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Today's
Stories
October
1, 2007
Al
Giordano
The Clinton Campaign's Reckless
Race for Big Money Donors
September
29 / 30, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
Clinton Time: Do We Set Our Clocks
Forward or Back?
Uri
Avnery
So What About Iran?
Andrew
Cockburn
Iraq's WMD Myth: Why Clinton is Culpable
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Through the Gates of Lodore
Wajahat
Ali
The Good, the Bad and the Iraqi
Andy
Worthington
The Curse of the Military Commissions
Don
Santina
Ethnic Cleansing in San Francisco
Ralph
Nader
Free Lunches, for Corporations!
Fred
Gardner
The Man Behind the MoveOn Ad
Seth
Sandronsky
The US Economy Since 1980
Gideon
Levy
The Children of 5767
William
S. Lind
A Ticking Bomb
Reza
Fiyouzat
An Anti-Imperialist Case Against a Nuclear Iran
Richard
Rhames
Wag the Tail, Frag the Dog
David
Michael Green
Buyer's Remorse: Their Purchase, Our Regret
Zach
Mason
Hate and Hope in Herndon
Poets'
Basement
Gibbons, Ali, Davies and Suss
Website
of the Weekend
Domestic Crusaders
September
28, 2007
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
The Teflon Alliance with Israel
Roberto
J. González /
David H. Price
When Anthropologists Become Counter-Insurgents
Saul
Landau
September, the Cruelest Month in Chile
Tom
Clifford
Burma by the Numbers
Christopher
Brauchli
Of Toxic Almonds and Bad Beef
Martha
Rosenberg
Spinning Suicide Statistics
Dave
Zirin
Soldier in Winter: John Carlos Speaks Out on the Jena 6
Laray
Polk
Bush Library or Lockbox?
Binoy
Kampmark
When Reagan Turned Brown
James
McEnteer
Hell, Columbia: an Academic Hotshot Introduces a Petty Tyrant
Website
of the Day
Concerned Anthropologists
September
27, 2007
Alan
Farago
Housing Market Crashes and Burns
Andy
Worthington
A Bad Week at Guantánamo
Jonathan
Cook
Why Did Israel Attack Syria?
William
Hughes
Billy Graham, a Prince of War Exposed
Ray
McGovern
Bush, Oil and Moral Bankruptcy
Ron
Jacobs
Joe Biden's Plan to Chop Up Iraq
Dave
Lindorff
Quit the Party! Join the Mass Resignation Movement!
Joshua
Frank
Pruning the Green Party
Anne
Dachel
The CDC, Vaccines and Autism
Website
of the Day
The God-O-Meter
September 26, 2007
Bill
Quigley
HUD's Home Wreckers
Paul
Craig Roberts
A Pandemic of Police Brutality
Jeff
Kisseloff
Still Smearing Alger Hiss
China
Hand
Is China the True Target of Financial Sanctions Against Iran?
Behzad
Yaghmaian
At the Gates of Paradise
Sonja
Karkar
The Quality of Mercy in Gaza
Mike
Ferner
Interrupting the Empire, 30 Seconds at a Time
Col.
Dan Smith
Freedom to Speak, Freedom to Learn
Clifton
Ross
Bollinger's Barbarous and Ignorant Speech
Brenda
Norrell
A Meeting of Indigenous Peoples in Caracas
Website
of the Day
The Smearing of Jean Maria Arrigo, a Psychologist Opposed to
Torture
September
25, 2007
Nicole
Colson
On the March Against Racism
Uri
Avnery
Foam on the Water
Brendan
Cooney
Ahmadinejad on Broadway: Free Speech? Arrest Him!
Harry
Browne
Bruce Springsteen Comes Home ... to Hell
Marjorie
Cohn
The Drift Toward War with Iran
David
Macaray
The UAW-GM Strike: the Long Knives are Already Out
Ralph
Nader
Hypocrisy and Inverted Priorities in Congress
Dan
Bacher
Schwarzenegger, the Climate Change Hypocrite
Anthony
Papa
Perverted Justice & America's Drug Laws
Christopher
Ketcham
All Politicos Now Classed as Sexual Deviants
Website
of the Day
John Waters on Free Speech
September
24, 2007
George
Ciccariello-Maher
Racist Violence from Jena to Oakland
Saree Makdisi
The
War on Gaza's Children
David
Keen
Action-as-Propaganda: Learning About the Iraq War from Hannah
Arendt
Sherwood
Ross
Just How Powerful is the Israel Lobby? Only Cheney Knows for
Sure
Ron
Jacobs
Greenspan's Open Secret
Donna
Saggia
The Cult of the Military and the Decline of Democratic Values
Mike
Ferner
Free Speech Takes a Capitol Beating
Malini
Johar Schueller
Norman Hsu is a Model Minority
Monique
Dols
and Dylan Stillwood
Ahmadinejad and Columbia
Website
of the Day
The Promotion
September 22 / 23, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
On Naomi Klein's "The Shock
Doctrine"
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Beneath the Hideous Veneer of
Security
Linn
Washington, Jr.
The Injustice in Jena: Prosecutorial Misconduct More Dangerous
Than Racism
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Going Down in Dinosaur: Oil, Dams and Whitewater (Part One)
Alan
Farago
Genuflecting to China
Brian
Cloughley
Of Hate, Hubris and Atrocities
Robert
Fantina
The Deadly Pattern of US Imperialism
Roxanne
Dunbar-Ortiz
Land Tenure and Resistance in New
Mexico
Jason
Hribal
Fear of an Animal Planet
David
Rosen
Slugger Sex: Athletes, Violence and Male Sexuality
Mike
Whitney
The Era of Global Financial Instability
John
V. Walsh
Who Will Lead a Filibuster of the Iraq War Spending Bill?
