Rick Talks Turkey
NOW we know who Gov. Rick Perry was hobnobbing with at this month’s top-secret international meeting of the corporate and political elite known as the Bilderberg Conference. The event was held in Istanbul, Turkey. And the Texas governor was among the invitees this year.
His fellow conference-goers included Henry Kravis, who heads the leading investor group in the $32 billion purchase of TXU. So while the Legislature was debating the deal back home, the governor apparently was with the New York billionaire leading the buyout. TXU is seeking federal approval for the deal. It made headlines during the legislative session, in part because of TXU’s attempt to build more coal-fired generating plants – an effort backed by Mr. Perry.
Others attending the four-day gathering of international movers-and-shakers included neocons Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Pearle, key figures in the Bush administration’s war policy in Iraq. Also Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, a former economic adviser to President Bush. Democratic pollster Peter Hart. Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations. And Henry Kissinger, needs no introduction.
Other titans of industry in attendance were top executives of Microsoft, Google, German-based Siemens, Britain’s Royal Dutch/Shell oil company, Sweden’s Ericsson and the European Central Bank.
The Bilderberg Conference has been held since 1954. The group has inspired conspiracy theories for years among critics on the extreme right who warn it is a prelude to one-world government.
The event itself is all hush-hush (we got the list of participants from a political intelligence newsletter). So we’ll have to speculate on how the dinner talk might have gone in the event the governor from Paint Creek shared a table with, say, Queen Sofia of Spain or the finance minister of Finland or Guido Westerwelle of Germany’s Free Democratic Party (sounds vaguely anti-Craddick).
And uh, no, Paris Hilton wasn't there. She had another commitment.