Posted on 05/23/2005 4:18:39 PM PDT by jern
Announce Filibuster Compromise
The only way around this revolt by the "moderates" is recess appointments.
well said
So, by your reasoning, if we stay home, we get more spending; if we vote Republican, we get more spending because that's just the way things go in D.C.; and if we vote Dems into Congress, spending will increase. Explain again why I should vote for ANY of them!
In early 1987, at the beginning of his first Senate term, McCain attended two meetings with federal banking regulators to discuss an investigation into Lincoln Savings and Loan, an Irvine, Calif., thrift owned by Arizona developer Charles Keating. Federal auditors were investigating Keating's banking practices, and Keating, fearful that the government would seize his S&L, sought intervention from a number of U.S. senators.
At Keating's behest, four senators--McCain and Democrats Dennis DeConcini of Arizona, Alan Cranston of California, and John Glenn of Ohio--met with Ed Gray, chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, on April 2. Those four senators and Sen. Don Riegle, D-Mich., attended a second meeting at Keating's behest on April 9 with bank regulators in San Francisco.
Regulators did not seize Lincoln Savings and Loan until two years later. The Lincoln bailout cost taxpayers $2.6 billion, making it the biggest of the S&L scandals. In addition, 17,000 Lincoln investors lost $190 million.
In November 1990, the Senate Ethics Committee launched an investigation into the meetings between the senators and the regulators. McCain, Cranston, DeConcini, Glenn, and Riegle became known as the Keating Five.
(Keating himself was convicted in January 1993 of 73 counts of wire and bankruptcy fraud and served more than four years in prison before his conviction was overturned. Last year, he pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud and was sentenced to time served.)
McCain defended his attendance at the meetings by saying Keating was a constituent and that Keating's development company, American Continental Corporation, was a major Arizona employer. McCain said he wanted to know only whether Keating was being treated fairly and that he had not tried to influence the regulators. At the second meeting, McCain told the regulators, "I wouldn't want any special favors for them," and "I don't want any part of our conversation to be improper."
But Keating was more than a constituent to McCain--he was a longtime friend and associate. McCain met Keating in 1981 at a Navy League dinner in Arizona where McCain was the speaker. Keating was a former naval aviator himself, and the two men became friends. Keating raised money for McCain's two congressional campaigns in 1982 and 1984, and for McCain's 1986 Senate bid. By 1987, McCain campaigns had received $112,000 from Keating, his relatives, and his employees--the most received by any of the Keating Five. (Keating raised a total of $300,000 for the five senators.)
After McCain's election to the House in 1982, he and his family made at least nine trips at Keating's expense, three of which were to Keating's Bahamas retreat. McCain did not disclose the trips (as he was required to under House rules) until the scandal broke in 1989. At that point, he paid Keating $13,433 for the flights.
And in April 1986, one year before the meeting with the regulators, McCain's wife, Cindy, and her father invested $359,100 in a Keating strip mall.
The Senate Ethics Committee probe of the Keating Five began in November 1990, and committee Special Counsel Robert Bennett recommended that McCain and Glenn be dropped from the investigation. They were not. McCain believes Democrats on the committee blocked Bennett's recommendation because he was the lone Keating Five Republican.
In February 1991, the Senate Ethics Committee found McCain and Glenn to be the least blameworthy of the five senators. (McCain and Glenn attended the meetings but did nothing else to influence the regulators.) McCain was guilty of nothing more than "poor judgment," the committee said, and declared his actions were not "improper nor attended with gross negligence." McCain considered the committee's judgment to be "full exoneration," and he contributed $112,000 (the amount raised for him by Keating) to the U.S. Treasury.
In this connection one must always remember Keating's reply to the question of whether he thought his campaign contributions influenced the recipients. He said, "I certainly hope so."
At one point, DeConcini even pushed Keating for ambassador to the Bahamas, where Keating owned a luxurious vacation home.
Charlie Keating always took care of his friends, especially those in politics. John McCain was no exception.
