Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Bush's last 31%:Too Many Complicated Scandals for "Liberal" Press to Explain to Them?

host · 05-11-2006, 11:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

My how quickly some forget 1992-2000

Well in all fairness many of you were pretty young, but still

I'm not that young...and I don't know what you are talking about. For the young....here is what happened, mostly documented by determinations of the Cheney endorsed, factcheck.org site, and the publicly edited, "Wikipedia" site.
What does your "party" or your POTUS offer the "rest of us", Ustwo? You've told us you're a practicing dentist. You probably have good health insurance coverage, and you don't like a progressive tax policy, like the one that Clinton fully supported. The majority of us are not as fortunate as you are, Ustwo. Clinton was "our POTUS". Sometimes, he represented the interests of the majority...the middle middle class....and lower. We, the majority...are America! Why do you hate America, Ustwo? If you disagree with my documentation, go to the Wiki links, and change what appears there.....make it more....accurate...if you can back up your opinions.....

Ustwo,are you referring to this?
(The 6 percent deficit was in fiscal year 1983, and the 4.7 percent deficits was in f-y 1992. Deficits decreased, turned to a 2.4 percent surplus in the seventh budget year of the Clinton presidency, in f-y 2000.......)

Quote:

<img src="http://www.factcheck.org/imagefiles/image004.png">
http://www.factcheck.org/article148.html
Half a trillion dollars is the most ever, but several others have been worse relative to the size of the economy.

February 27, 2004

Modified: February 27, 2004

or....maybe you mean this? :

Quote:

http://www.factcheck.org/article139.html
The President wrongly claimed he cut the growth of discretionary spending. Reality: the growth rate multiplied.

February 9, 2004

Modified: February 23, 2004

President Bush slipped up in his hour-long interview with NBC's Tim Russert over the weekend, claiming that the growth of discretionary federal spending has slowed markedly since he took office. But in fact, annual growth has been in double digits for the past three years, far higher than in any year of the Clinton administration.

.......As Clinton's budget surpluses have turned to deficits, Bush has come under criticism from all sides, liberals complaining about tax cuts and, lately, conservatives complaining about spending.

A Cato Institute analyst wrote Jan. 23 calling the increase "The Republican Spending Explosion,” and said discretionary spending increases signed by Bush -- once adjusted for inflation -- "are 3 of the 10 biggest annual increases in the last 40 years.”

A Heritage Foundation analyst wrote that "spending has increased twice as fast under President Bush as it did under President Clinton," and attributed the spending surge less to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 than to a lack of "self-discipline required to balance fiscal priorities.".....

Maybe you objected to Clinton's policy of heavily taxing the rich instead of the rest of us?

Quote:

http://www.factcheck.org/article339.html

....The NRSC cites only one vote by Byrd that was actually in favor of raising taxes. That one wasn't "today," it was a dozen years ago – the 1993 Clinton deficit-reduction measure, which also contained spending cuts. That 1993 measure did raise taxes on the middle class but only very slightly. It raised the gasoline tax by 4.3 cents per gallon. It also increased the amount of Social Security benefits that are subject to taxation, but only for those making $44,000 a year for a married couple. The rest of the increase was focused almost exclusively on the highest-earning one percent of households......

or....was your comment about all that Clinton era corruption?
[quote]

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...&notFound=true
Clinton Probes Cost $60 Million
Total Counsel Costs for Administration Top $110 Million

By George Lardner Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 31, 2001; Page A10

The independent counsel investigations of former president Bill Clinton have cost almost $60 million, with months of wrap-up work ahead, the General Accounting Office reported yesterday.

Independent Counsel Robert W. Ray and his predecessor, Kenneth W. Starr, had spent $59.9 million as of Sept. 30 on their probes of the Whitewater dispute, the White House travel office firings, the FBI files controversy and the Monica Lewinsky scandal, according to the GAO's latest six-month report. Ray, who took over from Starr in October 1999, spent about $8 million, and Starr spent the rest.

In all, five independent counsels investigating Clinton administration officials have spent more than $110.4 million.

Hours before he left office, Clinton reached a deal with Ray that ensured he would avoid indictment for his misleading statements about Lewinsky. In return, Clinton admitted giving false testimony. In a separate agreement with Arkansas authorities, Clinton agreed to pay a $25,000 fine and accepted a five-year suspension of his law license.....

Quote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewater_scandal
Ray Report

Kenneth Starr's successor, Robert Ray, released a report in September of 2000 that stated "This office determined that the evidence was insufficient to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that either President or Mrs. Clinton knowingly participated in any criminal conduct." Ray's report effectively ended the Whitewater investigation.