Dave
Lindorff
Why Aren't We Banning Blackwater Here?
David
Michael Green
Hiding Behind a Camouflage Skirt
Fred
Gardner
Claudia Jensen (Look Back in Anger)
Cassandra
Jones
Support Our Mercenaries
Roger
van Zwanenberg
Pluto Press Under Attack by Israel Lobby
Poets'
Basement
Buknatski, Davies and Ford
Website
of the Weekend
"For the Bible Tells Me So"
September
21, 2007
Karim
Makdisi
Letter from Lebanon
M.
Shahid Alam
A History of Violence
Alan
Farago
Who Will Buy My House?
Joshua
Frank
The Demise of the Congressional Black Caucus
Dave
Zirin
Notre Dame and the Economy of Sports
Kenneth
Couesbouc
A Short History of Lending and Borrowing
Dr.
Steffie Woolhandler and Dr. David Himmelstein
Mass Health Care Failure
Ben
Terrall
The Streets of San Francisco: Where Impeachment is Taken Seriously--By
Everyone But Pelosi
Steve
Fournier
Ex-Dems, Sign Up Here
Frederico
Fuentes, et al
Voices in Defense of Bolivia
Website
of the Day
Sabra and Shatila, Remembered
September
20, 2007
Kathleen
Christison
Whatever Happened to Palestine?
Zoltan
Grossman
An Endless Occupation?
Paul
Craig Roberts
As the Empire Slips: Greenspan and the Economy of Greed
Stan
Cox
and Wes Jackson
Carbon-Free and Still Wrecking the Planet
Russell
Mokhiber
AARP to Kucinich: Drop Dead
Charles
Modiano
Jim Crow's Children: the Jena 6, Shaquanda Cotton and Blog Power
Raymond
J. Lawrence
Bush's Worrisome Use of Religion
Brendan
Cooney
Body-Snatched Nation
Website
of the Day
Mind Control for Breakfast
September
19, 2007
Paul
Craig Roberts
Why Did Senator John Kerry Stand
Idly By?
Paul
Krassner
The Power of Laughter
Sgt.
Martin Smith
The New Private Warriors: Blackwater in Iraq
Seth
Sandronsky
Living in a Dilapidated Market: To Rent or Own?
Claud
Cockburn
Looking back at the Great Crash
Victoria
Buch
Israel's Agenda for Ethnic Cleansing
and Transfer
Robert
Weissman
Oil Warriors: From Greenspan to Kissinger
Mike
Ferner
Can We Talk?
Dan
Bacher
Schwarzenegger's $9 Billion Boondoggle for Big Water
Website
of the Day
Housing Cost Calculator
September
18, 2007
Mike
Whitney
U.S. Banks Brace for Storm Surge
as Dollar and Credit System Reel
Alan
Farago
Interviewing Alan Greenspan: How 60
Minutes Blew It
John
Ross
America's Great Wall:
Where Will the Workers Go
When They Finish It?
Ron
Jacobs
Nooses Hung From Jena, La. to College
Park, Md.
Alex
Doherty
Britain's 9/11 "Truth Movement":
Who's Responsible?
September
17, 2007
Marjorie
Cohn
Erwin Chemerinsky and the Post-9/11
Attack on Academic Freedom
Paul
Craig Roberts
Conservatism Isn't What It Used to
Be
Ricardo
Alarcón
The Return of C. Wright Mills Amid
the Dawn of a New Era
Marc
Levy
Fake Vets Chasing Fame
Eva
Liddell
In 1969 We Already Knew What 2007
Would Look Like
Website
of the Day
Propaganda:
Your Job in Germany. Directed by Frank Capra, and written by
Theodor Geisel
Sept.
15-16, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
The General Came to Washington
Vicente
Navarro
How the U.S. Schemed Against Spain's
Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy
Mike
Whitney
Plummeting Dollar, Credit Crunch
Herman
Mindshaftgap
Has There Ever Been a Surge?
If so, Has it a Future?
Ellen
Cantarow
Girls! Music! Palestine!
Jordan
Flaherty
K-Ville: Fox's New Paean to the
N.O.P.D.
Zachary
Hurwitz
Julio Cusurichi on Amazonian Development
September
14, 2007
Debbie
Nathan
New York Times reporter was a member
of an illegal underage porn site, claims he was only "posing
as online predator"
Franklin
Lamb
Sabra-Shatilla, 25 Years Later
Patrick
Cockburn
Greet Bush and Die: The Killing of
Abu Risha
Farzana
Versey
The World's Richest Muslim Tycoon
Alan
Farago
This is Florida, Epicenter of the
Housing Bust and of Public Corruption
Hank
Edson
Bill's New Book is Giving Me a Headache
September
13, 2007
Patrick
Cockburn
Petraeus Confided Presidential Ambitions
to Iraqi Official
Scott
Vest, former Air Force Captain at Minot
The Barksdale Nukes
Andy
Worthington
Guantánamo: "Ghost"
Prisoners Speak At Last
Michael
Baney
Mr. Fixit of Quake-Stricken Peru Has
Death Squad Past
Dr.
