It's November 2014 now and according to the Guardian out of London: "It is a view confirmed by close confidants of Jeb, the former Florida governor, who says he would like to run, has backing from senior figures in the party, and is now weighing up the likely impact on those around him."

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Introduction

"Dime con quien andas y te dire quien eres.

Tell me who you side with and I will tell you who you are."
-- "George W. Bush for President" web site

Presidential elections, like all product sales in America, are much like Black Friday or commercialized Christmas --- the political advertisements come out far ahead of the elections. First there are the rumors and speculations about who might run, then, there are the actual announcements by the candidates. In between, Americans are treated to political shenanigans, smarmy and seedy operators for the candidates, fawning and uncritical corporate media coverage and formidable money amassing by the one percent to produce and sell the 'product'. The presidential elections of 2016 are and will be no exception.

In September of this year, more than two years ahead of the 2016 election, the Washington Street Journal has reported:

"Jim Nicholson, a Bush supporter who served in President George W. Bush's cabinet, said: 'I think the chances are better than 50-50 that he runs, and that is based on some conversations I've had with members of the Bush family' (http://online.wsj.com/articles/former-florida-gov-jeb-bush-sends-signals-about-2016-presidential-run-1409876227)."

It's November 2014 now and according to the Guardian out of London:

'"It is a view confirmed by close confidants of Jeb, the former Florida governor, who says he would like to run, has backing from senior figures in the party, and is now weighing up the likely impact on those around him." (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/13/bush-dynasty-jeb-us-presidential-elections-george-white-house).

One question, of course, is will Republican John Ellis Bush (Jeb) run for president of the United States in 2016 and the other, a more serious question is: "Can America really endure another Bush presidency?"

There are many reasons to fear another Bush in the White House. The reason is simple: Jeb Bush is connected to right wing, anti-Castro Cuban exiles, drug dealers, terrorists, criminal enterprises, the CIA and corruption at the highest levels of government where he has not only served, but participated in bleeding the government like a leech.

Just who is John Ellis Bush?

"Jeb's the smart one" -- George Bush Sr. to dinner partner in 2000 (http://critcrim.org/critpapers/potter.htm).

Many people remember the sordid role of George Herbert Walker Bush's son, Neil Bush, in the failed Savings and Loan 'Crisis' of the 1980s (ibid). But young Neil was not the only Bush brother involved in the Savings and Loan collapses of the decade.

In 1984, Jeb 'The Smart One' had been made chairman of the Dade County Republican Party. As the Republican Party chief Jeb snuggled up with the anti-Castro Cuban community and especially to a con-man named Camilo Padreda. Padreda was at the time serving as Dade County GOP Finance Chairman and had raised oodles of money for the party from Miami's right-wing, anti-Castro Cuban-CIA connected community. Padreda had also been a counterintelligence officer for deposed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, who was supported by both the CIA and American organized crime before being eventually overthrown by Fidel Castro in 1959. Padreda was a CIA asset.

Padreda at this time made his living as a developer who specialized in deals with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In 1986, Padreda hired Jeb as the leasing agent for a vacant commercial-office building that Padreda had built with $1.4 million in federal loans. The loans had been approved by HUD officials.

In 1982, four years before teaming up with Jeb, Padreda, along with another right-wing, anti-Castro Cuban exile, Hernandez Cartaya, was indicted and accused of looting Jefferson Savings and Loan Association in McAllen, Texas. The federal indictment charged that Padreda and Cartaya had embezzled over $500,000 from the Jefferson. If that is not all, Cartaya was also charged with drug smuggling, money laundering, and gun running. Alas, the Jefferson Savings case would never go to trial (ibid). Neither would the drug-smuggling charges.

Just months before Jeb Bush and Padreda teamed up, authorities found that Padreda had unlawfully influenced a local politician -- the Dade County manager who had been made a secret partner of Padreda's when Padreda ran into difficulty getting a parcel of land rezoned. The property was promptly rezoned and the county official made a quick $127,000 profit when Padreda, in turn, "sold" it to an offshore Padreda partnership. That syndicate was controlled from Panama by a fugitive Miami attorney who had already been indicted for laundering drug money. The official resigned, but neither Padreda nor the 'official' were ever charged in the case. However, in 1989 Padreda finally pleaded guilty to charges that he defrauded HUD of millions of dollars during the 1980s.

Then there is the fact that Jeb 'the Smart One', former Governor of Florida, had a peculiar relationship with one Miguel Recarey during this period of time.