In 1982, during McCain's first run for the House, Keating held a fund-raiser for him, collecting more than $11,000 from 40 employees of American Continental Corp. McCain would spend more than $550,000 to win the primary and the general election.
In 1983, during McCain's second House race, Keating hosted a $1,000-a-plate dinner for McCain. When McCain pushed for the Senate in 1986, Keating was there with more than $50,000.
McCain had also carried a little water for Keating in Washington. While in the House, McCain, along with a majority of representatives, co-sponsored a resolution to delay new regulations designed to curb risky investments by thrifts like Lincoln.
On March 24 at 9:30 a.m., Keating went to DeConcini's office and asked him if the meeting with the regulators was on. DeConcini told Keating that McCain was nervous.
''McCain's a wimp,'' Keating replied, according to the book Trust Me, by Michael Binstein and Charles Bowden. ''We'll go talk to him.''
Keating had other business on the Hill and did not reach McCain's office until 1:30. A DeConcini staffer had already told McCain about the wimp comment.
When Keating questioned his courage, McCain invoked his POW experience. He told Keating that he didn't spend 5 1/2 years in the Hanoi Hilton to be called a coward.
The two argued, then Keating stormed out.
Despite the dust-up, McCain attended not one but two meetings with the regulators. McCain later explained that he thought it was the right thing to do, because Keating was a constituent.
The first meeting, on April 2 in DeConcini's office, included Ed Gray, chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, as well as four senators: DeConcini, McCain, Alan Cranston, D-Calif., and John Glenn, D-Ohio.
The meeting had a clandestine air. Gray came alone. None of the senators brought their aides.
Gray offered to set up a meeting between the senators and the San Francisco regulators.
The second meeting was on April 9. The same four senators attended, along with Sen. Don Riegle, D-Mich. Also at the meeting were William Black, then deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp., James Cirona, president of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and Michael Patriarca, director of agency functions at the FSLIC.
In a recent interview with The Republic, Black said the meeting was a show of force by Keating, who wanted the senators to pressure the regulators into dropping their case against Lincoln. The thrift was in trouble for violating ''direct investment'' rules, which prohibited S&Ls from taking large ownership positions in various ventures.
''The Senate is a really small club, like the cliche goes,'' Black said. ''And you really did have one-twentieth of the Senate in one room, called by one guy, who was the biggest crook in the S&L debacle.''
The five senators, including McCain, seemed like a united front to Black.
''They presented themselves as a group,'' Black said, ''and DeConcini is the dad, who's going to take the primary speaking role. Both meetings are in his office, and in both cases it's 'we' want this, with no one going, 'What do you mean we, kemo sabe?' ''
''McCain was the weirdest,'' Black said. ''They were all different in their own way. McCain was always Hamlet . . . wringing his hands about what to do.''
Glenn, a former astronaut and the first American to orbit the Earth, was not as tactful.
''To be blunt, you should charge them or get off their backs,'' he told the regulators. ''If things are bad there, get to them. Their view is that they took a failing business and put it back on its feet. It's now viable and profitable. They took it off the endangered species list. Why has the exam dragged on and on and on?''
Added DeConcini, ''What's wrong with this if they're willing to clean up their act?''
Cirona, the banking official, told the senators that it was ''very unusual'' to hold a meeting to discuss a particular company.
DeConcini shot back: ''It's very unusual for us to have a company that could be put out of business by its regulators.''
The meeting went on. McCain was quiet, while DeConcini carried the ball. The regulators told the senators that Lincoln was in trouble. The thrift, Cirona said, was a ''ticking time bomb.''
Then Patriarca made a stunning comment, according to transcripts released later.
''We're sending a criminal referral to the Department of Justice,'' he said. ''Not maybe, we're sending one. This is an extraordinarily serious matter. It involves a whole range of imprudent actions. I can't tell you strongly enough how serious this is. This is not a profitable institution.''
'What can we say to Lincoln?'' Glenn asked.
