It sure was nice of Attorney General Janet Reno’s Justice Department to cut a sweetheart deal with Indonesian billionaire businessman John Riady — head of the now-infamous Lippo Group — last week, allowing this puke to avoid jail time for illegally financing the 1992 and 1996 Clinton-Gore campaigns by handing him an $8.6 million fine.
That kind of money to someone with that kind of wealth is pocket change, and, in the case of Riady, this “punishment” is akin to asking Bill Gates if he can spare a quarter.
Worse, the damage done to this nation’s national security, election laws, and political integrity will basically go unpunished because after Riady writes Reno a check, it’s all over. Clinton, as President-elect Bush has indicated, will go free for this — and other — misdeeds.
What about the damage left in the wake of this Clinton/Riady “partnership”? Is there any way Americans can “recoup” some of what has been lost?
You bet our assets there is a way.
Since Mr. Bush apparently doesn’t think it’s appropriate to hold Clinton accountable for what he’s done after he leaves office Jan. 20, the very least he could do is take back a favor Clinton did for Riady to “repay” him for his illegal support.
On Sept. 18, 1996, Clinton signed one of his infamous land-grab orders, declaring 1.9 million acres of Utah land an official federal preserve. That preserve, named the
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, just happened to contain one of the world’s largest known reserves of “clean” coal — the kind that can be burned in power plants without undue harm to the environment.
While the U.S. reserves are large, the largest known reserve of this type of coal is in the hands of Riady himself and is located in Indonesia.
What a payback, eh? I still recall Clinton lying his mouth off in 1996, shortly after creating the Escalante monument, that his designation didn’t have a damned thing to do with Riady.
Right. And Clinton led “the most ethical administration in history,” too.
California state officials — now in the throes of a power crisis of their own making, caused by years of cowing to radical environmentalists — should take heed. So should Mr. Bush, who has pledged to reverse U.S. reliance on foreign energy suppliers, which ought to include scumbags like Riady.
The Bush transition team has indicated a willingness to reverse or, at least, scale back many of Clinton’s land-grab initiatives. In order to fulfill a couple of campaign pledges — to revisit states’ rights and bolster U.S. domestic energy production — getting rid of Escalante seems like a no-brainer to me.
The American people — right, left or “moderate” — were robbed of justice when Clinton and most of his cronies managed to escape accountability in no less than a dozen major scandals.
To let Escalante stand — in light of Riady’s guilt and Clinton’s obvious effort to repay his support — would be the equivalent of dropping napalm on a western forest fire. And it would be the equivalent of refunding Riady’s fine because American companies required to burn clean coal due to U.S. environmental regulations will still have to buy it from the Lippo Group.
Can we have our coal back, Mr. Bush? Oh, and some dignity?
Team Trump: Young, smart and ready to rumble
Bucky Fox