Bush League: Poppy & Smirko star in the World Series instead of rot inside prison where they belong.

[Octafish]

Joe Buck and Tim McCarver probably won't bring this up when the pretzeldents Bush throw out the first pitch at Arlington Stadium before today's World Series game:

The crazy moron made some big bucks by fronting the Texas Rangers, which he found the money to buy into by dumping his HARKEN shares on inside information just before the bottom fell out on the stock. No wonder it was nine months before the corporate director got around reporting it to the SEC. Here's the story, from a real journalist...

Bush built success on Harken sale

The struggling oil company served as a launching pad for the president's role in Major League Baseball which, in turn, spurred his successful political career.

By ROBERT TRIGAUX, Times Business Columnist
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 21, 2002

The struggling oil company served as a launching pad for the president's role in Major League Baseball which, in turn, spurred his successful political career.

Twelve years and 30 days ago, George W. Bush sold most of his stock in Harken Energy Corp. Now the echoes of that deal are undermining his campaign to rein in corporate wrongdoers, calm investors and revive plummeting stock markets.

The basics of Bush's entanglement with the Dallas oil exploration company can be told in three paragraphs:

In 1986, Bush joined the board of Harken when the struggling oil exploration company bought out another money-losing oil company that had, in turn, bought his troubled Bush Exploration Oil Co.

Bush was paid in Harken stock, consulting fees, discounted stock options and low-interest-rate loans by the company. In June 1990, a fateful month for Bush, he sold more than 200,000 Harken shares for nearly $850,000. But he neglected to file a required form with the Securities and Exchange Commission until eight months later.

When Harken soon reported an unexpectedly big loss and Iraq's Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, company shares plummeted from $4 to as low as $1.25 before the year was out.

That's when those questions -- the same critical ones being asked this summer -- began to arise.

SNIP...

Why did Bush sign off on the same type of loss-hiding accounting that ruined Enron and WorldCom? Bush was a director in 1989 when Harken booked a cash gain after selling its Aloha Petroleum subsidiary to insiders who used money borrowed from Harken. That deal caught the eye of the SEC, which in 1991 forced the company to restate its earnings and show a big loss for 1989.

CONTINUED...

http://www.sptimes.com/2002/07/21/news_pf/Worldandnation/Bush_built_success_on.shtml

This is one of those stories that should've been picked up and spread by AP, among others. Instead, it's pretty much gone down the Memory Hole. Thank Moon for the St. Petersburg Times and DU.