Have you considered how the eight year, $110 million, unrelenting criminal investigtaion of the Clintons, came about?
Or....how Paula Jones lawyers were able to put Clinton in the position of lying under oath about having sex with Monica Lewinski, in a deposition triggered by Paula's suit against sitting president Clinton?

Quote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_Project
Arkansas Project
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

The Arkansas Project is the general name of a series of investigations (mostly funded by billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife) that were designed to damage and end the presidency of Bill Clinton.[1]

According to R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. the idea for "investigating" the Clintons was born on a fishing trip on the Chesapeake Bay in the fall of 1993. David Brock, who reported many of the Clinton scandals, described himself as a Republican "hitman" who "soon became a lead figure in the drive to" get Clinton. Writing for the American Spectator, he brought the stories of alleged sexual misbehavior by Bill and Hillary Clinton into the public notice in late 1993. The unproven Troopergate charges were first attempt to examine the private life of an American president."[2]. The Pacific Research Institute and GOPAC funded further attempts to discredit the Clintons.

The investigations mostly concentrated on the Whitewater scandal, which extended to a conspiracy theory surrounding the death of Vince Foster, a Clinton aide with connections to Whitewater. Christopher Ruddy (a freelance reporter for the Scaife owned Pittsburgh Tribune-Review) published a series of articles claiming Clinton was behind Foster's suicide. Although Clinton was never found to have broken the law by Ken Starr, Ruddy published his book "The Strange Death of Vince Foster" regardless. While his conspiracy theories about Foster have been dismissed by mainstream conservative, and even some non-mainstream conservatives like Ann Coulter, there is a significant number of people who believe his claims that Foster's death was suspicious.[3] Nonetheless in 1999, Joseph Farah's Western Journalism Center "placed some 50 ads reprinting Ruddy's Tribune-Review stories in the Washington Times, then repackaged the articles as a packet titled 'The Ruddy Investigation,' which sold for $12." [4] Shortly thereafter, the Western Journalism Center "circulated a video featuring Ruddy's claims, 'Unanswered-The Death of Vincent Foster,' that was produced by ultra-conservative James Davidson, chairman of the National Taxpayers Union (NTU) and co-editor of the Strategic Investment newsletter."[5] (NTU's research arm receives funds from Scaife.)

David Brock then of the American Spectator (and previously of the Heritage Foundation) also went after the Clintons. Brock was the first journalist who published the sexual allegations by Paula Jones, which conflicted with later claims.[6] The Troopergate investigation later led Jones to sue Clinton, successfully obtaining an out of court settlement in the hundreds of thousands. Brock continued his dubious conspiracy theorising until a 1997 Esquire article titled "I Was a Conservative Hit Man" in which he recanted his claims. In 1998 he went further and personally apologized to Clinton. Brock was let go from the Spectator and published his 2002 book Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative.[7]

In the late 1990s, Ruddy and Farah turned their focus to the internet with help from Scaife. Ruddy founded NewsMax and Farah started World Net Daily to further promote conservative causes in the media. Eventually, Scaife became an investor and the third-largest stockholder of NewsMax [8]. Both featured and still feature stories about conspiracies surrounding the Clintons, liberals, gays and Democrats.

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...ain050299b.htm
Scaife: Funding Father of the Right

Richard Mellon Scaife
Conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. (AP)
By Robert G. Kaiser and Ira Chinoy
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, May 2, 1999; Page A2

...... Scaife has funded other Clinton efforts as well: Two zealous and resourceful (and rival) public interest law firms that have pursued Clinton and his administration relentlessly, the Landmark Legal Foundation and Judicial Watch, have received more than $4 million from Scaife. Judicial Watch, which is aggressively suing several branches of the government and has questioned numerous White House officials under oath, has received $1.35 million from Scaife sources in the last two years, a large fraction of its budget.

