Simon Head has written a fairly comprehensive piece that just appeared in the New York Review of Books “Blog” section, titled “The Clinton System.”
At the outset I would point out that Head’s is by no means a “hit” piece, although it does rely (in part) on some journalists who may have a demonstrated bias against the Clintons. However, it also relies on many sources that do not. All in all, I would agree with Head’s characterization, that:
The following investigation, drawing on many different sources, is intended to give a full sense of the facts about Clinton and not to endorse a particular candidate in the coming election.
The article mainly examines how the Clintons have assembled their vast donor base. Head acknowledges that in the post Citizens United world, the Republican candidates in the current election cycle have each amassed tens, even hundreds of millions in “dark money," through outside money groups such as PACS and SuperPACS, and direct contributions from corporations and individuals fundamentally opposed to the interests of “ordinary”—i.e., non-millionaire Americans. What physically differentiates the GOP’s corporate-sourced efforts from the Clintons’ is the sheer scale, complexity and variety of the Clintons’ connections to political donors, the fact that Hillary and Bill are equal partners in the “enterprise," and the sheer enormity of the funds involved.
Everyone here is familiar with the millions in “speaking fees” the Clintons have earned over the past fifteen years. Most of these fees have come from corporations and banks, since corporations and banks are essentially the only ones who can afford them. These have accounted for $125 million in the Clintons’ income since 2001, and include six and seven-figure fees amassed from Deutsche Bank, Barclay’s Capital, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs. Another, even more startling number is the amount contributed directly to Hillary’s campaigns for Senate, for President in 2008, and now for President in 2016. That figure has now reached $712.4 million as of September 2015, and is presumably significantly higher now. The goal of Hillary's SuperPAC is to amass $1 Billion, and there is no suggestion that they are behind in their efforts. Finally, though it is not characterized by Head as political largesse, there is the $2 Billion paid by various individuals to the Clinton Foundation for the sole purpose, in most cases, of gaining access to Bill Clinton, engaged in promoting what Head acknowledges are “unequivocally good causes,” such as African forestation, farming in depressed, economically backward regions, and public health.
Head points out, however, that many of the largest donors to the Clinton Foundation are the same corporate interests that donate to Hillary’s political campaigns. In particular, the largest contributer to the foundation is the Financial Services industry. Head also cites an investigation by Alec MacGillis for the New Republic which details the convoluted process by which corporate donors gain, through the scale of their donations, access to Bill Clinton. While not directly casting aspersions on the methods of the Clinton Global Initiative, Head points out that this organization, and the Clinton Foundation as a whole, occupy a unique place in Presidential foundations by providing an annual avenue of support for Hillary Clinton via the drawing power of her husband. The corporate sponsors of CGI 2014 and 2015 included Monsanto, ExxonMobil, Blackstone, HSBC, Microsoft, Cisco, PriceWaterhouse, Procter and Gamble and, of course, Goldman Sachs. This fairly represents a collection of the most powerful corporations in the world. The cost for “special privileges” up to and including access to Clinton is approximately $250,000.00.
As has been reported on extensively in the International Business Times, Bill Clinton received six figure speaking fees from numerous corporations that were lobbying the State Department at the same time Hillary was Secretary of State. It has been reported extensively, but the list is still rather stunning:
These payments to Bill Clinton in 2010 included: $175,000 from VeriSign Corporation, which was engaged in lobbying at the State Department on cybersecurity and Internet taxation; $175,000 from Microsoft, which was lobbying the government on the issuance of immigrant work visas; $200,000 from SalesForce, a firm that lobbied the government on digital security issues, among other things. In 2011, these payments included: $200,000 from Goldman Sachs, which was lobbying on the Budget Control Act; and $200,000 from PhRMA, the trade association representing drug companies, which was seeking special trade protections for US-innovated drugs in the Trans-Pacific Partnership then being negotiated.
And in 2012, payments included: $200,000 from the National Retail Federation, which was lobbying at the State Department on legislation to fight Chinese currency manipulation; $175,000 from BHP Billiton, which was lobbying the State Department to protect its mining interests in Gabon; $200,000 from Oracle, which, like Microsoft, was seeking the government to issue work visas and measures dealing with cyber-espionage…..
Of course, these types of donations are not made in a vacuum. No corporation makes substantial donations to causes or speakers out of the goodness of its heart for the simple reason that the corporate directors have a fiduciary duty to shareholders to operate in their interests. Every one of these donations has a corporate purpose—and the overwhelmingly logical conclusion is that they are made to buy influence. The implication is that a quid pro quo was expected. What Head’s article only partially attempts to do is show the extent to which the quid pro quo was realized, and the extent to which the correlations—of which there are many—rise to the level of cause and effect.
Some of the “correlations” Head points out include sale of armaments on behalf of Defense contractors, weapons and aircraft manufacturers, which greatly exceeded comparable sales made by an unquestionably corrupt and military-friendly Bush Administration :
During Hillary Clinton’s years as secretary of state, arms sales to the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation ran at nearly double the value of sales to the same nations during George W. Bush’s second term. There was also an additional $151 billion worth of armaments sold to sixteen nations that had donated funds to the Clinton Foundation; these were deals organized by the Pentagon but which could only be completed with Hillary Clinton’s authorization as secretary of state. They were worth nearly one and a half times the value of equivalent sales during Bush’s second term.
