If you listen to these comments each week, I’m going to assume you’re a serious consumer of news and if you are, I’m going to assume you heard last week that the federal government is offering Texan Charles Hurwitz $300 million in public assets in exchange for 7,500 acres of old-growth forest in northern California.
The old-growth forest in question – the Headwaters Grove – is well worth saving, so the federal government is acting with good intentions. Problem is, our federal officials have forgotten where the road of good intentions leads.
Let’s review some history. Charles Hurwitz acquired Headwaters in 1985 with a hostile takeover of the Pacific Lumber Company. The takeover was financed with junk bonds and the deal was arranged by Michael Milken , Ivan Boesky and Boyd Jeffries – all of whom were later convicted of insider trading. There is strong evidence to suggest Hurwitz and Jeffries engaged in illegal trades in the course of the takeover.
Once in control of the company, Hurwitz took 60 million dollars from the employees’ pension fund, and lent it to the fly-by-night Executive Life Insurance Company, which promptly went bankrupt and Pacific Lumber employees took it in the wallet.
Meanwhile, Hurwitz’s other financial catastrophes were beginning to bear fruit. In 1988, his misnamed savings and loan – the United Savings Association of Texas – went bust to the merry melody of one and half billion taxpayer dollars. This guy makes Charles Keating look like a shoplifter.
Right now Hurwitz is being sued by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation – the FDIC – for his hinky savings and loan shenanigans and by the employees of Pacific Lumber who got ripped off in the pension swindle.
At the same time, the Department of the Interior is asking Hurwitz to choose from a tantalizing array of citizen-owned natural gas and oil wells, acres and acres of the Sierra Nevada, a rock quarry in Napa County and what the New York Times describes as a South Lake Tahoe dog-training center.
If this is the kind of tactic our federal government takes with a crook like Hurwitz, can anyone be surprised that the Serbians give us as much trouble as they do?
The public lands the feds are trying to give away belongs in part to me – so I’d like to offer some advice: Think about that dog-training center in South Lake Tahoe. To save the Headwaters Grove, we should start by teaching this old dog to heel.
Get a judge to issue a restraining order on those trees until the dust settles from all the legal action. The FDIC may yet wind up with Headwaters, or maybe the employees of Pacific Lumber. If not, there will still be time to offer Hurwitz federal property for Headwaters Grove. Only next time, let’s offer him the Pentagon. Let’s see if he can run that place into the ground.
Seeing the Forest and the Trees
If you listen to these comments each week, I’m going to assume you’re a serious consumer of news and if you are, I’m going to assume you heard last week that the federal government is offering Texan Charles Hurwitz $300 million in public assets in exchange for 7,500 acres of old-growth forest in northern California.
The old-growth forest in question – the Headwaters Grove – is well worth saving, so the federal government is acting with good intentions. Problem is, our federal officials have forgotten where the road of good intentions leads.
Let’s review some history. Charles Hurwitz acquired Headwaters in 1985 with a hostile takeover of the Pacific Lumber Company. The takeover was financed with junk bonds and the deal was arranged by Michael Milken , Ivan Boesky and Boyd Jeffries – all of whom were later convicted of insider trading. There is strong evidence to suggest Hurwitz and Jeffries engaged in illegal trades in the course of the takeover.
Once in control of the company, Hurwitz took 60 million dollars from the employees’ pension fund, and lent it to the fly-by-night Executive Life Insurance Company, which promptly went bankrupt and Pacific Lumber employees took it in the wallet.
Meanwhile, Hurwitz’s other financial catastrophes were beginning to bear fruit. In 1988, his misnamed savings and loan – the United Savings Association of Texas – went bust to the merry melody of one and half billion taxpayer dollars. This guy makes Charles Keating look like a shoplifter.
Right now Hurwitz is being sued by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation – the FDIC – for his hinky savings and loan shenanigans and by the employees of Pacific Lumber who got ripped off in the pension swindle.
At the same time, the Department of the Interior is asking Hurwitz to choose from a tantalizing array of citizen-owned natural gas and oil wells, acres and acres of the Sierra Nevada, a rock quarry in Napa County and what the New York Times describes as a South Lake Tahoe dog-training center.
If this is the kind of tactic our federal government takes with a crook like Hurwitz, can anyone be surprised that the Serbians give us as much trouble as they do?
The public lands the feds are trying to give away belongs in part to me – so I’d like to offer some advice: Think about that dog-training center in South Lake Tahoe. To save the Headwaters Grove, we should start by teaching this old dog to heel.
Get a judge to issue a restraining order on those trees until the dust settles from all the legal action. The FDIC may yet wind up with Headwaters, or maybe the employees of Pacific Lumber. If not, there will still be time to offer Hurwitz federal property for Headwaters Grove. Only next time, let’s offer him the Pentagon. Let’s see if he can run that place into the ground.