Susan Block
Is U.S. Run by Secret Homintern?
September
12, 2007
Paul
Craig Roberts
American Economy: RIP
Stan
Goff
The Petraeus Report
William
Blum
When Soldiers Mutiny...Only Those Fighting
the War Can End It.
Manuel
Garcia
Forgetting 9/11
Debbie
Nathan
Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make the
Big Time
September
11, 2007
Patrick
Cockburn
The Fakery of General Petraeus
Iain
Boal
Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty,
Apocalypse
Michael
Dickinson
Osama on 9/11
Guerry
Hoddersen
Free Speech is Not Given, but Taken
Bill
Hatch
Irish Politics in Old Time California
Gary
Leupp
The Legacy of Luciano Pavarotti
Website
of the Day
Elisa Salasin's
"My September 11th"
September
10, 2007
Uri
Avnery
A Big Victory Against the Wall
Patrick
Cockburn
Petraeus's Closet
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassen
Screwing Up In Iraq
David
Michael Green
Why Fred Thompson is Uniquely Qualified
to be the GOP's Nominee
Pius
Adesanmi
A Solidarity Letter to a Victim
of Michael Vick
Betty
Schneider
How to Deal With Sex Offenders
September
8 / 9, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
Will the US Really Bomb Iran?
Saul
Landau
The Irrational Drama of a Declining Empire
Ismael
Hossein-Zadeh
Hurricane Katrina and Bush's Wars
Ray
McGovern
Petraeus, the Westmoreland of Iraq
Matthew
Abraham
Finkelstein's Legacy at DePaul
Alan
Farago
The Governor and the Growth Machine
Christopher
Brauchli
Grand Old Party Animals
Rannie
Amiri
Battle of the Camps
Fred
Gardner
Will Snoops Get Stopped?
James
L. Secor
B-52 Flexing Nuclear Muscles: H-Bombs Over Barksdale
Missy
Comley Beattie
Choices: Shall We Stay or Shall We Go Now?
Ben
Tripp
Still in the Clover
Francis
Boyle
The University of Illinois' Little Red Sambo Show
Joe
Allen and Paul D'Amato
Jason Bourne vs. James Bond
Website
of the Weekend
Drilling Wyoming: the View from Above
September 7, 2007
Robert
Fantina
Those Iraq Reports: Bush vs. Reality
John
Ross
Coca-Cola's Raid on a Sacred Mountain
James
Brooks
The Occupation Within
Russell
Mokhiber
Robert Reich and the Elimination of Corporate Criminal Liability
Joshua
Frank
The Green Implosion Continues: Cyberlynching John Murphy
John
Walsh
On the Green Party
Mark
Brenner
New York Taxi Workers Strike Over Tracking Devices
Mike
Ferner
"I Will Salute No More Forever"
Website
of the Day
Help Save Osny Zachary's Life
September
6, 2007
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden
Hand
Allan
J. Lichtman
When General Petraeus Speaks, Don't Listen ...
Norman
Solomon
The Secret Addiction of Thomas Friedman
Yifat
Susskind
Hurricane Felix's First Responders: Courage and Tragedy on the
Miskito Coast
Catherine
Fenton
Why I Am Going to the Protest
Laura
Santina
Can the War Machine be Contained?
Farzana
Versey
Fission Kashmir
Yves
Engler
Haiti: Where a Wage of $2 a Day is Too Much for the Lords of
Industry to Pay
Kelly
Overton
Bang Bang; Shoot Shoot: Is Hunting Racist?
Michael
Simmons
One Jew's Views: The Strange Genius of Drew Friedman and Kominsky
Crumb
Website
of the Day
Dams and Genocide in Guatemala
September
5, 2007
Stan
Goff
The End Begins
Michael
Dickinson
Working for Mother Teresa: Memoirs of a Rebellious Volunteer
Matthew
Abraham
Standing Firm with Norman Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students:
a Defining Moment
Patrick
Cockburn
The Basra Debacle
Dave
Lindorff
Beware the Wounded Beast
Paul
Craig Roberts
Who Are the Fanatics?
Clifton
Ross
Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity
Elizabeth
Schulte
Katrina's Forgotten Refugees
Joseph
Grosso
Labor Day in New York City
Ben
Terrall
Where's Nancy? On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco
Website
of the Day
A Guide to Narco Dollars
September
4, 2007
Jean
Bricmont
Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking
Iran
Patrick
Cockburn
Cut and Run in Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime
Tom
Kerr
Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row
Gary
Leupp
The Case of Jose Maria Sison
Sonja
Karkar
The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine
Heather
Gray
The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal
Silence of Billy Graham
Fidel
Castro
The Super-Revolutionaries
Jackie
Corr
Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand
Sunsara
Taylor
Katrina and the Progress of the System
Website
of the Day
Colombia Journal
September
3, 2007
Patrick
Cockburn
Brits Flee from Basra
Eamon
McCann
Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes
Joshua
Frank
The End of the Green Party?
