PIML 96050507 / Forwarded to Patriot Information Mailing List: [It looks more and more doubtful that Clinton will be able to remain in office until November.] PIML ================================================================== Date: 04 Jun 96 16:53:07 EDT From: Mike Johnson <102052.3716@CompuServe.COM> Subject: MJN:Essence of Whitewate A short, succinct synopsis of how the verdict in the Whitewater trial ties into Clinton. - Mike/North Central Florida Regional Militia It is safe to assume that any traffic going to or from this address is being recorded, stored and analyzed somewhere by government employees. Any other assumption is *not* *safe*. ----Forwarded Message(s)---- 04-Jun-96 11:03 EDT Sb: Master Marketing: WW Essence Fm: Brenda C. Jinkins [70762,154] To: Mike Johnson [102052,3716] Forwarded: ============================================================ May 31, 1996 Wall Street Journal Editorial "Much ado about nothing" is the spin now hurtling out of various Clinton precincts in the wake of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's victory Tuesday in the Tucker-McDougal fraud trial. The line first out of the White House was that all this is happening to someone else. Mr. Clinton, who testified for the defense in the case involving his former Whitewater Development Co. partners and his handpicked successor as governor, was credible, the White House says, but irrelevant. "We're letting the jurors' words speak for themselves," said designated White House spinmeister Mark Fabiani, who released seven pages of juror remarks culled from interviews and supportive of Mr. Clinton's testimonial appearance. Alas, missing from the Fabiani packet was juror Janice Green's observation to the Associated Press about the Clintons: "I think he and his wife had just as much to do with it." Spin, for all its shortcomings, normally has at least a toehold on reality. The political lexicon will have to search elsewhere for an apt description of Senator Christopher Dodd's performance Tuesday night on "Nightline." Senator Dodd castigated critics of the President for engaging in "guilt by association" and claimed that the Little Rock verdicts "had nothing to do with Whitewater." This, among other things, is nonsense. For the benefit of people only now joining the ranks of Whitewater aficionados, we would suggest that two words in the entirety of the just-completed trial need be committed to memory: Master Marketing. Among the James and Susan McDougal convictions were four counts, the Master Marketing charges, which anyone paying attention knows were directly linked to Whitewater Development Co. The purpose of President Clinton's videotaped testimony at the trial was to rebut the claims of former municipal judge David Hale that then-Gov. Clinton and Jim Guy Tucker pressured Hale for a loan to help the "political family." Mr. Hale, who confessed to two felonies and cooperated with the prosecution, said he made the $300,000 loan to a McDougal front company called Master Marketing. An FBI agent testified at the trial that he traced nearly $50,000 of those funds to two payments that benefited Whitewater Co.--$24,455 for a loan payment and a $25,000 down payment on a tract purchase from International Paper. Post-verdict juror deference to the Presidency aside, the jury's opinion was clear: David Hale had provided an accurate road map to Arkansas corruption, and one of those avenues led straight to Master Marketing, which funneled money to the Whitewater project. Based on this FBI testimony, the Clintons as Whitewater partners were the beneficiaries of the Master Marketing fraud. We will quickly add, however, that so far only Mr. Hale's testimony directly links Mr. Clinton to the now-proved conspiracy to loot two federally backed institutions, the McDougals' Madison Guaranty S&L and Mr. Hale's Capital Management Service lending company. At this juncture, this is an essential distinction, and one might expect the President's defenders would make it. Instead, they're attempting to rewrite reality. See related material: "Whitewater: The Prosecution Rests" Copyright 1996 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. =============================================================== Brenda C. Jinkins ================================================================== Date: Mon, 03 Jun 1996 20:38:07 -0600 From: "J. Horn" <6mysmesa@1eagle1.com> Subject: L&J: Clinton/Wall Street connection Reply-To: liberty-and-justice@pobox.com Arkansans ask how Bill won friends on Wall St. By John Crudele, New York Post 06-03-96 Several overseers of Arkansas state pension funds with billions in assets are calling for an investigation into whether Bill Clinton used the retirement money to win friends and campaign donations from Wall Street firms. Bill Mattox, the assistant director of accounting and auditing for the Pulaski County Special School district, which surrounds Little Rock, says the amount of fees paid to Wall Street companies for advice by the Arkansas Public