Government Watchdog Calls Clinton Foundation A Slush Fund

[amborin]

Government Watchdog Calls Clinton Foundation A "Slush Fund"


“It seems like the Clinton Foundation operates as a slush fund for the Clintons,” said Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a government watchdog group once run by leading progressive Democrat and Fordham Law professor Zephyr Teachout. …

The Clinton family’s mega-charity took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges in 2013 but spent just $9 million on direct aid. …

On its 2013 tax forms, the most recent available, the foundation claimed it spent $30 million on payroll and employee benefits; $8.7 million in rent and office expenses; $9.2 million on “conferences, conventions and meetings”; $8 million on fundraising; and nearly $8.5 million on travel. None of the Clintons is on the payroll, but they do enjoy first-class flights paid for by the foundation.

In all, the group reported $84.6 million in “functional expenses” on its 2013 tax return and had more than $64 million left over — money the organization has said represents pledges rather than actual cash on hand.


If you looked at the U.S. economy under a microscope, what you’d see is a gigantic cancerous blob of cronyism surrounded by tech startups and huge prisons. If you zeroed in on the cancerous tumor, at the nucleus you’d see a network of crony institutions like the Federal Reserve, intelligence agencies, TBTF Wall Street banks and defense contractors. Pretty close to that, you’d probably find the Clinton Foundation. A veritable clearinghouse for cronyism masquerading as a charity.

Unsurprisingly, I’m not the only one who has come to such a conclusion. In a New York Post article from Sunday that is generating a lot of buzz, Bill Allison, a senior fellow at nonpartisan, nonprofit government watchdog group the Sunlight Foundation, is quoted saying:

It seems like the Clinton Foundation operates as a slush fund for the Clintons.

In case you’re wondering what might prompt Mr. Allison to make such a claim, it’s not just the recent pay-to-play scandals that have emerged.

snip

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-28/government-watchdog-calls-clinton-foundation-slush-fund

[larkrake]

1. agreed, but I suspect the Clintons get more than perks

[FreakinDJ]

30. Wasn't Blummenthal on the Clinton Foundation payroll when he was in Libya

Reportedly working on "Business Deals" as he claimed in his emails to Hillary and at the same time handling secret NSA reports which Hillary forwarded to Obama ...



So What the Fuck to you call it ....

[grasswire]

33. yes

He also has worked for David Brock, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars.

[FreakinDJ]

36. Then What the Fuck do you call it

[grasswire]

37. what do YOU call it? nt

[FreakinDJ]

38. Sleazy - just plain Sleazy

[grasswire]

39. I think I would call it corrupt. nt

[Agnosticsherbet]

2. From rationalwiki...Zero Hedge is a batshit insane Austrian school finance blog run by two pseudonym

founders who post articles under the name "Tyler Durden," after the character from Fight Club.[wp] It has accurately predicted 200 of the last 2 recessions.

Chortle...

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Zero_Hedge

[haikugal]

4. So rather than address the issues you attack the messenger .... cute

[Agnosticsherbet]

7. No, the source is bonkers.

[haikugal]

10. He's quoting The Sunlight Foundation and Charity Navigator...that makes him bonkers?

He has the facts. Clinton foundation spends the money on themselves and their cronies. Only 10% goes to charity.

You say nothing about what he's reporting just attack the messenger.

[Agnosticsherbet]

14. I've found that using any source that bolsters a point of view, no matter how bad,

to be problematic.
It is an argument that doesn't care about facts, only about the attack.

Opinions may vary.

[haikugal]

17. Pointing out corruption is a point of view we all should nourish and I don't consider the search for

facts problematic. The facts are right there, deal with it.

[Agnosticsherbet]

19. Yes they are. And the source is crap.

Which means its facts fall short of the definition of fact.

