America's Royal Family of Crony Capitalists
By Maureen Dowd
Why is it that America’s roil family always seems better in abstract
than in concrete? The closer it gets to running the world once more, the
more you are reminded of all the things that bugged you the last time
around.
The Clintons’ neediness, their sense of what they are owed in material
terms for their public service, their assumption that they’re entitled
to everyone’s money.
Are we about to put the “For Rent” sign back on the Lincoln Bedroom?
If Americans are worried about money in politics, there is no larger
concern than the Clintons, who are cosseted in a world where rich people
endlessly scratch the backs of rich people.
They have a Wile E. Coyote problem; something is always blowing up. Just
when the Clintons are supposed to be floating above it all, on a
dignified cloud of do-gooding leading into 2016, pop-pop-pop, little
explosions go off everywhere, reminding us of the troubling connections
and values they drag around.
There’s the continuing grotesque spectacle of Anthony Weiner and Huma
Abedin. And there’s the sketchy involvement of the Clintons’ most
prolific fund-raiser, Terry McAuliffe, and Hillary’s brother Tony Rodham
in a venture, GreenTech Automotive; it’s under federal investigation
and causing fireworks in Virginia, where McAuliffe is running for
governor.
Many Israelis were disgusted to learn that Bill Clinton was originally
scheduled to scarf up $500,000 to speak at the Israeli president Shimon
Peres’s 90th birthday festivities in June. I guess being good friends
with Peres and brokering the accord that won Peres the Nobel Peace Prize
were not reasons enough for Bill to celebrate. The Israeli branch of
the Jewish National Fund had agreed to donate half a mil to the Clinton
foundation. Isn’t the J.N.F. “supposed to plant trees with donor cash?”
Haaretz chided before the fund pulled back. “I guess money does grow on
trees.”
I never thought I’d have to read the words Ira Magaziner again. But the
man who helped Hillary torpedo her own health care plan is back.
In a Times article last week headlined “Unease at Clinton Foundation
Over Finances and Ambitions,” Nicholas Confessore and Amy Chozick
offered a compelling chronicle about an internal review of the
rechristened Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation that
illuminated the fungible finances and tensions between Clinton loyalists
and the foundation architects Magaziner and Doug Band, former bag
carrier for President Clinton.
You never hear about problems with Jimmy Carter’s foundation; he just
quietly goes around the world eradicating Guinea worm disease. But
Magaziner continues to be a Gyro Gearloose, the inept inventor of Donald
Duck’s Duckburg.
“On one occasion, Mr. Magaziner dispatched a team of employees to fly
around the world for months gathering ideas for a climate change
proposal that never got off the ground,” Confessore and Chozick said.
We are supposed to believe that every dollar given to a Clinton is a
dollar that improves the world. But is it? Clintonworld is a galaxy
where personal enrichment and political advancement blend seamlessly,
and where a cast of jarringly familiar characters pad their pockets
every which way to Sunday.
“Efforts to insulate the foundation from potential conflicts have
highlighted just how difficult it can be to disentangle the Clintons’
charity work from Mr. Clinton’s moneymaking ventures and Mrs. Clinton’s
political future,” Confessore and Chozick wrote.
The most egregious nest of conflicts was a firm founded by Doug Band
called Teneo, a scammy blend of corporate consulting, public relations
and merchant banking. Band, a surrogate son to Bill, put Huma, a
surrogate daughter to Hillary, on the payroll. Even Big Daddy Bill was a
paid adviser.
As The Times reported, Teneo worked on retainer, charging monthly fees
up to $250,000 and recruiting clients from among Clinton Foundation
donors, while encouraging others to become foundation donors. The
Clintons distanced themselves from Teneo when they got scorched with bad
publicity after the collapse of its client MF Global, the international
brokerage firm led by the former New Jersey governor Jon Corzine.
And Chelsea is now shaping the foundation’s future, and her political
future. So there may not be as much oxygen for her troublesome surrogate
siblings.
As George Packer wrote in The New Yorker, Bill Clinton earned $17
million last year giving speeches, including one to a Lagos company for
$700,000. Hillary gets $200,000 a speech.
Until Harry Truman wrote his memoirs, the ex-president struggled on an
Army pension of $112.56 a month. “I could never lend myself to any
transaction, however respectable,” he said, “that would commercialize on
the prestige and dignity of the office of the presidency.”
So quaint, Packer wrote, observing, “The top of American life has become
a very cozy and lucrative place, where the social capital of who you
are and who you know brings unimaginable returns.”
The Clintons want to do big worthy things, but they also want to squeeze
money from rich people wherever they live on planet Earth, insatiably
gobbling up cash for politics and charity and themselves from the same
incestuous swirl.
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