Tammany Hil
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, December 20, 2007 4:20 PM PT
Campaign Finance: Some of the $500 million in secrets behind the Clinton Foundation and its ties to Hillary's presidential campaign are now revealed. The charity seems to be a clearing house for buying political favors.
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The hundreds of thousands of dollars Hillary took in campaign contributions from Washington lobbyists provoked a chorus of boos when she appeared at the Daily Kos' summer gathering of liberal bloggers in Chicago.
But those direct donations, under the watchful eye of the Federal Election Commission, are mere chicken feed. The now over $500-million-rich Clinton Foundation is where the real action is.
The New York Times, which has discovered the identity of 97 donors who together gave or pledged $69 million early on, reports some of the million-dollar donors sought changes in policies and two of them were under Justice Department probes.
With the presidential election approaching, Clinton Foundation donations skyrocketed last year to $135 million, 70% more than the year before, with two-thirds of the booty from only 11 donors.
So much for Bill and Hil's populist image.
The former president steadfastly refused to reveal the donors' identities — including one super-rich donor giving $31.3 million.
We can certainly now see why. The $31-million-dollar man turned out to be Canadian mining mogul and founder of Lionsgate Entertainment (distributor of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11") Frank Giustra, who plans to give another $100 million, plus half his future earnings.
Foreign contributions to presidential campaigns are illegal, but foreigners such as Giustra can anonymously give as much as they like to presidential foundations. So can the Saudi royal family, the king of Morocco, a United Arab Emirates foundation, and the governments of Kuwait and Qatar, all of whom reportedly gave undisclosed amounts to the Clinton Foundation.
That should make for interesting Mideast policy under Hillary.
Here at home, Anheuser-Busch gave $1 million after the Clinton administration's Federal Trade Commission agreed not to regulate beer, wine and liquor ads.
Chicago bankruptcy lawyer William A. Brandt Jr. pledged $1 million in 1999 as the Justice Department investigated whether he lied about using a big-money fundraiser for Clinton's 1996 re-election to lobby a top bankruptcy official. Later that year, Clinton's Justice Department cleared Brandt, who has since given big to Hil-lary's campaign.
When Loral Space and Communications' then-chairman, Bernard Schwartz, agreed to give $1 million in 2000, the firm was being investigated over whether it gave satellite technology to China. Under the Bush administration, Loral agreed to a $14 million fine.
Other million-dollar contributors got themselves deals on things like Medicare reimbursements for hospitals in Puerto Rico and special treatment on cell phone licenses from the Federal Communications Commission. One is an Iranian-born aviation executive who provided military equipment to Tehran during Iran-Contra.
Then there's the notorious income tax fugitive Marc Rich, pardoned by Bill after his ex-wife, Denise, gave $450,000 to the Clinton Library.
Hillary's campaign chairman and former Democratic National Committee head Terry McAuliffe, plus other top campaign officials, have worked or still do work for the Clinton Foundation.
New York City's infamous Tammany Hall Democratic Party machine took bribes for favors while engaging in "foundation"-like activities such as financing hospitals and museums to cover up the corruption. Hillary Clinton has a lot of convincing to do to prove this isn't a similar racket.
