Obama Foundation girds for Clinton-like scrutiny (user pols get-rich-quick)

Obama faces a daunting task of trying to avoid ethical issues that arise when public officials take donations for personal causes......eight years ago, candidate Obama tweaked then-rival Hillary Clinton by highlighting how unfettered fundraising for her husband’s presidential library could undermine trust in government. Now, Obama faces his own daunting task, trying to raise $500 million or more to build his own presidential library on the south side of Chicago, while keeping his promise to make detailed disclosures and avoid ethical issues that arise when public officials take large donations for personal causes.

The announcement WRT building the Obama library in Obama’s hometown will escalate fundraising efforts that got off to a slow start when the Obama Foundation was set up early last year....longtime Obama fundraiser Julianna Smoot oversees fundraising; the first tax form is expected to be made public early next week.

In its first year, the foundation has accepted contributions from 13 donors — couples, individuals or nonprofits. The top givers — listed at between $500,000 and $1 million — are Chicago-based, including publisher Fred Eychaner and hedge fund manager Michael Sacks, along with his wife, Cari. A foundation official declined to share the group’s fundraising total. Based on donations listed online, it appears that the first-year total reached a few million dollars. A charity-registration website maintained by the Illinois attorney general’s office put the group’s revenue at about $1.2 million through July of last year.

“In light of the controversy around the Clinton Foundation, I think there are legitimate questions to be asked of the Obama Foundation folks about how it is that their disclosure policy is going to be enforced, who will oversee that and how they will be making sure that their operation doesn’t become a vehicle for undue influence,” said Steve Spaulding of Common Cause. “We can take it on faith, but self-policing only kind of goes so far. … Who’s going to referee this, be an independent arbiter and make the judgment calls about complying with the policy?”

As Hillary launched her second presidential bid, the Clinton Foundation has faced a slew of allegations......Foundation officials acknowledged that they didn’t submit some foreign government donations for vetting when Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state, that some donor disclosures were inaccurate, and that some tax filings contained errors.....discrepancies that came to light in news reports and in author Peter Schweizer's investigatory book.

An Obama Foundation spokesperson declined to entertain comparison to the Clinton Foundation, but a spokesperson said Obama’s group is observing “strict donation guidelines in line with those adopted by the president for his campaigns.” As long as Obama is in office, his foundation has pledged not to take money from foreign nationals, foreign agents, registered federal lobbyists or corporations. Many corporations make charitable gifts through foundations, but an Obama spokesperson did not address Tuesday whether such funding is being accepted now or will be in the future.

A bill Obama co-sponsored in 2007 required disclosure of donations that registered lobbyists make to presidential foundations and other groups. Obama also vowed in campaign materials to “Disclose All Contributions to Organizations Affiliated with the President or Members of Congress,” including “presidential libraries.”

Obama's 2008 race salvos alluded to gifts to the Clinton Foundation late in Bill Clinton’s term...the $450,000 contributed by Denise Rich at a time she was pressing for a pardon of her ex-husband, fugitive financier Marc Rich. Clinton granted the pardon---midnight pardons--over 100 given on his last day in office (to avoid scrutiny). The Rich pardon triggered a grand jury investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan and a House committee investigation that led to public hearings as well as protracted wrangling over the foundation’s donor list. No criminal charges were brought.

“We do have a track record of a rather huge problem occurring with a presidential foundation at the end of the Clinton presidency,” said Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21. “The bottom line is if President Obama wants money raised for a foundation prior to leaving office then they have an obligation to take a number of steps to ensure there is no exchange of funds for favors or the appearance of such an exchange.” Separate legislation that has passed the House three times and which Obama also supported in 2007 would require disclosure of donations of $200 or more to a planned library and $1,250 to an open library in a given quarter. The measure has never cleared the Senate.

The Obama Foundation’s voluntary online disclosure omits some information that would have been required under the bill Obama backed, including the addresses and occupations of donors. In addition, instead of listing the exact amount of gifts, wide ranges are provided. The breadth of one such band — ranging from $200 to $100,000 — prompted a sharp rebuke from Wertheimer. “I object to that. That’s absurd,” the longtime backer of limits on money in politics said. “Knowing the amount given is quite relevant to the question of what kind of conflict might arise. Disclosing that someone gave between $200 and $100,000 doesn’t cut it.”

Obama friend Marty Nesbitt, who serves as chairman of the foundation’s board, predicted at a news conference in Chicago Tuesday that the Obama Library will open by 2020 or 2021 if all goes according to plan. That will require an aggressive pace of fundraising, particularly if the foundation waits to make a big push for funds until after Obama leaves office. However, doing that could minimize complaints that foundation fundraising is diverting money from Democratic campaigns in connection with the 2016 elections.

Clinton’s fundraising goal for his library in Little Rock, Arkansas, was $165 million (w/ donations from many foreign countries). For George W. Bush’s library in Dallas, it was $300 million, but they brought in $500 million. The price tag for a library in a high-cost city like Chicago could zoom even higher.