Chris
Floyd
Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph
Marjorie
Cohn
A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans
Walter
Brasch
The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in
Iraq
Matt
Reichel
Redefining the American Dream
Website
of the Day
Don't Get Fooled Again
September
1 / 2, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
Entrapment Snares Larry Craig
Andy
Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo
Saul
Landau
The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five
David
Keen
An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror
Patrick
Cockburn
The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care
Services
Diana
Johnstone
Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket
George
Longstreth, MD
& Karen Longstreth, RN
The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank
Linda
M. Woolf
A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights
Ralph
Nader
Wrapping the World with Advertising
Fred
Gardner
The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD
Ben
Tripp
Enquiry in America Today
David
Michael Green
American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut
Missy
Comley Beattie
Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't
Learned About Tolerance
Michael
Dickinson
Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana
Paul
Krassner
Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark
Ron
Jacobs
A Sports Nation of Millions
Poets'
Basement
Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z
|
October
1, 2007
A
CounterPunch Special Investigation
Why the Problems
with Clinton Inc. Could Sink the Democrats in 2008
The
Clinton Campaign's Reckless Race for Big Money Donors
By AL GIORDANO
The $850,000 that conman Norman Hsu
bundled for Senator Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign are
the gifts that Clinton will have to keep giving back, harming
her presidential hopes not just monetarily, but also morally
and politically.
Hsu's upcoming court hearings
together with a newly filed civil suit in California, plus the
criminal (and likely civil) complaints pending against him in
New York, will soon blast in stereo from the media capitals of
both coasts. The courtroom fireworks will take away a considerable
amount of the message control that the Clinton campaign has,
until now, been able to deploy.
It's a story with sizzle and
steak. Major media organizations including The Washington Post,
The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal
and Newsweek have put many of their top investigative reporters
on the trail through which a fugitive from justice rose to become
one of the Clinton campaign's top 15 fundraisers. With each new
report, new lines of investigation open; the story has so many
legs it's a caterpillar. Although very potentially harmful to
Clinton's ambitions, the increasing scrutiny on those that provide
and raise the millions required to win election to national office
is long overdue and should be cleansing for democracy.
Last May, The Nation's Ari
Berman filed an important story about the Clinton campaign's
ties to corporate America, "Hillary, Inc." It captured
the contradictions inherent in a candidate who speechifies against
an economy that skews toward "the privileged and the powerful
at the expense of everybody else" while playing footsie
under the table with those same interests. Yet the focus on the
corporate nature of Clinton, Inc. isn't entirely negative for
the senator's campaign: it can also imply--to voters made cynical
by the constraints capitalism imposes on democracy--a level of
businesslike competence in the rough and tumble realities of
electoral campaigns.
The Hsu case is more dangerous
for Clinton's aspirations because it shows the incompetent underside
of the Clinton organization; a sloppy and careless venture that
back in the era of "1990s values," was sufficient to
help it politically survive its own self-inflicted wounds. But
in this higher tech, faster information-flow, closer scrutiny
21st century that is upon us, the trademark recklessness that
got the Clinton organization through eight years in power now
veers toward disaster.
Nineties
Values
Scratch the surface of the
Hsu scandal, and find a confirmation of the unacceptable risks
for the Democrats if the 2008 general election becomes a referendum
on the Clinton White House of the 1990s. It offers a looking
glass into the inevitable disillusionment and scandal that would
follow a Clinton nomination. And even if candidate Clinton were
able to best a similarly flawed Republican nominee, her executive
branch would end up besieged, unable to comply on campaign promises,
because it will be placed on the permanent defensive by its own
serial ethical lapses.
The problem is not Norman Hsu,
his Ponzi schemes, or his tragic figure now rolling down the
treadmill toward the buzz saw of justice. Hsu is not an isolated
case. It is emblematic of the malignant negligence of the front-running
Democratic candidate and her organization, the lack of due diligence
when money is involved and the carelessness it exhibits.
The Hsu scandal involves both
Senator and Bill Clinton -- you can't pull them apart on this
one; two birds on the same wire hit by their own boomerang --
and it offers demonstrable proof that the protagonists that seek
another Clinton White House have not learned well from the lessons
of the first.
The Los Angeles Times reported
that a seeming nobody like Hsu was able to glom onto the highest
status in the Clinton organization:
When Bill Clinton received
an award at a gala dinner honoring the late Robert F. Kennedy
last year, the former president expressed his thanks before an
audience that included a Nobel Prize winner and a glittering
array of show business celebrities and Wall Street titans. Yet
the second sentence of his remarks expressed special gratitude
to a man almost no one there had heard of: "our friend Norman
Hsu.
The former president still
enjoys lifetime protection from the U.S. Secret Service, an agency
that conducts a background security check on anyone that gets
physically close to its charges. If the Clinton campaign did
not know about Hsu's criminal debt with society, it is highly
unlikely that the Secret Service--part of the US Department of
Homeland Security, and answerable to the executive branch--was
also ignorant. The Bush-Cheney administration's Secret Service
had no legal obligation to inform the Clinton campaign that a
warrant for the top fundraiser's arrest was outstanding from
the state of California because it did not present a physical
security threat to the Clintons. The threat was, instead, political,
and so the ace was held up-sleeve.
Was the administration saving
that red-hot news story for later, allowing Hsu to rack up even
more campaign dollars for the Clinton campaign, to achieve his
stated ambition of becoming Clinton's first one-million dollar
bundler, to receive more praise from the candidate, pose for
more photos at the right hand of power, only to then send the
scandal swooping down upon the presumptive Democratic nominee
like a smart bomb in, say, October '08? A strong indication of
that likelihood came just weeks after The Wall Street Journal,
in late August, opened season on journalistic scrutiny of Hsu,
when federal prosecutors in New York "unsealed" a criminal
complaint against Hsu that they have been quietly building all
along.