''Nothing,'' Black responded, ''with regard to the criminal referral. They haven't, and won't be told by us that we're making one.''
''You haven't told them?'' Glenn asked.
''No,'' said Black. ''Justice would skin us alive if we did. Those referrals are very confidential. We can't prosecute anyone ourselves. All we can do is refer it to Justice.''
Black said McCain probably went because Keating was close to being the political godfather of Arizona and McCain still had plenty of ambition.
''Keating was incredibly powerful,'' Black said. ''And incredibly useful.''
Keating accomplished his goal. He had bought some time.
The Keating Five card showed Charles Keating holding up his hand, with a senator's head adorning each finger. McCain was on Keating's pinkie.
As the Keating investigation dragged through 1988, McCain dodged the body blows. Most landed on DeConcini, who had arranged the meetings and had other close ties to Keating, including $50 million in loans from Keating to DeConcini's aides.
McCain adopted the blanket defense that Keating was a constituent and that he had every right to ask his senators for help. In attending the meetings, McCain said, he simply wanted to make sure that Keating was treated like any other constituent.
Keating was far more than a constituent to McCain, however.
On Oct. 8, 1989, The Republic revealed that McCain's wife and her father had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators.
The paper also reported that the McCains, sometimes accompanied by their daughter and baby-sitter, had made at least nine trips at Keating's expense, sometimes aboard the American Continental jet. Three of trips were made during vacations to Keating's opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay.
McCain also did not pay Keating for the trips until years after they were taken, when he learned that Keating was in trouble over Lincoln. Total cost: $13,433.
Sen. Hothead came out in all his glory.
''You're a liar,''' McCain snapped Sept. 29 when a Republic reporter asked him about business ties between his wife and Keating.
''That's the spouse's involvement, you idiot,'' McCain said later in the same conversation. ''You do understand English, don't you?''
He also belittled the reporters when they asked about his wife's ties to Keating.
''It's up to you to find that out, kids.''
And then he played the POW card.
''Even the Vietnamese didn't question my ethics,'' McCain said.
In April 1989, two years after the Keating Five meetings, the government seized Lincoln, which declared bankruptcy. In September 1990, Keating was booked into Los Angeles County Jail, charged with 42 counts of fraud. His bond was set at $5 million.
During Keating's eventual trial, the prosecution produced a parade of elderly investors who had lost their life's savings by investing in American Continental junk bonds.
Robert Bennett, who would later represent President Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones case, was the special counsel for the committee. In his opening remarks, he slammed DeConcini but went lightly on McCain, the lone Republican ensnared with four Democrats.
Among the Keating Five, McCain received the most direct contributions from Keating. But the investigation found that he was the least culpable, along with Glenn. McCain attended the meetings but did nothing afterward to stop Lincoln's death spiral.
Lincoln's losses eventually were set at $3.4 billion, the most expensive failure in the national S&L scandal.
McCain also looked good in contrast to DeConcini, who continued to defend Keating until fall 1989, when federal regulators filed a $1.1 billion civil racketeering and fraud suit against Keating, accusing him of siphoning Lincoln's deposits to his family and into political campaigns.
In the end, McCain received only a mild rebuke from the Ethics Committee for exercising ''poor judgment'' for intervening with the federal regulators on behalf of Keating.
''For the first time in history, the Ethics Committee overruled the recommendation of the independent counsel,'' McCain said. ''I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that I was the only Republican of the five and the Democrats were in the majority (in the Senate).''
Whether McCain really learned that lesson is debatable. As chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, he received hundreds of thousands of dollars from companies affected by the committee's work, and he has repeatedly been criticized for intervening with regulators on behalf of businesses whose employees gave him money, including Paxson Communications and AT&T.
Nor was McCain paying close attention to appearances when he set up the Reform Institute, which is dedicated to curbing the influence of special interest money yet depends on special interest money to fund its operations. According to The New York Times, McCain "defended the large donations as a necessary part of advocacy work, and drew a distinction between the progressive agenda of the Reform Institute and political efforts to which campaign finance laws apply." Unlike them, he said, the institute is "nonpartisan and issue-oriented."
