Charity begins at home, we are told, and a certain home in Chappaqua, NY is overflowing with the milk of human kindness. Yes, giving is ingrained in the home of Bill and Hillary Clinton, the former and future Presidents. In 2015 they raked in an income of $10,745,378, which is nothing to sneer at, considering neither one of them actually was employed by anybody. Since that January day in 2001 when they left the White House “dead broke,” if we may use the phrase of a prominent American political figure, Mr. & Mrs. C. have banked nearly $250 million. Some of that came from memoirs, which attract massive advances from publishers. The Clintons may be brilliant writers, but pen and ink are sidelines; their real earning power comes from their amazing powers of oratory. Their speeches and talks command staggering sums (The pair made $6.7 million in speaking fees last year and $10.5 million in 2014.) We would love to tell you what it is they have to say and why it is so valuable (in more than one sense of the word) but alas, this we cannot do; for one of the conditions of Mrs. Clinton's speechifying is that she controls the content. No recordings, no printed copies – well, actually, Hillary’s contracts insist that the listener pay for a stenographer, and further insist that which the stenographer produces becomes the exclusive property of Hillary herself, never to see the light of day.
We’ll assume that what they have to say is so powerful and brilliant that it is suitable for the ears of that particular audience only; the rest of us probably wouldn’t understand it anyway.
But what does this have to do with the opening line in this piece? Well, in 2015 the Clintons gave away to charity $1,042,000 of their $10.7 million income. Commendable, and vastly more than most of us ever will give away, both as a percentage and in raw total. Of course, $1,000,000 of that charitable contribution went to the Clinton Family Foundation (Note: not be be confused with the Clinton Foundation or the Clinton Global Initiative or other eponymous tentacles of the Clinton octopus) and the other $42,000 went to “Desert Classic Charities,” a charity golf event that the Clinton Foundation happens to sponsor. The Desert Classic in turn kicked back donated $700,000 to the Clinton Foundation in 2015. According to ABC News, “at least 98.5% of the Clintons’ charitable donations from 2007 to 2015 have gone directly to the Clinton Foundation or the Clinton Global Initiative." In 2014, the once and future Presidents gave $3 million to the Clinton Family Foundation, which in turn gave $1.87 million to the Clinton Foundation. Well, that’s surely because of all the good work they do. Mr. & Mrs. C. also in 2014 gave $250,000 to the Diplomacy Center Foundation. We don’t have to tell you, do we, which former First Lady and future President of the United States belongs to the board of directors of DCF? There is nothing illegal about all of this, we guess, but it is pretty handy to have one’s favorite charity so conveniently-located.
To put it in perspective, Mrs. Clinton’s former rival for the Democrat nomination, Bernie Sanders, earned $206,000 in 2014 ($156,000 was his salary as US Senator and $46,000 from Social Security.). Hillary makes more than that for one speech. He might not earn anything for talking to people, but we think Senator Sanders is at least as interesting as Mrs. Clinton and vastly more spontaneous and entertaining.
Anyway, the Clinton Foundation is the key to the gold mine – not only has it collected nearly $2 billion since its inception (much of it from foreign governments or entities that could have donated on their own without running the money through the Clinton Foundation), and much of that sum has gone directly or indirectly to the Clintons themselves or their family members, but it also is the likeliest reason that Mrs. Clinton demanded a private home-brew server that was beyond the control of the State Department or the Obama Administration: because she was ...ahem...soliciting for the Foundation most of the time. Mrs. Clinton’s long-time aide, Cheryl Mills, interviewed candidates to head up the Clinton Foundation. Some find troubling the fact that Ms. Mills conducted said interviews in 2012 when she was Mrs. Clinton’s Chief of Staff at the State Department, thus paid by the taxpayers. Well, the boundaries are blurry at such lofty places, and besides Mrs. M. said she paid for the train trip herself, and we will bet that a document turns up giving her permission to do the interview. We wonder, with the Clintons knowing simply everybody, why only Ms. Mills could do the job, but she is very capable, we’re sure. Donors to the Foundation also received access, favors, and in some cases, were given positions on government boards; but, Washington is such a small town, there are only so few qualified people and so many jobs for them to do.