There are some preliminary reports about Bill Clinton’s purported $50,000-a-month retainer — paid out to Teneo, a firm where he is chairman of the board — from his friend Jon Corzine’s now broke MF Global. It reminds of Newt Gingrich’s getting $30,000 a month for his work as a “historian” for Freddie Mac up until the eve of its crack-up. One comes away with a sort of despair that our most prominent politicians, who have already done quite well in private and public life, still cannot refrain from cashing in on their contacts for even more cash.
The symptoms are depressingly the same: the big retainer fee, the financial insolvency of the clients, the lack of financial expertise on the part of the consultant, the apparent lack of any quantifiable value in the service rendered, the euphemisms employed to disguise the lobbying efforts (Clinton was supposed to improve the “image” of CEO Corzine, rather than be an historian of the company).
One can think up all sorts of new rules and regulations to stop this sort of insider influence peddling (the various ways of making millions are endless, as the Freddie and Fannie vets attest — cf. Emanuel (Freddie), Gorelick (Fannie), Johnson (Fannie), Raines (Fannie), etc. — but there would no doubt be ways of circumventing them. In the end, the only antidote we are left with is shame, and a general public weariness with affluent and pensioned figures maximizing profit in ways made possible by their past public office.
One question remains — that of cause and effect: Are the clients usually broke because they habitually do these stupid and often unethical things, or are they already insolvent, and thus both the client and the lobbyist seek eleventh-hour cash before the dying firms expire?
>the only antidote we are left with is shame
I'd like to know the last time that anyone in our political class showed the slightest hint of shame.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAmen to that.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe graft and kickbacks just goes on and on: the stock tips; the multi-million dollar book advances; hiring family members. It's been said before but Washington is the greatest crime family on earth. And apparently, there are no deterrents whatsoever. You can have cash in your freezer and no one bats an eye. You can have a prostitution ring run out of your apartment; your kid gets a plumb job at NBC ... Sometimes I think we would be better off if a meteor or aliens did hit Washington!
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Are the clients usually broke because they habitually do these stupid and often unethical things, or are they already insolvent, and thus both the client and the lobbyist seek eleventh-hour cash before the dying firms expire?"
I think what's happening is that all firms are doing this stuff prophylactically, but we only hear about it when there's a scandal involving a bankruptcy.
There can be no doubt that our system is now entirely corrupt, precisely because this is all so routine.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Are the clients usually broke because they habitually do these stupid and often unethical things, or are they already insolvent...?"
What is your evidence that the clients are "usually broke"? The scandalous examples are the ones that end up in the papers. There are thousands of other examples of this sort of thing that are not noted because they are not noteworthy.
If this type of arrangement is undesirable, then the cure is not to pile new regulations and laws onto the steaming heap of unenforced and unenforcable rules we already have in place. (I would very much like, for instance, to see the operational definition of "lack of quantifiable value in the service rendered." You may *think* you'll just know it when you see it, but it's not so easy to craft a definition that doesn't prohibit behavior you don't want to discourage,) The cure is to remove the power of politicians -- of any stripe or bent -- to grant economic favors.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"The cure is to remove the power of politicians -- of any stripe or bent -- to grant economic favors."
It's like the Mafia ... all behind the scenes. The power is to make an introduction, to call in a favor. It's not called the 'favor factory' for no reason.
As in Solyndra, there is also always the careful disguise of good public purpose.
The problem is in the character of those we elect to office. Slimeballs will always be slimeballs.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse.... and I should have said:
The cure is to carve back government to its essential functions of defense etc. and reduce dramatically the politicians' ability to tax and spend and give out goodies to their friends.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHow do you reduce their power?
Term limits. Time in office equates to the ability to do favors, hire friends of influential people, trade votes and layer bureaucracies with "your" people (who can keep tabs for you on all kinds of matters, licit or otherwise).
If you are limited to 8 or 10 years, your ability and desire to pile up people and "chits" is extremely reduced.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"The cure is to remove the power of politicians -- of any stripe or bent -- to grant economic favors."
Bingo! And what are the economic powers they grant? Why, it's OPM - Other People's Money, meaning yours & mine. Reduce their supply of OPM by cutting government down to its essential size. The only things government should do are those things we cannot do for ourselves - treat & make war with other countries, defend our borders, and GENTLY regulate commerce. Government has no other legitimate function.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt's incredible that people would pay a serial adulterer and perjuror $50,000 a month to improve their public image. Only in America.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is a bit rich coming from NRO, a bastion of 'conservative' cronyism.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHuh? Come back after you sober up.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAmazing that none of the "Investigative Reporters" who swarm Washington ever connect the dots.
