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Comment by whack | Hacker News Reader

One man's propoganda is another man's counter-propoganda. If the bill aimed to empower independent sources, such as BBC/Reuters etc, I'd be all for it. But a group that's beholden solely to the US federal government? I wouldn't expect anything less than a biased mouthpiece for the President's interests.

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Where does propaganda from governments fall? Like Iraq having weapons of mass destruction... We are basically talking one way accountability.

One man's independent media is another woman's income stream.

Clinton Foundation donors 2015

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/05/clinton-foundati...

$1,000,000-$5,000,000

Carlos Slim - Chairman & CEO of Telmex, largest New York Times shareholder

James Murdoch - Chief Operating Officer of 21st Century Fox

Newsmax Media - Florida-based conservative media network

Thomson Reuters - Owner of the Reuters news service

$500,000-$1,000,000

Google

News Corporation Foundation - Philanthropic arm of former Fox News parent company

Here's the thing I don't get about that, maybe you can help me out. How did the Clintons profit from the Clinton Foundation? I'm looking on Politifact, which says:

"The Clintons don’t take a salary from this work, and they don’t receive any other direct monetary benefit."

"The Clinton Foundation is a public charity that, as we have reported, allocates about 80-90 percent of its expenditures to charitable programs, while the rest goes to fundraising and overhead."

So, I'm trying to work how this matches up with what basically became a mass meme, that the foundation was utterly corrupt. It certainly doesn't sound like a particularly valuable "income stream", as you call it. What am I missing? I can see it being an example of the Clintons being too close to the rich donor class, but then, Trump met Carlos Slim the other day (describing him as a great guy) so it's hardly as if there was only one candidate guilty of that.

(http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2016/sep/01/...)

I admit not knowing in depth, but supposedly (from a Wikileaks released email), Chelsea Clinton paid for her wedding out of foundation funds:

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/52046

Aren't these non-profit P&L/expense reports on file with the IRS and public record?

>Aren't these non-profit P&L/expense reports on file with the IRS and public record?

They don't have to disclose full (itemised) expenditures or income IIRC and even if they did someone needs to take a very deep look at it, the clinton foundation issues 1000's of invoices on a monthly basis if not more it's not like they would mark "-150,000$ - Chelsea's wedding" in the books.

These kinds of things are not easy to see or understand from untrained eyes like ours but if you dig deeper, you will find thorny issues like these:

https://www.google.com/amp/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/bill-cli...

https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/us/...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/foreign-governments-...

Totally speculating out of thin air ... but what if charity is the currency used by the powerful? X donates to Y's foundation in return for favours. Y uses those donations for Z's social work in return for favours, and so on it goes.

Maybe it acts as a bank for special interests, but with different reporting/legal obligations? I mean, that's just one of many intents I could speculate that large foundations could potentially realize. ('Speculate' being a key word.)

No idea about the US but the standard way thr rich and powerful do this in India is to setup the "charitable" foundation and then setup companies (who's share holding structure can be made complex to prevent traceback) to bid to provide goods and services to the "charitable" foundation at inflated prices and take a cut out of that while sub contracting the actual work. If you think about it a bit, the possibilities to get at that 80-90% used for "charitable purposes" are really endless.

As an example, in South India, many rich cloth mill owners converted their land into schools and colleges when they realized they would not be competitive in the global market. In India, schools and colleges are not allowed to be profit making institutions. Guess who owns all the service companies that provide services to these institutions?

Can we stop treating Politifact as being unbiased just because it contains the string "Fact" in its name? I think the site is owned by a Democrat newspaper in Florida?

As someone else mentioned, in 2010 Chelsea had a wedding that was the 7th most expensive wedding of all time [1], paid for (illegally) by the CF. [2]

Not bad for people who claimed to be "dead broke" 10 years earlier. [3]

Of course, it's not usually donation to pocket. It was donation, to $500k speech from Putin affiliated bank, to State Department deal for 20% of the US uranium [4]

Then again, there's the occasional $1m birthday gift from Qatar that helps pay the bills [5]

“[Qatar] would like to see WJC ‘for five minutes’ in NYC, to present $1 million check that Qatar promised for WJC’s birthday in 2011,” an employee at The Clinton Foundation said to numerous aides, including Doug Brand. “Qatar would welcome our suggestions for investments in Haiti — particularly on education and health. They have allocated most of their $20 million but are happy to consider projects we suggest. I’m collecting input from CF Haiti team.”

[1] http://www.therichest.com/luxury/most-expensive/10-most-shoc...

[2] http://nypost.com/2016/11/06/chelsea-clinton-used-foundation...

[3] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/jun/...

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-...

[5] http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/13/wikileaks-em...

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