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The White House Booty

Letters .. thanked Lee and Joy Ficks for their 1993 donation of a
kitchen set to the White House. Joy Ficks said she was surprised to
hear the Clintons are keeping the kitchen set as a personal gift.

White House Gifts List

• $19,900 two sofas, an easy chair and an ottoman from Steve Mittman,
New York.

• $3,650 kitchen table and four chairs from Lee Ficks, Cincinnati.

• $2,843 sofa from Brad Noe, High Point, N.C.

• $1,170 lamps from Stuart Schiller, Hialeah, Fla.

• $1,000 needlepoint rug from David Martinous, Little Rock.

Following are gifts the Clintons received in 2000 and are paying for:

• $9,433 china cabinet, chandelier and a copy of President Lincoln's
Cooper Union speech from Walter and Selma Kaye, New York.

• $7,375 two coffee tables and two chairs from Denise Rich, New York.

• $7,000 dining room table, server and golf club from Mr. and Mrs. Ron
Dozoretz, Washington.

• $6,282 two carpets from Glen Eden Carpets, Calhoun, Ga.

• $5,000 rug from Martin Patrick Evans, Chicago.

• $5,000 china from Mr. and Mrs. Bill Brandt, Winnetka, Ill.

• $4,994 flatware from Ghada Irani, Los Angeles.

• $4,992 china from Iris Cantor, New York.

• $4,967 flatware, Edith Wasserman, Beverly Hills, Calif.

• $4,967 flatware, Mr. and Mrs. Morris Pynoos, Beverly Hills, Calif.

• $4,787 china from Mary Steenburgen and Ted Danson, Los Angeles.

• $4,920 china from Mr. and Mrs. Steven Spielberg, Universal City,
Calif.

• $3,000 painting from Joan Tumpson, Miami.

• $2,993 televisions and DVD player from Paul Goldenberg, La Habra,
Calif.

• $2,400 dining room chairs from Arthur Athis, Los Angeles.

• $2,110 china and jacket from Jill and Ken Iscol, Pound Ridge, N.Y.

• $1,588 flatware from Myra Greenspun, Green Valley, Nev.

• $595 pantsuit and sweater, Margaret O'Leary, San Francisco.

• $524 golf driver and golf balls from Richard Helmstetter, Carlsbad,
Calif.

• $500 antique book on George Washington, Mr. and Mrs. Bud Yorkin, Los
Angeles.

• $499 golf driver from Ely Callaway, Carlsbad, Calif.

• $450 leather jacket from Vin Gupta, Omaha.

• $350 golf driver, Jack Nicholson, Beverly Hills, Calif.

• $350 framed tapestry, Mr. and Mrs. Vo Viet Thanh, Vietnam.

• $340 two sweaters from Robin Carnahan and Nina Canci, St. Louis.

• $300 flatware from Colette D'Etremont, New Brunswick, Canada.

• $300 painting of Buddy, Brian B. Ready, Chappaqua, N.Y.

Chair Lift

Among the gifts that former president Bill Clinton says he is keeping as
personal presents he accepted last year are $28,000 worth of furnishings
that documents and interviews indicate were given to the National Park
Service in 1993 as part of the permanent White House collection...

Two of the furniture makers whose donations Clinton took with him on
leaving the White House last month say they gave them to the White House
as part of a widely publicized, $396,000 redecoration of the executive
mansion and not to Clinton personally.

"When we've been asked to donate, it was always hyphenated with the
words, " 'White House,' " New York manufacturer Steve Mittman said of
his family-owned business, which gave two sofas, an easy chair and an
ottoman, worth $19,900 and listed by Clinton as part of the gifts he
took with him. "To us, it was not a donation to a particular person."

Gifts Were Not Meant for Clintons, Some Donors Say

Sen. Clinton made another assertion - one that is equally misleading.
She contends she was not obliged to report the first Leiber bag she received "because it was received before the Clintons entered the White House."
But this bag, valued at $3,500, was received after the election and during the transition and therefore obviously was related to the Clinton presidency.

HILLARY'S STORY ON HER WHITE HOUSE GIFTS IS FULL OF (LOOP)HOLES, Dick Morris
But he said the Socks purse was given to Clinton during the transition in late 1992, before her husband took office...
--HILLARY: I RETURNED GIFTS TO THE NATIONAL ARCHIVE

TRANSLATION: An earlier example of the clinton post-election/pre-swearing-in klepto-bribery scheme...

