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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 12 February 2001 | Vol. II No.21 | ||
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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 12 February 2001 | Vol. II No.21 | ||
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"I'm no economist, but how big does our surplus have to be before we stop hoarding these trillions of dollars and start giving some of them back to the people they belong to? American taxpayers have overpaid the government, and it's time they got a refund. I've been in politics for four decades and I thought I'd seen it all. But when I came to Washington last year, I was not prepared for the shock of how matter-of-factly both parties in Congress slurped up the surplus without hesitation. I understand clearly that if we don't send this overpayment of taxes back to those who paid it, politicians can always find a new way to spend it. ... Yes, this plan gives refunds to wealthier Americans -- as it should. But who are we to pick and choose among our taxpayers? All of them combined have paid more than it takes to run this government. All of them combined should get a break." - Sen. Zell Miller (D-GA)
[ Wall Street Journal ]
"George Voinovich doesn't know it yet, but he's being watched. The Ohio Republican has a history of hating tax cuts more than most Democrats do. Last year he was the only GOP senator to oppose both easing the marriage penalty and repealing the death tax. He also criticized George W. Bush's tax cut. But this year, with President Bush's agenda now in the balance, any of the senator's 'no' votes will get new celebrity--amplified in Ohio by TV ads financed by fellow Republicans. The 'scripts have been approved,' says Steve Moore, president of the Club for Growth, the GOP-leaning donor group that plans to be this year's tax-cut enforcer. 'We may not get Voinovich to move, but we'll get everyone else to notice.' This may be the era of (mostly phony) good feeling, but it's still going to take muscle and persuasion to pass the tax bill Mr. Bush introduced yesterday. One source of both will be the Club for Growth, which in less than two years has revived the moribund supply-side movement on Capitol Hill--much to the dismay of the Voinovich Republicans."
[ Columnist Paul Gigot, Wall Street Journal ]
** or Thoughts on the Liberal View of a Tax Cut
I recently had lunch with a liberal friend of mine and during lunch the topic of tax reform came up. I am going to describe this conversation the best I can but it shows how the liberal mind works.
We don't need tax relief; we need to pay down the debt. If they gave us tax relief we would just spend it!
At the end of September 2000 the Congressional and Senate Republicans and Democrats alike found that they had a surplus of 600 billion dollars. What did they do with this? Did they pay down the national debt, NO! Did they put any of it in the Social Security or Medicare, NO! They spent it on pork barrel legislation.
I would like to spend my money the way I want to stimulate the economy thank you very much!
In another conversation with a different liberal he recanted the mantra of the Democrats that the tax cut would allow the top to buy a new Lexus and he could buy a new muffler for his Yugo.
I asked this person if he was married and if they both worked, he is and they do. Then I asked him how much money they made between them, $60,000 per year.
I told him that what "W" plans is for a 5 percent reduction in the marginal rate and asked what 5 percent was of 60,000. He replied that it was $3000 and I told him that if he was paying $3000 for a muffler he was getting ripped off!
I then told him that in addition to this W wants to do away with the marriage tax penalty and that the average of that would be some 1500 dollars. So I then asked if he could make his car payment with the extra 4500 dollars that Bush wanted to give back to him.
Case closed!
[ Ike Harley ]
"(Newt Gingrich had) one excellent idea that he implemented in the 104th Congress very briefly, then dropped and never revived it again. Current Speaker Dennis Hastert would do well to pick up on the idea because it was one of Newt's better ones. Gingrich proposed that a day be set aside every other week to repeal laws that were not working, or to amend laws that needed changing or to exercise oversight on regulations promulgated by the administration. When Gingrich first proposed this, we cheered. Congress has all but abandoned its historic oversight role. The media and interest groups may judge Congress by what it passes, but so much that is on the books now is harmful. Congress ought to be judged by what it repeals or by what it amends as well. And we are perfectly prepared to do just that if there is a systematic program to exercise oversight."
