Tag Archives: Foundation

The Clinton Foundation Sure Is a Great Charity

by CaseyYZQswynlze Posted on September 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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When it comes to charity, Dylan Matthews is pretty hardnosed. To earn his approval, a charity better focus on truly important problems and be damn good at it. So how about the Clinton Foundation? After starting out as a skeptic, he says, “I’ve come to the conclusion that the Clinton Foundation is a real charitable enterprise that did enormous good.” In particular, he praises the Clinton Health Access Initiative, which helped lower the cost of HIV drugs and saved untold lives. But there’s a catch:

And—perhaps uncomfortably for liberals and conservatives alike — it is exactly the kind of unsavory-seeming glad-handing and melding of business and politics for which Bill and Hillary Clinton have taken years of criticism that led to its greatest success….The deals made required buy-in from developing governments. The person tasked with getting that buy-in was a former US president with existing relationships with many of those people. Bill Clinton essentially used his chumminess with foreign politicians and pharmaceutical executives, the kind of thing about the Clinton Global Initiative that earns suspicious news coverage, to enlist their help in a scheme to expand access to HIV/AIDS drugs.

I don’t get it. Why should this make anyone feel uncomfortable? Lots of people have star power, but very few have star power with both rich people and foreign leaders. Bill Clinton is one of those few, so he chose a project that (a) could save a lot of lives, (b) required buy-in from both rich people and foreign leaders, and (c) was right at the cusp where an extra push could really make a difference.

I can’t even imagine why anyone would consider this unsavory, unless they’ve lived in a cave all their lives and don’t understand that glad-handing and chumminess are essential parts of how human societies operate. Matthews may be right that many people feel uneasy about this, but I can’t figure out why. It sounds like Clinton chose to do something that his particular mix of experience and character traits made him uncommonly good at. That’s pretty smart.

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The Clinton Foundation Sure Is a Great Charity

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My One Wish For the First Debate

by EldonGollan Posted on September 21, 2016

Mother Jones

Don’t worry, Lester, this is nothing partisan. Feel free to grill Hillary Clinton about her emails and the Clinton Foundation and so forth. And by all means, grill Trump about the Trump Foundation and his lie about opposing the Iraq War and when he decided Obama was born in the US and all the other Trumpisms America wants to hear about.

But here’s my wish: do it in the second half-hour. Debate hosts have a habit of wanting to come out of the gate with a “tough” question that demonstrates what hard-hitting journalists they are, and that usually means some kind of edgily worded question about either a scandal or a “scandal.” Instead, let’s show that policy is what’s most important. You can still ask tough questions, probing around in the details the candidates would rather not address, but make the first half hour all about the actual, concrete plans they have for their presidency. There’s plenty of time for the zinger-fest later.

That’s it. That’s my wish list.

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My One Wish For the First Debate

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Help Me Solve the Mystery of Question 25

by AlexandSison Posted on September 21, 2016

Mother Jones

Ladies and gentlemen, I present question 25 from the latest WaPo/ABC News poll:

Golly, I wonder where people got that idea from? In over a year of investigation, there’s been no evidence of a Foundation donor getting anything from Hillary Clinton more important than a better seat at a State Department luncheon. And yet 59 percent of Americans have come away with the impression that both the Foundation and Hillary Clinton personally are corrupt.

How could this be? It’s a chin scratcher, all right.

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Help Me Solve the Mystery of Question 25

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Trump Foundation Involved in Yet More Corruption

by BeatrizKingsmil Posted on September 20, 2016

Mother Jones

Donald Trump’s foundation is in the news again:

Donald Trump spent more than a quarter-million dollars from his charitable foundation to settle lawsuits that involved the billionaire’s for-profit businesses, according to interviews and a review of legal documents.

In one case, from 2007, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club faced $120,000 in unpaid fines from the town of Palm Beach, Fla., resulting from a dispute over the size of a flagpole. In a settlement, Palm Beach agreed to waive those fines — if Trump’s club made a $100,000 donation to a specific charity for veterans. Instead, Trump sent a check from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a charity funded almost entirely by other people’s money, according to tax records.

Sorry Donald. You’re not allowed to use your charity to pay off your business obligations:

“I represent 700 nonprofits a year, and I’ve never encountered anything so brazen,” said Jeffrey Tenenbaum, who advises charities at the Venable law firm in Washington. After The Post described the details of these Trump Foundation gifts, Tenenbaum described them as “really shocking.”

“If he’s using other people’s money — run through his foundation — to satisfy his personal obligations, then that’s about as blatant an example of self-dealing as I’ve seen in a while,” Tenenbaum said.

I don’t think I can count the number of reporters who have investigated the Clinton Foundation or the number of pieces they’ve written. The net result has been (a) no actual serious misconduct uncovered, but (b) a steady drumbeat of stories implying that something improper was going on.

