[Mb-civic] Who is Karl Rove - from Kitty Kurth

[KKPR at aol.com]

http://www.wesupportthevets.com/
extracted from below

In 1970, he sneaked into the campaign office of Illinois Democrat Alan Dixon
and stole some letterhead. He printed fliers on the letterhead promising
"free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing" and distributed
the fliers at rock concerts and homeless shelters. One of the few times he
admitted to any of his tactics, he commented " I was nineteen and I got
involved in a political prank"
******

Thursday, September 09, 2004

William A. Gast Editor--Wesupportthevets.com

Karl Rove- Veterans most damaging opponent

We decided to do an article on Karl Rove. No shortage of research material
on this individual. He has quite a background. He is the kind of person
people say  "Once you "encounter Karl Rove, you never forget the name." ( Ed
note: I sat in front of my keyboard a laughed out loud at the remark I read
by Robert Bryce of the Austin Chronicle "I really wanted to show something
positive about Karl Rove in the article so we can show pro and con, but that
is hard to do with this man."-I agree Robert-I had the same problem.)

Karl is George W. Bush's Senior Advisor and political strategist. With a
title like that, you have to be impressed by sheer fact that this is the guy
that has the ear of the U.S. President. His "right -hand Man" so-to-speak.
Think about that title for a minute. "Senior Advisor" Literal interpretation
= his word prevails over others advising the POUS. Then,  "Chief Political
Strategist". That title will come into sharper focus by the time you finish
this article.

Karl Rove (Born December 25,1950 in Denver Colorado) was three years old
when the Korean vets started coming home. He was draft age for the Viet Nam
conflict and obtained a deferment. He has never seen uniformed service but
his decisions affect 26 million veterans in these United States and abroad.
We'll bring a few of them into this article but the main point is to uncover
the individual making recommendations to George W. bush and  his opinion of
military service and veterans.

Rove has attended a multitude of colleges but never graduated or has a
degree from any. While attending the University of Utah, Rove, a "young
Republican" teamed up with a young Lee Atwater to seize control of the
College Republicans Political Club. Once in the seat of power, Rove dropped
out of this college (the second of many) to take the position of executive
director of the College Republican National committee.  Rove was a protégé
of Donald Segretti , convicted Watergate conspirator. Considering all the
events that "Turd Blossom" (Rove's nickname by GWB senior) has been
associated with in the past few years, you have to wonder how that event
(Watergate) occurred without Rove on the team someplace.

In 1970, he sneaked into the campaign office of Illinois Democrat Alan
Dixon and stole some letterhead. He printed fliers on the letterhead
promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing" and
distributed the fliers at rock concerts and homeless shelters. One of the
few times he admitted to any of his tactics, he commented " I was nineteen
and I got involved in a political prank" (1) Rove has taught at the
University of Texas, San Marcos according to his bio. That was interesting.
I always thought that you had to have at least a degree and accredited
teaching credentials to teach college level.(?) Maybe not in Texas. In 1981,
Rove founded a direct mail consulting firm, Karl Rove & Co., based in Austin
Texas. The firm's first clients included Republican governor Bill Clements
and democratic Congressman Phil Gramm. (Gramm, you may recall later became a
Republican)

Rove first public affiliation with George W. Bush came in 1993 when he began
advising his gubernatorial campaign. Karl Rove has made the RNC a real cash
cow since that time. NYT claims that in 1993 John Ashcroft's campaign paid
Rove over $300, to aid his Senate race. In 1999, the George w. Bush campaign
paid him $2.5 million between July and December. Reading later accounts
doing this research we see that Karl is a wealthy man. What does he do with
the megabucks he gets for his tactics and "advising"? Evidently he invests a
lot. A guy with these connections should know where to place a few sheckles
and make a decent profit-right? No disgrace in making money. You just need
to be careful of where you put it.

Karl wasn't too careful with some of the bucks.

In march 2001 Rove met with executives from Intel, successfully advocating a
merger between a Dutch company and an Intel company supplier. Rove owned
over $100,000 in Intel Co. stock at the time. In June 2001 Rove met with two
pharmaceutical industry lobbyists. At the time Rove held almost $250,000 in
drug industry stocks. Amazingly, on June 30, 2001, Rove divested his stocks
in 23 companies, which included more than $100,000 in each Enron, Boeing,
General Electric and Pfizer. The same day, the white House admitted that
Rove was involved in administration energy policy meetings, while at the
same time holding stock in energy companies including Enron. His name never
appeared on any news list in the Enron scandal. As one reporter said of Rove
" You write a negative comment, let alone a negative article about Rove and
you will never again see the inside of the White House press room" .

Rove is credited with polishing young GWB for his 2000 presidential
election. In that election, GWB faced a war hero named John McCain, whose
sacrifices in a Vietnam prison camp made Bush's guard time look like a cub
scout drop-out. This was especially hard to combat when GWB was unable to
explain missing attendance at drills and a much needed participation in a
emergency alert conducted by the Texas National guard. At this point, Rove
conducted a "whisper" campaign to spread sleaze, pushing ridiculous
allegations, such that McCain was a stoolie while imprisoned in Vietnam.
Rove was reputedly the brains behind a multitude of spam E-Mails indicating
that McCain had fathered an illegitimate black daughter., a lie that was
"proven" by actual pictures of McCain with his black daughter, whom he
actually adopted. GWB and KR trampled McCain and moved on to the general
election.

