On the Other Hand...
by Jim Davies
Twenty One Mysterious Deaths
To me, the most surprising news to emerge this year from Sin City is the feeble way the Whitewater Hearings were conducted. The body of circumstantial evidence against the Clintons is so large that I thought their "opponents" (the Republicans) would painstakingly solidify that evidence and then hold the hearings right after next year's Democratic Convention, so inflicting maximum damage and leaving their supposed rivals up the creek without a paddle.
Well, I was wrong, and so far I can't see why. I doubt very much that the evidence, which I outline below, can't be substantiated. It is covered all over with the classic marks of political corruption as usual. And I doubt that it will take such a long time to bring out that the Reps believe they will not reach a crescendo of scandal until next Summer, when it matters. So why did they run such a half-hearted hearing, and why did they start it so soon?
Time will tell. Perhaps for some mysterious reason they want Clinton elected; or that their man Bush would be implicated in the same crimes the Clintons are; or that they do actually believe their own advisors, who predict that an impeachment of the Prez would bring irreparable harm to Wall and Main Streets.
That last is possible, but I'm unconvinced. But if they believe it, it would explain what's happening. Even Rush Limbaugh seems convinced; that impeachment would prevent the Pols conducting "governance of the Nation". So what?!
That was the tone of the investment newsletter that brought this circumstantial evidence to my attention; the writer predicted a stock market collapse, and offered his advice to counter its effects. I didn't buy either his prediction or his newsletter, but his account of Arkansan malfeasance did ring very true.
The Smoking Gun
"Whitewater" is not just a real-estate investment that failed, and whose losses Governor Clinton may, thanks to banking laws, have passed along to us. It's a thousand times worse than that. Here are the main elements that may be alleged.
1. Creaming the taxpayer . As Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton and his friends may have made a whole systematic series of "bad investments" in real estate. The scam is to get a friend to appraise some property for an inflated sum, borrow 80% of its price from a bank, develop it a little bit (put down a road, clear a site, build one house...) and then repeat the cycle; that is, have your friendly appraiser name a new, higher value, get your very-friendly banker to lend 80% of that new figure, develop it a little bit more, and so on.
Pyramid that up four or five cycles using companies created for the purpose, then walk off with the borrowed money and declare bankruptcy. The bank may go belly up, and if it does, the RTC blesses the corpse and the taxpayer is forced to pay off the depositors. The scam artists (two now allegedly residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue) just salt the money away. It's said that the Clintons left Arkansas with $4 million, after Bill was never paid more than $35,000 a year.
2. Sex With Speeders . Bill is a red-blooded guy, and it's none of our business whom he sleeps with... with the willing consent of the other party.
There's the rub. Arkansas State Troopers work, of course, under the Governor's authority and it's alleged that some of them, after flagging down some traffic-law infractor who appeared to fit Bill's profile of Desirable Wenches, would offer her the choice of a ticket, or a visit to the Governor's boudoir.
Now, that's not consensual sex. If he used the authority of his public office to acquire such favors, that's an outrage of the first order. These (allegedly, hundreds ) of young ladies were being coerced into the Governor's bed. In effect, they were being raped; not with a knife or a gun, but with the threat of a traffic ticket. A libertine in the White House is nothing new; a rapist is something else altogether.
3. Drug Running and Using . Once again, any regular reader of "On the Other Hand..." will have noticed I see nothing wrong with either using or trading in illegal drugs, for the transactions are voluntary. If someone wants to make a fortune running illegal drugs thanks to Prohibition, like the father of John F Kennedy did, good luck to him. He's serving his customers.
But if the drug runner is simultaneously in public office doing what he can to keep those drugs illegal, the activity smells very nasty indeed. It's said Clinton actually took massive bribes and approved their distribution to State Troopers, to look the other way when plane after plane unloaded cocaine and cash (for laundering through AR State Bonds, with his full knowledge and assistance) at the airfield at Mena, AR. So we may wonder how well Bill kept his inaugural promises to the Arkansas people.
4. Serial murder . If the above pattern of major crime over a dozen years is true, there is of course a large number of witnesses who could testify to it. So far, 21 of them have died in the last few years.
Some of those 21 may have been accidents or suicides. But all of them were close to the alleged Clinton crimes, all of them were about to blow the whistle when they died, none of them were sick or senile, and the possibility that they all died that way stretches credulity further than you may find comfortable.
One of them was Vincent Foster, officially declared a suicide. That's despite the (suppressed) evidence that this left-handed man shot himself in the head with his right hand, THEN walked 200 feet to a spot in the woods where he sat down tidily with blood running UP his forehead, THEN threw away his glasses.
If some of the 21 did not die as officially claimed, then we may have in the White House a major thief, a rapist, a drug monopolist and a mass murderer. Even Watergate looks a bit tame alongside that list, which is apparently too hot for the Republicans to handle. Time, perhaps, to fire the both of them.