MISDEMEANORS AND HIGH CRIMES

1
MISDEMEANORS AND HIGH CRIMES

• Chapter 33

The American Nation, 12e Mark C.Carnes John
A. Garraty
2
THE ELECTION OF 1988

• Republicans nominated Vice President George H.W.
  Bush
• Democrats nominated Massachusetts governor
  Michael Dukakis
• Tarnished by furlough program and Willie Horton
• Bush won 54 of the vote
• 426 to 112 electoral votes

3
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

• Responding to widespread calls for a crackdown on
  crime, elected officials hired more police,
  passed tougher laws and built additional prisons
• Shift toward capital punishment
• During 1960s only a handful of criminals were
  executed
• 1972 Supreme Court ruled in Furman decision that
  jury-imposed capital punishment was racially
  biased and thus unconstitutional
• Many states favored capital punishment statutes
  which then took decision out of hands of juries
• Supreme Court upheld these laws and capital
  punishment, on hold since 1967, resumed in 1976
• Since then nearly 1000 convicts have been executed

4
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

• State legislatures imposed tougher sentences and
  made it more difficult for prisoners to obtain
  parole
• 1973 New York passed laws that mandated harsh
  sentences for repeat drug offenders
• 1977 California replaced its parole system with
  mandatory sentencing, which denied convicts the
  prospect of early release
• Ten other states adopted similar systems
• Nationwide, the proportion of convicts serving
  long, mandatory sentences increased sharply
• From 1984 to 1995, more inmates died of suicide
  than in fights with other inmates

5
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

• Nations prison population increased
• 1973 federal and state prisons held about 10,000
  convicts
• 1990 number of prisoners exceeded 750,000
• 2004 2 million
• Required construction of a 1000-bed prison every
  week
• 1995 states spent more on prisons than on higher
  education
• Human Rights Watch reported the United States
  incarcerated more people than any country in the
  world except, perhaps, Communist China, which
  does not disclose that information

6
CRACK AND URBAN GANGS

• Several factors intensified the problem of
  violent crime, especially in the inner cities
• Shift in drug use from marijuana in the 1960s to
  cocaine
• Cocaine was more powerful and addictive but more
  expensive so few people could afford it
• During the 1980s growers of coca leaves in Peru
  and Bolivia greatly expanded production
• Drug traffickers in Colombia devised
  sophisticated systems to transport cocaine to
  U.S.
• Price of cocaine dropped from 120 an ounce in
  1981 to 50 in 1988

7
CRACK AND URBAN GANGS

• Even more important was proliferation of a
  cocaine-based compound called crack because it
  crackled when smoked
• Sold in 10 vials
• Gave an intense spasm of pleasure
• Lucrative crack trade led to bitter turf wars in
  the inner cities
• drive-by shooting entered the language
• Survey of Los Angeles County in the 1990s found
  that more than 150,000 young people belonged to
  1000 gangs
• In 1985, before crack, there were 147 murders in
  Washington, D.C. but in 1991 there were 482
• Black on black murder became an important cause
  of death for young men in their 20s
• By 2005, 20 of African American men in their 20s
  were in prison, or on probation, or on parole

8
GEORGE H.W. BUSH AS PRESIDENT

• In 1989, Bush named a drug czar to coordinate
  various bureaucracies, increased federal funding
  of local police, and spent 2.5 billion to stop
  the flow of illegal drugs into the nation
• Had little overall effect
• Opposed gun control and abortion and called for a
  constitutional amendment to ban flag burning

9
THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM IN EASTERN EUROPE

• Reforms instituted by Gorbachev in Soviet Union
  led to demands from Eastern European satellites
  for similar liberalization
• Gorbachev announced Soviet Union would not use
  force to keep communist governments in power in
  these nations
• Swiftly the people of Poland, Hungary,
  Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, East Germany
  and the Baltics did away with the repressive
  regimes
• Changes were peaceful except in Romania where the
  former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was executed
• Soviet-style communism had been discredited,
  Warsaw Pact no longer existed and Cold War was
  over

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11
THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM IN EASTERN EUROPE

• Bush expressed moral support for new governments
  and provided modest financial support in some
  instances
• June 1990 Bush and Gorbachev signed agreements
  reducing American and Russian stockpiles of
  long-range nuclear missiles by 30 and
  eliminating chemical weapons
• 1989 Bush sent troops to Panama to overthrow
  General Manuel Noriega who refused to yield power
  when his figurehead presidential candidate lost
  the election
• Noriega was under indictment in U.S. for drug
  trafficking
• After temporarily taking refuge in the Vatican
  embassy, he surrendered and was taken to the U.S.
  where he was tried, convicted and imprisoned