[Free Congress Foundation ]
"The early 00's are beginning to look a lot like the early 90's. Once again we've got an inarticulate president with no discernible ideology, who wants to be known for his achievements in education and is keen to tell people that he cares. He's even got the same name. Spooky.
"George W. Bush's interest in education and lack of principles go hand in hand. ... There was a time when the Republicans called for abolishing the Department of Education. Maybe they never really meant it, but at least they pretended they did, as a nod to the quaint idea that the federal government should not try to assume powers that the Constitution does not grant. Now Bush wants to beef up Washington's unconstitutional role in education by spending more money and using it to impose testing requirements, performance standards, and penalties for schools that fail to improve.
" ... Not surprisingly, sounding like a Democrat has endeared Bush to the Democrats. The New York Times reports this alarming development: 'On education, it seems, the political spectrum is collapsing into near consensus.' When politicians all agree on something, it usually involves picking your pocket or interfering with your life. In this era of bipartisanship, we can look forward to plenty of both."
[ Reason magazine senior editor Jacob Sullum, Creators Syndicate ]
After receiving hundreds of complaints from clients last week, the investment house Morgan Stanley Dean Witter has apologized for inviting disgraced ex-president Bill Clinton to speak before a Florida gathering Monday night.
In an e-mail message sent Thursday and Friday to investors who had complained, Morgan Stanley chairman Phillip J. Purcell wrote:
"I fully understand why you are upset that former President Clinton spoke at one of our conferences.
"We clearly made a mistake. First, the decision did not receive the proper review within the firm. And second, we should have been far more sensitive to the strong feelings of our clients over Mr. Clinton's personal behavior as President.
"In the past, we have heard from Presidents Reagan and Bush at our conferences, as well as other public figures across a broad political spectrum, and we have paid them speaking fees similar to what we paid Mr. Clinton.
"But in this case, we should have thought twice before the speaking invitation was extended. Our failure to do so was particularly unfortunate in light of Mr. Clinton's actions in leaving the White House.
"Again, thank you for sharing your comments with us."
Clinton was paid $150,000 for the speech, according to the Washington Post, in which he blamed outrage over his pardon of fugitive billionaire Marc Rich on rumors that he was having an affair with Rich's ex-wife Denise.
"The worst thing in the entire aftermath of the Marc Rich pardon was when people said I pardoned him simply because I had a relationship," Clinton complained to the crowd.
The firm's apology for the Clinton speech could limit his post-presidential earning potential, reports Sunday's New York Times.
"Morgan Stanley's decision to criticize itself for arranging the speech could have a serious impact on Mr. Clinton's post-White House income if other large investment firms and corporations feared that they, too, could face criticism from their clients by paying Mr. Clinton to speak," the paper said.
[ Rense ]
When Bill Clinton moved out of the Oval Office, he tried to take the two busts of former presidents -- FDR and Kennedy -- that sat behind his desk. Unfortunately, because they belong to the permanent White House collection, they weren't his to take, not that he didn't try. But two presidential ushers managed to remove them from boxes before they could be packed away for shipping to a temporary storage facility in New York. "The White House is always careful about what stays and what goes when presidents are leaving," says a former Clinton aide. "But they seemed extra careful with him."
Why the big deal about the busts? They are always a point of interest to people who see them during news dispatches from the Oval Office, and they are always prominent during presidential addresses from the room. Often the man who sits there uses the busts to send a not so subtle message to viewers that these are the men he wishes to embody So who has George W. Bush picked? Not his dad, but Eisenhower. He also picked Lincoln. In addition, he requested Reagan, but the bust isn't available in the collection. Which is perhaps the greatest outrage of all.
[ Washington Prowler ]
** White House Usher Doubted Ownership
President Bill Clinton and his wife started shipping furniture from the White House to the Clintons' newly purchased home in New York more than a year ago, despite questions at the time by the chief usher about whether they were entitled to remove the items.
