Via today's WSJ
* * *
Among recent secretaries of state, Hillary Clinton was
one of the most aggressive global cheerleaders for American companies, pushing
governments to sign deals and change policies to the advantage of corporate
giants such as General Electric Co., Exxon Mobil Corp., Microsoft Corp. and
Boeing Co.
* AND I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH THIS! INDEED, THIS WAS PART
OF HER JOB!
At the same time, those companies were among the many
that gave to the Clinton family’s global foundation set up by her husband,
former President Bill Clinton.
* WHICH BRINGS US TO THE COMPANIES THAT THEN-SECRETARY
CLINTON DIDN'T CHEERLEAD FOR...
* WERE "WINNERS" vs. "LOSERS"
DETERMINED BY WHO COUGHED UP WHAT IN BRIB... er... "DONATIONS?"
At least 60 companies that lobbied the State Department
during her tenure donated a total of more than $26 million to the Clinton
Foundation, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of public and
foundation disclosures.
As Mrs. Clinton prepares to embark on a race for the
presidency, she has a web of connections to big corporations unique in American
politics...
(*PURSED LIPS*)
...ties forged both as secretary of state and by her
family’s charitable interests.
* "CHARITABLE" INTERESTS... OR SELF-INTERESTS?
“To a lot of progressive Democrats, Clinton’s ties to corporate
America are disturbing,” says Jack Pitney, a politics professor at Claremont
McKenna College who once worked for congressional Republicans. Mrs. Clinton’s
connections to companies, he says, “are a bonanza for opposition researchers
because they enable her critics to suggest the appearance of a conflict of
interest.”
* I'M NOT CONCERNED WITH "APPEARANCES," I'M
CONCERNED WITH REALITY.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
The Wall Street Journal identified the companies involved
with both Clinton-family charitable endeavors and with Mrs. Clinton’s State
Department by examining large corporate donations to the Clinton Foundation,
then reviewing lobbying-disclosure reports filed by those companies. At least
44 of those 60 companies also participated in philanthropic projects valued at
$3.2 billion that were set up though a wing of the foundation called the
Clinton Global Initiative, which coordinates the projects but receives no cash
for them.
* NO CASH, PERHAPS... BUT WHAT OF PERKS...??? WHAT OF
COMBINING PLEASURE WITH "BUSINESS" AND HAVING THE ENTIRE TAB
"TAKEN CARE OF" WITHOUT THE CLINTONS OPENING THEIR WALLETS?
(*SHRUG*)
Mrs. Clinton’s connections to the companies don’t end
there. As secretary of state, she created 15 public-private partnerships
coordinated by the State Department, and at least 25 companies contributed to
those partnerships. She also sought corporate donations for another charity she
co-founded, a non-profit women’s group called Vital Voices.
* "VITAL VOICES...???" (VITAL VOICES FOR
HILLARY CLINTON? VITAL VOICES WITH HILLARY WRITING THE SCRIPT?)
(*SCRATCHING MY HEAD*)
Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman, Nick Merrill, says: “She did
the job that every secretary of state is supposed to do and what the American
people expect of them — especially during difficult economic times. She proudly
and loudly advocated on behalf of American business and took every opportunity
she could to promote U.S. commercial interests abroad.”
* REMIND ME... WHAT IS IT THAT THE SECRETARY OF COMMERCE
IS SUPPOSED TO DO...??? (NEVERMIND...)
Corporate donations to politically connected charities
aren’t illegal so long as they aren’t in exchange for favors. There is no
evidence of that with the Clinton Foundation.
* JUST LIKE THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE AL CAPONE RAN THE
CHICAGO MOB - IN THE END THE FEDS GOT HIM ON TAX EVASION! (AND CERTAINLY NO ONE
EXPECTS TODAY'S FEDS TO GO AFTER MADAM CLINTON AS THEY DID AL CAPONE...)