12
THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM IN EASTERN EUROPE

• Latin Americans were concerned about U.S. action
  in Panama and by fact that more Panamanian
  civilians were killed and wounded than armed
  supporters of Noriega
• Summer 1991 civil war broke out in Yugoslavia as
  Croatia and Slovenia sought independence from the
  Serbian-dominated central government
• Soon became religious war pitting Serb and
  Croatian Christians against Bosnian Muslims
• In Soviet Union, Gorbachev responded to demands
  for more local control of affairs by backing a
  draft treaty that would increase local autonomy
  and further privatize the Soviet economy
• In August, before treaty ratification, hard line
  communists attempted a coup
• Boris Yeltsin, the anticommunist president of the
  Russian Republic, defied the rebels and roused
  the people of Moscow
• The coup collapsed, the Communist party was
  disbanded and the Soviet Union was replaced by a
  federation of states, led by Yeltsin

13
THE WAR IN THE PERSIAN GULF

• Despite earlier aid to him, few in administration
  were fond of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein
• For years had been crushing the Kurds, an ethnic
  minority in northern Iraq that sought
  independence
• 1989 after Kurds assisted an Iranian advance,
  Saddam used chemical weapons on them, killing
  over 5000 civilians
• U.S. lodged a protest
• 1988 after Iran-Iraq War ended in stalemate,
  Saddam intensified war on Kurds

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15
THE WAR IN THE PERSIAN GULF

• August 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait hoping to add
  its oil reserves to those of Iraq thereby
  controlling about 25 of world total
• Soldiers overran Kuwait swiftly and carried off
  everything not nailed down
• Saddam annexed Kuwait and troops massed on the
  border with Saudi Arabia
• Saudis and Kuwaitis turned to U.S. and the UN for
  help
• UN applied trade sanctions
• The U.S.along with Great Britain, France, Italy,
  Egypt and Syria, at the invitation of Saudi
  Arabia, moved troops to Saudi bases

16
THE WAR IN THE PERSIAN GULF

• By November, Bush had increased the American
  troops in the area from 180,000 to 500,000
• Late November, UN authorized the use of force if
  Saddam did not withdraw from Kuwait by 15 January
  1991
• Congress voted to use force
• 17 January, Americans unleashed massive air
  attack which lasted for a month and reduced much
  of Iraq to rubble
• Iraqis fired a few missiles at Israel and Saudi
  Arabia and set the Kuwaiti oil wells on fire

17
THE WAR IN THE PERSIAN GULF

• 23 February Bush issued an ultimatum to pull out
  of Kuwait or face invasion
• When Saddam ignored the deadline, more than
  200,000 UN troops attacked in Desert Storm
• Between 24 and 27 February they retook Kuwait,
  killing tens of thousands of Iraqis and capturing
  even more
• Bush then stopped the attack and Saddam agreed to
  UN terms
• Reparations to Kuwait
• UN inspectors to determine whether Iraq was
  developing atomic and biological weapons
• No-fly zones over Kurdish territory and other
  strategic areas

18
THE WAR IN THE PERSIAN GULF

• Polls showed 90 of Americans approved Bushs
  handling of war and overall performance as chief
  executive
• Bush and others expected Saddam to be driven from
  power
• When Kurds in north and pro-Iranian Muslims in
  south tried, Saddam used the remnants of the army
  to crush them
• Refused repeatedly to carry out terms of UN
  agreement, particularly by hindering arms
  inspection

19
THE DEFICIT WORSENS

• War only worsened deficit
• Congress refused to close local military bases or
  cut funding for favored defense contractors
• Also nearly impossible to reduce nonmilitary
  expenditures, especially Medicare and Social
  Security
• Deficit for 1992 hit 290 billion
• Bush, who had promised no new taxes, was forced
  to raise the top tax rate from 28 to 31 and
  levy higher taxes on gasoline, liquor, expensive
  automobiles and other luxuries

20
LOOTING THE SAVINGS AND LOANS

• Another drain on the federal treasury resulted
  from demise of hundreds of federally insured
  savings and loan (SL) institutions.
• Traditionally played an important role in nearly
  every community by providing home mortgages
• 1980s Congress permitted SLs to enter the more
  lucrative but riskier business of commercial
  loans and stock investments
• Attracted swarm of aggressive investors who
  acquired SLs and invested company assets in high
  yield junk bonds and real estate deals
• Often failed to generate steady income and,
  worse, were often worthless
• October 1987 the stock market crashed and
  hundreds of SLs were plunged into bankruptcy

21
LOOTING THE SAVINGS AND LOANS

• In 1988 Michael Milken was indicted on 98 charges
  of fraud, stock manipulation, and insider trading
• Pled guilty, agreed to pay 1.3 billion in
  compensation, and went to jail
• His investment firm filed for bankruptcy
• Junk bond market collapsed
• Still more SLs went under and the governmentthe
  taxpayerswere forced to cover their losses
  because they were federally insured
• 5 billion reserve fund was quickly exhausted
• 1991 Congress allocated 70 billion to close the
  failing SLs, liquidate their assets and pay off
  depositors (may have cost taxpayers as much as
  500 billion)
• Justice Department charged nearly 1000 people

