February 27, 2007
All the Ex-President's Money (is Bill
being rewarded?)
By
Cal Thomas
Former President Bill Clinton is one of a kind, but we knew that
already.
No president before him has managed to cash in from his time
in office with such shameless abandon.
A Washington Post story by John Solomon and Matthew
Mosk is staggering in its revelations of Clinton's greed. In the
six years since he left the presidency, Clinton has taken in
nearly $40 million - between nine and 10 million of it last
year. Clinton averaged "almost a speech a day" in 2006. Twenty
percent of his fees reportedly "were for personal income." The
rest of his speeches, says the Post, were for no fee or
for donations to Clinton's foundation.
Unlike liberal Democrats, I am not obsessed with how much
others make, as long as it's honest money and they pay their
taxes. It ought to be a concern, though, when so much money is
paid to a former president by foreign governments, foreign
entities and corporations with interests in U.S. foreign and
domestic policies. While Bill Clinton is no longer in a position
to determine such policies, his wife, the junior senator from
New York and Democratic presidential candidate, is and she may
soon be in an even more powerful position. Given the Clintons'
history of questionable political, business and personal
relationships, can anyone say with certainty that the providers
of this largesse are uninterested in influencing a President
Hillary Clinton through her husband?
Were it not for the disclosure forms required of high-level
officials, we might never have known the full extent of the
Clinton ATM (always throw money) machine.
Clinton is also a master at whiny self-justification, saying,
"I never had a nickel to my name until I got out of the White
House, and now I'm a millionaire. I get a tax cut every year, no
matter what our needs are."
Clinton can easily assuage his conscience by writing a check
for the taxes he thinks he should pay under a Hillary Clinton
administration and send it to the U.S. Treasury, but that would
require him to be sincere. Clinton told a Houston fund-raiser in
1995, "Probably there are people in this room still mad at me at
that (1993) budget because you think I raised your taxes too
much. It might surprise you to know that I think I raised them
too much, too." Sincerity, like fidelity, is not his strong
suit.
It's not as if Clinton's speeches are imparting anything new
to his audiences. People are paying for celebrity, proximity to
a former president and possibly a future one. [Ed- or, paying
off past favors?] After one hears Clinton's riff on the supposed
shortcomings of his successor, the "failure" of the
administration's policy in Iraq and whatever he proposes to
solve the world's problems, there is little else. Why would
anyone pay so much to hear so little?
Other than greed, what is the primary motivation behind Bill
Clinton's massive cash-in? The answer is suggested in the
Post story: "it allows (the Clintons) to tap into that
wealth for a campaign if Hillary Clinton, as expected, forgoes
public financing in her race for president. It also suggests a
sometimes close connection between their personal finances and
her political career." What else is new?
The Clintons are plowing new ground. Ethics and election laws
should keep pace. Never before has the spouse of a former
president run for president. One of the reasons for disclosure
forms is to ensure no improper influences are exerted on public
officials by outside groups, or governments. Among those for
whom Clinton spoke were a Saudi Arabia investment firm ($600,000
for two speeches), a Chinese real estate firm, run by a
Communist Party official ($200,000), and a Toronto company,
founded by a Kenyan immigrant who was convicted of stock fraud
and barred for life from the brokerage business ($650,000 in
2005 and an undisclosed sum last year). The public needs to know
more about their backgrounds.
While other ex-presidents have spoken for money, there has
been nothing on this scale and none of their spouses served as
elected officials.
If the new Democratic congressional leadership is serious
about living up to its pledge of a far more ethical body than
the one run by Republicans, the Senate Ethics Committee will get
on this right away. There ought to be an investigation into the
associations and ties of especially foreign governments and
interests who paid these big bucks to Bill Clinton.
CalThomas@tribune.com
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