The clandestine nature of the
pending prosecution might well represent an unfair, even Nixonian,
misuse of federal power ("a vast right-wing conspiracy,"
in Clintonspeak) to protect Republican continuance in the White
House, but it was made possible by the irresponsibility and negligence
that has always been, and continues to be, the dominant tendency
of Clinton organization fundraising.
The Hsu case shattered the
nostalgic amnesia regarding the Clinton years, harkening back
to the day in March, 1996, when then 22-year-old Yah Lin "Charlie"
Trie, of Little Rock, Arkansas, handed an envelope with $460,000
in bundled contributions, each at or under the $1,000 legal limit
of the time, to President Bill Clinton's legal defense fund.
The contributions were obviously bogus: they included money orders,
sequentially numbered, in different names but in the same handwriting.
And the Clinton organization evidently knew something was amiss:
$70,000 worth of the contents of the brown envelope was returned,
but another $378,300 was deposited. "Don't report names
if $ are returned," wrote Clinton campaign operative Howard
Ickes in an internal memo that later surfaced to public light.
Then as now, when the scandal erupted, the campaign returned
all of those donations. (Ickes, today, remains a high level Clinton
'08 fundraiser, under another architect of many of the 1990s
Clinton fundraising blunders; Clinton finance chairman Terry
McAuliffe.)
As the Washington Post recently
noted, "The eerie echoes of the last Clinton campaign finance
scandal are what make the Hsu case so problematic for the current
Democratic presidential frontrunner," adding that the current
scandal sticks harder to Clinton than it would to others because
no other candidate for president "has that history to overcome."
The Clinton organization had
been warned that Hsu could become a problem for them (one campaign
staffer replied to such a red flag via email, typing part of
her message in all caps, insisting that Hsu was "COMPLETELY
legit"). It was also advised to better scrutinize its donors.
According to the same LA Times report, former Clinton fundraiser
David Rosen had pushed for criminal background checks by campaigns.
"Mistakes happen," he said, "when people are overwhelmed,
under-resourced and undertrained."
Mistakes happen, yes, but a
policy of looking the other way raises more dough.
Why in the world would Bill
Clinton shower such public attention and praise upon an unknown
quantity like Norman Hsu at that speech quoted above? Beyond
Hsu's utility to the Clinton campaign, he was bankrolling some
of the former president's pet projects as well. The Chronicle
of Philanthropy reports that Hsu donated $75,000 to the Clinton
School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas (the school
will now be returning the money). That caused the Hsu scandal
to hit The Chronicle of Higher Education, too. And while some
supporters of Senator Clinton's presidential bid insist that
the Clinton organization's fundraising missteps should not be
spoken of on the left, lest we repeat GOP talking points, it
is relevant to note that neither of those esteemed academic journals
are right-wing newsletters
The Hsu scandal also enters
into public discussion of an important priority of much of the
left: campaign finance reform. The message of hush up, buck up
and shut up from Clinton partisans essentially asks us to put
that goal aside for the rest of the '08 campaign and, indeed,
for the next eight years.
Once again, a politician confronts
us with the mantra of "do as I say, not as I do," because
although it doesn't want us talking about it, the Clinton campaign
issues "talking points" to its own mouthpieces to try
to spin the story away.
The Internal
Campaign Memo
Newsweek investigative reporters
Michael Isikoff, Mark Hosenball and Evan Thomas published parts
of an internal campaign memo with "talking points"
that had been sent to Clinton "surrogates" (one of
whom leaked the document to the reporters; there is apparently
dissent within the machine, too): "The Clinton supporters
were instructed to say they hadn't participated in the vetting.
If pressed, they were told to take a none-too-subtle swipe at
Clinton's chief rival. 'Long before Hillary's presidential campaign
took money from Mr. Hsu, Mr. Obama's senate campaign had as well
as a bunch of others,' read the memo given to Newsweekb by a
Clinton supporter who didn't want to be identified revealing
internal campaign communications."
Got it? Don't mention the $850,000
that Hsu bundled for Clinton in the first half of 2007, but by
all means whack Senator Barack Obama's receipt of a relatively
meager $7,000 back in 2005. Clinton communications director Howard
Wolfson and spokesman Phil Singer, the magazine reported, were
the ventriloquists behind the "talking points."
Interestingly, Obama's campaign
gave that seven grand to charity (which was the Clinton campaign's
first response regarding $23,000 that Hsu personally gave to
its organizations). But when the story grew so large that the
Clinton shop decided to cast off the ballast of almost a million
dollars, those funds would not go to the needy, but, rather,
directly back to 260 donors that Hsu had collected from.
The hypocrisy rises to the
level of poetry in that Clinton, in a sense, might really believe
that "Obama made me do it." Obama had bested Clinton
in fundraising for the first half of 2007 ($58 million to $53
million) and, with more than a quarter million donors averaging
$224 apiece, Obama may well widen the gap in the third quarter
Federal Elections Commission (FEC) reports due October 15. Another
loss in the Q3 "money primary" to Obama, and the hissing
sound this time will be the air beginning to seep from the Clinton
monster truck tires.
That fiscal reality provides
important context to the motives behind Clinton's returning the
Hsu bundled donations to sender rather than continuing to give
the money to charity. The fix is cosmetic and deceptive. Indeed,
Clinton admitted to the Associated Press that she'd welcome most
of that $850,000 to be donated right back to her: "I believe
that the vast majority of those 200-plus donors are perfectly
capable of making up their own minds about what they will or
won't do going forward."