22
WHITEWATER AND THE CLINTONS

• William (Bill) Clinton was caught in the SL
  difficulties
• 1977 Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham,
  joined with James McDougal, a banker, to secure a
  loan to build vacation homes in the Ozarks
• The development, named Whitewater, became
  insolvent
• McDougal covered the debts with a loan from a SL
  he had acquired
• 1989 the SL failed, costing the federal
  government 60 million to reimburse depositors
• 1992 Federal investigators claimed the Clintons
  had been potential beneficiaries of McDougals
  illegal activities

23
WHITEWATER AND THE CLINTONS

• The scandal emerged when Clinton, then governor
  of Arkansas, was campaigning for the Democratic
  presidential nomination
• Soon overshadowed by news that Clinton had
  engaged in an extramarital affair of several
  years with Gennifer Flowers
• Clintons standing in the polls plummeted and he
  and his wife made an appearance on 60 Minutes to
  appeal to the American people for understanding
• He finished second in New Hampshire, won the
  Democratic nomination and named Albert Gore,
  senator from Tennessee, as his running mate

24
THE ELECTION OF 1992

• Bush expected to be easily renominated but
  encountered stiff opposition within Republican
  party
• Patrick Buchanan, outspoken conservative
• Ross Perot, billionaire Texan, then announced he
  would run as an independent
• Declared both major parties were out of touch
  with the people
• Promised to spend 100 million of his own money
  on his campaign
• Platform had both liberal and conservative planks

25
THE ELECTION OF 1992

• Polls showed Perot was popular in states Bush had
  been counting on and it seemed possible there
  might not be anyone with enough electoral votes
  to win
• Bush was renominated by the Republican convention
• Clinton accused Bush of failing to deal with the
  lingering economic recession and promised to
  undertake public works projects, to encourage
  private investment and to improve the nations
  education and health insurance systems
• 44 million people voted for Clinton, 38 million
  for Bush and 20 million for Perot
• Clinton won with 370 electoral votes to Bushs 168

26
A NEW START CLINTON

• Reasons for Clintons success
• Intention to change health insurance and welfare
  systems and bring budget deficit under control
• Solid knowledge of public issues and appearance
  of mastery and control
• Willingness to reconcile differences
• Had promised to end ban on gays and lesbians in
  the military but settled for policy of dont
  ask, dont tell after the Joint Chiefs and a
  number of influential members of Congress objected

27
A NEW START CLINTON

• July 1993 Clinton appointed Ruth Bader Ginsberg
  to the Supreme Court
• Ginsberg was known to believe abortion to be
  constitutional
• Clinton also indicated he would veto any bill
  limiting abortion rights
• Reversed important Bush policies by signing a
  revived family leave bill into law and
  authorizing the use of fetal tissue for research
  purposes
• Wanted to reduce the deficit by 500 billion over
  5 years, half by spending cuts and half by new
  taxes
• Since a number of Democrats refused to cooperate
  and the Republicans were firmly against it,
  Clinton was forced to accept changes
• Effort to reform health care never came up with a
  viable plan to take to Congress
• Whitewater scandal created public pressure which
  forced Attorney General Janet Reno to appoint a
  special prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, a Republican
  lawyer

28
EMERGENCE OF THE REPUBLICAN MAJORITY

• Paula Corbin Jones, a State of Arkansas employee,
  charged that Clinton, while governor had asked
  her to engage in oral sex
• Clintons attorney denied the accusation and
  sought to have the case dismissed on the grounds
  that a president could not be sued while in
  office but the case continued
• Republicans in 1994, led by congressman Newt
  Gingrich of Georgia, offered voters an ambitious
  program to stimulate the economy by reducing both
  the federal debt and the federal income tax
• Would turn many of the function of the federal
  government over to the states or to private
  enterprise
• Federally administered welfare programs were to
  be replaced by block grants to the states
• Many environmental protection measures were to be
  repealed
• Republicans gained control of both houses of
  Congress and tried to pass their contract with
  America in the 1995 budget which Clinton vetoed,
  leading to an impasse
• The government shut down all but essential
  services, for a time

29
THE ELECTION OF 1996

• Public blamed Congress, and especially Gingrich,
  for the shutdown and the presidents approval
  rating rose
• Upturn during and after 1991 benefited Clinton
• By 1996, unemployment was below 6 and inflation
  below 3
• Dow Jones industrial stock average soared above
  6000 (triple the average in 1987)
• Bob Dole from Kansas got the Republican
  nomination
• Clinton won with 379 to 159 electoral votes but
  the Republicans retained control of both houses
  of Congress

30
A RACIAL DIVIDE

• 1990s saw the arrest of former football star O.J.
  Simpson for the murder of his estranged wife and
  a man, both of whom were white
• After a tempestuous nine month trial, Simpson was
  acquitted
• To many whites, Simpson was another violent black
  male
• To many blacks, he was another wrongly accused
  black male
• 85 of blacks but only 34 of whites agreed with
  the not guilty verdict

31
A RACIAL DIVIDE

• 1992 Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall
  observed that educated Americans of each race
  appeared to have given up on integration
• After the Simpson trial, Louis Farrakhan, leader
  of the separatist Nation of Islam, called on
  African Americans to express their solidarity by
  participating in a Million Man March on
  Washington, D.C.
• 16 October 1995 the demonstration attracted
  500,000 marchers

