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She shot back, Well, at least I didnt use the... |
31st July 2010, 09:11 |
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She shot back, Well, at least I didnt use the state police to spy on my political enemies the way you did! Faubus had actually done that in the aftermath of the Central High crisisNot bad for a six-year-old
I won the primary with more than 60 percent of the vote, but Faubus pulled a third of itEven at seventy-six, he still had some juice in rural areasFrank White took up where Faubus left offAlthough he had called teachers greedy when they pushed for higher pay during his tenure, he got the endorsement of the Arkansas Education Association in the Republican primary when he changed his position from support of the teacher test to oppositionThen he started in on Hillary and me
White began by saying the new education standards were too burdensome and needed to be changedI hit that one out of the park, saying if he were elected, he would delay them to deathThen he went after Hillary, alleging she had a conflict of interest because the Rose firm was representing the state in its fight against the Grand Gulf nuclear plantsWe had a good response to that charge, tooFirst, the Rose firm was working to save Arkansans money by lifting the necklace chanel burden of the Grand Gulf plants, while White, as a board member of one of the Middle South Utilities companies, had voted three times to go forward with construction of the plantsSecond, the Public Service Commission hired the Rose firm because all the other big firms were representing utilities or other parties in the caseBoth the legislature and the attorney general approved the hiringThird, the money the state paid to the Rose firm was subtracted from the firms income before Hillarys partnership profits were calculated, so she made no money from itWhite seemed more interested in defending the utilitys effort to soak Arkansas ratepayers than protecting them from a conflict of interestI asked him if his attacks on Hillary meant he wanted to run for first lady instead of governorOur campaign even made bumper stickers and buttons that said, Frank for First Lady
Whites final charges did him inHe had been working for Stephens, Inc then the largest bond house outside Wall StreetJack Stephens had supported me when I first ran for governor, but then he drifted to the right, heading Democrats for Reagan in 1984, and by 1986 he had become a chanel white bag RepublicanHis older brother, Witt, was still a Democrat and supporting me, but Jack ran the bond houseAnd Frank White was his guyFor many years, Stephens had controlled the states bond businessWhen I dramatically expanded the volume of bond issues, I insisted that we open all of them to competitive bidding by national firms, and that we let more Arkansas firms have the opportunity to sell the bondsThe Stephens firm still got its fair share, but it didnt control all the issues as it had in the past and would again if White won the electionOne of the Arkansas firms that got some business was headed by Dan Lasater, who built a successful bond firm in Little Rock before he lost it all to a cocaine habitLasater had been a supporter of mine and a friend of my brothers, with whom he had partied hard when they were both chained to cocaine, as too many young people were in the 1980s
When Betsey Wright and I were preparing for our television debate with White, we learned that he was going to challenge me to take a drug test with himThe ostensible reason was to set a good example, but I knew White was hoping I wouldnt do itThe blizzard of rumors knock off chanel earrings spawned by Lasaters downfall included one that I had been part of Dans party circleBetsey and I decided to take a drug test before the debateWhen White hit me on television with his challenge, I smiled and said Betsey and I had already taken a test and he and his campaign manager, Darrell Glascock, should follow suitGlascock had been subjected to his share of rumors tooTheir clever trick had backfired
White turned up the heat with the nastiest TV ad Id ever seenHe showed Lasaters office, followed by a tray of cocaine, with an announcer saying Id taken campaign contributions from a cocaine-using felon, then given him state bond businessThe clear implication was that Id given Lasater preferred treatment and at the least I had known about his cocaine habit when I didI invited the Arkansas Gazette to review the records of the Development Finance Authority, and the paper ran a front-page story showing how many more bond houses had done business with the state since Id taken over from Governor WhiteThe number had gone from four to fifteen, and Stephens still had handled over $700 million of bond business, more than twice as much as any other miu miu clutch Arkansas firmI also hit back with a TV ad that began by asking people if theyd seen Whites ad and actually showing a few seconds of itThen my ad cut to a picture of Stephens, Inc with the announcer saying White worked there and the reason he was attacking me was that neither Stephens nor anyone else controlled the states business any longer, but they would if White became governor againIt was one of the most effective commercials I ever ran, because it was a strong response to a low blow, and because the facts spoke for themselves
I was also glad that Roger and Mother hadnt let themselves get too hurt by Whites bringing up Rogers drug problemAfter he got out of prison, Roger served six months in a halfway house in Texas, and then moved to north Arkansas, where he worked for a friend of ours in a quick-stop service stationHe was about to move to Nashville, Tennessee, and was healthy enough not to let the old story drag him downMother was happy with -bleep- Kelley, and by now knew that politics was a rough game in which the only answer to a low blow is winning
In November, I won with 64 percent, including a staggering 75 percent in Little miu miu black bag |
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(4) As we try to solve problems which arise out... |
30th July 2010, 15:36 |
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(4) As we try to solve problems which arise out of the internationalization of American life and the changes in our own population, cooperation in every area is far more important than conflictWe have to share responsibilities and opportunitieswere going up or down together
(5) Waste is going to be punished it appears to me that we are spending billions of dollars of investment capital increasing the debt of corporations without increasing their productivityMore debt should mean increased productivity, growth, and profitabilityNow it means, too often, less employment, less investment for research and development, and forced restructuring to service nonproductive debt
(6) A strong America requires a resurgent sense of community, a strong sense of mutual obligations, and a conviction that we cannot pursue our individual interests independent of the needs of our fellow citizens
If we want to keep the American dream alive for our own people and preserve Americas role in the world, we must accept the new rules of successful economic, political, and social lifeAnd we must act on them
Over the next five years, I would refine my analysis of globalization and interdependence and propose more initiatives to respond to them, juggling as best I could my desire to be a good governor and to have a positive impact on national policy
