The Comprehensive 2016 GOP Presidential Candidate Guide. Jeb Bush, The Smart One?

I forgot just how much research has to go into one of these.  Life is so much simpler for the simple, turn on Fox "News", veg out and just let the bullshit fill my little brain.  Alas, my little brain is semi-functioning, so research and sources it is.

First up of the dregs of humanity is John Ellis "Jeb" Bush, son of a former president and brother of Crawford, Texas' village idiot, until he moved to Dallas after he tired of playing cowboy for publicity purposes.

Jeb was kinda considered a lovable underachiever by his parents, he was only worth 1.3 million.

Florida’s culture of get-rich-quickism probably held out a particular appeal to Jeb. It’s part of the Bush-family tradition to light out for the territory, reinvent oneself, and make one’s fortune before entering public service. Making money always comes first. Jeb’s grandfather left Ohio to become a banker in the Northeast. Jeb’s father left the Northeast to become a Texas oilman. W., by this standard, didn’t roll very far from the tree, but he did make money in the energy business and Major League Baseball before starting his political career.

But Jeb's been making the old folks proud by making money for the last eight years,  And he did it all on his own.  That's my sarcasm font.

Jeb, of all the Bushes, probably had the fewest assets before entering public office, and when he left Tallahassee, he was worth $1.3 million, which for the Bushes isn’t very much. His work space at the Biltmore is surprisingly unfussy (until January, he worked in a suite that didn’t even have its own bathroom). But the real-estate market went bananas during his time as governor. It must have whetted his appetite for a finer life. When I ask Howard Leach, one of Jeb’s most loyal fund-raisers, what the governor has been doing for the last eight years, he answers very matter-of-factly: “He’s been trying to rebuild his net worth.” And so he’s been sitting on corporate boards, doing real-estate deals with his son, hitting the speaking circuit.

Just like the rest of us common folk.

Just an example of the work that Jeb did was a liaison mission to a Mexican billionaire for that paragon of business ethics, Lehman Brothers.

Based on records and interviews that show that Jeb Bush participated in the “fevered, last-ditch efforts to prop up Lehman Brothers, a Wall Street bank weighed down by toxic mortgage-backed securities,” The Times learned about Bush’s failed mission, which was unknown until now. The daily says that emails show that as a paid adviser to the company in 2008, Jeb Bush met with Slim Helú as Lehman sought to persuade the world’s second richest man to make a sizable investment in the firm.

Disparately  Seeking Sugar Daddy

Now we all know that all the Republican sugar babies are looking for a daddy to bankroll their efforts to convince us that they really, really care about those ninety-something percent of us whose only use to them is our vote.  Fortunately for the GOP there are more than enough really, really intellectually lazy people who will vote against their own best interests to make one Republican's dream come true.

So, how's Jeb doing in his sucking up mode?  Well, he's been getting a ton of dough thru his super PAC, Right to Rise, which claims, in part.

We believe passionately that the Right to Rise — to move up the income ladder based on merit, hard work and earned success — is the central moral promise of American economic life. We are optimists who believe that America’s opportunities have never been greater than they are right now. But we know America is falling short of its promise.  

Millions of our fellow citizens across the broad middle class feel as if the American Dream is now out of their reach; that our politics are petty and broken; that opportunities are elusive; and that the playing field is no longer fair or level. Too many of the poor have lost hope that a path to a better life is within their grasp. While the last eight years have been pretty good ones for top earners, they’ve been a lost decade for the rest of America. We are not leading – at home or abroad.

 Is that a crock?  Of course.  Nowhere except in Right Wing Fantasyland does anyone believe that there can be a mass movement up the income ladder thru merit, hard work and earned success.  Nice thought, but the real world don't work that way.

And "the last eight years"?  Shows you just how gullible Jeb and the GOP thinks we are.

Looks like the vast majority of us started getting screwed by St. Ronald, the patron saint of the GOP.

But enough about our problems, Jeb still hasn't found a billionaire to sign his dance card.

Good news is that the Koch brothers have Jeb in their final five.

But in an interview with USA Today, Charles Koch revealed the candidates that he and his brother David likely will stand behind leading up to the presidential primaries in early 2016. They are – all Republicans – Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.

Really!?  Are all billionaires whackadoos?

Anyway, our intrepid Jeb perseveres by pretending that he's not running yet so that he can take advantage of the unlimited and unnamed contributions that he can get before he declares.  Told you, he's the smart one.

WASHINGTON — Jeb Bush is under growing pressure to acknowledge what seems obvious to some voters and election lawyers: He is running for president.

The lawyers say Mr. Bush, a former Florida governor, is stretching the limits of election law by crisscrossing the country, hiring a political team and raising tens of millions of dollars at fund-raisers, all without declaring — except once, by mistake — that he is a candidate.  

Some election experts say Mr. Bush passed the legal threshold to be considered a candidate months ago, even if he has not formally acknowledged it. Federal law makes anyone who raises or spends $5,000 in an effort to become president a candidate and thus subject to fund-raising, spending and disclosure rules. Greater latitude is allowed for those who, like Mr. Bush, say they are merely “testing the waters” for a possible run.                                                                                                                                                      

“When you look at the totality of the activities, could a reasonable person conclude anything other than that he is seeking the presidency?” asked Karl J. Sandstrom, a campaign finance lawyer who served on the Federal Election Commission.                                                                                                                                                                       For a candidate to avoid restrictions by simply not declaring his candidacy, he said, “makes a mockery of the law.”