32
A RACIAL DIVIDE

• Persistence of inequality was one reason for the
  new separatism
• 1972 Incomes of black families were one-third
  less than those of white families
• 1992 The statistic was virtually unchanged
• The leading sectors of the economytechnology and
  information servicesplaced a premium on
  education
• Math and reading scores of 17-year-old African
  American students rose relative to those of white
  students in the 1980s
• But black test scores after 1988 fell sharply

33
A RACIAL DIVIDE

• Significant casualty of the changing tone of race
  relations was affirmative action which gave
  minorities preference in hiring and college
  admission
• Initially justified on the grounds that the
  legacy of slavery and the persistence of racism
  put blacks at an unfair disadvantage in finding
  jobs or gaining admission to college
• Affirmative action programs spread in the 1970s
  and 1980s
• July 1995 Regents of the University of
  California ordered an end to affirmative action
• Led to protests throughout system
• Following year California voters approved
  Proposition 209, abolished racial and gender
  preferences in all government hiring and
  education
• U.S Supreme Court let the law stand and other
  state passed similar laws

34
A RACIAL DIVIDE

• Opinion polls indicated that attitudes about race
  were becoming more complicated and ambivalent
• By an overwhelming majority, whites endorsed the
  gains of the civil rights movement
• In 1964, only 1 in 5 whites lived near a black
  neighborhood
• By 1994, 3 in 5 whites did
• In a 1968 Gallup poll, only 17 of whites and 48
  of blacks approved of interracial marriages
• By 1994, the figure was 45 of whites and 68 of
  blacks
• Many observed that even when blacks and whites
  attended the same schools, learned the same
  songs, rooted for the same teams, they often
  attended different classrooms, sat at separate
  tables in the cafeteria and cheered from
  voluntarily segregated sections of the bleachers

35
VIOLENCE AND POPULAR CULTURE

• Many people were concerned about the violence in
  popular culture
• The most violent film of the 1930s, Public Enemy,
  and the 1974 vigilante fantasy Death Wish had
  body counts that topped out at 8
• Three movies of the late 1980sRobocop, Die Hard,
  Rambo IIIeach had a death tally of 60 or more,
  nearly one every two minutes
• Trend culminated in the unimaginably violent
  Natural Born Killers (1994)
• TV networks crammed violent shows into prime time
• 1991 survey found that by the age of 18, the
  average viewer had witnessed some 40,000 murders
  on TV

36
VIOLENCE AND POPULAR CULTURE

• 1981 Music Television (MTV) was launched
  featuring pop song videos
• Within three years, 24 million watched every day
• Michael Jacksons Thriller transformed the genre
  as pop music acquired a harder beat and more
  explicit lyrics
• 1988 American Academy of Pediatrics expressed
  concern that the average teen-ager spent more
  than two hours a day watching rock videos, over
  half of which featured violence and three-fourths
  of which contained sexually suggestive material

37
VIOLENCE AND POPULAR CULTURE

• Rap emerged from the ghetto and spread by means
  of radio, cassettes and CDs
• Consisted of unpredictably metered lyrics set
  against an exaggeratedly heavy downbeat
• Rap performers conveyed, in words and gestures,
  an attitude of defiant, raw rage against whatever
  challenged their sense of manhood
• Appeal of rap spread beyond black audiences and
  led to white rappers like Eminem, whose lyrics
  reveled in being offensive and whose contempt
  knew no bounds

38
VIOLENCE AND POPULAR CULTURE

• Violation of social norms had long been part of
  adolescence
• Most consumers of pop violence in the 1990s and
  early years of the 2000s, had little difficulty
  distinguishing between cultural fantasies and
  everyday life
• But for those who had grown up in the ghettos,
  the culture of violence seemed to legitimate the
  meanness of everyday life
• Moreover, violence and criminality were becoming
  so much a part of popular culture that some
  adolescents retreated to wholly imaginative
  worlds conjured by movies, video and computer
  games, TV and pop music

39
VIOLENCE AND POPULAR CULTURE

• A few went so far as to act out destructive
  fantasies
• 1 October 1997 A 16-year-old boy stabbed his
  mother, shot and killed two students and wounded
  seven others at his high school in Pearl,
  Mississippi
• Over the next 18 months a spate of similar
  shootings in West Paducah, Kentucky Jonesboro,
  Arkansas and Springfield, Oregon, left 5 dead
  and 23 wounded
• 20 April 1999 Two teenagers went on a rampage
  with automatic weapons at Columbine High School
  in Littleton, Colorado, killing 12 students and a
  teacher and wounding 30 others before killing
  themselves
• Turned out to be a replay of a 1995 movie
  Basketball Diaries
• A month after the Columbine shooting, a
  15-year-old shot six students at a high school in
  Conyers, Georgia

