Joined: Tue Oct 19, 2004 3:06 am Posts: 32635 Location: the last free city
Keating Five
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The five senators, Alan Cranston (D-CA), Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ), John Glenn (D-OH), John McCain (R-AZ), and Donald W. Riegle (D-MI), were accused of improperly intervening in 1987 on behalf of Charles H. Keating, Jr., chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which was the target of a regulatory investigation by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB). The FHLBB subsequently backed off taking action against Lincoln.
Lincoln Savings and Loan collapsed in 1989, at a cost of $2 billion to the federal government. Some 23,000 Lincoln bondholders were defrauded and many elderly investors lost their life savings. The substantial political contributions that Keating had made to each of the senators, totalling $1.3 million, attracted considerable public and media attention. After a lengthy investigation, the Senate Ethics Committee determined in 1991 that Alan Cranston, Dennis DeConcini, and Donald Riegle had substantially and improperly interfered with the FHLBB in its investigation of Lincoln Savings, with Cranston receiving a formal reprimand. Senators John Glenn and John McCain were cleared of having acted improperly but were criticized for having exercised "poor judgment".
All five of the senators involved served out their terms. Only Glenn and McCain ran for re-election, and they both succeeded. . . . McCain and Keating had become personal friends following their initial contacts in 1981, and McCain was the only one of the five with close social and personal ties to Keating. Like DeConcini, McCain considered Keating a constituent as he lived in Arizona. Between 1982 and 1987, McCain had received $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates. In addition, McCain's wife Cindy McCain and her father Jim Hensley had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators. McCain, his family, and their baby-sitter had made nine trips at Keating's expense, sometimes aboard Keating's jet. Three of the trips were made during vacations to Keating's opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay. McCain did not pay Keating (in the amount of $13,433) for some of the trips until years after they were taken, when he learned that Keating was in trouble over Lincoln. Because of these connections, Phoenix New Times writer Tom Fitzpatrick stated in 1989 that McCain was the "most reprehensible" of the five.
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Mon Oct 06, 2008 10:12 am
Rev
Romosexual!
Joined: Tue Oct 19, 2004 3:06 am Posts: 32635 Location: the last free city
Re: Keating Five
Exclusive: Obama to hit McCain on Keating Five http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/200810 ... tico/14302 Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Monday is launching a multimedia campaign to draw attention to the involvement of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the “Keating Five†savings-and-loan scandal of 1989-91, which blemished McCain’s public image and set him on his course as a self-styled reformer.
Pushing back against what it calls McCain's “guilt-by-association†tactics, the Obama campaign overnight began e-mailing millions of supporters a link to a website, KeatingEconomics.com, which will have a 13-minute documentary on the scandal beginning at noon Eastern time on Monday. The e-mails urge recipients to pass the link on to friends.
The Obama campaign, including its surrogates appearing on radio and television, will argue that the deregulatory fervor that caused massive, cascading savings-and-loan collapses in the late ‘80s was pursued by McCain throughout his career, and helped cause the current credit crisis.
Obama-Biden communications director Dan Pfeiffer said: “While John McCain may want to turn the page on his erratic response to the current economic crisis, we think voters will find his involvement in a similar crisis to be particularly interesting. His involvement with Keating is a window into McCain’s economic past, present, and future.â€Â
The sudden spate of personal attacks continued Monday, with McCain releasing an ad called "Dangerous": "Who is Barack Obama? He says our troops in Afghanistan are 'just air-raiding villages and killing civilians.' How dishonorable. Congressional liberals voted repeatedly to cut off funding to our active troops. Increasing the risk on their lives. How dangerous. Obama and Congressional liberals. Too risky for America."
Obama’s Keating offensive comes after McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, spent two days telling voters, donors and reporters that Obama showed poor judgment in his relationship with the former radical William Ayers.
McCain’s campaign has vowed to make a major issue of Obama’s Chicago relationships in coming days, with a senior McCain official telling Politico that they are “the vehicle that allows us to question Obama’s truthfulness about his past and his plans for the future.â€Â
The McCain campaign also plans to invoke money launderer Tony Rezko. Officials say they will not bring up Obama's former minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, because McCain has forbidden his campaign from using that as an attack. But the officials said outside groups supporting McCain might highlight Wright.
Responding to the Keating blast from the past, a Republican official said the Obama team seemed "frantic" at "the mere mention of the word 'Ayers.'"
McCain-Palin spokesman Brian Rogers said: "The difference here is clear. John McCain has been open and honest about the Keating matter, and even the Democratic special counsel in charge recommended that Senator McCain be completely exonerated. By contrast, Barack Obama has been fundamentally dishonest about his friendship and work with the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers, whose radical group bombed the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol. Nor has Barack Obama come clean on his close friendship with Tony Rezko, a felon convicted on bribery charges who subsidized the purchase of Barack Obama’s home. It's obvious that Barack Obama is frantically attacking because he knows that most voters find these kinds of friendships, and the failed judgment they expose, to be unacceptable for our next president."