And they called Bill Clinton "Slick Willy".

Plus there's always millionaires to cuddle.  Like Coal Barons?

Jeb Bush will convene next week with a clutch of coalmining barons and reliable Republican party donors who have paid at least $7,500 each to huddle in secret with the presidential hopeful at a golfing and fly-fishing retreat in a hidden-away corner of Virginia. 

Bush’s scheduled one-hour speech at the Coal & Investment Leadership Forum will take place at the members-only Olde Farm club in Bristol, Virginia, where the civil war-themed golf tournament is a “cherished tradition”. 

The under-the-radar appearance, which is invitation-only and off-limits to the press, will bring the potential presidential candidate face to face with the owners and chief executives of coalmining and energy companies at a critical time for the energy industry and for Bush’s political ambitions. 

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to finalize new rules for carbon pollution from power plants this summer, which the coalmining and electricity industries have condemned as a “war on coal”.

Which may explain why Jeb is pretty ambiguous about climate change.

The former Florida governor, who has taken more moderate stances on controversial issues such as immigration and education than many of his Republican White House rivals, is attempting to thread the needle on climate change, energy, and the environment.
 In recent months, Bush has suggested that the United States should adapt to climate change and work with other countries to cut carbon-dioxide emissions while also outlining a moral case for protecting the planet. The green group funded by liberal billionaire Tom Steyer even applauded Bush for saying he was "concerned" about the changing climate. 

That set Bush apart from Republican presidential contenders such as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who questions whether global temperatures are rising at all, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has thrown cold water on the idea that the United States can convince countries like China and India to rein in emissions. 

But Bush is a far cry from being a climate champion. He does not acknowledge the scientific consensus that human activity drives climate change, and he attacks the Environmental Protection Agency, the agency enforcing President Obama's ambitious effort to tackle global warming.

Jeb did, however, give a shout out to those of us who do believe in climate change and science, for that matter.  He said that we were "intellectually arrogant", thanks Jeb.  But then, anyone with an IQ over a 100, maybe 90, would seem intellectually arrogant to the GOP base.

The former Florida governor, who has taken more moderate stances on controversial issues such as immigration and education than many of his Republican White House rivals, is attempting to thread the needle on climate change, energy, and the environment.

In recent months, Bush has suggested that the United States should adapt to climate change and work with other countries to cut carbon-dioxide emissions while also outlining a moral case for protecting the planet. The green group funded by liberal billionaire Tom Steyer even applauded Bush for saying he was "concerned" about the changing climate. 

That set Bush apart from Republican presidential contenders such as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who questions whether global temperatures are rising at all, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has thrown cold water on the idea that the United States can convince countries like China and India to rein in emissions.

Now to end this mess, let's find out which author has had the most influence on him.  Now if this doesn't fuel some dystopian nightmare for you, you're in the wrong place.

Charles Murray, an author who GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush recently named first when he was asked which books have had a big impact upon him, is not an elected official, so he is free to rail against democracy to his heart’s content. And that is exactly what he does in his new book, By The People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission. 

Pay no attention to the title. Government “by the people” is the last thing Murray cares to see. Murray admits that the kind of government he seeks, a libertarian fantasy where much of our nation’s regulatory and welfare state has been dismantled, is “beyond the reach of the electoral process and the legislative process.” He also thinks it beyond the branch of government that is appointed by elected officials. The Supreme Court, Murray claims, “destroyed” constitutional “limits on the federal government’s spending authority” when it upheld Social Security in 1937. Since then, the federal government has violated a “tacit compact” establishing that it would not “unilaterally impose a position on the moral disputes that divided America” (Murray traces the voiding of this compact to 1964, the year that Congress banned whites-only lunch counters).         

Murray is probably best known for co-authoring 1994’s The Bell Curve, a quasi-eugenic tract which argued that black people are genetically disposed to be less intelligent that white people. Yet, while The Bell Curve “practically spawned an entire field of scholarship devoted to debunking it,” Murray remains one of the most influential conservative thinkers in America today.

Dr. Murray’s pre-Bell Curve work shaped the welfare reforms enacted in the 1990s. Former Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan cited Murray in 2014 to claim that there is a culture of laziness “in our inner cities in particular.” Last April, when Jeb Bush was asked what he liked to read, he replied “I like Charles Murray books to be honest with you, which means I’m a total nerd I guess.” 

So when Murray speaks, powerful and influential men (and his acolytes are, almost invariably, men) listen, including men who shape our nation’s fiscal policy and men who could be president someday. 

By The People, however, rejects outright the idea that Murray’s vision for a less generous and well-regulated society can be achieved through appeals to elected officials — or even through appeals to unelected judges. The government Murray seeks is “not going to happen by winning presidential elections and getting the right people appointed to the Supreme Court.” Rather, By The People, is a call for people sympathetic to Murray’s goals — and most importantly, for fantastically rich people sympathetic to those goals — to subvert the legitimate constitutional process entirely. 

“The emergence of many billion-dollar-plus private fortunes over the last three decades,” Murray writes, “has enabled the private sector to take on ambitious national or even international tasks that formerly could be done only by nation-states.” Murray’s most ambitious proposal is a legal defense fund, which “could get started if just one wealthy American cared enough to contribute, say, a few hundred million dollars,” that would essentially give that wealthy American veto power over much of U.S. law.

I want to thank all the sites that I got material from for doing all the hard work and you for reading it.

Later.