Mother Jones reported in September of 1992 that:

"Shortly after arriving in Miami, Jeb was hired by Cuban-American developer Armando Codina to work at his Miami development company as an agent leasing office space. A couple of years later, Jeb and Codina became business partners, and in 1985 they purchased an office building in a deal partly financed by a savings and loan that later failed.

"The $4.56 million loan, from Broward Federal Savings in Sunrise, Florida, was granted in such a way that neither Codina's nor Bush's name appeared on the loan papers as the borrowers. A third man, J. Edward Houston, borrowed the $4.56 million from Broward and then re-lent it to the Bush partnership. When federal regulators closed Broward Savings in 1988, they found the loan, which had been secured by the Bush partnership, in default" (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1992/09/bush-family-value).

Here is the way the scandal operated: Broward Federal Savings and Loan Broward Federal loaned $4,565.000 to J. Edward Houston, a real-estate developer, in February, 1985. The loan was secured only by Houston's personal assurance. On the same day, one of Houston's syndicates lent the same amount to a 'partnership' made up of Jeb Bush and Armondo Codina for the purpose of purchasing a building in Miami (http://www.campaignwatch.org/refs1.htm).

The terms of the loan indicated that the Bush-Condina partnership was required to repay the loan only if revenues from the building were sufficient to cover the repayment. Bush and Condina made no payments on the loan at all and in 1987, Houston defaulted on the Broward Federal loan and the bank sued both the Houston and the Bush-Condina real-estate enterprise.

In a sweetheart settlement with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Bush and Codina only had to repay $500,000 of the $4.5 million loan and were able to preserve ownership of the building that had been the guarantee on the loan.

In 1991, the FDIC sued the officers and directors of Broward Federal, charging that the loan ultimately used by Bush and Codina was an example of the bank's negligent lending practices (http://critcrim.org/critpapers/potter.htm). The Bush-Codina loan played a key part in the failure of Broward Federal, which cost taxpayers $285 million in bailouts (ibid).

The Cuban Mob, the CIA and Organized Crime Ties

Jeb 'The Smart One' also had ties with a known Mafia swindler and terrorist anti-Castro Cuban by the name of Miguel Recarey. Recarey was close to Florida organized crime figure Santos Trafficante and the Nicaraguan contras. He later disappeared with at least $12 million in federal funds.

Trafficante was the one who financed Recarey when he needed to get his business off the ground (ibid). According to Thom Hartmann and Lamar Waldron, Trafficante was one of the main principals in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and had notorious ties to drug runners, the CIA and Cuban terrorist exiles in Florida (http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Secrecy-Long-Shadow-Assassination/dp/1582435359). Recarey himself was a CIA asset.

In the 1980s, Recarey's business, International Medical Centers, was the largest health-maintenance organization for the elderly in the U.S. and had been sustained from $1 billion in payments from the Medicare program. International Medical Centers went belly-up in 1988 (ibid).

However, before the entombment of IMC, Jeb Bush was hired by Miguel Recarey to lobby the Department of Health & Human Services to find a new headquarters for his enterprise and Jeb was paid $75,000 for the job. However, the young Bush never located the building he was hired to buy (http://prorev.com/bush2.htm).

Jeb Bush's formal role in the Recarey saga began in 1985 when Recarey's attempt to create his "bust-out scam" corporation ran into a federal regulation that said no HMO could get more that 50% of its revenue from Medicare (Freedburg, 1988: A1; Royce and Shaw, 1988: 4).

Jeb 'The Smart One' intervened on Recarey's behalf with Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler and one of her top aides. 'The Smart One' convinced them to abandon the regulation in the case of Recarey's company (http://critcrim.org/critpapers/potter.htm).

In addition to Jeb Bush's intervention, Recarey had shelled out $1 million to senior Republican lobbyists in Washington who were also working the staff of Health and Human Services in pursuance of a waiver (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1043872&mesg_id=1044470).

In addition, Jeb Bush had contacted then Secretary Heckler earlier about complaints from doctors over the quality of International Medical Centers' care along with allegations that Recarey had embezzled funds from another hospital (http://www.campaignwatch.org/refs4.htm).

Jeb told an aide to Secretary Heckler at the time that:

"Contrary to any rumors that were floating around concerning Mr. Recarey, that he was a solid citizen from Mr. Bush's perspective down there [in Miami], that he was a good community citizen and a good supporter of the Republican Party" (ibid).

