against charges that he was presiding over a debacle. On day 45 of the new regime, Bush told
reporters that he had talked on the phone to a certain Robert W. Blake, an oilman of Lubbock,Texas, the city which Neil Bush and John Hinckley had called home for a while in the late 1970's. (^)
Blake had allegedly told Bush that "all the people in Lubbock think things are going great." Armed
with this testimonial, Bush defended his handling of the presidency: "It's not adrift and there isn't
malaise," he said, answering columnists who had suggested that the country had fallen through a
time warp back to the days of Jimmy Carter. "So I would simply resist the clamor that nothingseems to be bubbling around, that nothing is happening. A lot is happening. Not all of it good, but (^) a
lot is happening." Bush described his oilman friend Blake as "a very objective spokesman," and
stated this his personal rule was "never get all too uptight about stuff that hasn't reached Lubbock
yet." [fn 11]
If there was a constant note in Bush's first year in office, it was a callously flaunted contempt for the
misery of the American people. During the spring of 1989, the Congress passed a bill that would
have raised the minimum wage in interstate commerce from $3.55 per hour to $4.55 per hour by a
series of increments over three years. This legislation would even have permitted a subminimum
wage that could be paid to certain newly hired workers over a 60-day training period. Bush vetoedthis measure because the $4.55 minimum wage was 30 cents an hour higher than he wanted, and
because he demanded a subminimum wage for all new employees for the first six months on the
job, regardless of their previous experience or training. On June 14, 1989, the House of
Representatives failed to override this veto, by a margin of 37 votes. (Later, Bush signed legislation
to raise the minimum wage to $4.25 peapplicable only to teenagers and only during the first 90 days of the teenagers' employment, withr hour over two years, with a subminimum training wage (^)
the possibility of a second 90-day training wage stint if they moved on to a different employer.) [fn
12]
This was the same George Bush who had proposfor the International Monetary Fund, all without batting an eye. ed $164 billion for bankrupt S&Ls, and $8 billion
Before Christmas, 1988, and during other holiday periods, Bush customarily joined his billionaire
crony William Stamps Farrish III at his Lazy F Ranch near Beeville, Texas, for the two men's
traditional holiday quail hunt. This was the same William Stamps Farrish III whose grandfather, thepresident of Standard Oil of New Jersey, had financed Heinrich Himmler. William Stamps Farrish
III's investment bank in Houston, W.S. 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 town top-flight farm for the raising of thoroughbrehe past several decades had been the creation of hid horses. This was the 3,000 acre Lazy F Ranch,s (^)
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'smillion-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.