Hill, How many Black people do you know voting for McCain ?
and then there is this. A fine example of the Liberal Obama voter in NY. Manhattan to be exact. The well do do area...YOU'RE VERY NAIVE, HILLHONEY!
Thank you, Donn. That means a lot coming from you. That is pretty funny. I was watching CNN last week and they had some one on that said that if Obama loses it will be because of the "bubba boys", racist white men that won't vote for an african american. When questioned about the 95 percent of blacks voting for Obama and whether that was racism, the speaker stated, "No, Those are his people."Shame on you and this forum!
YOU'RE VERY NAIVE, HILLHONEY!
[/QUOTE]YOU'RE VERY NAIVE, HILLHONEY!
[/QUOTE]YOU'RE VERY NAIVE, HILLHONEY!
[/QUOTE]YOU'RE VERY NAIVE, HILLHONEY!
[/QUOTE] [/QUOTE] [/QUOTE]Shame on you and this forum!
YOU'RE VERY NAIVE, HILLHONEY!
[/QUOTE]
The Unemployment Rate Was 4.2 Percent in 1999 -- the Lowest Since 1969. The unemployment rate was 4.1 percent in December bringing the average unemployment rate for 1999 to 4.2 percent -- the lowest since 1969. The unemployment rate has fallen for seven years in a row. It has remained below 5 percent for 30 months in a row. For women the unemployment rate was 4.1 percent -- the lowest since 1953.
African American and Hispanic Unemployment Rates Were the Lowest on Record in 1999. The unemployment rate for African Americans has fallen from 14.2 percent in 1992 to 8.0 percent in 1999 – the lowest rate on record. The unemployment rate for Hispanics has fallen from 11.6 percent in 1992 to 6.4 percent in 1999 -- the lowest rate on record.
20.4 Million New Jobs Created Under the Clinton-Gore Administration. Since 1993, the economy has added 20.4 million new jobs. That’s the most jobs ever created under a single Administration – and more new jobs than Presidents Reagan and Bush created during their three terms. Under President Clinton, the economy has added an average of 245,000 jobs per month, the highest of any President on record. This compares to 52,000 per month under President Bush and 167,000 per month under President Reagan.
92 Percent -- 18.8 Million -- of the New Jobs Have Been Created in the Private Sector. Since President Clinton and Vice President Gore took office, the private sector of the economy has added 18.5 million new jobs. That is 92 percent of the 20.4 million new jobs – the highest percentage since Harry S. Truman was President and presiding over the post-World War II demobilization.
Most Rapid Growth in Construction Jobs In 50 Years. After losing 662,000 jobs in construction during the previous four years, 1.9 million new construction jobs have been added during the Clinton-Gore years -- that’s a faster annual rate (5.1 percent) than any other Administration since Harry S. Truman was President.
Fastest and Longest Real Wage Growth in Two Decades. In the last 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased 3.7 percent -- faster than the rate of inflation. This marks the fourth consecutive year of real wage growth -- the longest consecutive increase since the early 1970s. Under President Clinton, real wages are up 6.5 percent, after declining 4.3 percent during the Reagan and Bush years. Real wage growth in 1998 reached 2.6 percent -- the largest increase since 1972.
Inflation-- Lowest Since the 1960s. Inflation remains virtually non-existent, with the underlying core rate of inflation at 2.0 percent this year -- the lowest rate since 1965. In the last four quarters the GDP price index has risen 1.3 percent -- the lowest rate of increase since 1963.
Many of the "new" jobs created by the Bush administration where low income positions, replacing middle income positions which were "exported" by outsourcing. Individuals previously in those positions have had to take lower income jobs, sometimes working two jobs trying to make ends meet. On the books they are employed, but they aren't making what they were before.
Is no one freaaked out by Obama's comment during the last debate in favor of the redistribution of wealth??? That's not America. That's socialism.
