Posted on 08/04/2002 3:14:02 AM PDT by 2Trievers
If her performance at the Democratic leadership Council conference last week is any indication, a new Presidential candidate is headed New Hampshire’s way.
By all accounts, Hillary Clinton — who claims she isn’t running for President — bested Tom Daschle, John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, John Kerry and Joseph Lieberman at the annual Democratic Leadership Council conference last week. (Al Gore refused to attend.) Her fiery, anti-Bush speech was a huge hit with the crowd, which included 30-odd New Hampshire Democrats.
Sen. Clinton swore to her New York constituents that she won’t abandon them for a 2004 Presidential run. But why else would she participate in the DLC’s cattle show, unless she’s thinking of breaking that pledge? Remember the sweet talk her husband fed Granite Staters when he visited Dover in January 2001: that Hillary would be watching out for them in the U.S. Senate. Bet on Hillary conducting a “listening tour” through New Hampshire very soon.
Speaking of betting and cattle, New Hampshire Democrats who want to see President George W. Bush defeated might want to think twice before backing Hillary for President. The suspicious fortune Hillary made in cattle futures in the 1970s — thanks to shady accounting maneuvers, trading practices, and personal connections — disqualifies her from attacking Bush in his only vulnerable spot these days: the economy and how it’s adversely affected by the corporate misbehavior of companies such as Enron and Worldcom.
Cattle futures? Why should New Hampshire Democrats worry about something so obscure and so old? Especially when Hillary has so much scandal in her background: her handling of the Whitewater billing records, her role in unjustly firing employees of the White House travel office, her ordered collection of Republicans’ FBI files . . . the list goes on.
Hillary can pout that all those events took place while she was in the White House, responding to relentless attacks from her so-called Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. But when she was trading cattle futures in the 1970s, her behavior could only have been driven by her own greed, disregard for sound bookkeeping practices, and lack of interest in playing by the business rules set to protect the average, unconnected investor. Those are precisely the problems plaguing corporate America today, and national Democrats are eager to allege that Bush is partly to blame for trusting business too much. But Hillary has zero credibility on this subject.
Like Bush and his stock transactions with the Harken oil company, Hillary personally was cleared of wrongdoing long ago. But like so many other Democrats who claim to be champions of the common man, yet conduct their business otherwise (New Jersey Sen. Bob Torricelli and former House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, to cite a couple), Hillary’s cattle trading was all about rigging the system to benefit her. Common man be damned.
In 1978, while Bill was Attorney General of Arkansas and campaigning for governor, novice trader Hillary turned a 10,000 percent profit on a $1,000 investment in cattle futures. Analysts note that Hillary’s accumulation of $100,000 is too unlikely (the odds of such success are a million to one) to have been attained forthrightly.
Her success was likely the result of many trades being placed by someone more knowledgeable than she was, with the successful ones mysteriously finding their way into Hillary’s account and the unsuccessful ones eaten by some unknown benefactor. Most observers believe that benefactor was Jim Blair, counsel for Tyson Food Inc. — the Clintons’ biggest political supporter in Arkansas.
Perhaps because Hillary was set up for success from the inside, she was not asked by Refco — the trading firm where Blair sent her — to front the cash for margin calls, as would be required of the average investor. Once Hillary became Arkansas’s First Lady in 1979, Refco was fined the largest amount in Chicago Mercantile Exchange history for its unethical bookkeeping practices and for allowing customers to put up insufficient capital for their trades. Hillary’s broker received a three-year suspension. But Hillary had already golden-parachuted out of the cattle futures market with a profit of $100,000: five times the average American family’s annual income in 1978.
Having graduated from Yale Law School, Hillary had to know what she was doing was wrong. But she still danced around corporate regulations and safeguards so she could make a pile of cash in a hurry. If Hillary does innocently wander into a New Hampshire diner or living room soon, you may want to ask her: How can she criticize Bush for corporate wrongdoing with a record like her own?
Malone is the former Editorial Page Editor of these newspapers.
At least Hillary never voted to greatly increase the number of H-1B workers causing a depression in the IT employment market.
And we all had better take her seriously. She won't be beaten by cattle futures. The sheeple have already discounted all that stuff that pushes our buttons-she will have to be beaten head-to-head on the issues, and I'm not sure GWB is the man to do it.
Lest Americans ever forget why the clintons, and all their enablers need to be hectored, hounded, and harried into silence, until "clintonese is only spoken in Hell," look here:
The Holiday *Best* of Bill Clinton & his Friends!
-Some old strange clinton "stuff"--
| Liars-- and Sleaze, Incorporated... ( my files on the clintons and friends ) |
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Oh.... stop!
I can dream, can't I?
The jury will disregard G.Mason's previous remark.
If she does we will know by the first few months next year. My wishful thinking is, if Hillary runs, every Republican will turn out to vote, so she won't have a chance. The Military (if given the right to vote) alone will help kick her butt....
Old elephant ankles is DESPISED by women, she's not a salesman like Bill. She went to the school of Algore, talks down to people like they're 2 year olds, only she's worse. She comes across as a elitist lying condescending buffoon with zero political skills, which is totally appropriate.
It was worse than "common man be damned"
The "common man" took hillary's losses for her.
The way it worked was the broker would trade both ways, the winning trade became hillary's the losing trade assigned to some poor schmuck who was also a client of the broker.
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