Oh, Now They Tell Us
Linda Douglass: "Experts say just the threat of more jail time won't
stop corporate crime."
Professor John Coffee, Columbia Law School: "It's an
election-year
answer to crime. It sounds good, but it won't affect the sentences really
imposed or what prosecutors actually do."
World News Tonight, July 24, after House and Senate negotiators
agreed on a new corporate regulation law.
vs.
"The Senate has moved with stunning speed to pass this very, very
tough legislation....Lots of criminal penalties for such things as giving
false stock tips or signing a deceptive financial report, long jail terms, and
a very strong new board to oversee the accounting industry. The question now,
Peter, is what will happen to this....The lobbyists are swarming over Capitol
Hill to try to get the House to water down what the Senate has done."
ABC's Linda Douglass on World News Tonight, July 15.
Regulations Are Very Reassuring
"Will Republicans embrace much of the Sarbane's bill on accountability
and reform in corporate America as soon as possible so that the markets will
be reassured, the investors will be reassured and that those who violated laws
will go to prison?"
Tim Russert's question to House Majority Leader Dick Armey on NBC's
Meet the Press, July 21.
vs.
"Can you picture this conversation? 'Hey Martha, guess what? Senator
Sarbanes is writing new regulations for the stock market, the Senate Democrats
are going to pass them and the President says he'll sign whatever they send
him.' Is that a signal to buy or sell? My guess is that most people would
not be cheered by that news."
Brit Hume on Fox News Sunday the same day.
"Nonideological" Liberal Views
"Almost from the beginning, he has found himself at odds with many of
his more hard-line colleagues and the President himself on the handling of
foreign policy....Mr. Powell's approach to almost all issues foreign or
domestic is pragmatic and nonideological. He is internationalist,
multilateralist and moderate. He has supported abortion rights and affirmative
action."
New York Time's reporter Todd Purdum in a July 25 front-page
story about Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Cheney's "Shrewd" Stock Sale
"An executive sells shares in his energy company two months before the
company announces unexpected bad news, and the stock price eventually tumbles
to a quarter of the price at which the insider sold his. George W. Bush at
Harken Energy Corp. in 1990? Yes, but also Richard B. Cheney at Halliburton
Co. in 2000.....Whether through serendipity or shrewdness, Cheney made an
$18.5 million profit selling his shares for more than $52 each in August
2000."
The Washington Post's Dana Milbank in a front-page July 17
story. In August 2000, the Washington Post and other news organizations
demanded Cheney sever all of his financial ties to Halliburton.
Vice President Spiro Cheney?
"The closest parallel would be the investigation of Spiro Agnew in the
'70s when he was Richard Nixon's Vice President. Now you recall that Agnew
was ultimately forced to resign. Now no one is suggesting that Mr. Cheney is
another Agnew, and Cheney's personal integrity is not under investigation by
the SEC. But Cheney's problems could damage the Republican party this
fall....Democrats would love to make Dick Cheney the poster boy for the
Republicans' corporate governance problems."
CNN's William Schneider on Inside Politics, July 18.
In Rubin We Trust
"The blame-Clinton scenario has the appeal of a simple cartoon: Today's
corruption began in the 1990s and was shaped, as House Republican campaign
chairman Tom Davis puts it, by a 'culture of dishonesty and situational
ethics that flowed directly from the White House. A lack of accountability,
dishonesty, evasion, and dissemblance are the true legacies of the Clinton
era.' Ipso facto, Clinton did it.
"One small problem: He didn't. Blaming Clinton is absolutely
ridiculous, ex-Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin told me."
CBS special correspondent Gloria Borger in her July 29 U.S. News
& World Report column. Rubin served as Clinton's Secretary of the
Treasury from 1995 to 1999.
Bill Clinton Can Save Us
"The key to me is not that you would blame Clinton [for the corporate
scandals]. He would win any vote of any question on who you would blame for
something. But who would the people turn to right now to get out of this mess?
They'd probably vote for Clinton there, too."
Former Washington Post reporter and Clinton biographer David
Maraniss on MSNBC's Hardball, July 17.
Suspected?
