Hightower Lowdown

Step right up, folks, and hear about Dr. Bush’s Famous Education Oil—a genuine, magic slick-em that’s guaranteed to make every child learn.

It’s not a new education bill that George W. Bush is hustling, nor a plan being hawked by Jeb Bush in Florida. It’s a product from their younger sibling, Neil Bush, who is going school board to school board trying to sell an on-line, animated history course. He claims it will make eighth-graders excited about learning.

Would you buy a history course from this man? The last time we heard from Neil was a decade ago when his Silverado savings and loan company in Colorado did an Enron. It cost us taxpayers a cool billion bucks to bail out, but Neil’s daddy was president then, so—hi-ho Silverado!—he rode away with no jail time and no fine.

Now he’s emerged as an “educational entrepreneur,” and he’s openly trading on his family name, not only to open doors to school districts in Texas, Florida, and elsewhere—but also to get investors for his company, which he’s named “Ignite!”

He’s raised $20 million from such other famous finaglers as junk-bond king Michael Milkin, and he’s traveled the Middle East trolling for investors who just might want to do the president’s younger brother a favor. Neil is even negotiating a deal with the United Arab Emirates, a place his older brother has castigated for laundering money for Osama bin Laden.

If Neil was Billy Carter or Roger Clinton, the media would call his scam a scandal—and it is.