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October 24, 2005
Right Wingers Getting Nervous as Miers' Role in Bush Corruption Unfolds
By Rob Kall
Bush corruption, previously put behind and buried is being unearthed and could come to light in Senate judicial committee hearings. And one of the Judges Bush Brought to DC to endorse Harriet is deeply involved.
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An army of skeletons thought hidden deep in the recesses of Texas closests are coming to life as a result of Bush's nomination of longtime crony and protectress, Harriet Miers.Larry Litwin was fired in 1997 as executive director of the Texas Lottery Commission because then-Governor George Bush wanted an investigation into possible criminal political-influence buying squashed, and then-commissioner Harriet Miers, a Bush appointee, complied with his wishes and terminated him – that is the story Litwin is prepared to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee.
...ordering a thorough search for political campaign contributions that may have been made by GTECH to a comprehensive list of Texas legislators and state officials...
Littwin had reason to be suspicious. In January 1997, federal prosecutors in New Jersey had released a pre-sentencing report in the criminal conviction of J. David Smith, GTECH's national sales manager, which mentioned former Texas Lt. Governor and GTECH lobbyist Ben Barnes as having been involved in a criminal kickback scheme... Littwin wanted to investigate those charges and determine how deeply the corruption reached into Texas politics. Prior to his indictment in New Jersey, J. David Smith bragged he had bribed some ten Texas legislators to secure their votes when the lottery bill was before the Legislature. Lottery Commission chairperson Miers assured the Austin American-Statesman these charges against Barnes would be investigated. WND can find no record of any investigation actually undertaken, despite the accusations of criminal activity.
This was not the first time Hill and Miers spoke with one voice. In 1999, Miers' Dallas law firm, Locke, Purnell, Rain & Harrell, merged with Judge John Hill's Houston firm, Liddell, Sapp, Zivley, Hill & LaBoon, to form Locke, Liddell & Sapp. Judge Hill appeared in Washington last week as one of the Texas former Supreme Court Justices brought to the Capitol to buttress Harriet Miers' troubled nomination.
Commissioners Hill and Miers were desperate to calm the public uproar.
"Mr. President, we just all want to thank you for this nomination," said John Hill Jr., a Democrat who was chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court from 1985 to 1988 and served with Miers on the Texas Lottery Commission.
"We are excited about it, and we are here to try and let the people of America know what we all know, which is that she is an absolutely fantastic person and a great lawyer and will make a great judge," he said.
"We actually know Harriet Miers; I hope that still counts for something, somewhere," Hill said. "I'd trust her with my wife and my life."
"If it was an attempt in any way to embarrass or intimidate key members of the Legislature or the executive branch, then Governor Bush strongly objects."
On October 2, 1997, Lottery Commissioners Miers and Hill told the Dallas paper they had not approved the records search Mr. Littwin had undertaken. In the same article, Littwin defended himself: "Specifically, in the exercise of due diligence with provisions of our vendor contracts, I felt this research and review was important in order to determine if any financial contributions had been made by GTECH."
Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
Check out his platform at RobKall.com
He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
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more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.
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