Granted this is Dana Milbank, but, the Clintons have failed to keep
a distance between themselves and questionable associations
for 40+ years....
You see the FPers always saying "HRC is the best person out of 400 million
to run the country" and "These are old allegations"... Well, is the best
person to run the country really constantly swirling in allegations?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
the allegations are often dubious. But Clinton and her husband have only themselves to blame for making themselves vulnerable to guilt-by-association attacks. They have managed to make Hillary Clinton conspicuously out of tune with the mood of the 2016 electorate: At a time of rising populist backlash against Wall Street, inequality and wealth-purchased privilege, there is no Democrat more closely tied to the rich and the powerful than Clinton. At a time when Democrats need to draw contrasts with Republicans by sticking up for the little guy, Clinton’s solicitation of — and favors for — the powerful make her an inauthentic messenger.
the Clintons’ charitable efforts have been closely tied to the considerable fortune they amassed for themselves. Bill Clinton was paid at least $26 million in speaking fees by entities that were major donors to the foundation. The foundation has also been good for the balance sheets of Clinton friends such as Sidney Blumenthal, who received about $10,000 a month from the foundation while providing his thoughts on Libya to then-Secretary Clinton.
The vast array of contributors to the foundation (and those who paid the Clintons to give speeches) gives endless material to critics, and to the media:
[ Long Laundry List of Donors and questionable associations deleted]
The Clintons’ defenders will say none of this is illegal, and that may be so. The problem is appearance. Clinton can talk all she wants about income inequality and reducing the influence of money in politics, but her recent experience makes her seem insincere.
http://www.ibtimes.com/...
The approval of American chemical weapons sales to Egypt as Mubarak’s associates were stocking Clinton family interests with cash is but one example of a dynamic that prevailed though Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. During the roughly two years of Arab Spring protests that confronted authoritarian governments with popular uprisings, Clinton’s State Department approved $66 million worth of so-called Category 14 exports -- defined as "toxicological agents, including chemical agents, biological agents and associated equipment" -- to nine Middle Eastern governments that either donated to the Clinton Foundation or whose affiliated groups paid Bill Clinton speaking fees.
That represented a 50 percent overall increase in such export approvals to the same countries over the two years prior to the Arab Spring, according to an International Business Times review of State Department documents. In the same time period, Arab countries that did not donate to the Clinton Foundation saw an overall decrease in their State Department approvals to purchase chemical and biological materials. The increase in chemical, biological and related exports to Clinton Foundation donors was part of a larger jump in overall arms sales authorized by Hillary Clinton’s State Department to foreign governments that gave her family’s foundation at least $54 million, according to a previous IBTimes analysis.
And the Clintons have been fortunate in their accusers.
The GOP has been so over the top in their lathering that they have distracted
people from the scandals.
http://www.ibtimes.com/...
Hillary Clinton’s willingness to allow those with business before the State Department to finance her foundation heightens concerns about how she would manage such relationships as president, said Lawrence Lessig, the director of Harvard University’s Safra Center for Ethics.
“These continuing revelations raise a fundamental question of judgment,” Lessig told IBTimes. “Can it really be that the Clintons didn't recognize the questions these transactions would raise? And if they did, what does that say about their sense of the appropriate relationship between private gain and public good?”
wether it was doing business with Tyson Foods General Counsel
or doing business with the saudi's, However, I'm sure
there will be plenty of people willing to defend this