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- <text id=89TT2719>
- <title>
- Oct. 16, 1989: Grapevine
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Oct. 16, 1989 The Ivory Trail
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 36
- Grapevine
- </hdr><body>
- <p> YOUR TIME IS UP. Connoisseurs of cornball speechifying are
- dismayed by the temporary demise of the congressional
- equivalent of The Gong Show: the wacky period when the
- One-Minute Rule allows members to wax eloquent on such topics
- as the joy in Chicago over the Cubs' making the play-offs. So
- many Congressmen were acting like would-be Willard Scotts that
- Speaker Tom Foley last week suspended the One-Minute Rule until
- Congress deals with serious business like the deficit.
- </p>
- <p> RETURN TO SENDER. Charles Keating, owner of Lincoln Savings
- & Loan, is accused of frittering away $1.1 billion. He also gave
- at least $1.3 million to organizations affiliated with five
- Senators who met with the Federal Home Loan Board about his
- thrift. The Senators -- Democrats John Glenn of Ohio, Alan
- Cranston of California, Donald Riegle of Michigan, Dennis
- DeConcini of Arizona and Arizona Republican John McCain -- deny
- they were pressuring the board to go easy on Keating. After the
- Government brought fraud charges against Keating last month,
- DeConcini returned the contributions (Riegle had done so
- earlier). So far McCain, Cranston and Glenn have not.
- </p>
- <p> LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBUCK. Ever since Bob Farmer, Mike
- Dukakis' fund-raising ace, became the Democrats' treasurer last
- winter, many of the party's financial backers have pressed
- chairman Ron Brown to name a corporate heavyweight as finance
- chairman. Brown's likely choice is Monte Friedkin, a millionaire
- whose ties to Jewish causes could help Brown with a constituency
- that mistrusts him because he advised Jesse Jackson.
- </p>
- <p> BUSY SIGNAL. When a Los Angeles businessman called the
- local Drug Enforcement Administration to report his suspicions
- about mysterious 18-wheelers dropping off shipments at a nearby
- import business, he got either a busy signal or no answer at
- all. Finally, he called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
- Firearms, where somebody picked up the phone. The ATF passed
- along the tip to the DEA, leading to a record seizure last week
- of 20 tons of coke valued at $8 billion. Explains a rueful DEA
- agent: "Our phones are so busy, it's a little hard to get
- through."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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