulations” for the economy.
But underregulated businesses sometimes run into trouble — and Jeb Bush should know that better than anyone.
Jeb Bush: Untrustworthy to lead since the 1980s, and that's only the tip of the iceberg, evidenced by his obsession to steal elections (as evidenced in 2000 to give the Presidency to Bush 43).
h/t: Josh Israel at Think Progress Elections
I'm writing a paper on electoral reform in the U.S. so of course I'm doing research on HAVA and the 2000 presidential elections. It was nearly 12 years ago and it still grinds my gears how enormously fucked up and suspicious those circumstances were.
