Goodbye, CGI: A Moral Victory For Bill Clinton — And Many Others - by Joe Conason
September 23, 2016 9:24 pm
Late on the afternoon of September 21 — almost exactly eleven years after Bill Clinton inaugurated the annual Clinton Global Initiative conferences in New York City — the former president offered closing remarks there for the very last time. Having watched this innovative organization grow from a casual idea into a formidable entity credited for delivering quality health care, clean water, modern education, disaster relief, and other essential benefits to millions of people around the world, he told its members and supporters gathered in a midtown hotel ballroom that “CGI has worked out better than I ever dreamed.”
It was understandable and probably wise for Clinton to declare victory this year, after profoundly changing the mindset and practice of modern philanthropy. But even as John Lennon’s “Imagine” filled the room, it was impossible to ignore another aspect of CGI’s conclusion — the angry, exaggerated, and almost entirely inaccurate attacks on CGI from political adversaries of Bill and Hillary Clinton, bristling with accusations of “corruption” and favoritism.”
Such shrill assaults were never heard until Hillary Clinton became the favored candidate to succeed Barack Obama in the White House. Over the years since CGI began, in fact, its membership and operations were resolutely non-partisan, with the participation of many Republicans and independents who shared the desire to do some good in the world. Republican businessmen like John Chambers of Cisco Systems joined CGI, provided financial support, and undertook the “commitments to action” that were at the heart of its mission. Republican politicians like John McCain, Mitt Romney, and even Carly Fiorina came to the annual conference and offered high praise for its work.
But that was then — and now, with Hillary Clinton as the historic nominee of the Democratic Party, what Republicans once lauded as a font of good works is denounced as a sewer of venality. While scarcely a word of the criticism is true, that doesn’t matter as much as the opportunity to smear the Clintons for political advantage. The most illuminating example was a widely-publicized press release that falsely depicted a 2005 CGI “commitment” by Bahrain’s crown prince as a bribe to sway the Secretary of State in 2010. Like so many other slanders surrounding the Clintons’ philanthropy, that “exposé” from the right-wing claque called Judicial Watch was a clumsy fraud, yet damaged reputations anyway.
-snip-
http://www.nationalmemo.com/goodbye-cgi-a-moral-victory-for-bill-clinton-and-many-others/
= new reply since forum marked as read