Before his flight and the collapse of IMC, Miguel Recarey's International Medical Centers was also using Medicare funds to treat wounded Contras during the 1980s. IMC received $30 million a month for its Medicare patients, among them terrorists. An agent with the U.S. Office of Labor Racketeering in Miami would later describe IMC as a company in which "a criminal enterprise interfaced with intelligence operations" (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1992/09/bush-family-value).

In late 1988, when International Medical Centers finally bellied up, leaving $222 million in unpaid bills, it was under investigation for $100 million in Medicare fraud (http://critcrim.org/critpapers/potter.htm). The U.S. Office of Labor Racketeering in Miami referred to Recarey and his company as "the classic case of embezzlement of government funds ... a bust-out operation" (ibid).

Robert Teich, a DEA official in Miami, later said:

"IMC is a classic case of embezzlement of government funds."

He called the skimming of Medicare funds a "bust out" in which money is "drained out the back door" (ibid).

Recarey eventually fled the U.S. facing three separate indictments for labor racketeering, illegal wiretapping and Medicare fraud (ibid). He bolted to Caracas, Venezuela, where attempts to extradite him failed. He died at the healthy age of 87 in 2002 while receiving Social Security benefits from the US (http://www.ancientfaces.com/person/miguel-recarey/42604854).

His brother, Jorge Recarey, was indicted along with others on one count of conspiracy to illegally influence the operations of an employee-benefit plan (18 U.S.C. 371). Following a five-week joint trial, a jury convicted Jorge Recarey on all indicted crimes, but on August 21, 1989, the Florida appellate court, appointed by Jeb, reversed the convictions (http://openjurist.org/892/f2d/976/united-states-v-fernandez).

Then, shortly after, in December 1989, the administration of George Bush, Sr. abolished all 14 regional organized crime strike forces (http://critcrim.org/critpapers/potter.htm). The organized crime strike forces were created as independent entities so they would not be subject to political influences or bureaucratic squabbling within federal law enforcement. In the two decades of their operation the strike forces had secured convictions of major organized crime figures in several U.S. cities (ibid). They were simply too successful for the Bushes and they had to go.

It is important to note that the federal strike force in Miami had also been responsible for indicting Miguel Recarey, the man for whom Jeb Bush had intervened with regulators, and for whom he operated (ibid).

The Case of Jeb and Manny 'the looter' Diaz

Manuel C. Diaz, another anti-Castro Cuban, was an additional Jeb Bush business associate and 'homeboy' who ran a commercial nursery with headquarters in Homestead, Florida. Manny 'the looter' Diaz's previous business colleague was Charles Keating, Jr. convicted of racketeering and sentenced to prison for larceny and fraud. Keating was the poster-boy for the Savings and Loan crisis. But during Keating's days manning the rudder of the $6 billion Lincoln Savings fiasco, Diaz became a Keating insider, confidant, and beneficiary of illegal largess.

For example, in 1987, as federal regulators closed in on his crumbling kingdom of theft, snake-oil salesman Keating instructed his attorneys to transfer a large chunk of prime Phoenix real estate to Diaz for just one dollar. And right before filing for personal bankruptcy, Keating transferred his $2 million mansion on the island of Cat Cay in the Bahamas to Diaz.

At the same time Diaz was bumming around with Keating, Jeb 'The Smart One', then serving as Florida's Secretary of Commerce, arranged a hush-hush meeting for Diaz with then Florida's Republican governor Bob Martinez. Right afterward, Diaz Farms landed a lucrative, $1.72 million, state-highway-landscaping contract, despite the fact that Diaz had little prior highway-landscaping experience (http://rollbacktolls.com/welcome-to-mdxs-tree-million-dollar-highway-paradise-2/).

It seems like nothing is too good for the Cuban, terrorist, exile community in Florida when it comes to Jeb Bush and the looting of the public treasury.

As Mother Jones reported in 1992 about the government contract:

"This raised howls of protest and charges of political influence-peddling from other contractors. But state officials explained that the extraordinary speed in issuing the contract had occurred because the state was anxious to spruce up 113 miles of freeway for the coming visit of the Pope" (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1992/09/bush-family-value).

With the background we have seen regarding Jeb 'The Smart One' and his proclivity for awarding contracts to cronies and terrorists in the anti-Castro Cuban community, it is hard to believe that he did not know about Diaz's business associations with Charles Keating. But Jeb would never answer questions to this effect and of course the corporate media that seeks to conceal more than they reveal would never press him, preferring to give him a pass.