Longtime Clinton confidant Skip Rutherford, who oversaw the early stages of Clinton’s library planning effort, noted that while the costs will be higher for Obama, he also has another source of donations he can tap into: Chicago’s business elite. “Chicago probably has more wealthy people, and the University of Chicago has a lot of successful alumni, and we don’t know what kind of foundation or corporate support he could pick up. …. Look at the museums in Chicago and the university endowments,” Rutherford said. “Another key donor base will be people in that particular home area who will see the benefit of the library.”

The Clinton Foundation wound up needing bridge loans in 2004 because it had to pay out money for construction before pledges had arrived. Bank of America put up $26.5 million, while a longtime donor to the Clintons, Haim Saban, floated $10 million. “You’ve got construction bills coming in and large pledges over multiple years, so bridge loans are not uncommon,” Rutherford said.

Transparency advocates said that while most donors are simply seeking to burnish a particular president, a law requiring full, detailed disclosure of gifts is needed because some may give for less laudable reasons. “It’s going to be a magnet for those who care about securing that president’s legacy and making sure it lives on and is told the way the president wants to tell it, but the other reason that someone might cut a six- or seven-figure check for something so closely tied with a president is they’re hoping to have some kind of influence,” Spaulding added. “This is something we should not have to hash out every four years or eight years.”

Obama has two foundations to date (TWO THAT WE KNOW OF).
Must need two foundations to handle all the tax-free money.

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OBAMA'S SISTER IS THE CHICAGO FOUNDATION BOARD MEMBER

Maya Soetoro-Ng is President Obama’s sister and a specialist for the Matsunaga Institute for Peace. She is the co-founder of Our Public School, a non-profit that connects schools to their communities, and the co-creator of Ceeds of Peace, a peace education program that has been implemented in schools and communities around Hawaii.

Previously, Soetoro-Ng worked as an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii and taught in both private and public settings in New York City and in Hawaii. She also worked at the East West Center, promoting educational exchange between Asia and the United States.

Soetoro-Ng received a Masters degree in Secondary Education from New York University and a PhD in Multicultural Education from the University of Hawaii.

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OBAMA's HALF-BROTHER HEADS THE SECOND FOUNDATION

Kenya-resident, Malik Obama in Muslim dress, holds up
photo of his half brother Obama in Muslim dress, taken
during an earlier visit.

MORE HERE http://shoebat.com/shoebat-foundation/obamas-wahhabist-fundraising-empire

BACKSTORY---The Barack H. Obama Foundation (BHOF) is run by Malik (in Kenya)---to honor Malik and Obama's late dad. It was fast-tracked by Lois Lerner for IRS tax-exempt status.

The BHOF is based at a Virginia UPS store, according to its website. The organization’s IRS filings list another Virginia address that is actually a drug rehab center where the foundation does not appear ever to have been based.

As first reported by The Daily Caller, the foundation was speedily approved for IRS exemption by Lois Lerner, the self-same IRS senior official at the center of the targeting of conservative organizations that have waited over two years to receive tax exempt status. The IRS thoughtfully gave the Obama Foundation retroactive fund-raising status.......which it stupidly never applied for.

To get tax-exempt status, the foundation cooked-up a mission statement: “to provide people everywhere with resources to uplift their welfare and living standards in memory of dad---Barack H. Obama: in the region of his birth, Kenya, and beyond.” Its guiding principle is “the inherent belief that no one can truly enjoy the riches he has reaped if his neighbor suffers....."We seek to elevate the human condition so that everyone can live in dignity and truly enjoy having one another as neighbors.”

(waiting for hysterical laughter to die down)

Despite raising more than $250,000, the alleged charity doesn’t seem to have done much. Its website claims the organization has built a madrassa and was building an imam’s house as well as some “proposed latrines,” but there is no other evidence that the nonprofit was working to “mitigate social-shortcomings in areas of education and literacy, health and well-being, poverty, and lack of community infrastructure in such basic needs such as water, electricity, shelter and sustenance,” as the site says.

Alton Ray Baysden, a former Dept of State employee, allegedly a registered Republican, who helped start the Barack H Obama foundation, declined to comment before seeing copies of a reporter’s passport and govt ID, along with a description of the article’s “motivation” and “slant.”

Repeated reporters' phone calls went to the organization’s voicemail and were not returned.

OBAMA'S SISTER IS A CHICAGO FOUNDATION BOARD MEMBER

Soetoro-Ng received a Masters degree in Secondary Education from New York University and a PhD in Multicultural Education from the University of Hawaii.

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OBAMA's HALF-BROTHER HEADS THE SECOND FOUNDATION

Kenya-resident, Malik Obama in Muslim dress, holds up
photo of his half brother Obama in Muslim dress, taken
during an earlier visit.

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