Posted on 03/11/2014 6:17:34 PM PDT by Olog-hai
Melding 2014 needs with 2016 hopes, President Barack Obama teamed up Tuesday with an ally and fundraiser of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to help the Democratic Party erase a worrisome debt.
Obama was in New York Tuesday to raise money for the Democratic National Committee at a high-dollar fundraiser at the home of Alan Patricof, the founder of a New York venture capital fund. Patricof is a longtime Clinton friend and fundraiser for her Senate and presidential campaigns, and the event aligns the Obama and Clinton orbits as the former first lady considers a White House bid in 2016.
It also illustrates the overlapping fundraising draw that Obama and Clinton represent at a crucial time for the cash-strapped DNC. And it helps bridge some internal party tensions between donors who are merely interested in presidential politics and the Democrats’ needs during this year's midterm elections. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Billionaire Walmart heiress Alice Walton, billionaire philanthropist Jon Stryker, and billionaire progressive global financier George Soros were among the wealthy donors who helped raise over $4 million last year for the “Ready for Hillary” super PAC, newly released public filings reveal.
Walton, Stryker, and Soros were joined by 32 others in chipping in the maximum $25,000 super PAC donation, including Steve and Amber Mostyn’s law firm, Clinton 2008 bundler Bill Rudin, and former U.S. ambassador to Hungary under Clinton Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis.
Additional notable contributors were Homeland producer Howard Gordon, the soon-to-be ex-wife of disgraced former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Silda Wall, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, John Tyson of Tyson Foods, and former Clinton operatives Lynn Cutler, Lanny Davis, and Ann Lewis.
The super PAC has reportedly spent over $1 million on online advertising to build an army of volunteers and donors. At the end of 2013, Ready for Hillary had just under $750,000 in cash on hand.
December 25, 2013
Is Hillary Clinton’s charitable foundation hurting for cash? One may think so with the new donation scheme she announced this week in a fundraising email. Hubby Bill, Hillary says, will match each new donation dollar-for-dollar until December 31.
“We have big plans for 2014,” the former Senator and Secretary of State insisted in a Monday email to supporters. The Washington Post notes that the Clintons have three new programs they are trying to fund for 2014. The three programs include the “Too Small to Fail” program, an effort intended to help parents prepare kids for school; “No Ceilings,” meant to help women and girls achieve “full participation” in society; and programs to help youngsters learn job skills.
The email plea for cash was for the Bill, Hillary, & Chelsea Clinton Foundation—formerly named the Clinton Foundation. The Clintons hope to raise upwards of $250 million to keep their charity organization afloat into the future.
When the Post asked foundation officials about the matching claim, no comment was forthcoming. How anyone will be able to determine if this matching takes place was not outlined.
The Clinton Foundation came under heavy fire earlier this year when The New York Times published a story detailing the massive waste the foundation has engaged in since it began in 1997. The foundation, the paper reported, was rife with waste and cronyism. The paper also reported that despite the nearly $500 million raised since its inception, the foundation had little to show for all its activities, although Clinton cronies made millions off their work for the charity even as the foundation seems to have run million-dollar deficits for years.
“The Clinton Foundation had become a sprawling concern, supervised by a rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction and threatened by conflicts of interest. It ran multimillion-dollar deficits for several years, despite vast amounts of money flowing in,” The Times reported in August.
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