MORE:

HILLARY: I RETURNED GIFTS TO THE NATIONAL ARCHIVE [SOCKS BAGS BAG]

Is hillary clinton's $8M "book advance" a Peter-Principle artifact?

The jacket could use some color...black has such a slimming effect!!

Q ERTY6 clinton & clinton were utter failures: kleptocratic REALITY-CHECK ping!
QWER•TY (kwûr'tee) adj.
Of, relating to, or designating the traditional configuration of typewriter or computer keyboard keys. [From the first six letters at the upper left.]

Q ERTY Series: The Inspiration

No Joke

Those who trashed the White House were vicious vandals, not merry pranksters.

BY TUNKU VARADARAJAN
Monday, January 29, 2001 12:01 a.m. EST

The Wall Street Journal

What is a "prank"? And when does a prank take on a darker hue and
merit, instead, a less indulgent label--such as "delinquency," or
"vandalism"?

These questions, whose answers are rooted in common sense, culture and
civilization, were raised last week by revelations first detailed on the
Internet by Matt Drudge, for whose insolent, frontiersman's approach to
newsgathering we continue to be grateful. He's not always right, and
he's not always elegant, but he bawls his tales from the rafters when
others, more timorous and more conventional, would only mince their
words, or whisper.

Although the mainstream press echoed the story only reluctantly, and
sought to draw its sting by downgrading it to the status of rumor, the
contents of the Drudge report seemed to be unquestionably consonant with
the tone, the oh-so-jarring tone, struck, in their departure from the
White House, by the Clinton cohorts--from the strutting
self-congratulation of the ex-president at Andrews Air Force Base (like
a weed, he'd taken root, and like a weed he called to be ripped from the
soil beneath him), to the stripping bare of the former Air Force One by
the ex-presidential locusts.

According to reports, outgoing Clinton-Gore staffers at the White House
performed a range of "pranks," including the prizing out from many White
House computer keyboards of the W (Dubya) key, the gluing shut of
drawers on office desks, the infecting of computers with viruses, the
recording of offensive reception messages on the answering machines, the
slashing (yes, slashing) of telephone lines, the loading of pornographic
images on printers and computers, offensive graffiti on corridors and
bathroom walls, the turning upside down of desks, and, as a valedictory
signature, the leaving of a trail of trash across the West Wing.

Mr. Drudge, the only one to quantify the damage publicly, has put the
monetary estimate--in terms of its cost to the taxpayer--at $200,000.
There is some speculation that this is a conservative estimate. Peggy
Noonan writes: "You just know when you read about it that it's worse
than anyone is saying--the Bush people being discreet because they don't
want to start out with complaints and finger pointing, the Clinton-Gore
people because it is in their obvious interests to play it down."

These actions have been characterized as "pranks" in the press, although
the Washington Post did, in a giveaway line, suggest that there was more
to the story than high jinks. Quoting Clinton(ian) sources, the paper
said:
"The Democratic officials said the actions were meant to be funny, or in
some cases were an outlet for frustration by soon-to-be-unemployed
staffers."

Were these actions "pranks"? Let's parse the situation, and start by
returning to my original question: What is a prank? I think most people
would agree that a prank is an impish action, intended by the prankster
to make the "prankee" feel momentarily sheepish, but not shell-shocked
or outraged. Classic pranks are intended to provoke a prankish payback,
not heated antagonism, or contempt. In other words, the prankster's
motivation lies in a sense of irreverent one-upmanship--in mischief, not
malice. The mental state, or mens rea, of the perpetrator is as central
to the definition of prank as it is to murder or assault.

To give you an example: In my days at Oxford, I was witness to a healthy
rivalry between my college, Trinity, and our insufferable neighbors,
Balliol.
Pranks were the currency in which this rivalry was traded. On one
occasion, some chaps from Balliol uprooted the rugby posts from the
Trinity grounds (some four miles away), brought them in a hired lorry to
college, and set them up on the lawns in front of the Trinity chapel.
They chuckled, and, yes, we chuckled too. In reprisal, a handful of
hearties from Trinity stole into Balliol in the pitch of night and
unleashed a sheep in the college library there, the stench of whose
droppings caused the Balliol librarian nearly to faint the next
morning. Again, we chuckled, and they chuckled back. These were
pranks, part of a sequential, good-natured rivalry. There was no malice
aforethought, only a juvenile sense of caper.

