April Foley, chairman of the Export-Import Bank, will be the new ambassador of the United States to Hungary from the fall of 2006.
This is the third appointment by US President George W Bush, following current incumbent (and a Bush relative) George Herbert Walker, who has been the ambassador since 2003, and Nancy Goodman Brinker .
Foley, said to have been Bush's girlfriend while they were at Harvard together, was born in Avon Lake, Ohio and graduated from Smith College before receiving her Masters degree in business administration from Harvard University.
Later, she served as director of business planning for corporate strategy with PEPSICO, Inc as well as director of strategy for Reader's Digest Association and worked for Pfizer, one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies. In Nov 2003, Foley was appointed a member of the board of directors of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, having been nominated by Bush. In an article on the President for The Washington Post in 1999, Foley wrote that she met George Bush at Harvard, where the two dated for a short time and later stayed friends.
How small is Bush's circle? He replaces a relative with a girlfriend who worked for Viagra.
April 24 (Bloomberg) -- Democrats outdid Republicans last year in attracting political donations from investment banks, brokerages and fund managers for the first time since 1994, helped by support from hedge funds and companies such as Merrill Lynch & Co.
Democrats got $13.6 million, or 52 percent of the financial industry's $26.3 million in political donations in 2005, said the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan Washington group that researches the influence of money on elections and public policy. In the two years leading up to the 2004 presidential election, Republicans received 52 percent of the $91.6 million given by the industry.
[...]
Merrill Lynch, the world's largest securities firm, is home to another one of Bush's 2004 Rangers, Chief Executive Stanley O'Neal. Merrill's political action committee, which pools executives' donations, is on track to give more money to Democratic candidates than to Republicans for the 2006 election for the first time in the PAC's quarter-century history, if current trends hold.
Why would Wall Street have a change of heart? Because Bush policies are bad for all business, even big business. The broad markets, including the job market, prospered under Clinton. But under Bush-Cheney only energy-related cronies are rewarded, punishing the bulk of the stock market that has moved sideways for five long years. The returns on your 401(k) account are probably only now approaching where they were when Clinton left office.
And yet all these Wall Street donation-bets are hedged if not schizophrenic in their inconsistency. Morgan Stanley's CEO gave to Bush, Santorum, and (ahem) Hillary Clinton. Wall Street loves winners — and that's why they're switching horses.
President Bush, frustrated in efforts to make ex-girlfriend April Foley the head of the Export-Import Bank, has decided to name her as U.S. ambassador to Hungary without formally announcing it.
The top Ex-Im job was vacant for months when the Justice Department took a long look at Foley's financial records. Her proposed nomination is in the hands of the Hungarian government, as was reported by that nation's press.
"Although she is not related to U.S. President George W. Bush, like her immediate predecessor [Amb. George Herbert Walker]," said the Budapest Business Journal, "Foley's appointment would follow a tradition of having a trusted old friend of the Bush family at the helm of the embassy." Bush dated Foley when they both were students at the Harvard Business School.
More about April Foley can be found in the delightful Skimble archives.
If anyone doubts that Bush, Cheney, Rove and their confidants are planning an "October Surprise" to prevent the Republicans from losing control of Congress, then he or she has not been observing this presidency very closely.
What will that surprise be? It's the most closely held secret of the Administration.
How risky will it be? Bush is a whatever-it-takes risk-taker, the consequences be damned.
One possibility is that Dick Cheney will resign as Vice President for "health reasons," and become a senior counselor to the president. And Bush will name a new vice president - a choice geared to increase his popularity, as well as someone electable in 2008. It would give his sinking administration a new face, and new life.
The immensely popular Rudy Giuliani seems the most likely pick, if Giuliani is willing. (A better option for Giuliani might be to hold off, and tacitly position himself as the Republican anti-Bush in 2008.) But Condoleezza Rice, John McCain, Bill Frist, and more are possibilities.
Bush's second and more likely, surprise could be in the area of national security: If he could achieve a Great Powers coalition (of Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, and so on) presenting a united-front "no nukes" stance to Iran, it would be his first diplomatic coup and a political triumph.
But more likely, Bush may mount a unilateral attack on Iran's nuclear facilities - hoping to rev up his popularity. (It's a risky strategy: A unilateral hit on Iran may both trigger devastating Iran-sponsored terrorist attacks in Iraq, with high death tolls, and increase international dislike of Bush for his bypass of the U.N. But as an active/negative President, Bush hardly shies away from risk.) Another rabbit-out-of-the-hat possibility: the capture of Osama bin Laden.
