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Orrin Hatch & Friends:
Pot Senators Calling the Kettle White House Black
Orrin Hatch - In a scene from "My Favorite Martian"
September 23rd 1997: Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) told this week's "Meet the Press" audience that President Bill Clinton's 1996 fund-raising activities were "unethical, illegal (and) in poor taste." The Mormon lay minister also said he has "no doubt" Attorney General Janet Reno will appoint an independent counsel to investigate White House fund-raising -- a decision he said should have been made months ago. But Hatch is no stranger to scandal and would do better to leave the accusing to someone else.
This is the same Senator who called Democrats the "party of homosexuals," made sneering and derogatory comments to Anita Hill, and who himself was investigated in 1993 for helping a business associate get a loan from the infamous Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) which swindled Americans and others of more than $8 billion. Hatch defended the bank until the last possible moment. Hatch, trying to recover his squeaky-clean image, recently cut his own CD titled "My God is Love" -- He wrote the lyrics and is featured on the album cover sitting at a piano like a Salt Lake Liberace. You can run out and buy it in October.
Couldn't you just puke?
Senator Orrin Hatch - The Liberace of Salt Lake
Rather than waste its time on the White House, maybe the Justice Department ought to take another look at Hatch who is most infamous for his stands against bussing, affirmative action and raising most of his own campaign money (more than 80%) from outside the state of Utah. Hatch is up for re-election in 2000 and thus far 95% of his money comes from other states. He's also a favorite campaign cash repository of pharmaceutical companies, and worked hard, along with VISA card hawker Bob Dole to give $4 billion in tax breaks to pharma-giants Merck and Eli Lilly for their Puerto Rico operations. Drug companies are definitely and enthusiastically major Hatch contributors.
Hatch joined other Republican "legal scholars" like Senator Don Nickles of Oklahoma in a concerted effort to push Attorney General Janet Reno into appointing a special prosecutor to investigate both Bill Clinton and Al Gore for making phone calls raising money from their White House offices.
Hatch, and Nickles know that the Justice Department and the FBI are already investigating these charges, but they want a special prosecutor anyway -- for the sole purpose of embarrassing the White House and crippling Al Gore's chances for the Democrat nomination in 2000.
Janet Reno - Is she trapped by her own words?
Reno got herself into a corner when she, earlier this year, refused to appoint an independent counsel based partially on the fact that raising "soft money" did not violate the law. Recent revelations that some portion of soft money contributions raised by Clinton and Gore were syphoned into "hard money" accounts by the Democratic National Committee have allowed Republican strategists to irresponsibly seize on her words and shout "Aha!" in their, what should be futile, attempts to manipulate the independence of the nations top prosecutor. In what is tantamount to "ordering" the Attorney General to prosecute the President and Vice President, Republican leaders may be violating the law themselves by pressuring Reno to do that which she thinks unnecessary.
If they get away with it, what's to stop Senators from "ordering" the Justice Department to investigate you or your children -- for political or any other reasons?
The Justice Department, bowing to non-stop Republican pressure, announced Saturday that it has opened a 30-day review into allegations that Clinton solicited contributions in telephone calls from the White House in a violation of federal law. A similar inquiry of Vice President Al Gore has been launched.
Republican Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi - a state which enjoys the highest rate of illiteracy in America, called for Reno's resignation for not taking action sooner. Other GOP legislators have urged impeachment procedures to begin against Reno if she does not appoint a special prosecutor. Other wiser Republicans like Arlen Specter have called this move irresponsible.
"I frankly think the attorney general should resign," Cochran said.
Cochran, not known for his intellect, might not know better than to threaten a constitutional officer with impeachment. It's a crime to attempt to blackmail the Attorney General into investigating and prosecuting individuals, yet the mainstream media -- eager for another scandal -- seems to ignore this.
Reno has resisted appointing a special prosecutor, suggesting that it is unclear whether a century-old law banning federal employees from seeking political donations from federal offices is applicable to the president and vice president. I, and a lot of legal scholars think that law doesn't apply to any elected official.
Just what is the law on this issue? In 1883 a law was passed which prohibited government officials from strong-arming federal employees for campaign money. This was a period in American history where patronage jobs were handed out like candy, and politicians "collected" campaign money from federal job holders a quid-pro-quo for their employment. The law had nothing to do with elected officials using their offices or telephones to raise money from non-federal employees.
Elected officials didn't even have telephones 114 years ago.
But a literal reading of the law could make it illegal to use taxpayer-paid offices for fundraising purposes -- Literal, as in moron.
What's the difference if your U.S. Senator, Representative or President calls a donor for money from his office or from a pay phone across the street? Elected officials are not paid by the hour. They're "on duty" 24 hours a day. Thus, if one were to follow this silly line of reasoning, an argument could be made that elected officials should never raise funds while in office. Believe it or not, many elected officials at least "go through the motions" in an idiotic charade by leaving their federal offices and walking down the street to the RNC or DNC headquarters to call for campaign cash. They do it all day long.
As a taxpayer I'd much rather they stayed in the office rather than waste time dialing for dollars from some bogus site set up at great expense to protect them from censure.
Bill Clinton denies he violated the law - and -believe it or not - he's right
There aren't more than a handful of elected officials who don't raise money from their Capitol Hill suites. Sure, they go outside to make it appear they're raising money "off-site" -- once in a while -- but they field calls and make calls on a regular and nearly uninterrupted basis from their offices every day. As a matter of fact, most political offices are engaged in re-election work more than 90% of the time -- a huge percentage of that spent on laying the groundwork for fundraising opportunities.
Senators, spend between $5 and 15 million dollars each time they're up for election. On average they must raise $8,000 every working day to stay in office. If you believe Senator Hatch, he must spend most his life in a phone booth rather than taking care of the people's business.
As for the 114 year old law -- you should know that not a single elected official has ever been prosecuted, let alone convicted of violating it. Now, all of sudden, Hatch and his friends are screaming for "justice."
This kind of hypocrisy and sanctimony only demonstrates how piteous the system is and always has been. Republicans don't give a hoot about this law, they only care about winning the White House -- and they're using tens of millions of YOUR dollars to do it. To be fair, Democrats don't care much either, but at least they were smart enough not to highlight their own lack of grace simply to try and manipulate your vote.
Both political sides are engaged in a battle for power. Like the corporations that fund them, each wants a bigger slice of the pie. It's an age old story most of us realize and not only willing to live with, but eagerly participant in. It's just the way things are.
You'll see a lot of proposals from the Thompson Committee to mend campaign finance laws. Then you'll see a re-run from Dan Burton's Committee in the House this year and next. But unless we want to change the entire fabric of America and get rid of the free-market economy upon which most of what we do is based, then we'll just have to live with it.
You see, American politics is based on the same principals as business. In order to win, you have to be well-funded and present a cohesive set of policies that the voters will buy. That costs money in a free society.
I think we're all heads up enough to watch where that money comes from. If we don't like the source of political funds then we can vote the takers out.
Like Senator Robert Torricelli of New Jersey predicts, Janet Reno will decide against asking for an independent counsel -- at least in this instance. To do otherwise would be tantamount to giving elected officials the right to prosecute anyone they choose without regard for the law governing the conduct of the Attorney General and those that seek to influence her for purely self-seeking reasons.
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