Since
taking office in 2001, HILLARY Clinton has delivered $500 million worth of
earmarks that have specifically benefited 59 corporations. a review by the
Los Angeles Times shows NEARLY ALL of those corporations provided funds to
her campaigns through donations made by employees, executives, board
members or lobbyists.
Her record stands in contrast with
others in the Senate seeking the presidency, particularly John McCain (R-Ariz.)
and Barack Obama (D-Ill.). McCain, who has long opposed earmarks, does not
write them. Obama has used the device, but now declines to earmark funds
for private companies; he uses earmarks only to secure funds for
government projects such as road building and hospital construction. Other
senators seeking the presidency provide earmarks to home-state
constituents and collect donations from recipients of the federal
largesse. But The Times review found that Clinton does it on a different
scale.
For example, in the appropriations bills that have passed the Senate so
far this year, Clinton earmarked 216 separate projects for a total of
$236.6 million. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) secured $112.8 million;
Obama earmarked $90.4 million, and Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) earmarked
projects totaling $70.8 million.
Since Clinton arrived in the Senate, she has collected in excess of $1
million from earmark beneficiaries and their associates.
“This pattern shows that Clinton has made aggressive use of the
pay-to-play earmark game,” said Keith Ashdown, research director for the
Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan research organization in
Washington.
Because of her perch on the Senate
Armed Services Committee, Clinton has been able to earmark $1.4 billion
for defense contractors in New York state since she arrived in the Senate,
including $140 million this year, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense.
Her record of home-state defense earmarking on that panel is second only
to that of Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who is chairman of the committee and
has served in the Senate since 1979.
Clinton has raised more than $270,000 for her campaigns from defense
companies with New York operations that have received federal money with
her help.
Clinton has delivered
multimillion-dollar defense earmarks to a company making improvements to
bomb racks for B1 fighter jets; to a small Buffalo-area firm that provides
anticorrosive coating to military vehicles; and to the Manhattan-based New
School University for a defense mapping project. Individuals associated
with these entities have donated to her campaign.
New School, which received $1.6 million in this year’s defense budget
and $6 million previously, is particularly well-connected. Its president,
former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), is campaigning for Clinton in Iowa. Three
school trustees are among Clinton’s most prominent backers, having each
raised at least $100,000 for her campaign. A former trustee is Norman Hsu,
who was indicted on fraud charges last week. After Hsu’s criminal past
was revealed last summer, Clinton returned $850,000 he raised for her.
Clinton’s notable earmark activity is
not explained solely by the fact that she represents a populous state. The
extent of her earmarking far outstrips that of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.),
for example, who represents a larger state. Boxer secured $79 million in
earmarks this year, according to the taxpayers group.
Like all presidential candidates, Clinton places a premium on bundlers,
people who use their networks of friends and associates to raise large
sums of money. Clinton singles out people who raise $100,000 or more as
“Hillraisers.”
At least eight Hillraisers are affiliated with recipients of her earmarks.
One is James Flaws, chief financial officer of one of New York’s major
employers, Corning Inc. Once heavy GOP donors, Corning employees have
given Clinton $236,000 since 1999, including $106,000 for her presidential
campaign.
“The system is broken,” said lobbyist George Hochbrueckner, a Clinton
backer and former New York congressman, who represents several companies
that have received earmarks with Clinton’s help. “Until it is fixed,
you have got get good people elected and they’ve got to play by the
rules. Right now the rules allow exactly what Hillary is doing.”
Yeah, I LIED, er, Misspoke I Mean
Maybe she can just imagine she is winning. Just
like she imagined she was under sniper fire in Bosnia.
Sen. Hillary Clinton was telling
Wolf Blitzer that she didn’t think “the Pakistani government at this
time under President Musharraf has any credibility at all.” She then
said something that betrayed a serious lack of knowledge about Pakistan
and called her own credibility on the subject into serious question.
“If President Musharraf wishes to stand for election,” she told
Blitzer, “then he should abide by the same rules that every other
candidate will have to follow.” My immediate reaction was: “Did I
hear that correctly?” As a Pakistan analyst, I know for a fact that
Pervez Musharraf doesn’t wish to stand for election any time soon…
Sen. Clinton really didn’t know
that the upcoming elections were for individual seats in Pakistan’s
parliament. She actually believed that Bhutto, Nawaz and Musharraf would
be facing off as individual candidates for leadership of the country in
the upcoming elections. Sen. Clinton didn’t know that Nawaz Sharif
isn’t allowed to run for office in Pakistan because of a felony
conviction. She didn’t know that President Musharraf won’t be on the
ballot because he’s already been elected. Sen. Clinton, a candidate
for the leadership of the free world, apparently doesn’t know the
first thing about the country referred to by some as “the most
dangerous place on earth.”
Her lifelong pattern of secrecy was
once again evident at the OHIO DEBATE. While publicly promoting
transparency in government, she steadfastly refuses to release her
personal income tax returns. That’s a clear tip-off that there’s
something to hide. Recall that the Clintons selectively released tax
returns in Arkansas, but refused to go back to 1980, when Hillary had her
windfall in cattle futures.
During the debate, Hillary
suggested that she’d release the returns “soon,” but her staff
quickly backtracked. She implied that she’s been too busy to deal with
releasing the returns. Does she really think anyone believes that it will
take more than simply making a copy of the return? She’s stalling and
there’s a reason for that.
Most likely, the return will show
how much Bill has been making from his partnership with the Sheik of Dubai
and his other business ventures. Should the spouse of a presidential
candidate be in business with a foreign leader who needs favors from the
U.S. government? Definitely not. That’s why we’ll never see those
returns.
And then there are the Clinton
Library records that document her schedule as first lady. She doesn’t
want them released either because they will definitively show that she was
never the co-president. The Library has been stalling on the release of
those documents for years. During the debate, she said that she wanted
them released as quickly as possible and seemed to blame the Bush
administration for the delay. But today, the White House indicated that
she had made no requests for any expedited release.
OH, AND IF WE ADOPT HILLARYCARE, WHERE WILL THE
ALL CANADIANS GO TO SEE A DOCTOR? LOL
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"I want you to get rid of all these
bitches he's seeing ... I want you to give me the names and addresses
and phone numbers, so we can get them under control" - Hillary
Clinton