The Clintons Lower The Bar -- Again

I once had a boss who gave me some great advice, not just for managing people but for judging politicians: You forgive mistakes; you punish patterns. Everybody screws up. But if someone won't learn from his mistakes and try to correct his behavior, then he either doesn't think it was a mistake, he just doesn't care or he thinks you're a fool. The one indisputable takeaway from Peter Schweizer's new book, "Clinton Cash," is that Bill and Hillary Clinton fit one or all of those descriptions.

Let us recall Marc Rich, a shady billionaire indicted for tax evasion and defying trade sanctions with Iran during the U.S. hostage crisis. Rich fled to Switzerland to escape prosecution.

He hired Jack Quinn, a former Clinton White House counsel, to lobby the administration for a pardon. Quinn sought help from then-Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, who advised Quinn to petition the White House directly -- advice Holder later regretted. On the last day of his presidency, Bill Clinton pardoned Rich.

The ensuing scandal was enormous -- and bipartisan. It was widely believed that Rich had bought his pardon. Denise Rich, his ex-wife, had made huge donations to the Democratic Party, including $100,000 to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign and $450,000 to the foundation building Bill Clinton's presidential library.

Liberals were infuriated. "You let me down," wrote the Washington Post's Richard Cohen. "It's a pie in the face of anyone who ever defended you. You may look bad, Bill, but we look just plain stupid."

"It was a real betrayal by Bill Clinton of all who had been strongly supportive of him to do something this unjustified," exclaimed then-Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). "It was contemptuous." Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) chastised, "It was inexcusable." New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd suggested Clinton had "traded a constitutional power for personal benefit." Jimmy Carter all but called it bribery and said it was "disgraceful."

You can understand the bitterness. Democrats had defended the Clintons through Whitewater, Travelgate and Hillary Clinton's billing records shenanigans. They even defended Bill Clinton when he raised millions in re-election donations from Chinese donors and rented out the Lincoln bedroom. But this was just too much. Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us half a dozen times ...

The Clintons said it was all a misunderstanding, which is what they always say. Quinn offered a familiar defense: "The process I followed was one of transparency." Bill Clinton: "As far as I knew, Marc Rich and his wife were Republicans." Hillary Clinton kept quiet.

But let's assume it really was just a misunderstanding. Wouldn't a normal person -- never mind a family with historic ambitions -- go to great lengths to avoid even the appearance of a repeat performance? When Sen. John McCain was unfairly lumped in with the "Keating Five" influence-peddling scandal, he said the dishonor was more painful than his five years in a Vietnamese prison. He dedicated himself to demonstrating the sincerity of his shame, including his decades-long -- though intellectually misguided -- quest to reform campaign finance laws.

There are no allegations of pardons for sale in Schweizer's book. After all, Bill Clinton had none to sell anymore. But the Rich scandal was equally about the wealthy buying access and influence. And though there is no clear proof that Bill Clinton illegally sold access to shady gold-mining interests in Haiti or uranium moguls in Canada, no one this side of longtime Clinton defender Lanny Davis can dispute that the Clintons have acted as if they really just didn't care how it all looked.

As New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait notes, the "best-case scenario" is that the Clintons have been "disorganized and greedy."

The Clinton spin on the book is that there's not a "shred of evidence" of criminal wrongdoing, or as ABC's George Stephanopoulos helpfully repeated over the weekend, "There's no smoking gun." He's right, but not being a criminal is a remarkably low bar for a politician, even a Clinton.

The standard is that public servants should avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Not only is there three decades of evidence that the Clintons don't think that standard applies to them, but there's growing evidence that their biggest supporters are happy to play the fool -- again.

The Clinton spin on the explosive Schweizer book is that there's not a "shred of evidence" of criminal wrongdoing, or as ABC's George Stephanopoulos helpfully repeated over the weekend, "There's no smoking gun."