In 1987, my agenda for the legislative session, Good Beginnings, Good Schools, Good Jobs, was consistent with the work I was doing with the National Governors Association under the theme gucci paolo watches Making America WorkIn addition to recommendations that built on our previous efforts in education and economic development, I asked the legislature to help me get the growing number of poor children off to a good start in life by increasing health-care coverage for poor mothers and children, starting with prenatal care in order to lower the infant-mortality rate and reduce avoidable damage to newborns; to increase parenting education for mothers of at-risk children; to provide more special education in early childhood to kids with learning problems; to increase the availability of affordable child care; and to strengthen child-support enforcement
From Hillary, I had learned most of what I knew about early-childhood development and its importance to later lifeShe had been interested in it as long as Id known her, and had taken a fourth year at Yale Law School to work on childrens issues at the Yale Child Study Center and YaleNew Haven HospitalShe had worked hard to import to Arkansas an innovative preschool program from Israel called HIPPY, which stands for Home Instruction Programs for Preschool Youngsters, a program that helps to develop both parenting skills and childrens ability to learnHillary set up HIPPY programs all across the stateWe both loved going to the graduation exercises, watching the children show their stuff and seeing the parents pride in their kids and themselvesThanks to Hillary, Arkansas had the largest program in the country, serving 2,400 mothers, and their children showed remarkable chanel jewellery progress
The main focus of my economic development efforts was to increase investment and opportunity for poor people and distressed areas, most of them in rural ArkansasThe most important proposal was to provide more capital to people who had the potential to operate profitable small businesses but couldnt borrow the money to get startedThe South Shore Development Bank in Chicago had been instrumental in helping unemployed carpenters and electricians set themselves up in business on the citys South Side to renovate abandoned buildings that otherwise would have been condemnedAs a result, the whole area recovered
I knew about the bank because one of its employees, Jan Piercy, had been one of Hillarys best friends at WellesleyJan told us South Shore got the idea to fund artisans who were skilled but not creditworthy by conventional standards from the work of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, founded by Muhammad Yunus, who had studied economics at Vanderbilt University before going home to help his peopleI arranged to meet him for breakfast in Washington one morning, and he explained how his micro-credit program workedVillage women who had skills and a reputation for honesty but no assets were organized in teamsWhen the first borrower repaid her small loan, the next one in line got hers, and so onWhen I first met Yunus, the Grameen Bank already had made hundreds of thousands of loans, with a repayment rate higher than that for commercial lenders in BangladeshBy 2002, Grameen had made them to more than 2 million people, 95 percent black gucci bag of them poor women
If the idea worked in Chicago, I thought it would work in economically distressed areas in rural ArkansasAs Yunus said in an interview, Anywhere anybody is rejected by the banking system, you have room for a Grameen-type programWe set up the Southern Development Bank Corporation in ArkadelphiaThe Development Finance Authority put up some of the initial money, but most of it came from corporations that Hillary and I asked to invest in it
When I became President, I secured congressional approval for a national loan program modeled on the Grameen Bank, and featured some of our success stories at a White House eventAgency for International Development also funded two million micro-credit loans a year in poor villages in Africa, Latin America, and East AsiaIn 1999, when I went to South Asia, I visited Muhammad Yunus and some of the people hed set up in business, including women whod used the loans to buy cell phones, which they charged villagers to use to call their relatives and friends in America and EuropeMuhammad Yunus should have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics years ago
My other major interest was welfare reformI asked the legislature to require recipients with children three years old or over to sign a contract committing themselves to a course of independence, through literacy, job training, and workIn February, I went to Washington with several other governors to testify before the House Ways and Means Committee on welfare prevention and reformsWe asked Congress to give us the twiggy balenciaga tools to promote work, not welfare; independence, not dependenceWe argued that more should be done to keep people off welfare in the first place, by reducing adult illiteracy, teen pregnancy, the school dropout rate, and alcohol and drug abuseOn welfare reform, we advocated a binding contract between the recipient and the government, setting out the rights and responsibilities of both partiesRecipients would commit to strive for independence in return for the benefits, and the government would commit to help them, with education and training, medical care, child care, and job placementWe also asked that all welfare recipients with children age three or older be required to participate in a work program designed by the states, that each welfare recipient have a caseworker committed to a successful transition to self-sufficiency, that efforts to collect child-support payments be intensified, and that a new formula for cash assistance be established consistent with each states cost of livingFederal law allowed states to set monthly benefits wherever they chose as long as they werent lower than they had been in the early seventies, and they were all over the place
I had spent enough time talking to welfare recipients and caseworkers in Arkansas to know that the vast majority of them wanted to work and support their familiesBut they faced formidable barriers, beyond the obvious ones of low skills, lack of work experience, and inability to pay for child careMany of the people I met had no cars or access to public chanel watch j12 white transporta |
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By far the most beautiful words of the day were... |
29th July 2010, 10:25 |
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By far the most beautiful words of the day were spoken by Maya Angelou, a tall woman with a deep strong voice whom I had asked to write a poem for the occasion, the first poet to do so since Robert Frost spoke at President Kennedys inauguration in 1961I had followed Mayas career since Id read her memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which recounts her early years as a traumatized mute girl in a poor black community in Stamps, Arkansas
Mayas poem, On the Pulse of Morning, riveted the crowdBuilt on powerful images of a rock to stand on, a river to rest by, and a tree with roots in all the cultures and kinds that make up the American mosaic, the poem issued a passionate plea in the form of a neighborly invitation:
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again
Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you
Give birth again
To the dream
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sisters eyes, and into
Your brothers face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning
Billy Graham ended our good morning with a brief benediction, and Hillary and I left chanel jumbo the stage to accompany the Bushes down the back steps of the Capitol, where the presidential helicopter, Marine One, was waiting to take them on the first leg of their journey homeWe went back inside for lunch with the Congressional Committee, then drove up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the viewing stand in front of the White House for the inaugural paradeWith Chelsea, we got out of the car and walked the last few blocks of the route so that we could wave to the crowds packed several deep along the way
After the parade, we went into our new home for the first time, with only about two hours to greet the staff, rest, and get ready for the eveningMiraculously, the movers had gotten all our belongings in during the inaugural ceremonies and the parade
At seven, we started our evening marathon with a dinner, followed by visits to all eleven inaugural ballsMy brother sang for me at the MTV Youth Ball, and at another I played a tenor saxophone duet on Night Train with Clarence ClemonsHowever, at most of the balls Hillary and I would first say a few words of thanks, then dance to a few bars of one of our favorite songs, It Had to Be You, showing off her beautiful purple gownMeanwhile, Chelsea was off with friends from Arkansas at the Youth Ball, and Al and Tipper kept their own scheduleAt the Tennessee ball, Paul Simon seamaster de ville regaled them with his hit You Can Call Me AlAt the Arkansas Ball, I introduced Mother to Barbra Streisand and told them both I thought theyd get alongThey did more than thatThey became fast friends, and Barbra called my mother every week until she diedI still have a picture of them walking hand in hand on that inaugural evening
When we got back to the White House, it was after 2 aWe had to be up the next morning for a public reception, but I was too excited to go right to bedWe had a full house: Hillarys parents, Mother and -bleep-, our siblings, Chelseas friends from home, and our friends Jim and Diane Blair and Harry and Linda ThomasonOnly our parents had retired
I wanted to look aroundWe had been in the second-floor living quarters before, but this was differentIt was beginning to sink in that we actually lived there and would have to make it a homeMost of the rooms had high ceilings and beautiful but comfortable furnitureThe presidential bedroom and living room face the south, with a small room off the bedroom that would become Hillarys sitting roomChelsea had a bedroom and study across the hall, just beyond the formal dining room and the small kitchenAt the other end of the hall were the main guest bedrooms, one of which had been Lincolns office and has one of his handwritten copies of the Gettysburg replica chanel jewelry Address
Next to the Lincoln Bedroom is the Treaty Room, so named because the treaty ending the Spanish-American War was signed there in 1898For several years it had been the private office of the President, usually configured with multiple televisions so the Chief Executive could watch all the news programs at onceI believe President Bush had four TVs thereI decided I wanted it to be a quiet place where I could read, reflect, listen to music, and hold small meetingsThe White House carpenters made me floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and the staff brought up the table on which the Spanish-American War treaty had been signedIn 1869, it had been Ulysses Grants cabinet table, with space for the President and his seven department heads to sit around itSince 1898 it had been used for the signing of all treaties, including the temporary nuclear test ban under President Kennedy and the Camp David Accords under President CarterBefore the year was out, I would be using it too
I filled out the room with a late-eighteenth-century Chippendale sofa, the oldest piece of furniture in the White House collection, and an antique table bought by Mary Todd Lincoln, on which we put the silver commemorative cup from the 1898 treatyWhen I got my books and CDs in, and hung some of my old pictures, including an 1860 photo of Abraham replica pasha cartier Lincoln and Yousuf Karshs famous photograph of Churchill, the place had a comfortable, peaceful atmosphere in which I would spend countless hours in the years ahead
On my first day as President, I started out by taking Mother down to the Rose Garden, to show her exactly where I had stood when I shook hands with President Kennedy almost thirty years agoThen, in a departure from traditional practice, we opened the White House to the public, providing tickets to two thousand people who had been selected in a postcard lotteryAl, Tipper, Hillary, and I stood in line shaking hands with the ticket holders, then with others who waited in the cold rain for their time to walk through the lower south entrance into the Diplomatic Reception Room to say helloOne determined young man without a ticket had hitchhiked overnight to the White House with his sleeping bagAfter six hours, we had to stop, so I went outside to speak to the rest of the crowd gathered on the South LawnThat night, Hillary and I stood in line for another few hours, to greet our friends from Arkansas and classmates from Georgetown, Wellesley, and Yale
A few months after the inauguration, a book was published filled with beautiful photographs that capture the excitement and meaning of the inaugural week, with an explanatory text written by Rebecca Buffum gucci women's watches Taylor |
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Begala felt that the entire team should stress... |
28th July 2010, 10:23 |
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Begala felt that the entire team should stress three points: that deficit reduction is not an end in itself, but the means to achieve the real objectiveseconomic growth, more jobs, and higher incomes; that our plan represented a fundamental change in the way government had been working, ending the irresponsibility and unfairness of the past by asking the wealthy big corporations, and other special interests that had benefited disproportionately from the tax cuts and deficits of the 1980s to pay their fair share of cleaning up the mess; and that we should not say we were asking people to sacrifice but to contribute to Americas renewal, a more patriotic and positive formulationBegala wrote a memo containing his arguments and suggesting a new theme: Its NOT the deficit, stupidGene Sperling, Bob Reich, and George Stephanopoulos agreed with Paul, and were glad to have some inside help in arguing the message
While all this was going on in public, we were struggling hard with some big questionsBy far the largest was whether to include health-care reform along with the economic plan in the omnibus Budget Reconciliation ActThere was a compelling argument for doing so: first, the budget, unlike all other legislation, isnt subject to the filibuster rule, the Senate practice that allows just forty-one senators to kill any bill by debating it to death, blocking a vote until the Senate has to move on to other businessSince the Senate had forty-four Republicans, the probability that they would at least try to filibuster health care was high
Hillary and Ira Magaziner badly wanted health care in the budget, the congressional leaders were open to it, classic chanel quilted bag and -bleep- Gephardt had urged Hillary to do it, because he was sure the Republican senators would try to filibuster health care if it were proposed by itselfGeorge Mitchell was sympathetic for another reason: If health-care reform were introduced as a separate bill, it would be referred to the Senate Finance Committee, whose chairman, Senator Pat Moynihan of New York, was, to put it mildly, skeptical that we could come up with a workable health-care plan so quicklyMoynihan recommended that we first do welfare reform, and spend the next two years developing a health-care proposal