40
CLINTON IMPEACHED

• January 1998 a judge ordered Clinton to testify
  in the lawsuit Paula Corbin Jones had filed
  against him
• To strengthen her case, Jones sought to show
  Clinton had a history of womanizing and so she
  subpoenaed a former White House intern, Monica
  Lewinsky
• Clinton and Lewinsky both denied an affair, which
  Clinton restated to TV cameras after the
  information was leaked
• Hillary Clinton denounced the charges as part of
  a right wing conspiracy
• Lewinsky had been confiding in Linda Tripp, a
  former White House employee, and Tripp had
  secretly taped some 20 hours of their
  conversations
• She turned these tapes over to special prosecutor
  Kenneth Starr

41
CLINTON IMPEACHED

• In the Tripp tapes, Lewinsky provided intimate
  details of sexual encounters with Clinton, making
  it appear Clinton and Lewinsky had lied under
  oath
• Starr threatened to indict Lewinsky for perjury
• In return for immunity, she repudiated her
  earlier testimony and admitted engaging in sexual
  relations with the president and being encouraged
  by him and his aides to provide false testimony
• When called to testify before the Starr grand
  jury in August, Clinton admitted to
  inappropriate intimate contact but stated he
  had not had sex according to his definition
• More legalisms followed

42
CLINTON IMPEACHED

• Clintons testimony infuriated Starr who made
  public Lewinskys humiliatingly detailed
  testimony and announced that Clintons deceptive
  testimony warranted consideration by the House of
  Representatives for impeachment
• Throughout this, opinion polls suggested two in
  three Americans approved of Clintons performance
  as president
• Most Americans blamed the scandal on the
  intrusive Starr as much as on Clinton
• In the November election, Republicans nearly lost
  their majority in the House

43
CLINTON IMPEACHED

• Republican leaders in the House impeached Clinton
  on the grounds that he had committed perjury and
  had obstructed justice by inducing Lewinsky and
  others to give false testimony in the Jones case
• The vote closely followed party lines
• The impeachment trial began in January 1999 with
  Chief Justice William Rehnquist presiding
• Republicans numbered 55, enough to control the
  proceedings but 12 short of the two-thirds needed
  to convict
• Democrats, while publicly critical of Clintons
  behavior, maintained that his indiscretions did
  not constitute high crimes and misdemeanors as
  defined by the Constitution
• Article accusing Clinton of perjury was defeated
  55 to 45 the obstruction of justice charge was
  defeated with a vote of 50 to 50

44
CLINTONS LEGACY

• One reason Clinton survived was the health of the
  economy
• Until the final months, the Clinton years
  coincided with the longest economic boom in the
  nations history
• Clinton deserves much of the creditby reducing
  the federal deficit, interest rates came down,
  spurring investment and economic growth
• By August 1998, unemployment had fallen to 4.8,
  the lowest level since the 1960s
• Inflation was a minor 1, the lowest since the
  1950s
• In 1998, the federal government had its first
  surplus since 1969
• In the 2000 fiscal year, the surplus hit 237
  billion

45
CLINTONS LEGACY

• Clinton also promoted the globalization of the
  economy
• Successfully promoted the North American Free
  Trade Agreement to reduce tariff barriers
• Congress approved in 1993
• During the last half of the 1990s, the U.S. led
  all industrial nations in the rate of growth of
  its real gross national product
• New global economy harmed many
• Union leaders complained that their members could
  not compete against convict or sweatshop labor in
  foreign countries
• Others complained the emphasis on worldwide
  economic growth was generating an environmental
  calamity
• International protests against the World Trade
  Organization culminated in the disruption of the
  2000 meeting in Seattle, when thousands of
  protestors went on a rampage

46
CLINTONS LEGACY

• Clintons record in foreign affairs was mixed
• 1993 failed to assemble an international force
  to prevent ethnic cleansing by Serbian troops
  against Muslims in Bosnia
• Same year a U.S. initiative in Somalia, an
  African nation wracked by civil war and famine,
  ended in failure when a Somali warlord ambushed
  and killed 15 American commandos
• 1999 Clinton proposed a NATO effort to prevent
  Yugoslavian General Slobodan Milosevic from
  crushing the predominantly Muslim province of
  Kosovo, which was attempting to secede
• After several months of intense NATO bombing of
  Serbia, Milosevic withdrew from Kosovo
• Within a year, he was forced from office and into
  prison, awaiting trial for war crimes before a UN
  tribunal

47
THE ECONOMIC BOOM AND THE INTERNET

• Significant part of the prosperity of the 1990s
  came from new technologies such as cellular
  phones and genetic engineering, but especially
  from the development of the Internet
• Developed in the 1970s by U.S. military and
  academic institutions to coordinate research, the
  Internet lacked a common language
• Early 1990s, Tim Berners-Lee, a British physicist
  working at a research institute in Switzerland,
  devised software that became the grammar of the
  Internet
• With this language, the Internet became the World
  Wide Web (WWW)
• The number of websites increased exponentially

