The Fawning Estate's Silence About The Scandals Of Al Gore

Television's liberal 'luminescent triangle' of Rather, Brokaw and Jennings, including all their little cable runts, have turned a blind-eye to the seriousness of the scandals surrounding Vice-President Al Gore. The most any TV News Show (Translation: the left's re-education camp in a box) has been willing to offer, is some quick, cursory soundbite. For the most part, this is also true of their less prominent cousins in the print media.

An exception, recently, was an in-depth article by Bill Hogan in the March 23 issue of National Journal revealing that Tony Coelho, who chairs Al Gore's presidential campaign, is currently under criminal investigation for his role as U.S. commissioner general to the 1998 World Exposition in Lisbon, Portugal.

[continued]

What does Al Gore think of this criminal investigation? He thinks Coelho is doing a "terrific job." He has dismissed the charges as just "inside baseball." This while he solemnly proclaims our need to rewrite campaign finance laws to protect him from himself (translation: more government control of elections).

Old habits apparently die hard for our Crown-Prince.

Gore even surprised his harshest critics when he asked Coelho to lead his presidential bid last May. Most political insiders agreed that Gore's team needed a change. But Tony Coelho? The Congressman who, in 1989, was cashiered from Congress amid damaging corruption charges concerning his personal finances. The Coelho appointment sounded like trouble for Gore even with a fawning media running his interference.

Trouble it was. In October, 1999 came news that the State Department's inspector general had written a scathing report on Coelho's tenure as head of the U.S. mission to the World Exposition in Portugal in 1998. Hogan writes: "Chief among [the charges] was that Coelho had exposed the U.S. government to liability for a $300,000 private loan — a loan, it was later disclosed, that had not yet been repaid. It also turned out that Coelho had leased for himself, at government expense, a four-bedroom, $18,000-a-month waterfront apartment (complete with swimming pool) in Lisbon, and that 'certain records' were destroyed before the government's auditors arrived in Lisbon for an on-site review." There's a lot more, but you get the point.

Now, writes Hogan, the federal probe is trying to determine "whether Coelho used government employees, property, and other resources to advance his own business and financial interests while he was the U.S. commissioner general of Expo '98." The evidence Hogan presents, sure makes it look like he did.

Here's an example:

Coelho was seeking investors for a project of his called LoanNet, a mortgage-processing Internet business, during the height of Expo '98. He invited a couple of K-Street Democrats, to bring their wives to Portugal. Coelho provided round-trip tickets donated to the government by a private sponsor of the U.S. pavilion at Expo '98, had his government-paid chauffeur fetch them from the airport and take them on a sight-seeing trip, then put them up at his luxury apartment. William Cable and Charles Manatt both say that Coelho didn't mention LoanNet during their Lisbon frolic, but shortly afterward they each plunked down $200,000. By the way, LoanNet went belly-up early in early 1999.

Coelho is not only a tough-guy, he's proving himself to be vengeful as well as crooked. Tony C's lawyer Stanley Brand, writes Hogan, "recently retained a team of private investigators who, among other things, have collected derogatory personal information on at least one federal employee who has been cooperating with the government investigators." Here we go again, the politics of personal destruction meshes with the politics of personal protection in the Clinton-Gore years.

Meanwhile, rather than exposing yet another ugly Democrat scandal, the media is busy gushing with plaudits about the "innovation" of Gore's latest Campaign Finance proposals. Free balloons, buttons and commercials for every would-be politician on every college campus in America. The problem with Gore's proposals, as with all the other leading Campaign Finance Reform schemes, is that they cede to government an even bigger role in American free elections. That's another story.

There's real irony here. Gore, through his mass opinion shapers in the left-wing media, is suggesting that he [Gore] should be put in charge of reforming America's campaign finance laws — because he's the one who broke these very laws. The dynamic-duo of McCain-Feingold fame just add to the irony. Russ Feingold has endorsed Al Gore who broke the law. John McCain can't even utter Dubya's name without choking and George W. Bush has never violated a campaign finance law. So, go figure.

Gore believes he is — untouchable. He knows his mendacious predecessor climbed in the polls after being found a perjurer. He is well aware that today's American rewards confessions without any real contrition or repentance. Janet Reno's popularity, for example, soared after she took "responsibility" for burning the children at Waco.

"I know firsthand what is wrong with the way we fund our political campaigns. I care very deeply about the integrity of our politics — and of course my own integrity as well. My commitment to changing America's campaign finance laws is both personal and profound," Gore solemnly proclaims.

No wonder Tony Coelho fits right in as his campaign chairman. And no wonder he dismissed the Coelho allegations as "inside baseball." Gore's hypocrisy is matched only by those in the media who tolerate, without question, such shameless conduct.

And the voters?

Today's voters are easily distracted by the left's big government promises: — transfer more wealth from the hated rich by increasing their earned income tax credit — or give them free health care at someone else's expense — or raise the minimum wage — or frighten them with gun-control horror stories — or play their nasty race-cards to make them mad, or … you get the idea.

Yes. Americans, seem as easily fooled as other people in our world have been in recent history. The good news is we will wake up — the question is — will it be too late?

A.J. — a son of liberty, from the land of the blind!

America's Wake-Up Call has just been delivered. Yoo-hoo!

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