The latest story coming out of the Clinton Cash furor doesn’t involve the serious charges of a conflict of interest that have been revealed by follow-up investigations since the publication of Peter Schweizer’s book. Unlike those shocking instances in which donors to the Clinton Foundation sought and may well have received favors from the Hillary Clinton State Department, today’s New York Times feature about the ex-president’s appearance at a far smaller charity’s fundraising dinner doesn’t involve government action. But it does tell us not only about Bill Clinton’s mercenary approach to philanthropy but the way the former First Family’s slush fund disguised as a charity has profiteered at the expense of actual charities. There is no “smoking gun” of corruption here. But what it does provide us with is insight into their character and the raging hypocrisy at the core of everything they do.
The story involves Bill Clinton’s appearance at the annual dinner of the Happy Hearts Fund in June of last year. Happy Hearts is a relatively small-scale charity — when compared to the billions raised by the Clinton Foundation — that builds schools in Indonesia and Thailand. It was founded by Czech model Petra Nemcova in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in which she nearly lost her life. She had tried to get Clinton to appear at her dinner for years, but it was only last year that she succeeded. How did she do it? By writing a check for $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
There’s nothing illegal about that. But it is, as a scholar who studies the world of philanthropy told the Times, “distasteful.”
That’s true. But actually it’s much worse than that.
Happy Hearts is a celebrity vehicle for Nemcova and the transaction between her and Clinton was pretty straightforward. For a half million dollars, she purchased a few hours of the 42nd president’s time and his far greater celebrity appeal. That raised her personal profile and, no doubt, helped make her dinner a greater social and economic success, though it’s hard to imagine that Clinton’s presence brought in enough contributors to make up for the enormous investment in quid pro quo that Nemcova’s contribution to his foundation represents. But it must be admitted that it shows that while the Clinton Foundation is a thinly disguised political slush fund for the Clintons, its fundraising efforts are not based on deception. Donors pay for the privilege of being around the Clintons or having them do favors which can take the form of appearances at charity affairs like that of Nemcova or assisting — or at least not obstructing — the sale of a uranium mine to Russia. None of his big donors are deceived about what they are buying when they give the Clintons money.
But the main point to be gleaned from this incident isn’t just that Clinton has established a lucrative personal appearance business that beggars anything ever attempted by any other retired public official, let alone a former commander-in-chief. The problem is that Happy Hearts is a real charity that does hands-on good works in the Third World. The Clinton Foundation is, at best, a charitable middleman, that funds events where people talk about charity and how best to strategize its implementation. As we’ve learned since Schweizer’s book appearance, the foundation does relatively little actual charity work on its own. Only ten percent of the vast sums it raises from the wealthy and the powerful around the world is spent on charitable efforts. The rest goes to funding conferences where the Clintons and their donors pose as philanthropists and to pay the salaries and travel expenses of those who work for the foundation. That means the money goes to feather the nests of Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton and, to a lesser extent, does the same for many of their faithful family retainers such as Clinton attack machine hit man Sidney Blumenthal.
So while the large army of Clinton fans and apologists can say that there is nothing illegal going on here, what they aren’t saying is that the Clintons don’t merely leech off the rich. They also live off of the money they extract from smaller charities that do real good works. That’s not merely “distasteful,” it’s disgraceful and unethical.
It should also be noted that Haitian protesters picketed Clinton’s appearance at the Happy Hearts dinner. His questionable conduct in his role as the gatekeeper for rebuilding efforts since a 2010 earthquake in that country has also gained wider notice since Clinton Cash was published. That effort has done little good for Haitians but others, such as Clinton Foundation donors and Hillary’s brother, have profited from it. As the Times notes, the Haitians jeered the ex-president crying, “Clinton, where is the money? In whose pockets?”
Those are good questions.
This story would be discreditable were it to be the case for anyone involved in such a tawdry affair. But if we have come to the point where such behavior is not considered at least an impediment to election to the presidency then we have come a long way down the road to moral decay even since the Clinton family’s first exploration of what Bill Bennett called “The Death of Outrage.”