Another example illustrates how rather than donating for favors in advance, some governments would appear to “reward” Bill Clinton or the Clinton Foundation for what they must have perceived as political favors after they occurred:
In March 2011, for example, Bill Clinton was paid $175,000 by the Kuwait America Foundation to be the guest of honor and keynote speaker at its annual Washington gala. Among the sponsors were Boeing and the government of Kuwait, through its Washington embassy. Shortly before, the State Department, under Hillary Clinton, had authorized a $693 million deal to provide Kuwait with Boeing’s Globemaster military transport aircraft. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton had the statutory duty to rule on whether proposed arms deals with foreign governments were in the US’s national
Head also cites the work of David Sirota and Andrew Perez which established that:
In all, governments and corporations involved in the arms deals approved by Clinton’s State Department have delivered between $54 million and $141 million to the Clinton Foundation as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to the Clinton family, according to foundation and State Department records.
A more blatant example of apparent quid pro quo between an individual and the Clinton Foundation is the complicated web spun involving Canadian energy billionaire Frank Giustra. Giustra has donated $131 million to Clinton’s Foundation, and is now a Board member, but clearly not out of the goodness of his heart. According to the New York Times, in 2005 Clinton and Giustra allegedly took an MD-87 jet to Kazakhstan (later evidence reviewed by Forbes magazine suggests only a Clinton advance staff member was on the same plane, not Clinton himself, and also disputes the Times rendition of the chain of events), one of the most corrupt countries in the world, where Clinton inexplicably endorsed that country’s bid to chair the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which verifies the legitimacy of elections of member states, a position desperately coveted by the Kazakh President. Just as inexplicably, the US then backed their bid. But why?
Well, Giustra hadn’t been riding on that plane for the fun of it. According to the New York Times:
Within two days, corporate records show that Mr. Giustra also came up a winner when his company signed preliminary agreements giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by Kazakhstan’s state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom.
The monster deal stunned the mining industry, turning an unknown shell company into one of the world’s largest uranium producers in a transaction ultimately worth tens of millions of dollars to Mr. Giustra, analysts said.
Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton’s charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from Mr. Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month.
Head’s article also details how Bill Clinton helped Giustra lobby the Colombian President, Alvaro Uribe, for a 250 km oil pipeline and ultimately gain control—via a Colombian oil company founded by Giustra--of Colombia’s largest oilfield. Uribe was described by the US Defense and Intelligence agency as a “close friend” of Pablo Escobar and ‘ha[d] worked for the Medellin cartel.” He was also described in a report by Human Rights Watch as leading an Administration:
[R]acked by scandals over extrajudicial killings by the army, a highly questioned paramilitary demobilization process, and the national intelligence service's illegal surveillance of human rights defenders, journalists, opposition politicians, and Supreme Court justices.
Hillary Clinton visited Uribe in 2010, knowing about his record. Nonetheless, and against her own embassy’s warning, she praised him effusively, also touting his support for a U.S.- Colombia free trade agreement, from which her husband’s private jet-setter pal Giustra stood to benefit handsomely. Although she was representing the Obama Administration’s policy (which Head doesn’t point out), this still constituted a marked reversal from her 2008 campaign position, in which she expressed opposition to such an agreement due to Colombia’s terrible human rights record. Since Giustra’s company’s, Pacific Rubiales’ takeover, according to a Colombian opposition party, the oil fields he now controls are run like “concentration camps," with sixteen-hour shifts, inadequate sanitary facilities and third-party anti-union hiring policies (Pacific Rubiales’ lawyers deny this).
It is reasonable to infer from Head’s relatively straightforward article, which succeeds in collecting in one place a great deal of information that has been reported elsewhere, that anyone running against Hillary Clinton is also, in a manner of speaking, running against the richest and most powerful corporations in the world, the entire US defense and financial services industry, and even the interests of foreign billionaires and governments. The question is if she is elected, would ordinary Americans be competing against similar odds.
And that is a fair question, one that Hillary needs to answer to Americans’ satisfaction if she is ever going to win this primary with more than just her much- vaunted “institutional” support. The unmistakable takeaway from this is that, from Kakazhstan to Kuwait to Colombia, the source—one is tempted to say the “foundation”-- of Hillary’s Presidential hopes is clearly made up of far more than the voters trudging through the snowy fields and school parking lots to caucus and vote in Iowa and New Hampshire. With rhetorical understatement, Head wonders that in the face of all this massive corporate largesse, “whether a Hillary Clinton presidency would take on the growing political influence of large corporate interests and Wall Street banks,” address the stagnating incomes of the middle class, and close the tax loopholes that permit corporations and the super-rich from profiting at the expense of ordinary Americans. And while Republicans may not care enough to elect their leaders based on these issues, Democratic voters generally do.
The view from Bill Clinton’s jet does not inspire confidence.
