Membership Has Its Privileges

There are a number of stories coming out today that illustrate some of the cozy business relations enjoyed by a few BushCo family relations. First up, Uncle Bucky (via the LATimes; hat tip to RawStory):

As President Bush embarks on a new effort to shore up public support for the war in Iraq, an uncle of the chief executive is collecting $2.7 million in cash and stock from the recent sale of a company that profited from the war.

A report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shows that William H.T. Bush collected a little less than $1.9 million in cash plus stock valued at more than $800,000 as a result of the sale of Engineered Support Systems Inc. to DRS Technologies of New Jersey. The $1.7 billion deal closed Jan. 31. Both businesses have extensive military contracts.

[...]

Bush, known as "Uncle Bucky" in the president's family, joined ESSI's board in 2000, several months before his nephew became president. He heads a St. Louis investment firm and is the youngest brother of former President George H.W. Bush.

He declined to comment Wednesday. However, in an interview last year, he said he played no role in ESSI's winning federal contracts. "I don't make any calls to the 202 [Washington, D.C.] area code," he said.

OK, so that's nothing unheard of. This family is chock-a-block into all sorts of military industrial corporatism.

But here's where we start going into grayer territory (via Houston Chronicle; hat tip again to Raw Story):

Former first lady Barbara Bush donated an undisclosed amount of money to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund with specific instructions that the money be spent with an educational software company owned by her son Neil.

Since then, the Ignite Learning program has been given to eight area schools that took in substantial numbers of Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo has more:

Ignite!'s has a unique business model, which works like this. Neil goes around the world finding international statesmen, bigwigs and criminals who want to 'invest' in Ignite! as a way to curry favor with the brother in the White House.

A couple years ago when I was at Salon I wrote about the craze for investment in Ignite! then taking hold among Red Sea oil magnates and progeny of the rulers of the People's Republic of China (See this article as well about the craze for investing in Ignite! in the United Arab Emirates and specifically in Dubai). Now, Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky has awakened to the wonders of investing in Ignite!

And BoingBoing gets in the act with this memory from Neil Bush's divorce papers (via CNN):

[Bush] admitted in the deposition that he previously had sex with several other women while on trips to Thailand and Hong Kong at least five years ago.

The women, he said, simply knocked on the door of his hotel room, entered and had sex with him. He said he did not know if they were prostitutes because they never asked for money and he did not pay them.

"Mr. Bush, you have to admit it's a pretty remarkable thing for a man just to go to a hotel room door and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her," Brown said.

"It was very unusual," Bush said.)

Finally, the Smoking Gun has a surprising find: Dick Cheney's hotel rider (aka, the stuff requested to be available to the Vice President when he arrives in his room). No, he doesn't ask for belly dancing women with jewels in their navels to greet him at the door (he has Lynne, Mrs. Big Time, for that). But he does request that all TVs be tuned to the Republican Propaganda Channel... also known as FoxNews. (There's also a handwritten note about newspapers, and surprisingly the Moonie Washington Times doesn't make it in--though I'm guessing it's not widely distributed outside the DC area.) And, interestingly, if Mrs. Big Time is traveling with the Vice, a bottle of sparkling water is requested--either US-bottled Calistoga or Perrier from that Cheese-Eating-Country-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named. Maybe this is the first step in better relations with France...