Word: quids
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...case, and particularly the Tamraz tale, makes it harder for anyone in Washington to sustain the Big Lie on which the whole campaign-finance racket rests. The Big Lie works like this: over and over, despite each piece of evidence to the contrary, politicians insist there's no quid pro quo. People can give money to campaigns or parties, the pols say, but the donors get nothing from the government in return. Repeating this fiction obscures the obvious point: why would hardheaded businessmen give hundreds of millions of dollars--$262 million, the Federal Election Commission reported last week--without...
...story of Roger Tamraz, a U.S. citizen of Lebanese descent born in Cairo, as told in the Wall Street Journal last week, suggests just how far Democratic officials were willing to go to hide a quid and deliver a quo. Tamraz wanted to build his billion-dollar oil pipeline through the warring nations of Armenia and Azerbaijan. He sought U.S. blessing for the project to help secure financing, and with the aid of some State Department officials, arranged a meeting in June 1995 with NSC Central Asia specialist Sheila Heslin. She was not impressed with his pitch and didn...
...other hand, it is absurd for the Clintonites (and the Republicans as well) to deny the basic nature of these transactions. Whether on government property or off, whether the quid comes before the quo or after, these are exchanges of money for--what? In a few cases, maybe, for nothing: people give in support of politicians whose agendas they agree with. In a few more cases, perhaps, donors are buying mere propinquity: a photograph with someone famous, a story to tell friends. In most cases, though, big political contributors have a policy agenda they are trying to advance or protect...
...Quid, No Quo: An embarrassed DNC is trying to return a $107,000 election donation from the Cheyenne-Arapa ho Tribe of Oklahoma, but the tribe doesn't want its money back. It wants the land it thought it was buying. The tribe wants to turn Oklahoma's Fort Reno, built in 1869, into a tourist attraction, and thought that was what it was getting when it cobbled the check out of funds targeted for food, medical care and other basic needs for the hard-pressed, 10,700-member community, which suffers from 80 percent unemployment. The DNC may duck...
...present intense interest in this, as well as the controversy over fund raising in the last election and all the publicity over it, as a spur to action," said Clinton. The President, aides say, is prodding the Federal Communications Commission to use free campaign air time as a quid pro quo for allowing broadcasters to switch over to technically superior digital signals. Underlying Clinton's maneuverings is a serious question for a democracy: does free speech include the right of wealthy special interests to drown out the voices of those who can't afford TV ads? Democrats as well...