48
THE ECONOMIC BOOM AND THE INTERNET

• In 1995, Bill Gatess Microsoft entered the
  picture with its Windows operating system, which
  made the computer easy to use
• It competed with Netscape by creating a web
  browserMicrosoft Internet Explorerand embedded
  it in its software in the Windows 95 bundle
• Netscape and other service providers protested
  that Microsoft was threatening to monopolize
  Internet access

49
THE ECONOMIC BOOM AND THE INTERNET

• In 1995, Jeff Bezoss Internet company designed
  to sell books, Amazon.com, made its first sale
• Within six years its annual sales approached 3
  billion and its stock soared
• Bezos became one of the richest men in the nation
  
• Others thought they could do the same with
  products fro pet food to pornography
• Many start up companies consisted of little more
  than the hopes of the founders
• Venture capitalists poured billions into
  emerging dot-coms

50
THE ECONOMIC BOOM AND THE INTERNET

• In 1999, some 200 Internet companies went
  public, selling shares in the major stock
  exchanges
• Raised 20 billion easily
• NASDAQ, the exchange which specialized in tech
  companies, had its index more than double between
  October 1999 and March 2000
• Prices of dot-com stocks kept climbing though few
  companies generated profits and some lacked
  revenue all together
• Spring 2000 A selling wave hit tech stocks and
  spilled over to other companies
• Stock prices plummeted with the NASDAQ loosing
  nearly half its value in six months
• In all, some 2 trillion in stocks and stock
  funds disappeared

51
THE 2000 ELECTION George W. Bush Wins by One
Vote

• During the 2000 campaign, Vice President Al Gore,
  tried to prove his indispensability to Clinton,
  whose administration was credited with the
  economic growth of the 1990s, but distance
  himself from the scandals
• Raised money for the Democratic party but did not
  mention Clinton
• Gore ran afoul of election laws by soliciting
  funds in inappropriate places while Clinton
  devoted his energies to his wifes successful
  campaign to represent New York in the Senate
• Gore became the Democratic nominee and chose
  Senator Joseph Lieberman, an orthodox Jew from
  Connecticut as his running mate

52
THE 2000 ELECTION George W. Bush Wins by One
Vote

• The Republican nominee was George W. Bush, son of
  former president Bush, who selected the defense
  secretary from his fathers administration,
  Richard Cheney, as his running mate
• Consumer activist and environmentalist Ralph
  Nader also entered the race on the Green party
  ticket
• Main issue was what to do with the federal
  surplus of 1 trillion within five years
• Bush wanted a substantial tax cut
• Gore wanted to increase spending on education and
  shore up the social security system
• Gore seemed stiff, though knowledgeable while
  Bush ambushed the English language
• Candidates spent a record 1 billion to get their
  messages to the voters

53
THE 2000 ELECTION George W. Bush Wins by One
Vote

• On election night, it appeared at midnight that
  Bush had 246 electoral votes and Gore 267 with
  270 votes to win and Florida, with 25 votes,
  undecided
• Bush had a lead in Florida of 1784 out of nearly
  6 million votes cast
• After a machine recount, Bushs lead was reduced
  to several hundred votes with Democrats
  complaining that a punch-card ballot was
  confusing and that machines routinely failed to
  count them correctly
• Gores lawyers demanded several predominantly
  Democratic counties be recounted by hand
• Republicans claimed could not change voting
  procedures after the election
• Yet when overseas absentee ballots came pouring
  in, many from military personnel, Republicans
  demanded technical rules, such as requiring the
  ballots be postmarked on or before election day
  be waived

54
THE 2000 ELECTION George W. Bush Wins by One
Vote

• Entire election wound up in the courts
• 12 December 2000 the Supreme Court ruled, 5 to
  4, that the selective hand counts violated the
  Constitutions guarantee of equal protection
• Bush was the winner
• Nationwide, Gore received 51 million votes to
  Bushs 50.5 million
• Nader received 3 million

2000 2000 2000 2000 2000 2000 2000 2000 2000 2000
2000 2000 2000 2000
55
TERRORISM INTENSIFIES

• In the wake of the Cold War, many military
  dictators who had been kept afloat by the U.S. or
  the Soviets found themselves having to seek the
  support of the people in order to stay in power
• In many Arab nations, rulers cultivated popular
  support by denouncing Israel, which refused to
  return Palestinian land seized in the 1967 war
• U.S. encouraged Israel to trade land for peace
  but few Israelis believed the promises of Arab
  leaders who routinely called for the destruction
  of Israel and had trained and funded terrorism
• American leaders called on Arab leaders to show
  their good faith by putting an end to terrorism,
  then Israel would return some land
• Yet Arab leaders, whose countries were often
  mired in poverty, knew that they could garner
  popular support by denouncing Israel

56
TERRORISM INTENSIFIES

• Since the U.S. heavily supported Israel, Arab
  rage focused on the United States and American
  soldiers serving abroad as well
• Several dozen separate terrorist organizations
  were behind the attacks on American targets
• 1998 Osama bin Laden, the son of a Saudi oil
  billionaire, published a fatwaa religious
  edictto Islamic peoples throughout the world to
  kill Americans and their allies, both civil and
  military.
• Bin Laden was protected by an extremist Islamic
  group, the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan
• Six months later, bin Ladens organizational-Qaed
  ahad perpetrated bombings of the U.S. embassies
  in Nairobi and Dar es-Salaam in Africa

