One of the stories that has mostly flown under the radar (and which Bushites would rather sweep under the rug), is the Stephen Payne story. Payne, the Houston lobbyist and Bush/Cheney bag man who was caught on tape offering to arrange a meeting with top Bush officials for a couple of hundred thousand dollars in donations to W's new library (a scene straight out of the sequel to "Thank You for Smoking"), confirmed "long-held suspicions that favors are being offered in return for donations to the libraries which outgoing presidents set up to house their archives and safeguard their political legacies." The amount Payne told the "former Kyrgystan president" that it would cost him to set up a meeting with top Bush officials was a few hundred thousand. The press should now be asking what $ 35 million buys? That's how much SMU alum Ray Lee Hunt has pledged. Hunt, for those who don't know, is a former board member of Halliburton (he resigned last year), a Bush/Cheney "Pioneer" and member of Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, with a security clearance and access to classified intelligence. He's also the head of Hunt Oil, the first company to sign an oil exploration agreement last September, a deal he made with Iraq's Kurdistan Regional government. At the time Hunt bagged the deal, Bush administration officials feigned surprise. But on July 2, Henry Waxman revealed a series of emails and letters that clearly demonstrate the contr ...
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