Clinton$ tax return

[cannon_fodder]

Sorry RM, couldn't pass this up -

No wonder she didn't want them released.  Earning  $109,000,000 in income from 2001- 2006 (article says 8 years.  But the figure is from leaving office to 2006) she can't exactly claim to be one of the people now.  From a lowly Walmart executive to one of if not THE richest people in the United State's government.  If elected she would likely be in the top 5 for richest presidents ever... not bad for 6 years of work.

Assuming income was constant for 2007 that puts their net worth near $127,000,000.00.  Or the top 1 hundredth of 1% of wealth in the nation.  

What will be trouble:

1) Paid $33mil in taxes.  Her effective rate is 30%.  Their rate is high for 'rich' people because much counted as income, however, earnings from that $100mil will be capitals gains.   Anyway, that's a lower effective rate than I pay... doesn't she complain about regressive taxation?

2) The charitable contributions total $10mil.  They were made to the Clinton Charity and nearly all were made in 2006 AFTER she declared her candidacy.  Most of that money remains in the Clinton Trust.  Doesn't she say the rich need to help out those in need?

3) Much of the income for speaking comes from friends Bill made while president, people who head major corporations and are now financing Hillary's campaign (per the Washington post).  Certainly calls of buying favors will be levied or accusations of undue influence.

People accuse Cheney of being bought and paid for by oil money, his net worth is estimated at $55,000,000 for a lifetime of working in the oil business.  The Clinton's doubled that in 6 years.

Bush is worth about $20mil.   If, in 7 years, he had $1 BILLION dollars (Clintons saw their net worth go up ~ 50 fold from 2001-2006), don't you think you'd ask some questions?  If he is bought and paid for by oil companies...

4) Many of the Clinton's top fund raisers are also their top sources of income.  Again, what if Haliburton was GW largest campaign contributor AND offered him a $15,000,000 a year job when he leaves office?

5) They hold investments in closed overseas hedge funds (Carmen Islands), not transparent in the slightest and an overseas "tax haven" that she has spoken against in the past.  Also, the company has been declared a fraudulent tax shelter by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (shell companies generating fake losses... reverse of Enron). In fairness, this stake has now been liquidated.

6) If elected Hillary would be barred form much of this income as a conflict of interest.  But it came flowing in to Bill faster than all other living presidents combined and continues to flow in to him... but surely the $109,000,000 won't influence her if elected.

7) Records for their charity (which only contributed half the 10mil to any cause) and fund raising for the library remain secret.

Her 2007 tax return remains secret (and will until after the next round of primaries). [McCain and Obama have not released 2007 either]

9) $18,000,000 remains unaccounted for.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/04/AR2008040403927_pf.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/05/us/politics/05clintons.html?ref=politics

I don't care that she is wealthy. Generally wealth indicates achievement and the Clinton's have done that.  Bill by being popular and drawing audiences on the speaking tour.  Hillary by being a successful corporate attorney, Bill's Wife, and an elected official.  

BUT, to make so much money so quickly after and while still in office seems scary to me.  I expect some contacts were made and doors were opened - but why to an extent never before seen?    Also the repetitive nature of friends of the white house, donors to Hillary and sources of vast personal wealth seems dangerous.  It isn't a bribe if you give it to the government officials spouse (or their library).

On top of all that there is still a good chunk of secrecy.  

Add the double speak about taxation, donations, and over seas tax shelters and I see more of the same.  BUT BUT BUT, I am probably biased.  So am I just reading too much into the conservative NYT and Washington Post articles or was there a good reason she did not want to release these?

Will voters care that she is wealthy?  Will they care about the vastness of the wealth, the source, the rapidness?

Seriously, it's 1:30am...  I might just be feeling spiteful.

[FOTD]

They released it Friday at 4....always the time real news gets hidden from weekend fun.

[TheArtist]

The Clintons have repeatedly harped on the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, saying: I don't need a tax cut, taxes should be raised on the wealthy not cut. However, as with anyone they are going to try to make as much as they can and keep it to do with as they wish. You know the other guy is taking advantage of whatever tax shelters and advantages are available, it would be stupid for you not to do the same and let them have an advantage over you. Thats why you ask to level the "rich" playing field so that everyone is working fairly under the same tax system.

