Election season creates many opportunities for me to talk with strangers. The latest about The Clinton Foundation has come up a lot over this past week and it has me talking outside my comfort zone. The media’s attempt to demonize the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) isn’t working a bit from my view at the ground level. A lot of right wingers have come to me to ask about CGI thinking to score points, but once the Clinton Global Initiative is explained to them and once the nay sayers see the numbers of lives changed for the better; even those who don’t like HRC grudgingly admit it’s a good charity.
I work in healthcare compliance and many of the people I work with are conservatives who end up voting for Democrats simply because Dems do a better job on healthcare from their point of view. Political polarization irritates me to no end, but it has trained me to defend my political leanings on the job in a more subtle manner (and I can meet up to 60 new people on any given work day). Usually this means I have to concede the mistakes made by progressives, but when it comes to the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI); I can’t do that. CGI is NOT a mistake. The media is failing us in an irresponsible way and it’s disgusting me.
Finding a diplomatic way to defend CGI has been difficult for me. It’s exasperating because most of the concern trolls have never even run a small church. They are clueless of what they are saying about CGI. So, I’m going to vent a little here.
I know a lot of conservatives who are really torn about the Clinton charities.They want to support their party, but since they are health care executives; they know the death and suffering that will occur if the people on the receiving end of the Clinton charities suddenly lose that support. I know a lot of devout religious people who know how difficult it is to run a charity, have trouble with the criticism of CGI. (They know that the success of a charity is highly dependent upon networking.) A lot of conservatives I know don’t like HRC, but they are honest enough to give her grudging credit for her accomplishments and most of the conservatives I know think of CGI as an accomplishment. More than a few conservatives I know are planning on voting for HRC. More than a few think the criticism of CGI is not only stupid, but dangerous for the people CGI serves.
That said, I’m also hearing people parrot:
“Just Close it Down”
I can’t think of a more irresponsible statement than that and I’m uncomfortable with telling people I respect that they are promoting an irresponsible action. I’m doing it anyway.
The Clinton Global Initiative vaccine work alone saves about 50,000 lives per year. “Just close it down?” Ok, Stephanie Ruhle, help me out here and write the script. How do you flip the lights off a multi-million dollar foundation over night? Are we supposed to say, “Sorry Mom, Dad, your kid can’t get a Polio, MMR or DTap or Hib vaccine, you’ll just have to risk it.”….And, hope to God no one dies? Stephanie, do you even know what you are saying when you parrot what your producers stick on your teleprompter?
Equivocating by saying, “Sure the Clinton Foundation does a ton of good work, but…..”
or
“The Clintons could hand the charity off to someone else to run it.” Oh, right, like anyone would let their name be on a charity without any oversight (sarcasm here was a bonus).
or
“The Clintons could change the name of CGI in a day.”
or
“If the work is that important to them, they would let it go.” Would you let your wildly successful namesake charity go just like that? No? I thought not.
NO! Tamron Hall and Andrea Mitchell! You don’t get to discount the work the Clinton Foundation does with bland, simplistic statements like “Sure the Clinton Foundation does a ton of good work, but…..” . There are real people who get to live because of the Clinton Foundation. This foundation reaches out to communities everywhere in the world. Sure, a lot of focus is on Africa, but it also has programs in Asia, South America and here in the U.S. Plus, if CGI was handed off to someone else to run and something unethical or disastrous occurred; the Clintons would bear the full brunt of the blame. Leaving Chelsea on the Board and stepping back and relieving Bill from fund raising for the foundation is their best plan. What’s the media response? They have “questions that need answering”. As the media is revoltingly proving again, somehow “questions” are damning when it comes to HRC.
More than 9 million people worldwide get access to lower cost HIV drugs. Good grief! Those HIV drugs not only prevent death, but the drugs can also reduce the HIV antibodies down to undetectable levels which reduces the spread of HIV. The reduction of deaths from HIV attributable to the Clinton Global Initiative is incalculable and these dweebs are still parroting “Just Shut it Down”.
“Just shut it down”? Just think of the number of farmers in impoverished regions getting help growing local food. The work on climate change is benefiting a population that has no idea they are getting help as they sip their latte’s on the porch of their $5 million domicile overlooking the sea shore.
I find it rich that Andrea Mitchell, married to Alan Greenspan (former Chairman of the FED!) actually has ANYTHING to say about the “conflict of interest”. If anything, she should be congratulating HRC on successfully navigating the “Ethical Wall”. No one and I repeat, NO ONE has found an example of quid pro quo or illegal behavior between HRC and CGI. The media focuses on a charity that doesn’t pay the Clinton’s a salary, but largely ignores the real conflict of interest of Trump’s many business dealings and debt obligations. What are Trump’s plans to avoid conflict of interest should he win? We got no plans. CGI announced their plans. It’s another double standard. Trump gets a pass for not having a plan while HRC gets a load of grief for having one.
I find the hypocrisy OVERWHELMING! (Yes, I’m raising my voice.) I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard a right wing mouth piece proclaim the very work The Clinton Global Initiative is doing is work that should be done by charity, not governments. Here we have a CHARITY supplying the goods working with governments (mostly in a diplomatic fashion to ensure the goods don’t get stolen or re-appropriated to the wealthy) to meet the needs of real people and the concern trolls con vacuous media talking heads into parroting this non-story. THINK! People! Joe Scarborough can’t find anything substantive to say on why the charity should be shut down, so he goes for the ad hominem attack and calls the defenders “pathetic”. Joe’s trying to support his bankrupt GOP brand here. The Clinton Foundation exemplifies Joe’s own words by providing tangible benefits through charity, not government, but because it has the Clinton name on it; it can’t be good? Horse Pucky!
You know that stupid fictional list over at WND that blames Hillary Clinton for the deaths of people she might never have met? “Just close it down” will add thousands of lives to that list and I can just see that clown adding those thousands to the list while calling for the closure of CGI out of the other side of his mouth. The duplicitous nature of the criticism of CGI is underreported….not seriously reported at all. (Oops, Johnathan Capehart and Chris Matthews both mentioned the likely harm of closing CGI in passing. Then, Chris finished with it last night.) I flipped john Heilemann off earlier last night over his lackadaisical concern trolling BS even though Alex Wagner was cohosting with him.
What about the argument that HRC knew she was going to run for president, so she should have better planned for divestiture of the CGI. What a bunch of twaddle. Running for president and winning the election are two different things as HRC well knows. She did plan and their plans go above and beyond what the law dictates, but that isn’t good enough. It is good enough. It’s only a problem for people who can’t find anything substantively wrong with HRC, so they’ve made this one up. I’ll say it again, if you didn’t have a problem with Elizabeth Dole running the Red Cross while her husband was Senate Majority Leader and if you didn’t have a problem with George W. Bush supporting his father’s Points of Light Foundation; then The Clinton Global Initiative shouldn’t be a problem for you. If it is, you’re a hypocrite.
“Just close it down” isn’t going to happen. The Gates Foundation isn’t going to be able to step up and take it. Warren Buffet has plenty of his own work to do, and he doesn’t need more. Telling a family to walk away from their namesake charity is something we’d only ask a Clinton to do.
Deal with it.