The list of Rove antics goes on forever. Not his most recent but typical is
the report that it was Karl that used Robert Novak to leak that former U.S.
Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife worked  for the CIA. This was retaliation by
Rove for Wilson's breach of loyalty by telling the truth to the American
Public.

Wilson had been sent to Niger in 2002 to investigate whether Iraq was
trying to buy uranium there. He documented that, factually, they weren't.
Wilson made several documented reports to the white House if this fact which
was promptly ignored.  Bush cited the uranium story in his 2003 State of the
Union address; Cheney cited it almost every day in defense of the reason to
invade Iraq. When the war was "won and over", no WMD had been found. Asked
about the uranium, Wilson pointed out to the media that there was no
evidence and that he had told the White House and documented it. At that
moment, Wilson came into the crosshairs of Rove's focus. In July 2003
reporter Robert Novak reported that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA,
blowing her cover and endangering her life as she had worked as a covert
operative for the Agency. (any other person but Novak with his
arch-conservative status with the WH would have been tackled and pinned by
the Justice Department in a nanosecond). Wilson identified Rove as the
instigator.

The cruel dark side of Rove came out in the 107th congressional fight for
veteran's benefits.

In the 107th Session of Congress, the bill to return retired pay to disabled
veterans, HR303 was cosponsored by Democrats and Republicans alike. It was a
bill that had been too long in the process of returning retired pay to
America's disabled veterans drawing medical from the V.A. GWB had made it
known that if the bill came to his desk, he would veto it. (The POUS has
never given a valid reason for his dislike of this resolution but has been a
avid opponent of its passage. ) Enter Karl Rove. Speaker of the house Dennis
Hastert and Rove are like tennis doubles champs. Both are known for their
in-your-face aggressive political tactics. The bill that would have given
America's disabled veterans their due was never introduced to the floor
courtesy Dennis Hastert, therein not requiring the embarrassment of a veto
by GWB.

The 108th session of Congress started with the introduction of HR303 (again)
by its faithful champion of the cause, Congressman Michael Bilirakis
(RFla.9) introducing the bill. To see the events and read the process up to
the introduction of the discharge petition by Jim Marshall, see
http://www.vets-r-us.com

This time veterans were better organized and had conducted a nationwide
campaign to bring the attention of HR303 to the media and public. It was
working, congressmen returning to their districts during Fourth of July
returned to Washington reporting "increased concern and support to pass
HR303" The discharge petition was gaining momentum and had all but 18
signatures required. Enter Karl Rove. The author of the bill Michael
Bilirakis suddenly to the amazement of all steps forward and leads a
blockade against any more Republican signatures on the discharge petition.
Two Republican congressmen had already signed and it was getting close to
where this discharge petition was going to close in on GWB and he would have
to veto it before the public who, in turn would want to know why, a guy that
loved having his photo taken with the troops, landed on carriers, and ate
chow with the troops would deny aged vets their due? Not good for the
upcoming election in November. It looked bad for Congress also. 383 of the
475 members had cosponsored the bill, saying that they approved it and would
back its support on the floor. Veterans hung Bilirakis out to dry and shot
at him on the net. Most asked what kind of deal he had sold out to in order
to step in front of other Congressmen and spit in the face of vets that had
supported his election. Then, when the house came up with a compromise bill
that had the fingerprints of Rove all over it the vets saw the connection.
HR1588 would give 50% of the disabled vets their retired pay and medical
compensation and treatment but the under 50% would have to wait in a ten
year phase-in program. Rove had diffused the uprising and at the same time
split the veterans into groups that had won and those that could not win. As
of the time of this writing, the clamor over HR303 has died. Nancy Pelosi,
the Congresswoman from California that so gallantly challenged the RNC to
come forward and act on HR303 is silent. This is odd in this phase of the
election,  when at a time when Democrats are looking for anything that would
expose Republican partisanship, she has choked on the material in front of
her.  The letter writing to congressmen by vets has come to a halt because
the Congressmen's rebuttal is ( of course as Rove promised it would be) "We
acted on your bill, what more do you want?? Everyone will get something from
HR1588".

I'm sure they will. It's just a matter of time of course. Ten years to be
exact. With most of the vets that are disabled and in their 70's the greater
win percentage is with the government. They will never have to pay about 45%
of those that were eligible before Karl Rove made another deal on behalf of
GWB. What happened to the author of the bill that took the flak for the
blockade?-Bilirakis? Political magic. Some body someplace saw that he was
having problems in his ninth district constituents in the upcoming election
and gave him a boost by making him the VFW poster boy of the year or as they
called it in their award, "Legislative Congressman of the Year" We asked
several VFW posts to tell us how many of the local members voted to see that
happen and the outstanding response was.. "National does all that-we don't
have any input."

I'll bet Karl Rove had some input. He usually does.

William Gast

Editor, wesupportthevets.com


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Kitty Kurth
President
Kurth Lampe
444 N. Wabash Ave., #410
Chicago, IL 60611
(312) 464-0260 phone (312) 464-0262 fax
Ideas, delivered.
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