57
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58
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

• At 840 on the morning of September 11, 2001,
  Madeline Amy Sweeney, a flight attendant on
  American Airlines flight 11, placed a call on her
  cell phone to inform her supervisor in Boston
  that 4 Arab men had slashed the throats of two
  attendants, forced their way into the cockpit and
  taken over the plane
• She provided their seat numbers
• When asked if she knew where they were headed,
  she looked out the window and realized they were
  headed for the World Trade Center

59
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

• The Boeing 767 was traveling at 500 miles per
  hour at 846 when it slammed into the 96th floor
  of the north tower, causing a fireball to engulf
  8 or 9 floors
• Fifteen minutes later a second jet plowed into
  the 80th floor of the south tower
• 50,000 people worked in the World Trade Center
• As thousands fled, hundreds of firefighters
  charged up the stairs to try to rescue those who
  were trapped

60
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

• At 930 the White House received word that
  another hijacked airliner was barreling toward
  Washington, D.C.
• Secret Service agents rushed Cheney to an
  emergency command bunker below the White House
• At 935 the airliner plunged into the Pentagon
  and burst into flames
• Cheney telephoned Bush, who was in Florida, to
  tell him the nation was under attack
• Bush authorized the Air Force to shoot down any
  other hijacked airliners
• A few minutes later a fourth hijacked airliner
  plowed into a field in Pennsylvania after
  passengers had declared their intentionby cell
  phoneto retake the plane

61
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

• At 959, the south tower of the World Trade
  center collapsed followed by the north tower half
  an hour later
• Nearly 3000 lay dead in the rubble, including the
  Fire Chief and 350 firemen
• Several hundred more perished at the Pentagon and
  the crash of the airliner in Pennsylvania
• Teams of four or five Arabic speaking men had
  hijacked each of the planes
• Several of the hijackers were quickly linked to
  al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, who had previously
  been indicted (but not captured) for the 1998
  bombing of the U.S. embassies in East Africa and
  the 2000 attack on the USS Cole
• Bin Laden operated with impunity in Afghanistan

62
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

• That evening, President Bush assured Americans
  that the terrorists would be found and made to
  pay for their attacks and that any government
  harboring them would be held equally responsible
• Bin Laden, in a video recording, denied
  involvement in the attacks but praised those who
  had carried them out
• Several weeks later, Bush declared that bin Laden
  would be taken dead or alive and offered 25
  million for his death or capture
• Within the United States, thousands of Arabs were
  rounded up and detained
• Those with visa and immigration violations were
  imprisoned

63
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

• Several letters addressed to government officials
  included threatening messages and anthrax, which
  could prove fatal if touched or inhaled
• Thousands of government employees took
  antibiotics as a precaution
• Some spores had seeped out and half a dozen
  postal workers and mail recipients died
• Bush created the Cabinet position of Office of
  Homeland Security and named Pennsylvania Governor
  Tom Ridge to direct it

64
AMERICA FIGHTS BACKWar in Afghanistan

• Bin Laden was in Afghanistan protected by the
  Taliban
• Taliban had fought the Soviet invasion in the
  1980s, inflicting heavy losses with weapons and
  support from the U.S.
• Source of the anthrax letters was problematic
• Bushs secretary of state, Colin Powell,
  maintained that U.S. troops should only be
  deployed when their political objective was
  clear, military advantage overwhelming and means
  of disengaging securePowell Doctrine
• Powell urged many European, Asian and Islamic
  states to crack down on terrorist cells in their
  countries and to provide assistance in the U.S.
  military campaign against the Taliban
• Persuaded anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan to
  join forces to topple the regime

65
AMERICA FIGHTS BACKWar in Afghanistan

• 20 September Bush ordered the Taliban to turn
  over bin Laden and top al-Qaeda leaders
• When the Taliban refused, Bush unleashed missiles
  and warplanes against Taliban installations and
  defenses
• Taliban forces hunkered in bunkers to withstand
  bombings and fought off attacks by anti-Taliban
  forces
• Small teams of American soldiers with hand-held
  computers and satellite-linked navigational
  devices, joined with anti-Taliban contingents,
  marking Taliban positions with laser spotters and
  communicating with high altitude bombers which
  dropped electronically guided bombs from 30,000
  feet
• Taliban soldiers fled or switched sides
• Taliban were driven from power with the loss of
  only one U.S. soldier to enemy fire (a few U.S.
  soldiers and hundreds of civilians were killed by
  errant bombs)

