Republicans are licking their chops at a Hillary nomination. One of their favorite topics is the donations, past and present. Both Hill and Bill have raised almost a billion between Hill's senate run, presidential run, the library, and Bill's charity foundation which has raised over 500 million alone. Now many past presidents have given their statue to raising funds for charity and it's a noble legacy to leave but never before did we have a past president that was going to have considerable leverage again in the White House as the spouse to the President.
Republicans have been good at the lobbying for charity shell game. Delay, Santorum, to name a few. I've read lots of articles but nothing ever seems to come of it. Can we expect something to come of this topic with the Clinton Foundation in the general election if Hillary is the nominee? I think it's safe to say yes. It's at the top of the list with Hannity and Limbaugh and I'm all ready starting to see reports:
Bill Clinton, China linked via his foundationEugene Hoshiko, Associated Press
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-clintonchina13apr13,0,499290.story?page=1(whole article worth a read)
IN HANGZHOU: President Clinton gave the keynote address at a 2005 conference organized by Alibaba, hailing the Internet as “an inherently cooperative instrument.”
A firm that has donated to the president's charity is accused of collaborating with the government in its crackdown on Tibetan activists. Hillary Clinton has spoken out against China's actions.
I really didn't think to much of this at first until I read further. I remember hearing about Yahoo getting flak for working with the Chinese government on internet censorship and crackdowns. Yahoo under global pressure sold it's Chinese division to the Chinese company, Alibaba. Alibaba has allowed the government to control information.
But her recent stern comments on China's internal crackdown collide with former President Bill Clinton's fund raising relationship with a Chinese Internet company accused of collaborating with the mainland government's censorship of the Web. Last month, the firm, Alibaba Inc., carried a government-issued "most wanted" posting on its Yahoo China homepage, urging viewers to provide information on Tibetan activists suspected of stirring recent riots.
So Bill speaks to conference of Internet executives in Hangzhou on behalf of this Alibaba. Instead of taking his standard speaking fees, he takes an unspecified private donation from Alibaba to his international charity. This I thought was ok cause it's Charity, right? but then the article goes on to say this:
But her husband brushed aside a similar opportunity to address China's jailing of dissidents when he spoke at the conference hosted by Alibaba in 2005. Days before his appearance, two prominent rights groups, Human Rights in China and Reporters Without Borders, asked Clinton to raise Internet freedom issues during his speech and address the plight of Shi Tao, a Chinese writer arrested in 2004 after Yahoo's China operation provided state security authorities with private Internet data.
In his keynote address, Bill Clinton hailed the Internet as "an inherently cooperative instrument and an inherently shared technology. The Internet has the potential to put power through information and communication in the hands of ordinary people."
But he said nothing about China's Web censorship or Shi Tao's arrest. Asked later why, he said he was unaware of Shi Tao's jailing. "Unfortunately, there was no discernible result or response" from Clinton, said Carol Wang, a program officer with Human Rights in China., Alibaba Inc., carried a government-issued "most wanted" posting on its Yahoo China homepage, urging viewers to provide information on Tibetan activists suspected of stirring recent riots.
So rather than compromise his donation to the Clinton foundation he gives a speech on behalf of a company that is working with the Chinese government to round up dissidents and says this: "an inherently cooperative instrument and an inherently shared technology. The Internet has the potential to put power through information and communication in the hands of ordinary people."
But then forgets the pleas of human rights groups that spoke with him days before???????
Now that seems to imply something else. So when is charity just charity, and when is it lobbying for charity.
The article says :
"The Clinton foundation and the former president's library in Little Rock have received millions of dollars in donations from the Saudi royal family and the Middle East sheikdoms of the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar, along with the governments of Taiwan and Brunei."
Foreign contributions to American-based charities are allowed under U.S. law, but political and philanthropy ethics advocates worry that Bill Clinton's reliance on international businesses and foreign governments to finance his worldwide charity campaigns raise issues of potential conflicts of interest if he were to take an active role in his wife's administration.
"This is a perfect example of why it's critical for both Clintons to provide prompt and complete disclosure of all their sources of income, not just personal sources but also his foundation," said Sheila Krumholz, executive director for the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, a government reform advocacy group.
So to better transparency in government and cut out negative lobbyist control on our elected officials should donor list to charity foundations of elective officials and their family members be made public, whether it's Delay's wife or Hilary's husband??
Also in light of a Congressional scolding:
Last year, Yahoo's senior executives were scolded by a congressional committee for the company's dealings with Chinese authorities. In a legal settlement that followed a lawsuit by attorneys for Shi Tao and another jailed dissident, Yahoo also agreed to provide financial aid for their relatives and press for their release.
"We've met with the State Department and met with Chinese officials to ask for assistance in securing the release of some of these individuals," said Michael Samway, a Yahoo vice president and the firm's deputy general counsel. "We're hopeful that with the Olympics approaching there will be progress."
So while the article states Hillary Clinton campaign position as this:
In recent months, Hillary Clinton has repeatedly referred to her 1995 speech in Beijing as a foreign policy accomplishment that showed her crossing "the commander-in-chief threshold." Clinton upbraided China's government for infanticide and other human rights abuses in her address to the U.N.-sponsored Fourth World Conference on Women.
Just last week, Hillary Clinton pressed the Bush administration to boycott the opening of the Summer Olympics. "The violent clashes in Tibet and the failure of the Chinese government to use its full leverage with Sudan to stop the genocide in Darfur are opportunities for presidential leadership," she said. "These events underscore why I believe the Bush administration has been wrong to downplay human rights in its policy toward China."
The article goes on to say this also,
The Clinton foundation spokeswoman would not address Alibaba's role in aiding the crackdown in Tibet. Instead, she emphasized the former president's efforts to push AIDS relief in China. "He has both pushed and helped the government of China to acknowledge and tackle the growing HIV-AIDs crisis facing their country," she said.
"You have to applaud President Clinton for his philanthropic interests," said Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy. "I wouldn't want to discourage it. But he certainly wouldn't want to be used as a tool for special interests to have undue influence."
In the mean time Alibaba continues to add the Chinese government as recently as March.
Human rights activists said clear evidence of Alibaba's collaboration with China's state security apparatus surfaced last month with the appearance of a "most wanted" posting for Tibetan rioters on the firm's Yahoo China homepage.
The postings, which appeared March 15 on both Yahoo China and Microsoft's MSN China homepage, carried photos of suspected rioters and a phone number for informants to call. The postings vanished later the same day after news accounts highlighted them.
Yahoo officials said they had no advance warning from Alibaba that the postings would run. "We made our concerns known that the displays were inappropriate," one Yahoo official said, but were told by Alibaba officials "that it was a standard news feed."