Candidates In
2000
Al Gore: his hyperactive fundraising has
brought him together with a grim cast of cronies, many of whom have
received perks or favors from the Clinton-Gore administration;
illegal fundraising at a Buddhist temple, illegal fundraising phone
calls, hypocrisy on tobacco (using his sister's death for political
gain while continuing to profit from tobacco stock); environmental trendiness
(and hypocrisy). CLICK HERE for
details.
George
W. Bush, Jr.: a man who has succeeded in life through
no fault of his own, profiting from sweetheart deals with his Dad's
cronies and with campaign contributors. In return, he's delivered
plenty of Texas state tax money to his donors and business
colleagues, including $135 million of new sales tax money that went
directly into the pockets of Bush and friends.
-- Did a year of
community service in 1972; was it for a cocaine arrest, or for drunk
driving?
-- Bush and his staff intervened to protect a huge
funeral home company that gave lots of money to Bush and his dad
(the former president), and Bush has lied under oath to avoid
testifying in the whistleblower lawsuit that resulted.
--
Thin-skinned, he is trying to censor his critics both on the
Internet and in Texas.
-- Longtime party animal now preaches
abstinence and sobriety despite widespread rumors of sex, drugs and
possibly even rock and roll.
-- Profited from insider stock sale
just before his dad launched the Gulf War.
-- His foreign
business partner at Harken Energy gained access to President Bush
and the U.S. National Security Adviser (Scowcroft) after Harken
purchased Bush Jr.'s oil company. CLICK HERE for details.
Elizabeth
"Liddy" Dole [withdrew]: Ruthless
politician cloaked in Southern charm. Took $875,000 for speeches to
Bob Dole's campaign contributors, and got sweetheart deal on a
luxury vacation condo from one of them, and a million dollars for
the Red Cross right after she took it over. Criticized for work at
the FAA. CLICK HERE for
details.
John
McCain: This Vietnam vet and former prisoner of war
has a reputation as one of Congress' few independent thinkers, in
part because of the bipartisan bills he crafted on tobacco and
campaign reform. At the same time, he was one of the "Keating
Five", congressmen who vigorously helped Charles Keating delay
prosecution for his financial crimes. Meanwhile, McCain received
$112,000 in Keating donations, flew 9 times on Keating jets and
visited his posh retreat in the Bahamas at least 3 times. McCain is
also known for nasty, rude comments on Chelsea Clinton, for sending
warm birthday wishes to a mafia boss, and a mean quick temper. CLICK HERE for
details.
Bill
Bradley: This self-styled reformer was the second
worst in Congress (out of 535) for taking "fact finding
trips" (junkets) paid for by special interests. And a
nonpartisan watchdog group called him "The King of
Bundling", which is a way to evade campaign finance limits by
having your friends, business colleagues and/or family also make
maximum donations. Covered up a potentially serious heart defect.CLICK
HERE for details.
Gary
Bauer [withdrew]: This righteous little guy took tens of
thousands of dollars from the Moonies, dodged the draft and is
alleged to be having an affair with a twenty-something woman,
despite his marriage of 27 years.CLICK HERE for details.
J.
Danforth Quayle [withdrew]: DUMB! You've no doubt
seen some of his hilarious quotes ("what a terrible thing it is
to lose one's mind"), but you have no idea how many there are.
Hear Quayle talk about the water-filled canals on Mars! He also
dodged the draft in Vietnam by pulling strings, and Quayle's alleged
drug dealer was thrown into solitary confinement when he tried to
talk to the press during Quayle's vice-presidential campaign. Also:
attempted (and failed) adultery. CLICK HERE for details.