Employees Retirement fund and the Arkansas Teachers Retirement System started rising sharply beginning in the late 1980s. That's about the time that then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton began to seriously think about running for the presidency. Mattox said that these fees, which in some cases rose over 1,500 percent in just a few years, jumped by a much greater proportion than the assets that were under management. Plus, Mattox says, the advisement fees were spread out among a much larger number of companies. And, all of the investment advisers were from outside Arkansas. That's highly unusual for a state that is known for close business relationships between its companies and government. Mattox and other pension watchdogs have taken their suspicions to the office of Independent Council Kenneth Starr. But Starr has turned them away for now, saying that abuse of pension funds - while it would be interesting and criminal - simply did not fall under the current jurisdiction of the special prosecutor's responsibility to look into abuses at Madison Guaranty Trust. "It seems to me that the pension funds are being run for the benefit of the political machines," says Mattox. Mattox says he has already given documents to Hickman Ewing, the chief assistant to Starr and the man running the Arkansas portion of the investigation. "He was interested, but Hickman said he couldn't connect it to Whitewater so it would be outside his scope," says Mattox. "He suggested someone in the press might be interested in it." For a Democrat, President Clinton has an unusually close relationship burgh Poll Street. In fact, the financial markets did not react in the typical gloomy fashion when Clinton upset incumbent George Bush in the 1992 election. And Clinton quickly surrounded himself with Wall Street people, naming Robert Rubin and Robert Altman to top positions in his Administration. But a number of folks in Arkansas are now wondering just how much of Wall Street's attraction to Bill Clinton was love and how much of it was money. "All of a sudden they were paying millions and millions in fees," says Roy Drew, who has discussed the handling of pension funds with members of Starr's investigation. "The way you get campaign contributions from all over the country is to let everyone share a piece of the pie." Drew, who has a background in finance and once helped audit the Arkansas Development Finance Authority, says the special prosecutor's office seemed interested in how the pension funds were being used. "I definitely think there was corruption," adds Linda Hogue, recently elected director of the Teachers Retirement System. The numbers certainly are suspicious. In 1987, the Teachers Retirement System and the Arkansas Public Employees Retirement fund had only seven Wall Street firms as advisors. By 1993, that pension fund alone was up to 32 advisors. During that same period, fees paid by the fund for advice soared to $11.1 million from $1.1 million. The biggest increase occurred in the 1991/1992 fiscal year - which just happens to be when Bill Clinton was running for president. In that year, the retirement systems fund paid an extra $2.3 million in fees. The assets in the retirement funds only went from $3.06 billion to just under $5.4 billion between 1987 and 1993. And the return on those assets was no better when the number of advisers increased, even though the stock and bond markets were experiencing one of its strongest periods ever during these years. The retirement funds had a 12 percent gain in the 1987/88 fiscal year when they had just seven advisors. When all 32 advisors were on board in 1993/94, the gain was only 8 percent. And the fees do not include commissions on trades, which are built into the gain or loss on the transaction. Mattox and the others say that there seems to be an unusual increase in trading activity and he has suggested that regulators determine whether "churning" - or unnecessary trading - took place just to generate commissions. The retirement people are currently trying to correlate a list of those Wall Street firms that are receiving the fees from Arkansas retirement system and those who contributed heavily to the Clinton campaign in 1992. This won't be easy to do since contributions can be concealed in a number of different ways. The group has not yet looked into whether other state retirement funds, which also have billions in assets, had a similar growth in fees in the same years. "I'd like to see anyone how has the capability of investigating the investments and money managers of the pension funds do to," says Bill Ray Lewis, assistant superintendent of the Harrison School District. Bill Shirron, executive director of the Teachers Retirement System, says the number of his advisers has risen over the years because he wanted a diversity of opinion and because the amount of money under management has grown. But he does admit that eight of the current nine advisers are from outside Arkansas. