The Worst President in History?

That's easy enough to say because her handlers won't allow anyone other than "stay the course" die-hard supporters to come within a mile of her--but she's not being honest when blindly focuses on the perceived appreciation for her husband while she ignores the maelstrom of criticism and the mountain of corpses he has created. Laura Bush has to be willfully blind if she can't see the LACK of appreciation that the majority of Americans have for her hubby. I guess Laura was totally oblivious to all those anti-war protestors who were camped near her home in Texas week, after week, after week. . . .

Those idiots did not represent the majority of the people in the US. It's chic to disapprove of the president these days. The media tells people that everyday.

McG, It's not only the media. It's obvious you've been missing all the negative stuff against this president on A2K.

What?!

"What?" is right.

At least she was smart enough to not marry a "dick-happy"jerk like Clinton.

Not possible.

Glad to help you find them. Here's one of the newer ones.
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=74528&start=0

No wonder you don't know what fly over country really thinks if you use A2K as a legitimate gauge of public opinion. Ha Ha, thats a good one. Do you live in the A2K "bubble."

Living in the a2k bubble is preferable to the Bush ship with holes that can't be plugged.

Parados asks-What Rampant Corruption during the Clinton years.

His memory must be failing him:

He may try to show that the list below is bogus. I don't think he will be able to do that. If he cannot, it stands as proof of Clinton years mired in corruption.



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CLINTON
SCANDAL STATS
COMPILED BY THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW


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Originally published October 1998. Partially updated 9/21/00
Please send corrections and additions to THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW

THE REVIEW HOME PAGE


NOTES


Some of the data has not been updated recently and thus understates conditions. In certain areas, such as anomalous deaths, we have used an extremely conservative count. It is important in considering these fatal incidents to bear in mind the following:


(1) The fact that anomalies need to be investigated further carries no presumption of how a death actually occurred, only that there remain serious questions that require answers.


(2) The possibility of foul play must be taken seriously in a major criminal conspiracy in which over two score individuals and firms have been convicted and over 100 witnesses have pled the Fifth Amendment or fled the country.


(3) If foul play did occur in any of these cases, that fact by itself does not carry the presumption that the White House was involved. Given the footprints of organized crime, drug trade, foreign espionage, and intelligence agencies on the trail of the Clinton story, such a assumption would not be warranted.


ADMINISTRATION RECORDS SET
- The only president ever impeached on grounds of personal malfeasance
- Most number of convictions and guilty pleas by friends and associates
- Most number of cabinet officials to come under criminal investigation
- Most number of witnesses to flee country or refuse to testify
- Most number of witnesses to die suddenly
- First president sued for sexual harassment.
- First president accused of rape.
- First first lady to come under criminal investigation
- Largest criminal plea agreement in an illegal campaign contribution case
- First president to establish a legal defense fund.
- Greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions
- Greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions from abroad



HISTORICAL CONTEXT
- Number of independent counsel inquiries since the 1978 law was passed: 19
- Number that have produced indictments: 7
- Number that produced more convictions than the Starr investigation: 1
- Median length of investigations that have led to convictions: 44 months
- Length of Starr-Ray investigation (7/00): 67 months.
- Number of Starr-Ray investigation convictions to date (including one governor, one associate attorney general and two Clinton business partners): 15
- Median cost per Starr investigation conviction: $3.5 million as of 3/00
- Total cost of the Starr investigation (3/00) $52 million
- Total cost of the Iran-Contra investigation: $48.5 million
- Total cost to taxpayers of the Madison Guarantee failure: $73 million
- Number of Clinton cabinet members who came under criminal investigation: 5
- Number of Reagan cabinet members who came under criminal investigation: 4
- Number of top officials jailed in the Teapot Dome Scandal: 3


CRIME STATS
- Number of individuals and businesses associated with the Clinton machine who have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to crimes: 47
- Number of these convictions during Clinton's presidency: 33
- Number of indictments/misdemeanor charges: 61
- Number of imprisonments: 14
- Number of congressional witnesses who have pled the 5th Amendment, fled the country to avoid testifying, or (in the case of foreign witnesses) refused to be interviewed: 124


CAMPAIGN FINANCE INVESTIGATION
- As of June 2000, the Justice Department listed 25 people indicted and 19 convicted because of the 1996 Clinton-Gore fundraising scandals.
- According to the House Committee on Government Reform in September 2000, 79 House and Senate witnesses asserted the Fifth Amendment in the course of investigations into Gore's last fundraising campaign. [These figures are included in the larger figures elsewhere].
-James Riady entered a plea agreement to pay an $8.5 million fine for campaign finance crimes. This was a record under campaign finance laws.