And what do you call the bail-out?Any taxation is redistribution of wealth, isn't it? I think anyone who loses their job (because of RA or not) or goes on disability because of RA is benefiting from the redistribution of wealth. It's just a matter of having a society where everyone is treated decently. Not so that you can go out and buy a BMW if you are on disability, but so you aren't on the street. It's all a matter of degree. Too much is socialism, I agree, but we have to take care of our fellow americans. Sounds cheesy but that's the point.Senator Obama will say and do anything to get elected. The sad part is that so many americans care only for a bag of magical beans that Obama is offering. Obama is doing nothing more than buying votes, it's just that simple. That's how low so many low income are. They would sell this country for a bag of "magical" beans. I live in Michigan and this is the second term for our democrat governor, Jennifer Granholm. Since she has been in office, the state continues to go down the drain. She has spent her whole term blaming president Bush for Michigans troubles. She is another great democrat mind at work. She can't figure out how to help the state but she sure knows how to raise those taxes. If it weren't for the black vote and the union vote, she would never have been Governor. The blacks and unions don't care about our state or "the people" of the state, only what can the state do for them specifically and to hell with the rest.
LEV
So if you are giving billions to wealthy CEO's to out for a weekend at the spa, it's called economic recovery, and if you give it to poor people it's socialism?Hillhoney,
Who gave billions to ceos for a weekend spa? George Bush and the republicans? As you and Obama and the media like to tell it, all the woes of ours is the cause and effect of G.W. Bush and the republicans? Why do you think that so many other countries are in such economic dire straits? G.W. has nothing to do with their economic troubles. Hillhoney, what goes up, must come down. Who's deal was it to give mortgages to those that couldn't afford it, republicans or democrats? Another way to repay the black vote and to hell with the United States, right? Who was at the wheel of the fannie and freddie? Republicans or democrats? Two years ago when Barney was warned about fannie and freddie cooking the books, Barney said "nothing to worry about" and just kept counting the money that he and Chris Dodd and Obama were receiving from fran and fred. That's okay, isn't it Hillhoney? Media kinda sweeps it under the rug. If you were to listen to the media all problems with the U. S. is Bush and McCains fault. How stupid is that? The rest of the world has the same troubles, and neither Bush nor McCain have anything to do whith them. So who gave those ceos the money to spend for a weekend spa?
Linncn-
The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The five senators, Alan Cranston (D-CA), Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ), John Glenn (D-OH), John McCain (R-AZ), and Donald W. Riegle (D-MI), were accused of improperly intervening in 1987 on behalf of Charles H. Keating, Jr., chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which was the target of a regulatory investigation by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB). The FHLBB subsequently backed off taking action against Lincoln.
Lincoln Savings and Loan collapsed in 1989, at a cost of over billion to the federal government. Some 23,000 Lincoln bondholders were defrauded and many elderly investors lost their life savings. The substantial political contributions that Keating had made to each of the senators, totalling .3 million, attracted considerable public and media attention. After a lengthy investigation, the Senate Ethics Committee determined in 1991 that Alan Cranston, Dennis DeConcini, and Donald Riegle had substantially and improperly interfered with the FHLBB in its investigation of Lincoln Savings, with Cranston receiving a formal reprimand. Senators John Glenn and John McCain were cleared of having acted improperly but were criticized for having exercised "poor judgment".
All five of the senators involved served out their terms. Only Glenn and McCain ran for re-election, and they both succeeded. McCain would go on to become the Republican nominee for president in 2008.
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The U.S. Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s was the failure of 747 savings and loan associations (S&Ls) in the United States. The ultimate cost of the crisis is estimated to have totaled around 0.1 billion, about 4.6 billion of which was directly paid for by the U.S. taxpayer.[1]
The accompanying slowdown in the finance industry and the real estate market may have been a contributing cause of the 1990-1991 economic recession. Between 1986 and 1991, the number of new homes constructed per year dropped from 1.8 million to 1 million, the lowest rate since World War II.[2]
The Keating Five scandal was prompted by the activities of one particular savings and loan: Lincoln Savings and Loan Association of Irvine, California. Lincoln's chairman was Charles Keating, who ultimately served five years in prison for his corrupt mismanagement of Lincoln.[3] In the four years after Keating's American Continental Corporation (ACC) had purchased Lincoln in 1984, Lincoln's assets had increased from .1 billion to .5 billion.[4] Such savings and loan associations had been deregulated in the early 1980s, allowing them to make highly risky investments with their depositors' money. Keating and other savings and loan operators took advantage of this deregulation.[4][5] Savings and loans established connections to many members of Congress, by supplying them with needed funds for campaigns through legal donations.[5] Lincoln's particular investments took the form of buying land, taking equity positions in real estate development projects, and buying high-yield junk bonds.[6]
The core allegation of the Keating Five affair is that Keating had made contributions of about .3 million to various U.S. Senators, and he called on those Senators to help him resist regulators. The regulators backed off, to later disastrous consequences.