66
THE SECOND IRAQ WAR

• January 2002 After the Taliban had been crushed,
  Bush declared the U.S. would take preemptive
  actions against regimes that threatened it
• Identified Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an axis
  of evil
• Immediately after September 11, he initiated
  plans to attack Iraq
• Secretary of State Powell advised Bush not to
  attack Iraq
• If Saddam were driven from power, U.S. would be
  left with Iraq and the following disarray
• Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and
  others insisted Iraqis would welcome liberation
  and embrace democracy and a free Iraq would
  stimulate democratic reforms throughout the
  Middle East
• Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed an invasion of
  half a million troops
• Rumsfeld insisted on a smaller, faster, cheaper
  force of 125,000
• Spring 2002 CIA agents were spirited into Iraq
  and airplanes and soldiers were deployed to
  Kuwait
• Bush denied he had any plans to attack Iraq

67
THE SECOND IRAQ WAR

• In September, Bush sought congressional support,
  stating that the Iraqi leader had weapons of mass
  destruction
• Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of war
  appropriations
• Bush called on the UN to join in the attack
• Following the Iran-Iraq War, UN inspectors had
  destroyed thousands of tons of chemical weapons
• In recent years these inspectors had found little
  further evidence of these weapons

68
THE SECOND IRAQ WAR

• Powell presented evidence to the UN that Saddam
  had been building and stockpiling weapons of mass
  destruction that the UN inspectors had not found
• UN Security Council order Saddam to cooperate
  with UN inspectors and warned of serious
  consequences if he did not comply
• After several months, Bush grew impatient with
  the slow pace of the inspections
• When the Security Council refused to take action,
  Bush formed a coalitionGreat Britain, Italy,
  Spain and a few other countriesto oust Saddam

69
THE SECOND IRAQ WAR

• 20 March 2003 American missiles and bombsin the
  Shock and Awe campaignpounded Saddams defenses
• Two armored columns roared across the Kuwaiti
  border into Iraq
• British forces moved along the coast toward the
  oil port of Basra
• TV reporters provided live coverage
• Iraqi resistance was disorganized and ineffective
• American forces advanced half way to Baghdad the
  first night

70
THE SECOND IRAQ WAR

• 4 April U.S. Army seized the Baghdad
  International Airport
• The next morning, 800 American soldiers in tanks
  and armored vehicles blasted their way into
  downtown Baghdad
• Some Iraqis poured into the streets to celebrate
• Others looted offices, museums, stores, and
  hospitals
• Saddam disappeared and his government evaporated
• By mid-April, the Pentagon declared major combat
  operations had come to an end
• Iraq was in chaos and there were too few U.S.
  soldiers to preserve order
• Islamic radicals joined with Saddam supporters to
  attack occupation forces

71
THE ELECTION OF 2004

• The war became the main issue of the election
  campaign
• Democratic candidate Howard Dean of Vermont leapt
  ahead in the polls by denouncing the war
• Proved adept at using the Internet to raise funds
  and recruit supporters
• Called for national health insurance and legal
  recognition of marriage for gays and lesbians
• December 2003 American soldiers captured Saddam
  and Bushs approval rating soared
• Democrats started looking for an alternative to
  ultra-liberal Dean

72
THE ELECTION OF 2004

• By January, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts
  was gaining in the polls and, by April, was the
  Democratic nominee
• Chose Senator John Edwards of North Carolina as
  his running mate
• In Iraq the situation deteriorated as 60 Minutes
  revealed American captors had tortured Iraqi
  captives in the Abu Ghraib prison
• Casualties mounted
• Cost of the occupation was spiraling upward
• No Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had been
  found

73
THE ELECTION OF 2004

• At the Democratic Convention in July, Kerry
  emphasized his military service in Vietnam
• Contrast to Bush who had served in the National
  Guard in Alabama and Texas during the war
• Criticized Bush for attacking Iraq before
  capturing bin Laden and for starting the war with
  insufficient international support and
  insufficient troops to maintain order and rebuild
  Iraq

74
THE ELECTION OF 2004

• Bush mobilized conservatives and religious
  fundamentalists by proposing a constitutional
  amendment that would define marriage as the union
  between a man and a woman
• Kerry endorsed gay rights but endlessly qualified
  previous statements on same-sex marriage
• Bushs campaign attacked Kerrys war record
• Some Vietnam veterans seized on the fact that in
  1971 Kerry had told a congressional committee
  that the Vietnam war was wrong and immoral
• Republicans also portrayed Kerry as opportunistic
  and Bush accused him of flip-flopping
• More than 12 million new voters came to the polls
  for one of the most divisive elections in recent
  history
• Kerry received 57 million votes but Bush got 60
  million and won with 286 electoral votes to 252

75
THE IMPONDERABLE FUTURE

• In Iraq, bombings rocked police stations and
  public squares and smoldering tensions between
  rival Muslim groups threatened to break into
  civil war
• By early 2005, over 1400 American soldiers had
  been killed, 10 times more than had died fighting
  to topple Saddams regime
• The federal deficit approached half a trillion
  dollars

76
WEBSITES

• Desert Storm
• http//www.desert-storm.com
• Investigating the President The Trial
• http//www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/resources/1998/lewi
  nsky
• Kosovo
• http//www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1998/10/kosovo
• Oklahoma City Bombing
• http//www.cnn.com/US/9703/okc.trial