Over at Politico, Michael Kruse posted an article seeking to redeem Hillary Clinton by smearing George W. Bush with a dose of moral equivalence:
Toward the end of his presidency, George W. Bush told Robert Draper, reporting for a book called Dead Certain, that he intended after vacating the Oval Office to “replenish the ol’ coffers.” He said he could make “ridiculous” money on the lecture circuit.
“I don’t know what my dad gets, but it’s more than 50, 75” thousand dollars a speech, he said.
And then here it comes:
“Clinton’s making a lot of money,” he added.
As critics over the years have chided Bill Clinton and also his wife for the industriousness with which they have pursued opportunities to get paid a lot of money in this manner, Bush, too, has been doing exactly what he said he would be doing.
And Kruse wants you to know that Bush is just as a bad as Bill Clinton:
Since 2009, POLITICO has found, Bush has given at least 200 paid speeches and probably many more, typically pocketing $100,000 to $175,000 per appearance. The part-time work, which rarely requires more than an hour on stage, has earned him tens of millions of dollars.
It’s complete with sarcasm. Let’s not forget how stupid W is:
“Evil is real,” he said at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton, Texas.
“Bowling is fun,” he said at a get-together for the Bowling Proprietors’ Association of America in Orlando.
It’s a pathetic and transparent effort to denigrate W in an effort to justify the malfeasance of the Clinton’s. But the differences between what the Bush’s have done and what the Clinton’s have done is gargantuan.
No one begrudges former Presidents for making money on the talk circuit, but what the Clinton’s have done is God-awful. When the Clinton’s left the White House they ransacked the place:
After they were criticized for taking $190,000 worth of china, flatware, rugs, televisions, sofas and other gifts with them when they left, the Clintons announced last week that they would pay for $86,000 worth of gifts, or nearly half the amount.
Their latest decision to send back $28,000 in gifts brings to $114,000 the value of items the Clintons have either decided to pay for or return.
It was no secret that Hillary was going to run for President from the moment Bill took office. She was coronated as Senator from New York as part of that goal. Then in 2007 she ran against Barack Obama for the democrat Presidential nomination and ended up being the loser.
Last year she claimed to be “dead broke” when she and Bill left the White House despite having over $700,000 in assets.
Then Hillary decided that she was “not truly well off” with a combined net worth of well over $100 million. The poor Clinton’s still have to charter private jets. They aren’t well off enough to buy their own jet- yet.
Despite the asinine attempt at moral equivalence there is one astronomical difference.
Laura Bush did not sell foreign policy for cash. Neither did W’s speaking double when Laura became Secretary of State. Bill Clinton’s speaking fees doubled when Hillary became SoS.
And yet that’s not close to the worst of it. Hillary regularly took money from companies who sought to influence her:
Who gave and gave and gave and lobbied? Corning’s in good company in padding the Clinton family bank account after lobbying the State Department and donating to the foundation. Qualcomm and salesforce.com did that, too. Irwin Jacobs, a founder of Qualcomm, and Marc Benioff, a founder of salesforce.com, also cut $25,000 checks to the now-defunct Ready for Hillary SuperPAC.
Hillary Clinton spoke to their companies on the same day, October 14, 2014. She collected more than half a million dollars from them that day, adding to the $225,500 salesforce.com had paid her to speak eight months earlier.
And Microsoft, the American Institute of Architects, AT&T, SAP America, Oracle and Telefonica all paid Bill Clinton six-figure sums to speak as Hillary Clinton laid the groundwork for her presidential campaign. The entities that paid a Clinton for a speech, lobbied Hillary Clinton’s State Department and donated to the Clinton Foundation. And that list, which includes Clinton Foundation donors, is hardly the end of it…
Hardly the end indeed. The Clintons appear to have set up a fundraising arm specifically to cash in on Sweden’s desire to dodge US sanctions on Iran:
Bill Clinton’s foundation set up a fundraising arm in Sweden that collected $26 million in donations at the same time that country was lobbying Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Department to forgo sanctions that threatened its thriving business with Iran, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Times.
