Posted on 02/09/2002 11:06:53 PM PST by Mudboy Slim
for dixie,sw
McLowlife's chutzpah is absolutely amazing...MUD
Candidate for "Understatement of the Day"?
"Gary Winnick, Global Crossing's founder and chairman, ran Drexel's convertible bond desk in the early 1980s and sat just a few feet from junk-bond king Michael R. Milken. Less well-known are four of Winnick's Drexel colleagues, now at Toronto-based Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), which provided a healthy chunk of Global Crossing's initial capital. Because of its investment, CIBC, one of Canada's five largest banks, has realized more than $1.3 billion in profits from Global....But CIBC's ties to Global may be more complex than a short-term investment. CIBC has a banking relationship with Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., the Hong Kong conglomerate that, in partnership with another company, has offered to buy Global's assets out of bankruptcy. Hutchison Chairman Li Ka-shing is one of CIBC's largest individual shareholders.
"...CIBC in March, 1997, ponied up $41 million for a 25% stake in Global Crossing. Fifteen months later when Global Crossing sold stock to the public, that stake was worth $926 million. CIBC served as an underwriter for the initial offering, earning $20 million in fees for that and other Global Crossing work, according to Thomson Financial. CIBC also received $12 million in stock from a consulting contract with Global."
This scandal reeks RICO-indictable circumstantial evidence...and that includes DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe!!
FReegards...MUD
But nary a mention on the major news outlets!
"The rescue plan that Global Crossing presented when it announced it was seeking bankruptcy protection has also raised questions. Under the deal, two companies, Hutchison Whampoa (news/quote) of Hong Kong and Singapore Technologies Telemedia, would invest $750 million for a 79 percent stake in Global Crossing. Global Crossing's creditors would get 21 percent, shareholders nothing. Winnick never revealed to his own board or creditors that he and fellow company director Steven Green invested $25 million in a company called K1 Ventures, effectively controlled by another firm, Temasek Holdings, which in turn owns Singapore Technologies. Winnick and Green told The New York Times (news/quote) their investment was unrelated to Singapore Technologies' effort to buy Global Crossing."
FReegards...MUD
Bet if one looked closer into this Winnick character they'd likely find the clown's a registered 'Pubbie, too.
One with a cozy-tight, lucrative li'l repore' with ol' Terry McAuliff.
It's becoming increasingly obvious these miserable bloodsuckers are playing both sides againt the middle.
The scenario's about as pathetic as it gets.
-BTTT-
"At the Constitutional brink"
By David Keene
It’s about to happen: Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) vision of how we ought to run our democracy will soon become law even though the senator and many of his cohorts have to know that major parts of what they have managed to cobble together in the name of “reform” may not pass constitutional muster.
This doesn’t seem to bother most of those who favor campaign finance reform in its current incarnation. Indeed, some of them seem almost proud of the fact that they’re flouting the First Amendment. Ask them about the constitutional questions raised by, say, the limits on the ability of advocacy groups to advertise just prior to an election, and they’ll tell you deciding such questions is not their job, but the job of the courts.
That, of course, is what’s known as a cop out.
At least Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.) is more honest about the whole thing. He recently wrote a constituent that, while he intends to vote for the bill, he has no doubt that it will be struck down by the courts because of that pesky First Amendment. That’s why he’s introduced a constitutional amendment in recent congresses that would strip political speech of its constitutional protection. Do that, he says in his letter, and Congress will be able to “regulate campaign finance issues in the manner it deems fit.”
The audacity of those words is mind numbing. One can only imagine what Congress would do if it could simply ignore the Constitution altogether.
Fritz Hollings, to his credit, has always been more outspokenly blunt than most of his colleagues. One suspects, however, that many of them share his disdain for the First Amendment but are simply more reticent about saying so.
Instead, they’ve apparently decided to legislate as if it simply doesn’t exist. Even a cursory examination of the legislation they are about to pass suggests they aren’t at all reticent about simply ignoring free speech guarantees when they find it convenient to do so.
The shameless hypocrisy in all this becomes clear when one listens to just how important it is that various portions of the act that may eventually fail to impress the courts not be allowed to endanger the whole scheme. The authors knew going in that some parts of the bill they were putting together simply won’t make it through the courts, but included them anyway, either because they didn’t care or because they wanted the votes of senators who may have predicated their support on their inclusion.