[FOTD]

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/04/updates_on_the_clintons_tax_re.php

Updates On The Clintons' Tax Returns

[RecycleMichael]

Quick...name a Senator or a presidential candidate who is not a millionaire?

Bet you can't without google.

These tax returns show that they have gotten rich, mostly because of speechs by her husband, an ex-President. They also show that they gave away over 8% of their money to charity (Obama gave less than 4%). They show that the Clintons put most of their money into savings accounts (how un-American).

The Hillary-haters just knew that they were going to be tax returns that showed they made money with the devil and spent their fortune killing innocent family pets. They don't. The Clinton's have now released over a quarter century of tax records, more than any other presidential candidate ever.

I tired of the Obama people implying that she was hiding something by not releasing her tax records as soon as he did. I have never heard them once say for McCain to release his tax records. They used this implied slander to further create doubt of her honesty. Her failure to voluntarily release this personal information was used by the media in yet one more attack on her and her campaign.

Guess what folks. These returns so a couple of people who make a lot of money and give a lot of money to charity. Hillary has never denied that and in fact has often in her campaign said that she benefitted from tax cuts that she didn't need and opposed when voted on.

Now, let's call for Obama to release all the paperwork related to his purchase of Chicago property from a known Chicago mobster one of his personal campaign financers.

[USRufnex]

quote:Originally posted by RecycleMichael



Now, let's call for Obama to release all the paperwork related to his purchase of Chicago property from a known Chicago mobster one of his personal campaign financers.

Broadway Bank... yeah, lived around there.
Another twisting of the truth by a Clintonite in a vain attempt to change the subject.
And NOBODY can twist the truth like a Clinton.
Per usual.

1.3 million individual donors for Obama... per usual, the Clintonistas insist using a kitchen sink strategy to focus on old machine dem donors from Chicago...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/29/171056/015/838/445627

[RecycleMichael]

That is typical of Obama supporters. Call Clinton names and act like their candidate can do no wrong. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Obama has lied about his relationship with the mobster and the American media doesn't seem to care. He said originally that Rezko raised around twenty thousand dollars, turns out it was over 250,000 dollars. Why is this not a lie?

His explanation of why he was not concerned about approaching a mobster about real estate deals was that Rezko had never asked for any favors, so why should he be worried. It was naive at best, a bald-faced lie more likely.

Obama has run an entire campaign on his better judgement than Hillary. He didn't vote to fund the war, but that pales in comparison to this. You are who you hang with. Obama hangs out with mobsters and no one seems to pay attention.

Demanding her tax return is nothing more than changing the subject, yet you accuse me of doing the same.

What is good for the goose...

[USRufnex]

RM's response in a thread about Clinton's tax returns...

Blame Obama, blame the media, blame Obama supporters... accuse Obama of being in bed with the mafia as a non sequitur to try to change the subject and...

Play the victim card.

Classic.

The untold story in this primary is not about race or gender...

It's generational.

[pmcalk]

Well, you can certainly see why Hillary waited until now to release their tax returns.  

quote:These tax returns show that they have gotten rich, mostly because of speechs by her husband, an ex-President. They also show that they gave away over 8% of their money to charity

Actually, RM, I believe that number is closer to 10%.  But let's look at where that money actually went.  The vast majority of the money went to their family foundation (around 60%), which is exclusively controlled by Hillary, Bill & Chelsea.  Even though the Clinton's took the full 6 million deduction for donating to the foundation, that foundation only spent about 2.5 million.  In fact, the foundation really didn't do much until Hillary decided to run for president.

For example, in July of 2007, the foundation gave $100,000 to start a library in South Carolina.  Coincidentally, that was the same day that Hillary put her name on the ballot in South Carolina.  The foundation gave money to start a library named after George McGovern, a superdelegate who later endorsed Hillary.  It gave money in the name of Senator Byrd's grandson--again, another endorsement for Hillary followed.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/04/05/ST2008040502593.html

I am not saying the Clinton's did anything illegal.  They were legitimate donations.  Still, it simply reenforces that perception of the Clinton's as skirting that line between barely legal and just sleazy.

