Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Obama Change You Can Deceive With?

It's been the oddest occurence of all of the odd occurences.

Barack Obama rails against Hillary Clinton's failure to press her husband Bill Clinton to release all of the details of the Clinton Library and Foundation donations during the campaign, but after all is not disclosed, Obama names Hillary as his Secretary of State?

Maybe there is more to this saga than at first glance? Are the Clintons about to be Obama-tized?

Hillary is confirmed. Caroline Kennedy is formally named to her Senate seat. Shortly afterwards, more and more comes out about the library donations... more comes out about donations to Hillary's Senate and Presidential campaigns...

There's a call for Hillary to resign amid all the controversy, so as not to embarrass Obama and stymie the Obama legacy...

She'll be out, and so will Bill. Out of the 'insider' loop - they thought they could beat the system... but not really...

Marci Kaptor
The latest example of this sickness afflicting American politics is reflected in our political system being bought out from under us through the system of Presidential libraries whose principals seek to find investors from other countries to help to promote their legacy in perpetuity. Don't believe the logic? Just then follow the money. With President Bush desperately trying to salvage his legacy, action is heating up on funding his Presidential library. While donors to George W. Bush's Presidential library represent a Who's Who in Republican politics, some of these donors have significant business with the White House. According to a recent Harpers magazine article, a wealthy Texas oil man, Ray Hunt, reportedly gave $35 million, $35 million to the Bush Presidential Library.

This same businessman was a big campaign contributor to the Bush-Cheney campaign and, coincidentally, has a stake in a nearly billion-dollar proposal to pipe out Peruvian natural gas. All of our friends who participated in the recent debate on Peru free trade ought to think about this one. In addition, Mr. Hunt is closely involved with a "legally questionable" exploration deal with the Iraqi Kurds. Interesting set of friends in this White House.

Estimates now indicate the George W. Bush Presidential Library will cost up to half a billion dollars. A half a billion dollars. Why should a sitting United States President be involved with raising nearly unlimited amounts of money from those seeking influence?

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/record.xpd?id=110-h20071218-67


House panel opens new hearings into Clinton pardons
March 1, 2001
Web posted at: 12:32 p.m. EST (1732 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A House panel has opened a new round of hearings this afternoon into former President Bill Clinton's controversial late-term pardons, a day after reaching an agreement with Clinton's lawyer on viewing a list of donors to Clinton's library foundation.

The House Government Reform Committee has begun the new round of hearings, with three former top White House aides scheduled to appear before Chairman Dan Burton's panel to testify about the final days of decision-making that led to Clinton's last-minute pardons.

Former White House Counsel Beth Nolan, Chief of Staff John Podesta and adviser Bruce Lindsey will likely tell the committee about the deliberations over the controversial pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich, which has sparked two congressional and one federal criminal probe.

Clinton, hoping to put the pardons scandal to rest, has waived any executive privilege claims and given his aides approval to testify freely when they appear before the panel.

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/02/28/clinton.library/



ABOUT THOSE CLINTON LIBRARY DONORS Posted: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 11:09 AM by Mark Murray Filed Under: 2008 Clinton, 2008 Obama, Obama WH Transition
From NBC's Mark Murray
Politico's Ben Smith reports that the current focus of the Obama-Clinton negotiations over Bill Clinton's foundation and presidential library is looking forward --not necessarily vetting the past.

Still, it's worth remembering that during the primary season, Obama called for the disclosure of presidential library donors. Consider this exchange from the MSNBC debate at Dartmouth in September 2007:

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/11/18/1679059.aspx


so the release of material back in 2001 didn't raise any controversy??? Most of it remained a secret>>>


Clinton Library Donor List Revealed
DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer
AP Online
03-01-2001

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congressional investigators hunting for evidence of a pardons-for-dollars scheme at the Clinton White House got their first look on Wednesday at a list of 150 top donors to his presidential library project.

They looked at the list for about 45 minutes, but lawyers for the House Government Reform Committee would not disclose information about the contributors, or say how many of the names would prompt further investigation. All 150 people and organizations on the list contributed more than $5,000...

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-42423533.html


Related Madoff donations abounding... yet to impact public sentiment...

http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/search.php?name=Madoff&state=NY&zip=&employ=&cand=&c2008=Y&c2006=Y&c2004=Y&old=Y&sort=N&capcode=4p6wq&submit=Submit


http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/search.php?cid=N00009638&name=Madoff&employ=%28any+employer%29&state=NY&zip=%28any+zip%29&submit=OK&amt=a&sort=A

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