STARR INVESTIGATION


- Number of Starr-Ray investigation convictions or guilty pleas to date (including one governor, one associate attorney general and two Clinton business partners): 15
- Number of Clinton Cabinet members who came under criminal investigation: 5
- Number of Reagan cabinet members who came under criminal investigation: 4
- Number of top officials jailed in the Teapot Dome Scandal: 3


SMALTZ INVESTIGATION
- Guilty pleas and convictions obtained by Donald Smaltz in cases involving charges of bribery and fraud against former Agriculture Secretary Espy and associated individuals and businesses: 15
- Acquitted or overturned cases (including Espy): 6
- Fines and penalties assessed: $11.5 million
- Cost of investigation: $22.2 million through 9/99
- Amount Tyson Food paid in fines and court costs: $6 million
- Amount Tyson Food still has in annual government contracts: $200 million
- Reasons individuals other than Espy were convicted or pled guilty: Concealing knowledge of gifts to Espy and his girlfriend (1), providing illegal gratuities to Espy(4), illegally supplementing the salary of a government official (2), concealing receipt of illegal funds on behalf of Espy (1) (Espy's chief of staff sentenced to prison in this case)


CRIMES FOR WHICH CONVICTIONS HAVE BEEN OBTAINED
Drug trafficking (3), racketeering, extortion, bribery(4), tax evasion, kickbacks, embezzlement (2), fraud (12), conspiracy (5), fraudulent loans, illegal gifts(1), illegal campaign contributions(5), money laundering (6)


POSSIBLE CRIMES AND SUSPICIOUS MATTERS INVESTIGATED BY SPECIAL PROSECUTORS, CONGRESS,
AND/OR INVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS
Bank and mail fraud, violations of campaign finance laws, illegal foreign campaign funding, improper exports of sensitive technology, physical violence and threats of violence, solicitation of perjury, intimidation of witnesses, bribery of witnesses, attempted intimidation of prosecutors, perjury before congressional committees, lying in statements to federal investigators and regulatory officials, flight of witnesses, obstruction of justice, bribery of cabinet members, real estate fraud, tax fraud, drug trafficking, failure to investigate drug trafficking, bribery of state officials, use of state police for personal purposes, exchange of promotions or benefits for sexual favors, using state police to provide false court testimony, laundering of drug money through a state agency, false reports by medical examiners and others investigating suspicious deaths, the firing of the RTC and FBI director when these agencies were investigating Clinton and his associates, failure to conduct autopsies in suspicious deaths, providing jobs in return for silence by witnesses, drug abuse, illegal acquisition and use of 900 FBI files, illegal futures trading, murder, sexual abuse of employees, false testimony before a federal judge, shredding of documents, withholding and concealment of subpoenaed documents, fabricated charges against (and improper firing of) White House employees, as well as providing access to the White House to drug traffickers, foreign agents and participants in organized crime.


UNEXPLAINED PHENOMENA
- FBI files misappropriated by the White House: c. 900
- Estimated number of witnesses quoted in FBI files misappropriated by the White House: 18,000
- Number of witnesses who developed medical problems at critical points in Clinton scandals investigation (Tucker, Hale, both McDougals, Lindsey): 5
- Problem areas listed in a memo by Clinton's own lawyer in preparation for the president's defense: 40
- Number of witnesses and critics of Clinton subjected to IRS audit: 45
- Number of names placed in a White House secret database without the knowledge of those named: c. 200,000
- Number of persons involved with Clinton who have been beaten up: 2
- Number of women involved with Clinton who claim to have been physically threatened (Sally Perdue, Gennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey, Linda Tripp, Elizabeth Ward Gracen): 5
- Number of men involved in the Clinton scandals who have been beaten up or claimed to have been intimidated: 10