In the extremely important
money primary, the maneuver opens the possibility of a kind of
laundering of money that was already reported by Clinton in previous
quarters to be counted again, anew, in the upcoming third quarter,
artificially raising her third quarter take. But while that almost
million dollars, if re-deposited, may or may not make the difference
in the fundraising war, the Clinton campaign (that some fawning
pundits have characterized as "flawless" and "mistake
free") has just inadvertently given the Hsu story another
set of legs. It's as if the Clinton organization is now tossing
landmines ahead on the very path it must walk next.
And so beginning on October
15, news organizations will be putting a magnifying glass to
Clinton's Q3 FEC report to find out how much of that Hsu-bundled
money is being re-donated in a manner that artificially boosts
the campaign's claims to fundraising superiority. That will bring
another round of news about the scandal that will not die.
"He
Never Said No"
The New York Times reported
that Hsu "was desperate for invitations to glitzy Democratic
party galas in California and private political dinners in New
York." Hsu seemed "almost astonished to be posting
for pictures with former President Bill Clinton at Chelsea Piers
and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton at a rally in San Francisco."
Referring to Hsu as "a
compulsive name dropper" that would snag elusive reservations
at chic Manhattan restaurants for Clinton campaign staffers,
the portrait emerges of a loose cannon on the deck of the USS
Clinton that may yet take high-level campaign staffers down with
him. "He spent money, he never said no," Clinton fundraiser
John A. Catsimatidis told the Times.
That sentence--"he spent
money, he never said no"--provides a worrisome hint of the
probable spin-off scandals to come. Hsu had already donated the
maximum allowed by law to Clinton's US Senate campaign and thus
could not legally spend any more of his own money that year.
Any Clinton staffer that was party to such lawbreaking may soon
go down with him, as the judicial and media scrutiny heightens.
In Hsu's case, he seemed to
be using the status he gained at the right hand of the Clintons
to work his game on others. The Times reported that one Hsu investor
was referred to him as "this big businessman who was a big
friend of Hillary Clinton," and that Hsu encouraged investors
to send campaign donations as "good for business."
The Times quotes a prominent Clinton donor as saying that Hsu
"went from a nobody to a player. And if Hillary was elected
he would go from a player to a well-connected star in Democratic
business circles."
Norman Hsu turns out not to
be the hapless innocent that looks up at us with puppy eyes from
his mug shots. He is a slash-and-burn player that sought a position
on a team that encouraged him, and others like him, to pursue
a charred earth fundraising policy. Hsu found in the Clinton
campaign a perfect headquarters for unethical money handling,
where he could, and did, blend in perfectly without seeming out
of place.
Hsu's Fundraising
Methods
Some right-wing bloggers have
seized upon Hsu's Chinese ethnicity to suggest a nefarious plot
by foreign interests or governments to buy influence in a possible
Clinton administration (a line that a Congressional investigation
of the 1996 Clinton fundraising scandal pursued after the Trie
donations came to light). But no evidence whatsoever has so far
pointed to that. Others have speculated that Hsu may have been
under the impression (illusory or not) that if he topped the
Clinton fundraising team in "sales," he might parlay
that into a presidential pardon for his past sins. Yet the early
evidence has an even more tangled web unraveling in full public
view.
The pattern that instead emerges
suggests that Hsu basked in the light of the Clintons and other
politicians to gain the confidence of others he met in the campaign's
orbit in order to run multiple investment con schemes with their
money.
The Washington Post reports
that Hsu raised the eye-popping sum of $850,000 "in just
eight months" with "donors that included wealthy investors
in his apparel ventures, hotel shopkeepers, a 96-year-old in
a Florida retirement home and an auto-body worker who mistakenly
thought he would get a tax break for his political generosity."
The Clinton campaign hasn't
disclosed the identities of the 260 donors it says were bundled
by Hsu (and that, too, reflects sloppy politics: it merely postpones
the escalation of the story's news value to when the October
15 FEC report, which requires candidates to itemize returned
donations, can be perused by news organizations). But the Post
investigative team was able to identify "nearly 100"
of those bundled by Hsu, noting that some "had trouble explaining
why they gave the funds to Clinton or could not recall the circumstances
in which they met Hsu."
Jack Cassidy, a California businessman, told the Post that he
informed the Clinton campaign and the FBI that Hsu might be part
of an "illegal Ponzi scheme" and that Hsu was using
the Clinton campaign to run his game, "to gain the confidence
of the people he was meeting" through it: "If you are
opening a hamburger stand, you want to put a set of golden arches
outside Hsu was using Hillary Clinton as his golden arches."
One investor that complained
of being defrauded by Hsu told the newspaper: "Norman would
make friends with one guy, and then move around to meet all this
guy's friends, and soon they would all be his investors."
Some of Hsu's New York investors
fear that he cheated them out of $40 million, according to another
NY Times report. And the Los Angeles Times informs us that a
$23 million lawsuit has been filed against Hsu in California
for a similar bilking scheme. The complaint states that the plaintiff
trusted Hsu with his money because, "prominent persons,
including Sen. Hillary Clinton, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson,
California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, national Democratic political
advisor James Carville, film director Steven Spielberg, actor
[Tobey] Maguire, grocery store magnate/billionaire Ron Burkle
and others introduced and/or endorsed Hsu as a friend, colleague
and trusted associate."
Simultaneously, Hsu would pressure
his investors to donate to Clinton and other candidates, according
to that same lawsuit. "He always used that phrase - 'favor'
- in communications with the contribution demand," the plaintiff's
attorney told Associated Press.