The economic team was adamantly opposed to including health care in the budget, and they had good reasons, tooIra Magaziner and many health-care economists believed, correctly as it turned out, that greater competition in the health-care marketplace, which our plan would promote, would produce significant savings without price controlsBut the Congressional Budget Office would not give credit for these savings in any budget we presentedThus, to provide universal coverage, we had either to include a provision for backup price controls in the plan, raise taxes and cut other spending even further, or reduce the deficit target, which might adversely affect our strategy to lower interest rates
I decided to delay the decision until after I put the details of the economic plan before the people and the CongressNot long afterward, the decision was made for meOn March 11, Senator Robert Byrd, the senior Senate Democrat and ultimate authority on the bodys rules, told us he would not make an exception for health care to the Byrd rule, which prohibited the inclusion of omega replica watches nongeneric items in the budget-reconciliation billWe had enlisted everyone we could think of to make the case to Byrd, but he was adamant that health-care reform could not be construed as part of the basic budget processNow, if the Republicans could sustain a filibuster, our health-care plan would be dead on arrival
In the second week of February, we decided to kick the health-care can down the road and complete the rest of the economic planI had become deeply immersed in the details of budgeting, determined to understand the human impact of our decisionsMost of the team wanted to cut farm supports and other rural programs, which they thought were unjustifiableAlice Rivlin pushed hard for the cuts, suggesting I could then say I had ended welfare for farmers as we know itIt was a takeoff on one of my best campaign lines, a pledge to end welfare as we know itI reminded my mostly urban budgeteers that farmers were good people who had chosen hard work in an uncertain environment, and though we had to make some cuts in their programs, we dont have to enjoy itSince we couldnt restructure the whole farm program, reduce the subsidies in other nations budgets, or eliminate all the foreign barriers to our food exports, we ended up reducing the existing farm benefits modestly
Another thing we had to consider in proposing cuts, of course, was whether they had a chance to passFor example, someone said we could save a lot of money by eliminating all the so-called highway-demonstration projects, which were specific spending items members of Congress obtained for their districts or statesWhen the suggestion came up, my new congressional liaison, Howard tiffany toggle necklace Paster, shook his head in disbeliefPaster had worked in both the House and Senate and for both Democratic and Republican lobbying firmsA New Yorker with a brusque, candid manner, Howard snapped, How many votes does the bond market have? Of course, he knew we had to convince the bond market that our deficit-reduction plan was credible, but he wanted us to remember that it first had to pass, and inflicting personal pain on members of Congress was unlikely to prove a successful strategy
Some of the proposals we considered were so absurd they were comicalWhen someone suggested we impose fees for Coast Guard services, I asked how they would workIt was explained that the Coast Guard was quite often called upon to bring in boats that were in distress, often due to the negligence of the operatorsI laughed and said, So when we pull up alongside, or throw down a rope from a helicopter, before we do the rescue, were going to ask, Visa? MasterCard??We let that one go, but eventually we did come up with more than 150 budget cuts
Deciding on the tax increases was no easier than choosing the budget cutsThe toughest issue for me was the BTU taxIt was bad enough that I was going back on my commitment to cut middle-class taxes; now I was told we had to raise them, both to reach the $140 billion deficit reduction target in the fifth year and to turn the psychology of the bond marketThe middle class had been shafted in the eighties, and Bush had been crippled by signing a gas-tax increaseIn one fell swoop, if I proposed the BTU tax I would make the Republicans the anti-tax party again, largely to satisfy the hunger of the prosperous interest-rate setters chloe bag for a little middle-class pain, in this case about $9 a month in direct costs, rising to $17 when indirect costs, in the form of higher prices for consumer products, were includedLloyd Bentsen said that he had never had any fallout from voting for energy taxes, and that Bush was hurt by signing the 1990 gas-tax increase because of his read my lips pledge and the fact that the most militant anti-taxers were hard-core RepublicansGore again pushed for the BTU tax, saying it would promote energy conservation and independence
Finally, I gave in, but made some other changes in Treasurys tax proposals that I hoped would reduce the tax burden on average AmericansI insisted that we include in the budget the full $26 billion cost of my campaign proposal to more than double the tax cut for millions of working families with incomes of $30,000 or less, called the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and for the first time offer a more modest EITC to more than 4 million working poor Americans without dependentsThis proposal would ensure that, even with the energy tax, working families with incomes of $30,000 or less would still receive a meaningful tax cutOn the campaign trail, I had said at virtually every stop, No one with children who works full-time should live in povertyIn 1993, there were a lot of people in that situationAfter we doubled the EITC, more than four million of them moved out of poverty into the middle class during my presidency
As we were trying to close the deal, Laura Tyson said she felt she had to point out that there was no significant economic difference between a fifth-year reduction of $140 billion and one of $120 or $125 chanel white purse billio |
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Unfortunately, what should have been a... |
27th July 2010, 16:20 |
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Unfortunately, what should have been a life-affirming event was marked by yet another tragedy, as I announced that our chief of naval operations, Admiral Mike Boorda, had died that afternoon of a self-inflicted gunshot woundBoorda was the first enlisted man ever to rise through the ranks to the navys highest positionHis suicide was triggered by news stories alleging that he had worn two Vietnam battle ribbons on his uniform that he hadnt earnedThe facts were in dispute and, in any case, should not have diminished his standing after a long career marked by devotion, stellar service, and evident courageLike Vince Foster, he had never had his honor and integrity questioned beforeTheres a big difference between being told that you are no good at your job and being told that youre just no good
In mid-May, I signed the reauthorization of the Ryan White CARE Act, which funded medical and support services for people with HIV and AIDS, the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of twenty-five and forty-fourNow we had doubled the money available for AIDS care since 1993, and one-third of the 900,000 people with HIV were receiving services under the act
That same week I also signed a bill known as Megans LawNamed after a little girl who had been killed by a sex offender, the legislation gave states the power to notify communities of the presence of violent sex offenders; several studies had shown they are rarely rehabilitated
