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Arlen Specter, Dan Burton, Henry Hyde and, Say what? -- Jimmy Carter?
The Smoking Butter Knife Theorists
Arlen Specter - Dick Nixon lookalike?
Monday, October 20th 1997: NEW YORK - If you're like me, you curl up on Sunday mornings in front of your television and watch three and a half hours of political pundit TV starting with Fox News' Tony Snow and ending with Frank Sesno on CNN. It's high drama at it's silliest. It's tough to start with Fox, because one has to watch the king of sneering over-puffy lips -- Brit Hume, who sees himself as a kind of video White House prosecutor and a Tom Brokaw clone who didn't make it.
This weekend was no different. The Republican spin was this week's alleged "smoking gun" videotape which reveals that President Clinton knew the Democrats could get out their message and that delivering that message would enhance the President's own campaign. To top it off, the President also knew that the DNC-paid spots allows the Party to legally avoid spending limits imposed on presidential campaigns taking matching funds from the "people." Of course, that's the point isn't it.
Duh.
Bob and Liddy Dole -- passing the scepter?
The Dole campaign did the same with the RNC, but you don't see the Democrats moving to prosecute Bob and Liddy.
Republicans charged Sunday that a recently released White House tape contains evidence that President Clinton was involved in an effort to use the Democratic National Committee to circumvent campaign fund-raising limits in 1996. It may be just the opposite -- perhaps they were using him to raise money for House and Senate races. No matter, the key word is "circumvent." Nothing could be further from the truth. Here's GOP Senator Arlen Specter - self-appointed wanna-be Presidential candidate - who himself took $5,000 in laundered cash from a trash company last cycle, wanting you to believe that he's finally got the President in a prosecutorial headlock.
Sure Arlen. We trust you. After all, you have that utterly believable Nixonian face. Specter's no stranger to campaign cash himself and he gets more and more of it from people who don't even live in Pennsylvania. His 1993-94 FEC report shows he grabbed about 12% of his total campaign funds from "carpetbagger" donors. In 1995-96 that interloper ratio rose to 22%. And in the latest 1996-97 cycle he's getting 46% of his $2.4 Million in campaign money from someplace other than his home state. One wonders what Specter donors from Florida get for their money?
The tape Arlen refers to shows President Clinton meeting with donors at a DNC get together in Washington in December 1995. He is seen hailing the political gains that the DNC made from party-funded issue advocacy television ads. The fact that the President benefitted from these party-run ads is not illegal and Specter knows it.
The President, on tape, also tells the donors that by the DNC raising money for the ads, "we could raise money in $20,000, $50,000 and $100,000 blocks."
"We", not "I" Mr. Specter.
"We didn't have to do it all in $1,000," he said, referring to the federal limits on direct contributions to his own campaign.
Specter, said Clinton's remarks evidenced "the smoking gun or the smoking tape."
"Now we have it from the president's own mouth that the purpose of the money being raised by the Democratic National Committee was to promote his own campaign ... a violation of federal law," Specter said this weekend. The only problem is that Bill Clinton didn't say that. He said that DNC advocacy ads helped Democrats and, by inference, his campaign as well. He also made the statement at a DNC fundraising event, not a Clinton/Gore campaign event.
Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill. joined in the monkeyshines and alerted us that what Clinton said on the tape was "a devastating statement" and ample reason for Attorney General Janet Reno to ask for an independent counsel to investigate Clinton's 1996 fund-raising activities. Hyde too, knows better, but could hardly contain his glee.
"For all of the period of time we've been wrestling with this question, it is apparent to us that the real issue is not who made phone calls from what telephone, but was there a conspiracy to evade the federal campaign laws for the election?" Hyde said ,"And this is one more indication that there was such a conspiracy."
If Hyde really believes that, why isn't he calling for an independent council to skewer Dole, who appeared on RNC spots funded from unlimited soft-money dollars flowing into Republican coffers. The RNC sports are obvious campaign ads for Dole. You remember them -- "Bob was born in Russell, Kansas... " - puhleeze! Perhaps we can also indict Liddy Dole for doing the voiceovers as a co-conspirator. That way we could stop her campaign for President 2000 much as the GOP is trying to stop Al Gore.
At least Hyde admits that the President shouldn't be pilloried for making calls for cash from the White House. Hyde, thoughtlessly cancelled the impact of financier Richard Jenrette's statements that Bill Clinton called him for money. Jenrette gave the DNC $50,000 after the President's call but admitted that Clinton did not ask him for a specific amount. One can only guess what Jenrette thought he'd get for his money -- and didn't.
One also wonders why the President would appear on tape while he was conspiring to break the law. He wouldn't and he didn't.
However, appearing on "This Week," White House adviser Rahm Emanuel poorly defended the DNC's issue-oriented ads, saying only that lawyers for both parties and the former counsel for the Federal Election Commission have all said the ads were "appropriate."
