Newspaper logo  
 
 
Bookmark and Share
Local News & Opinion

Ref. : Local Newsbriefs

Travel
Letters

Ref. : Letters to the editor

Open Letters:

03.05 Open Letter to Congressman Bart Stupak

Health & Environment

Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries

03.12 Slick Barry and the $100-Billion Medicaid/Medicare Fraud Claim

03.09 Kill Bill: Death to Obamacare!

03.09 Obama’s Rhetoric May Be “Fiery,” But His Health Care Reform Is Still Lukewarm

02.24 Obama’s New Plan

02.21 Time to Pass the Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act of 2009

Media Watching

03.12 Cud and Complicity: Burying the Alternatives to Empire's Dominion

03.11 NYT and the ACORN Hoax

03.05 Sorry, Rove, Bush Did Lie About Iraq

03.03 It's Snow News

03.03 The Woeful Washington Post

02.28 The NYT Veers Neocon

02.18 US Media Replays Iraq Fiasco on Iran

Ref. : The Daily Howler

Legal Matters

02.26 America's Supremes: Court Over Constitution

US Politics, Policy & Culture

03.11 Power Rangers: Policing the System With the "Fightin' Progressives"

03.09 Thinking About Countings

03.07 Unnatural Acts: Breaking the Fever of Militarism

02.25 Future Shock: A Better World Beyond the Imperium

02.24 The Last Flight of Joe Stack

02.22 Thinking About Sadie

02.18 All Systems Go: No Dysfunction in Profitable Afghan Enterprise

“High Crimes?”

03.13 Palestinian Dispossession in East Jerusalem

03.12 Israeli Settlement Expansions Continue

03.11 Brutalizing Palestinian Children

03.08 The Russell Tribunal on Palestine: Barcelona Session

03.05 Targeting Israeli Apartheid

03.01 America's Permanent War Agenda

02.25 Global Sweatshop Wage Slavery

02.23 Israeli Unaccountability and Denial: Suppressing the Practice of Torture

02.22 American Genocides: is Haiti Next?

02.18 Israeli Abusive Administrative Detentions

02.16 MK-ULTRA: The CIA's Mind Control Program

Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance

03.14 The Crisis in America's Telecommunications Network

03.09 The Business of Water: Privatizing An Essential Resource

03.05 Is the Recovery Real?

03.04 IMF-Style Austerity Measures come to America: What “Fiscal Responsibility” Means To You

03.04 Barry C. Lynn's "Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and Economics of Destruction"

03.02 Obama's Budget Revealed: Money for Wars and Weapons, While More Americans Face Joblessness and Hunger

03.01 Thinking About Fees

02.22 Campaigning for State-Owned Banks

02.22 Social Security Will Fall To Obama Before The Taliban Do

02.19 Obama’s Stealth Entitlement Commission

02.19 Selling Out America to Wall Street

International

03.15 Peace Process Hypocrisy: Stillborn from Inception

03.03 Muslim Disunity

03.02 Funding Israeli Militarism, Belligerence and Occupation

02.26 Iran Captures a 'Good' Terrorist

02.24 The Dubai Hit

02.22 Holland Has Had Enough: Killing of Innocent Civilians Goes On Apace in Afghanistan

02.19 The Placeman Cometh: New IAEA Chief Stokes Iran War Fever for the Bush-Obama Regime

We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
Google
This site Web
  Hillary Low-balled Bill's Pay in Forms
Newspaper logo

POLITICAL COMMENTARY:

Hillary Low-balled Bill's Pay in Forms

by Robert Parry

April 6, 2008—In her disclosure forms for the U.S. Senate and her presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton downplayed Bill Clinton’s income from two key financial backers, billionaire investor Ronald Burkle and consumer-data executive Vinod Gupta, when compared with the Clintons’ recently released tax filings.

Sen. Clinton’s earlier disclosure forms listed the former President’s compensation as “over $1,000” each from Burkle’s and Gupta’s firms – when the actual amounts ran into the hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars, according to the tax returns.

The Clintons received as much as $15 million from Burkle’s Yucaipa investment firm from 2003 through 2007, starting with $1 million a year in 2003, peaking at $5 million in 2005 and leveling off at more than $2.5 million the past two years, according to tax forms and other data released by the campaign on Friday.