If there is no "October Surprise," I would be shocked. And if it is not a high-risk undertaking, it would be a first. Without such a gambit, and the public always falls for them, Bush is going to lose control of Congress. Should that happen, his presidency will have effectively ended, and he will spend the last two years of it defending all the mistakes he has made during the first six, and covering up the errors of his ways.
I vote for Option C: attacking Iran.
It's expensive but rewarding for cronies, idiotically wrong-headed, extremely dangerous, and a complicated cocktail of class and religious warfare — and perfectly fits the pattern.
Ann Schue used to cherish the time she spent alone in her 2003 Ford Expedition during her 90-minute morning commute to her job at the University of Chicago. Nestled in heated leather seats, she planned her day while listening to the news.
Not anymore. Massive construction work on one of Chicago's main highways has forced her to trade the peace of her sport-utility vehicle for the clatter and crowds of a double-decker commuter train.
"This was a very, very big step for me," says Ms. Schue, 42 years old, who had never been on a train in her life before she recently started taking the Metra rail service. "I'm still very...," she says, choking up, then pausing to compose herself. "I miss my car."
Choking up? Ninety-minute commute? Ford Expedition? Never been on a train at the age of 42?
American adulthood has become the most infantile form of human life on the planet.
You may be wondering, what is Ann Schue's hard-driving profession that she so desperately needs her heated leather seats for three hours a day?
"Animal-health technician." That's right — she cleans up poop. So riding on a train is "very, very big step" for her.
Pity her. Feel her pain. Wish her the best. Then cry for America.
Consolidation among health insurers is creating near-monopolies in virtually all reaches of the U.S. - with the most dominant firms grabbing more market share by several percentage points a year - according to a study released Monday.
Data from the American Medical Association shows that in each of 43 states, a handful of top insurers have gained such a stronghold that their markets are considered "highly concentrated" under Department of Justice guidelines, often far exceeding the thresholds that trigger antitrust concerns.
The study also shows that in 166 of 294 metropolitan areas, or 56%, a single insurer controls more than half the business in health maintenance organization (HMO) and preferred provider networks (PPO) underwriting.
And on the other hand we have the totally unrelated phenomenon of this executive's record-breaking payday (WSJ):
Today, the 58-year-old Dr. [William] McGuire is chief executive officer of UnitedHealth Group Inc., one of the nation's largest health-care companies. He draws $8 million a year in salary plus bonus, enjoying perks such as personal use of the company jet. He also has amassed one of the largest stock-options fortunes of all time.
Unrealized gains on Dr. McGuire's options totaled $1.6 billion, according to UnitedHealth's proxy statement released this month. Even celebrated CEOs such as General Electric Co.'s Jack Welch or International Business Machines Corp.'s Louis Gerstner never were granted so much during their time at the top.
Dr. McGuire's story shows how an elite group of companies is getting rich from the nation's fraying health-care system. Many of them aren't discovering drugs or treating patients. They're middlemen who process the paperwork, fill the pill bottles and otherwise connect the pieces of a $2 trillion industry.
Patients! Bah! Let them eat deductibles!
The Marie Antoinettes of the American healthcare system need to have their heads checked. We should offer to help.
[Enron Task Force chief Sean] Berkowitz also quizzed Skilling about his attempt to sell 200,000 shares of Enron on Sept. 6, 2001, which was put off because his broker was concerned Skilling was still considered an insider after quitting on Aug. 14.
Berkowitz prodded Skilling about whether he was aware at the time of a letter questioning Enron's finances written by executive Sherron Watkins, $2.2 billion in pending writedowns or that the company was in jeopardy because its Raptor hedging structures could unwind if the share price kept dipping. All could be considered illegal inside information if used to dump shares.
Skilling said he knew about none of it, and that his understanding was that the Raptors would be in trouble only if the share price went below $20. He did sell 500,000 shares on Sept. 17 for around $31 each, citing the terrorist attacks.
Also, it's unseemly for an ex-CEO to sell shares out of concern for the 9/11 attacks. On 9/6, that is.
...Skilling turned hostile after several hours of drinking, falsely accusing several patrons of being FBI agents, the report said, and accusing them of using someone "as a decoy to lure (him) into lowering his guard."
The government reports that around 3:30 a.m., the bar manager asked Skilling and his party to leave. Outside, Skilling tried to forcibly remove the front license plate of a car parked near the bar to "gather `proof' " about the identity of the people he thought were agents, the prosecutors said.