Now then: how many reporters have been investigating the Trump Foundation? I might be missing someone, but basically the answer is one: David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post. The net result has been (a) plenty of actual misconduct uncovered, but (b) very little in the way of public attention to it.

This is why so many people can somehow believe that Hillary Clinton is less trustworthy than Donald Trump. In truth, it’s not even close. Trump is probably the world champion in the sport of lying; he cares about nothing but enriching himself and getting even with his enemies; and his political positions change with the wind. He’s just about the least trustworthy person on the planet.

But he’s entertaining. Gotta give him that. And really, isn’t that what matters?

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Trump Foundation Involved in Yet More Corruption

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New York’s Attorney General Has Opened An Inquiry into Donald Trump’s Charity

by Alina37H91973 Posted on September 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has opened an inquiry into Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s charity following questions over whether the foundation has complied with state law.

The scrutiny comes in light of recent investigations by the Washington Post and Associated Press that shed light into the inner workings of the Donald J. Trump Foundation. The Washington Post reported on Saturday that Trump, who founded the charity in 1987 and has claimed to have donated millions from his own pocket, had not contributed to his foundation since 2008. Instead, the Post found, Trump’s foundation received millions of dollars from donors, which it doled out under its own name.

In 2009, Trump reportedly spent $20,000 meant for charitable purposes on a six-foot-tall painting of himself. In 2013, the Trump Foundation gave $25,000 to a political group associated with Florida Attorney General Pamela Bondi. That gift, which was illegal, resulted in a $2,500 penalty payment to the Internal Revenue Service. House Democrats have called for a federal criminal investigation into the transaction.

Schneiderman told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday that his office was looking into Trump’s charity out of concern it had “engaged in some impropriety” in its operations. “We’ve inquired into it, and we’ve had correspondence with them,” he said. “I didn’t make a big deal out of it or hold a press conference. We have been looking into the Trump Foundation to make sure it’s complying with the laws governing charities in New York.”

Schneiderman is also challenging Trump in a lawsuit alleging that Trump University, the mogul’s defunct real-estate seminar, engaged in “persistent fraudulent, illegal and deceptive conduct.”

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New York’s Attorney General Has Opened An Inquiry into Donald Trump’s Charity

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A Closer Look Behind the "Obamacare Surprise"

by MaricruCorona Posted on June 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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Helaine Olen writes in Slate that Democrats might be in for a nasty surprise just before the election:

A few weeks ago Politico warned of “Obamacare’s November surprise”: Many consumers enrolling in the health care marketplace on Nov. 1, just one week before the election, can expect increased rates.

Given the current disparity in the polls, it’s unlikely that alone could change the outcome of the election. But it is quite possible it will cause a bit of turmoil in the last week of the campaign. It’s beginning to look likely than many shoppers aren’t going to like what they find.

A report from the Kaiser Family Foundation released earlier this month estimated that the average weighted premium increase for the benchmark second lowest cost silver plan will come in at 10 percent. Last year? It was 5 percent.

This is quite possible. As the Obamacare market shakes out and insurers get a better handle on their actual costs, premiums were always bound to go up. But it’s worth pointing out what’s really happening here: insurers lowballed their premiums at first in order to win market share, coming in at rates far below the CBO’s initial estimates. So even if we do see a 10 percent increase in 2017, premiums will still be well under CBO’s initial projections1:

I’m under no illusion that this will change the politics of a premium increase, of course. Someone, somewhere, will have a 30 percent increase, and that’s undoubtedly what Donald Trump will blather on about. Nonetheless, it’s nice to at least be prepared with the truth. And the truth is that even if there’s a sizeable increase next year, premiums will still be about 15 percent less than CBO projected back when Obamacare was first passed.

1It was surprisingly hard to collect these numbers. You’d think CBO would have them all collected in one place somewhere, but if they do, I couldn’t find them. If anyone can point me to something better, let me know. In the meantime, here are my sources:

Projections:

2014: https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/76701/ib_premiums_update.pdf, p.6.
2015: Interpolation of 2014 and 2016 numbers.
2016: http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/107xx/doc10781/11-30-premiums.pdf, p. 7.
2017: Projection based on CBO projection of 8 percent increases between 2016-18. https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/51130-Health_Insurance_Premiums_OneCol.pdf, p. 12.

Actual:

2014: http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/45231-ACA_Estimates.pdf, p. 6.
2015: https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/49892/49892-breakout-AppendixB.pdf, p. 120.
2016: https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/51130-Health_Insurance_Premiums_OneCol.pdf, p. 12.
2017: Estimate based on 10 percent increase from 2016.

