The Clinton Foundation

I have been reading about it a lot the last few days. The article does cover some of their failures. Was every decision on the up and up? Probably not. But I see people mention "slush fund" or a "Ponzi scheme". I don't believe that to be true at all. It seems that it is a victim of the R smear campaign against the Clintons going back to the 90s.

It gets an A rating, pays out 88% of donations as charity, and on average spends $2 to raise $100.

And it actually helps hundreds of millions of people:

Since 2005, according to CGI, it has spawned initiatives that:
•Raised $313 million for R&D into new vaccines and medicines;
•Helped provide better maternal and child survival care to more than 110 million people, and;
•Provided treatment for more than 36 million people with tropical diseases.

But the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), which is an independent entity of the Clinton Foundation, may have had the most wide-ranging impact on global public health to date. It has helped negotiate HIV/AIDS therapy price cuts as high as 90%, ensuring access to these treatments for more than 11.5 million people across more than 70 countries
Click to expand...
 
Here's the perspective of a non biased charity watchdog Guidestar when it comes to the differences between the two "foundations":

https://trust.guidestar.org/notes-on-the-clinton-and-trump-foundations

When I donate I check everything through Charity Navigator to see how donations are used etc. Here are the results of that evaluation for Clinton, top tier. I can't find Trumps because it's a private organization ... sneaky as usual.

https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=16680

 
I think people mistake the Foundation's unique leveraging of Bill as a former president as some kind of corruption or personal enrichment tool. While it is NOT those things (I'm fairly certain the Clintons do not draw any kind of salary from the Foundation itself), it is a HUGE asset to use his status for good causes.

From what I understand, they haven't operated using a traditional charity structure. But they've done a hell of a lot of good, attained high marks from charity watchdogs (as Red kindly showed above), and haven't seemed to have benefitted from the charity structure in any kind of tangible way.

If they attained employment for people they knew from the Foundation, I fail to see how that is any kind of impropriety given the person qualified for the job. They just knew them from before.

If she communicated with foreign diplomats/citizens as a government official that she knew from the Foundation, I also fail to see how that's any kind of wrongdoing. She just had a prior relationship with them. That does not bar her from communicating with them while working for the government.

And yet, the terms 'slush fund', 'quid pro quo,' and 'selling access' seem to flow freely from the mouth of any partisan opposed to the Clintons. I'm all for calling a spade a spade, but I think they're trying to call a baseball a spade.

Part of it is the Clintons fault. They tend to not care about emitting the APPEARANCE of impropriety, even if there isn't one. That leaves them vulnerable to the above terminology from lazy partisans trying to lead a horse to water.

 
dudeguyy said:
Part of it is the Clintons fault. They tend to not care about emitting the APPEARANCE of impropriety, even if there isn't one. That leaves them vulnerable to the above terminology from lazy partisans trying to lead a horse to water.
Click to expand...
Part of it is the fact they've had to deal with this hypocritical stupidity since Newt Gingrich was Speaker. You'd be tired of having to having to fight PR battles created by people that vilify you because their echo chambers instructed them to for 20-odd years.

At some point, you just run out of "F***s" to give.
default_dunno.gif


 
Last edited by a moderator:
VectorVictor said:
dudeguyy said:
Part of it is the Clintons fault. They tend to not care about emitting the APPEARANCE of impropriety, even if there isn't one. That leaves them vulnerable to the above terminology from lazy partisans trying to lead a horse to water.
Click to expand...
Part of it is the fact they've had to deal with this hypocritical stupidity since Newt Gingrich was Speaker. You'd be tired of having to having to fight PR battles created by people that vilify you because their echo chambers instructed them to for 20-odd years.

At some point, you just run out of "F***s" to give.
default_dunno.gif
Click to expand...
Well said, my friend. I agree 100%.

It's pretty funny to see a guy who got the largest ethics fine in the history of Congress try and pass ANY kind of judgment on them. Newt did his damnedest to try and lead the moral crusade against Bill for his affair... while having an affair.

I understand why they'd both be tired of this crap. I guess it's just kind of part of the deal being a high-profile politician. Anything you do is open to scrutiny and people who have a vested interest in doing so will pick you apart even if they're picking at nothing.

I guess it's not so much as their fault but rather they should have seen it coming. If you leave yourself vulnerable at all, people will attack whatever they can.

Partisan politics can be really stupid.

 
Back
Top