Hillary Clinton, the champion of the blue collar class, earned $109 million dollars over the last eight years. Shall we celebrate this as yet one more rags to riches of American family ascending to astonishing wealth through their own effort and the magic of capitalism? Maybe. However, the release of Clinton's tax returns and especially their public financial disclosure report reveals relationships to power brokers and foreign entities that raises questions about Hillary's reformist claims-- that she is the handmaiden not just of corporate interests but also possibly criminal interests. The sheer volume of the money involved suggests to me bets made by power brokers itching to exploit Hillary's enthronement in January, 2008.
In the coming days, journalists and political opponents will start data mining through the tax returns and reports, and they will raise questions on self-benefiting chairtable donantions, offshore shelters, and ties to shadowy and possibly criminal figures.
The questions lie in the minutia. Hillary's 42 page Public Financial Disclosure Report, signed on June 13, 2007, lists the sources of capital to her net worth. Here are some details that jumed out at me.
Citibank Account 5,000,001-25,000,000
Bill Clinton Honorariums. I assume these refer to speeches. They ranged in value of between $100,000 and $300,000, with most being in the $250,000 range. From February, 2006 to June, 2007, there were 91 "honorium" events.
The Clinton's hold large positions in a variety of stocks. Their largest holdings include the following.
Between 250,001 - 500,000
Anadarko Pete Cisco Systems General Electric Home Depot Johnson & Johnson Merrill Lynch Microsoft Quellos Alpha Engine Cash Receivable Texas Instruments Time Warner Walt Disney
Hillary does report one liability-- a credit card debt of between 10,001 and 15,000 to Citigroup.
She also describes herself as the secretary/treasurer of The Clinton Family Foundation in Chappaqua, New York, the same foundation that received the charitable donations that show up on her tax returns as write offs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/opinion/25brooks.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&oref=slogin Let’s take a look at what she’s going to put her party through for the sake of that 5 percent chance: The Democratic Party is probably going to have to endure another three months of daily sniping. For another three months, we’ll have the Carvilles likening the Obamaites to Judas and former generals accusing Clintonites of McCarthyism. For three months, we’ll have the daily round of résumé padding and sulfurous conference calls. We’ll have campaign aides blurting “blue dress” and only-because-he’s-black references as they let slip their private contempt.
For the sake of that 5 percent, this will be the sourest spring. About a fifth of Clinton and Obama supporters now say they wouldn’t vote for the other candidate in the general election. Meanwhile, on the other side, voters get an unobstructed view of the Republican nominee. John McCain’s approval ratings have soared 11 points. He is now viewed positively by 67 percent of Americans. A month ago, McCain was losing to Obama among independents by double digits in a general election matchup. Now McCain has a lead among this group.
For three more months, Clinton is likely to hurt Obama even more against McCain, without hurting him against herself. And all this is happening so she can preserve that 5 percent chance. When you step back and think about it, she is amazing. She possesses the audacity of hopelessness.
Why does she go on like this? Does Clinton privately believe that Obama is so incompetent that only she can deliver the policies they both support? Is she simply selfish, and willing to put her party through agony for the sake of her slender chance? Are leading Democrats so narcissistic that they would create bitter stagnation even if they were granted one-party rule?
The better answer is that Clinton’s long rear-guard action is the logical extension of her relentlessly political life.
For nearly 20 years, she has been encased in the apparatus of political celebrity. Look at her schedule as first lady and ever since. Think of the thousands of staged events, the tens of thousands of times she has pretended to be delighted to see someone she doesn’t know, the hundreds of thousands times she has recited empty clichés and exhortatory banalities, the millions of photos she has posed for in which she is supposed to appear empathetic or tough, the billions of politically opportune half-truths that have bounced around her head.
No wonder the Clinton campaign feels impersonal. It’s like a machine for the production of politics. It plows ahead from event to event following its own iron logic. The only question is whether Clinton herself can step outside the apparatus long enough to turn it off and withdraw voluntarily or whether she will force the rest of her party to intervene and jam the gears.
