Help needed. Articles on Clinton lying about the last two years of his economy to get Gore elected.

I remember Clintons GDP numbers were off about 20% during his last two years, and had to be restated.

This is from the Chicago Sun-Times, but the link no longer exists. I found this re-posted HERE.

Sunny Clinton forecast leaves cloud over Bush by Robert Novak

The Commerce Department's painful report last week that the national economy is worse than anticipated obscured the document's startling revelation. Hidden in the morass of statistics, there is proof that the Clinton administration grossly overestimated the strength of the economy leading up to the 2000 election. Did the federal government join Enron and WorldCom in cooking the books?

Through all of President Bill Clinton's last two years in office, the announced level of before-tax profits was at least 10 percent too high--a discrepancy rising close to 30 percent during the last presidential campaign. Most startling, the Commerce Department in 2000 showed the economy on an upswing through most of the election year, while in fact it was declining.

Although a political motive for Democratic cooking of the government's books is there, nobody--including Bush administration officials--alleges specific wrongdoing. Nor is there any evidence. Estimation in 2000 was conducted by career public servants who are doing the same jobs today (working under a highly political Democrat in the Commerce Department). Nevertheless, such discrepancy in earnings statements by corporate executives today would warrant a congressional subpoena.

The Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates before-tax profits of domestic nonfinancial corporations quarterly. Revised figures last week showed profits were really lower by 10.7 percent, 12.2 percent, 15.2 percent and 18 percent for the four quarters of 1999. In 2000, this gap became a chasm. The revised quarterly profits for the election year are lower than the announced figures by 23.3 percent, 25.9 percent, 29.9 percent and 28.2 percent.

Most startling, original estimates showed a generally rising profit outlook for the two years preceding the election. Starting with $503.7 billion in the last quarter of 1998, the quarterly estimates rose steadily to $543.8 billion in the fourth quarter of 1999 and then took off in the first two quarters of 2000 to $574.9 billion and $606.6 billion, leveling off to $602.9 billion in the third quarter (before falling to $527.3 billion in the fourth quarter after the election).

Last week's revised returns reflect not only different numbers but a different trend (starting at a much lower level of $473 billion). Profits actually fell through much of 2000, dropping from $449.7 billion to $422.4 billion for the second half (before slipping to $372.8 billion).

How could there be this big of a discrepancy? How could the government have reported steadily rising profits when they actually peaked in 1998?

''The gap is a bit larger than usual, but not really out of line,'' Brent Moulton, associate director at the Bureau of Economic Analysis, told me. Moulton, who was in charge of both the old figures and the new revision, said the problem was the two-year delay in obtaining corporate tax returns (reflecting changes in telecommunications and business services).

Moulton's boss in 1999-2000 was one of the Clinton administration's most politically astute economists: Undersecretary of Commerce Rob Shapiro, a pioneer ''New Democrat'' and early friend and supporter of Bill Clinton. I asked him flatly: ''Did you cook the books?''

Shapiro laughed it off, asserting that the Bureau of Economic Analysis is ''the most nonpolitical, nonpartisan agency in the government.''

That begs the question of whether the bureau's very political, very partisan management chief should have known the bureaucrats were on the wrong track.

''No,'' said Shapiro, ''2000 looked very good to us.'' He dismissed the early reports as ''an econometric projection based on estimates.''

The result: headlines in 2000 spewing false information of corporate profits growing at 25 percent, bolstering the stock market and holding up the state of the economy as the election approached. That is the underpinning for the Democratic myth that a growing and vibrant American economy has been sabotaged by President Bush's tax cut. (''We lost the opportunity for long-term economic growth,'' says House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt).

If the government's books were not purposely cooked in the same way as corporate accounts, there still remains the question of how the government could be so wrong.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis may well be free of partisan tilt, but its incompetence can cast a long political shadow.

Another analysis of the Novak article from Carl Limbacher, NewsMax (and Freepers). (^:

Clinton cooked the books?.

If researching the Clintons and $$$, don't forget the influence of their international pals like George Soros, the far-left socialist billionaire who broke the Bank of England (when they wouldn't join the Euro), and announced his sale of US $$$ (for Euros) the week Pres. Bush got his tax cut.

Also, check out Clinton's Big Business friends:

From its modest beginnings--with a start-up budget of just $400,000 in its first year, cobbled together at fundraisers starring Robb, former President Jimmy Carter, and K Street Democratic eminence Bob Strauss--the DLC patiently cultivated wealthy individuals and corporate backers. By 1990 the combined DLC-PPI operation boasted revenues of $2.2 million, a big chunk of which came from a single source, New York hedge fund operator Michael Steinhardt, who pledged $500,000 a year for three years. (Steinhardt, whose actual donations came to half that in the end, was named chairman of the newly formed PPI`s board of trustees, before falling out with the DLC in the mid-1990s.)

One by one, Fortune 500 corporate backers saw the DLC as a good investment. By 1990 major firms like AT&T and Philip Morris were important donors. Indeed, according to Reinventing Democrats, Kenneth S. Baer`s history of the DLC, Al From used the organization`s fundraising prowess as blandishment to attract an ambitious young Arkansas governor to replace Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia as DLC chairman. Drawing heavily on internal memos written by From, Bruce Reed, and other DLCers, Baer says that the DLC offered Clinton not only a national platform for his presidential aspirations but "entree into the Washington and New York fundraising communities." Early in the 1992 primaries, writes Baer, "financially, Clinton`s key Wall Street support was almost exclusively DLC-based," especially at firms like New York`s Goldman, Sachs.

The DLC`s investment in Clinton paid off, of course, after the 1992 election. Not only did the DLC bask in its status as idea factory and influence broker for the White House, but it also reaped immediate financial rewards. One month after the election, Clinton headlined a fundraising dinner for the DLC that drew 2,200 to Washington`s Union Station, where tables went for $15,000 apiece. Corporate officials and lobbyists were lined up to meet the new White House occupant, including 139 trade associations, law firms, and companies who kicked in more than $2 million, for a total of $3.3 million raised in a single evening. The DLC-PPI`s revenues climbed steadily upward, reaching $5 million in 1996 and, according to its most recent available tax returns, $6.3 million for 1999. "Our revenues for 2000 will probably end up around $7.2 million," says Chuck Alston, the DLC`s executive director.

~~~

The DLC board of trustees is an elite body whose membership is reserved for major donors, and many of the trustees are financial wheeler-dealers who run investment companies and capital management firms--though senior executives from a handful of corporations, such as Koch, Aetna, and Coca-Cola, are included. Some donate enormous amounts of money, such as Bernard Schwartz, the chairman and CEO of Loral Space and Communications, who single-handedly finances the entire publication of Blueprint, the DLC`s retooled monthly that replaced The New Democrat. "I sought them out, after talking to Michael Steinhardt," says Schwartz. "I like them because the DLC gives resonance to positions on issues that perhaps candidates cannot commit to."

How the DLC does it, The American Prospect, Apr. '01.

Good luck!

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.