After delay after delay, public-corruption investigators finally put together their case against Manny 'The Looter' Diaz, and he was ultimately hauled off to jail in 2000. The charge: Diaz stole nearly one million dollars in public money by not delivering thousands of trees for the Pope; trees that the county purchased in 1994 and 1995 as a result of the lucrative contract awarded to him by Jeb Bush and then Governor Martinez (http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2000-08-31/news/at-long-last-busted/).

Keating is now dead; he expired in April of this year, a broken, criminal (http://www.economist.com/news/obituary/21600648-charles-keating-moral-crusader-and-financial-snake-oil-salesman-died-march-31st-aged).

Releasing Cuban terrorists to run rampant over the US

Former Florida governor, Jeb 'The Smart One' Bush, also has been instrumental in securing the release from prison of a number of bellicose Cuban exiles convicted of terrorist offences, according to a book written shortly after the theft. The Bush crime family has also accommodated the demands of Cuban exile hardliners in exchange for electoral and financial support.

In 2002, according to the book Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana by Ann Louise Bardach, an award-winning investigative journalist who has covered Cuban and Miami politics for the New York Times and Vanity Fair:

"Jeb Bush sealed his popularity with the Cuban exile community by acting as campaign manager for another prominent Cuban-American, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, when she ran successfully for Congress" (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/dec/02/usa.books).

Ros-Lehtinen is currently under federal investigation for her role in protecting banking fugitives from Ecuador, the Isaias brothers (http://www.dailycensored.com/the-brothers-grim-criminal-isaias-brothers-investigated-by-homeland-security-for-alleged-money-laundering-the-obama-2012-campaign-received-90000of-stolen-swag/).

Jeb 'the Smart One' also intervened to assure his father, then president, released the convicted Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch from prison and grant him US residency.

Bosch had participated in more than 30 terrorist acts. He was convicted of firing a rocket into a Polish ship that was on passage to Cuba. He was also implicated in the 1976 blowing-up of a Cuban plane flying to Havana from Venezuela in which all 73 civilians on board were killed. Jeb served as Bosch's point man to Bush Sr.

In 2002, Jeb Bush nominated Raoul Cantero, the grandson of former Cuban dictator Batista, as a Florida Supreme Court judge, despite having no judicial experience. Cantero had previously represented Bosch and acted as his spokesman, once describing Bosch on Miami radio as a "great Cuban patriot" (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5773.htm).

But the political patronage for terrorists accelerated at rapid speeds when Mel Martinez, the Orlando Republican who arranged for the shipwrecked Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez, to visit Disney World, was made housing secretary and Otto Reich was awarded a one-year recess appointment for the western hemisphere in the state department.

Otto Reich, like Elliot Abrams, Oliver North and John Negroponte, was one of the officials most responsible for devising and administering the murderous "Reagan doctrine" in the 1980s in Central America where 30,000 Nicaraguans died. Reich was later compensated with a top job in the George W. Bush administration. As the former head of a pro-Contra government office, Reich was named Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere during the February Senate recess in 2002 (http://www.counterpunch.org/2002/03/12/contra-warrior-otto-reich-returns-to-the-state-department/).

Then there is the fact that brother George W. Bush, no doubt at the request of Jeb 'The Smart One', in September of 2002 released Jose Dionisio Suarez and Virgilio Paz Romero from prison. The two carried out the 1976 assassination of the Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffit in Washington on American soil. PRESS headlines called it one of the worst acts of state terrorism ever to take place in U.S. territory ((https://beta.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/CubaNews/conversations/messages/10729).

Bush Crime Family ties to Argentina

Finally, there is the Florida-Argentine connection set up by Jeb Bush with Carlos Ruckauf, a scandalous Peronista politician from Argentina. Ruckauf was vice-president of Argentina under Carlos Menem but, also, Ruckauf was the labor minister under Isabel Peron and then served in the military junta in Argentina. He drew up an accord that led to the "disappearance" of dissident workers at the Mercedes Benz plant in Buenos Aires during the military junta (1976-1983).

In 2003, the ex-Argentine minister Carlos Ruckauf was called to testify before a judge investigating the disappearance. The sub poena was issued by the Federal Court of the City of Plata, capital of Buenos Aires Province, of Argentina. The purpose of the 2003 hearing was to hear testimony from Ruckauf, who was the ex-labor minister at the time of the disappearance. The case concerned the fate of 14 workers who worked in a Mercedes Benz Plant in Canuelas and from which they were 'disappeared' in 1976 after the coup d'etat that restored the military regime (http://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-533-the-florida-argentine-connection-another-helluva-conspiracy-theory/). Ruckauf claims he had no knowledge of the disappearances but he fled Argentina when the heat became suffocating.

