Thread: Hillary Clinton's 'obsession' with money could be an obstacle for her 2016 campaign

Hillary Clinton's 'obsession' with money could be an obstacle for her 2016 campaign

Colin Campbell and Hunter Walker

• Feb. 27, 2015, 1:15 PM

Michael Loccisano/Getty

Hillary Clinton at a Clinton Foundation event.

For Hillary Clinton, more money means more problems.

Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner in 2016, is under a barrage of criticism for her finances including her six-figure speaking fees and her foundation's fundraising practices. The headlines have some experts on both sides of the aisle convinced Clinton's cash could be an issue in her prospective White House bid.

Multiple Republicans working on the 2016 race told Business Insider they thought Clinton's finances were a major weakness for her on the campaign trail.

"I think that it absolutely would be a potent attack against Hillary Clinton, if only for the fact that she's just not able to relate to the guy who's actually waiting paycheck to paycheck," one GOP operative said.

In the most explosive development, The Washington Post reported Wednesday night that the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation broke an agreement it made with the White House by taking a $500,000 contribution from the Algerian government while Clinton was secretary of state. The agreement was designed to prevent foreign governments from indirectly currying favor with the State Department through Clinton.

A Democratic operative told Business Insider the story created "a line of attack that should keep Hillaryland up at night."
"Accepting foreign donations is a huge conflict of interest, and their decision to reverse the ban is mind-boggling," the Democrat said.

Indeed, almost immediately after the story about the donations broke, the GOP pounced. In a statement, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus ripped into Clinton's fundraising "obsession" and said it should disqualify her from the presidency.

"The latest revelations about the Clinton Foundation's shady deals are disqualifying," Priebus said. "No one in their right mind, Democrat or Republican, can think the foundation receiving foreign government donations while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state, and in violation of its ethics agreement with the Obama administration, is acceptable. This is symptomatic of the Clintons' obsession with raising cash at all costs."

The Algerian contribution is only a small drop in the $2 billion bucket reportedly raised by Clinton's foundation over the years. A significant amount of that money is from foreign entities, including Saudi Arabia, which has widespread human-rights abuses, and Qatar, which has a history of supporting an Al Qaeda affiliate.

Clinton's foundation isn't the only aspect of her finances that has generated negative headlines. Despite widespread criticism of her paid speeches — which can command as much as $300,000 an event — Clinton has continued giving them. The organizations she speaks to have included esoteric groups like the New York regional chapter of the American Camp Association, as well as public universities like the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. UNLV students unsuccessfully petitioned Clinton to return the money to their school, which is in an important swing state.

Getty/Ethan Miller

Clinton during a speaking event at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

Clinton's most recent paid appearance, at a Silicon Valley gathering of professional women, generated a damning Yahoo News headline: "Hillary Clinton paid $300,000 to explain what ails the middle class."

A representative for Clinton did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

A second Democratic operative who spoke to Business Insider said Clinton's decision to keep taking lucrative speaking fees and foreign donations was "baffling" in light of the problems it could cause for her brand.

"You can kind of massage policy things, but these are just avoidable mistakes, and in many ways it feeds a narrative that's far more damaging than if she wasn't pure on trade, or healthcare, or some other issue — so, it's baffling," the operative said.
Robert Gibbs, a former spokesman for President Barack Obama, has also described Clinton's finances as a potential obstacle for her presidential ambitions. In an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Gibbs said the foreign donations to Clinton's foundation had an appearance that was "awkward at best," and he alluded to the steady drumbeat of bad press relating to her finances.

"I think they're going to have to do something in the very short term to deal with this in a way that puts it off the table," Gibbs added. "I think there are a lot of people that have watched the sort of slow roll of the Hillary Clinton campaign, really dating back to last year with a book tour that some wondered what she was doing ... There has been a slow roll of concerning headlines for a long time."

Indeed, Clinton's potential rivals have already started making her money an issue. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was one of many potential 2016 candidates who mocked the Clinton foundation's foreign contributions at the conservative confab CPAC this week.

"We could have had Hillary here, but we couldn't find a foreign nation to foot the bill," he quipped to laughter on Thursday.

AP/Hassan Ammar

Clinton while she was secretary of state.

The Republican operative who spoke to Business Insider said the revelation about the Algerian donation would not be a problem for Clinton for only the next few days. The operative predicted the issue could be used as ammunition against her throughout the coming campaign.

"I think what you're seeing is maybe one of the first big hits on her that seems to be resonating," the Republican said. "It's certainly raising ethical questions. And you can take it to the bank that the headlines that are being produced from these stories are going to be in television ads over the next few years."

In addition to Clinton's finances providing fodder for attacks from her opponents, the second Democratic operative Business Insider spoke to suggested they could also prevent Clinton from hitting her rivals on their wealth or coziness to corporate interests.

"At best, if we were running against Mitt Romney and she was the nominee, then it would be a wash, but we're not going to be that lucky this time," the Democrat said. "And from an operative's standpoint, it makes me nuts because it takes so much off the table that you might be able to use to go after [Jeb] Bush or one of the other Republicans."

Given the issues Clinton's speaking fees and the foreign donations to her foundation could pose for her presidential ambitions, nearly all the sources who spoke to Business Insider expressed shock she had not stopped taking the money while preparing to launch.