The other distinction between a prank and an act that exceeds a prank's
bounds is the causing of harm, or damage. In boarding school in India,
as a boy, I once threw a rock at a hive of wild bees that had grown,
high up, on the clock tower of the school's main building. My aim was
unerring, and the hive broke, discharging scores of furious bees in the
direction of my admiring friends. While I was able to scamper to
safety, two boys were stung so badly that they were hospitalized. My
act was not a prank, since it had caused damage. I was publicly caned,
and rightly, by the principal.

In the context of the White House, any harm or damage must be construed
to include the infliction of a burden on the taxpayer--not to mention
the interference, however temporary, with the business of government.
So the hanging up, here and there, of signs that said "Dept.
of Strategery"--a play on the president's bumbling way with words--was a
prank worthy of my confreres at Trinity or Balliol, or even of the frat
house at which our "frat boy" president earned his spurs.

But the slashing of phone lines? The gluing shut of desk drawers? The
gouging out from keyboards of the W key? The infection of computers
with viruses? The redirection of official phone lines, on which the
public and government rely? These, I fear, violate the prankster's
rulebook. They caused damage; lines, desks, computers and keyboards
needed repair and replacement. My money, and yours, was used for this
repair.

Most shabby of all, however, was the perpetrators' intent. A true
prank--a prank properly defined--is carried out in a jocular spirit.
Pranks are escapades, monkeyshines. They're not acts of venom or spite,
of resentment or ill-will. If the actor is malefic, he is not a
prankster but a vandal. He is, in truth, a delinquent.

That's what I learned in grade school, and I commend that interpretation
to you.

Mr. Varadarajan is deputy editorial features editor of The Wall Street Journal. His column appears Mondays.

I would argue with Mr. Varadarajan's contention that mens rea must be considered and that the absence of malicious intent reduces the act to mere prank. Such an argument runs contrary to the concept of strict liability crimes. That doctrine (Park v United States, (1974) 421 US 658,668) established the principle of 'strict liability' or 'liability without fault' in certain criminal cases, usually involving crimes which endanger the public welfare.

"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools.
Let's start with typewriters."

- Frank Lloyd Wright

Someone recently tested the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of Will Shakespeare, but all they got were the plays of bill clinton.

HILLARY: I RETURNED GIFTS TO THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Notice she didn't say ALL the gifts, that rascaly beast.

...prompted complaints from GAO chief David Walker, who told the News, "they want us to do more work than is even reasonable."

Is this RINO referring to Enron (sarcasm)? I'm still at a loss to understand why the GAO is involved in Enron to begin with. Clearly the area of vandalism is within their scope and I don't consider it unreasonable to expect they fulfill their duty.

It's not clear whether the White House's newly aggressive attitude will translate into action in the office of the U.S. Attorney for New York's Southern District, which has been accused of footdragging in its probe into the Clinton Pardongate scandal. We can dream, can't we? Although to finally see justice seems to be a dream that I don't wish to be beguiled by.

I think you meant to say "punch". Hope this helps.

Thanks for the info.

My God, woman, are you prolific! Bump for MiaT.

In answer to liberal/libertarian reality---the... realatarians!!

A 'too early in the morning for a helen thomas picture' bump.

5.56mm

Outstanding post, and it will take me some time to go through all the links. Thank you!

BTW, does anyone remember what happened last summer when the basement of Clinton's Chappaqua home flooded?

Several hundred books, including a 200-year-od copy of Thomas Jefferson's "Notes on the State of Virginia" and an autographed first edition of John F. Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage," were waterlogged.

The only reason this became public, was because Clinton wanted them restored by a book company, Argosy Books, in Manhattan.

"We were able to restore some of them, but most were beyond any help at all. We haven't gotten anywhere near coming to an estimate of how much it will cost to replace or restore everything." Hample said, {Argosy Books}.

Wonder if the White House had an "inventory" of books, and what were such valuable books doing in a musty old basement?

OK, I'll say it. I think they stole them.

sw