Some of the Clinton Foundation's Recent Foreign Connections

[JDPriestly]

24. Great work! Hillary and Bill could do a lot of good with their foundation if they stuck

to doing the foundation work.

But their foundation relies on donations from extremely wealthy people to do that good work.

And that is where a problem arises if we want to get big money, the money of wealth and influence out of our government and have a government that governs for all of us.

It is very difficult to go to wealthy people for money and then turn around and speak out for some cause or law that the wealthy people do not want.

I worked in fundraising for eight years. I know all about the influence that wealthy people and their money can have on you when you go out begging for donations for good causes.

I left fundraising when I caught myself going down my list of friends and categorizing them according to whether they were rich enough to give a sizable donation to the homeless project I worked on. I realized at that point that somehow the need to fund the project was causing me to place the value of wealth, my need for money, above the value of human qualities. I'm not sure many will understand what I mean by this.

But to put it another way, I felt that I might be beginning to "suck up" to people who had money because I needed their money for the project that I and others were working together on. I felt that I was developing discrimination against old friends just because they were not wealthy. I'm exaggerating a bit, but some will understand what I mean.

When you try to raise money from the wealthy, you begin to spend a lot of time with them. You think about entertaining them according to their tastes. They invite you for lunch at their clubs, etc. and if you do enough of that, you lose the sense of the value of people who are middle class and poor and you lose touch with life outside the elite clubs. You go home to your modest house and life and you feel poor.

I don't think I can explain this well.