J's Cafe Nette

Archive for the ‘Clinton’ Category

When I was a girl I didn’t have an allowance. If I wanted to go to the movies or get a cold drink I’d have to ask for the money. Since I hated asking for money I very seldom did it.

When I was working I can remember being shy about picking up my paycheck because I felt it was something given to me even though I had earned it.

When I went on business trips for the company or the union it was with an expense account. The company was much more generous than the union. I guess the union had to keep their funds for political purposes. I joke there.

I never took advantage of the expense accounts and looked for places, even in Manhattan, where I could get a decent meal and not pay a fortune for it.

After all, it wasn’t my money to spend recklessly.

Now I read about former President Clinton taking advantage of every possible benefit available to him and I think he’s nothing but someone who never had anything and is now going to get every single thing he can get for free.

Yes, real estate in Manhattan is expensive, but I remember the big fuss over how much he was spending for office space when he first left office. There were other places just as nice with less expense associated with it.

If he is spending more than all the other former presidents combined (including Reagan and Ford while they were alive) for office space, telephone calls and staff the question comes to mind “why?”

This man and his wife are worth over $100 million on their own.

I almost flipped when I read before that his house payment is being made by us. Here’s how he does it: His house payment is a certain amount of money each month and he has to have secret service protection as a former president. He has rented space to the secret service on his protection detail that is equal to the amount of his house payment, so it appears that apart from eating, everything else this man gets is from using the system to get it.

Somehow I just feel he should be a little more fair to the American taxpayer since he says he shouldn’t be getting all these tax breaks for himself, and stop receiving the maximum of what the law says he can get.

Just because you can get it doesn’t mean you need it.

This unjustified lifestyle is enjoyed by the man whose flunkies never failed to call someone trailer trash. I have found that when you point a finger at someone you have three pointing back at you.

Here is a man who never had anything as a child or as an adult until he became president and now thinks he’ll just reach into the nation’s cookie jar and take all he can take, and he does it with no shame.

Those are the Clintons for you. No class and it shows.

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Before the immigration blow-up at Polipundit I loved to read Jayson Javitz, as he seems so well informed about politics and tells it the way it is.

Today he has a column up at Wizbang that is a must read.

Here’s the introduction:

First things first: If you would have told me six months ago — hell, one month ago — that Clinton would be fighting for her political life against Obama, I would have said: “I’ll have what your smoking.”

“There’s no way,” I would have continued, “that the most ruthless politician since ‘Landslide’ Lyndon Johnson would allow a newbie Senator to end her presidential obsessions.”

Well, despite losing New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts *and* California(!), Obama has the same coin flip chance as Clinton to obtain the Democrat nomination. Which raises two questions: 1. How did this happen? 2. What are Obama’s chances in the Nov. general election?

Read the rest as it isn’t very long and it makes so much sense. I still love you, Jayson, even if you did put me on probation.

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Updated

For those who question why the Norman Hsu connection to Hillary Clinton has remained part of the news cycle, the following might help answer some questions. Writing at the Washington Post Peter Baker in one condensed article captures the essence of the Senate Investigation into illegal contributions to both Former President Clinton’s re-election campaign and the Clinton legal defense fund.

The case evokes the fundraising scandals born out of Bill Clinton’s reelection in 1996, which dominated Washington for more than a year after the vote as one unseemly tale after another emerged about White House fundraising tactics and the characters trying to buy access through questionable if not illegal methods.

The president used the White House to stroke donors in a more methodical way than any of his predecessors had ever done, inviting hundreds of top contributors and politically connected people to attend coffees with him in the executive mansion or even to stay in the Lincoln Bedroom. (“Ready to start overnights right away,” Clinton wrote on a fundraising memo.) Vice President Al Gore made fundraising calls from his office and attended a fundraiser at a Buddhist temple where nuns who had taken vows of poverty were illegally reimbursed for $2,500 contributions.

The Clinton team ended up sending back millions of dollars as the revelations widened. John Huang, a Democratic National Committee fundraiser, raised $3.4 million for the party and its campaign, but nearly half of it had to be returned because of questions about the donors, including some from overseas. Huang was the one who organized the Gore event at the Hsi Lai Temple outside Los Angeles that brought in $140,000, most of which had to be given back.

The DNC also returned $253,000 donated by businesswoman Pauline Kanchanalak after she said the money came from her mother-in-law and $366,000 to Johnny Chung, who told investigators a Chinese military officer had given him hundreds of thousands of dollars to funnel to the Democrats. The Clinton legal defense fund refunded or refused to accept at least $640,000 from Charlie Trie, a businessman who showed up one day with two manila envelopes filled with checks.

