Now that Hillary Clinton has officially thrown her name into the presidential race, it’s bringing several different stories to our attention.
She was already in the spotlight for keeping secret emails. Then she threw her hat in the ring, and we are immediately hit with stories about the Clinton Foundation.
The Clinton Foundation is a huge “charity” that collected more than $140 million in 2013 in the form of grants and pledges. However, according to a story by the NY Post, the foundation spent just $9 million on direct aid.
The most recent data is from the foundation’s 2013 tax forms, which shows $30 million spent on salaries and benefits, $8.7 million in rental expenses, $9.2 million on conferences and conventions, $8.5 million in travel expenses, and $8 million for fundraising.
The Clinton Foundation also supposedly had $64 million left over, but is money that had been pledged and was not cash on hand.
While it is not known if the Clintons directly profited from their own foundation, perhaps other than some first-class flights, it should surprise nobody that the CEO for a short time was a friend of Chelsea Clinton’s. He collected a salary and benefits of almost $275,000.
This is all coming to light after it was revealed that Hillary Clinton approved a deal allowing Russia to control 20% of all uranium producing capacity in the U.S. while secretary of state. Not surprisingly, the head of the Russian government’s uranium company was a donor to the Clinton Foundation, but was not reported.
Frank Giustra, the CEO of the Radcliffe Foundation, is also a friend and top donor to the Clinton Foundation. The Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership in Canada is a donor to the Clinton Foundation and was also connected with the Russian uranium company.
In other words, the foundation is just playing structuring games to conceal all of the donors and the cronyism that goes with it.
Interestingly, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one of the top donors to the Clinton Foundation. Also on the list of high donors are people and governments from the Middle East.
Why is the Left Going after Clinton?
There is no question that the Clintons are a corrupt bunch. But this goes back to their days in Arkansas, long before Bill Clinton ever became president. Hillary Clinton has corruption up to her eyeballs just going back to her days at the Rose Law Firm.
But why all of the scrutiny now? We certainly have the Internet to thank, at least to some degree. How much would we ever see of these stories if we had to depend on the evening television news and our daily newspapers?
The interesting thing now is that even the left is going after Hillary Clinton, at least to a certain degree. I don’t know if they are trying to get the stories out of the way now. The average American voter tends to have a short memory, so these stories probably won’t mean much in over a year from now, except for maybe talk radio and certain Internet sites. But the voters who read or listen to that won’t be voting for Clinton anyway.
The other possibility is that the left, including the Democratic establishment, just doesn’t want Hillary Clinton to be the nominee. Perhaps they are afraid of bigger baggage that could come to light. Perhaps they just don’t think she is electable in a general election and they would prefer a better nominee that would win.
Partisan politics aside, it is not surprising that the Clinton Foundation has been used as a cover for more cronyism. But this is what we should expect in political circles. It happens with people in power, regardless of the party.
As long as there is power in politics, then it is going to be used and abused. It isn’t a question of getting the “right” people in office. It is a question of severely limiting political power. If politicians did not have the ability to exercise so much power over others, then we wouldn’t have to worry about the type of cronyism we see with the Clinton Foundation.
The lesson here isn’t just that we shouldn’t elect Hillary Clinton to the presidency. The main lesson is that we need to drastically shrink the size and scope of government in order to limit the damage that corrupt people can do.
