I can’t help but delight in all the drama surrounding Hillary Clinton these days. Those of us on the ‘right’ seem totally to the idea that she and her husband have committed serious offenses against the nation. And she probably has. At least by all the accounts that continually get press. At the very least there’s Uranium One, Benghazi, the email server, the nebulous Clinton Foundation, and of course ‘pay-for-play’ scandals from her time as Secretary of State. Plus who knows what else may surface in the weeks or months to come. Now, if you’re like me, you are jonesing for her to be formally accused of some high crime, and taken away in shackles. In fact the image is really quite appealing. But….as NFL referees like to say “upon further review” Hillary is very different than what she first appears.
It is my contention that Hillary is the quintessential CAPITALIST. That’s right. Let’s take a look.
broke Hillary
If you recall January 20, 2001 Hillary and Bill were being evicted from their home because they were bankrupt. Oh, wait, not exactly true, but close. Hillary and Bill were leaving the White House at the end of two Bill Clinton terms as President. But the bankrupt part is true according to Hillary. They were being sued (for stealing items from the White House??) and made a public appeal for donations to their defense fund because they were ‘dead broke’ (her words). So that’s the baseline – January 2001 – dead broke. Zero, nada, outta money. Send us your $10 bills to help us pay for attorneys. Fast forward to today January 2018, seventeen years later and now worth more than $250,000,000. Pretty astounding I’d say. That means either 25 Million people sent them $10 each or they found other ways to amass a fortune. She averaged $15 Million per year not counting any spending cash. Oh, and by the way, neither of them had actual ‘jobs’ during the intervening years. Now let’s go back and look at the list of some of Hillary’s more profitable accomplishments in a different light. A light that any right-wing capitalist would be proud to shine.
So, Uranium One – let’s put giant wadges of cash into the Clinton Foundation in exchange for the ‘yes’ vote on that deal. Perfect. Skirting the law a little, but very profitable. And the Foundation itself? Operated as profitably as any corporate mogul could aspire to. It seems that there were almost no real expenses to go against the millions of dollars in annual donations. How perfect is that? Unbelievably large revenues and equally unbelievably small expenses. National Security won’t be an issue for her – because she’s planning to have so much money that she and Bill will always manage to be safe. Then let’s use a Senate seat (what capitalist wouldn’t want one of those?) to catapult into the Secretary of State position.
I can just hear her waking up one day saying “Heck, while I’m here, I can use my mini bully-pulpit to strong-arm foreign nationals into paying Bill millions for speaking engagements and to get even more donations to the Foundation.” No wonder that her response to Benghazi was “what difference does it make”? She was being honest for once. It really didn’t matter to her. There wasn’t any money to be made there. A little post-script here. Has anyone made even a single dollar of donations to the Clinton Foundation since she lost the election?
All told, Hillary has done an amazing job generating capital for herself and Bill. 250 Millions worth. She is a top tier capitalist. Unfortunately for the rest of us, her brand of capitalism is the robber-baron brand. The kind that gave capitalism a bad name. Everyone, including her country, be damned. She’s in it for herself. Textbook exemplar. Now that she’s out of government we’ll need to see how she continues to make money. There’s really only one last question that we all need to answer: “What Happened”?
What the Heck?
