Charity

From Vox:

In 1997, after a distinguished career in military service that culminated with stints as national security adviser under Ronald Reagan and chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Colin Powell launched a charity. Named America’s Promise, it’s built around the theme of Five Promises to America’s children. And while I’ve never heard it praised as a particularly cost-effective way to help humanity by effective altruists, it was surely a reasonably good cause for a famous and politically popular man to dedicate himself to.

Needless to say, however, Powell continued to be involved in American political life. His sky-high poll numbers ensured he’d be buzzed about as a possible presidential or vice presidential nominee, either as a moderate Republican or as an independent. Realistically, that wasn’t in the cards, and Powell was smart enough to know it. But his support for George W. Bush during the 2000 campaign lent him valuable credibility, and his recruitment to serve as Bush’s first secretary of state was considered an important political and substantive coup by Bush.

So what about the charity? Well, Powell’s wife, Alma Powell, took it over. And it kept raking in donations from corporate America. Ken Lay, the chair of Enron, was a big donor. He also backed a literacy-related charity that was founded by the then-president’s mother. The US Department of State, at the time Powell was secretary, went to bat for Enron in a dispute the company was having with the Indian government.

Did Lay or any other Enron official attempt to use their connections with Alma Powell (or Barbara Bush, for that matter) to help secure access to State Department personnel in order to voice these concerns? Did any other donors to America’s Promise? I have no idea, because to the best of my knowledge nobody in the media ever launched an extensive investigation into these matters. That’s the value of the presumption of innocence, something Hillary Clinton has never been able to enjoy during her time in the national spotlight.

I think this is a pretty fair viewpoint, even though the guy is straining pretty hard to take it right up to the edge of Tu Quoque without tipping over into it completely. 

I think this shit happens too much, and I think it's harder and harder to rationalize away disturbing thoughts of how corrupt it seems to be.

Like the author says, the tendency to believe the worst about most politicians, and Hillary in particular, has been in place for a long time.  But that just makes me wonder if The Clinton Foundation thing is a good example of the famous Too-Cute-By-Half that seems to characterize the Clinton gang.

Some Brain Puking:

People want something from Hillary's State Dept.
They call and ask.
They either get what they want or they don't (it looks sketchy, but nobody's made any direct Quid Pro Quo connections).
Anyway, the call goes thru to somebody on Hillary's staff, and after an appropriate length of time, the caller is contacted by The Foundation, there's a low-key soft-sell pitch, and before they know it, they're writing out a nice fat check.
So the Lithuanian Labor Minister gets a little help from the US Dept of State for his niece's visa problem, and 7 or 8 months later, Uganda gets some water filters with the money the grateful Minister donated to The Clinton Foundation.
Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more.

So instead of Pay To Play (which is illegal), they've reversed it to Play Then Pay (which isn't; not really anyway) - and if anybody makes a big squawk, well, "just look at all the great things we've done with the money" - which they have, and which makes it harder to flat-out reject the "How Things Work In The Real World" narrative.