Domestic Issues
[Destitute S&L please help]
January 13, 1989
Ink and white out on paper (19)
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On January 10, 1989, House Banking Committee members had their first look at details
of the thirty-four thrift transactions arranged by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board
(FHLBB) during December 1988. Tax breaks, totaling $8 billion during 1988, were
guaranteed to buyers of insolvent institutions, much of it in the form of Federal
Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) notes. House members believed that
the FHLBB had engaged in a gigantic giveaway of federal funds that benefitted
buyers, who invested little capital in return.
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During the 1992 presidential campaign, conservative Republicans led by Senator Jesse
Helms targeted federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the
Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Pat Buchanan, another conservative who was
challenging President George Bush for the Republican presidential nomination,
chastised Bush for allowing the NEA to fund "pornographic art" and called the
endowment "the upholstered playpen of the arts and crafts auxiliary of the Eastern
liberal establishment." The White House forced John Frohnmayer, chairman of the
NEA, to resign on February 29. Republican members of Congress attempted to
eliminate these programs from the federal budget in 1992.
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[Jesse Helms attacks cultural funding]
March 6, 1992
Ink and white out over pencil on layered paper (26)
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‘I was about to say that if ol' J. Edgar was still
running things, we wouldn't be having this big image problem. . .but let it
pass.'
May 11, 1995
Ink and white out over pencil on layered paper (44)
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The Justice Department agreed to censure the acting deputy director of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, Larry A. Potts, for managerial failures during a 1992 siege
of a white supremacist's cabin in Idaho which resulted in three deaths. The censure,
the mildest of disciplinary actions, had been recommended by FBI Director Louis J.
Freeh, who had reprimanded twelve FBI agents and suspended and reassigned two field
commanders in January 1995 for their participation in the raid on Randall C.
Weaver's cabin. On February 9, PBS'sFrontline aired a documentary, "The
Secret File on J. Edgar Hoover," that included a segment about J. Edgar Hoover's
alleged cross-dressing.
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Oliphant used the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous words from the civil
rights era to underscore, with great irony, what he believed to be a travesty of
justice, the jury acquittal on April 29, 1992, of four white Los Angeles police
officers accused of beating black motorist Rodney G. King in March 1991. In the
wake of riots that ensued in the South-Central district of Los Angeles, in which
fifty-eight people were killed and $1 billion of damage was done, President George
Bush said, "The jury system has worked. What's needed now is calm, respect for the
law." The riots focused the country's attention on continuing inequities and
tension between blacks and whites in the United States.
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[Free at last!]
April 30, 1992
Ink and white out over pencil on paper (28)
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‘[I won't ask! Don't ask!
I mustn't ask! Don't ask!
I can't ask! Don't ask!
So don't ask! Don't ask!]'
July 10, 1993
Ink and white out over pencil on paper (34)
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After weeks of publicly reported discussions between the executive branch and
military leadership, President Clinton announced on July 19, 1993, that homosexuals
could serve in the armed forces provided they were discreet about their sexual
orientation, thus modifying a fifty-year-old unqualified ban on homosexuals in the
military. Commanders were forbidden to investigate service people for homosexual
behavior on suspicion or hearsay alone. However, personnel could be discharged if
such behavior were proved. The administration described the policy as "Don't ask,
don't tell."
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The trial of twenty-four-year-old Ecuadoran native Lorena Bobbitt for cutting off
her husband's penis in June 1993 ran through December and January, ending with her
acquittal by reason of insanity on January 21, 1994. A jury in Manassas, Virginia,
and a rapt worldwide audience, listened to the young woman's account of sexual abuse
by her husband, culminating in the alleged marital rape that led her to retaliate.
Reactions to both the cutting and the verdict were often split along gender lines
and spurred a national debate on domestic violence. Some men's groups argued that
an acquittal of Lorena Bobbitt might encourage other women to perform similar
attacks on men.
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‘Now, tell the jury what you did with the knife, Mrs. Bobbitt
. . . '
January 12, 1994
Ink and white out over pencil on paper (37)
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‘You may be the commanding general of Post 17 of the Grand
Patriot Militia, but in this outfit you're the private who takes the garbage to the
dump!'
April 28, 1995
Ink and tonal film overlay on paper (43)
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Timothy McVeigh, arrested and charged with the April 19, 1995, car-bombing attack on
a federal office building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, was suspected of having links
to anti-government militias. McVeigh had been angered by the federal government's
attack on the compound of the Branch Davidian cult near Waco, Texas, exactly two
years earlier. Officials had taken two suspects into custody, Terry Lynn Nichols and
his brother James Nichols, who had links to both McVeigh and militia groups.
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