ARKANSAS SUDDEN DEATH SYNDROME
- Number of persons in the Clinton machine orbit who are alleged to have committed suicide: 9
- Number known to have been murdered: 12
- Number who died in plane crashes: 6
- Number who died in single car automobile accidents: 3
- Number killed during Waco massacre: 4
- Number of one-person sking fatalities: 1
- Number of key witnesses who have died of heart attacks while in federal custody under questionable circumstances: 1
- Number of medications being taken by Jim McDougal at the time he was placed in solitary confinement shortly before his death: 12
- Number of unexplained deaths: 4
- Total suspicious deaths: 46
- Number of northern Mafia killings during peak years of 1968-78: 30
- Number of Dixie Mafia killings during same period: 156


ARKANSAS ALZHEIMER'S
- Number of times Hillary Clinton said "I don't recall" or its equivalent in a statement to a House investigating committee: 50
- Number of paragraphs in this statement: 42
- Number of times Bill Clinton said "I don't recall" or its equivalent in the released portions of the his testimony on Paula Jones: 271
- Total number of facts or events not recalled before official bodies by Bill Kennedy, Harold Ickes, Ricki Seidman, Bruce Lindsey, Bill Burton, Mark Gearan, Mack McLarty, Neil Eggleston, John Podesta, Jennifer O'Connor, Dwight Holton, Patsy Thomasson, Jeff Eller, Beth Nolan, Cliff Sloan, Bernard Nussbaum, George Stephanopoulous, Roy Neel, Rahm Emanuel, Maggie Williams, David Tarbell, Susan Thomases, Webster Hubbell, Roger Altman, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton: 6,125
- Average occurrence of memory lapse by top administration figures while before official bodies: 235


ARKANSAS MONEY MANAGEMENT
- Amount of an alleged electronic transfer from the Arkansas Development Financial Authority to a bank in the Cayman Islands during 1980s: $50 million
- Grand Cayman's population: 18,000
- Number of commercial banks: 570
- Number of bank regulators: 1
- Amount Arkansas state pension fund invested in high-risk repos in the mid-80s in one purchase in April 1985: $52 million through the Worthen Bank.
- Number of days thereafter that the state's brokerage firm went belly up: 3
- Amount Arkansas pension fund dropped overnight as a result: 15%
- Percent of Worthen bank that Mochtar Riady bought over the next four months to bail out the bank and the then governor, Bill Clinton: 40%.
- Percent of purchasers from the Clintons and McDougals of resort lots who lost the land because of the sleazy financing provisions: over 50%


THE MEDIA
- Number of journalists covering Whitewater who have been fired, transferred off the beat, resigned or otherwise gotten into trouble because of their work on the scandals (Doug Frantz, Jim Wooten, Richard Behar, Christopher Ruddy, Michael Isikoff, David Eisenstadt, Yinh Chan, Jonathan Broder, James R. Norman, Zoh Hieronimus): 10


FRIENDS OF BILL
- Number of times John Huang took the 5th Amendment in answer to questions during a Judicial Watch deposition: 1,000
- Visits made to the White House by investigation subjects Johnny Chung, James Riady, John Huang, and Charlie Trie. 160
- Number of campaign contributors who got overnights at the White House in the two years before the 1996 election: 577
- Number of members of Thomas Boggs's law firm who have held top positions in the Clinton administration. 18
- Number of times John Huang was briefed by CIA: 37
- Number of calls Huang made from Commerce Department to Lippo banks: 261
- Number of intelligence reports Huang read while at Commerce: 500

Parados will try in lawyerly fashion, and I can't wait to see what hoops he has us all jump through to deny reality, except that he will argue that reams of circumstantial evidence and countless accusations are not absolute proof beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law besides lying about cavorting with the intern, and of course doing that even displays leadership qualities if you remember the stories concocted by the press on that, so therefore poor Bill is absolutely innocent of absolutely everything and is therefore one of the most upstanding citizens to ever grace the White House, while George Bush is the biggest lying scoundrel, and the dumbest man to ever be president. He will also cite statistics of corruption associated with Ronald Reagan and other presidents to prove that Clinton was an angel compared to them. We've had this conversation before.

