The "Rainbow Scandal"

B= Curtis Bruner- General Manager Rainbow Materials
M= Mark Hamilton- Sales Vice President Rainbow Materials
C= Chris Danze- President, Texas Contractors and Suppliers for Life

Ramon = Ramon Carrasquillo- Owner Rainbow materials
Mike= employee of Rainbow Materials

Tuesday January 13, 2004

C: Thanks for inviting me.

M: Quick notice. Talking to Chris about Dick Rathgeber.

B:Yeah, who is he?

C: He’s been around along time, he’s about your age Curtis probably, he’s been in Austin a long time, way back, he was in the demo business.

B: What?

C: Demolition business, and then he got into developing. He developed Lost Creek, mainly development, land development, that kind of thing but he’s a philanthropist too.

B: Is he?

C: He gave a lot of money to Salvation Army.

B: A lot of money.

C: Yeah, I think he basically built it, he gave a whole lot of money or half the money or something like that, I think about ten years ago or maybe longer than that, I don’t remember when that was.

B: a whole lot of money, what kind of money?

C: Millions.

B: Yeah?

C: Yeah, he’s a heavy…

B: Sounds like he’s on the wrong side if he’s in the philanthropy business.

C: Wrong side of what?

B: This issue.

C: Well uh, he’s uh, I’m pretty sure he’s pro-life, is that what you mean?

B: Yeah.

C: Yeah. I’m pretty sure he’s pro-life.

B: Well…

C: Well, I don’t know, I don’t know what his, I don’t know what his deal is, I don’t know what he’s doing.

B: Where do y'all want to eat?

C: Anywhere close is fine with me. I know you’ve got a meeting, another meeting at 1:30, right?

B: What’s out here Mark besides that catfish place? That catfish place is so loud you can’t talk.

M: Let’s see……..

Resturaunt
B: Was this your idea, the boycott?

C: Actually it was his idea.

B: His idea?…

M: Don’t blame it on me. (laugh)

C: I sent out a letter to twenty-five suppliers asking them not to participate and a few of those suppliers said we agree with you and we’re going to call some people too, at that point it was a boycott, Mark was one of those folks who said “I’m going to call around to some of the other concrete plants that kind of thing…got some momentum going, I guess you could say I started it, Mark picked it up and ran with it.

B: Y'all have done well, I wouldn’t have thought you’d get this many people to do it, y’all have done well, but uh, you’ve still got a lot of people who still like killing,uh and uh I thought it was a done deal…
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C: A bunch of people who like to do what?

B: Want to stop the boycott.

C: Oh yeah, yeah.

B: You know when Mark asked me I said I applaud the effort, to legalize abortion is the worst thing this country had ever done if we just thought about it, its really the murder of a lot of kids and uh nobody seems to….

C: Yeah.

B: But uh, inaudiable…(…came to me Thursday or Friday…inaudible)…I got back to Ramon and he said, I agreed to supply, and I said I wish he had talked to me first,….inaudible… discuss with Mark if…

C: Right.

B: I told him I think you probably should have talked to me before you… (inaudible). I think we’re on the right side of the issue and uh inaudible…but we got a lot of flack about …we have an environmental problem that’s…inaudible…we thought it was put to bed, it was a non-issue when I first came here…inaudible…there was a river spill…they came out and said it was no big problem…. We’ve got to fine you something so…forty-five hundred dollars and you have to plant some trees somewhere later and they sent them a check and nothing else was said about it and everybody assumed it was over but all at once last February it came to life very very fast and very very big indeed, potential for five criminal charges and between them they had 750 thousand dollars in fines and up to 15 years in jail for Mike and Ramon and they’re real serious about it….it got into becoming a big time public issue, the agencies can make a lot of flack out of it and so they centralized it down at the county .

C: Is this the State? is this the LCRA, State or who?

B: The state, the LCRA, the city, the county, a couple others, six of them all together.

C: Wow.

B: And uh…

C: Every government entity you can think of, were the feds involved?

B: No. no

C: No feds.?