There is a scene in the 1984 Academy Award winning movie Amadeus that remind me of Hillary's current predicament. The film is loosely based on the lives of Austrian composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri. In the movie, the irreverant yet immensely talented Mozart humilates Salieri. At an audience with the emperor, Mozart transforms Salieri's "March of Welcome" intothe "Non più andrai" march from his opera, The Marriage of Figaro.
In sports, there are people that make what they do best look easy. In academics, we have all encountered that quick study who spends the quarter shooting hoops and hanging out and then aces the course. Most of us are plodders. We sweat through life and nothing comes especially easy. Such is also true with Hillary. It cannot be a happy time in Hillaryland with money and polls ebbing and prospects of her nomination lookign increasingly distant.
Some of where Hillary is today has to do with bad political choices, her assumption that this was her time, and that she had to position herself for the general election by pre-pandering to conservatives. But it also has to do with character in contrast to Obama's character. While she sweats through her positions paper, he invokes hope, change, and the future. While she defines herself in terms of combat and conquest, he looks for concilation and compromise. The paradox is that Clinton if she is nominated would in many respects be an echo of McCain, ideologically siblings. By contrast, the temperamentally moderate Obama has staked out a far more contrasting position ideologically, while framing his approach in terms of national solidarity.
Hillary, the Salieri of American politics, may well have the resume and the policies, but she cannot compete against the effortless grace and vision of Obama, the Mozart of American politics.
Hillary Clinton today said that she dipped into her personal fortune to lend the campaign $5 million of her money. Since runs for political office don't involve the retailing of widgets, the only way she will recover her money is if people in the future pays her off. As to what exactly those services will be remains for yet another scandal to unfold. But as a self-professed public servant for the last 35 years, what is the source of her millions? Simon & Shuster gifted her with $8 million for her tome Living History and Bill Clinton got another $10 million for his autobiography My Life. The horse trading, back room deals, and Whitewater and commodity bonanzas are sources of subterranean streams of lucre that is so much a part of the swampland politics of Arkansas and the White House. Money, of course, is the mother's milk of politics, and that the Clinton campaign is scrambling for dollars cannot be a good sign. This is especially true as Obama is outraising the Clinton campaign by a factor of three to one.
Of course, she is following in the footsteps of Romney, who loaned his campaign $35 million dollars from his quarter billion dollar family fortune. Perhaps Mitt can look back on his 1975 classnotes from Harvard Business School to consider his return on investment-- about $1.1 million dollars per delegate.
Could it be that there are cheaper hobbies out there for bored litigators and tycoons?
"In the South Carolina Democratic Party Presidential Debate on January 21, 2008 Senator Hillary Clinton said that Obama had represented Rezko, who she referred to as a slumlord.
"On Friday, January 25, 2008, a picture emerged of an official photo of Hillary and William Clinton posing with Tony Rezko. Hillary Clinton commented on the Today Show that she doesn't remember having the picture taken. She further stated that she has had many pictures taken and can't remember them all."
Says Bill Clinton on why Obama won: "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here."
This has been the core of the conservative critique of the Clintons for years. So it is illuminating to hear the same critique coming from Mr. Obama and his supporters now that his candidacy poses a threat to the return of the Clinton dynasty. Even Democrats are now admitting the Clintons don't tell the truth -- at least until Mrs. Clinton wins the nomination.
His so-called “purple fits” and “earthquakes” have been a constant to those who have worked with him. Some have dealt with it by avoiding him, others by simply responding with silence. One senior White House aide, George Stephanopoulos, who was often a target of Mr. Clinton’s fury, has written of taking an antidepressant because the vicissitudes of the job were so intense. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/18/us/politics/18bill.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
The primaries are basically the battle of competing narratives. We have the narrative-- the accepted wisdom-- that Hillary is the inevitable candidate and perhaps should be crowned anytime now. There are other narratives-- that she is the nut-cracking Wicked Witch of the West (or at least Whitewater), cackling from some coven populated with feminanzis.