The day before the items were shipped out, White House chief usher Gary J. Walters said he asked whether the Clintons should be taking the furnishings because he believed they were government property donated as part of a White House redecoration project in 1993, during Clinton's first year in office.
But Walters was told by the White House counsel's office that the items he asked about - which included an iron and glass coffee table, a painted TV armoire, a custom wood gaming table, and a wicker center table with wood top - were "personal gifts received by the Clintons prior to President Clinton's assuming office."
Personal property brought to the White House by an incoming president does not have to be disclosed on financial reports. As a result of the counsel's determination, the furnishings were sent on to the Clintons' new home in Chappaqua. They were not listed among the controversial gifts Clinton revealed, the day before he left office this year, that he and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), had taken with them.
However, government records show that the gifts that concerned Walters did not arrive at the White House until after the Clintons moved in. At least one of the items, a Ficks-Reed wicker table, was logged in at the White House on Feb. 8, 1993. Joy Ficks, the widow of the manufacturer, told The Washington Post last week it was meant for the White House, not the Clintons, and she thought it would stay there.
The Clintons' interior decorator, Kaki Hockersmith, had been soliciting gifts for the White House redecoration project even before the 1993 inauguration, according to some of those she approached. Walters said he understood she was telling donors that the furnishings were for the executive mansion rather than the Clintons personally.
"As far as we were concerned, they were government property," Walters said of all the gifts obtained for the $396,000 redecoration project.
This week, the Clintons returned the four items to the White House, along with other furnishings, after questions were raised about whether they actually belonged to the Clintons. Almost all the furnishings had been designated official White House property by the National Park Service in 1993.
Julia Payne, a spokeswoman for the former president, said the Clintons wanted to be "overcautious" in light of the concerns that had been raised. Despite the questions posed by Walters, Payne said the Clintons or Hockersmith acquired the four items in Little Rock before they came to Washington.
"I don't know physically where the items were," Payne said, but "they [the Clintons] were not required to put them on their financial disclosure form. He wasn't president yet."
Hockersmith did not return repeated calls this week seeking comment.
The Clintons came under strong criticism after disclosing that they were taking with them $190,000 in gifts received over the past eight years. GOP lawmakers and other critics chastised Hillary Clinton, in particular, for accepting a rash of presents just before she was sworn in as a senator and became covered by strict ethics rules that prohibit the receipt of any gift worth more than $50.
Bowing to such criticism, the Clintons decided on Feb. 2 to pay for $86,000 worth of gifts given to them in the year 2000. This week, they agreed to return another set of gifts that had been donated to the White House in earlier years, including six items they had not previously disclosed as having been taken. These included the coffee table, the armoire, the gaming table and the wicker table that Walters has asked about a year ago.
Yesterday, the National Park Service released an inventory of all the furnishings returned this week by the Clintons. It included $28,500 in furnishings identified by The Post earlier this week as having been legally designated as White House property by the Park Service.
The armoire, the coffee table and the wicker center table were trucked to New York on Jan. 4, 2000, just before the Clintons moved into the $1.7 million home in suburban New York, Walters said yesterday. The gaming table and most of the other furnishings the Clintons returned to White House custodians this week had been taken from the White House last month in several shipments starting Jan. 4, 2001, the day after Hillary Clinton was sworn in.
Walters said he accepted without a fuss the determination of the counsel's office, in a memo dated Jan. 3, 2000, that the gifts were personal Clinton property. In the memo, White House associate counsel Meredith Cabe said the reason the four items "arrived after the Clintons" was each item "was given a special finish" under Hockersmith's direction "to match the design decor selected by the Clintons for individual rooms in their personal space in the Residence." Cabe said she was relying on information from Hockersmith.
"I'm not a lawyer," Walters said. "I didn't feel I was in a position to argue with the counsel's office."