Hillary Clinton was caught up in the scandals to some degree. At one point, it emerged that Chung had delivered $50,000 directly to the first lady’s chief of staff, Maggie Williams, at the White House. Williams forwarded the check to the DNC, even though federal law bars officials from receiving political donations on government property.

As the story on Mr. Hsu has grown with the assistance of the LATimes more and more questions have surfaced as to what Senator Clinton and/or her staff knew and when exactly they were aware that Hsu was a man with a criminal record and a potential problem as a fundraiser?

Questions about Hsu were first raised in June by an Irvine businessman, Jack Cassidy, who contacted the Clinton campaign and party officials about his suspicions, which he had heard about through a friend.

“There is a significant probability that a man using the name of Norman Hsu is running a Ponzi scheme,” Cassidy wrote to a California Democratic Party official on June 18 in an e-mail obtained by The Times. Describing the deal he understood Hsu was offering to investors, he wrote: “The math does not work!”

The party official passed Cassidy’s concerns to Samantha Wolf, who rejected them.

On June 20, Cassidy sent an e-mail directly to Wolf.

“I am more than ever convinced that a man claiming to be a big fundraiser for Hillary Clinton is running a Ponzi scheme,” he wrote. He said he feared that an associate “may lose her home” because of her participation in the scheme and cautioned Wolf that Hsu may be “using your good name in vane.”

Cassidy said Wolf did not respond to the e-mail warning.

If you were a candidate for president and knew that in the past you were in any way associated with difficulties with campaign financing, would you just brush off a warning that there was a potential for more of the same? One would think being dismissive might not be the ideal tact to take.

Also, as of this writing, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has refused to release the name of the 260 donors whose funds will be returned because they are linked to bundling by Hsu. This makes it most difficult for anyone to track these very same contributions if what they have announced materializes.

Although Clinton will return the money raised by Hsu, Wolfson said the individual contributors could make new donations.

“We will accept their contributions and ask them to confirm for our records that they are from their own personal funds,” he said in an e-mail.

I don’t know if I would contribute again to the Senator’s coffers while the FBI is in the throws of an investigation into this matter. It is a shame in some respects because there may be many individuals who get caught up in a matter which they never anticipated. I say may because though there seem to be signs pointing to more campaign finance shenanigans but until the official report by the investigative team is issued, no direct accusations can be made.

Now there is the matter of the Fred Thompson’s campaign jumping into the fray.

Hillary Clinton’s links to illegal fundraising by Asian-Americans in 1996 should have made her wary of accepting $850,000 from a fugitive Asian-American this year, a rival presidential campaign said Tuesday.

The criticism came from an adviser to former Republican Sen. Fred Thompson, who chaired a Senate investigation into illegal contributions by Asian-Americans to Bill Clinton’s re-election campaign and the couple’s legal defense fund in the 1996 election cycle.

Thompson adviser Rich Galen said Clinton’s 2008 campaign has become “the sequel” to her husband’s scandal-plagued 1996 campaign.

Sadly, the spokesman for the Clinton campaign rather than addressing the irregularities attributed to Hsu decided to reply in this manner to Mr. Galen:

Wolfson said, “We reject the suggestion that suspicion should be based on ethnicity in America.

Fact is, it was donations by Asian-Americans which caused the woes for the Presidential Campaign of Bill Clinton. All one has to do is read the transcript of the hearings linked above which is public knowledge.

We are still a long way from the home stretch in 2008 in the election of a new POTUS, however, as stories such as these emerge, I feel it’s imperative we get the word out. There are no accusations here. All of this information is publicly available and can be read for each individual to come to their own conclusions. What there are though, are a lot of unanswered questions surrounding Mr. Hsu and his association with both the DNC and Mrs.Clinton.

Hopefully whatever path the investigation which has begun takes, it will yield the answers.

Update: According to today’s Wall Street Journal Mrs. Clinton may not be able to return the funds to the donors for them to promise it’s theirs and return to her campaign.

New documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal may help point to an answer: A company controlled by Mr. Hsu recently received $40 million from a Madison Avenue investment fund run by Joel Rosenman, who was one of the creators of the Woodstock rock festival in 1969. That money, Mr. Rosenman told investors this week, is missing.