As part of an investigation into Nazi-like crimes in Argentina, it was found that:

"In 2003, as part of the Truth Commission (Juicio de la Verdad) that took place in La Plata, Argentina, German journalist Gabriela Weber introduced a 1976 memo in which Daimler Benz executive Hanns Martin Schleyer admitted that the company had always 'collaborated' with the Labor Ministry and with the bureaucracy of the Peronist SMATA trade union to 'combat subversion.' Schleyer had been an SS officer in Germany during the Nazi era and in all likelihood was no stranger to the fascist methods being employed by the Argentine military dictatorship at the time" (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/05/arge-m23.html).

Despite all of this, or perhaps because of it, 'Jeb the Smart One', signed an agreement with Ruckauf in mid-2000, allegedly to develop economic and cultural ties between the Buenos Aires province and Florida, where Ruckauf once ruled.

According to long-time researcher Dave Emory:

"The agreement was hammered out by Patricio Lombardi, an Argentine citizen and a former aide to Ruckauf. Lombardi was the Deputy Secretary of State for Latin American affairs for the state of Florida, functioning in that capacity as an aide to Katherine Harris, who was instrumental in the stealing of the Florida election on behalf of George W. Bush in 2000" (ibid).

You can hear more about Ruckauf and the Jeb Bush-Argentinian connection at the audio website: http://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-533-the-florida-argentine-connection-another-helluva-conspiracy-theory/).

There, you will also hear about Gustavo Cisneros, a close associate of the Bushes and another one of the many men and women of Cuban extraction in the close Bush circle of friends.

Gustavo Cisneros is the owner of the revamped Cisneros Group, a conglomerate with interests in Venezuelan television stations, telecom, a regional brewery, a real estate company and a baseball team (http://www.forbes.com/profile/gustavo-cisneros/).

Cisneros appears to have been deeply involved with the attempt to oust Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. He owns Univision TV, and will seek to influence Latino voters in the US in 2016, as he has done in the past.

Either way you cut it, 'The Smart One' has a history of long, merciless and sordid ties to Latin American dictators, drug dealers, terrorists and fascists.

Columba Bush

Besides being a corrupt politician, supporter of terrorism, drug dealers and the Mafia, Jeb Bush, from all appearances seems like a happily married man. He is married to Columba Bush and has been for forty years. A native of Mexico, Columba is rarely seen inside 'The Smart One's' political circles. The couple first met in the early 1970s while Jeb Bush was on a study-abroad trip to Mexico as a high school student. The couple got married in Texas in 1974.

However, family life has not been kind to the couple. In the past, two of the couple's three children were arrested on charges related to drug possession and intoxication. Their son, Jeb Bush Jr., was arrested at a popular bar district in Texas in 2005 and charged with public intoxication and resisting arrest. He was 21 years old at the time. Three years before that, their daughter, Noelle Bush, was arrested on other more serious charges.

In 2002, she was arrested and charged with trying to fill a false prescription of Xanax at a pharmacy. She was later charged for hiding crack cocaine in her shoe while staying at a drug-rehabilitation center (http://www.laopinion.com/the-private-life-of-jeb-bushs-mexican-wife-columba). She is a recovering 'crack addict'.

However, the dysfunctionality of the family does not simply rest on the sins of the offspring. In 1999, immigration agents temporarily detained Columba at the Florida airport after she deceitfully stated to customs agents that she bought only $500 worth of clothes and jewelry during a shopping spree in Paris, when in fact she had purchased $19,000 in clothing and jewelry. The original receipts were found in her passport (ibid). She was never arrested.

But the wife of privilege has even more baggage than she had when she flew to Paris.

Columba Bush's sister is married to John P. Schmitz, a beneficiary of the fellowship programs subsumed under the Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft, and he is the brother of Joseph Schmitz. Both Schmitz's come from a long family line of hotly righteous reactionaries and they have close links to George Bush, Sr.
(http://www.apfn.net/Messageboard/10-03-07/discussion.cgi.21.html). 'John' is a former executive with Blackwater Worldwide, now called Academi LLC, and previously known as Xe.

Interestingly, the Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft and its subsidiary fellowships were used to sponsor the professional careers of said 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta (http://www.rense.com/general37/ATA.HTM).

As Topix.com noted regarding Columba's brother-in-law, John P. Schmitz:

"With Schmitz, one gets into a really nasty political neighborhood: He was deputy counsel, under C. Boyden Grey, to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, playing a role in the defense of the elder Bush in the Iran-Contra scandal. John Schmitz and his brother Joseph E. Schmitz are both longtime leaders of the Federalist Society.