After the ceremony I flew to Missouri to campaign with -bleep- GephardtI really admired Gephardt, a hardworking, smart, kind man who looked twenty years younger than tiffany replica he wasEven though he was the Democratic leader in the House, he regularly came home on weekends to go into neighborhoods and knock on his constituents doors to talk with themOften, -bleep- would give me a list of things he wanted me to do for his districtWhile lots of congressmen asked for things from time to time, the only other member who regularly provided me a typed to do list was Senator Ted Kennedy
At the end of the month, I announced that the Veterans Administration would provide compensation to Vietnam veterans for a series of severe illnesses, including cancers, liver disorders, and Hodgkins disease, that were associated with exposure to Agent Orange, a cause long championed by Vietnam veterans, Senators John Kerry and John McCain, and by the late Admiral Bud Zumwalt
On May 29, I stayed up until well past midnight watching the election returns in IsraelIt was a real cliffhanger, as Bibi Netanyahu defeated Shimon Peres by less than 1 percent of the votePeres won the Arab vote by a large majority, but Netanyahu beat him badly enough among Jewish voters, who made up more than 90 percent of the electorate, to winHe did it by promising to be tougher on terrorism and slower with the peace process, and by using American-style television ads, including some attacking Peres that were made with the help of a Republican media advisor from New YorkPeres resisted the pleas of his supporters to answer the ads until the very end of the campaign, and by then it was too lateI thought Shimon had done a good job as prime minister, and he had given his entire life to the state of Israel, but in 1996, by a narrow chanel logo earrings margin, Netanyahu proved to be a better politicianI was eager to determine whether and how he and I could work together to keep the peace process going
In June, against the backdrop of the presidential campaign, I focused on two issues, education and the disturbing rash of black church burnings then sweeping the countryAt the Princeton University commencement, I outlined a plan to open the doors of college to all Americans and to make at least two years of college as universally available as high school: a tax credit modeled on Georgias Hope Scholarships of $1,500 (the average cost of community college tuition) for two years of higher education; a tax deduction of $10,000 a year for all higher education beyond the first two years; a $1,000 scholarship to students in the top 5 percent of every high school graduating class; funds to increase college work-study positions from 700,000 to 1 million; and annual increases in Pell Grants for lower-income students
In mid-month I went to Grover Cleveland Middle School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to support the communitys curfew program, one of several such efforts across the country requiring young people to be in their homes after a certain hour on school nights; they had led to a decline in crime and an improvement in student learningI also endorsed the policy of requiring school uniforms for elementary and middle school studentsAlmost without exception, school districts that required uniforms experienced higher student attendance, less violence, and increased student learningThe distinctions between poor and wealthier students diminished as well
Some knock off tiffany jewelry of my critics ridiculed my emphasis on what they called small bore issues like curfews, uniforms, character education programs, and the V-chip, saying it was all politics, as well as a reflection of my inability to pass big programs in the Republican CongressAt the time, we were also implementing the large education and crime programs passed in my first two years, and I had another major education initiative before CongressBut I knew that federal money and laws could only give Americans the tools to make their lives better; the real changes still had to be effected by citizens at the grassroots levelPartly as a result of our promotion of school uniforms, more and more school districts embraced them, with positive results
On June 12, I was in Greeleyville, South Carolina, to dedicate the new Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church, after the congregations old church had been burnedLess than a week earlier, a church in Charlotte, North Carolina, had become the thirtieth black church to be burned in the previous eighteen monthsThe whole black community in America was in an uproar and expected me to do something about itI endorsed bipartisan legislation to make it easier for federal prosecutors to punish those who burn houses of worship, and pledged federal loan guarantees to support low-interest loans for the rebuilding effortsThe church burnings seemed to feed off one another, much as a rash of synagogue defacements had in 1992They werent connected by a conspiracy, but by a contagion of the heart, a hatred of those who are different
During this time, I also had to acknowledge a problem in my chanel pearl necklace White House operation so severe that I felt it was the first issue of my administration that merited an independent investigation
In early June, news reports revealed that three years earlier, in 1993, my White House Office of Personnel Security had obtained from the FBI hundreds of FBI file summaries on people who had been cleared for entry into the Bush and Reagan White HousesThe files had been obtained when the office was attempting to replace security files on current White House employees, since those files had been taken away by the departing Bush administration for deposit in the Bush LibraryThe White House had no business possessing confidential FBI reports on RepublicansI was outraged when I heard about it
On June 9, Leon Panetta and I apologized for the incidentWithin a week, Louis Freeh announced that the FBI had wrongly turned over 408 files to the White HouseA few days later, Janet Reno asked Ken Starr to investigate the files caseIn 2000, the OIC found that the incident had been simply a mistakeThe White House had not engaged in any kind of political espionagethe Secret Service had given the Personnel Security Office an outdated list of White House employees, which included Republicans names, and this was the list that had been sent to the White House
Late in June, at the annual Gore family conference in Nashville, I called for an expansion of the family leave law to allow people to take up to twenty-four hours a year, or three more workdays, to attend parent-teacher conferences at their childrens school or to take their children, or a spouse, or their parents for routine medical mulberry bayswater bag car |
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Its hard to restrain the source of your power, as... |
26th July 2010, 10:19 |
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Its hard to restrain the source of your power, as Newt was reminded the next day when he was criticized by Rush Limbaugh and the conservative Manchester Union Leader for being too pleasant to meIt was a mistake he wouldnt often repeat in the future, at least not in public
After the meeting I went to Boston for a fund-raiser for Senator John Kerry, who was up for reelection and would likely face a tough opponent in Governor Bill WeldI had a good relationship with Weld, perhaps the most progressive of all the Republican governors, but I didnt want to lose Kerry in the SenateHe was one of the Senates leading authorities on the environment and high technologyHe had also devoted an extraordinary amount of time to the problem of youth violence, an issue he had cared about since his days as a prosecutorCaring about an issue in which there are no votes today but which will have a big impact on the future is a very good quality in a politician