Dick Gephardt [withdrew]: Political chameleon has
morphed from an anti-abortion conservative to a protectionist lefty
populist. Had to return $22,000 in questionable contributions from
the Lippo Group after that scandal broke. A campaign volunteer
illegally attained credit reports of 2 Gephardt opponents in 1996,
though Dick and his paid staff were cleared of charges. He failed to
report his half-interest in a $750,000 North Carolina beach home in
his 1992 disclosure report, doing so 3 weeks later after being
questioned about it (OK, this is all pretty thin stuff.) CLICK HERE for
details.
Pat Buchanan: Washington and media insider,
Watergate abuses (dirty tricks and obstruction of justice), pushed
IRS audits on his enemies. Did VD keep him out of Vietnam? 6 aides
with ties to racist or white supremacy groups, all talk & no
action (the Republican Jesse Jackson), anti-Semitic statements,
flirts with fascism, top defender of Nazis, assaulted police
officers, Holocaust revisionist. CLICK HERE for details.
Alan
Keyes: Paid himself $100,000/year out of campaign
funds when he ran for senate, won't take responsibility for old
campaign debts, all talk and no action. Quotes.CLICK HERE for
details.
Steve
Forbes: - Rich kid with little real world experience,
sleazy land deals, bad manager, draft dodger, vanity candidate,
hiding his tax returns, stalking horse for supply-siders. Wilder
accusations: Involved in Vincent Foster death coverup? Quotes. CLICK HERE for
details.
Lamar Alexander [withdrew]: Lamar has
gotten rich of dozens of sweetheart deals with business cronies and
financial supporters that make Hillary's $100,000 commodities trade
look puny. In fact, he tried to hide most of them by transferring
stock and other assets to his wife Honey. Lamar Alexander:
Longtime Washington lawyer-lobbyist shamelessly claiming to be an
outsider. He's a "weathervane" candidate who now claims to
be conservative. Claims to be an "entrepreneur" based on
one of his sweetheart deals, where he did no actual work.Other
Politicians
John Ashcroft
[withdrew]: this self-styled moral crusader of the
far right, and former Missouri governor, has been involved in
several allegedly corrupt deals. He declared an "economic
emergency" and pushed through $140 million in state funds to
build an 18-mile freeway that opened up a major contributor's land
for development; Ashcroft and his wife got a good deal on a boat
from a political contributor and didn't pay personal property tax on
it until a newspaper questioned him on it; the contributor received
$1 million in state contracts during Ashcroft's administration.
Ashcroft's Attorney General was sent to jail for converting state
property for his own use. CLICK HERE for details.
Newt
Gingrich: Newt quit Congress, but he remains
stubbornly convinced that he should run for president. If he does,
he'll face plenty of allegations:
Adultery and public sex, blatant hypocrisy on Clinton's affairs,
admitted pot smoker, divisive demagogue who loves to vilify his
opponents, bounced 22 checks on the House bank, pro-military draft
dodger, pressured his first wife to sign divorce papers while she
was in hospital with cancer, under investigation for numerous ethics
violations, got lucrative book contract from rich businessman Rupert
Murdoch -- and another one years earlier, used taxpayer subsidies to
fund his partisan campaign course, refuses to reveal who funded his
GOPAC committee. His character. Quotes. Wilder accusations:
Sexual misconduct with a convicted murderer? CLICK HERE for
details.
Bob
Dornan:"B-1" Bob Dornan is not the crazy
far-righter that every one says he is. Well, we can't say that. He's
not JUST a crazy far-right winger; he's an Emmy award-winning,
surfing spy who's flown dozens of jet fighters and bounced House
bank checks for the Virgin Mary. His wife also claimed he beat her
the last two times she left him.CLICK HERE for details.
Ross
Perot [Reform Party]: Paranoid hypocrite, got rich
off of government funding, manipulates his genuinely grass roots
supporters, conspiracy theory fan, and "crazy": obsessive,
delusional, and never wrong (in his own mind.)
