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| Home Front: Politix |
| Clinton's Donor List Raises Lots of Questions |
| 2008-12-25 |
| By MARTIN PERETZ This is not about former President Bill Clinton's shakedown of the sheikhs. They can take care of themselves, Clinton Foundation or no Clinton Foundation. This is also not about Hillary Clinton's vulnerability to her husband's donors. She can tell him to "go stuff it," which people say she's been doing for a long time anyway. Rest assured, the next secretary of state will not shirk her diplomatic obligations for the benefit of some scummy foreign mineral magnate's uranium. What I've been tying to discern about the Clinton Foundation is why -- aside from the annual fancy party in New York -- foreign governments, other foundations and charities have given money to fund what they already do themselves. I understand why McDonald's of central Arkansas would make a contribution to Mr. Clinton's present career. He has spent so much cash on Big Macs over three decades that they actually owe it to him. But I fail to grasp why the "I Won't Cheat" foundation gave a donation to Bill's charity. He isn't exactly an ideal poster boy. None of these gifts were really big money, at least not for Mr. Clinton, for whom a million dollars isn't at all big anymore. But the scrounging operation seems to have dug down very deep to pull in thousand-dollar gifts. There were four United Way contributions, one from the national outfit, three from local branches. Since when is the Clinton Foundation one of the approved charities of the United Way? Then there are more serious questions about operating charities. What was the purpose of a contribution by the National Opera of Paris? Or of hospitals themselves in strained circumstances, like Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn and Arkansas Children's Hospital? The University of Cambridge and Liverpool University in the United Kingdom threw into the pot from the other side of the pond. American universities like Tufts, Columbia, Georgetown, Iowa State, Texas, Brown, Rensselaer Polytechnic, UCLA and its school of public health all gave, plus the University of Judaism with a whopping sum between $100,000 and $250,000. (Is Bill Clinton now supporting studies in theology?) Do these educational institutions have such deep pockets to share with Bill Clinton's ego? On the donor list are also the names of the charities we all give to generically: Human Rights Watch (well, not me), Feed the Children, and the Hunger Project. The foundation also receives funding from the International Bank for Recovery and Development of the World Bank, and the World Health Organization. They have their own, far-reaching projects. Why would they give cash to charitable work for which Mr. Clinton is at most a matchmaker? There's a certain looseness here that spreads downwards: District 1199 of the Service Employees International Union gave old comrade Bill somewhere in the range of half a million bucks. And then spreads upwards, so to speak: Citi gave him from $1 million to $5 million. Perhaps Citi's gift was just a pledge. In that case, is Treasury now paying up? Many are focused on the contributions of the Arab states. Mr. Clinton started his charity in 1997 with four years to go in his presidency, a period when no American law provided for the most elementary public reporting of the enterprise. Still, the fact that Saudi Arabia is on the donor list comes as no surprise. What we now know is that Mr. Clinton was indiscriminating when it came to accepting cash from all sorts of countries. He took money from poor countries like Jamaica, and more prosperous countries like Italy. He dipped into the Irish Aid Fund and the Swedish Postal Lottery for big money, and for small money from the Social Economic Council of the Netherlands. And then there was an especially strange source from which he schnorrered: Citgo, Hugo Chávez's oil company. Even if the revolucion didn't gain points for this, it is unseemly for an American president to ask the energy company of the Venezuelan dictatorship for spare cash. So where did all this fund-raised money go? Wouldn't you want to know to which philanthropic undertaking the King of Saudi Arabia and the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques committed himself? This information is not in the report -- and it doesn't look like President-elect Obama has any interest in pushing for further disclosure. Maybe the king just gave to general expenses. Mr. Peretz is editor in chief of The New Republic. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #1 I'm just surprised he's surprised. |
| Posted by: Woozle Elmeter 2700 2008-12-25 11:25 |