Hsu was very talented at the
con, and his prominence as a "Hillraiser" brought him
new investors. Once they had anted up, Hsu then got them to donate
to Clinton and others by implying that the return on their investments
would be at stake. The more money he raised for Clinton, the
more access and attention was fawned upon him. And it was all
going swimmingly until late August, when the Wall Street Journal
first reported that Hsu had bundled tens of thousands of dollars
in Clinton donations from a California family headed by a postal
worker that earned just $49,000 a year. That report sent other
major news organizations digging, which led to evidence that
he had paid money to some of his bundled Clinton donors (illegal
under federal elections law) and, finally, the startling revelation
that Clinton's leading bundler was a fugitive from justice who
had pled "no contest" in 1992 to defrauding investors.
When the jig was up in early
September, Hsu turned himself into authorities in California,
paid $2 million bail, but then skipped the next hearing. He was
found in an Amtrak sleeping car crossing Colorado, in a pharmaceutical
haze and an apparent suicide attempt. Bail, after first being
raised to $5 million, was then revoked, and he awaits his many
upcoming days in court from jail.
Was the Clinton campaign so
desperate to catch up with Obama's fundraising success that it
ignored clear early warning signs about the bundler in their
midst? It wouldn't be the only example of how the pressures of
raising tens of millions of dollars have compromised the Senator:
in stark contrast to rivals Obama and John Edwards, who decline
DC lobbyist or Political Action Committee (PAC) donations, Clinton
is frenetically chasing such influence money. The Edwards campaign
recently hit Clinton hard over a September fundraising event
in which the campaign put lobbyists for companies seeking Homeland
Security contracts together with key Congressional committee
chairs; a thousand dollars or more to Clinton was the price tag
of achieving such coveted access.
These compromises underscore
what advocates of campaign finance and ethics reform have long
asserted: That as long as electoral campaigning is dependent
on wealthy donors, the system will continue to favor their policy
choices over those that benefit the common good.
In the end, though, the fast
and loose approach by the Clinton organization in hunting for
those big checks comes down to one word: Negligence. And evidence
mounts that the practice of looking the other way was not merely
an oversight by low-level staffers. The reckless standard operating
procedure came from the highest levels of the Clinton campaign.
The Negligence
Is Top-Down
Signs are beginning to emerge
that high level Clinton campaign staff including campaign
manager Patti Solis Doyle--knew there were problems with Hsu
before the story blew up on them, but did not take action. The
LA Times reported that, from Hsu, "Solis Doyle got a coveted,
and pricey, designer handbag -- a gift that made her so uncomfortable
she returned it."
If a designer handbag made
Solis Doyle--a top aid to Clinton since the office of the First
Lady that has often been called "Hillary's alter-ego"--uncomfortable
enough to return it, why did she not likewise question the $850,000
that Hsu was bundling into the campaign chest? The difference
in value to a cash-thirsty campaign answers the query: a handbag
does not a campaign make, but $850,000 pays for the entire media
budget in various early primary states. Only after the Clinton
shop learned that the FBI was on the trail of Hsu did it say
it would divest from the money he raised. Solis Doyle's return
of the handbag suggests that she knew something was wrong, but
looked away at the larger corruption.
Solis Doyle's problems may
now be larger than can fit in a handbag. The LA Times report
locates her as the recipient of Hsu's largesse in November 2006,
after Senator Clinton won reelection in New York, when Solis
Doyle plus "two junior staffers and a New York-based fundraiser"
were treated to a "post-victory trip to Las Vegas"
by Hsu, with rooms at the Mandalay Bay hotel: "While at
the Mandalay Bay, Hsu took at least some of his guests to a favorite
bar, Red Square. It features a huge statue of a decapitated Lenin
at the entrance, and the top of the bar is sheathed in ice to
maintain the chill of the caviar and exclusive vodkas Clinton
aides believed Hsu had gotten their rooms on a complimentary
basis because he was a frequent visitor to Mandalay Bay, the
aides said."
That two junior staffers fell
into that pit is not surprising, but Solis Doyle? If the Federal
Elections Commission interprets Hsu's generosity to the campaign
manager as an in-kind contribution from a donor that Solis Doyle
already knew had donated the maximum allowable by law in 2006,
the legal burden could also fall upon her. (That the 2006 election
had already taken place doesn't serve as an excuse; federal limits
on contributions apply specifically to the "calendar year.")
It's not just the corruption of such game playing that offends;
it is also the ineptitude. The campaign manager of the leading
Democratic candidate for US president ought to know better than
to have crossed that line. And if she's that foolhardy with her
own reputation and adherence to the letter and spirit of the
law, it's likely that the negligence pervades many other aspects
of how the Clinton campaign, and its fundraising operation, is
run.
Now that the investigative
sharks of the news media smell blood in the water, the Clinton
campaign will be subjected to a level of scrutiny it had gambled
would not occur. The possibility of new scandals, involving other
Clinton donors and fundraisers, is not hypothetical. In the wake
of the Hsu case, another Clinton donor has been indicted.
And the race is on to identify others with less than endearing
histories. These are hot scoops for any investigative reporter
because they stick to Clinton--the similar problems in the previous
Clinton administration, and Bill Clinton's clear involvement
with Norman Hsu, make them examples of a pattern, not just isolated
errors--much more convincingly than to others without that history.