Ralph
Nader [Green Party]: Authoritarian hypocrite, secret
luxury house, owned by the trial lawyers' lobby, just another
politician, busted a union among his workers, abuses workers,
amassing millions of dollars and playing the stock market with it,
secrecy and stonewalling, vindictive toward critics, forced
contributions to his college PIRG groups. Quotes.CLICK HERE for
details.
Pete Wilson:
Perhaps the most two-faced politician in America, and that's
saying something.
Colin Powell:
Involved in coverup of the My Lai Massacre. More bureaucrat than
soldier. Let Saddam survive at end of Desert Storm. Rejected
ordering more helicopters in Somalia, with disastrous results.
Historical
Scandals
Contrary to popular opinion, scandals go
back long before Monica and even Watergate, and so do problems with
media reporting. The affair between Thomas Jefferson and Sally
Hemmings, one of his slaves, has recently been supported by DNA evidence.
While the DNA data leaves open the possibility that close relatives of Jefferson
fathered Hemmings' children instead of Thomas, a study of other evidence by the
foundation that manages Monticello confirms it was Thomas. The key evidence is that
the other potential fathers weren't at Monticello at the time of her conception, while the
ex-president was.
According to an excellent article in the Wall Street
Journal (9/23/97, pA1), this scandal was reported in the Richmond, VA
Recorder in 1802 by James Callendar, a British-born reporter, who
didn't have any particular evidence to back up his charges.
Callender also reported that Alexander Hamilton had been in an
extramarital affair.
Later on, during the 1884 presidential campaign, the Buffalo
Evening Telegraph claimed that Grover Cleveland had fathered an
illegitamate son. Again, there was no proof but repetition in other
papers proved almost as effective in "confirming" the
rumor. Papers later gave the celebrity treatment to Cleveland's
marriage to much younger Frances Folsom in 1886, even following them
on their honeymoon and reporting some details.
More recently, Presidents Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and
Johnson have been shown with reasonable certainty to have had
extramarital affairs. George Bush is alleged to have had a
long-running affair with Jennifer Fitzgerald, a State Department
employee who worked for him at most of his posts over the years
("She served him in a number of positions," the joke
goes.)
Of course, there were many real and more substantial scandals in
years past as well. Thanks to reader Tim Weber, here are links to
several mudpits from olden times; the mysterious "Whisky
Ring" and "XYZ
Correspondence" fiascos, and the better known Watergate
and Teapot
Dome affairs.
Links
The House
of Crooks: at http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~lsfitzge. This
is an attempt at a Skeleton Closet for congress, which sorely needs
one. However, the site has very sketchy coverage and is pretty
slanted to the liberal viewpoint.
The Guerilla Pages at
http://jeffbob.home.mindspring.com/guerrilla/list.htm. Bipartisan,
more opinionated but with less factual detail. Still very
entertaining. It covers Georgia politicians of both parties, plus a
few national figures.
The
Center For Public Integrity at
http://www.essential.org/cpi/. This outfit has done a great job of
researching the funding of major presidential candidates and their
advisers, making the information public for free and not showing
favoritism to either party. They also have a page of databases on
candidate assets, honoraria, travel junkets, Clinton's various
contributions, and which businesspeople got to go with Ron Brown on
his various trips to drum up business, at
Tony
Raymond's Page of FEC Info at
http://www.tray.com/fecinfo/. Lots of nonpartisan reports and detail
on who gives and gets what donations. Lots of good info on soft
money donations. Very well organized, a great site.
FEC Raw Data Files at
http://www.fec.gov/finance/ftp.htm. Want to see the hard numbers
yourself, without someone "explaining" them all to you? Go
to the source, the government reports that candidates file under
penalty of perjury.
Want a really specific political gossip sheet? How about one for
a single County? GRANT STREET 1999 covers just Allegheny
County in Pennsylvania. It seems to be liberal, but it's hard to
tell unless you live there.
What's New
Bush's supporters fight to keep McCain off the NY ballot, the latest on
Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, the amazing Paroli scandal in upstate NY,
and updated Forbes links.
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