On June 13, in a nationally televised address from the Oval Office, I offered a plan to balance the budget in ten yearsThe Republicans had proposed to do it in seven, with big spending cuts in education, health care, and the environment, and large tax cutsBy contrast, my plan had no cuts in education, health services for the elderly, the family supports necessary to make welfare reform work, or essential environmental protectionsIt restricted tax cuts to middle-income people, with an emphasis on helping Americans pay for the rapidly rising costs of a college educationAlso, by taking ten years instead of seven to get to balance, my plans annual bolsas prada contractionary impact would be less, reducing the risk of slowing economic growth
The timing and substance of the speech were opposed by many congressional Democrats and some members of my cabinet and staff, who thought it was too early to get into the budget debate with the Republicans; their public support was dropping now that they were making decisions instead of just saying no to me, and a lot of Democrats thought it was foolish to get in their way with a plan of my own before it was absolutely necessary to put one outAfter the beating wed taken during my first two years, they thought the Republicans should have to endure at least a year of their own medicine
It was a persuasive argumentOn the other hand, I was the President; I was supposed to lead, and we had already cut the deficit by a third with no Republican supportIf I later had to veto Republican budget bills, I wanted to do so after demonstrating a good-faith effort to make honorable compromisesBesides, in New Hampshire, the Speaker and I had pledged to try to work togetherI wanted to hold up my end of the bargain
My budget decision was supported by Leon Panetta, Erskine Bowles, most of the economic team, the Democratic deficit hawks in Congress, and -bleep- Morris, who had been advising me since the 94 electionsMost of the staff didnt like -bleep- because he was difficult to deal with, liked to go around established White House procedures, and had worked for RepublicansHe also had some off-the-wall ideas from time to time and wanted to politicize foreign policy too much, but I had worked with him long enough to know when to fake fendi spy bag accept, and when to reject, his advice
Dicks main advice was that I had to practice the politics of triangulation, bridging the divide between Republicans and Democrats and taking the best ideas of bothTo many liberals and some in the press corps, triangulation was compromise without conviction, a cynical ploy to win reelectionActually, it was just another way of articulating what I had advocated as governor, with the DLC, and in 1992 during the campaignI had always tried to synthesize new ideas and traditional values, and to change government policies as conditions changedI wasnt splitting the difference between liberals and conservatives; instead, I was trying to build a new consensusAnd, as the coming showdown with the Republicans over the budget would show, my approach was far from lacking in convictionEventually, Dicks role would become known to the public and he would become a regular part of our weekly strategy sessions, which were normally held every Wednesday nightHe also brought in Mark Penn and his partner, Doug Schoen, to do polling for usPenn and Schoen were a good team who shared my New Democrat philosophy and would remain with me for the rest of my presidencySoon we would also be joined by veteran media consultant Bob Squier and his partner, Bill Knapp, who understood and cared about policy as well as promotion
On June 29, I finally reached an agreement with the Republicans on the rescission bill, once they restored more than $700 million for education, AmeriCorps, and our safe drinking water programSenator Mark Hatfield, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations necklace chanel Committee and an old-fashioned progressive Republican, had worked closely with the White House to make the compromise possible
The next day in Chicago, with police officers and citizens who had been wounded by assault weapons, I defended the assault weapons ban and asked Congress to support Senator Paul Simons legislation to close a big loophole in the law banning cop-killer bulletsThe policeman who introduced me said he had survived severe combat in Vietnam without a mark, but had nearly been killed by a criminal who used an assault weapon to riddle his body with bulletsCurrent law already banned the bullets that pierced protective vests worn by police officers, but the banned ammunition was defined not by its armor-piercing capability, but by what the ammunition was made of; ingenious entrepreneurs had discovered other elements, not mentioned in the law, that could also be made into bullets that pierced vests and killed cops
The National Rifle Association was sure to fight the bill, but they were down a little from their high-water mark in 1994After their executive director had referred to federal law-enforcement officers as jackbooted thugs, former President Bush had resigned from the organization in protestA few months earlier, at an event in California, the comedian Robin Williams had lampooned the NRAs opposition to banning cop-killer bullets with a good line: Of course we cant ban themSomewhere out there in the woods, theres a deer wearing a Kevlar vest! As we headed into the second half of 1995, I hoped Robins joke and President Bushs protest were harbingers of a larger trend chloe black toward common sense on the gun issue
In July, the partisan fights abated a littleOn the twelfth, at James Madison High School in Vienna, Virginia, I continued efforts to bring the American people together, this time on the subject of religious liberty
There was a lot of controversy about how much religious expression could be allowed in public schoolsSome school officials and teachers believed that the Constitution prohibited any of itStudents were free to pray individually or together; religious clubs were entitled to be treated like any other extracurricular organizations; in their free time, students were free to read religious texts; they could include their religious views in their homework as long as they were relevant to the assignment; and they could wear T-shirts promoting their religion if they were allowed to wear those that promoted other causes
I asked Secretary Riley and Attorney General Reno to prepare a detailed explanation of the range of religious expression permitted in schools and to provide copies to every school district in America before the start of the next school yearWhen the booklet was issued, it substantially reduced conflict and lawsuits, and in so doing won support across the religious and political spectrum
I had long been working on the issue, having established a White House liaison to faith communities, and signed the Religious Freedom Restoration ActNear the end of my second term, Professor Rodney Smith, an expert on the First Amendment, said my administration had done more to protect and advance religious liberty than any since James chloe bag bay Madiso |
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Without even giving Judge Woods an opportunity to... |
25th July 2010, 16:49 |