Mr. Hsu told Mr. Rosenman the money would be used to manufacture apparel in China for Gucci, Prada and other private labels, yielding a 40% profit on each deal, according to a business plan obtained by the Journal. Now the investment fund, Source Financing Investors, says Mr. Hsu’s company owes it the $40 million, which represents 37 separate deals with Mr. Hsu’s company. When Source Financing recently attempted to cash checks from the company, Components Ltd., the investors say they were told the account held insufficient funds. …

…Mr. Rosenberg, the attorney for Mr. Rosenman, asked politicians to hold on to the funds so that Source Financing and other investors can be made whole. “It appears that Source Financing Investors joins Hillary Clinton…and many others as his victims,” Mr. Rosenberg said in an interview. “We urge candidates who received contributions from Mr. Hsu to retain those funds so that they may be returned to victims of the scheme.”

How many innocent, regular Americans have been scammed by Hsu and their money gone into the Clinton and Democratic coffers instead of giving a return on their investment of hard-earned money?

We don’t know the answer to that question for certain yet, but if a judge rules the money cannot be distributed until this case is resolved it’s only going to put stronger legs on this story of deception.

Sweetness and Light quotes the New York Times talking about another shady contributor:

John R. Burgess makes for an improbable courtier of presidents, or of a senator who might become one.

A disbarred New York lawyer with a criminal record for attempted larceny and patronizing a 16-year-old prostitute, Mr. Burgess owns International Profit Associates, a management consulting company in Illinois.

Federal authorities are pressing a sexual harassment suit against the company on behalf of 113 former female employees.

The Illinois attorney general is investigating accusations of deceptive marketing tactics, officials say, and the company has been the subject of 470 complaints to the Better Business Bureau across the nation in the past three years.

But despite the trail of problems dating to the 1980’s, many prominent politicians have accepted campaign contributions and speaking fees from Mr. Burgess and his company, which offers organizational and financial advice, mostly to owners of small businesses, and claims annual revenues of more than $200 million.

Former President George Bush was paid $82,000 to speak at a company banquet in 1999, and former President Bill Clinton received $125,000 to appear in 2001.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has collected more than $150,000 in contributions from executives of International Profit Associates, some as recently as September, and spoke at a company event in 2004. As a group, company officials and their spouses are one of the largest sources of contributions to Mrs. Clinton’s re-election campaign.

Mr. Bush, Mr. Clinton and Mrs. Clinton all say they were not aware of problems with the company, known as I.P.A., or with Mr. Burgess when they took the money, though some problems were documented as early as 1997 in newspapers, magazines and on the Internet.

Mike McIntire of Sweetness and Light then wraps up his post with these words:

Boiling it down from the NYT’s opaque text, Hillary Clinton accepted at least $157,000 in donations from a company owned by John Burgess, a disbarred New York lawyer with a criminal record for attempted larceny and patronizing a sixteen-year-old prostitute.

And when informed of this, Mrs. Bill Clinton refused to return the money. Even though other pols, like the Cuomos, were shamed into doing so.

(Mind you, this is the same Hillary Clinton who demanded that Barack Obama return contributions from David Geffen because Mr. Geffen had the temerity to call the Clintons “liars.”)

The old saying is when you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas. It appears both Clintons have been sleeping with dogs for a long time and are covered with fleas they are trying to eliminate now. The problem is the damage has already been done.

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Sue may have written about this already and I apologize for reposting the same information if she has.

The Wall Street Journal has a blog piece giving an eyewitness description of how Norman Hsu was found and the condition in which he was found.

That night, passengers on in the sleeper compartment across the aisle from his noticed a hat, a book and other items spilling into the hallway from under the door. The next morning, the drapes were still drawn. Returning from breakfast, one passenger peeked through the curtains and saw a person wedged against the door. The passenger, Joanne Segale, a retired school-bus driver from Sonora, Calif., knocked on the window but got no answer. Segale said she saw a man who appeared to be in fetal position, bare-chested. “It appeared this person had fallen out of bed,” she said.

Eventually, three conductors used the crowbar to pry the door open.

Segale said that Hsu “could not stand. He was acting like he didn’t understand them. They tried to get him up but he couldn’t walk.” At one point, Hsu asked the Amtrak attendants if he was in jail, according to Segale.

When Hsu was helped to the bathroom, Segale says she saw “lots and lots of medication in that room. I could see pills on the floor and rolling around.”

Giving back the money in drips and drops isn’t going to take this story away. The press and the bloggers smell blood in the water and will search it out.

The money from the Clinton campaign is going back to the donors, who were suspicious characters to begin with, so who is really getting the money? Who is behind this meddling in our political affairs?

How did Norman Hsu get the money he gave and how did the people he got to contribute honestly get the money? I say honestly because I strongly suspect the people involved are agents of the Chinese government.

