George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

Farrish & Co. had at one time managed the personal blind trust into which Bush had
placed his personal investment portfolio. Farrish was rich enough to vaunt five addresses:
Beeville, Texas; Lane's End Farm in the Versailles, Kentucky bluegrass; Florida, and two
others. Farrish's hobby for the past several decades had been the creation of his own topflight
farm for the raising of thoroughbred horses. This was the 3,000 acre Lazy F Ranch,
with its ten horse barns, four sumptuous residences, 100 employees, and other
improvements. Over the years, Farrish has saddled winners in the 1972 Preakness and the
1987 Belmont Stakes, and bred 80 stakes winners over the past decade. Farrish, who is
married to Sarah Sharp, the daughter of a Du Pont heiress, had worked with Bush as an
aide during the 1964 senate campaign.
Farrish was rich enough to extend his largesse even to Queen Elizabeth II of the United
Kingdom, probably the richest individual in the world. The Queen has visited Farrish's
horse farm at least four times over the past few years, travelling by Royal Air Force
jetliner to the Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky, accompanied by mares which
Her Majesty wishes to breed with Farrish's million-dollar prize stallions. Farrish
magnanimously waives the usual stud fees for the Queen, resulting in an estimated
savings to Her Majesty of some $800,000. Farrish's social circle is rounded out by such
plutocrats as Clarence Scharbauer, a fellow member of the horsey set who also happens
to own the bank, the hotel, the radio station, oil wells, and an estimated one half of the
city of Midland, Texas, the old Bush bastion in the Permian Basin.
Farrish has been described as the Bush regime's counterpart to Bebe Rebozo, Richard
Nixon's sleazy crony. According to Bush, when he is watching movies, hunting, and
playing tennis with his old friend Farrish, "we talk about issues. He's very up on things,
but it's a comfortable thing, not probing beyond what I want to say." Michael York of the
Washington Post wrote that "Farish says he'll always be one of Bush's biggest boosters,
and he's ready at a moment's notice to make the resume argument in favor of Bush's
being the best-prepared man ever to become president. It's also clear that Bush regularly
asks Farish's advice on the budget, domestic policy, and politics." With a cabal of friends
and advisers like William Stamps Farish III and Henry Kravis, we begin to comprehend
the wellsprings of Bush's policies of parasitical looting of infrastructure and the work
force. [fn 13]
For George Bush, the exercise of power has always been inseparable from the use of
smear, scandal, and the final sanctions of police-state methods against political rivals and
other branches of government. A classic example was the Koreagate scandal of 1976,
unleashed with the help of Bush's long-time retainer, Don Gregg. It will be recalled that
Koregate included the toppling of Democratic Speaker of the House Carl Albert of
Oklahoma, who quietly retired from the House at the end of 1976. That was in the year
when Bush had returned from Beijing to Langley. Was it merely coincidence that in the
first year of Bush's tenure in the White House not just the Democratic Speaker of the
House, but also the House Majority Whip, were driven from office?
The campaign against Speaker of the House Jim Wright was spearheaded by Georgia
Republican Congressman Newt Gingrich, a typical "wedge issue" ideologue of the GOP's