corrente

Leave no 13,000-square-foot mansion behind. Via NYTimes (no login required):

Top White House Chef Is Leaving
By MARIAN BURROS

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 - Unlike members of the White House staff who maintain the fiction that resigning was their decision, the executive chef, Walter Scheib 3rd, minced no words Friday in saying he had been fired.

"We've been trying to find a way to satisfy the first lady's stylistic requirements," Mr. Scheib said in a telephone interview, "and it has been difficult. Basically I was not successful in my attempt."

Mr. Scheib sensed a change afoot, he said, when Cathy Fenton was succeeded as White House social secretary last month by Lea Berman, the wife of Wayne Berman, a wealthy contributor to the Republican Party. Mrs. Berman is a well-known Washington hostess who entertains in a 13,000-square-foot Embassy Row mansion.

"Clearly with the new social secretary, there is a new set of eyes and a new vision," said Mr. Scheib, whose imminent departure was first reported Friday by The Washington Post. "She is a very hands-on social secretary, very involved with all aspects of food, flowers and décor. She clearly has a mandate."

Meet the Berman's:

Husband and wife Wayne and Lea Berman are both Bush Pioneers, although Wayne suspended his 2000 Pioneer activities to comply with a federal probe into his ties to ex-Connecticut treasurer Paul Silvester. Silvester, who received major campaign donations from Pioneers Herbert Collins, Thomas Foley, Hank Greenberg and Peter Terpeluk, was convicted in 1999 of taking kickbacks from the private money managers to whom he awarded contracts to invest state pension funds (Pioneer Christopher Burnham was Silvester’s predecessor). Berman, who was one of the first President Bush’s assistant commerce secretaries, snagged a $500,000 “finder’s fee” for helping Pioneer Hank Greenberg’s AIG Capital Partners land a contract to invest $100 million of these pension funds. After Silvester lost a 1998 campaign, he went to work for Park Strategies lobby firm, which Berman started in 1999 with Pioneer Alfonse D’Amato (see also David Albert). Berman lobbied for two other firms that won big investment contracts from Silvester: PaineWebber (see Joseph Grano) and the Carlyle Group (see Robert Grady), which retained the first President Bush as a senior advisor. After the Connecticut scandal, President-Elect George W. Bush appointed Berman to his 2000 Commerce Department transition team. Berman has lobbied for the plaintiff firm Scruggs Millette Lawson Bozeman & Dent, which led state lawsuits against the tobacco industry. Berman also lobbied for Flo-Sun, the sugar company owned by the “First Family of Corporate Welfare.” The Fanjul family (see Jose Fanjul) has such extraordinary political access that President Clinton took a call from Alfonso Fanjul[*see below*] during a tryst with Monica Lewinsky. The Bermans paid $4.5 million in 2000 for the 13,000-square-foot Embassy Row mansion of art collector Paul Mellon. “We’re Anglophiles and we just liked the traditional Georgian nature of the house,” explained Lea Berman. The home boasts eight bedrooms and seven fireplaces.

Name - Mr. & Mrs. Wayne & Lea Berman
Appointed To - Commerce transition
Industry - Lawyers & Lobbyists
Employer - Berman Enterprises, Inc.
Occupation - Owner
Address - Washington, DC 20016
Status for 2000 - Raised at least $100,000
Status for 2004 - Ranger
Info Link

The fabulous family Fanjuls:

A 1998 Time Magazine expose dubbed the Fanjuls "the First Family of Corporate Welfare." The Fanjuls get about $64 million a year from U.S. taxpayers because Tio Sam guarantees U.S. sugar producers a price that is double the world-market price.~ more on the Fanjul's

So take that all you forty two thousand dollar per year pissant public high school home ec. teachers milking the public teat! Aren't ya glad ya voted for plain-spoke reglar' folk like Gee Dubya and the little librarian homemaker misses. Wait till the Berman's and their pals get their hooks into your commie teacher union pension funds! Bwahahahahaha. Enjoy your retirement dinner of diced Nine Lives mackerel etoufee you fucking servile jangle-witted sugar junkie morons!

Oh yeah, go ahead, call meeeee an "elitist". Heh. Indeed.

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