Because Hillary is the ostensible Democratic front runner, she naturally is the target of the most intense questions both from the moderator and from other candidates.
I think most Americans are trying to size up Hillary and what they see is kind of a layer cake-- the historic-- the first women president potentially-- the Machivellian-- a disingenuous control freak-- the intellectual-- someone who is in command of the forest and the trees of policy-- the experiential-- someone who can hit the ground running with her years in the background from another White House administration, the human-- someone with the same mix of uncertainties, ambitions, and ideals that all politicans have and so on.
I think Clinton has been savvy in avoiding what I think would be a grave political mistake, portray a vote for her as some kind of feminist or feminine litmus test. I think it is rubbish to think that there is a "powder room vote"-- a collection of political sympathies that are unique to women only. Certainly, India, Israel, England, Germany, and many other countries have no problem with leaders who are women, and the United States I suspect is no exception, given the right candidate and cirumstances. Perhaps, the reticence of Americans to have women leaders has its roots in the male-centric religions that dominate America. Whatever the cause, gender no longer seems to have much weight in determining whether or not someone should lead the country. Our popular and pragmatic governor in Arizona for example is Janet Napolitano. What is important is character and competence-- the same standard that you would choose in determing who should be your family dentist or doctor. My own sympathies are presently with the other candidates, but Hillary in my opinion is to be preferred over any Republican candidate.
"The first jury trial Mrs. Clinton handled on her own, for instance, concerned the rear end of a rat in a can of pork and beans. She represented the cannery, and she argued that there had been no real harm, as the plaintiff did not actually eat the rat. “Besides,” she wrote in her autobiography, describing her client’s position, “the rodent parts which had been sterilized might be considered edible in certain parts of the world.”
The jury seemed to buy her argument, more or less, as it awarded only token damages. But no one was particularly happy about the case or her performance. Her former partner, Webster L. Hubbell, told one of her biographers that she was “amazingly nervous” in speaking to the jury."
"It may surprise you to learn, that an attorney represents her client. etc." (snort)
Don't be so patronizing. Yep, I know what a lawyer does. On what basis do you assume that I'm one of "you wing-nuts"? I'm pretty consistent in my blogging going way back in my roasting of the Republicans and I'll probably be voting for Billery.
This is a fairly typical post from November 2nd, 2006.
You're a shining example of those wormy hard-eyed partisan true believers of both the right and the left that is irony deficient and humorless and probably dateless as well. So to you and them I say: lighten up.
Then what was your point in posting that drivel?
That drivel is from the The New York Times, as read with horror by the likes of you.
As entertaining as plagerized photos from the tabloids are, you really need to get you facts straight.
The Illuminati have nothing to do with witchcraft. As a matter of philosophy as well as paractice, they are diametrically in opposition, one have to do with rationalism and the other having to do with paganism.
Barack Obama's offer to meet without precondition with leaders of renegade nations such as Cuba, North Korea and Iran touched off a war of words, with rival Hillary Rodham Clinton calling him naive and Obama linking her to President Bush's diplomacy. Older politicians in both parties questioned the wisdom of such a course, while Obama's supporters characterized it as a repudiation of Bush policies of refusing to engage with certain adversaries. Who's the scariest?
Osama Obama Chelsea's Momma
I consider Hillary's response to the question to be a minor intellectual victory but a major political defeat. Focus groups right after the debate seemed also to take the view the Obama nosed ahead of Hillary. It reminds of the Gerald Ford many years ago when he asserted that Poland wasn't under the domination of the USSR-- narrowly true but contrary to what Americans generally believed.