In any case, the Reform Institute helps keep McCain in the public eye and burnishes his image as a reformer, thereby enhancing his presidential prospects. The senator seems to be taking advantage of one of those terrible "loopholes" in campaign finance law that allows people to engage in unfettered political speech.
Meanwhile, he is determined to close other people's loopholes. His odious Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 already prohibits "nonpartisan and issue-oriented groups" from criticizing politicians close to an election, and it may lead to regulation of bloggers and online journalists. Unsatisfied by this impressive assault on the First Amendment, McCain wants to ban the so-called 527 groups that raised such a ruckus in the last presidential campaign.
McCain describes the danger they pose this way: "Some billionaire decides he or she doesn't like you in office, and they decide to form a 527 and contribute $10 million or $20 million and dive-bomb into your state or district. That should alarm every federally elected member of Congress."
During the Keating Five scandal, McCain was suspected of trying to keep himself in office by doing a favor for a campaign donor. Chastened by this experience, he is now trying to keep himself and his colleagues in office by silencing potential critics. In Washington this is considered progress.
If five Republicans find the candidate unfit, they could always vote "No". This is always their right. That is not what this fight is about. The question will be whether two moderate Republicans think that the moderate Dems are breaking their agreement to not filibuster, allowing them to change and vote for the nuke option. It only takes two of the seven to change.
It does read like that. So, when Myers, and Bolton come down the pike .. do they get the vote? Or will the DEMs try to pull a refusal to vote? Refusal to vote is the nature of their filibuster. It forces a reaction. CLoture of point of order or both. The issue isn't going away.
And if the Senators refuse to vote, the Constitutionally-minded Senators either try to deal with it (Constituional Option, whatever its form), or not. Ain't politics fun!
Okay. They caved.
Save your money
*****
May I puke now?
Maybe it's time for the President to go "nucular" himself. The Senate won't give his nominees a vote -- treating him differently than every other President before him? Fine. He isn't running in '06 -- many of the Senators are (such as Dewine). VETO every appropriations bill and shut down the government until he gets votes on his nominees. The voters can't take it out on the President, so Congress will pay.
Close. According to APnews My Way
"The White House said the agreement was a positive development.
"Many of these nominees have waited for quite some time to have an up-or-down vote and now they are going to get one. That's progress," said press secretary Scott McClellan said. "We will continue working to push for up or down votes for all the nominees."
We lost, it's not quite apocalyptic, but it's horrendous!
Some of the DUmmies are having the same comprehension problems understanding what happened as some of the FREEPERS. The Dummies who thought they lost and the FREEPERS who think we didn't lose much are both equally damned, dead wrong.
Is developer Charles Keating related to OK Gov. Keating ?
Someone else said: "This is the essence of the agreement: The Republicans have agreed not to ban the fillibuster -- as long the Democrats don't use it."
Thank you for refreshing history for those who didn't catch it the first time around. That looks like one of my posts from the days when McLame was running for President. He is and was a slimy bully who does his dirty work in the shadows--a real back-stabber. The Republican party seems to have its share of characters like McLame, rogues who feed their egos by flipping off the people who vote for them and, in this case, the President who won office overwhelmingly.
"Graham said that he would ignore his conservative constituency."
Great! Now his conservative constituency will ignore him during his re-election!
I disagree. I do not fault Frist.
Snow, Collins and Chaffee are as GOP as their states elect: barely GOP.
DeWine, Warner, and Graham can be spanked.
McCain wants to be POTUS and for the public to view him as a statesman. He picked a good venue to usurp Bush, and today was payback time for South Carolina's primary 2000, and Lindsay helped him. Again.
Heheheheh. Well, their nominations still need to be dealt with. Nominations don't just go "poof" on a two page signed MOU by 14 frumpy Senators.
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