In January 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported that Bill Clinton also stands to make $20 million as he unwinds his complicated business relationship with Yucaipa, which has connections to the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum. [WSJ, Jan. 22, 2008]

However, a voter would have gotten no inkling of the value of Bill Clinton’s dealings with Yucaipa from Sen. Clinton’s disclosure forms. Although she gave precise dollar amounts for Bill Clinton’s many paid speeches, his earnings from Yucaipa were listed simply as “guaranteed payment to partner, over $1,000.”

In her presidential disclosure form, signed on June 13, 2007, Sen. Clinton also put the value of her spouse’s assets in Yucaipa Global Partnership Fund LP at between $1,001 and $15,000. The form listed interest from Yucaipa Global Holding as between $5,001 and $15,000.

Sen. Clinton’s disclosure forms displayed a similar vagueness regarding Bill Clinton’s earnings from Gupta’s InfoUSA. The forms listed “non-employee compensation, over $1,000” – however, the tax material released by the Clinton campaign on Friday showed that InfoUSA paid the ex-President $400,000 last year alone.

Legal papers, which surfaced in 2007, showed that Bill Clinton had earned more than $3 million from Gupta’s firm. [Washington Post, April 5, 2008]

It is not clear why Sen. Clinton low-balled her husband’s compensation from these two sources when she provided precise figures for his many speeches in her disclosure forms. Broad ranges of figures are permitted in these forms, but a category as vague as “over $1,000” is not included as a typical option.

In signing the disclosure forms, Clinton certified “that the statements I have made on this form and all attached schedules are true, complete and correct to the best of my knowledge.”

Major Backers

Both Burkle and Gupta have been major backers of Clinton campaigns and other family endeavors, including Hillary Clinton’s presidential run.

Burkle ranks as one of Sen. Clinton’s “Hillraisers,” meaning that he has raised more than $100,000 for her presidential run. Besides donating to the campaign, Gupta has contributed to Bill Clinton’s presidential library.

Questions about the Clintons’ post-presidential tax records arose after Sen. Clinton disclosed that she had made a $5 million loan to her campaign in late January, before the crucial “Super Tuesday” primaries on Feb. 5.

Sen. Clinton insisted that the $5 million had come from her personal money, not from the couple’s joint accounts. Hillary Clinton’s Senate disclosure forms show that she had earned almost $10 million for her memoir, Living History, meaning that the loan indeed could have come from her own money.

However, the bulk of the couple’s wealth – estimated at about $30 million and accumulated almost entirely since they left the White House in January 2001 – appeared to derive from Bill Clinton’s lucrative speeches, totaling $10.2 million in 2006 alone, according to Sen. Clinton’s last Senate disclosure form.

From 2001 to 2007, Bill Clinton collected nearly $40 million in speaking fees, according to a review by the Washington Post. His paid speeches  – with fees as high as $400,000 – included appearances before landlord groups, biotechnology firms, food distributors, charities and leadership organizations all over the world.

Over the past eight years, the Clintons earned a combined $109 million, according to the tax data released Friday.

The significance of Hillary Clinton’s assertion that the $5 million campaign loan came from her portion of the couple’s wealth related to the political sensitivity – and questionable legality – of a husband or wife financing the campaign of a spouse. Federal law only allows the candidate to make unlimited contributions to his or her own campaign.

For instance, when Sen. John Kerry arranged a $6.4 million loan to keep his 2004 campaign afloat, he used his Boston townhouse as collateral, rather than count on help from his multi-millionaire wife, Theresa Heinz Kerry.

In the Clintons’ case, there was also the question of whether contributors – like Burkle – who have maxed out on the $2,300 legal limit for contributions to a campaign might be providing back-door funding through favorable financial deals. Given Burkle’s ties to foreign investors, there was the additional question of foreign money influencing a U.S. presidential campaign.

[For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Hillary’s Curious Campaign Loan.” To see Sen. Clinton’s Senate disclosure forms, click on the years, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006.]


Robert ParryRobert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

This article is republished in the Baltimore Chronicle with permission of the author.



Copyright © 2008 The Baltimore News Network. All rights reserved.

Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent.

Baltimore News Network, Inc., sponsor of this web site, is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed in stories posted on this web site are the authors' own.

This story was published on April 7, 2008.

 

Public Service Ads:
Verifiable Voting in Maryland