John was also both law clerk to Judge Antonin Scalia, US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (1983-1984), and a Special Assistant to William Baxter, Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust, US Department of Justice (1981-1982). Prior to law school, he was Legislative Assistant to US Representative Goodloe E. Byron (1977) and Legislative Aide to US Congressman Charles W. Sandman, Jr. (1973-1975). All were proud right-wing politicians.

The Schmitz's father was John G. Schmitz, a militant racist and reactionary fascist who was the former California State Senator, member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and U.S. Presidential candidate under the American Independent Party in 1972.

Schmitz Sr. once told a TV interviewer in 1982 that it might be time for a military coup in the United States, just like General Augusto Pinochet's coup in Chile. His friend, columnist Joseph Sobran, quoted Representative Schmitz saying:

"There is nothing wrong with the Jesuits that a good Inquisition wouldn't cure" (http://www.topix.com/forum/philly/TBBSIQJBD6CFEED5B/p13332).

Schmitz 'the elder', died in 2001, but his legacy continues.

John's brother, Joseph E. Schmitz, was nominated by President George W. Bush to be Defense Department Inspector General on June 18, 2001. He quit in 2005 to work for Blackwater. He is a member of Opus Dei and Knights of Malta. Joseph is known to have a fascination with German Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, having installed seals bearing the Von Steuben family motto in the Inspector General's office during the time he served there.

In 2005, brother Joe was accused of slowing or blocking investigations of senior Bush administration officials, spending taxpayer money on pet projects and accepting gifts that may have violated ethical guidelines, according to interviews with current and former senior officials in the inspector general's office, congressional investigators and a review of internal e-mail and other documents. (http://articles.latimes.com/2005/sep/25/nation/na-schmitz25).

John P. Schmitz, Columba's sister's husband, is also marinated in the love of Germany. He is the head of Schmitz Global Partners. At their website they write that:

"In September 2009, together with former Ambassador C. Boyden Gray, John established Gray & Schmitz LLP in September 2009 (renamed Schmitz Global Partners LLP in 2011). In 1993, John joined Mayer Brown as a partner to open its first German office in Berlin. From 1993 to 2009, John helped lead and develop a prominent and thriving German practice at Mayer Brown. Before joining Mayer Brown in 1993, John held a wide range of significant public policy positions" (http://schmitzglobalpartners.com/Professionals/John Schmitz/index.html).

Columba's brother-in-law emphasizes his special emphasis on US and German political regulatory concerns and has experience with numerous high-profile business and regulatory matters involving both American and German public policy and legal activities.

John's clients have included the US Chamber of Commerce, General Electric, Bayer AG, Bertelsmann, Bosch GmbH, Deutsche Welle, Gillette, Pfizer, Microsoft, Verizon, Eli Lilly Co., Ford Motor Co., and Arkema, amongst other clients.

Thanks to the work of reporter and author Jeremy Scahill (http://www.amazon.com/Blackwater-Rise-Worlds-Powerful-Mercenary-ebook/dp/B0097CYTYA), we now know that tied to the Bush crime family through marriage and to right-wing extremist and racist groups and with political connections and money, Blackwater set up shop in North Carolina in 1997. Securely hidden on a former military base in North Carolina and saddled with money as a result of Pentagon contracts ensured by Joseph Schmitz and the Bush crime family, Academi LLC (formerly Blackwater) began to expand its role nationally and internationally. The company specialized in targeting small communities in order to establish regional military training centers. Today, it is one of the largest, murderous, private mercenary groups in the world.

The syndicate is notorious for its assassinations overseas, arms smuggling and unauthorized possession of automatic weapons (http://www.thewire.com/business/2012/08/time-blackwater-change-its-name-again/55532/).

Drug Cartels, Columba and Jeb

Due to the fact that Jeb has been married to Columba for so many years and that she is from Mexico, one might say this is why 'Jeb the Smart One' feels so comfortable in Mexico; this and his father's past ties with oil companies there.

And of course, the two both speak fluent Spanish, which is one reason the Republican Party has their eyes on Jeb for the presidency of the United States. Getting the Latino vote is a necessity and with a Mexican wife, fluent Spanish and ties to Latin America, 'The Smart One' is counted on to secure the American Latino vote.