As for questionable business relationships, Bill Clinton's relationship with Burkle and Dubai is going to continue to plague Hillary.

[Conan71]

What's to be learned from this?  The Clintons are masterful politicians and they have been able to parlay that into a wonderful fortune.  I'm truly envious.  It's hard to find any elected official in D.C. who has not left there a much wealthier individual than when they arrived.  Former politicos are in high demand with corporatsions and special interest groups.  Most politcians are for sale to the high bidder.  That is the skank-pit that D.C. has become.I don't see what the huge impact of this tax information was supposed to do.  Everyone knew the Clintons were making a load of money (though it seems to be double initial speculation) after Bill left office, and no one would care if Hillary weren't running for President.Let's face it, none of the three major candidates remaining in this race have ever known what total poverty looks like.  All three have made somewhat questionable business dealings or political decisions for friends in their past.

The hard part for Hillary to get past here is that her husband can make as much money as he wants speaking to any company or special interest group.  It's not considered patronage as he's no longer an elected official.  However, the Clintons can "loan" money to their campaign, so I think this is a slippery slope for them.  It could be construed as a way to circumvent political campaign contribution laws.

RM, at the very least, you've got to admit this fund-raising capacity of a spouse is legit fodder for others to take pot-shots at.

[FOTD]

The Vodka Chronicles

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: April 6, 2008

"John McCain's saucy mother says her boy was always a scamp and a hell-raiser. And one of the senator's great charms is that he wore those appellations proudly.

So it was quite disheartening Thursday to see a McCain spokeswoman telling The Associated Press, in a story about how Cindy McCain helped her husband's political career bloom with her multimillion-dollar fortune from the family beer business, that the senator is a virtual teetotaler.

"Senator McCain rarely, if ever, drinks alcohol," Jill Hazelbaker averred.

McCain's pals know him as a man who enjoys libations of vodka with little green cocktail olives. Over the years, at dinners with reporters, I noted he had the habit of ordering one double vodka and sipping it slowly. And there was that famous Hillary-McCain Estonian drink-off in 2004, when Hillary instigated a vodka shot contest and McCain agreed with alacrity (even though he later offered a sketchy denial).

Maybe now that he's the presumptive Republican nominee, his campaign wants to put his vices in a vise and sanitize the wild side of the man whose nicknames in high school were "Punk," "Nasty" and "McNasty."

Next they'll deny he likes to gamble in Vegas ("I'll put $50,000 on Bomb Iran, with 3-to-1 odds"), socialize with liberals and lash out at people who annoy him. (As a toddler, he had "tiny" rages. "I would go off in a mad frenzy and then, suddenly, crash to the floor unconscious," he wrote. His parents would drop him into a bathtub of icy water.)

If his campaign is bowdlerizing, let's hope it stops before he's a bland McNice.

Americans, after all, don't trust candidates without any vices. They got turned off by the picture-perfect Mitt Romney, whose khakis were never wrinkled and whose hair stayed eerily in place even while he was jogging in a campaign commercial.

Do we really need McCain obfuscating on drinking, and Obama putting up a smoke screen on smoking?

Ever since Chicago reporters followed the up-and-coming Obama and saw him flicking his ashes and butts out the windows of moving vehicles, the senator has had a testy relationship with the press about his addictions to cigarettes and littering. (Obama, wrote one reporter on his blog, was "one of those reprehensible nicotine addicts who seems to believe that the world is his ashtray.")

When Chris Matthews tried to pin down Obama on when he'd had his last cigarette, he radiated guilt, even though he dryly noted that "having your wife say on '60 Minutes' that if you see Barack with a cigarette, let me know' was a heck of a deterrent.

"I fell off the wagon a couple times during the course of it and then was able to get back on," the candidate admitted. "But it is a struggle like everything else."

In his book and last week's bio-tour, McCain painted himself as a cool bad boy. He was a girl-loving, authority-defying, plane-crashing Top Gun.

In his memoir, Obama played up his vices to depict himself as a cool bad boy, too, recalling that he had smoked pot and done "a little blow."

But now the two men are sticking to the straight and narrow. Everyone may imagine that Obama and his press corps spend all their time quaffing Champagne and celebrating the astonishment of his very being. But the candidate is boringly abstemious — and reporters traveling with him find him aloof. On a 2005 trip to Russia, he priggishly requested that his vodka shot glass be filled with water.

