Word: importance
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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William Cobbett is a pompous English import who bloviated in his Porcupine's Gazette on behalf of Hamilton and his law-and-order Federalists. His rival in vitriol is James Thomson Callender, wanted for sedition in his native Scotland. He was Jefferson's hit man who, when slighted by the Sage of Monticello, spread informed innuendo about his arrangement with slave and lover Sally Hemings. Public reaction to the disclosure makes the Clinton-Lewinsky affair look like a casual game of spin the bottle...
...short version of the money story is this: Europe first offended Lindner when it imposed import restrictions on bananas from Latin America, where his plantations are located. Lindner then contributed a quarter of a million dollars to the Democrats. Gore called and asked for more money. Lindner gave it. And then some more. So much more that Lindner had dinner in the White House, attended a coffee klatch there for the truly generous and slept in the Lincoln Bedroom. Along the way, he periodically met with then U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor and his staff, the officials who ultimately sought...
...started with bananas in Europe. After World War II, the continent's banana market divided into two kinds. Such countries as Britain, France and Spain limited imports and gave preferential treatment to bananas grown in their former colonies. Thus Britain encouraged banana output in Jamaica, Dominica, St. Lucia; France extended special treatment to bananas grown in the Ivory Coast and the Cameroons. At the other extreme, Germany offered a free market with no import restrictions or tariffs...
...proper legal forums, we are prepared to adapt to this new regulated environment." By this time, Dole, the world's second largest banana producer and Chiquita's only real rival, had hedged its bets and arranged to acquire bananas from those countries with no tariffs and generous import quotas...
...against this background that in June of that year, Keith Lindner, then president of Chiquita and one of Carl's three sons in the family businesses, wrote a "Dear Ambassador" letter to Mickey Kantor outlining concerns over Europe's import restrictions. There was little response...