THE ORACLE OF KEMP
The Oracle of Kemp During the heated months of debate on most-favored-nation trading status for China, many politicians tried to assure the anti-China lobby that while they were against revoking...
...The remaining 729 attendees represented businesses, labor unions, interest groups, and nonprofits...
...Oracle refuses to release the terms of Kemp's current membership, but when he temporarily vacated the Oracle board during last year's presidential campaign, he disclosed owning 14,000 Oracle shares, valued at $500,000...
...On July 10, the Senate caved...
...Not bad...
...Jason Turner, an architect of Wisconsin's successful welfare reform, notes that if the grievance language becomes law it will "absolutely, positively, cause the withdrawal of thousands of work opportunities in Wisconsin...
...This could eliminate most productive employment opportunities available to people moving off welfare...
...About Those White House Coffees In his opening statement at the hearings of the Thompson committee on Tuesday, Oklahoma senator Don Nickles raised the point that it is illegal—according to Section 441c(a)2 of the Federal Election Code—to solicit contributions from federal contractors...
...Moreover, the threat of union-inspired litigation, and the intricacies of complying with the language, could discourage private employers from participating in state efforts to find work for welfare recipients...
...For an indication, we can look at an interesting work of French-style micro-sociology called Federal Pork and White House Coffees, written by Kenneth R. Weinstein and August Stofferahn of the Heritage Foundation, for release on Monday, July 14...
...They're getting their money's worth: In 1995, these same organizations received $825 million in grants and loans from federal agencies...
...Of those non-governmental attendees, 199 (or 27 percent) represented groups that received federal grants or contracts...
...Really...
...And he's lost 20 pounds...
...Unless congressional Republicans remain vigilant in the next few weeks, they could find their past work on welfare all for naught...
...This was odd, since Kemp had cosigned an op-ed with his fellow Empower America co-directors on June 23—just before the MFN vote—arguing that "high-tech weapons and technology should not be sold to China...
...Is the business of America's politicians really just business...
...Private polling of GOP donors shows he's more highly regarded than any other Republican...
...These talks may determine whether last year's welfare reform succeeds in moving people from the dole to the work force...
...Still, a presidential bid is only being plotted...
...A conference committee of the two houses will now have to decide whether to retain the provision...
...They also received $30.4 billion in federal contracts in 1995, and $29.2 billion in 1996...
...IBM chairman Lou Gerstner personally called members of the Senate Republican leadership and urged them to vote against the proposed amendment...
...It may have been the single most important political event I have witnessed in my life...
...And Kemp's board membership is believed to be highly lucrative...
...How Jude Wanniski Spent the 4th We quote from his letter to clients: "My wife Patricia and I spent the four-day July 4th weekend in Chicago at the International Islamic Conference, hosted by the Nation of Islam, in conjunction with the World Islamic Peoples Leadership...
...When House speaker Newt Gingrich confided to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he may run for president in 2000, the reaction in the political community was, Yeah, right...
...The World Islamic Peoples Leadership, incidentally, is chaired by Libyan strongman Muammar Qadhafi...
...At its conclusion, Farrakhan stands a good chance at uniting 1.2 billion Muslims under his spiritual leadership...
...Right...
...Many House Republicans don't want him back as speaker, anyway, and this would give him a graceful way to depart...
...What made the event so important was that when the weekend began, Farrakhan was the spiritual leader of 200,000 members of the Nation of Islam and clearly the most influential of 33 million African-Americans...
...And his chief political adviser, Joe Gaylord, is said to be fully on board...
...The amendment would have required American companies to obtain government approval before exporting a particular class of high-performance supercomputers to countries like China and Russia...
...The coffees raised $27 million, of which an astonishing $14.4 million was contributed by federal contractors or grant recipients...
...Needless to say, this was not mentioned in Kemp's Empower America letter...
...Despite his national popularity rating of a meager 30 percent, he's still the best Republican fund-raiser...
...With Jude al-Wanniski as his grand vizier...
...Language has been inserted into the Senate bill that would prohibit companies participating in state-sponsored welfare-to-work programs from hiring "that will infringe in any way upon the promotional opportunities of employed individuals...
...There were 1,528 attendees at the coffees, according to lists released by the White House...
...The sincerity of that claim was called into question last week when the Senate defeated an amendment to the defense authorization bill...
...Some previously exported supercomputers have been diverted to military use by China and Russia, and the proposed restriction seemed to be a common-sense attempt to staunch the flow of advanced technology to the Chinese and Russian militaries...
...What would possess Kemp to weigh in, contrary to his previous position, on such an esoteric amendment...
...Well, it just might have to do with his service on the Oracle Corporation's board of directors...
...Now here's the twist: Newt really is making plans to run for the Republican presidential nomination...
...Not silly at all, as the goal is simply to prevent the work requirements from being weakened...
...Under both House and Senate language, disgruntled workers at firms that hired former welfare recipients could subject their employers to special grievance procedures for reasons ranging from sex discrimination to displacement...
...But when the defense bill came to the Senate floor last week, there was furious lobbying against the measure by business groups like the Chamber of Commerce and computer companies...
...Oracle is a California-based computer company that manufactures software compatible with the supercomputers covered by the amendment...
...He distributed a letter, written on Empower America stationery, strongly criticizing the proposal...
...He's been talking to friends and allies about this for weeks...
...Last week's Senate vote showed that business interests could trump national-security considerations...
...Newt's the One...
...It's not a done deal yet...
...The amendment was defeated 72-27...
...The result would be financial penalties imposed by the Labor Department...
...The plan calls for Gingrich to hang on as speaker through November 1998, then leave Congress and lay the groundwork for a campaign...
...Gingrich may also have an impressive claim to make if Republicans hold the House next year: I engineered the capture of Congress and held the House through two elections...
...Don't Get a Job_ Congressional Republicans are negotiating with Democrats and the White House this week over changes in the welfare bill...
...The MFN debate showed that business interests could trump human-rights concerns...
...Of these, 799 were either DNC officials or Clinton White House people or state and local Democrats...
...One reason for that is the work requirements...
...Also contentious are grievance procedures...
...Indeed, the House of Representatives passed such an amendment overwhelmingly last month...
...At the moment, it looks likelier that new regulations and loopholes will gut state work requirements...
...Santorum also noted that the "welfare reform law is doing magnificent things...
...Where will Nickles go with this line of argument in the week ahead...
...Besides, Gingrich may have considerable appeal to the GOP faithful as a presidential candidate...
...House Republicans are toiling to fix these problems, which is why it was disappointing to see Senate Republican Rick Santorum quoted in the July 8 Washington Post characterizing efforts to tighten the work requirements as "just silly...
...The Oracle of Kemp During the heated months of debate on most-favored-nation trading status for China, many politicians tried to assure the anti-China lobby that while they were against revoking MFN, they really did want to get tough on Chinese misbehavior in other ways...
...One other person lobbying the Senate to defeat the amendment was Jack Kemp...
Vol. 2 • July 1997 • No. 44
