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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (168783)	8/8/2001 4:25:20 AM
From: asenna1	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT IMPERATIVE TO "GET CLINTON" (From WE HAS MET THE ENEMY, AND THEY IS US" ) "And now a third and more important factor presented itself: as a result of the Democratic Party's disastrous rout in the 1994 elections, Clinton began to successfully re-position the party back to the center and away from the liberal, special interest group politics of the 1980s, which had made the Democrats unable to win the White House. In doing so, he was shamelessly poaching Republican issues. If he succeeded - as the results of the 1998 presidential election seemed to indicate that he was doing - Republicans could lose both the House and the Senate in 2000 and be shut out of the presidency for another eight years by Vice President Al Gore, the man who Clinton was grooming to take over the new centrist Democratic Party. To Republicans who thought long-term, this meant the Supreme Court would be gone along with the entire federal judiciary, and it also meant a resurgence of the hated federal bureaucracy and its related regulatory agencies. To anti-abortionists, anti-feminists, anti-homosexuals, free marketeers, etc., this meant the devastation of all the dreams of the right - especially, the Religious Right, the dreams of people like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Tim LaHaye, etc. By the time the Al Gore presidency finished - in the year 2009 - all of them would very probably be dead and buried, or at least close to it. It was precisely these people who refused to let Starr give up - and thus was born the determination to "get Clinton" at all costs. All this, of course, has tended to reveal what the Religious and Secular Right were really up to: to prevent at whatever cost Clinton's re-positioning of the Democratic Party in the center. They were not interested in the specifics of the charges against Clinton; they weren't even interested in necessarily finding out the truth of the charges against the president. They wouldn't even have been pleased (or relieved) to find out that the president was genuinely innocent of the charges. Their purpose was to remove him from office or to so cripple him (and the Democratic Party) politically that they could successfully install themselves in power in the year 2000 - and by their control of the presidency and both houses of Congress re-institute America as a "Christian nation." A president who was innocent of the charges against him would be of no use to them. They had to make at least one of the charges stick! - and they didn't much care which one it was. Hardly the attitude that real Christians would be expected to display. These men - all of them - seem quite unconcerned that in order to save the United States as a "Christian nation," they are killing Christianity as a spiritual reality. Enter Paula Jones, Richard Scaife, the Rutherford Institute and the Religious Right in all their pompous regalia and at full gallop.

To: Neocon who wrote (168783)	8/8/2001 9:39:45 AM
From: Mr. Palau	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

>>Surely the Reverend Jackson has better things to do<< Yeah, maybe he could bilk true believers, as others have done in the name of God in recent years: Religion-Based Investment Scams Rising -Regulators By Peter Ramjug WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scams using religion as a lure to get people to invest money took in about $1.8 billion over the last three years, and swindlers are becoming more prevalent and more sophisticated, state securities regulators said on Tuesday. Classified by regulators as ``affinity fraud,'' the process involves using someone's religion to gain their trust and, ultimately, their money. ``I've been a securities regulator for 20 years and I've seen more money stolen in the name of God than in any other way,'' said Deborah Bortner, president of the Washington-based North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) and the securities director for the state of Washington. ``The con artist makes faith in God synonymous with faith in the investment scam,'' Bortner told a news conference where investors also described their experiences. One of the victims, Forrest Bomar of Palestine, Texas, said, ``I'm embarrassed to say this, but I never asked for an annual report, I never asked for an audit, I never called anyone. I never had any fear.'' NASAA said officials in 27 states have taken legal action against hundreds of companies and individuals that used religious or spiritual beliefs to gain the trust of more than 90,000 investors across the nation before taking their money -- about $1.8 billion of it over the last three years. In contrast, a 1989 survey co-sponsored by NASAA found that only 15,000 investors had lost more than $450 million in such scams in the previous five years. The increase in such fraud is likely related to investors' looking for an alternative to the skittish stock market and scams that offer above-market returns, Bortner said. Bomar lost money in a scheme that drew in 13,000 people, including about two dozen investors from as far away as Hungary, Singapore and Taiwan. ``In 1994, I began to look for fixed-rate income because I had become tired of the ups and downs of the stock market,'' he said. When he received a postcard outlining returns of 6.75 percent and pledging to ``do the work of the Lord,'' he called the company, the Baptist Foundation of Arizona. The foundation sent a representative to Bomar's home. COURT ACTION Mark Sendrow, director of securities for the Arizona Corporation Commission, said the Baptist Foundation of Arizona took in a total of $590 million, using a maze of shell corporations in a Ponzi scheme, before it was shut down in August 1999. Ponzi schemes depend on the solicitation of new investors to pay existing ones. NASAA said three people related to the Baptist Foundation pleaded guilty to defrauding investors in May and have agreed to cooperate in an investigation of five others indicted on 32 counts each of theft, fraud and racketeering. In addition, the foundation's auditor, Arthur Andersen, is involved in several court cases brought on behalf of investors and by securities regulators, Sendrow said. ``We think they ignored a lot of red flags,'' he said. In another case, Greater Ministries International Church raised about $580 million between 1993 and 1999 by promising to double investors' money through ``divinely inspired'' investments in the currency market and gold, silver and diamond mines. In a video of a Greater Ministries meeting shown by NASAA at the press conference, Greater Ministries founder Gerald Payne promoted the investments by comparing investors' money to the biblical story of the multiplying loaves and fishes. Payne was sentenced on Monday afternoon in federal court in Tampa, Florida, to 27 years in prison for fraud and conspiracy, according to Joseph Borg, Alabama's securities chief. The scams targeted by the regulators do not include church bonds, which require substantial disclosure of how investor money will be used. dailynews.yahoo.com