Obama website about Keating says: “The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain's attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. ... The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today's credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules.â€Â
In 1991, the Senate Ethics Committee cleared McCain of corruption charges but cited him for “poor judgment†in meeting with federal regulators on behalf of Charles H. Keating Jr., a political patron who went to prison for fraud in connection with the collapse of the California-based Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which at the time was one of the biggest financial failures in the nation’s history.
A trailer for the campaign-produced documentary features William K. Black, a former bank regulator who McCain met with in the Keating case, saying: “The Keating Five involved all the things that have brought the modern crisis. Senator McCain has not learned the lesson, and has continued to follow policies that are going to produce a disaster.â€Â
The Obama website has news clips and a narrative explaining the scandal and McCain’s involvement for voters and reporters.
The Keating episode took a searing toll on the senator and his wife, Cindy. Robert Timberg, in his 1999 biography “John McCain: An American Odyssey,†wrote that the trouble began with the senator “carelessly choosing his friends.â€Â
“McCain had stumbled into a scandal of immense proportions,†Timberg wrote. “Charles Keating, it turned out, had built his financial empire on the life savings of elderly retirees, men and women who watched helplessly as their dreams were snuffed out along with the assets of Keating’s Lincoln Savings and Loan Association.
“The story was complicated, but the press found a tag line that simplified it. McCain and four other senators with ties to Keating were dubbed ‘the Keating Five.’ The label stuck, imputing to all the same degree of guilt even though it soon became evident that at least two, McCain and former astronaut John Glenn of Ohio, were far less culpable, if they were culpable at all.â€Â
Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), a close Obama adviser who is the fourth-ranking House Democratic leader, brought up McCain’s association with Keating on CNN’s “Late Edition†on Sunday. “John McCain got admonished by the Senate Ethics Committee for that,†Emanuel said.
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Mon Oct 06, 2008 1:56 pm
Box
Extraordinary
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2004 12:52 am Posts: 25990
Re: Keating Five
I was wondering why Obama waited so long to bring this up. Given the McCain smears, I'd say this is an expected retort.
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MadGez wrote:
Briefs. Am used to them and boxers can get me in trouble it seems. Too much room and maybe the silkiness have created more than one awkward situation.
Joined: Thu Oct 21, 2004 9:30 pm Posts: 12096 Location: Stroudsburg, PA
Re: Keating Five
Box wrote:
I was wondering why Obama waited so long to bring this up. Given the McCain smears, I'd say this is an expected retort.
It's the "October surprise." It's always better to have your biggest attacks just before the election; keeps it in the public's mind, gives your opponent less time to respond.
The fact that McCain attacked first (which I'm sure the Obama guys expected) allows them to put this up (which was obviously well prepared) and say "Hey, we're just responding; don't blame us, he started it."
I was wondering why Obama waited so long to bring this up. Given the McCain smears, I'd say this is an expected retort.
It's the "October surprise." It's always better to have your biggest attacks just before the election; keeps it in the public's mind, gives your opponent less time to respond.
The fact that McCain attacked first (which I'm sure the Obama guys expected) allows them to put this up (which was obviously well prepared) and say "Hey, we're just responding; don't blame us, he started it."
It's very smart campaigning.
I agree, also makes McCain look very hypocritical.
Mon Oct 06, 2008 6:19 pm
Beeblebrox
All Star Poster
Joined: Wed Dec 01, 2004 9:40 pm Posts: 4679
Re: Keating Five
Box wrote:
I was wondering why Obama waited so long to bring this up. Given the McCain smears, I'd say this is an expected retort.
They were waiting for the McCain camp itself to play the "guilt by association" card. Now that they have, as it is the only strategy they have left, Obama is hitting back hard.
Mon Oct 06, 2008 6:22 pm
Beeblebrox
All Star Poster
Joined: Wed Dec 01, 2004 9:40 pm Posts: 4679
Re: Keating Five
From American Conservative magazine:
"It’s not hard to figure out what the talking point among increasingly desperate Republican shills is. I counted the word “Ayers†one hundred times in the Corner, and that only got me back two days, with two more days still on visible on the main page."
They have no ideas, no plans, no solutions. All they have are smears, and OLD ones at that. They are a farce.
Mon Oct 06, 2008 6:24 pm
A. G.
Draughty
Joined: Tue Oct 19, 2004 9:23 am Posts: 13347
Re: Keating Five
Box wrote:
I was wondering why Obama waited so long to bring this up. Given the McCain smears, I'd say this is an expected retort.
He's been getting a good image by being seen as not playing politics during this crisis as much as McCain has. I'm not sure it was a good idea to bring up the keating 5. Moveon should have done it instead.
Mon Oct 06, 2008 7:00 pm
Caius
A very honest-hearted fellow
Joined: Mon Oct 11, 2004 8:02 pm Posts: 4767
Re: Keating Five
Beeblebrox wrote:
From American Conservative magazine:
"It’s not hard to figure out what the talking point among increasingly desperate Republican shills is. I counted the word “Ayers†one hundred times in the Corner, and that only got me back two days, with two more days still on visible on the main page."
They have no ideas, no plans, no solutions. All they have are smears, and OLD ones at that. They are a farce.
I wonder how many times I'd find the word "neocon" in the American Conservative....
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