[randome]

8. Here's the 'issue': your source is trash.

No matter how much money Clinton asks to be donated to it, it is the CF Board that decides how to disburse it. And the 'just $9 million' figure is disingenuous, to say the least.

http://www.factcheck.org/2015/06/where-does-clinton-foundation-money-go/

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina says that “so little” of the charitable donations to the Clinton Foundation “actually go to charitable works” — a figure CARLY for America later put at about 6 percent of its annual revenues — but Fiorina is simply wrong.
Fiorina and others are referring only to the amount donated by the Clinton Foundation to outside charities, ignoring the fact that most of the Clinton Foundation’s charitable work is performed in-house. One independent philanthropy watchdog did an analysis of Clinton Foundation funding and concluded that about 89 percent of its funding went to charity.
Simply put, despite its name, the Clinton Foundation is not a private foundation — which typically acts as a pass-through for private donations to other charitable organizations. Rather, it is a public charity. It conducts most of its charitable activities directly.

So you and Bill Allison and Crazy Frank and Carly Fiorina are all wrong. Because you don't care about anything but trashing a Democrat.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[haikugal]

11. see my post above.

[randome]

15. The 'less than 10%' figure is bogus. It doesn't matter how often you repeat it.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[haikugal]

18. Then 'Correct The Record'......

[randome]

20. It's been corrected often enough. Can't stop you from going to the right-wing well for sustenance.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[haikugal]

23. I have not seen any corrections on this and I don't go to right wing sources for nourishment...I use

to rely on DU but it has become too right wing for me.

If you can't make a case this is false then your aren't credible, sorry, but that's how it works.

[randome]

24. I gave you a link that is more credible than yours. I can't force you to read it.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[haikugal]

25. I missed it then...where did you post it? Oh the Carly Fiorina one...got it.

[Hoyt]

34. Any simpleton gets there are charities that funnel money to needy causes, and those

that take on innovative projects with their own staff and contractors. The Clinton Foundation is the latter model. If you judge them on how much money they "give," you are missing the point of what they do. I suspect you don't care either.

Tell us about Sanders' Foundation, or anything similar he's done.

[Vattel]

22. Politifact's analysis is also disingenuous.

The vast majority of the money the foundation spends is not on "charitable activities"--at least if that phrase is understood as any ordinary person would understand it. That doesn't mean the foundation is bad, but in all fairness it doesn't spend much of its money on directly helping the poor.

[randome]

26. Then someone needs to list the charitable concerns that the CF does.

Then we can all make up our minds about whether the work they are doing is worthwhile or not. But subtle implications that they are hoarding money and funneling it off the radar is not worthy of discussion unless there is some evidence of it.

Journalists are supposed to 'supply' (facts), not 'imply' (subtly accuse).

'Slush fund'? That's hardly objective journalism without facts to back it up. Until it's accompanied by facts, it's the usual right-wing bullshit.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[Lord Magus]

9. When the messenger is insane the message cannot be trusted. -nt-

[haikugal]

13. Well that explains why Clinton is considered so untrustworthy then, right?

[brentspeak]

28. This is rationalwiki on Hillary Clinton:

[div [class="excerpt"]http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_Clinton#Hillary_and_Big_.24.24.24

Secretary of State

Her lasting accomplishments as Secretary of State were characteristically of a hawkish route.[23][24] Showing she learned nothing from the Iraq War vote she disavowed during an election campaign, Clinton backed an escalation into the Afghanistan War despite the power being accumulated by regional warlords due to the conflict. She was a leading proponent for a "humanitarian" intervention against the Libyan government of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya; she was actually caught having a laugh on screen upon learning of his death.[25] Said intervention led to the disintegration of the country into rival governments along the coastline, with terrorist gangs including Al-Qaeda and ISIS setting up shop and taking over cities as the unrest continues.[26]
She pressed Obama to arm the Syrian rebels, many of whom were Islamists[27] who would later become the Islamic State. She endorsed the usage of air strikes against the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad within the Obama administration, which Chuck Hagel - the Republican - opposed as Defense Secretary.