A concern I have with Hillary, apart from her tendency to trim the truth, is her effort as I see it to demonstrate that whatever a general can do, she can do better. I think it's that attitiude that can have her looking for a fight should she become president. I also see a tendency as well to carefully triangulate between the policies of the Bush administration and the Democratic base to prepare for the general election. In any case, as much as Hillary's response may have won plaudits from the Council of Foreign Relations and the editorial staff of the Chicago Tribune, it scarcely reflects the kind of new leadership this country needs to to reject and repair the legacy of the Bush years.
Re: America is not safer since 9/11 Da: June 4, 2007
During the Democratic debate in New Hampshire last night, there was disagreement over whether or not America is safer since the 9/11 attacks on our nation. Senator Obama believes and asserted in the debate that America is less safe since 9/11 largely because the war in Iraq has fueled terrorism around the world. He opposed the war from the beginning and has a plan to end it, bringing all combat troops out of Iraq by March 31, 2008.Recent studies by the U.S. State Department and the Council on Global Terrorism confirm that the war in Iraq has accelerated the spread of terrorism and increased the threat of attacks.
In a September 2006 report State of the Struggle: Report on the Battle Against Global Terrorism, the Council on Global Terrorism issued a report with the number 1 finding -- "Five Year Assessment: As of Now, West is in a Worsening Position in Struggle Against Radical Islam." The report issued a D+ for "Combating Islamic Extremist Terrorism," saying, "there is every sign that radicalization in the Muslim world is spreading rather than shrinking."
In a speech in San Antonio in April 2006, Gen. Michael Hayden (currently the CIA director) said: "New jihadist networks and cells, sometimes united by little more than their anti-Western agendas, are increasingly likely to emerge… If this trend continues, threats to the U.S. at home and abroad will become more diverse and that could lead to increasing attacks worldwide."
According to the State Department's "Country Reports on Terrorism" released on April 30, 2007 - there was a 29% increase in terrorism worldwide from 2005 to 2006(much of that gain took place in Iraq and Afghanistan). The new statistics record a rise in terrorist attacks on nonmilitary targets globally to 14,338 in 2006 from 11,153 in 2005, with an increase in deaths to 20,498 from 14,618.
The political question of the week is the identity of the anonymous person who reworked the classic 1984 ad introducing the Apple Macintosh computer to the world into a biting attack piece against Clinton -- and posted it on the popular YouTube Web site.
The national election horserace is shaping up as a contest between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. Right now, I like neither of them much. Hillary reminds me of the cartoon character Lisa Simpson except that Lisa has more depth and less pretension. Many people snickered at a recent speech she gave in front of a southern black audience where she adopted a phony red-neck accent. Just after that speech, the camera lingered on Hillary as she shook the hands of those who passed her by. I was struck by the disconnect between the dead-fish coldness of Hillary's eyes and her crinkled smile. Hillary has impressive ambition and she may well be the smartest candidate. But her inability to account for her continuing support for her vote for the war in Iraq fosters with me deep distrust in her character.
And yet when it comes to character, Hillary is a tower of integrity compared to Rudy Giuliani, who the New York Times described as "swaggering, brash and opinionated and loves to stick his thumb in the eye of conventional political norms. Those traits won him some acclaim in New York, not to mention a lot of tabloid headlines. But he can also be temperamental, controlling, capricious, volatile." That he married his second cousin, divorced his second wife, is estranged from his kids. and presided over some of the worst civil rights violations in New York's recent history must surely provide a window to his soul much more so than Time's 2001 Man of the Year haliography.
Just as some liberals distrust Hillary in her embrace of the Bush war machine, so too do some conservatives distrust Giuliani in his embrace of abortion, gay rights, and other red meat social issues. After the defeat of John Kerry, I would have thought that presidential wannerbees would have heeded the lesson of that election-- that northeastern liberals need not apply for the Oval office.
My prediction: neither Clinton nor Giuliani will be nominated by their respective parties. Read more.