"It's a form of arrogance that they think that they can continue doing it and not be held accountable for it and not get called out for it," the GOP operative said of Clinton and her family. "It's not like they didn't know that she was going to be running or that this was a possibility."

http://www.businessinsider.com/hilla...ampaign-2015-2

Clinton's most recent paid appearance, at a Silicon Valley gathering of professional women, generated a damning Yahoo News headline: "Hillary Clinton paid $300,000 to explain what ails the middle class."

If a gathering of professional women want to waste $300,000 and pay it to Hillary Clinton to explain what ails the middle class, then more power to Hillary for being the smartest one of the bunch, because if "professional women" really want to know what ails the middle class, they would just invite some middle class people to their gathering and ask them, and it wouldn't cost them a dime. Or better yet, just ask some of their underpaid overworked middle class employees what ails them and forget the "gathering" altogether.

From 2013..
Money, Money, Money, Money, MONEY!

AUG. 17, 2013




Bill Clinton and his daughter, Chelsea, who is now shaping the future of the family’s financially troubled charitable foundation. CreditJoao Silva/The New York Times


Maureen Dowd

WASHINGTON — CLINTON nostalgia is being replaced by Clinton neuralgia.

Why is it that America’s roil family always seems better in abstract than in concrete? The closer it gets to running the world once more, the more you are reminded of all the things that bugged you the last time around.

The Clintons’ neediness, their sense of what they are owed in material terms for their public service, their assumption that they’re entitled to everyone’s money.

Are we about to put the “For Rent” sign back on the Lincoln Bedroom?

If Americans are worried about money in politics, there is no larger concern than the Clintons, who are cosseted in a world where rich people endlessly scratch the backs of rich people.
​
They have a Wile E. Coyote problem; something is always blowing up. Just when the Clintons are supposed to be floating above it all, on a dignified cloud of do-gooding leading into 2016, pop-pop-pop, little explosions go off everywhere, reminding us of the troubling connections and values they drag around.

There’s the continuing grotesque spectacle of Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin. And there’s the sketchy involvement of the Clintons’ most prolific fund-raiser, Terry McAuliffe, and Hillary’s brother Tony Rodham in a venture, GreenTech Automotive; it’s under federal investigation and causing fireworks in Virginia, where McAuliffe is running for governor.

Many Israelis were disgusted to learn that Bill Clinton was originally scheduled to scarf up $500,000 to speak at the Israeli president Shimon Peres’s 90th birthday festivities in June. I guess being good friends with Peres and brokering the accord that won Peres the Nobel Peace Prize were not reasons enough for Bill to celebrate. The Israeli branch of the Jewish National Fund had agreed to donate half a mil to the Clinton foundation. Isn’t the J.N.F. “supposed to plant trees with donor cash?” Haaretz chided before the fund pulled back. “I guess money does grow on trees.”

I never thought I’d have to read the words Ira Magaziner again. But the man who helped Hillary torpedo her own health care plan is back.

In a Times article last week headlined “Unease at Clinton Foundation Over Finances and Ambitions,” Nicholas Confessore and Amy Chozick offered a compelling chronicle about an internal review of the rechristened Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation that illuminated the fungible finances and tensions between Clinton loyalists and the foundation architects Magaziner and Doug Band, former bag carrier for President Clinton.

You never hear about problems with Jimmy Carter’s foundation; he just quietly goes around the world eradicating Guinea worm disease. But Magaziner continues to be a Gyro Gearloose, the inept inventor of Donald Duck’s Duckburg.
“On one occasion, Mr. Magaziner dispatched a team of employees to fly around the world for months gathering ideas for a climate change proposal that never got off the ground,” Confessore and Chozick said.

We are supposed to believe that every dollar given to a Clinton is a dollar that improves the world. But is it? Clintonworld is a galaxy where personal enrichment and political advancement blend seamlessly, and where a cast of jarringly familiar characters pad their pockets every which way to Sunday.

“Efforts to insulate the foundation from potential conflicts have highlighted just how difficult it can be to disentangle the Clintons’ charity work from Mr. Clinton’s moneymaking ventures and Mrs. Clinton’s political future,” Confessore and Chozick wrote.
The most egregious nest of conflicts was a firm founded by Doug Band called Teneo, a scammy blend of corporate consulting, public relations and merchant banking. Band, a surrogate son to Bill, put Huma, a surrogate daughter to Hillary, on the payroll. Even Big Daddy Bill was a paid adviser.

As The Times reported, Teneo worked on retainer, charging monthly fees up to $250,000 and recruiting clients from among Clinton Foundation donors, while encouraging others to become foundation donors. The Clintons distanced themselves from Teneo when they got scorched with bad publicity after the collapse of its client MF Global, the international brokerage firm led by the former New Jersey governor Jon Corzine.

And Chelsea is now shaping the foundation’s future, and her political future. So there may not be as much oxygen for her troublesome surrogate siblings.

As George Packer wrote in The New Yorker, Bill Clinton earned $17 million last year giving speeches, including one to a Lagos company for $700,000. Hillary gets $200,000 a speech.

Until Harry Truman wrote his memoirs, the ex-president struggled on an Army pension of $112.56 a month. “I could never lend myself to any transaction, however respectable,” he said, “that would commercialize on the prestige and dignity of the office of the presidency.”

So quaint, Packer wrote, observing, “The top of American life has become a very cozy and lucrative place, where the social capital of who you are and who you know brings unimaginable returns.”

The Clintons want to do big worthy things, but they also want to squeeze money from rich people wherever they live on planet Earth, insatiably gobbling up cash for politics and charity and themselves from the same incestuous swirl.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/op...ney-money.html