P.S. BernardR, I got tired before I read your whole list, but there are surely some things that are left out or forgotten.

It's amusing how the American people seem to ignore people like okie and his statistics. According to the Gallup Poll taken last year, we find the following results (including Bill Clinton):

Gallup poll

A Gallup poll about presidential greatness, taken 7-10 February 2005, asked 1008 adults nationwide, "Who do you regard as the greatest United States president?" This poll had a margin of error of plus or minus three percent.[8]

1. Ronald Reagan (20%)
2. Bill Clinton (15%)
3. Abraham Lincoln (14%)
4. Franklin D. Roosevelt (12%)
5. John F. Kennedy (12%)
6. George W. Bush (5%)
7. George Washington (5%)
8. Jimmy Carter (3%)
9. Harry Truman (2%)
10. Theodore Roosevelt (2%)
11. Thomas Jefferson (2%)
12. George H.W. Bush (1%)
13. Dwight Eisenhower (1%)
14. Richard Nixon (1%)
15. Other/None/No opinion: 5%

Since the Gallup poll was taken last year, and George W Bush's rating have been dropping like a lead sinker since then, we can easily assume that his "greatness" value has fallen a few points.

Some of us do not judge presidents based on a poll or what everybody else might think. According to one poll, 80% think the U.S. government is hiding information about extraterrestrial life. Does that mean I am intelligent if I agree with the 80%? Perhaps you do. I don't. Principles should trump polls. Go ahead and stick your finger in the air and see which way the wind is blowing if thats the way you wish to vote and make decisions. That is your privilege.

By the way, I might vote for either Eisenhower or Lincoln, probably Lincoln, but Eisenhower is one of my favorite personalities in terms of his philosophy.

Yeah you talk all that big sh*t - but are you going to try to act like you wouldn't be parading it, if the polls had your boy popular? You and he are both full of it. His poll numbers dropping isn't some kind of abberation or fluke.

I am not happy with the polls. The public is tired of the war and they are mad about illegal immigration and runaway spending. Both Democrats and many Republicans are unhappy. I am not 100% happy with Bush, maybe only 50 to 60%, but I am not going to turn on him and accuse him of things I do not believe him guilty of. I may disagree with him on some things, but I don't have hatred and contempt for the man in any way shape or form. The economy is doing okay, I liked his Supreme Court nominees, and I agree with him on other issues, some of which the Congress will not do anything with. Which brings up a point, how popular is Congress now? Probably not that great.

The Republican controlled Congress isn't any more popular than Bush. But that is not exactly a shock!

okie says the "economy is doing okay." The Brookings Institute disagrees. The last sentence is especially telling.



New Report Questions Effectiveness, Design of
Bush Tax Cuts through 2004 and Beyond
Press Release: HTM | PDF
Executive Summary: HTM | PDF
Full Report: PDF (76pp.)

Comments by Brookings economist William Gale

View Related Analyses

If you cannot access the files through the links, right-click on the underlined text, click "Save Link As," download to your directory, and open the document in Adobe Acrobat Reader.

A new study of three years of Administration tax cuts, issued by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, finds adverse fiscal, distributional, and long-term economic effects from the tax cuts. The study, Tax Returns: A Comprehensive Assessment of the Bush Administration Tax Cuts, represents perhaps the most comprehensive analysis yet issued of the effects of the tax cuts, synthesizing previous findings on both the 2001, 2002, and 2003 tax cuts and the tax policy proposals in the Administration's fiscal year 2005 budget and featuring significant new data from the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center.

Among the study's highlights:

* The average tax cut for the top one percent of households will be nearly $35,000 this year, 54 times the average tax cut of $647 that the middle fifth of households will receive. This finding is based on a new analysis by the Tax Policy Center that examines the effects of all components of the tax cuts and is the first comprehensive Tax Policy Center analysis to be based on a revised and improved Tax Policy Center model that fully incorporates the corporate and estate tax reductions.

