Hillary’s Scarlet M – Does her new campaign finance plan include the Clinton Foundation?
http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillarys-scarlet-m-1441756438
So Hillary Clinton has a new plan to rid politics of big money and secrecy. Question: Do the words Clinton Foundation come up anywhere in her proposal?
Mrs. Clinton announced Tuesday that as President she would have the government provide matching funds for campaign donations below a certain dollar amount, lower the cap on the amount individuals can contribute to candidates, and force independent groups to disclose their donors. She would also try to rewrite the First Amendment to allow more regulation of political speech.
The point of this exercise is to appeal to her party’s campaign-finance obsessives and blunt the appeal of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who has made money in politics a cornerstone of his presidential campaign. It’s also intended to change the subject from stories about the $1 billion or so that she and Bill Clinton have raised from various big-money donors for political and other purposes over the past two decades.
Which brings us to the Clinton Foundation. You’d think that if Mrs. Clinton really wanted to purge that Scarlet M from her candidacy she would include some rules to limit contributions from, say, Qatar to a family foundation while someone is Secretary of State—especially if the Secretary is a potential presidential candidate in the future. Or how about a provision that bars such foundations from serving as de facto political operations by raising money to employ unofficial advisers like Sidney Blumenthal and future campaign aides like Huma Abedin?
If Mrs. Clinton wants anyone to believe a word she says about campaign finance, she’d better deal with her own original sins.
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