{"id":6941,"date":"2006-03-24T10:02:28","date_gmt":"2006-03-24T15:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6941"},"modified":"2006-03-24T10:02:28","modified_gmt":"2006-03-24T15:02:28","slug":"barbara-bushs-katrina-earmark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/barbara-bushs-katrina-earmark\/","title":{"rendered":"Barbara Bush’s Katrina earmark"},"content":{"rendered":"

In case you missed it yesterday, former First Lady Barbara Bush generously donated to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, but included a fairly specific request<\/a> with her contribution.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Since then, the Ignite Learning program has been given to eight area schools that took in substantial numbers of Hurricane Katrina evacuees.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s odd; I didn’t think my regard for the Bush family could get any worse. These guys somehow manage to surpass my expectations.<\/p>\n

I can appreciate Barbara Bush looking out for her ne’er-do-well son, but using the Katrina Fund to promote Neil Bush’s software company, called “Ignite!” isn’t just tacky, it’s low. It’s not like the former First Lady’s reputation on the disaster was strong before. When we last heard from her, she was telling us that families left with nothing after the hurricane “were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

But that was just a dumb remark; Barbara Bush’s earmark is far more ridiculous. As Josh Marshall noted<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Ignite!’s has a unique business model<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

A couple years ago when I was at Salon I wrote<\/a> 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<\/a> 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<\/a> of investing in Ignite!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The jokes about the “Bush crime family” certainly have the ring of truth sometimes, don’t they?
\n
\nPost Script<\/i>: Stories like this one also won’t help: Bush’s Uncle Earned Millions in War Firm Sale<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case you missed it yesterday, former First Lady Barbara Bush generously donated to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, but included a fairly specific request with her contribution. 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6941\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}