The report says that when a woman started to get into that car, Skilling tried to stop her and attempted to lift her blouse, claiming he was looking for a wire. Another patron pushed Skilling away from the woman and a scuffle ensued.
One patron's nose was cut and Skilling grabbed his wife, who was using a crutch because of a foot ailment, knocking her over. The motion said that while he was at the hospital, Skilling admitted it was he who inadvertently toppled his wife.
Several people called 911. When police arrived, they found Skilling's wife sitting in the street. Skilling, who had chased the people he scuffled with, was stopped a block away.
A police report from that night indicates Skilling was "irrational and highly uncooperative" and "possibly suffering from paranoid delusions," accusing people of being "FBI agents stalking him," according to the document.
"At one point, Skilling went to middle of the street, put his hands behind his back and began talking to the sky, asking if FBI cameras were capturing what was happening," the government papers say.
Police sent Skilling in an ambulance to a hospital, along with his wife.
At the hospital the morning of April 9, Skilling's blood alcohol level was 0.19 -- nearly twice the legal driving limit of .10 in many states, the government report notes.
Prosecutors say Skilling's later accounts of the events, as told through his lawyers, were incorrect, showing he was not willing to be truthful even when sober.
Skilling's lawyers previously told reporters that Skilling and his wife were attacked by two men who knocked her down and rendered her unconscious.
"Not willing to be truthful even when sober" also describes the behavior of a certain president to whom Enron contributed in record amounts.
After the 2004 presidential election, [Ohio] Cuyahoga County election workers secretly skirted rules designed to make sure all votes were counted correctly, a special prosecutor charges. [...]
But the fix was in at the Cuyahoga elections board, [Erie County Prosecutor Kevin] Baxter charges.
Days before the Dec. 16 recount, workers opened the ballots and hand-counted enough votes to identify precincts where the machine count matched.
"If it didn't balance, they excluded those precincts," Baxter said.
"The preselection process was done outside of any witnesses, without anyone's knowledge except for [people at] the Board of Elections."
On the official recount day, employees pretended to pick precincts randomly, Baxter says.
So now we have a pretend president for the second four-year term, all because of the ineffective gentility and lack of bloodlust in a couple of Democractic presidential candidates.
...Bush threw out the first pitch in Cincinnati on Monday. And although he received scattered boos there, he insulated himself from the worst by walking out to the mound accompanied by two injured American soldiers and the father of a soldier who was killed in action.
He has a habit of hiding behind the people he has hurt.
Next to the recent arrest of DHS spokesman Brian Doyle on child sex charges, this was just one more reason to take Operation Predator away from DHS, I said. "Predator" is the agency's program to bust child sex criminals.
Now we discover -- that law enforcement agent, Frank Figueroa, used to run Operation Predator.
The victim, a 16-year-old girl, said Figueroa pulled up a leg of his shorts, exposed himself and masturbated for about 10 minutes, according to the Tampa Tribune.
A leisurely jerking off session in the food court of a mall — there's your Republican law enforcement.
The fox-guarding-henhouse position of Frank Figueroa, aka "Frankie the Fig," is so outrageous that even rightwingers are appalled.
A deputy press secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was charged with using a computer to seduce a child after authorities said he struck up sexual conversations with an undercover detective posing as a 14-year-old girl.
Brian J. Doyle, 55, the fourth-ranking official in the department's public affairs office, was expected to appear in court Wednesday afternoon in Maryland and also to be placed on administrative leave. [...]
Doyle found the teenager's profile online and began having sexually explicit conversations with her on the Internet on March 14, the sheriff's office said in a statement.
He sent her pornographic movie clips, as well as non-sexual photos of himself, officials said. One of the photos, released by the sheriff's office, shows Doyle in what appears to be DHS headquarters. He is wearing a Homeland Security pin on his lapel and a lanyard that says "TSA." The Transportation Security Administration is part of the Homeland Security Department.
During online conversations, Doyle revealed his name, who he worked for and offered his office and government-issued cell phone numbers, the sheriff's office said.
Thank God we have an administration that spends hundreds of millions of US tax dollars on promoting sexual abstinence.
Remember this story the next time you are charged a "security fee" by the TSA and ordered to take your shoes off at the airport.
Osama must be laughing his terrorist ass off at us.
I'll bet it was planned. GM probably thought that by giving their critics a voice they were containing them, de-enraging them, and making them easier to dismiss. Because the voice they gave is an extremely limited one that has no distribution relative to real Tahoe ads.
The controversy puts SUVs back into the national PR spotlight, this time as a victim.