Beginning in 1985, Edwin J. Gray, chair of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB), feared that the savings industry's risky investment practices were exposing the government's insurance funds to huge losses.[6] Gray instituted a rule whereby savings associations could hold no more than ten percent of their assets in "direct investments",[6] and were thus prohibited from taking ownership positions in certain financial entities and instruments.[7] Lincoln had become burdened with bad debt resulting from its past aggressiveness, and by early 1986,[6] its investment practices were being investigated and audited by the FHLBB:[8] in particular, whether it had violated these direct investment rules; Lincoln had directed FDIC-insured accounts into commercial real estate ventures.[4] By the end of 1986, the FHLBB had found that Lincoln had 5 million in unreported losses and had surpassed the regulated direct investments limit by 0 million.[6]
Keating had earlier taken several measures to oppose Gray and the FHLBB, including recruiting a study from then-private economist Alan Greenspan saying that direct investments were not harmful,[6] and getting President Ronald Reagan to make a recess appointment of a Keating ally, Atlanta real estate developer Lee H. Henkel Jr., to an open seat on the FHLBB.[6] But by March 1987, Henkel had resigned, upon news of his having large loans due to Lincoln.[6] Meanwhile, the Senate had changed control from Republican to Democratic during the 1986 Congressional elections, placing several Democratic senators in key positions, and starting in January 1987, Keating's staff was putting pressure on Cranston to remove Gray from any FHLBB discussion regarding Lincoln.[9] The following month, Keating began large-scale contributions into Cranston's project to increase California voter registration.[9] In February 1987, Keating met with Riegle and began contributing to Riegle's 1988 re-election campaign.[10]
It appeared as though the government might seize Lincoln for being insolvent.[7] The investigation was, however, taking a long time.[8] Keating was asking that Lincoln be given a lenient judgment by the FHLBB, so that it could limit its high risk investments and get into the safe (at the time) home mortgage business, thus allowing the business to survive. A letter from audit firm Arthur Young & Co. bolstered Keating's case that the government investigation was taking a long time.[11] Keating now wanted the five senators to intervene with the FHLBB on his behalf.
By March 1987, Riegle was telling Gray that "Some senators out west are very concerned about the way the bank board is regulating Lincoln Savings," adding somewhat ominously, "I think you need to meet with the senators. You'll be getting a call."[10] Keating and DeConcini were asking McCain to travel to San Francisco to meet with regulators regarding Lincoln Savings; McCain refused.[11][7] DeConcini told Keating that McCain was nervous about interfering.[7] Keating called McCain a "wimp" behind his back, and on March 24, Keating and McCain had a heated, contentious meeting.[11]
On April 2, 1987, a meeting with chairman Gray of the FHLBB was held in DeConcini's Capitol office, with Senators Cranston, Glenn, and McCain also in attendance.[7] The senators requested that no staff be present.[12] DeConcini started the meeting with a mention of "our friend at Lincoln."[7] Gray told the assembled senators that he did not know the particular details of the status of Lincoln Savings and Loan, and that the senators would have to go to the bank regulators in San Francisco that had oversight jurisdiction for the bank. Gray did offer to set up a meeting between those regulators and the senators.[7]
On April 9, 1987, a two-hour meeting[4] with three members of the FHLBB San Francisco branch was held, again in DeConcini's office, to discuss the government's investigation of Lincoln.[11][7] Present were Cranston, DeConcini, Glenn, McCain, and additionally Riegle.[7] The regulators felt that the meeting was very unusual and that they were being pressured by a united front, as the senators presented their reasons for having the meeting.[7] DeConcini began the meeting by saying, "We wanted to meet with you because we have determined that potential actions of yours could injure a constituent."[13] McCain said, "One of our jobs as elected officials is to help constituents in a proper fashion. ACC [American Continental Corporation] is a big employer and important to the local economy. I wouldn't want any special favors for them.... I don't want any part of our conversation to be improper." Glenn said, "To be blunt, you should charge them or get off their backs," while DeConcini said, "What's wrong with this if they're willing to clean up their act? ... It's very unusual for us to have a company that could be put out of business by its regulators."[7] The regulators then revealed that Lincoln was under criminal investigation on a variety of serious charges, at which point McCain severed all relations with Keating.[7]