In some cases, donations came after Mrs. Clinton took
action that helped a company. In other cases, the donation came first. In some
instances, donations came both before and after.
(*GUFFAW*)
All of the companies mentioned in this article said their
charitable donations had nothing to do with their lobbying agendas with Mrs.
Clinton’s State Department.
* AS OPPOSED TO...??? ("YES! THE DONATIONS WERE
BRIBES!")
(*STILL LAUGHING*)
President Barack Obama’s transition team worried enough
about potential problems stemming from Clinton-organization fundraising while
Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state that it asked Mr. Clinton to quit raising
money from foreign governments for the Clinton Global Initiative and to seek
approval for paid speaking engagements, which he did. The transition team
didn’t put limits on corporate fundraising.
The foundation resumed soliciting foreign governments
after Mrs. Clinton left the State Department.
The official name of the foundation was changed to the
Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation. Mrs. Clinton became a director.
All told, the Clinton Foundation and its affiliates have collected donations
and pledges from all sources of more than $1.6 billion, according to their tax
returns. On Thursday, the foundation said that if Mrs. Clinton runs for
president, it would consider whether to continue accepting foreign-government
contributions as part of an internal policy review.
* FOLKS... OVER THE YEARS I'VE ADDRESSED THE MALFEASANCE
WITHIN THE CLINTON "FOUNDATION." I URGE YOU... GOOGLE... BING... READ
THE EXPOSES THAT EVEN THE LIKES OF THE NYT, WASHINGTON POST, AND ABC NEWS HAVE
RUN ON THE CLINTON'S "CHARITABLE" EFFORTS AND HOW THEY AND THEIR
FRIENDS AND FAMILY HAVE BEEN PERSONALLY ENRICHED VIA FOUNDATION
"WORK."
In her book, “Hard Choices,” Mrs. Clinton said one of her
goals at the State Department was “placing economics at the heart of our
foreign policy.” She wrote: “It was clearer than ever that America’s economic
strength and our global leadership were a package deal.”
Matthew Goodman, a former Clinton State Department
official who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a
Washington think tank, says Mrs. Clinton is the first secretary of state to
make economics such a focus since George C. Marshall, who helped rebuild
postwar Europe.
* AND AGAIN... NO ONE IS CRITICIZING HER FOR HAVING MADE
ECONOMICS A FOCUS! (IT'S THE INTERMINGLING OF WHAT'S BEST FOR "AMERICAN
BUSINESS" WITH WHAT'S BEST FOR "THE CLINTON FAMILY BUSINESS" -
POLITICS - THAT REASONABLE PEOPLE ARE WORRIED ABOUT!)
That approach, which Mrs. Clinton called “economic
statecraft,” emerged in discussions with Robert Hormats, a former Goldman Sachs
Group Inc. investment banker who has worked in Democratic and Republican
administrations and became an undersecretary of state. “One of the very first
items was, how do we strengthen the role of the State Department in economic
policy?” he says.
* REPEAT:
"... who has worked in Democratic and Republican
administrations..."
* THE OLIGARCHY LIVES, MY FRIENDS!
Early in Mrs. Clinton’s tenure, according to Mr. Hormats,
Microsoft’s then Chief Research Officer, Craig Mundie, asked the State
Department to send a ranking official to a fourth annual meeting of U.S.
software executives and Chinese government officials about piracy and Internet
freedom. Mr. Hormats joined the December 2009 meeting in Beijing.
Since 2005, Microsoft has given the Clinton Global
Initiative $1.3 million, in addition to free software, according to the
foundation.
In 2011, Microsoft launched a three-year initiative
coordinated by the Clinton Global Initiative to provide free or discounted
software and other resources to students and teachers — a commitment Microsoft
estimated to be worth $130 million.
* QUESTION: $1.3 MILLION PLUS $130 MILLION EQUALS $131.3
MILLION IN "DONATIONS." WHAT PORTION OF THIS IS A TAX WRITE-OFF FOR
MICROSOFT? (JUST CURIOUS...)