* The tax cuts will bestow more than $30 billion in 2004 on the 257,000 households with incomes exceeding $1 million, with these households securing average tax cuts of $123,600 each. The $30+ billion in tax cuts that these "millionaires" will receive in 2004 far exceeds the total amount of tax cuts that the nearly 29 million households who comprise the middle fifth of the U.S. population will get.

* The tax cuts were not well designed to stimulate a weak economy. Only eight to 14 percent of the 2003 tax-cut package, which was promoted as being necessary to boost economic recovery, consists of high "bang-for-the-buck" tax cuts that will be provided by the end of fiscal year 2004. (A high bang-for-the-buck proposal is one that increases economic "demand" in the short term by more than one dollar for each dollar of lost tax revenue.) The tax cuts consequently have produced significantly less economic stimulus than could have been provided for the same (or less) budgetary cost. The failure of policymakers to design and enact more effective stimulus measures has likely contributed to job creation being more meager during this recovery than in other recoveries since the end of World War II.

* From 2005 through 2014, the increased interest payments on the debt that will result from the tax cuts will amount to approximately $1.1 trillion, if the tax cuts are made permanent and the other tax-cut proposals in the Administration's fiscal year 2005 budget are enacted. The interest payments would reach $218 billion in 2014.

* Without the tax cuts, deficits would be modest over the next ten years and be below $100 billion in 2014. By contrast, with the Administration's tax-cut policies, the deficit is likely to grow to approximately $677 billion by 2014.

Figure 1

"The tax cuts have contributed to federal revenues, measured as a share of the economy, dropping to their lowest level since the Truman Administration, and have conferred the greatest benefits on households at the highest income levels," said Isaac Shapiro, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and co-author of the study. "The tax cuts also have produced less economic stimulus and job growth than could have been accomplished with the same or even lesser amounts of resources, because the tax cuts were poorly designed to respond to the economic slump."

Shapiro added: "The problems that the tax cuts pose are likely to grow more severe if the tax cuts are made permanent, since the persistent, large deficits to which they would be a major contributing factor are likely to slow future economic growth, saddle future generations with sizable interest payments on a greatly enlarged national debt, and leave the nation ill-prepared for the retirement of baby boomers."

Other significant findings from the study include the following.

Bulk of Middle-Class Tax Cuts Could Have Been Provided at One-Third the Cost

The tax cuts enacted over the past three years include three major "middle-class" provisions: the provisions establishing the 10 percent tax bracket, expanding the Child Tax Credit, and providing tax relief to married couples. These three tax cuts were enacted in 2001 and became fully effective in 2003, when their implementation was accelerated.

These three provisions provide substantial help to the broad middle class. These measures also provide significant tax benefits to high-income households. The middle fifth of households will receive an average tax cut of $547 in 2004 from these provisions. The top one percent of households will receive an average tax cut of $1,320 from these measures.

But the distribution of tax benefits under the other tax-cut provisions enacted in the past three years is far less evenly distributed. The new Tax Policy Center data show that the top one percent of households will receive an average tax cut in 2004 of $33,700 from the other tax-cut provisions. By contrast, the middle fifth of households will receive an average tax cut of just $100 from these other provisions.

The study also finds that these three middle-class provisions would account for only about one-third of the cost of the tax cuts when the Administration's tax cuts were fully in effect. The bulk of the tax-cut benefits that the middle class will receive thus could have been provided for about one-third of the long-term cost that the Treasury will bear if the Administration's full tax-cut agenda is enacted, with nearly all of the recent tax cuts being made permanent and some new tax cuts being added on top.

Long-Term Costs and Distributional Effects

If the Administration's tax-cut agenda is approved (and relief from the swelling Alternative Minimum Tax is continued, as most observers expect it will be), future costs will be extremely large.

* Over the 10-year period from 2005 through 2014, the tax cuts will increase federal deficits by nearly $4 trillion. This includes the cost of the increased interest payments that will have to be paid on the national debt.