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A Closer Look Behind the "Obamacare Surprise"

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Watch: Attacks on American Abortion Providers Over the Years

by FeliciaFoutch Posted on June 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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A new video from the Thomson Reuters Foundation shows a chilling timeline of violence against abortion providers over the past two decades, from the 1993 murder of Dr. David Gunn in Pensacola, Florida, up through the recent shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

But perhaps the most heart-stopping detail is that abortion providers are in increasingly short supply—Reuters reports that in 1982, there were 2,908 providers in the United States. In 2011, that number had dropped to 1,720.

Democrats in the House are calling for Rep. Marsha Blackburn to end the “witch hunt” of the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, which was formed by John Boehner last fall to explore allegations that abortion clinics are selling fetal tissue for profit. (There has been no evidence thus far to prove this.) Democratic members have expressed concern that the aggressive allegations put forth by Blackburn and the Republicans on the panel endanger researchers and abortion providers.

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Watch: Attacks on American Abortion Providers Over the Years

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Gates Foundation quietly dumps all of its BP stock

by 2Gofman3 Posted on May 12, 2016

Gates Foundation quietly dumps all of its BP stock

By on May 12, 2016 5:16 pmShare

Has the world’s largest charitable foundation started shifting away from fossil fuels?

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sold off its $187 million stake in the oil giant BP sometime between September and December of 2015, according to a recent filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The move came after the foundation sold off $824 million in ExxonMobil stock, as disclosed last fall.

The foundation has been under pressure from climate activists demanding that it drop all investments in fossil fuel companies. The Guardian’s “Keep It in the Ground” campaign and the Gates Divest campaign have both been particularly dogged in focusing on Gates.

But the foundation has refused to comment on its investment decisions, so the significance of these recent oil-stock sell-offs is unclear. Bill Gates, the billionaire cofounder of Microsoft, has been skeptical of the fossil-fuel divestment movement and last year called it a “false solution.”

According to public records, the Gates Foundation held about $1.4 billion of investments in coal, oil, and gas companies at the start of 2014. Now it holds only about $200 million of those stocks, according to the Guardian — though it may have made new fossil fuel investments that haven’t been publicly disclosed.

Given the big troubles the coal industry is facing right now, and the volatility in the oil and gas sector, it’s the perfect time for investors like Gates to get out.

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Gates Foundation quietly dumps all of its BP stock

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Law School Named After Scalia Deals With Awkward Acronym

by RooseveltKeeney Posted on April 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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RIP #ASSLaw. RIP #ASSoL.

Last week, George Mason University announced that it was renaming its law school in honor of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Henceforth, students would attend the Antonin Scalia School of Law or, as the internet quickly (and gleefully) pointed out, ASSLaw—or ASSoL

It didn’t take long for the school to tweak the name. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Antonin Scalia School of Law at George Mason University” will be the official name, but the school’s website and promotional materials will refer to the Antonin Scalia Law School. Take that, snarky acronym-mongers!

The decision to rename the school came after it received two major donations: an anonymous donor, who requested the name change to commemorate Scalia, gave $20 million, and the Charles Koch Foundation gave $10 million.

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Law School Named After Scalia Deals With Awkward Acronym

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Leonardo DiCaprio gives $1 million to help island nation protect its oceans

by ArnetteSoderste Posted on March 19, 2016

Leonardo DiCaprio gives $1 million to help island nation protect its oceans

By on 19 Mar 2016commentsShare

From Shutter Island to Manatee Island, Leonardo DiCaprio keeps winning our hearts — and our climate-inclined minds.

The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation recently granted $1 million to help the Seychelles islands protect their ocean territory — which makes up 99 percent of the country.

It’s part of a huge, unprecedented swap between the Pacific Island nation and foreign investor groups. The gist of the deal: The country of 115 tiny islands commits to protecting 154,000 square miles of its surrounding seas, and in return, its lenders agree to restructure $21.4 million of its debt. From Mashable:

In this case, instead of repaying debt at relatively high interest rates, the Seychelles government will redirect payments to a new, locally-run organization known as the Seychelles Conservation and Climate Adaptation Trust.

DiCaprio’s (ahem) titanic donation will go toward financing this swap, which was brokered by The Nature Conservancy and will result in the second-largest swath of protected waters in the West Indian Ocean. By protecting coral reefs and limiting damaging fishing practices, Seychelles is hoping it will encourage more resilient ecosystems — and in turn, a more robust economy for the ocean-dependent nation.

“We champion projects like this one across the globe that use cutting edge methods in conservation and environmental protection,” said DiCaprio in a press release. “This deal will enhance food security for the local people of Seychelles, help mitigate the effects of climate change on their low-lying island home, and protect the surrounding rich ocean ecosystems for future generations.”

All the more reason to lobby for a new holiday: Leonardo DiCapprecation Day!

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