"[Michael] Jackson's representatives said last October he had
finished studio recordings for the single, which he hoped would raise $50
million for victims' families and survivors of the attacks by suspected
Islamic militants that killed nearly 3,000 people."
Last paragraph of July 20 Reuters dispatch from Tokyo.
Brokaw Earns Cheers from Phil
Phil Donahue: "Let me tell you what is impressive. You're not
wearing a flag. Well, I don't want to damn you with my praise, but I say
hip-hip-hooray for that, and I think you gave the right answer when you spoke
at Northwestern University...."
Tom Brokaw: "Right. I said, you know, I wear a flag in my heart, but I
think if you wear a flag, it's a suggestion somehow that you're endorsing
what the administration is doing at the time. And I don't think journalists
ought to be wearing flags."
Donahue: "And I say hear, hear, hear."
Exchange on MSNBC's Donahue, July 25.
Helen Sees Nazi-like Crackdown
"I think the chipping away of our civil liberties is unprecedented.
Even in World War II, I never saw anything like that in Washington or any of
the wars. I think that people are standing mute, and I remember the rabbi in
the March on Washington program. He said that the greatest sin of all in the
Nazi era was silence. He had been in a concentration camp for many years.
People have got to, they must speak up now or forever hold their peace."
Hearst White House columnist Helen Thomas on MSNBC's Donahue,
July 22.
Maybe to Some Journalists, She Is
"Hillary Clinton Emerges as Moderate"
Headline of July 29 Associated Press story by Washington bureau
reporter Shannon McCaffrey.
Well, That Settles Everything
"It's an article of faith among Republicans that George Bush sealed
his fate when he went back on his 1988 'Read My Lips' pledge as part of a
1990 budget deal that raised taxes slightly and cut spending to shrink the
deficit. But what's forgotten is that the deal worked. Even many Democrats
now give 41 some credit for the boom of the 1990s; his deal helped restore
confidence in the capital markets."
Jonathan Alter and Howard Fineman in "A Dynastys Dilemma,"
Newsweek's July 29 cover story contrasting the two President Bushes.
Slamming a "Reckless" Tax Cut...
"What we have is a crisis of confidence here, and I think it's a
crisis that ignores the fact that most of the fundamentals are sound, with the
exception of the fiscal situation a few years out, because of that reckless
tax cut for the wealthy."
Wall Street Journal Executive Washington Editor Al Hunt on the
July 20 Capital Gang on CNN.
"The overriding question - the one that dwarfs everything else -
is what to do about the huge tax cut that Bush pushed through Congress back
when those mythical budget surpluses were still clouding most peoples
vision....Bush has been adamant in rejecting a rollback or even a delay in the
tax cut - virtually all of which will go to the highest-income voters. His
House Republican allies, seeking short-term political gain at the expense of
long-term fiscal sanity, have been staging votes to make the tax cuts
permanent."
Washington Post reporter and columnist David Broder in his July
24 column, "A Time to Face Fiscal Reality."
...But Pushing For More Spending
Dan Rather: "Senior Americans who saw retirement savings evaporate in
the Wall Street meltdown have another financial headache now. It turns out it
was all talk and no action with the President and Congress again today on
passing any version of Medicare prescription drug coverage."
Bob Schieffer: "...They say they'll keep trying, but don't bet on
them getting far. Instead, expect Democrats to blame Republicans, Republicans
to blame Democrats, and the White House to blame Congress. Seniors, in the
meanwhile, just get the shaft."
CBS Evening News, July 23.
Post Decries Mean Pro-USA Song
"The meanest [song], by far, is 'Courtesy of the Red, White and
Blue,' which unabashedly glorifies the bombing of Afghanistan. The song
traffics in vivid, simple shades of black and white, good and evil."
Washington Post Style-section reporter David Segal writing about
country singer Toby Keith's new album, Unleashed, July 25.
Fantasizing About Janet Reno
"I leave my friends behind and rush the stage to try to dance with
[former Attorney General Janet] Reno, only to find myself in a small crowd of
men living the same fantasy. When I finally push my way past them, she is
gone."
Time staff writer Joel Stein's recounting of Reno's dance
party fundraiser for her campaign for Florida Governor, in the magazines
July 29 issue.
