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[Steven Champeon <schampeo AT hesketh.com>]

on Thu, Oct 10, 2002 at 02:08:17PM -0700, Eric Wolfram wrote:
> At 03:21 PM 10/10/02 -0400, you wrote:
> >on Thu, Oct 10, 2002 at 10:04:56AM -0700, Eric Wolfram wrote:
> >> Please indulge the thought for a moment. Follow the cash. George the
> >> II, as I like to call him, is from one of the richest families on the
> >> globe. They made their money by selling us the oil we use.
> >
> >Hm. That's funny - I always thought the Bush family was relatively poor
> >and nouveau riche. Prescott Bush, George W.'s grandfather, was just some
> 
> This IS funny. In what world is 3rd generation wealth nouveau?

OK, the Merriam Webster definition says "a person newly rich" and gives
as a synonym "parvenu", which says "one that has recently or suddenly
risen to an unaccustomed position of wealth or power and has not yet
gained the prestige, dignity, or manner associated with it", which I
think qualifies for Dubya here. But it's not at all important to my
argument, so congrats - your objection is accepted.

George W. Bush is a parvenu, not nouveau riche. My bad.

> In which society is a family that is worth over 300 million dollars
> "relatively poor"?

A society in which the most wealthy are worth far more than that? Read
my post. Maybe if by "richest families on the globe" you mean "the ten
million richest families on the globe" or some such, well, then, you're
probably right. 

There's a guy who raises hogs down the road who is probably worth more
than the entire Bush family combined.

I'd love to see a reference for the $300M number, BTW, if you can find
one. And if you could, please define "family" above so there aren't
any more misunderstandings. I was referring to the progeny of GHW Bush,
the one who became rich through his work in the oil industry, not to
his sons, who are coddled and generally speaking, bumbling, members of
his family, or to everyone related to them, which probably includes
half of the country, according to this Salon article:

 http://archive.salon.com/politics2000/feature/2000/03/31/bush/print.html

> >George H. W. Bush didn't even enter the oil business until after WW II,
> >in the mid-fifties. According to Grolier, he made $2M between 1954 and
> >1966.
> >
> > http://gi.grolier.com/presidents/aae/bios/41pbush.html
> 
> Not only is that URL miss quoted here, the source itself is carefully
> chosen to support an absurdly faulty conclusion that the Bush family is
> "relatively poor".

Hrm. The URL is not "miss quoted" [sic].

 "Two years later [after graduating Yale in 1948] he and a partner
 established the Bush-Overby Development Company to trade oil leases and
 royalties, and in 1954 he became president of the Zapata Offshore
 Company, developing new oil-drilling equipment. Within a decade he had
 amassed about $2 million and began dabbling in local Republican
 politics in Houston. Defeated when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 1964,
 Bush became the first REPUBLICAN to represent Houston in theU.S. HOUSE
 OF REPRESENTATIVES in 1966."

I extrapolated from "in 1954", "within a decade", and "1966". I left
off "about" preceding "$2M", which is a short form of "$2 million".

What's your problem?

> Do the world a favor, read this Article from Mother
> Jones, and adjust that paradigm:
> 
> http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/bushboys.html

Um. So, where do you get the $300M figure again? And how does this
article support your claims above?
 
> As a bonus, that Motherjoens article should clear up any confusion about
> how connected the Bush family is with the oil industry.

Yes, I see. Neil Bush was a banker who made bad loans during the housing
boom, and lost a pile of money exploring for oil. George made most of
his money running a baseball team for some rich friends, after a crooked
stock deal with Harken, where he may have traded (and probably did) on
the basis of some knowledge of the affect an attack on Iraq would have
on Harken, a full eight months before the Gulf War. Amazingly prescient.
Jeb is apparently a wizard at making money from office real estate in
underoccupied areas of urban Florida.

Sounds to me like they are deeply connected with the oil industry. They
have been losing millions of dollars by making bad investments in oil
for decades. Where, exactly, does this clarify how they *made* their
money through oil?

> I think everyone agrees, that oil is essential to our American way of life.
> Everything around us, was driven here with a truck, car or plane. Our AC,
> our heating and our industry; it's all dependent on oil. 

Actually, most electricity is generated by coal-fired plants.

 http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/mer/txt/mer7-2

> >Following the money entails doing some basic research, no?
> 
> Is it easy to hide behind research? Is it easy to tell lies with research?
> Is this thread a joke? Is this some sort of research competition?

No, I was trying to engage in an exercise in backing up statements
with proof of some sort. If your original post was a poem, I apologize
for misunderstanding its intent.

> Or are you really trying to get me to believe that The Bush family is
> poor and American life doesn't depend on oil. LOL.

OK, it's apparent you're not following along. I didn't say they were
poor, I said "relatively poor", in reply to your silly claim about how
the Bushes are - and I quote you directly here - "one of the richest
families on the globe."

They're not.

Then, you claim, and again I quote you: "They made their money by
selling us the oil we use".

Which, as your own source shows, is patently absurd. George Pere made
his money selling shares in oil futures and oil drilling equipment. His
sons have been laughably unable to make any money at anything, and have
only succeeded by having friends of the family buy their way into
baseball teams and real estate scams.
 
But hey, believe what you want to believe. I'm trying to find a
reasonable basis for belief, myself.

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