In 2000, El Andar media released an extraordinary report noting that in 1989 Jeb and his wife were present at an extravagant celebration for then president of Mexico, Carlos Salinas. The on-line zine, when speaking of the Bush's connections to Mexico, reported:

"If one event could be said to make that relationship visible, it had to be the state dinner given eleven years ago by President Bush for Mexico's president, Carlos Salinas. It was an elegant yet boisterous gala, where the biggest movers and shakers in Texas and Mexico congregated and celebrated. This group was to become W's Mexican legacy, a gift of ties and connections passed on from the father to his son" (http://www.elandar.com/bush/amigos.html).

At the gala event the group included two men with numerous links to drug cartel figures. These men helped George W. Bush win the Latino vote in Texas.

George Bush Sr. met Carlos Salinas's father, Raúl Salinas Lozano, back when the latter was Mexico's commerce secretary. The families' friendship continued through the years. Raúl Salinas, the president's brother, told investigators that Jeb and Columba Bush joined him three times for vacations at his hacienda Las Mendocinas. It was the same estate where he reportedly hosted an infamous 1990 party for the elite of Mexico's drug cartels.

According to the report by El Andar:

"A glance around the fourteen tables at the 1989 dinner showed that pains were taken to arrange them so that no one appeared more important than the others. There was a smattering of celebrities -- Anthony Quinn, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Barbara Walters and Larry King. Bush's son Jeb and his Mexican wife Columba joined the soiree, too.

The Mexican president had spent a long day with President Bush signing trade pacts, the precursors of NAFTA. Salinas brought his so-called Dream Team: his commerce secretary, finance minister, and his personal Machiavelli, Jose Córdoba. It would later be astounding to see, as the decade unfolded, how many of that administration's proud men and women fell shamefully from grace -- some exiled, some imprisoned and some assassinated" (ibid).

Also present at the festivity were loyal "Bushfellas", old friends of the family: present was then Commerce Secretary for W's cabinet, Robert Mosbacher Sr., General Colin Powell, and George Bush Senior's ever-present friend and consigliore, Secretary of State James Baker. Also on hand was Gary Jacobs, whose Texas bank was about to be bought by the son of Mexico's billionaire-politico Carlos Hank González. Gonzalez was also a guest. Tony Garza was there also. Then a young judge, he went on to become a Bush cabinet contender. George W. Bush appointed him Secretary of State (the Katherine Harris job), and the Bushes then ran him for state Railroad Commissioner, wherein he became the first Hispanic to win statewide office in Texas. George W. Bush then named him ambassador to Mexico (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3038635).

Graza went on to marry Mara Asunción Aramburuzabala, who inherited the Modelo Brewery Beer fortune (Mexico's biggest brewery and maker of Corona Beer, enjoyed by millions of Americans). Since then she has taken big stakes in Televisa, the world's biggest Spanish-language broadcaster, and Telemex, the telecommunications giant. Forbes and Fortune reckoned her wealth at about $1.5 billion, making her Mexico's richest woman.

Mara Asunción has been divorced once, and her private life has long been the subject of intense interest in Mexican gossip columns. She started dating the ambassador after a lengthy relationship with Manuel Medina Mora of Citibank operations in Latin America (ibid).

But the scoop is that criminal defense lawyer Roy Barrera Jr. and car dealer Ernesto Ancira Jr. were present at the gala as well and the ties Barrera and Ancira had to drug cartels would, as El Andar reported, remain unnoticed for another decade.

The Barreras, father and son, were at one time among Texas's best narco-lawyers. Roy earned a large portion of his income from drug pushers' bosses, and he's done a suitable job of keeping them out of prison.

As to Ancira, his family in Mexico has been part of the power elite for years. The Ancira name is prominent in the city of Monterrey. The northern commercial center's most elegant long-standing hotel bears the name of Hotel Ancira.

As he developed business and political contacts with the Bushes and others in the US, Ernesto Ancira cultivated friendships with men connected to Mexican drug cartels. One of the first was financier Guillermo Ávila. They palled around San Antonio, Texas, together until Ávila and his partners were busted for drug-money laundering.

Ávila was eventually found guilty of conspiracy to launder money for his drug-trafficking friends. Yet, incredibly, he served a little over a year in prison. His boss, Rafael Muñoz Talavera, was gunned down on a Juarez street in 1998 (ibid).

As the article from El Andar notes:

"Ernie and Roy Barrera campaigned for President Bush in 1992, and they celebrated what looked like an easy re-election with George 'W' at a 'Super Tuesday' rally for the Texas primary. Ancira also thought he was a shoo-in in his run for the state senate, especially when both Bushes came out to campaign for him. George W. optimistically greeted Ernie as 'Mr. Senator' well before the election took place" (ibid).