The Fund for Living American Government (FLAG), a one-man philanthropy run by William Lehrfeld, a Washington tax lawyer who has represented Scaife in the past, gave $59,000 to Paula Jones's sexual harassment suit against Clinton. FLAG has received at least $160,000 in Scaife donations. And lawyers who belong to the conservative Federalist Society, which has enjoyed Scaife support for 15 years (at least $1.5 million), were members of a secretive group who provided important legal advice to Paula Jones and who may have pulled off the key legal maneuver in the Clinton case by connecting the Jones suit and the Starr investigation. ........

mercifully...but much later....David Brock "switched sides", exposed the rightwing "Op" against the Clintons, and then created: http://mediamatters.org/about_us/staff_advisors

....or maybe...Ustwo, you're still smarting from that awful Clinton pardon of fugitive billionaire, Marc Rich? :

Quote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Rich
Marc Rich (born Marc David Reich on December 18, 1934) is a billionaire international commodities trader who fled the United States in 1983 to live in Switzerland in order to avoid prosecution on charges of tax evasion and illegally making oil deals with Iran during the hostage crisis. He received a controversial presidential pardon from President of the United States Bill Clinton in 2001, which required him to pay a $100 million dollar fine before the charges would be dropped.

Most recently, Marc Rich was linked to former United States Vice Presidential Chief of Staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Libby served as Rich's lawyer as far back as 1985 and charged him US$2 million for legal fees.

Quote:

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLI...inton.library/
March 2, 2001
Web posted at: 3:15 a.m. EST (0815 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff testified Thursday he believes prosecutors of billionaire financier Marc Rich "misconstrued the facts and the law" when they went after Rich on tax evasion charges.

The testimony from Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who represented Rich dating back to 1985 but stopped working for him in the spring of 2000, came during a contentious, hours-long House committee hearing into former President Bill Clinton's eleventh-hour pardons.

Earlier in the day, three former White House advisers all said they recommended that the Rich pardon be denied, but that they supported Clinton's decision-making process.

Facing intense questioning from Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pennsylvania, Libby hedged on whether he thought Clinton's pardon was justified, infuriating the congressman.

"Did you represent a crook who stole money from the United States government, was a fugitive and should never have been given or granted a pardon by the facts that you know?" snapped Kanjorski.

"No, sir," Libby responded. "There are no facts that I know of that support the criminality of the client based on the tax returns."

Libby then said prosecutors from the Southern District of New York "misconstrued the facts and the law" when they prosecuted Rich.

"(Rich) had not violated the tax laws," said Libby.

At a later point, Libby said he thought Rich was a traitor for his company engaging in trades with Iran at a time when that country was holding U.S. hostages. "I did not condone it, I didn't advise it, I don't admire it," he said.....

......not much "untoward" to see here, Ustwo. Just a two term president who was demonized by wealthy conservative republican extremists, hounded for eight years by the special prosecutor that their "Arkansas Project" spawned, and finally trapped into lying about his private sexual activity in a sworn deposition in a lawsuit that the extremists financed. The lies about his personal sexual activities were the core of the grounds for an impeachment trial that the republican controlled house of rep. prosecuted against Clinton, and the senate acquitted him. This was the same sort of "Op" as the campaign in 1993 to stop Clinton's attempts to draft a health insurance plan for nearly 27 million uninsured Americans:

Quote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_..._under_Clinton
The National Mood
In the initial months of the Clinton Administration, the public had a limited amount of confidence in the new president. Following two failed Attorney-General nominations, a Republican filibuster of the first part of the Clinton economic plan, and a controversy over gays in the military, the nation was in a skittish mood, but open to health reform[26]......

In one of Clinton's initial polls on health care, most individuals were unhappy with their personal health coverage. Two-thirds of voters were dissatisfied with the overall health-care system.

.........The No Name Coalition, started by the Conservative Christian Coalition and National Taxpayers Union placed negative editorials in The Wall Street Journal and used conservative media persons like Rush Limbaugh to wage an intensive war against Clinton’s plan. In the end, the Coalition grew to include more than 30 organizations. Not including additional money by corporations and other associations, public records show that the Coalition spent over $100 million dollars fighting against Clinton’s plan............

If you are finished with the well..."Clinton did it", knee jerk response to the OP for this thread...can you answer these two questions? Would Bush fair as well as Clinton did if a special counsel was set up, with unlimited time and an unlimited budget, to investigate him and all of his appointees?

Was it appropriate for the republican house to almost instantly launch an inquiry into the "routine" end of term pardons that Clinton signed, just as Bush '41 had done before him...yet to, this day, ignore the disclosures and guilty pleas of Cunningham and Abramoff, and the indictment of Delay, showing no interest in launching congressional investigations or to legislate meaningful lobbying reform?

Compared to what Clinton tried to do to represent what is best for me, what is Bush or the republican congress doing, or
done...besides burdening my descendants with $4 trillion in new debt and a dismantled progressive income tax policy that might have mitigated servicing interest payments on that debt?