ustxtxb_obs_1999_02_05_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

1.1. ast month our Governor took time out from his busy inaugural schedule to go golfing with his father and Argentine President Carlos Menem at Austin’s Barton Creek Country Club, in what the local paper celebrated as “his latest foray into foreign policy.” It was just a little foray, for only joined in for three holes. Meanwhile, we’re still wondering how many holes he played in a 1989 gas pipeline deal in Argentina. According to a member of the Argentine Congress, in 1988, while George H. W. Bush was vice president and campaigning for the presidency, his son leaned on the Argentine government in an attempt to win a huge pipeline contract for Enron the Houston-based energy company whose CEO Kenneth Lay has taken equity positions in the political campaigns of both Bushes. Reporter David Corn faxed George W. Bush a list of some eighteen questions about the Enron deal in 1994, just as Bush was concluding his first race for governor. He dismissed each of Corn’s questions with no explanation. Bush did say he never called Rodolfo Terragno, the Argentine Congressman who raised the Bush-Enron issue in debate on the floor of his country’s Congress. Terragno had served as the minister of public works in the reform government of President Raul Alfonsin, and he maintains that Bush called and introduced himself as the son of the Vice President. “He tried to exert some influence to get that project for Enron,” Terragno told the Observer in November of 1994. “He assumed that the fact he was the son of the [future] President would exert influence…. I felt pressured. It was not proper for him to make that kind of call.” Enron didn’t get the concession until the Bushs’ golfing partner, Carlos Menem, defeated Rail Alfonsin. “Enron was luckier with the new president,” Corn reported in the Observer. “The pipeline was approved by the administration of President Carlos Sail Menem, the leader of the Peronist Party and a friend of President Bush.” Menem not only approved the project. In his book Robo para la corona \(I Steal for Buenos Aires’ most respected investigative journalists, reports that Enron got more than a contract. President Menem made the Houston-based energy company eligible for his industrial promotion program: Enron was declared exempt from Argentina’s ties on capital goods while the pipeline project was in the works. The day after Menem was inaugurated, another Bush son, Neil, played a highly publicized game of tennis with the new President in Buenos Aires. + TALKING TRASH Just before the mid-Januarysnows blanketed the Northeast, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani announced that the rest of the United States bears an obligation to store the refuse produced by his constituents. Why? Well. obviously, because we non-New Yorkers profit \(in a figurative as the cultural center of the country. I ‘pun hearing this nugget of wisdom, residents of Sierra Blanca, where New York sends its shit, reportedly began planning an outing to the Guggenheim. And 1Nhi.le they’re right there at the center of the UlliVeltie, they might also swing by the vitality by ushering spic-n span corporatism into its cultural districts. \(A question Giuliani, who’s been mentioned as a potential running mate for Governor Bush, had best stuff his words down one of those new disposals they’re intro.. clueing in Gotham not the first cultural benefit New York has reaped from the provinces. George W. can tell him, waste importing is not a big political seller here in the heartland. + INTERVIEW: The Next Generation nother Republican fraternity brother has been inducted into the Order of the Big Brown Swivel Chair: last session the good people of Angleton elected young Dennis Bonnen to the House; joining him there this session is 27-year-old Rick Green who according to theAustin American-Statesman “could be the prototype for a new generation of Texas lawmakers.” A lawyer, entrepreneur, and Christian conservative, Green initially lost his race in Dripping Springs by twenty votes, then won by thirty-six after a recount. The Observer spoke with the Representative in his new Capitol Extension office; which lie’s decorated with a photo of Reagan and Thatcher, a photo of his two-year-old son in camouflage clothing, and a motivational nature poster with the motto “Conviction: Be Certain Your Feet Are In The Right Place Before You Decide To Stand Firm.” Green himself is small but broad-shouldered, televisably handsome, genial, and fluent in the language of his party. Excerpts of our conversation follow: On starting his first business: When I graduated from Angelo State my dad gave me a trip to Puerto Vallarta… a couple of fraternity brothers and I went down there, and I met the Texas A&M Aggie Wranglers…. I thought I could dance before I saw them, but when I saw them I said man, I’d pay to learn how to do that. I just thought right then and there, hey if we could get these guys on videotape, teaching what they’re doing, people’ll pay $19.95. That was a blast, we had a great time, and it gave me a great experience of what it’s like to be an entrepreneur. On producing a documentary film: I have a real desire to make sure that we’re historically accurate, so that we learn from the mistakes of the past and from the successes of the past, so when you have someone like Ronald Reagan that 1 believe had the most powerful economic policy that we’ve seen this century, and yet Reaganomics has been so mischaracterized in the last few years, that I FEBRUARY 5, 1999 46imimmumusairmemisaiiiii 6 THE TEXAS OBSERVER