B: All a local effort, out of that damn paper, and uh, if we had not been extremely fortunate, uh, …inaudible…for these charges… all you have to do is put something somewhere and it gets in the water, primafacia evidence, of the crime something was in your possession sometime earlier.

C: Wow.

B: We got lucky, really lucky, but it has never been settled, we got the criminal charges dismissed, paid the fine but…

C: That was back in t he spring.

B: Back in Febuary., remember those two days we had freezing days, people couldn’t work? If that hadn’t happened Mike and Ramon would be in jail just as sure as I’m sitting here.

C: In jail?

B: Yeah.

C: Why?

B: Criminal charges, up to 15 years jail time.

C: What happened, what happened with the ice storm? What caused him not have to go to jail?

B: Nobody came to work and we had the right lawyer, we had a chance to sit down with Ken Oden the prosecutor and uh, he didn’t have anybody else in town that day, I got a chance to pitch him for 8 hours, and the next day we got a chance to get those criminal charges settled by working it all out with the environmentalists, we set up with a program that we developed that night and so he didn’t believe me at all and he sat there and told Ramon right to his face before we got to the meeting, I had been up with Ramon since 3:00 in the morning and he had sixteen pages of analysis like he always does, a professor, he had it all worked out, had all the rights and wrongs of it. I listened to about 2 min. of it and I said the issue is, to go to jail or stay out of jail that’s the only issue you have to worry about. Inaudible, I don’t know what you say to a thing like that. I said I don’t want you to say anything. You got to understand me, we got down there, got there and the lawyer told him the same thing, the lawyer talked to me about 30 min, the lawyer said I don’t want you to say anything, not a word, well that was the wrong thing to do, he didn't say a word, first time I had ever seen him that scared, but Oden sat there and said you guys are sleaze bags and you should go to jail…its willful intent to make money and there's some greed and I’ll let you hear my whole case so the deputy got out the whole case and showed them everything they had, I took them one at a time and spent 8 hrs, refuting them, I never would have gotten to do that, I never would have gotten to do that in court, I never would have gotten to say any of those things.

C: Yeah, but you’re not an attorney are you?

B: No

C: But you had an attorney there though?

B: Yeah we had an attorney there but he didn’t say a word and about 7:30 that night, I have no idea what changed his opinion, but Oden said I believe you, but we’ve a got a real hot potato here and uh if you can get me an environmental solution to it and I’m going out of office on Friday and if you can get me an environmental solution by tomorrow, uh, I’ll see what I can do, because the next guy who comes in here can get elected governor on this case.

C: Really?

B: So we worked all night and uh we got this environ…inaudible…we presented all day and at the end of the day he presented us a deal and we accepted, the criminal charges were quashed and we had to take care of the stuff in the water and up to100 yr. flood plain, that’s what the criminal charges were for and then we had it on private property uh, quite a lot of the cement that had bled out and got in the water that you could take out with your hand, it had some old crusty stuff, I don’t know what it’s called. Anyway, we’ve been trying all year to get that done, we’ve been trying all year to get permits, we’re still having to deal with the other 5 agencies all year long, we tried every single week to go ahead and get those permits and that’s because it’s a great jeopardy to us, if that’s not finished up there won’t even be a hearing, we’ll be indicted and those charges will be very ominous ones indeed.

C: So you have to get a permit to do the work?

B: You have to get a permit to do the work.

C: They won’t give you a permit?

B: We don’t have the permit

C: Why not? Why won’t they give you the permit?

B; Because you have 5 agencies hassling each other and somebody wants to make some more capital out of it.

C: But you’re showing good will, you want the permits, there’s plenty of evidence that you want the permits, letters, and…

B: We file something every week, every week, but we’re still nervous about it because the consequences are so ominous, well anyway somebody, I don’t know who, came to Ramon and said “we can make these problems go away but we want you to give us the concrete”. He said immediately, without even thinking, he said “sure, you bet, you bet, uh, we’ll do it” and uh, he called me over there and he told me he agreed to do it, and said “we don’t have any choice” and I said I don’t see it that way, I've been trying to cure it ever since. I went to one meeting this week, that’s all I've been involved in, he’s been in meetings all week, uh yesterday, and after…

C: Why are you trying to kill it?