The Swedish entity, called the William J. Clinton Foundation Insamlingsstiftelse, was never disclosed to or cleared by State Department ethics officials, even though one of its largest sources of donations was a Swedish government-sanctioned lottery.
As the money flowed to the foundation from Sweden, Mrs. Clinton’s team in Washington declined to blacklist any Swedish firms despite warnings from career officials at the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm that Sweden was growing its economic ties with Iran and potentially undercutting Western efforts to end Tehran’s rogue nuclear program, diplomatic cables show.
It is clear that Hillary could be induced to overlook human rights abuses for a coincidental contribution:
As to the first question, we know that in 2010, the Clinton Foundation accepted a $500,000 donation from Algeria. The money was used to assist with earthquake relief in Haiti, according to the Foundation. But, of course, Algeria could have contributed directly to Haitian relief without going through the Clinton Foundation.
This brings us to the second question — what did Algeria, having gone through the Clinton Foundation, receive from Hillary Clinton? According to the Washington Post, Algeria wanted better relations with the U.S. and relief from the State Department on human rights issues.
Hillary and Bill routinely take money from countries which oppress women and gays and from churches in Cameroon which are explicitly anti-gay.
Hillary Clinton’s charity accepted a substantial donation from an anti-gay African church which has likened homosexuals to the Devil, Daily Mail Online can reveal.
The 2016 Presidential candidate took money for her sprawling health nonprofit from the Cameroon Baptist Convention whose official policy is that being gay ‘contradicts God’s purpose for human sexuality’.
The devout Christian organization has in the past compared being gay to committing incest and human trafficking. Its leaders have also railed against US attempts to promote gay rights in Cameroon.
Despite this, the Cameroon Baptist Convention Health Board gave between $1million and $10million between 2010 and this year, according to the latest list of donors from the Clinton Health Access Initiative.
This begs the question- how does a church in Cameroon have millions for the Clintons?
You can read here how the money flowed to Bill and to the Clinton Foundation as they helped sell control of US uranium stocks to Russia.
The Clintons can actually pay for favors. They made a $100,000 donation to a NY Times Foundation after the Times endorsed her for President.
There could not be a greater difference between George W. Bush and the Clintons. Laura was not part of government when W was a paid speaker. Neither did Laura sell US policy for cash.
Hillary and Bill did. They’ll turn any trick for a buck. That’s something the Politico hit piece ignores.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
If you are going to support Hellary, there is much to ignore. Sad, though, that they were so broke when they left the White House that they had to steal the furniture and accoutrements to survive.
Thanks for citing the article that said that the Clinton’s had 700,000 in assets
But also according to that cited article they had 2-10 million in outstanding debts
so I am pretty sure , not that I am a CPA, that having more debts than assets means “dead broke”
The Clinton’s seem to not choose to live anything close to a lavish lifestyle. They bought their 2 homes for a total of 5 million. They apparently COULD have spent 10 or 20 times that amount, had they wanted a lavish lifestyle. Neither seems to have expensive hobbies (horse breeding , art collection) but instead both seem to have chosen public service as the best way to spend their time.
I am quite unsure of how much or little time the Clinton’s spent on directing the White House staff, most of whom were staying on under Bush, on packing and moving.
If wealth accumulation was most important to Hillary she would not be running for POTUS.
As for Bill Clinton’s speaking fees vs Bush’s speaking fees, in case you have forgotten Bush left office with below freezing (32) poll numbers, not so many people were happy to hear him speak regardless of what fee he might charge.
Bush’s policy of preemptive war was a disaster
@john:
You know, you would be better at groveling if you would separate those two sentences with some other blather so that they are not so blatantly contradicting. People that buy two homes for $5 million ARE living lavishly. For your information, the vast majority of homes cost less than $2 million or so. They can even come with their own secret, illegal internet server.
Their hobbies (destroying economies and foreign policy) may not cost them much, but the price is really high for the rest of the world.