Mother Jones reports:
Clinton’s tax filings show that she and Bill Clinton donated just over $1 million to charity last year, the bulk of which went to the Clinton Foundation. Another $42,000 was donated to the Desert Classic Charities, a nonprofit that organizes the Carebuilder Challenge charity golf tournament with the Clinton Foundation. In total, the Clinton’s gave nearly 10 percent of their income to charity.
That’s certainly one way of putting it. Another would be: “Of the $1,042,000 that the Clintons gave to charity last year, 96 percent of it went to their own foundation, and four percent of it went to fund a golf tournament.”
As Tyler Durden notes over at Zerohedge, this is pretty darned incestuous. “Taking a deduction for contributing to the employer of your daughter and expense payer of your husband,” Durden notes, “is awesome.”
Indeed it is. And it hardly helps to dispel the suspicion that the Clintons have set up an all-purpose money-and-influence roundabout, which they use to advance their private interests under the guise of “public service.” Frankly, I’m not sure which part is more suspicious. Is it that the Clintons unashamedly use their high-ranking government roles in order to funnel outside contributions into their family-controlled slush fund? Or is it that they use that slush fund as vehicle with which to avoid taxes on the lucrative speaking fees that — yes, you’ve guessed it — are the product of influence obtained by the possession of high-ranking government roles?
On the stump, Hillary Clinton likes to rail against Citizens United, usually on the grounds that overly cozy relationships yield the appearance of impropriety, and that this has a cancerous effect on the body politic. What one wonders, would Candidate Clinton say about her own foundation if it had been set up in any name other than her own?