RE: Electability.......Clinton and the Chinese donations

[Tinksrival]

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 foundation
Eugene 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."

[leftofcool]

1. So Bill gets money from foreign investors for his charities

which along with the help of people like Branscum (sp?)are doing wonderful works across the planet and this is bad? Bush borrows from the Chinese to finance a war but I don't see anyone talking about this. Bad Bill!

[Tinksrival]

2. My question is......

Should charity donations remain private if the foundation belongs to a public officials family member? It's a discussion about lobbyist, businesses, and other organizations having influence in our governments positions.

It's about open government and the election in the fall. China will be a hot topic with the olympics coming and the crack down on Tibeit. Hillary is talking about this and as a result the media will be taking a closer look at these relationships. Agree?

[leftofcool]

3. I doubt it

China is such a complicated issue anyway. We owe them billions, they steal our copyrights, trade issues and then their lack of human rights. The real truth is, no one really wants to bring this up in any election because everyone knows how complicated it really is. Same with the Saudis. Look at their opression of women and yet we borrow money from them, they have supported the charities of many past presidents and we still do business with them. Both countries are always going to influence our candidates and not always in a bad way.

[Tinksrival]

5. Well,

Looks like your right! Thanks for responding. :hi:

[grantcart]

13. where is the harm in transperancy?

[grantcart]

6. If there is nothing adverse make the list public

the problem is that he is not doing just charity but also making money in the hundreds of millions

[mod mom]

7. LIKE UNDERMINING FOREIGN ELECTIONS:

After Mining Deal, Financier Donated to Clinton

By JO BECKER and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
Published: January 31, 2008
Late on Sept. 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the west a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Mr. Giustra was in hot pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap them.

Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. Giustra on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former president of the United States, Bill Clinton.

-snip

snip

"Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, whose 19-year stranglehold on the country has all but quashed political dissent."

"Mr. Nazarbayev walked away from the table with a propaganda coup, after Mr. Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leader’s bid to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports democracy."

-snip

Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton’s charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from Mr. Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month. The gift, combined with Mr. Giustra’s more recent and public pledge to give the William J. Clinton Foundation an additional $100 million, secured Mr. Giustra a place in Mr. Clinton’s inner circle, an exclusive club of wealthy entrepreneurs in which friendship with the former president has its privileges.

LINK:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html

[Tinksrival]

9. Holy Shit!

That does not look good.

[mod mom]

8. LIKE FREE TRADE W A NATION DOCUMENTED FOR LABOR & HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS:?

When the Clintons Mine Big Bucks
By Steve Weissman
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Thursday 03 April 2008

-snip

In June 2005, Giustra provided his luxurious MD-87 jet for Clinton to make speeches in Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Brazil. According to Bloomberg News, the tour earned Clinton $800,000 in personal income. Giustra "has since put his plane at Clinton's disposal at least a dozen times to raise money for charity, his wife's presidential campaign or himself," Bloomberg reported.

American law does not permit Giustra, as a Canadian, to contribute directly to Hillary Clinton's campaign. Whether providing his plane to raise campaign money counts as a contribution, I leave to the legal eagles.

A far more telling payoff involved Colombia, which has long faced international condemnation for its well-documented violations of labor and other human rights. In the oval office and after, Bill Clinton never let this get in his way, steadfastly backing a free trade agreement with the country along with a $3 billion "Plan Colombia" to fight drug traffickers and guerrillas. As he publicly told Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and others in Bogota, he was "absolutely convinced that it was vital to American interests that Colombia succeed" against the left-wing narcotraficantes.

In September 2005, Clinton hosted "a philanthropic event" at which one of his aides arranged for Giustra to meet Uribe. According to The Wall Street Journal, the two men sat in the hallway speaking for about ten minutes. A Clinton aide later told Giustra the meeting had gone well.

Giustra wanted Colombian oil. He was working with a Canadian group that subsequently paid more than $250 million to operate oil fields in conjunction with Colombia's state-owned petroleum company. Giustra's associates - now operating as Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp. - also signed an oil pipeline deal and was invited to do further oil-development work in Colombia, the Journal reported.

-snip

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040308R.shtml

[Tinksrival]

10. So basically,

Giustra uses Clinton's former Pres. status to grease the wheels in brokering big deals with other shady government and gets paid through either the foundation or directly with set up speaking engagements and transportation for campaign use.

This sounds like Bill took a page out of Bush 1's post presidential playbook. Didn't daddy Bush do this with Carlyle? Play middle man?