Just as we sold our military secrets to the Chi-Coms in the 90s for political donations from Buddhist monks and other crooked “businessmen”, I wonder why they are so interested in making sure Hillary is president and lots of other Democrats are elected or re-elected.

The voters need to be reminded of this over and over again until it sinks in that if we put in Sen. Clinton we are going to have to endure another four or eight years of corruption at the very highest levels.

The first dribble of money went to “charity”. The question is: what is the charity so it can be confirmed? For all I know the charity is the DNC.

This fish is beginning to stink more and more with each passing day.

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Sorry folks, I have a great deal of distrust for Hillary Clinton. In what appears to be another purely political move on her part she had decided to return further monies donated to her campaign which were in some fashion tied to this felon.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign said Monday it will return $850,000 in donations raised by Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu, who is under federal investigation for violating election laws.

Clinton, D-N.Y., previously had planned only to give to charity $23,000 she received from Hsu for her presidential and senatorial campaigns and to her political action committee, HillPac.

Isn’t it just a wee bit interesting there was no interest in returning this full amount of money when the original story surfaced and $23,000 was returned, but now that the FBI is investigating, she wants to wash her hands of this man and all of his contributions.

I expect some carefully crafted statement to come from her campaign soon or perhaps the candidate herself to speak. Must have frightened her a bit too that her name was bandied about in papers like the NYT and the LAT in a less than favorable light. When was the last time you heard of that happening to a candidate with the last name Clinton. I suppose now she will attempt to become the hero for “doing the right thing.” No. Doing the right thing would have been to give all the money back when it was learned that Mr. Hsu was a fugitive from justice.

This story is not going to disappear and the more we learn the worse it could become for those on the left who can be tied to this man. Let me rephrase that, if we don’t have another teflon candidate that would be the case…my greatest fear is that we do and that others not so deeply involved with Mr. Hsu’s money will pay the consequence.

Update: Further information has become available following the initial piece:My Way News is reporting the following:

“In light of recent events and allegations that Mr. Norman Hsu engaged in an illegal investment scheme, we have decided out of an abundance of caution to return the money he raised for our campaign,” Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said in a statement Monday night. “An estimated 260 donors this week will receive refunds totaling approximately $850,000 from the campaign.”

Wolfson said the Clinton campaign also will vigorously review its fundraisers, including thorough criminal background checks, in the future. “In any instances where a source of a bundler’s income is in question, the campaign will take affirmative steps to verify its origin,” he said.

The amount that the campaign identified as raised by Hsu would make him one of her top fundraisers. During the first six months of this year, her presidential campaign raised $52 million from individual contributors, second to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who raised $58.5 million.

So now they will thoroughly vet their fundraisers? Nice timing don’t you think?

HT: Drudge Report

Check out Macsmind where he mentions the growing FBI investigation of this campaign finance fraud. Good stuff.

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I don’t understand it. Republicans had better be careful what they wish for.

Washington–From the K Street lobbyist corridor to the major gay and lesbian organizations to the city’s kingpin consultants and fundraisers to the big feminist groups, Hillary Clinton has acquired a near-lock on the Democratic establishment in the nation’s capital.

The level of support here for the junior New York Senator approaches what an incumbent president seeking re-election might expect.

The people and organizations run the gamut: Togo West, former Secretary of Veterans Affairs and CEO of The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the nation’s premier black think tank; Elizabeth Bagley, former US Ambassador to Portugal whose Georgetown home has been the gathering place for countless fundraisers; Elizabeth Birch, former head of the Human Rights Campaign, and her partner, former top recording industry lobbyist Hilary Rosen and, of course, former DNC chair and money-man extraordinaire Terry McAuliffe.

Those names only touch the surface of Clinton’s support among the Democratic establishment.

Take Matthew Bernstein, a prominent Hillary-backer. He is a classic Washington success story. Once a lowly legislative assistant to former Senator Howard Metzenbaum, he is now a lobbyist whose clients paid his law firm $1.98 million during just the first half of 2006, according to reports filed with the Senate. Among those clients is the Estate Tax Coalition seeking permanent elimination of the burdensome levy placed on the nation’s wealthiest citizens.

And then there is Vernon Jordan, one of this city’s highest-profile wheeler-dealers, who is now a Clinton $100,000-plus bundler. And Vernon is not the only major bundler in the Jordan family. His wife, Ann Dibble Jordan is also a $100,000-plus bundler whose credentials as a player in Washington include past or present board memberships at Johnson & Johnson, Automatic Data Processing, Citigroup, and Catalyst; service as a trustee at The Brookings Institution, the University of Chicago, WETA (Washington’s PBS affiliate), and the Phillips Collection; and chair of the Board of Directors at the National Symphony Orchestra.

