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Foreign Government Gifts to Clinton Foundation on the Rise
WSJ ^ | February 17, 2015 | James V. Grimaldi And Rebecca Ballhaus

Posted on 02/18/2015 10:31:14 AM PST by yoe

The Clinton Foundation has dropped its self-imposed ban on collecting funds from foreign governments and is winning contributions at an accelerating rate, raising ethical questions as (Hillary) ramps up her expected bid for the presidency.

Recent donors include the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Australia, Germany and a Canadian government agency promoting the Keystone XL pipeline.

In 2009, the Clinton Foundation stopped raising money from foreign governments after Mrs. Clinton became secretary of state. Former President Bill Clinton, who ran the foundation while his wife was at the State Department, agreed to the gift ban at the behest of the Obama administration, which worried about a secretary of state’s husband raising millions while she represented U.S. interests abroad.

(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Extended News; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: slushfund
Remember Robert Torricelli? He and Ms. Clinton had a great deal in common when it came to selling governmental favors for themselves to various foreign businessmen. I don't think either he or she will or can resist riches from anywhere. Ms. C's baggage is mighty heavy....too heavy even for the POTUS.

NO TO HILLERY

1 posted on 02/18/2015 10:31:14 AM PST by yoe
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To: yoe

...wonder if any countries sent DVD’s....


2 posted on 02/18/2015 10:32:24 AM PST by Doogle (( USAF.68-73..8th TFW Ubon Thailand..never store a threat you should have eliminated))
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To: yoe

Democrats are attempting to give us the hellhole they’ve always dreamed of for this country.


3 posted on 02/18/2015 10:43:23 AM PST by GOPJ (If you can't get on the high horse for men burned alive and children raped, what's the horse for?)
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To: Doogle

Got to help old Bill&Hillary pay the mortgages,wouldn’t want them to stay POOR!


4 posted on 02/18/2015 10:52:13 AM PST by ballplayer
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To: yoe
So scumbag Slick Willy has figured out how to continue to get even richer by shaking down other countries and promising them access to all the bennies of being a Clinton Foundation Platinum Club member.

Of course, none of these Platinum Club members (or the Clintons) would ever try to get rich by actually providing a real VALUE-PROPOSITION to those of us who actually have to do productive WORK for a living and then live off what's left after the government takes its cut.

Clinton foresees a wonderful, enlightened World Without Profits for all of us proles, who will be so much better off when our lives are run and our money is spent by our superiors at the Clinton Foundation Platinum Club.

And for those who may have forgotten what kind of a President Bill Clinton was:

1) Clinton’s own words show his often expressed innate hostility to, and utter contempt for, the core principles of the American founding:

``If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government’s ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees.’’ -- President Bill Clinton, August 12, 1993

``The purpose of government is to reign in the rights of the people’’ –- Bill Clinton during an interview on MTV in 1993

``We can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans…that we forget about reality.’’ -- President Bill Clinton, quoted in USA Today, March 11, 1993, Page 2A, ``NRA change: `Omnipotent to powerful’’’ by Debbie Howlett

“When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly… that they would work for the common good, as well as for the individual welfare… However, now there’s a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there’s too much freedom. When personal freedom’s being abused, you have to move to limit it.” – Bill Clinton, April 19, 1995

2) Clinton inevitably pursued his own political advantage at the expense of American interests and national security. Here is just one of many possible examples:

It is well documented that Clinton and the Democrats took illegal campaign money from groups and individuals tied directly to the Chinese People’s Republican Army. It is therefore not surprising that In January 1998 Clinton went against the advice of then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Pentagon experts by lifting long-standing restrictions against the export of American satellites to China for launch on Chinese rockets. Not only did he move control over such decisions from the more security-focused State Department to the Commerce Department, but he intervened in a Justice Department investigation of Loral Space & Communications, retroactively enabling Loral to sell critical missile technology to the Chinese. Interestingly enough, Clinton’s decision was made at the request of Loral CEO Bernard Schwartz, whose earlier $1.3 million campaign donation made him the single biggest contributor to the Democratic election effort.

The result, as stated eloquently by syndicated columnist Linda Bowles, was that “the Democrats got money from satellite companies and from Chinese communists; China got supercomputors, advanced production equipment and missile technology; Loral got its satellites launched at bargain basement prices . . . and the transfer of sensitive missile technology gave China [for the first time] the capability of depositing bombs on American cities.” Incidentally, Loral ultimately failed to benefit from this permanent injury to America’s security interests: in July 2003, the company filed for bankruptcy protection, and in order to raise cash was forced to sell its most profitable business – a fleet of communications satellites orbiting over North America.