* Over the next 75 years, the cost of the tax cuts would be more than three times the size of the Social Security shortfall, and larger than the shortfalls in the Social Security and Medicare Hospital Insurance trust funds combined.

As uneven as the distribution of the tax cuts is in 2004, the distribution will become still more uneven over time. The tax cuts of greatest benefit to the middle class already are fully in effect. Some of the tax cuts of most benefit to high-income households, however ?- such as the elimination of the estate tax ?- are only partly in effect now or have not yet begun to take effect.

The Very Well-Off: Big Winners on Two Fronts

In addition to the large tax cuts they are now receiving, high-income households secured huge gains in income in the 1980s and 1990s. The Congressional Budget Office publishes the most comprehensive data available on changes in incomes and taxes for different income groups. Just-released CBO data cover years from 1979 until 2001. These data show:

* The average after-tax income of the top one percent of the population more than doubled over this period, rising from $294,300 in 1979 to $703,100 in 2001, an increase of 139 percent. (These figures are adjusted for inflation.)

* By contrast, the average after-tax income of households that make up the middle fifth of the U.S. population rose $6,300, or 17 percent, during this period. The average after-tax income of the poorest fifth of households rose $1,100, or eight percent.

Jobs and Economic Growth

Job growth during this recovery might have lagged well behind that of previous recoveries even if recent economic policies had been better designed. Nonetheless, the unusually poor job growth of the past couple of years suggests the Administration's tax cuts have fallen well short of accomplishing one of their stated goals.

* Employment remains substantially below its level at the start of the downturn, a development unparalleled this far into a post-World War II recovery. Substantial job growth typically occurs by this point.

* The Economic Policy Institute has compared actual job growth since the summer of 2003 to the level of job growth the Administration predicted would occur with passage of the 2003 tax cut. The Administration predicted that with passage of that measure, 5.5 million jobs would be created in the 18 months from June 2003 through December 2004. Employment figures through March 2004, however, indicate that in the first half of this 18-month period, only 689,000 jobs were created. This amounts to just 13 percent of the Administration's jobs projection.

Overall economic growth also has been below par. Whether measured from the start of the recession or the end of the recession, the economy has grown more slowly in the past few years than it grew, on average, at comparable stages of other post-World War II recoveries.

The Administration's Story

The Administration has highlighted the tax-cut benefits the middle class has received and also has promoted its tax cuts as being highly beneficial to groups such as small business owners. The Center's study finds much of the information the Administration has put forward on these matters has been selective or misleading. As one example, President Bush has often cited the "average" tax cut that American families are receiving. The large majority of families, however, are getting considerably less than this "average" amount. The tax cut that the typical household will receive in 2004 is less than half the amount that the President has described as being the "average" tax cut this year. The Administration's average tax-cut figures are skewed upward by the inclusion of the very large tax cuts going to a relatively small number of very affluent taxpayers.

Administration officials also have touted the benefits to small business owners of the reductions in the top income tax rate. But Treasury Department data show that the top-rate reduction benefits only two percent of small business owners.

The Center's study concludes that the majority of Americans are likely to end up worse off over time as a result of the tax cuts, because action ultimately will need to be taken to rein in burgeoning deficits and pay for the tax cuts. "Because the tax cuts are so tilted toward the highest-income households," said Joel Friedman, a senior fellow at the Center and co-author of the report, "the burden of financing these lopsided tax cuts eventually is likely to be borne disproportionately by households that have gained only modestly from the tax cuts. This will be the case unless offsetting spending cuts or tax increases are enacted that reduce benefits or raise taxes primarily on high-income households, an unlikely scenario. Over the long term, most Americans may well end up as net losers from the tax cuts."

Taken from the above article.

* From 2005 through 2014, the increased interest payments on the debt that will result from the tax cuts will amount to approximately $1.1 trillion, if the tax cuts are made permanent and the other tax-cut proposals in the Administration's fiscal year 2005 budget are enacted. The interest payments would reach $218 billion in 2014.



Bush keeps pushing for the permanent tax cuts to carry over the current deficits to our children and children's children. What a nice guy!