Barack Obama has ten Washingtonians each committed to raising at least $50,000. Some are well known figures, including former Federal Communications Commission chairman William E. Kennard who is now with the Carlyle Group; and Gregory Craig, who defended President Clinton at his impeachment trial before the Senate. But adding up all the Washington fundraiser-bundlers listed on Public Citizen’s White House For Sale web site, Clinton has 21, more than all seven of her Democratic opponents combined, who have 15.

Story

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Damn liberal publication.

In an August 21 New York Times article, reporter Jeff Zeleny characterized the “reception” for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) at the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) national convention as “respectful yet tepid,” making no mention of the “standing ovation” that Clinton received, which he reported the day before on the New York Times blog The Caucus.

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Well I guess Mr. Edwards tactics of attacking Hillary and Obama are driving him further down in the polls.

– Potential Democratic primary voters see Sen. Hillary Clinton as more experienced and a stronger leader than her major rivals for the 2008 Democratic nomination, according to a poll released Monday.

Clinton is also viewed as the most electable candidate and the one most likely to bring change to the country, according to the results of the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll.

However, Clinton did not score as high when registered Democrats were asked which of the candidates is the most likable and the most honest, the poll showed. And a quarter of those polled don’t think she can beat the Republican standard-bearer in the general election if she gets her party’s nod.

Asked which of the candidates in the race has the best experience to be president, Clinton was the choice of 59 percent, compared to 11 percent for former Sen. John Edwards and just 9 percent for Sen. Barack Obama, who is now running second to Clinton in national polls.

The poll’s sampling error was plus or minus 5 percentage points.

When asked to pick the strongest leader, Clinton again scored far ahead of her rivals, at 47 percent, compared with 22 percent for Obama and 13 percent for Edwards. She also came out on top when voters were asked who is most qualified to be commander-in-chief, with 46 percent saying Clinton, 15 percent Obama and 13 percent Edwards.

Despite Obama’s concerted efforts to portray himself as the agent of change, 40 percent of poll respondents thought Clinton is the candidate most likely to bring change, compared with 27 percent for Obama and 15 percent for Edwards.

However, the poll found Clinton and Obama are neck-and-neck when it comes to which candidate is the most likable, with 34 percent picking Obama and 31 percent Clinton. Edwards was at 19 percent.

Story

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Speaks for itself.

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards may not want to participate in debates sponsored by FOX News, but they like taking cash from officials of the company considered an arm of the conservative movement by many liberal Democrats.

In April, Edwards led the charge in refusing to participate in a Fox-sponsored debate. His deputy campaign manager, Jonathan Prince, told AP: “We believe there’s just no reason for Democrats to give Fox a platform to advance the right-wing agenda while pretending they’re objective.”

Within days, Clinton followed suit. Unlike Edwards, Clinton did not directly attack Fox in announcing her decision.

“We’re going to participate in the D.N.C. [Democratic National Committee]-sanctioned debates only. We’ve previously committed to participating in the South Carolina and Tavis Smiley debates,” Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said. The Fox debate was not DNC-approved.

Obama joined in with Clinton. Bill Burton, Obama’s spokesman, said a CNN-sponsored debate would be a more “appropriate venue.”

But in her most recent filing at the FEC, Hillary Clinton reported two large donations from the very top of the Fox corporate structure.

On June 5, Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the News Corporation, gave her presidential bid $2,300. A few weeks later, his son, James R. Murdoch, chief executive of British Sky Broadcasting in London, gave $3,400. Altogether, NewsCorp/Fox executives gave at least $40,000 to the Clinton campaign.

Story

Acts like an ex-wife.

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Maybe she should move to India and run for president over there.

– Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is wooing wealthy entrepreneurs with ties to India, seeking to tap the growing political clout of Indian-Americans in California’s Silicon Valley.

Clinton spoke Friday by live video feed from New Orleans to nearly 4,000 businesspeople in Santa Clara attending the annual alumni conference of the Indian Institute of Technology, one of the world’s most elite university systems.

Clinton _ the only Republican or Democratic presidential candidate to accept an invitation from the IIT _ reiterated her call for more H-1B work visas for highly educated immigrants, an issue of deep concern to the Indian and Indian-American executives and engineers in the audience.

She did not shy from characterization of the pain of offshore outsourcing, the exporting of technology jobs to low-cost workers in countries such as India, China and Russia. The United States has sent tens of thousands of high-paying computer programming and engineering jobs to developing countries in recent years.

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