3) On two occasions, Clinton used military action for the specific purpose of distracting the American public from the fallout of the Lewinsky affair:

• On August 20, three days after Clinton finally admitted publicly to the Lewinsky affair, the news media was poised to focus on that day’s grand jury testimony by Monica Lewinsky. That same morning, Clinton personally went on national television to gravely announce his bombing of a Sudanese “chemical weapons factory,” and a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. It was the first time most Americans ever heard the name of Osama bin Laden. The factory bombing in Sudan killed an innocent night watchman, but accomplished little else. It later was proven that the plant was making badly needed pharmaceuticals for people in that poverty-stricken part of the world, but no chemical weapons.

Several months later, the U.S. Center for Nonproliferation Studies, part of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, stated: "...the evidence indicates that the facility had no role whatsoever in chemical weapons development." Kroll Associates, one of the world's most reputable investigative firms, also confirmed that there was no link in any way between the plant and any terrorist organization. As for the Afghanistan bombing, it failed to do any damage at all to bin Laden or his organization. Clinton’s action was accurately characterized by George W. Bush when he said right after 9-11: "When I take action, I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt.

Clinton’s pointless and murderous military actions did not make Americans safer that day, although they did destroy an innocent life, and for all the good they did certainly could have been delayed in any case. But they did succeed in diverting media attention from Lewinsky’s grand jury testimony for a 24-hour news cycle, which was the main point. So I guess, they weren’t a total loss.

•On December 16, 1998, on the eve of the scheduled House vote on his impeachment, Bill Clinton launched a surprise bombing attack on Baghdad. As justification for this exploit, he cited the urgent threat that Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction posed to America, and the need for immediate action. Almost immediately, the House Democrats held a caucus and emerged calling for a delay in the impeachment proceedings. House minority leader Dick Gephardt made a statement: "We obviously should pass a resolution by saying that we stand behind the troops. I would hope that we do not take up impeachment until the hostilities have completely ended."

Conveniently, a delay so near the end of the House term would have caused the vote to be taken up in the next session – when the newly elected House membership would be seated with more Democratic representation, thereby improving Clinton’s chances of dodging impeachment.

The Republicans did, in fact, agree to delay the hearings, but only for a day or two. Amazingly, Clinton ended the bombing raid after only 70 hours -- once it became clear that in spite of the brief delay, the vote would still be held in the current session.

Once the bombing stopped, Clinton touted the effectiveness and importance of the mission. As reported by ABC News : “We have inflicted significant damage on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction programs, on the command structures that direct and protect that capability, and on his military and security infrastructure,” he said. Defense secretary William Cohen echoed the point: “We estimate that Saddam's missile program has been set back by at least a year.”

Whether or not one buys Clinton’s assessment of that mission, it is difficult to believe that its timing was so critical that it required commencement virtually at the moment the House was scheduled to vote on the impeachment¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬. I think the most reasonable conclusion is that Clinton cynically deployed US military assets and placed military personnel in harm’s way for purely political reasons.

4) Clinton’s reckless sexual behavior was a threat to American national security:

Clinton and his supporters have been very effective in persuading large numbers of Americans that the Lewinsky scandal was “only about sex.” But I see a bigger issue here, because Clinton is on record as saying that he would have done anything to keep knowledge of the Lewinsky affair from becoming public.

To me, that statement raises a very serious question: What if, instead of sending her recorded Lewinsky conversations to Ken Starr, Linda Tripp had instead secretly offered them for sale, say, to the Chinese government? Or to the Russians? Or even to agents of Saddam?

What kind of blackmail leverage would those tapes have provided to a foreign government in dealing with America on sensitive trade, security or military issues? One of the few things Clinton ever said that I believe is that he would have done anything to keep the Lewinsky affair secret. Given his demonstrated track record of selling out American interests for personal or political gain (and there are more examples that I could have cited here), how far would he have gone in compromising America’s real interests in order to protect his own neck when threatened with blackmail?

Pretty far, I believe. Equally distressing is the prospect Clinton might, in fact, have succumbed to foreign black mail on other occasions in order to hide different sexual episodes that ultimately did not become public. There is no way to know, of course, but I prefer presidents for whom such a scenario is not a plausible possibility.

And don’t even get me started on the war crime in Kosovo.

WAR IN KOSOVO

During Bill Clinton’s 1999 NATO-led war in Kosovo – which according to some estimates cost as much as $75 billion – we bombed Belgrade for 78 days, killed almost 3,000 civilians, and shredded the civilian infrastructure (including every bridge across the Danube.)

We devastated the environment, bombed the Chinese embassy, came very close to engaging in armed combat against Russian forces, and in general, pursued a horrific and inhumane strategy to rain misery on the civilian population of Belgrade in order to pressure Milosevic into surrendering.

Why did we do all that? The US did not even have an arguable interest in the Balkans, and no one ever tried to claim that Serbia represented any kind of threat to our nation or our interests.

But for months the Clinton administration had told us that Milosevic was waging a vicious genocide against Albanian Muslims, and needed to be stopped. The New York Times called it a “humanitarian war.” In March 1999 – the same month that the bombing started – Clinton’s State Department publicly suggested that as many as 500,000 Albanian Kosovars had been murdered by Milosevic’s regime. In May of that year, as the bombing campaign was drawing to a close, Secretary of Defense William Cohen lowered that estimate 100,000.