Add to the troubles ahead for
those that need the Hsu story to quiet down is Hsu's hire of
flamboyant defense attorney James Brosnahan, who wants to withdraw
his client's 1992 "no contest" plea and try the case
in court and in the media. Brosnahan (who the San Francisco Chronicle
lists as number two on its "top ten lawyers" guide)
has hinted at a DC Madam strategy, with veiled threats to bring
down others if his client must also suffer. "Why didn't
they go get him?" Brosnahan asked reporters, according to
AP, then answering his own question. "He was contributing
to California politicians."
Trouble
in Paradise
The Clinton campaign's cultivated
image as expert and monolithic also shows signs of becoming unglued
in the wake of Hsu. The campaign's Iowa field director (who managed
the victorious caucuses there of John Kerry in '04 and Al Gore
in '00) mysteriously left the campaign shortly after the Hsu
scandal broke and the campaign wouldn't tell reporters whether
she had resigned or been fired. The leaking of the internal memo
above may also indicate some discontent.
NBC's Andrea Mitchell went
from gape-jawed praise of former president Bill Clinton's role
in Senator Clinton's campaign to a public expression of worry
in a matter of days as a result of the Hsu scandal. On September
5 Mitchell, on MSNBC, had lauded Bill Clinton as "a big
asset to his wife's campaign." But days later, Mitchell--even
as her husband, Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan
was releasing a book that praised Bill Clinton (praise that was
later cited by Senator Clinton during an Iowa stump speech) -
had this to say on the same channel: "Up until now, Bill
Clinton has been a complete plus among Democratic primary voters
for Hillary Clinton. But now, with the Norman Hsu money-raising
controversy, for the first time there's a real concern in the
Clinton camp that this is real baggage from the Clinton White
House years. There's a lot of stress, a lot of damage control,
a lot of finger pointing - and in fact, stress is so high that
there was a shouting match observed among Clinton staffers in
public last week."
The wheels are coming off the
Clinton bandwagon, but so far imperceptibly to all but those
paying very close attention. Most political reporters and pundits
don't notice the wobble yet. They accept the conventional wisdom
that the Clinton organization is marked by competence, that "Hillary,
Inc." is a well-oiled political corporation. Enron, too,
was once perceived as healthy. This is another case of nineties
corporate and political values that cannot withstand the new
levels of scrutiny made possible by the expansion of the Internet.
Information is not as easily filtered as it was then. Back in
1997, according to the US Census, only 18 percent of US homes
had Internet access, mainly via slow dial-up connections. By
June 2007 more than 200,000 million Americans (69 percent) are
online according to Nielsen/Net Ratings and it's that much harder
for politicians to spin or sweep inconvenient facts under the
campaign rug.
Clinton's fundraising problems
and ethical lapses harm all aspects of her campaign, especially
the matters that most concern voters. The Hsu scandal broke exactly
when the Bush administration rolled out General George Petraeus
to sell a continuation of the Iraq war to Congress and the American
public. It was an hour when many looked to Clinton and her rivals,
particularly those Democratic presidential candidates in the
US Senate, to exercise more effective leadership to end that
war. But the scandal paralyzed Clinton in the same way that 1990s
troubles paralyzed the first Clinton White House from effective
action on behalf of progressive agendas.
On September 12, Senator Clinton
was so hell-bent on evading media questions about the Hsu case
that some of her supporters manhandled a Newsday reporter to
keep him from doing his job. The reporter, Glenn Thrush, posted
the incident almost immediately to the newspaper's website, noting
that, "Typically, the Secret Service allows credentialed
journalists to question the senator as she heads to her car (she
often refuses to talk) and today there was much to query her
on: the Norman Hsu scandal, her tough talk to Gen. David Petraeus
and Barack Obama's new position on Iraq."
These are just the earliest
signs about how fundraising scandals drag on all aspects of a
campaign (or a presidency). Hsu's contribution truly is the gift
that keeps on taking. Clinton's Hsu problem (and the compounding
troubles that grow out of it) can't be fairly blamed on a vast
right-wing conspiracy nor on anyone other than those that, in
their unquenchable thirst for campaign dollars, played fast and
loose with the fundraising game, encouraged vertiginous competition
among million-dollar bundlers and allowed an unvetted glommer
like Norman Hsu into their inner circle based only on his ability
to bring in the checks.
It may be too late for the
Clinton campaign to recover and repair its flawed machine (and,
regardless, it has telegraphed that it doesn't recognize its
problem or the need to change course). But it is not too late
for the other Democratic presidential candidates, the party's
candidates for Senate, House, state and local offices, the press
corps and rank-and-file citizens to learn those lessons and adjust
accordingly.
To recklessly gamble that the
scrutiny upon how campaigns are funded won't continue to intensify
will be at the peril of what could be an historic landslide in
November of '08, one that could rewrite the electoral map for
decades to come. To risk all that in order to nostalgically fight
the past political wars all over again (or to think they can
be fought effectively without a break from nineties values) would
be as self-destructive for the country as it would be for the
Democratic Party. The alarm clock screams and will continue to
ring. The wake-up call has arrived.
Al Giordano, the founder of Narco
News, has lived in and reported from Latin America for
the past decade. His opinions expressed in this column do not
reflect those of Narco News nor of The Fund for Authentic Journalism,
which supports his work. Al encourages commentary, critique,
additional analysis and news tips for his continued coverage
of the US presidential campaign to be sent to his email address:
narconews@gmail.com.
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