"I thought it was kind of impressive that you get three lawyers to agree," Emanuel quipped when joking was out of order.
While the president did not ask for a specific amount of money, Richard Jenrette said the president told him that he was trying to raise $2 million from 40 "good friends." Jenrette said he subsequently sent a letter to Clinton promising to donate $50,000 to the DNC. Good math skills.
But what did Jenrette actually do? Well, more than meets the television eye. Jenrette gave away nearly $40,000 personally in the past five years, most of it to Democrats, but some to Republicans - specifically Al D'Amato and Bill Weld. Further search of FEC records reveal the following entries under "Equitable" his company:
EQUITABLE7/18/94 $5,000.00 NEW YORK, NY 10019 -[[Receipt--exempt from limits]] DNC-NONFEDERAL-CORPORATE
EQUITABLE 7/18/94 $5,000.00 NEW YORK, NY 10019 -[[Receipt--exempt from limits]] DNC-NONFEDERAL-CORPORATE
EQUITABLE 8/15/94 $1,000.00 NEW YORK, NY 10019 -[[Receipt--exempt from limits]] DNC-NONFEDERAL-CORPORATE
EQUITABLE 10/11/96 $5,000.00 NEW YORK, NY 10020 -[[Receipt--exempt from limits]] DSCC NON-FEDERAL CORPORATE
EQUITABLE 3/17/95 $5,000.00 NEW YORK, NY 10019 -[[Receipt--exempt from limits]] DNC-NONFEDERAL-CORPORATE
EQUITABLE 9/7/95 $5,000.00 NEW YORK, NY 10019 -[[Receipt--exempt from limits]] DNC-NONFEDERAL-CORPORATE
EQUITABLE 9/7/95 $10,000.00 NEW YORK, NY 10019 -[[Receipt--exempt from limits]] DNC-NONFEDERAL-CORPORATE
EQUITABLE CAPITAL MANAGEMENT CORP 5/26/93 $7,500.00 NEW YORK, NY 10020 -[[Receipt--exempt from limits]] DNC-NONFEDERAL-CORPORATE
EQUITABLE CO 5/10/96 $250.00 CINCINNATI, OH 45202 -[[Receipt--exempt from limits]] NRCCC - NONFEDERAL ACCOUNT
EQUITABLE COMPANIES INC 6/20/97 $10,000.00 NEW YORK, NY 10104 -[[Receipt--exempt from limits]] 1997 REP S/H DINNER TRUST & INDIVIDUALS (NON-FEDERAL)
EQUITABLE INVESTMENT CORP 7/18/94 $5,000.00 NEW YORK, NY 10020 -[[Receipt--exempt from limits]] DNC-NONFEDERAL-CORPORATE EQUITABLE INVESTMENT CORP 2/27/96 $5,000.00 NEW YORK, NY 10020 -[[Receipt--exempt from limits]] DNC-NONFEDERAL-CORPORATE
EQUITABLE LIFE ASSUR SOCIETY OF US 9/6/96 $10,000.00 , NY -[[Receipt--exempt from limits]] RNC REPUBLICAN NATIONAL STATE ELECTIONS COMMITTEE
EQUITABLE RESOURCES 5/23/97 $20,000.00 WASHINGTON, DC 20007 -[[Receipt--exempt from limits]] 1997 REP S/H DINNER TRUST & INDIVIDUALS (NON-FEDERAL)
Wanting to show the whole "Equitable" picture, we warn the reader that we don't know whether Equitable Capital Management, Equitable of Cincinnatti, Equitable Investment, Equitable Life and Equitable Resources are Jenrette-related companies. We'll let someone else figure that out.
Dan Burton: "Got any watermelons?"
Dan Burton, one of two political officials -- both Republican -- now in front of a grand jury looking into campaign finance felonies (The other one is former RNC Chairman Haley Barbour) told the talking TV heads that he believes that some White House videos were doctored.
"We think some of those tapes may have been cut off intentionally, been altered in some way," Burton said.
Of course, Burton is the same guy who shot at fruit shaped like a human head in his Indiana back yard. The fruit was supposedly shaped like Vince Foster's head. Burton was trying to prove that the President had Foster murdered.
Jimmy assuaging his guilt
Finally, we have the tired old Jimmy Carter, the guy who brought you Burt Lance and BCCI and is now working out that guilt by building homes for the poor with other people's money. Carter, who traveled the world convincing small nations to put their money in BCCI and thereby lose it, now wants you to believe this about the Clinton video:
"It gives the American people the impression, which is not always erroneous, that to get legislation passed, or decisions made in Washington, you've got to contribute money and a so-called legal bribe in order to get what you need for your own business or your own financial benefit passed through the Congress and signed by the president," Carter said.
Double Duh.
Carter, who's remade himself as Mr. Goodie Two-Shoes, is an noted expert on taking cash for favors. Just ask the Arab sheiks who controlled the Bank of Credit and Commerce:
"He's Number One," they'll say, "Numero Uno!"
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