The San Francisco regulators finished their report in May 1987 and recommended that Lincoln be seized by the government due to unsound lending practices.[7][4] Gray, whose time as chair was about to expire, deferred action on the report, saying that his adversarial relationship with Keating would make any action he took seem vindictive, and that instead the incoming chair should take over the decision.[6] Meanwhile Keating filed a lawsuit against the FHLBB, saying it had leaked confidential information about Lincoln.[6] The new FHLBB chair was M. Danny Wall, who was more sympathetic to Keating and took no action on the report, saying its evidence was insufficient.[4][7] In September 1987, the Lincoln investigation was removed from the San Francisco group[7] and in May 1988, the FHLBB signed an agreement with Lincoln that included not going ahead with a criminal referral to the Department of Justice.[14] In July 1988, a new audit of both Lincoln and American Continental began in Washington.[14][7]
Cranston continued intervening on behalf of Keating after the April 1987 meetings, contacting both Wall and California state regulators and receiving large amounts of new donations from Keating.[15] DeConcini also continued on behalf of Keating, contacting Wall, California state regulators, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) advocating approval of a sale of Lincoln as a December 1988 alternative to government seizure.[15][14] But bank regulators refused to approve the sale of Lincoln.[14] Glenn too continued to help Keating after the April 1987 revelation, by setting up a meeting with then-House Majority Leader Jim Wright.[16]
News of the April meetings between the senators and the FHLBB officials first appeared in National Thrift News in September 1987, but was only sporadically covered by the general media for the next year and a half.[17] In early 1988, The Detroit News ran a story on Riegle's participation,[18] which Riegle responded to on Meet the Press by denying an interceding on Lincoln's behalf,[13] before returning Keating's campaign contributions back to him.[18] In spring 1988, the Los Angeles Times ran a short piece in their business section, but their political reporters did not follow up on it; two isolated, inside page mentions by The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal similarly failed to develop further.[18] As media critic Howard Kurtz would later write, "the saga of Charles Keating took years to penetrate the national consciousness."[18] The political fortunes of the senators involved did not suffer at this time. During the 1988 U.S. presidential election, McCain was mentioned by the press as a vice-presidential running mate for Republican nominee George H. W. Bush,[19][20] while Glenn was one of the two vice-presidential finalists in Michael Dukakis' selection process, losing out to Lloyd Bentsen.[21]
Lincoln stayed in business; from mid-1987 to April 1989, its assets grew from .91 billion to .46 billion.[6] During this time, the parent American Continental Corporation was desperate for cash inflow to make up for losses in real estate purchases and projects.[22] Lincoln's branch managers and tellers convinced customers to replace their federally-insured certificates of deposit with higher-yielding bond certificates of American Continental; the customers later said they were never properly informed that the bonds were uninsured and very risky given the state of American Continental's finances.[22] Indeed the regulators had already adjudged the bonds to have no solvent backing.[12] FDIC chair L. William Seidman would later write that Lincoln push to get depositors to switch was "one of the most heartless and cruel frauds in modern memory."[12]
American Continental went bankrupt in April 1989, and Lincoln was seized by the FHLBB on April 14, 1989.[4] About 23,000 customers were left with worthless bonds.[23] Many investors, often ones living in California retirement communities, lost their life savings, and felt emotional damage for having been duped on top of their financial devastation.[22][24] The total bondholder loss came to between 0 million and 8 million.[23][25] The federal government was eventually liable for .4 billion to cover Lincoln's losses when it seized the institution.[26]
Keating was hit with a .1 billion fraud and racketeering action, filed against him by the regulators.[4] In talking to reporters in April, Keating said, "One question, among many raised in recent weeks, had to do with whether my financial support in any way influenced several political figures to take up my cause. I want to say in the most forceful way I can: I certainly hope so."[27]
In the wake of the Lincoln failure, former FHLBB chair Gray went public about all five of the senators' assistance to Keating in a May 21, 1989 front page story in the Dayton Daily News, saying that in the April 1987 meetings the senators had sought "to directly subvert the regulatory process" to benefit Keating.[28][14] Press attention to the senators began to pick up, with a July 1989 Los Angeles Times article about Cranston's role.[18] With a couple of months, Arizona Republic and Washington Post reporters were investigating McCain's personal relationships with Keating.[18]
On September 25, 1989, several Republicans from Ohio filed an ethics complaint against Glenn, charging that he had improperly intervened on Keating's behalf.[29][30] The initial charges against the five Senators were made on October 13, 1989 by Common Cause, a public interest group, who asked for the