[mod mom]

11. Jackson Stephens (Clinton's connection w BFEE who b(r)ought him from obscurity :

Jackson Stephens rivals Bath in his role as conduit between high-level factions. A Little Rock, Arkansas tycoon who attended the U.S. Naval Academy with Jimmy Carter and staked Sam Walton to found Wal-Mart in 1970, Stephens was owner of the notoriously toxic WTI Incinerator in East Liverpool, OH, and a munificent contributor to the campaign warchests of both Bill Clinton and George Bush, Sr. He was also embroiled in the BCCI affair through his association with BCCI satellite Union Bank of Switzerland—UBS, in turn, contributed $25 million to the moribund Harken Energy Corp.

http://www.wburg.com/0202/arts/lombardi.html




There has always been something incongruous about Stephens Inc. Despite the Little rock firm's attempts to portray itself as a small- city operation that closes for the duck season and got fabulously lucky on a couple of down-home deals like Wal-Mart, it was, at the incinerator's inception, the ninth-largest investment bank in the country. Since it is not headquartered in New York, its dealings are local news, little noticed by the national press, even when they have national implications. And, as a source close to the company once remarked, "The farther you get from Arkansas, the better it looks."

Stephens Inc. was founded by Witt Stephens, a state legislator's son who parlayed a Depression-era belt-buckle, Bible, and municipal-bond business into an immense personal fortune. After his retirement in 1973, the company was run by his shy younger brother, Jackson (a classmate of Jimmy Carter's at the Naval Academy). Witt Stephens and Stephens Inc. did much to create the economic paradox that is modern Arkansas: a desperately poor state with a scant 2.3 million inhabitants that is nonetheless home to a number of wealthy companies. Without the financial assistance of the Stephens brothers, Sam Walton might have ended his days as the most innovative merchant in Bentonville. Stephens money was also important to the fortunes of enterprises as various as Tyson Foods and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, the television producer and reigning First Friend. Stephens Inc. is an important client of the Rose law firm, whose chairman, C. Joseph Giroir, made Hillary Rodham Clinton a partner. And back in 1977, Stephens assisted BCCI's infiltration of the American banking system by brokering the latter's purchase of National Bank of Georgia stock held by Bert Lance, former President Jimmy Carter's friend and disgraced budget director.

Jackson Stephens (who turned over the reins to his son, Warren, in the late eighties) and his firm were both substantial contributors to the campaigns of Presidents Reagan and Bush (to the tune of at least $100,000 in 1980 and 1989), but they have been closer still to Bill Clinton (whom Witt Stephens had been known to call "that boy").

On two occasions, once when Clinton was running for reelection in Arkansas in 1990 and again in March 1992, when his battered presidential campaign was broke, the Stephens family saved Clinton's bacon with an infusion of money. Indeed, it may not be too much to say that their Worthen Bank's emergency $3.5 million line of credit saved the presidential campaign from extinction. --L.J.D.

-snip

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1993/11/davis.html




Who is the octopussy that might be lurking in the Ohio River Valley? Perhaps we should start by asking shy Arkansas billionaire Jackson T. Stephens. After all, Stephens introduced BCCI from Pakistan to the United States and the WTI waste incinerator to East Liverpool, Ohio. Stephens would be a good sketch artist because he's seen some monstrous scandals in his day. Stephens' family firm is the largest privately owned investment bank outside Wall Street. In September 1977, President Jimmy Carter's Budget Director Burt Lance was forced to resign amid allegations about his bank dealings with Stephens (Stephens and Carter were classmates at the Naval Academy). In 1978, Stephens, Lance and BCCI were charged with violating U.S. security laws. The charges were dropped after the defendants promised not to violate security laws in the future, even though they admitted no guilt.

The New York Post reported in February 1992 that it was Stephens who enabled BCCI to gain a foothold in the U.S. and helped the fraud-plagued bank secretly acquire U.S. banks. In Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin's book, False Profits, perhaps the best account of the BCCI scandal, the authors outlined how opium revenue from Afghanistan Mujahedin fighting the Soviets ended up in the accounts of BCCI, founded by Agha Hasan Abedi. The Post reported that Stephens allegedly introduced Abedi to Lance shortly after Lance resigned.

In 1991, Lance testified that he urged Abedi to acquire a Washington bank holding company, but he denied any knowledge of BCCI's subsequent secret ownership of First American Bankshares. The Post reported that Securities and Exchange Commission documents from 1977 substantiate that the idea originated with Stephens.

During Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential run, Stephens and his son Warren boasted of raising more than $100,000 for the campaign. The Stephens family also owned a 38 percent share in Worthen National Bank that extended a crucial $2 million line of credit to Clinton in January 1992.

-snip

http://www.ohiocitizen.org/campaigns/wti/bob.html

DUer blm is a wealth of knowledge about this connection. :hi:

[Tinksrival]

4. Just a little kick

Been at work all day

[SoCalDem]

12. Actually it makes them VERY American.. They love the Chinese money

just like our country does too :rofl: