Former President Bill Clinton is one of a kind, but we knew that already.
No president before him has managed to cash in from his time in office with
such shameless abandon.
A Washington Post story by John Solomon and Matthew Mosk is staggering in
its revelations of Clinton's greed. In the six years since he left the
presidency, Clinton has taken in nearly $40 million - between nine and 10
million of it last year. Clinton averaged "almost a speech a day" in 2006.
Twenty percent of his fees reportedly "were for personal income." The rest
of his speeches, says the Post, were for no fee or for donations to
Clinton's foundation.
Unlike liberal Democrats, I am not obsessed with how much others make, as
long as it's honest money and they pay their taxes. It ought to be a
concern, though, when so much money is paid to a former president by foreign
governments, foreign entities and corporations with interests in U.S.
foreign and domestic policies. While Bill Clinton is no longer in a position
to determine such policies, his wife, the junior senator from New York and
Democratic presidential candidate, is and she may soon be in an even more
powerful position. Given the Clintons' history of questionable political,
business and personal relationships, can anyone say with certainty that the
providers of this largesse are uninterested in influencing a President
Hillary Clinton through her husband?
Were it not for the disclosure forms required of high-level officials, we
might never have known the full extent of the Clinton ATM (always throw
money) machine.
Clinton is also a master at whiny self-justification, saying, "I never had a
nickel to my name until I got out of the White House, and now I'm a
millionaire. Š I get a tax cut every year, no matter what our needs are."
Clinton can easily assuage his conscience by writing a check for the taxes
he thinks he should pay under a Hillary Clinton administration and send it
to the U.S. Treasury, but that would require him to be sincere. Clinton told
a Houston fund-raiser in 1995, "Probably there are people in this room still
mad at me at that (1993) budget because you think I raised your taxes too
much. It might surprise you to know that I think I raised them too much,
too." Sincerity, like fidelity, is not his strong suit.