| I learned that Rogers cocaine habit, about four grams a day, was so bad it might have killed him if he hadnt had the constitution of an ox, and that his addiction was rooted, in part, in the scars of his childhood and perhaps a genetic predisposition to addiction he shared with his father
From the time he was arrested until almost the date of his court appearance, Roger couldnt admit that he was an addictFinally one day, as we were sitting at the breakfast table, I told him that if he wasnt an addict, I wanted him to go to jail for a very long time, because he had been selling poison to other people for moneySomehow, that got through to himAfter he admitted his problem, he began the long road back
The case had been taken over by the Uattorney, Asa HutchinsonRoger gave up his supplier, an immigrant even younger than he was, who got cocaine from family or friends in his home countryRoger pleaded guilty to two federal offenses before Judge Oren Harris, who had been chairman of the Commerce Committee in the House of Representatives before going to the benchJudge Harris was in his early eighties but still sharp and very wiseHe sentenced Roger to three years on chanel logo earrings one charge and two years on the other, and suspended the three-year sentence because of his cooperationRoger served fourteen months, most of it in a federal facility for nonviolent offenders, which was hard on him but probably saved his life
Hillary and I were in court with Mother when he was sentencedI was impressed by the way the whole thing was handled by Judge Harris, and by the UAsa Hutchinson was professional, fair, and sensitive to the agony my family was experiencingI wasnt at all surprised when later he was elected to Congress from the Third District
In the summer, I led the Arkansas delegation to the Democratic convention in San Francisco to see Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro nominated and to give a five-minute tribute to Harry TrumanWe were in trouble to start with, and it was all over when Mondale said he would propose a hefty tax increase to reduce the budget deficitIt was a remarkable act of candor, but he might as well have proposed a federal car-tag feeStill, the city put on a great conventionSan Francisco had lots of pleasant small hotels within walking distance of the convention center, and well-organized traffic, so we avoided the cartier santos white crushing traffic jams that characterize many conventionsThe Arkansas host, DrRichard Sanchez, was heavily invested in the efforts to treat and prevent the relatively new disease of AIDS, which was sweeping the cityI asked Richard about the problem and what could be done about itThat was my first real exposure to a battle that would claim a lot of my attention in the White House and afterward
I had to leave San Francisco early to return to Arkansas to recruit a high-tech industry for our stateIn the end it didnt pan out, but I couldnt have done any good staying in California anywayWe were headed for defeatThe economy was rebounding and the President told us it was morning again in America, while his surrogates sneered at those of us on the other side as San Francisco Democrats, a not-so-veiled allusion to our ties to the citys large gay populationEven Vice President Bush fell into the macho mode, saying he was going to kick a little ass
In the November election, Reagan defeated Mondale 59 to 41 percentThe President won 62 percent of the vote in ArkansasI received 63 percent in my race against Woody Freeman, an appealing young businessman from replica gucci handbags Jonesboro
After our family enjoyed Chelseas fifth Christmas and our second Renaissance Weekend, it was time for a new legislative session, this one devoted to modernizing our economy
Even though the overall economy was improving, unemployment was still high in states like Arkansas that were dependent on agriculture and traditional industriesMost of Americas job growth of the eighties came in the high-technology and service sectors, and was concentrated in and around urban areas, primarily in states on or near the East and West coastsThe industrial and agricultural heartland was still in bad shapeThe pattern was so pronounced that people began to refer to America as having a bicoastal economy
It was obvious that in order to accelerate job and income growth, we had to restructure our economyThe development package I presented to the legislature had some financial components that were new to Arkansas but already in place in other statesI proposed to broaden the states housing agency into a Development and Finance Authority that would be able to issue bonds to finance industrial, agricultural, and small-business projectsI recommended that the states public pension funds set cartier replica watch ladies santos steel targets of investing at least 5 percent of their assets in ArkansasWe were a capital-poor state; we didnt need to export public funds when there were good investment options at homeI recommended allowing state-chartered banks to hold assets they foreclosed on for longer periods of time, primarily to avoid dumping farmland in an already depressed market, which would make it even harder for farmers to hold onI also asked the legislature to allow state-chartered banks not only to lend money, but also to make modest equity investments in farms and businesses that couldnt borrow any more money, with the provision that the farmer or small-business person had a right to buy the bank out within three yearsOther farm-state governors were especially interested in this bill, and one of them, Bill Janklow of South Dakota, passed a version of it through his legislature
The economic proposals were innovative but too complex to be well understood or widely supportedHowever, after I made appearances at several committee hearings to answer questions and did a lot of one-on-one lobbying, the legislature passed them all
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