Thanks once again to The Other McCain for the Rule Five links!
Have a read through John Stossel on Clinton Cash. If you harbored any notions that Her Imperial Majesty was in any way a reasonable candidate for the Imperial Mansion, this should dissuade you. Excerpts interspersed with my comments:
The just released documentary Clinton Cash, based on a book by Peter Schweizer, explains how they make big money by selling access to themselves.
On my TV show, Schweizer said the Clintons use “speaking fees” to get around bribery laws.
Imagine the cries of outrage from the political Left if, say, George W. Bush did this exact same thing.
“If somebody gave a politician or family member money for a favor, that’s breaking the law. But if you say it’s a speaking fee, and you pay double or triple the normal rate, that seems to be legal.”
And you may remember that Her Imperial Majesty likewise gave some pricey talks to Wall Street bankers – and nobody not physically present seems to know what the content of those talks were. Did Her Highness actually speak at all? Nobody seems to know.
Since Bill Clinton left office, he’s earned more than $126 million giving speeches. Nothing wrong with that. Bill likes to talk, and if people want to pay big bucks to hear him or just to say they were near him, so be it. It’s their own money.
No argument there.
But what suggests influence peddling, says Schweizer, is that before Hillary became secretary of state, Bill’s usual fee was less than $200,000. But after Hillary became secretary of state, he made as much as $750,000 per speech.
And that, True Believers, is what stinks on ice. In what Bizarro world is this anything but influence peddling?
That’s “evidence that people paying him expect to get something in return,” says Schweizer. “She becomes appointed secretary of state, a friend of the president of Nigeria suddenly offers (Bill) $700,000 apiece for two speeches. An investment firm in Moscow that’s tied to the Kremlin who had never paid for him to speak before suddenly gave him $500,000.”
Uh huh – influence peddling.
John Stossel closes his article by stating that he hopes that Clinton Cash “gets the attention it deserves.” I’d like to hope so as well, but I’m afraid it won’t. In our increasingly ill-informed and polarized nation, most voters (to be fair, this includes Right and Left both) won’t consider any information that goes against The Side, and at least a plurality of voters simply haven’t the attention span for a revealing work like this.
But to the voter who a) gives a shit, and 2) can be buggered to examine it, Clinton Cash goes a long way to disqualifying the fundamentally corrupt Dowager Empress from ever setting foot in the Imperial Mansion.
Trump may be… well, Trump. But sometimes the difference between good and bad is much less than that between bad and worse.