The party-line is that "it’s extremely difficult to identify a direct quid pro quo"....b/c while Hillary was Secy of State, foreign funny money was moving around from hand to hand with big money deals approved which she could say were going to be approved anyway......at the same time, foreign money was flowing into the charitable Clinton Foundation, not Hillary’s bank account.....

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LOOKING THROUGH THE WRONG END OF THE TELESCOPE The Buckraking Clinton Foundation sucking up foreign donations is morally reprehensible----but the real crimes are what exactly they are doing with the corporate/foreign monies once its in their Foundation's tax-exempt coffers.

So how'd they do that? Remember, Wall Street makes money disappear faster than a cream puff at a Weight Watchers weigh-in.

EXHIBIT ONE--- Dec 05, 2011---Fox News Report: Bill Clinton Reaped Big Bucks from Corzine Firm Before Collapse--- MF Global Employee Links Clinton to the Bankrupt Firm

A former MF Global employee accused former president Bill Clinton of collecting $50,000 per month through his Teneo advisory firm in the months before the brokerage careened towards its Halloween filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, reports Human Events.

Teneo was hired by MF Global’s former CEO Jon S. Corzine to improve his image and to enhance his connections with Clinton’s political family, said the employee, who asked that his name be withheld because he feared retribution, according to Hum/Events. Teneo is a dual-track company with one side devoted to merchant and investment banking and the other side set up to provide image and strategy consulting services. Clinton is the chairman of the company’s advisory board, reports Hum/Events.

SOURCE http://nation.foxnews.com/mf-global/2011/12/05/report-bill-clinton-reaped-big-bucks-corzine-firm- collapse#ixzz1fhH3pHHH

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EXHIBIT TWO--Then-Secy of State Hillary gave her close aide, Huma Abedin, “State Dept special status".....Abedin was working for Hillary at State....... AND simultaneously working for Bill Clinton, as a private contractor for his company, Teneo Holdings.

Abedin, reportedly had private email addresses on the Clinton email server system (underlining Democrats' greatest fear: the intersection of undisclosed foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s secret email address. Huma Abedin's sweetheart deal: (1) an outside private six-figure consultant at the State Department, and, (2) “special government employee” status, and worked a sideline---as a private contractor.

One of Huma's clients was Bill Clinton's Company----Teneo Holdings----self-described as a dual-track political/banking consulting firm that calls itself the “next chapter in strategic advisory.”

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EXHIBIT THREE---An earlier NYT's expose tarred Bill Clinton w/ Teneo's sub rosa dealings. Teneo is run by Clinton aide---Doug Band. Prosecutors found Band and Clinton listed in pedophile's Jeffry Epsteiin's records as having a shocking 21 email addresses and tele nos. Can you say money laundering? L/E recognizes multiple phone nos and email as the classic MO for money- laundering and tax evasion.

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EXHIBIT FOUR---Chelsea's husband runs a hedge fund that gained access to investors who had ties to the Clintons---even as reports surfaced that Mezvinsky's hedge fund had "underwhelming" returns.

The WSJ reports extensively on the fund's underperformance since its inception and Mezvinsky's mediocre investing and strategizing. Back in 2011, Mezvinsky, now 37, and two former Goldman Sachs colleagues — Bennett Grau and Mark Mallon — began raising money for Mezvinsky's Eaglevale Partners LP hedge fund. Some of Eaglevale's investors included Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Blankfein, a slavish Democrat supporter, said he had "always been a fan of Hillary Clinton."

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EXHIBIT FIVE-- The eternal Clinton/Goldman Sachs connection. Then-Pres Clinton's WH aide Rahm Emanuel also worked as a Goldman Sachs lobbyist.....both at the same time

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Here's Hillary cozying up to Goldman Sachs.

Then-US Sens Clinton and Corzine. Corzine was fresh out of Goldman Sachs
executive suite, buying his NJ Senate seat office for $65 million; then buying
the NJ governorship. Out of office, he ran a hedge fund where $1.5 B went missing.

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