Oddly, Hillary, a Tracy Flick Goodie Two Shoes growing up, is the only one who seems to be enjoying her vices — even beyond the delight she takes in the dark and costly Mark Penn, and the gusto with which she bedazzled her résumé and then bedazzled some more when she got caught bedazzling. Her campaign doesn't deny that she likes to kick back, at the end of a long day, with a vodka on her plane.

Bill Clinton is a cautionary tale about what happens if you surrender too many cherished vices. Curtailed from Burkling, international jet-setting, cholesterol-chowing and race-baiting, Bill has gotten raspy and lost his legendary charm. He blew up at a California superdelegate who objected that Bill Richardson, a former Clinton cabinet member, was being painted as Judas because he wasn't willing to transfer his affections from Bill to Hillary — and no doubt one day to Chelsea. The ex-prez railed against the "political elite" and said it was a "bunch of bull" that there were calls for Hillary to leave the race. In Lawrenceburg, Ind., he dubbed himself a "rural hitman" for his wife.

Churlish Bill doesn't even follow his own advice. According to the Clinton tax returns, he gave only $1 million to charity out of the $6.3 million he made for his book "Giving" — even though his income has gone up 6,900 percent since his White House years.

Let the Big Dog off his leash. There can be virtue in a little vice. "

[RecycleMichael]

No.

Her husband is successful. He is still paid less than any all-star baseball player and made less than one fifth of what Judge Judy made last year.

They created a family trust that now gives away millions of dollars of interest income every year. That is exactly what George Kaiser did here in Tulsa. He is a hero for doing it...you guys act like she is cheating. I can't believe you guys are attacking Hillary because her husband makes money and they are giving it away.

I am tired of this constant attack on everything Hillary does or doesn't do. She won't release her returns...she must be bad. She released her returns...we will attack her for being successful. She gives away millions of dollars...but she does it with her "gasp"...family.

Pitiful. Name one politician who has had to put up with this. I would expect this treatment from Karl Rove...not fellow democrats.

[cannon_fodder]

RM,

Bill is amazingly successful, well liked, and by all accounts a good speaker.  He surely would have earned millions on the speakers circuit one way or another.

The problem is the amounts and sources of his earnings.  He earned more than all living past presidents from speeches combined in just 6 years. Most of the paid speeches were from former and/or current Clinton donors.  It just reeks of kickbacks.

To put it in perspective - many have been critical of Bush & Cheney for courting oil companies.  What if, upon leaving office, Bush gave a speech at Exxon for $1mil, then to Phillips, and Halliburton, and on and on making tens of millions.  Would you not think "kick back" for favors done while in office?

Add the "donations" from their foundations to people who shortly thereafter endorsed Hillary and it gets even more dubious.  Perfectly legal, but on a fine line of ethical behavior.  

I am not attacking her for being successful.  I'm proud of what her and Bill have achieved as Americans. But as a politician the grab for money from connected people while still influencing Washington seems scary.  I'm not calling Hillary out on this because it's Hillary (at least I don't think so, i admit I might be THAT biased) - if Barracks wife was making $20mil a year from influential people I'd be suspicious too.  

Anyway, I don't expect you to agree with me and appreciate your points to the contrary - but do you at least understand why this might draw concern?

[RecycleMichael]

I think you see problems with his speeches only because they were to friends of his years in the White House. I don't.

You expect his enemies to pay him to speak? You expect him to appoint enemies to positions in the administration?

Why would you be suspicious and immediately assume kickbacks?

You need to stop hanging out with friendly bear. Everything is not a conspiracy nor a kickback. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar...

[midtownnewbie]

quote:Originally posted by cannon_fodder

Assuming income was constant for 2007 that puts their net worth near $127,000,000.00.  Or the top 1 hundredth of 1% of wealth in the nation.

To clarify, did you really mean income and not net worth?  Just because they pulled in that astronomical figure over those few years, they still had to pay taxes, reduce it by the $ they gave to charity, reduce it by their expenses, etc.  I'm sure they have a high net worth but it's definitely not equivalent to their income unless Bill made some great investments!