Perhaps her most telling decision was to have her State Department enable Obama’s expansion of lethal drone strikes against people said to be terrorists by John Brennan, who later became Director of the CIA. Her adoration of Israel, AIPAC, and Benjamin Netanyahu also led her to block every effort Palestinians made at the United Nations to achieve recognition, even UNSC resolutions declaring Israeli settlements illegal (despite the fact the entire world and most legal scholars share this view).[citation needed]


[div

[class="excerpt"]http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_Clinton#Hillary_and_Big_.24.24.24

Hillary and Big $$$
From 2013 to 2015 Hillary Clinton made $2.9 million on 12 speeches to big banks[40] and $225,000 from a single speech for Verizon Wireless[41] although there is nothing illegal about former Secretaries of State earning money on the speaking circuit. And according to sources in the industry, there is nothing unusual about someone with the name value of Hillary Clinton being able to charge so much.[42] It was later revealed that Hillary and her husband have raised over $3 billion over 41 years in charitable and campaign donations. The majority of the money — $2 billion — has gone to the Clinton Foundation.[43] Her campaign has also accumulated $6.9 million from fossil fuel donations.[44] Through the Hillary Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee, she has funneled $60 million in donations through 33 state-affiliated Democratic parties[45] but only one percent of those donations have been given to the state committees.[46] So basically, she's not doing much to help her fellow Democrats to get elected, contrary to her prior statements.

Hillary Clinton possesses and controls transcripts of her lucrative speeches to Wall Street fat cats, but has flatly refused to release them. The hashtag #ReleasetheTranscripts trended for several weeks on Twitter,[47] and she's been pressed on the matter by multiple journalists[Who?]. But she consistently refuses by setting up a series of conditions for releasing them she knows won't be met; for example, demanding every other political candidate also release all of their speeches if she does. However, even after every other candidate had dropped out other than Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, neither of whom had given any paid speeches to Wall Street, satisfying her already exhaustive original conditions, she again failed to release her speech transcripts. [48]

In any case, by May of 2016, Clinton was far less interested in wooing Bernie Sanders supporters and/or Independents to her left.[51] Instead, she began a full bore campaign to solicit money and support from right-wing Wall Street Republicans, including Jeb Bush’s former finance chair.[52] One Clinton fundraiser said, “[t]here’s no question there’ve been a lot of incoming calls from Republicans."

[EndElectoral]

3. The Foundation is going to be huge campaign issue in the GE.

[qdouble]

5. Any source other than an obvious anti-Hillary site?

with images such as this? [img][/img]

[haikugal]

16. here...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/4/17/1516678/-Government-Watchdog-Calls-Clinton-Foundation-A-Slush-Fund

I'm assuming you'd accept DK sense they're all in for Hillary. I agree with the graphic btw....but then I'm not a neoliberal.

[qdouble]

21. The dailykos post links back to the anti-hillary site...meaning there is no unbiased source.

[haikugal]

29. Did you miss the part about a Government Watchdog organization? There have been many questions

about the Clintons and their Foundation, family or otherwise.

[qdouble]

32. Your only source of this is anti-Hillary website. The dailykos site links back to the anti-hillary

site... meaning there's no way to back up the claim from an unbiased source so far.

[ReasonableToo]

6. It finances the carrots and sticks behind her "naughty and nice" list. Gotta pay for all those -

- super delegates and other endorsements. Well, not all, but I'm damned if I know why Franken endorsed Clinton over Bernie. And, of course the lobbyist super delegates don't need to be paid they are voting for their bosses.

Why the HELL do we have lobbyist super delegates?

[Tarc]

12. "...leading progressive Democrat and Fordham Law professor Zephyr Teachout"

and currently a leading Bernie acolyte.

Funny how that stuff works...

[beachbumbob]

27. Sunlight foundation....really

[AzDar]

31. Hmmm-odd you'd not know that the Sunlight Foundation is a well-respected Government Watchdog Agency

[farleftlib]

35. Just like Neil Bush's software company

If you bought his "educational" software, you were actually contributing to his brother's campaign for prez.
And since the Clintons and Bushes are soooo cozy, where do you think Hill and Bill got the idea?

[Uncle Joe]

40. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, amborin.