B: For 2 reasons, I believe abortion is the worst thing we’ve ever done in this country, we’re a pretty good country, we do a lots of good things, this is a really bad thing.

C: It’s a bad thing for women too.

B: It’s a bad thing for our nation.

C: It has repercussions that are very subtle and not often presented.

B: It’s not a good thing to be involved in.

C: The depression that comes out, the alcoholism, all the bad things, the suicide, we don’t talk about those things.

B: Its evil to the core. There's not a good thing you can say about it.

C: That’s right.

B: I’m opposed too it, I uh, was asked to be the head of right to life in Texas, I thought about it for two weeks, a month, I don’t know, because I certainly feel very strongly about the issues, but I did not however accept it, I did not accept the job,I said I am honored that you asked me to do it but I’m not sure that I have the right to make that decision for a lot of women… inaudible … but then I’m a man …I don’t carry babies in my body.

C: I don’t either but obviously I’ll speak up about it.

B: I didn’t feel totally comfortable with it…inaudible… so I didn’t..do,…inaudible…about another thing, when I give my word I do it, and I, I, without any equivocation told Mark that I supported him.

C: So your reason for not wanting to supply the concrete is purely moral reasons, not necessarily business reasons, a moral reason.

B: I need the business, I need all the business I can get.

C: But is there a possibility that supplying the concrete would be bad for business?. Or would you get more business, because you supply the concrete?

B: I don’t know, that’s an issue that hasn’t been decided, they did call Ramon today, and said hey boy, things are really heated up, nothing you do in this town is ever quiet I believe there must be a bug, inaudible, I believe they must have my office bugged everything we do everybody on the street knows the next day.

C: What can they do to him that they haven’t already done?

B: They told Ramon today, he called today all excited, I got over there just after you left and talked to Ramon I got over there just after he told me you had just left, and I went over there and talked to him this morning, all morning I tried to talk to him yesterday afternoon… (inaudible)…that I wanted him to change his opinion, then I said… he said, well I gave my word and I said I gave my word too earlier and I gave it for our business, anyway, he called him since I was over there, and then said hey we’re going to get you this much business, you won’t even believe, you’re going to be real pleased that you did this, it’s the right thing to do.

C: Who are these people?

B: The only one I know, that guy that I met with Ramon yesterday, yesterday? I don’t know ,I get days mixed up and his name is Dick…

C:Rathgeber?

B: Rathgeber, yeah.

C: Yeah.

B:Yeah.

C: Dick Rathgeber, he’s a developer. he’s the developer I was talking about .

B: He called Ramon this morning and said we can get you Avery ranch, we can that Milburn subdivision. We can get you this job, this job, this job…. that really, I thought I had Ramon maybe leaning our way when I left there but Ramon kind of changes his opinion about every 15 minutes depending on who he talked to last .

M: I thought he was coming over to help that situation with the river.

B: Huh?

M: I thought he was coming over to help that situation with the river.

B: I imagine he is, uh, they got another set of engineers out there that Ramon’s meeting out there at one thirty, that’s the reason why I want to be in that meeting because we’ve already done the engineering, I don’t want to pay for this stuff twice, I don’t want....... I want him to get out of this deal.

Time line:

Thursday January 8, 2004- “someone” calls Carrasquillo and informs him ‘we can make these problems go away but we want the you to give us the concrete’
Carrasquillo tells Bruner, according to Bruner, “we don’t have a choice”.

Saturday January 10, 2004 - Mark Hamilton calls Chris Danze and says ‘Rainbow will supply the concrete’ because according to Bruner, Carrasquillo felt “ threatened and didn’t want to go to jail”.

Tuesday January 13, 2004 - Chris Danze includes in early morning “Boycott update” the fact that ‘the pro-abortion forces in Austin were bearing down on Mr. Carrasquillo’.
Chris Danze meets with Carrasquillo at 8:30 am then meets with Curtis Bruner and Mark Hamilton for lunch.

Wednesday January 28, 2004 –Rainbow Materials supplies concrete to the abortion factory project for the “midnight pour”.

Thursday January 29, 2004—Mark Hamilton resigns.