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Unsub info - send to majordomo@pobox.com with "unsubscribe liberty-and-justice" in the body (not the subj) of the msg. Listowner: Mike Goldman ================================================================== Date: Mon, 03 Jun 1996 21:47:38 -0700 To: Conservative News From: Kim Weissman <74157.1507@compuserve.com> Subject: C-NEWS: Congress Action 06/02/96 CONGRESS ACTION June 02 1996 =============== Kim Weissman 74157.1507@compuserve.com GUILTY! On Tuesday, the jury in Little Rock returned guilty verdicts in the Whitewater trial of Governor Jim Guy Tucker, James and Susan McDougal on 24 of the 30 criminal counts brought by the Independent Counsel. The defense put on only two witnesses: Jim McDougal and Bill Clinton. In summation, the defense argument was simple, David Hale was a liar, and telling the jury it had to choose between the President's word and that of Hale, a convicted criminal. Jim McDougal's lawyer, Sam Heuer, argued that "In order to buy into David Hale's bill of goods, you have to disbelieve the President. It is humiliating for the President of the United States to have to answer questions in a court of law, but he did it to set the record straight." Of course hyperbole is common in closing arguments, but Bill Clinton did not testify out of the goodness of his heart to "... set the record straight...", he was subpoenaed, and he fought the subpoena. Before the verdicts, speculation was strong, based on this argument, that a guilty verdict would imply that the jury believed Clinton to have lied in his videotaped testimony. Subsequently, a juror said she didn't have to examine Clinton's credibility in light of the paper trail which led to the convictions, and the White House issued a press release designed to emphasize this point. Starr also pointed out that this was not simply a "testimonial" case, as there was considerable documentary evidence which supported the convictions. It will be recalled that back in October, 1995, U.S. District Judge Henry Woods dismissed several of the fraud charges filed by Independent Counsel Starr against Governor Tucker, leading to much media hype that such dismissal "proved" that Starr's inquiry was politically motivated and was without any foundation. Much less noticed by the national media was the action of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, who heard Starr's appeal of Woods' dismissal. The Court of Appeals not only reinstated most of the charges which Woods had dismissed, but took the extraordinary step of removing Judge Woods from supervision over Starr's investigation, citing Woods' "... link with the Clintons and Clintons' connection to Tucker..." created the appearance of a conflict. The jury verdicts also place in a new light the personal vilification campaign against Starr over the past weeks, waged by administration spokesmen and many sympathetic media figures, since these verdicts marked the first trial of Whitewater related charges, and the decisions were rendered by ordinary Arkansas citizens. On the evening of the verdicts, the White House (and all the news reports) repeatedly pointed out, accurately, that the Clintons were not parties to this case, and were not charged with anything in this trial. The point, however, is that Clintons' partners were convicted of fraud, which raises the possibility of complicity on the part of the Clintons. The London Times made the point (studiously ignored by most domestic media) that the illegal loan from Hale to Susan McDougal was in part used to prop up the financially failing Clinton-McDougal Whitewater partnership, and Hale testified that Clinton pressured him to make that loan. White House statements also vehemently denied that the credibility (or lack of it) of Clinton's testimony had anything to do with the verdicts. No sooner had the verdicts been announced than reporters on the Clinton News Network started to "spin" the story, speculating whether the defense strategy was properly handled, second guessing whether the defense should have put on more of a defense. Put simply, the convictions were not the product of reasoned deliberation by 12 citizens, tried and true, but were the result of incompetent defense attorneys. A variation on the "so what?" defense. The evening news on ABC and NBC led their nightly broadcasts with the story, NBC speculating that, had the verdicts gone the other way, the White House would have claimed credit for the credibility of Clinton's testimony. CBS devoted the first half of it's news coverage on the day of the Whitewater verdict with a feature on the JFK assassination. Governor Tucker announced his resignation pending appeal, with republican Lt. Governor Mike Huckabee taking over and announcing his withdrawal from his race for a Senate seat from Arkansas, which polls placed him at a 2 to 1 advantage to win. The Independent Counsel is still pursuing his investigation into the death of Vince Foster, and there is another trial beginning in about 2 weeks