Carlos Salinas, the former president of Mexico, is self-exiled in Ireland for corruption and theft of Mexican funds. He led Mexico, as president, from 1988 to 1994. He is widely reviled for the economic collapse he set in motion at the end of his term.

One of his brothers, Enrique Salinas, was an engineer who never entered politics but became wealthy during his brother's term. He was found dead on December 6^th of 2004 inside a car he had borrowed from his companion, Hilda Deneken. He had been beaten and was black-bagged. The cause of death was asphyxiation.

Raul Salinas, the drug-dealing brother of Carlos and Enrique, is serving life in a federal prison in the US.

The BBC reported in 1998:

"The Swiss authorities say more than $100m of drugs money was deposited in Swiss banks by the brother of the former Mexican president, Carlos Salinas.

"They are confiscating the money, which they believe was part of a much larger amount paid to Raul Salinas for helping Mexican and Colombian drugs cartels during his brother's six-year term ending in 1994" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/197773.stm).

The fact remains that these politically connected thugs and drug dealers were all 'amigos' of the Bushes and 'The Smart One' was present at Carlos's festive gala and a host at Mexican homes used by drug dealers.

Again, the old expression from Mexico comes into play: "Tell me who you side with and I will tell you who you are."

Summary

"A family that 'preys' together stays together."

Florida, since the overthrow of the dictator Batista by Fidel Castro of Cuba in 1959, has always been an open sore for Latin American dictators, terrorists, drug dealers, crooks, swindlers, CIA operatives and Mafia kingpins. But they could never have become entrenched as they are now without the backing of enabling and crooked politicians like Jeb Bush and his crime family.

The long and winding stench of monstrous murderers, terrorists, anti-Castro exiles, former Nicaraguan Contras, CIA terrorists, drug cartels and Mafia Kingpins all are part of the Jeb Bush legacy and, indeed, the Bush Crime Family birthright. It's all of the family, as they say.

If 'Jeb the Smart One' runs, the corporate press will trickle at the mouth over his scandals involving his wife's profligacy, his daughter's drug addiction and his son's arrest for intoxication and assaulting a police officer but they will never reveal the shadowy world of Bush terrorism, drug dealing, looting of the US treasury, the financing of terrorism for profit, the role of the CIA in undermining America nor the Bush Crime Family's connections with Mafia criminals.

The truth of the matter is that Jeb 'the Smart One' Bush is simply one Bush in the long gaggle of the Bush's sinister legacy and destruction of America.

We cannot accept this!

The sad part is, as I wrote regarding Hillary Clinton, within the US one-party system with two wings, there are no good choices for president of the United States in 2016 (http://www.opednews.com/articles/Ready-for-Hillary-PAC-A-p-by-Danny-Weil-2016-Election_2016-Elections_2016-Presidential-Race_Adhd-141118-368.html).

The best activists and progressive-minded people can do is to organize on a grass-roots level within their communities over ending inequality, ending plutocracy, ending corporatocracy, ending capitalism, ending racism, ending sexism, ending gender discrimination, ending war, fighting for environmental protection, creating an organized progressive media and laying the groundwork for a moral leveling and underpinning of a more sane, rational and enhanced society.

It's time to clean out the Augean Stables of Empire, time to subdue the canine instincts of the one-percent sociopaths, like 'Jeb the Smart One' and his family, who are practiced in deception and dishonesty; it is the time to un-grease ourselves from the soiled aprons strings of despair, victimization and unfettered crime.

It is either this, or we witness the destruction of American and exist in the Potter's Field of a crumbling, fascist Empire.

Authors Bio:

I am an author and investigative journalist who has written more than four hundred articles for Truthout, Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, Daily Censored, Project Censored and more. I received two awards from Project Censored, one in 2010 and one in 2012.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/08/24/obama-and-duncan-s-education-policy-like-bush-s-only-worse/

http://www.projectcensored.org/10-hr-347-would-make-many-forms-of-nonviolent-protest-illegal/

I am part of Truthout's "Public Intellectual" project.

I have written seven books on education, most recently:

Charter School Movement: History, Politics, Policies, Economics and Effectiveness

(http://books.google.com.ec/books/about/Charter_School_Movement.html?id=Fk8kAQAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y).

I have been a federally certified public interest attorney for more than 30 years.

I have been a tenant organizer and educational worker and organizer for 40 years.

I lived for one year in Nicaragua during the war, 1985,and worked for The Sandinista Ministry of Culture under Ernesto Cardinal.

I now live in Ecuador.