Mr. Hormats says there was no relation between
Microsoft’s donations and the State Department’s participation in the China
conference.
* ONE WOULD THINK MICROSOFT WOULD BE A PERMANENT
PARTICIPANT...
(*SCRATCHING MY HEAD*)
In 2012, the Clinton Foundation approached GE about
working together to expand a health-access initiative the company had launched
four years earlier, says a GE spokeswoman. That same year, Mrs. Clinton lobbied
for GE to be selected by the Algerian government to build power plants in that
country. She went to Algiers that October and met with President Abdelaziz
Bouteflika. “I saw an opportunity for advancing prosperity in Algeria and
seizing an opportunity for American business,” she explained in her book.
A month after Mrs. Clinton’s trip, the Clinton Foundation
announced the health-initiative partnership with GE, the company’s first
involvement with the foundation. GE eventually contributed between $500,000 and
$1 million to the partnership. The following September, GE won the contracts
with the Algerian government, saying they marked “some of its largest power
agreements in company history.”
Mrs. Clinton championed U.S. energy companies and
launched an office to promote overseas projects. Many of those efforts were
focused in Eastern and Central Europe, where she saw energy development as a
hedge against Russia’s dominance in oil and gas. Companies that had interests
in those areas included Exxon Mobil and Chevron Corp. One effort, the Global
Shale Gas Initiative, promoted hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a technique
perfected by U.S. companies.
In 2010, Mrs. Clinton flew to Krakow to announce a
Polish-American cooperation on a global shale-gas initiative, according to her
book. At the time, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted
abundant deposits of shale gas in Poland.
* HOWEVER...
After pursuing shale-gas projects in Poland, Exxon Mobil
gave up a few years later, and Chevron said late last month it would abandon
its Poland project.
In 2012, Mrs. Clinton flew to Sofia, Bulgaria, and urged
the Bulgarian Parliament to reconsider its moratorium on fracking and its
withdrawal of Chevron’s five-year exploration license. A few months later, the
government allowed conventional gas exploration, but not fracking. Chevron left
Bulgaria in 2012.
Both Exxon and Chevron are supporters of the Clinton
Foundation. Chevron donated $250,000 in 2013. A Chevron spokesman said the
Clinton charity “is one of many programs and partnerships that the company has
had or maintains across a number of issue areas and topics pertinent to our
business.”
Exxon Mobil has given about $2 million to the Clinton
Global Initiative, starting in 2009. Since 2007, Exxon Mobil also has given
$16.8 million to Vital Voices, the non-profit women’s group co-founded by Mrs.
Clinton, according to the group’s spokeswoman. An Exxon Mobil spokesman said
the donations were made to support work on issues Exxon Mobil has long
championed, such as programs to fight malaria and empower women. “That is the
sole motivation for our support of charitable programs associated with the
Clintons,” he said. “We did not seek or receive any special consideration on
the Shale Gas Initiative.”
* AND I SUPPOSE YOUR LOBBYISTS DON'T SEEK ANY SPECIAL
CONSIDERATION EITHER...
(*SNORT*)
In October 2009, Mrs. Clinton went to bat for aerospace
giant Boeing, which was seeking to sell jets to Russia, by flying to Moscow to
visit the Boeing Design Center. “I made the case that Boeing’s jets set the
global gold standard, and, after I left, our embassy kept at it,” she wrote in
her book.
About seven months later, in June 2010, Russia agreed to
purchase 50 Boeing 737s for $3.7 billion, choosing Boeing over Europe’s Airbus
Group NV.
Two months later, Boeing made its first donation to the
Clinton Foundation — $900,000 to help rebuild Haiti’s public-education system.
* AND BY THE WAY... HOW'S THAT BEEN GOING...? (WHERE DID
ALL THAT MONEY GO...???)
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