on charges that two Arkansas bankers illegally directed campaign funds to Clinton's 1990 gubernatorial race in exchange for special favors from the governor. Starr's investigation has produced 9 guilty pleas of Whitewater connected figures to date, and a federal judge has decided to empanel another grand jury to hear details of additional evidence produced by Starr. Separately, the Independent Counsel is actively investigating the Travel Office affair with an eye toward the possibility of obstruction of justice and perjury, and also looking into the mysteriously disappearing and reappearing Rose firm billing records. Another Independent Counsel is still looking into the affairs of resigned Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, and has unsealed two indictments of farmers for receiving illegal crop subsidies, after much stonewalling by the Justice Department which tried to prevent Independent Counsel Smaltz from widening his probe to include a senior official at Agriculture appointed by Espy. That investigation is ongoing, as is the Justice Department inquiry into HUD Secretary Cisneros. The Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit against Bill Clinton is proceeding; and the Congress is investigating Iran-Bosnia, the United States role in Iranian arms transfers to Croatia and Bosnia. TRAVEL OFFICE CONTEMPT: William Clinger's (R-PA) House Government Reform and Oversight Committee set a deadline of May 8 for the White House to turn over Travel Office documents under subpoena since January. The White House refused to comply with the subpoena, Bill Clinton claimed Executive Privileged to protect all remaining documents related to the Travel Office firings, and the committee voted to send a contempt of Congress resolution to the full House for a vote. This week, the full House was scheduled to take up the matter of issuing contempt citations (which carry a penalty of $1000 fine and 1 year in jail). That vote was delayed when the White House decided to turn over 1000 pages of documents under the subpoena, but maintained their claim of Executive Privileged over 1700 more. BEST ECONOMY IN 30 YEARS: The Commerce Department recently revised downward the rate of GDP growth for the U.S. economy, to 2.3% annually. It might be noted that at the end of the Bush presidency, which candidate Bill Clinton dubbed the worst economy in 50 years, GDP was growing at an annualized rate of 6.55% from 1991-1992, and 5. 05% from 1992-1993. By way of interesting comparisons, during the worst years of the Great Depression, 1933-1938, Gross National Product (a slightly different measure than the currently used GDP) averaged 5.63% annual growth. So the question must be asked of President Bill Clinton: if a growth rate of over 5% was called a Great Depression, and a growth rate of over 5% was called (by Clinton) the worst economy in 50 years, what shall we call the current growth rate of less than half that, barely above 2%? The anemic economic growth was recently put in perspective by several economic studies which showed that our economic growth could be nearly one third higher if government spending and regulation had stayed at a per capita rate equivalent to the level it was in 1930 (not staying at the same constant dollars expended, naturally, but the same per capita relative rate). The Environmental Protection Agency's own estimate is that clean air and water regulations alone reduced the 1990 GDP by 5.8%. According to an analysis by the Washington University Macro Model (WUMM), an award winning economic forecasting tool, had it not been for the Clinton/democrat tax increase in 1993, the economy would have produced 1.2 million more private sector jobs than it did between 1993-1996; would have generated $208 billion more economic output during that period ($2100 more income for every American household); and would have created 40, 000 more new businesses. "...class warfare is bad politics because it is bad economics. No country has ever sustained prosperity by punishing educational achievement, hard work and entrepreneurship while subsidizing irresponsibility, indolence and imprudence. A tax policy that discourages people from adding to their incomes must also discourage them from the productive activities that would otherwise add to output." -- (Alan Reynolds, director of economic research, Hudson Institute) DEFEND AMERICA ACT: On May 23, a motion was entered to close further debate and proceeded to the consideration of S. 1635, to establish a United States policy for the deployment of a national missile defense system. A vote on the cloture motion (to cut off democrat filibuster) is scheduled to occur on Tuesday, June 4. END Congress Action is available on its own web page at http://www.aimnet.com/~jbv/congress_action.html and on FTP site at ftp.aimnet.com /pub/users/jbv/congress_action/ ------- To unsubscribe from c-news, send the message UNSUBSCRIBE c-news to majordomo@world.std.com. 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