The editors of the Wall Street Journal underscore a point I’ve been making pretty much since I began posting on this blog:
The Band memo reveals exactly what critics of the Clintons have long said: They make little distinction between the private and public aspects of their lives, between the pursuit of personal enrichment, the operation of a nonprofit, and participation in U.S. politics.
Mr. Band writes that he and his colleague Justin Cooper “have, for the past ten years, served as the primary contact and point of management for President Clinton’s activities—which span from political activity (e.g., campaigning on behalf of candidates for elected office), to business activity (e.g., providing advisory services to business entities with which he has a consulting arrangement), to Foundation activity.â€
This excerpt and all the potential conflicts it describes, plus Chelsea’s warning about business “hustling†at foundation events, would seem more than ample cause to trigger an IRS audit of the foundation. For that matter, why aren’t the IRS and prosecutors already on the case? Any normal foundation has to keep records to show it is separating its nonprofit activity from any for-profit business.
Mr. Band’s memo confirms that donors were not seeking merely to help the sick and the poor. He explains that the Clinton Foundation had “engaged an array of fundraising consultants†over the past decade but “these engagements have not resulted in significant new dollars for the Foundation.†In other words, it wasn’t working as a conventional charity.
Mr. Band then explains how he and his Teneo partner Declan Kelly had to carry the fundraising load, and did so by packaging foundation solicitations with other services such as a meeting with Bill Clinton, $450,000 speeches or strategic advice. Many of the donations, from U.S. companies like Coca-Cola and Dow Chemical and foreign firms like UBS and Barclays, occurred while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.
Why exactly were donors writing checks? The Band memo makes clear that donations untied to additional Clinton or Teneo services weren’t all that appealing to potential supporters. This is significant, because the large grant-making foundations in the U.S. are almost entirely run by Clinton voters. So you know they weren’t turned off by the brand name. They’d contribute more if they thought they were also buying goodwill and influence with a current Secretary of State and a potential future President.
which is that elected officials inevitably come to conflate their own personal benefit with the public good. It isn’t unique to the Clintons; in fact the Clintons aren’t particularly distinguished in it other than by scale. It isn’t limited to one political party. I think it’s a human characteristic.
And it’s corrupt. In some cases it’s amazing that any public business is conducted at all. That’s certainly the case in Illinois where public business is not in fact being conducted but public money continues to flow to the law firms, etc. of elected officials.
The solutions are to keep elected officials on much shorter leashes, to give them greater scrutiny, and limit their terms of office.
Or to put corporations, lobbyists, and huge amounts of money on an incredibly short leash. And how schizo are the dorks at the WSJ? Regulation is terrible and the Clintons need to be audited because of a rule and the Kochs should be able to buy a state with dark money that the government has no business looking at!
I’d support that, too. I think, for example, that it should be illegal to accept money for lobbying and that it should be against House and Senate rules for sitting Congressmen and Senators to be lobbied by anyone other than a constituent.
I think we need to come to the realization that the Congress will not implement even obvious, commonsense reforms. It’s going to need to be done to them rather than by them.
There are so many ways around restrictions on who can get what. The money will go somewhere close to the person being lobbied, and nothing will change. The problem is the money, and the sterile social arrangements necessary for it to change hands.
That there are ways to evade paying taxes does not mean that laws compelling you to pay taxes are futile. People are put in jail for income tax evasion.
As long as they’re levied and enforced in an even-handed manner I have no problems with laws limiting political contributions. Most of the complaints I’ve heard about money in politics defend the contributions made by their own supporters and attack those made by their opponents’.
Sure, but you can’t go to prison for being a Congressman for two years and then taking a job with a consulting group across the river after you leave office. Or having your wife be a consultant while you are in Congress. And the current laws for campaign finance would allow a a distant corporation to manufacture a campaign for a robot like Scott Walker or an entity to give money to some shadow group that in no way coordinates with the actual politician.
There was a really funny bit from Jeb Bush’s campaign where a reporter had to express astonishment at the actual campaign and the shadow campaign finance whatever having booked space at the same hotel at the same date, despite not being allowed to coordinate.
There have been multiple proposals for ending that particular abuse including levying a heavy tax on income from lobbying and an outright ban on Congressmen lobbying their former colleagues.
You know, the scandal isn’t the baleful effect of money on politics. The scandal is the ROI. It’s not just easy to buy our Congress it’s incredibly cheap.
Can’t we just impose a sort of non-compete agreement upon election? 10 years no lobbying, no government-related lawyering, speaking, punditizing, etc… , backed up by confiscatory penalties. But if we hope to attract decent candidates we’re going to have to raise salaries. Senators make $174,000, which is nice, but not if you’re supposed to maintain homes in both DC and California and commute between them.
I agree completely. However, I’d prefer their maintaining homes only within their districts and teleconferencing. That’s what’s done in the private sector these days. You don’t have execs of multi-nationals maintaining homes in the U. S. and India. They go to India a couple of times a year and teleconference the rest of the time.
I know one CEO who has a sort of robot surrogate who wanders around the office in Niles with an iPad while the CEO is comfortably at home in California.
As it is right now between them Virginia and Maryland have 80 or 90 senators, at least based on actual residency.
The day to day operations of the Congress are still rooted in the 1950s.
“Can’t we impose”
Sure. Done in the private sector all the time. Problem is, politicians have no interest and voters are asleep. No one should be surprised at an obvious feature of the system
“If this gets out we are screwed”.
Asleep, or ok as long as it’s their side
Yes, the private sector often uses non-compete clauses. One of the many ways the private sector hurts the economy. Heaven knows you don’t want those fast food workers going elsewhere and telling everyone that at the Burger Bomb they put the ketchup on before the mustard.
The number of registered federal lobbyists has dropped 30% during this administration. Does that mean we have less influence going on? I suspect they all just become consultants now instead of lobbyists. Hard to tell for sure.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/obama-lobbying-rules-226958
Steve
Steve