A CRIMINAL GOVERNS FLORIDA

In Kitty Kelley's THE FAMILY, pp. 406-408, you can read of Jeb Bush's criminal dealings with thugs and assorted scammers in Florida. Some of these revelations are unbelievable, and I must ask how Floridians could support such a shady dealer, but you can also understand why Jeb would not hesitate to steal an election from the Democrats. His connections with dishonest Cuban-Americans gives him great clout down there.

The more I read about the shady dealings our government has had over the last 25 years through Republican politicians, I truly do doubt if honest elections and honest government are possible anymore. Those who vote for Republicans don't seem to care about the kind of people they are putting into office. Just say the word "god" and the minds of believers, lied to from birth about angels and gods and demons, go shut to reality, and they vote for anyone who spouts the correct words. I fear for America's future.

Look, I don't absolve Democrats from shady dealings, but recall, they haven't held the executive offices for very much of this time period, and though Clinton was constantly scrutinized by a Republican special prosecutor, he was not found guilty of anything but a blow job in the White House and certainly not with overthrowing elected democratic governments in foreign lands or for using government to enrich himself.

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In one case Jeb peddled his influence for Miguel Recarey Jr., an international fugitive whose hobby was extortion. Recarey, who boasted of Mafia ties to Santos Trafficante, pulled off one of the biggest Medicare frauds in American history, skimming untold millions from taxpayers. According to law-enforcement officials, he increased his personal net worth from $1 million to $100 million in six years. By the time Recarey met Jeb Bush, the Cuban immigrant had been forced to repay $13 million in improper Medicare payments. He had also been convicted of tax evasion, served time in prison, and was being investigated for hospital embezzlement in connection with his health maintenance organization, International Medical Centers.

In 1984, Recarey made a two-thousand-dollar contribution to Jeb’s Dade County coffers. Jeb then acted as a conduit to his father and Oliver North to arrange for IMC to provide free medical treatment for the contras. Afterward, Recarey hired Jeb’s personal company, Bush Realty Management, for $250,000 to find IMC an office building. During their conversations, Recarey mentioned that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was tightening Medicare rules, which threatened IMC profits. Recarey asked Jeb to call HHS on his behalf. Jeb agreed and made two telephone calls, which he would later deny, asking that Recarey be granted a waiver of the new HHS regulations.

Jeb went right to the top. He called the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Margaret Heckler, and spoke to her chief of staff, C. McClam Haddow. Jeb told Haddow to “discount rumors that were floating around concerning Mr. Recarey... He’s a good community citizen and a good supporter of the Republican party.”

These calls from the son of the Vice President commanded not just attention but action. When Congress later investigated Recarey’s Medicare fraud, Haddow testified that Jeb’s calls for Recarey had helped IMC receive its waiver, enabling IMC to have more than half its clientele be Medicare recipients. Secretary Heckler’s approval of this waiver overruled the decision of a local HHS administrator. Jeb’s intervention basically guaranteed that Recarey could continue bilking millions from Medicare, which is exactly what he did for three more years. Recarey paid Jeb seventy-five thousand dollars, which both men claimed was a realty fee, although Jeb never found Recarey any office space. In 1985 and 1986, Recarey also gave more than twenty-five thousand dollars to George Bush’s political action committees.

In 1987, when IMC was shut down because of insolvency, more than $200 million in Medicare money was missing. Recarey was indicted for embezzlement, labor racketeering, bribery, obstruction of justice, and wiretapping. He fled to Venezuela, and then to Spain, where he now lives in luxury. To this day he remains on the FBI’s list of international fugitives.

In 1985, the year after Jeb intervened with HHS for Recarey, he wrote a letter to the Department of Housing and Urban Development on behalf of another unscrupulous character. Hiram Martinez Jr. had applied for federal loan insurance for an apartment development. The application was stalled because of questions about the value of the land. After Jeb wrote to HUD, Martinez got the loan, but HUD later discovered that Martinez had indeed inflated the value of the land and the cost of the project. He was convicted and served six years in prison for fraud. Jeb said he did not remember writing the letter, but HUD released a copy.

Jeb had interceded for Martinez because he had been hired by Martinez’s contractor, Camilo Padreda, another anti-Castro Cuban, who was finance chairman of the Dade County GOP when Jeb was chairman. In 1982, Padreda had been indicted for embezzling $500,000 from the Jefferson Savings and Loan in MeAllen, Texas. But the case never went to trial, because the CIA intervened on behalf of Padreda’s associate, who was indicted with him. His associate had worked for the CIA during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Padreda later pleaded guilty to defrauding the Department of Housing and Urban Development of millions, including the Martinez fraud, but Padreda never went to jail. Instead, he was placed under house arrest and given probation in exchange for cooperating with authorities investigating Dade County corruption.

Jeb, who has claimed that he never lobbied his father’s government, petitioned the Justice Department in 1990 in behalf of Orlando Bosch, who was in prison for having entered the United States illegally. The antiCastro terrorist, who was implicated in the car-bombing assassination of Orlando Letelier, was notorious for having masterminded the bombing of a Cubana Airlines flight in October 1976, which killed all seventy-three on board, including a group of Cuban athletes returning from the Pan Am Games in Caracas, Venezuela. At that time George Herbert Walker Bush was CIA director. The United States sanctioned terrorism against Cuba and routinely trained commandos to infiltrate the island. Jeb, who planned to run for governor of Florida, represented a rabid anti-Castro constituency, a voting bloc that held his father’s anti-Castro actions at the CIA in the highest esteem. Jeb’s public support for paroling Bosch further enhanced his standing in the Cuban community, which considered Bosch a patriot in exile and honored him for his murderous bombings around the globe. At his son’s behest, George Bush intervened to obtain the release of the Cuban terrorist from prison and later granted Bosch U.S. residency.
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"Justice is my being able to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so." —Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) [This is also called "Bush-league" justice down in Texas. Now the law of the land.]