Five years after the bombing, after all the forensic investigations had been completed, the prosecutors at Milosevic’s “War Crimes” trial in the Hague were barely been able to document a questionable figure of perhaps 5,000 “bodies and body parts.” During the war, the American people were told that Kosovo was full of mass graves filled with the bodies of murdered Albanian Muslims. But none were ever found.

BILL CLINTON ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE

During the election cycle of 1992, George H.W. Bush lost his job after Bill Clinton hammered him relentlessly for having caused the “worst economy of the last 50 years.”

In fact, as CNN’s Brooke Jackson has reported: “Three days before Christmas 1992, the National Bureau of Economic Research finally issued its official proclamation that the recession had ended 21 months earlier. What became the longest boom in U.S. history actually began nearly two years before Clinton took office.” See (See http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/10/31/jackson.recession.primer.otsc/).

By the same token, Clinton is generally perceived as having a stellar economic record during his own presidency, in spite of the fact that the economy was already starting to decline during the last year of his term after the stock market crashed in March 2000.

According to a report by MSNBC: “The longest economic expansion in U.S. history faltered so much in the summer of 2000 that business output actually contracted for one quarter, the government said Wednesday in releasing a comprehensive revision of the gross domestic product. Based on new data, the Commerce Department said that the GDP — the country’s total output of goods and services — shrank by 0.5 percent at an annual rate in the July-September quarter of 2000.” See: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3676690/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/t/gdp-figures-revised-downward/.

5 posted on 02/18/2015 10:56:33 AM PST by Maceman
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To: yoe
Foreign countries seeking influence within the US government - an issue tailor made for the opposition.

A few decades ago such a charge backed up by evidence would've been the kiss of death for the Clintons.

Now those making the charge will be excoriated as xenophobic. How times change.

6 posted on 02/18/2015 10:58:37 AM PST by skeeter
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To: yoe

No doubt all the libs will be condemning this intrusion of foreign money into the American political process. /sarc Obama, you clown, where are you on this?


7 posted on 02/18/2015 11:00:36 AM PST by Steve_Seattle
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To: Steve_Seattle

Buy your piece of America ,Support the Clinton Foundation


8 posted on 02/18/2015 11:09:32 AM PST by molson209 (Blank)
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To: yoe

9 posted on 02/18/2015 11:20:46 AM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either satire or opinion. Or both.)
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To: yoe

Sorry but we tried three computer links and the source site demands payment of a subscription to read this article. Same happened a few days ago with another wsj posting on FR. We refuse to re- subscribe to wsj because they tried charging us much more than the renewal rate and then failed to fully refund the overcharge. As for hillary, she’s obviously sold out long ago and must be stopped.


10 posted on 02/18/2015 11:26:14 AM PST by faithhopecharity ((Brilliant, Profound Tag Line Goes Here, just as soon as I can think of one..).)
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To: yoe

IIRC, Clinton received lots of money after being elected Senator. It was dismissed because she HADN’T YET TAKEN OFFICE. And remember all tht money, in 2008, that the Obama Machine didn’t disclose? They dismissed it as ALL small donations, under $200, so they didn’t have to provide names. And Big Media let both Hillary! and Obama skate on their ‘word’ about the monies


11 posted on 02/18/2015 11:27:22 AM PST by originalbuckeye (Moderation in temper is always a virtue; moderation in principle is always a vice. Paine)
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To: yoe

Have Hillary and Bill registered as foreign agents?

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) was enacted in 1938. FARA is a disclosure statute that requires persons acting as agents of foreign principals in a political or quasi-political capacity to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements in support of those activities. Disclosure of the required information facilitates evaluation by the government and the American people of the statements and activities of such persons in light of their function as foreign agents. The FARA Registration Unit of the Counterespionage Section (CES) in the National Security Division (NSD) is responsible for the administration and enforcement of the Act. (Source http://www.fara.gov)


12 posted on 02/18/2015 11:43:08 AM PST by WMarshal (Free citizen, never a subject or a civilian)
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To: yoe

The Clinton Global Initiative is pretty big $$, but I guarantee you it will be pocket money compared to the Obama Foundation after Jan 2017.
Just the POTUS pardon bribes will be huge.


13 posted on 02/18/2015 11:44:50 AM PST by nascarnation (Impeach, convict, deport)
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To: ballplayer

Read that Chel’s hubby’s hedge fund tanked bigtime over bad bets on Greece.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/chelsea-clinton-mark-mezvinsky-hedge-fund-loss-114880.html


14 posted on 02/18/2015 11:46:09 AM PST by nascarnation (Impeach, convict, deport)
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To: yoe

Money laundering. Covering-up Qadaffi’s money.


15 posted on 02/18/2015 12:43:28 PM PST by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer")
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