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Without even giving Judge Woods an opportunity to defend himself, the court not only reversed his decision and reinstated the indictment but also kicked him off the case, citing not court records, but newspaper and magazine articles critical of himOne of the articles filled with false charges was written by Justice Jim Johnson in the right-wing Washington TimesAfter the ruling Woods pointed out that he was the only judge in American history to be removed from a case on the basis of press articlesWhen another enterprising defense lawyer appealed to the Eighth Circuit to get a trial judge removed and cited the Woods case as precedent, a different, less ideological panel refused the request and criticized the Woods decision, saying it was both unprecedented and unjustifiedOf course it was, but there were different rules for Whitewater
On April 17, even the New York Times couldnt take it any longerCalling Starr defiantly blind to his appearance problems and indifferent to the special obligation he owes to the American people for his refusal to divest himself of his own political and financial baggage, the Times said Starr should step downI couldnt deny that the grand old paper still had a conscience; they didnt want Hillary and me handed over to a lynch mobThe rest of the Whitewater media was silent on the subject
On April 28, I gave four and a half hours of videotaped testimony in another Whitewater trialIn this one, Starr had indicted Jim and Susan McDougal and Jim Guy Tucker chanel wallet for misappropriating funds from Madison Guaranty and from the Small Business AdministrationThe loans were not repaid, but the prosecutors didnt dispute that the defendants intended to repay them; instead, they were charged with crimes arising from the fact that the borrowed money was used for purposes other than those described on the loan application papers
The trial had nothing to do with Whitewater, Hillary, or meI mention it here because David Hale dragged me into itHe had swindled the SBA out of millions of dollars and was cooperating with Starr in hopes of getting a reduced prison sentenceIn his testimony at the trial, Hale repeated his charge that I had pressured him to make a $300,000 loan to the McDougals
I testified that Hales account of his conversations with me was false and that I knew nothing of the dealings between the parties that had given rise to the chargesThe defense attorneys believed that once the jury knew that Hale had lied about my role in his dealings with the McDougals and Tucker, his entire testimony would be compromised and the prosecutors case would collapse, and therefore the defendants themselves did not need to testifyThere were two difficulties with the strategyFirst, against all advice, Jim McDougal insisted on testifying in his own defenseHe had done so in a previous trial arising out of the collapse of Madison Guaranty in 1990, and he had been acquittedBut the manic depression from which he suffered had progressed since then, and according chanel bags pink to many observers, his rambling, erratic testimony damaged not just himself but also Susan and Jim Guy Tucker, who did not testify in their own defense, even after McDougal had unwittingly imperiled them
The other problem was that the jury didnt have all the facts about David Hales connections to my political adversaries; some of them werent yet known, and others were ruled inadmissible by the judgeThe jury didnt know about the money and support Hale had been receiving from a clandestine effort known as the Arkansas Project
The Arkansas Project was funded by the ultra-conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife from Pittsburgh, who had also pumped money into the American Spectator to fund its negative stories on Hillary and meFor example, the project had paid one former state trooper $10,000 for the ridiculous yarn accusing me of drug smugglingScaifes people also worked closely with allies of Newt GingrichWhen David Brock was working on the Spectator article featuring the two Arkansas state troopers who claimed they had procured women for me, Brock had received not only his salary from the magazine but also secret payments from Chicago businessman Peter Smith, the finance chairman of Newts political action committee
Most of the Arkansas Projects efforts centered on David HaleWorking through Parker Dozhier, a former aide to Justice Jim Johnson, the project set up a haven for Hale at Dozhiers bait shop outside Hot Springs, where Dozhier gave Hale cash and the use of his car chanel pearl necklace and fishing cabin while Hale was cooperating with StarrDuring this time Hale also received free legal advice from Ted Olson, a friend of Starrs and a lawyer for the Arkansas Project and the American SpectatorOlson later became the solicitor general in President George WBushs Justice Department after a Senate hearing in which he was less than candid about his work for the Arkansas Project
For whatever reasons, the jury convicted all three defendants on several of the charges against themIn his closing, the lead OIC prosecutor went out of his way to state that I was not on trial and that there had been no allegations of wrongdoing directed at meBut Starr now had what he really wanted: three people he could pressure to give him something damaging on us in order to avoid a jail sentenceSince there was nothing to tell, I didnt worry about it, though I regretted the cost to the taxpayers of Starrs far-flung efforts, and the mounting casualties among people in Arkansas whose principal sin was that they had known Hillary and me before I became President
I also had serious doubts about the jury verdictJim McDougals mental illness had progressed to the point where he was probably not competent to stand trial, much less testifyAnd I felt that Susan McDougal and Jim Guy Tucker might have been convicted only because they were caught up in Jim McDougals downward mental spiral and David Hales desperate effort to save himself
May was a relatively quiet month on the legislative front, which cartier tank must enabled me to do some campaigning in several states and to enjoy some of the ceremonial duties of the presidency, including the presentation of a Congressional Gold Medal to Billy Graham, the annual WETA-TV In Performance concert on the South Lawn, featuring Aaron Neville and Linda Ronstadt, and a state visit from the Greek president, Constantinos StephanopoulosWhen we were involved in high-stakes foreign and domestic problems, I often had a hard time relaxing enough to fully enjoy such things
On May 15, I announced the latest round of community policing grants, which brought us to 43,000 of the 100,000 new police officers Id promisedThat same day Bob Dole announced that he was resigning from the Senate to pursue his presidential campaign full-timeHe called to tell me of his decision and I wished him wellIt was the only sensible course for him; he didnt have time to campaign against me and be majority leader, and the positions the Senate and House Republicans were taking on the budget and other matters were hurting him in his presidential race
The next day I called for a global ban on anti-personnel land minesThere were about 100 million land mines, mostly relics of past wars, just beneath the surface of the earth in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin AmericaMany of them had been there for decades but were still lethal; twenty-five thousand people were killed or maimed by them every yearThe damage they were doing, especially to children in places like Angola and Cambodia, was top chanel bags awfu |
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Since 1993 our overall investment in combating... |
24th July 2010, 10:25 |