Payne said, "No item, nothing, was removed without the approval of the usher's and curator's office."
Walters blamed himself for not raising any questions when the rest of the furnishings were taken from the White House last month. He said a Hillary Clinton aide, Eric Hothem, had told him these too were "the Clintons' personal property."
"I should have asked for more specifics on these items," Walters said. "I shoulder the blame for not saying, 'Hey, wait a minute.'"
In interviews this week, Walters said that Hockersmith told the late Vincent Foster, then the White House deputy counsel, that the furnishings she was soliciting for the 1993 redecoration project were meant for the White House collection, not the Clintons personally.
Walters said that Foster directed him and the Park Service in a March 24, 1993, memo to begin accepting the gifts with formal acknowledgments, thereby making the furnishings government property. Walters said he sent thank-you letters of his own, but by law, the Park Service's acknowledgments are what count since only it has the legal authority to accept gifts for the White House.
Gifts meant for the first family are supposed to be routed through the White House gifts office, a separate unit.
Walters said it was long-standing policy to have the donors state "if possible in writing, that the gift/donation is for the Executive Residence or the Presidency, not the President."
Walters said Hockersmith was given a copy of that policy and it was her job, as the one who solicited the gifts, to obtain the letters. But no letters ever materialized.
Walters said he tried unsuccessfully to "close that loop" for years. "It finally came to the point of decision when the Clintons bought their house in New York. They were under the impression that these [four] items were theirs to take."
[ Washington Post ]
During the initial flap over Bill Clinton's $800,000 midtown Manhattan offices, Hillary Clinton's Washington Senate staff suggested to the new senator that perhaps she could take part of the penthouse space for her Manhattan Senate office, to cut the price a bit. "She told them she wasn't going to bail him out of his trouble," says a staffer of another Democratic senator. [ Washington Prowler ]
One Senate newcomer already in re-election mode is Missouri's Jean Carnahan. She's up for re-election in two years (due to her appointment to a vacant seat), and is desperate to build up her portfolio. So desperate in fact that she has staff canvassing for any and all legislation she can co-sponsor. She's even called the White House. "Someone from her office called legislative affairs wanting to talk about legislation she might co-sponsor for us in the Senate," says a White House Hill lobbyist. "But we aren't even up and running. We haven't gotten those kinds of calls from Republicans, so she must be desperate to sign her name to something." The Republican Party has already targeted Carnahan's seat as a potential pickup and are lining up candidates. The early favorite is conservative House member Jo Ann Emerson, a rising star on the Hill. It doesn't hurt that she works on a committee that will help her make friends back home: Appropriations.
[ Washington Prowler ]
Sources on Capitol Hill are saying that some congressmen doubt the validity of a full third of President Clinton's slovenly-signed last minute pardons. Either from laziness or from ignorance, these reprieves failed to follow procedure.
Forty seven of the 140 convicts pardoned by Clinton on January 20, 2001, skirted the DOJ's channels in filing clemency requests. They went straight to the President for their commutations instead.
Thirty of the pardons issued were to people who had not filed applications. Another 14 had previously filed for clemency, but were denied by the President himself on December 28, 1998. Another two had previously filed the paperwork for pardons, but were ineligible due to a law that imposes a waiting period on applicants.
One clemency application, for Louis Goldstein, was pending and under review at the Department of Justice at the time his pardon was granted.
All of the above may still feel the noose around their neck.
"Newport News Shipbuilding will christen the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) on March 4, with launching of the ship six days later. Nancy Reagan will serve as the ship's sponsor and crack the traditional bottle of champagne against the hull, honoring an ancient tradition and officially naming the carrier. The floating Gipper is 1,096 feet long, towers 20 stories above the waterline, displaces approximately 95,000 tons, and will carry 6,000 personnel and 80 aircraft. The ship will be in service for missions around the world for approximately 50 years."
[ John McCaslin's "Inside the Beltway" ]
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