The problem is that they have had to argue their case out of both sides of their mouths. McCain, for example, has suggested at some times that the bill shouldn’t be amended in any substantive way because it represents a carefully thought out reform regime made up of equally important and mutually dependent parts. This was his justification for including and defending the prohibition on advocacy group spending prior to federal elections. If you don’t ban such spending, he argued in March, you will simply rechannel money and create a new “loophole” through which it will find its way into the system.
If he truly believed this, however, one would expect him to acknowledge that striking down this section could endanger the whole scheme. But he doesn’t. In fact, he argues at other times that the Congress must include severability so that the courts won’t threaten the whole plan if parts of it don’t make the constitutional cut.
It is, of course, true that even without an explicit severability provision, the courts are loath to strike down a whole law simply because one small portion of it is flawed. During floor debate back in March, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) made this point, but in his remarks went on to admit there are situations where the general rule doesn’t apply.
It is said that a good prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich and I have little doubt that a few good cosponsors, some friends in the media and a politically correct and appealing label could get many in Congress to make the sandwich law. Still, McCain has argued that what he is asking his colleagues to vote for is not a ham sandwich, but a carefully thought out and constructed regime that must be passed intact and virtually without amendment. And that may be why the senator thinks he needs specific severability language in the bill.
The consequences of striking down parts of a flawed but integrated scheme are sitting in the Senate today. In the Buckley decision back in the ‘70s, the Supreme Court found that contribution limits were constitutional, but that spending limits were not and that it was constitutionally impossible to limit an individual’s right to spend as much of his own money as he wants. The result has been a flock of rich, self-financed candidates who have beaten opponents running with one hand tied behind their backs.
Something worse could happen this time and if it does, we’ll all have John McCain to thank.
David Keene is Chairman of the American Conservative Union and a Washington-based government affairs consultant.
Keene nails it...writing and passing blatantly UN-Constitutional legislation is an abomination, and if Dubyuh is to sign it into Law, his cynical abuse of the Constitution is equally lamentable...MUD
FReegards...MUD
My friend?
Who'd ever have thunk it.
But then again, something/someone is holding up the Senate vote on CFR. And Dubyuh has finally struck back against the Judge Pickering detractors. So I feel more optimism today than I have for a couple weeks. The Simon win didn't hurt, either!
The Sultan
Acknowledged felonies by the Highest-Ranking Executor of our Laws go unprosecuted...and not a single word from the Medyuh Minions.
Grrrrrr...MUD
Dubyuh's fully capable of turning the tide...but he's gotta realize his popularity ratings are a Tool for Good, not an end in themselves.
"So I feel more optimism today than I have for a couple weeks."
Amazing how much more productive we are when we retain Hope.
"The Simon win didn't hurt, either!"
Excellent news, indeed, my FRiend...MUD
I couldn't care less what the presstitutes do or don't report; & neither should you.
Now what this OIC did was the bottom line; that was where the rubber supposedly met the road.
The legal system, for reason or reasons unknown to me failed; & failed miserably.
Of that, let there be no doubt.
Lookit; from what I know (& heard) of this Judge Pickering there's an awful lot of similarities between him & Riordan.
We're being fed Liberals in Conservative's clothing who're on a par with NYCity's Bloomberg.
That is NOT a "Conservative" in my book.
The kind of bullshit being pulled here by none other than the OUR RNC doesn't pass the smell test by a country mile.
"So I feel more optimism today than I have for a couple weeks."
"Be careful of something that's just what you want it to be" -- the old song says.
All I can say is that's some sage advise.
"The Simon win didn't hurt, either!"
The Simon win was in the primary.
*Preseason wins* don't count for squat, as far as I'm concerned.
Moreover, aside from NYCity, what place on Earth is any more screwed-up than California?
I for one wouldn't put a dram of stock in what CA does, or doesn't do.
Not when it comes to politics, at any rate.
LOL and FReegards...MUD
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Starting today, March 6, 2002, from 6:00 PM Central, to March 7, 2002, 11:59 PM Central, the state which contributes the most to Free Republic during this time period will get to add Never Never Land's total to their own state."
And when you donate, make sure folks know yer from Ol' Virginny!!
FReegards...MUD
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