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Since 1993 our overall investment in combating HIV and AIDS had increased 60 percent, we had approved eight new AIDS drugs and nineteen others for AIDS-related conditions, and the death rate was going down in AmericaStill, we were a long way from a vaccine or a cure, and the problem had exploded in Africa, where we werent doing enoughThurman was bright, energetic, and forceful; I knew she would keep us all on our toes
On the last day of April, Hillary and I made public Chelseas decision to attend Stanford in the fallIn her typically methodical way, Chelsea had also visited Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, and Wellesley, and had been to several of them twice to get a feel for the academic and social life of each institutionGiven her excellent grades and test scores, she had been accepted by all of them, and Hillary had hoped she would stay closer to homeI always suspected Chelsea would like to get far away from WashingtonI just wanted her to go to a school where she would learn a lot, make good friends, and enjoy herselfBut her mother and I were going to miss her badlyHaving Chelsea at home in our first four years in the White House, going to her school and ballet events, and getting to know her friends and their parents had been a joy, repeatedly reminding us, no matter what else was going on, of what a blessing our daughter was
Economic growth in the first quarter of 1997 was reported to be 5 percent, which pushed the estimated deficit down to $75 billion, about a quarter of what it was when I took gucci bangle watch officeOn May 2, I announced that, at long last, I had reached a balanced budget agreement with Speaker Gingrich and Senator Lott and the congressional negotiators for both partiesSenator Tom Daschle also announced his support for the agreement; -bleep- Gephardt did not, but I was hoping he would come around once he had a chance to review itThe deal was much easier to make this time because economic growth had brought unemployment below 5 percent for the first time since 1973, boosting payrolls, profits, and tax revenues
In broad terms, the agreement extended the life of Medicare for a decade, while providing the annual mammogram and diabetes screening initiatives I wanted; extended health coverage to five million children, the largest expansion since the passage of Medicaid in the 1960s; contained the largest increase in education spending in thirty years; gave more incentives to businesses to hire welfare recipients; restored health benefits to disabled legal immigrants; funded the cleanup of five hundred more toxic waste sites; and provided tax relief close to the amount I had recommended
I met the Republicans halfway on the amount of Medicare savings, which I now believed we could achieve with good policy changes that didnt hurt senior citizens, and the Republicans accepted a smaller tax cut, the child health insurance program, and the big education increaseWe got about 95 percent of the new investments I had recommended in the State of the Union, and the Republicans took about two-thirds of the tax 2.55 chanel cut figure they had originally proposedThe tax cuts would now be far smaller than the Reagan tax reduction of 1981I was elated that the countless hours of meetings, begun in late 1995 under the threat of a government shutdown, had produced the first balanced budget since 1969, and a good one to bootSenator Lott and Speaker Gingrich had worked with us in good faith, and Erskine Bowles, with his negotiating skills and common sense, had kept things going with them and the principal congressional negotiators at critical moments
Later in the month, when the budget agreement was brought to a vote in a resolution, 64 percent of the House Democrats joined 88 percent of the House Republicans in voting for itIn the Senate, where Tom Daschle was supporting the agreement, Democrats were in favor of the agreement even more strongly than Republicans, 82 to 74 percent
I took some criticism from Democrats who objected to the tax cut or to the fact that we were making the agreement at allThey argued that if we did nothing, the budget would be balanced the next year or the year afterward anyway because of the 1993 plan only Democrats had voted for; now we were going to let Republicans share the creditThat was true, but we were also going to get the biggest increase in higher education aid in fifty years, health care for five million kids, and middle-class tax cuts I supported
On the fifth, Mexican Independence Day, I left for a trip to Mexico, Central America, and the CaribbeanLittle over a decade earlier, our twiggy balenciaga neighbors had been plagued with civil wars, coups, dictators, closed economies, and desperate povertyNow every nation in the hemisphere except one was a democracy, and the region as a whole was our largest trading partner; we exported twice as much to the Americas as to Europe and almost 50 percent more than to AsiaStill, there was too much poverty in the region, and we had serious problems with drugs and illegal immigration
I took a number of cabinet members and a bipartisan congressional delegation to Mexico with me as we announced new agreements designed to reduce illegal immigration and the influx of drugs across the Rio GrandePresident Zedillo was an able, honest man with a strong supporting team, and I was sure he would try his best to deal with these problemsWhile I knew we could do better, I doubted there was a completely satisfactory solution to either of the two problemsThere were a number of contributing factors to take into accountMexico was poorer than the United States; the border was long; millions of Mexicans had relatives in our country; and many illegal immigrants came to the United States looking for work, often at low-paying, demanding jobs most Americans didnt want to doAs for drugs, our demand was a magnet for them, and the drug cartels had a lot of money with which to bribe Mexican officials and plenty of hired guns to intimidate or kill those who didnt want to cooperateSome Mexican border police were offered five times their annual salary to look the other way on just one drug men's omega watch shipmentOne honest prosecutor in northern Mexico had been shot more than one hundred times right in front of his houseThese were tough problems, but I thought the implementation of our agreements would help
In Costa Rica, a beautiful country with no permanent military organization and perhaps the most advanced environmental policy in the world, President Jos Mara Figueres hosted the Central American leaders for a meeting that focused on trade and the environmentNAFTA had inadvertently hurt Central America and the Caribbean nations by putting them at a competitive disadvantage with Mexico in trading with the United StatesI wanted to do what I could to rectify the inequityThe next day I made the same point in Bridgetown, Barbados, where Prime Minister Owen Arthur hosted the first meeting ever held between a UPresident and all the leaders of the Caribbean nations in their own territory
Immigration was also a big issue at both meetingsMany Central Americans and people from the Caribbean nations were working in the United States and sending money back home to their families, providing a major source of income in the smaller nationsThe leaders were worried about the anti-immigration stance Republicans had taken and wanted my assurances that there would be no mass deportationsI gave it to them, but also said we had to enforce our immigration laws
At the end of the month I flew to Paris for the signing of the NATO-Russia Founding ActYeltsin had kept his Helsinki commitment: NATOs Cold War adversary was now its louis vuitton diaper bags partne |
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