Rule by the Rich
Hume, Sandy
A t first glance, President Clinton would seem to have kept his promise to appoint, as one transition official put it, "more than the usual white boys who run Washington." Indeed, he appointed four...
...Bentsen, who had previously represented Kosberg before federal regulators, bought $100,000 worth of stock, which grew in value to between $600,000 and $1.2 million in three years...
...His net worth is estimated to be more than $1.4 million...
...Brown has represented several Japanese corporations and foreign governments, the most notorious of which was Haiti under the Duvalier regime...
...Secretary of State Warren Christopher collected a salary of just under $1 million as chairman of his Los Angeles law firm, O'Melveny and Myers, which represents numerous American and Japanese clients...
...The Duke Endowment also paid him $107,988, and together with other assets (including a clam and scallop farm), Riley enjoys a net worth of over $1.25 million...
...Bruce Babbitt, who made $250,000 from his law firm Steptoe & Johnson, is like others in the cabinet who reported assets in the high six figures, but, because of the vagueness of disclosure forms, cannot be confirmed millionaires...
...As a Harvard lecturer, Labor Secretary Robert Reich earned $75,000, to which he added over $100,000 in consulting fees and book royalties and a striking $334,400 in honoraria...
...Bentsen escaped with an impressive profit...
...Every member made over $100,000 last year, a claim that only 1.8 percent of Americans can make...
...Trade Representative Mickey Kantor, a friend of the Clintons who served with Hillary on the board of the Legal Services Corporation, collected as partner of the L.A...
...Trent Lott voiced objections that Brown agreed to break ties with former clients and not discuss Commerce matters with former colleagues...
...With no neoconservatives and a preponderance of Wall Street liberals and Washington lobbyists, his cabinet is hardly politically diverse...
...But the use of a collapsing S&L to create the company, later investigated by regulators, proved to be a violation of federal banking laws, and Kosberg was fined $2.4 million...
...Secretary of the Treasury Lloyd Bentsen is the patriarch of the group...
...law firm of Manatt, Phelps, Phillips and Kantor a salary of $314,730...
...it was only after Mississippi Sen...
...t was once said that Eisenhower's I cabinet consisted of seven millionaires and a plumber...
...An inheritance, a reign as head of an insurance company, and various investments have made him a millionaire many times over...
...Indeed, he appointed four women, four blacks, and two Hispanics...
...One Bentsen investment, first reported by Jeff Gerth in the New York Times, illustrates the type of profit that Clinton condemned as a candidate...
...HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, an avid lecturer who reported roughly $250,000 in speaking fees alone last year, HHS Secretary Donna Shalala, and Veterans' Affairs Secretary Jesse Brown also fall into this group...
...It should come as no surprise that a joke making the rounds in Washington compares Clinton's cabinet to Eisenhower'swithout the plumber...
...Her diverse portfolio includes bonds from Kodak, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and McDonald's, as well as stock in Avon, Bausch & Lomb, General Electric, NYNEX, and many others, bringing her worth to at least $2.4 million...
...U.S...
...Financial disclosure forms, which require the listing of assets only in broad categories, indicate Bentsen's assets to be worth at least $5.9 million...
...His other assets, including Shearson Lehman holdings, put his net worth near $2 million...
...It includes fourteen lawyers and nine millionaires (more than either the Reagan or Bush cabinets had), many with Ivy League and Oxford credentials...
...He earned over $1 million last year as the chairman and CEO of TIAA-CREF, a pension fund that claims to be the largest in the world...
...Clinton has replaced the cabinet he criticized as elitist and "out of touch" with Americans with an even wealthier Democratic elite...
...The Georgetown Foreign Service professor holds a wide variety of stocks and bonds, from Apple Computer to PepsiCo to Walgreen, with a total value of at least $3.1 million...
...Madeleine Albright, who will enjoy cabinet status as the ambassador to the United Nations, is also a millionaire...
...His deputy, Clifton R. Wharton, sits on the boards of the Ford Motor Company and the New York Stock Exchange...
...He received a salary of roughly $580,000 from the firm, in addition to a $1 million buyout of his partnership interest and an $89,000 salary as DNC chairman...
...But the cabinet that Clinton said repeatedly would "look like America" looks a great deal more like Washington...
...Secretary of Education Richard Riley, former governor of South Carolina, received a $445,317 salary from his law firm, Nelson, Mullins, Riley & Scarborough...
...This cavalier approach to conflict of interest was the rule for Brown...
...In 1988, J. Livingston Kosberg, a Texas savingsand-loan operator, asked Bentsen to join a small, select group investing in a cornputer company...
...His total assets, worth at least $4.2 million, include retirement benefits from the firm and his directorships at the Lockheed Corporation and the First Interstate Bank...
...Sony Music Entertainment was but one of the firms willing to put up $10,000 for the "Friends of Ron Brown" inauguration gala, cancelled after the press caught wind of it and a major embarrassment loomed...
...Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary received a $271,148 salary as executive vice president of the Northern States Power Company in Minneapolis...
...Brown saw nothing objectionable about the event, despite the fact that the corporate sponsors would have issues before the Commerce Department...
...S ecretary of Commerce Ron Brown has been one of the premier lawyer-lobbyists in Washington, a partner at the powerful firm of Patton, Boggs and Blow...
Vol. 26 • April 1993 • No. 4