Fannie and Freddie have been used for 20 years as a"golden parachute" by presidents to thank political allies who proved loyal during each president's tenure. Freddie and Fannie pad these political sycophants millions to keep them quiet and out of the way.
Goldman Sachs is another company used for the exact same purposes. Political Allies are snuggled into a corner office, and paid out large sums of money to simply secure a lunch date with a Senator or Department Secretary.
Gingrich merely climbed on board this lavish gravy train.
Clinton did the same thing at Corzine's cash-cow.
It's disgusting.
If voters out in Nebraska or Western Kentucky ever figured out what goes on in Washington, they truly would spark a Revolution.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe saddest aspect is the corrupt Clintons get away with it repeatedly. It is a sincere American tragedy in so many ways.
Even more regretful, the enabling of this ugly folly is partly due to some from the sound side. Even after the disgraceful Clintons tried to foolishly Nationalize Health Care, some who call themselves Conservative present the malfeasance as some mythic "centrism". One can look at the disastrous "smart power" failure of Hillary Rodham Clinton, and still see some professional sideline pundit afraid to rebuke the utter folly. You could not have a more dreadful effort in the State Department, if you tried. Hillary Clinton has made another massive mess yet again.
Yet, the worst comes in the form of Newt Gingrich being pushed now by the same denial which once championed Donald Trump. A tired Beltway Celebrity Insider from as far back as 1979, who was forced to resign in disgrace and was grafting the taxpayer for 1.8 Million via Fannie and Freddie. Newt is a Politician who is part of the problem, an entrenched Washington Icon who sits on TV with Nancy Pelosi trying to sell global warming.
And this is the great hope of the fashion amongst us?
Some time ago, the once sound - serious Conservative movement would have known Gingrich will lose dramatically in any National Election he is entered in. But Conservatives would also never consider the unethical Beltway Player anyhow. They would naturally prefer the sound Private Sector offering with proven CEO ability and accomplishment.
But today's Conservative Arena is lost in a self destructive fashion, all stuck on image, emotion, fan fare, desperately seeking acceptance. Some even accept religious bigotry, class warfare, even geographical bigotry. Many who push this fashionable sophistry, have never even bothered to review the record, the facts, the basis, they simply repeat the most superficial spin which is often the opposite of the reality.
It is no wonder why we have disastrous Government failure, or even the disastrous Democratic Partisans denial influencing so much today. And many are dedicated emotionally now to further enabling the worst, by pushing a disastrous Newt Gingrich.
It could not be more insane.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseInfluence peddling assumes that there is some influence to peddle. A nation with a bloated federal bureaucracy as ours will invariably succomb to crony capitalsim. The more the Beltway taxes and regulates, there more loopholes, codecils, and subsidies to be had. Progressives and those civic do-gooders who demand goverment intrusive federal supervision of every aspect of the citizen's life create a pandora's box of corruption that dwarfs anything some fat-cat can create. For every Enron there is a Sarbox. And Sarbanes-Oxley was not written by our lawmakers; instead it was crafted by dozens if not hundreds of staffers from the Big Five accounting firms. It is therefore it is no coincidence that these accounting firms reap huge consulting and auditing fees from the very law they created. And when a set of instrusive regulatory laws are written, lobbiests and influence peddlers make sure they don't go away.
We shouldn't then be surprised that corporations like GE reap big rewards when Congress declares the incadescent light bulb illegal. We shouldn't be surprised that President Obama meets first with health insurers when pushing his health care bill (that's where the individual mandate came from). Nor should we be shocked that Wall St finds a way to make a bundle through decades of congressional mandates in the real estate and home mortgage markets. The Beltway doesn't resemble Rome in its last days, but Versailles before the Revolution.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"In the end, the only antidote we are left with is shame,"
I can think of another way around it, at least for the top 600 politicians in the USA. Pay them closer to what they're worth, closer to what the importance of their jobs would suggest. Pay it to them above the table, with no strings, so they don't have to seek it below the table with strings.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseUnfortunately, since they've run this country's finances into the ground, since they haven't passed a budget in something like 3 years, since they constantly whine and cry, since they actually provide nothing of value, the true value of their employment would be next to nothing. In fact, one could argue that they owe the American people money.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI am pretty sure that it was WFB (though perhaps someone else at NR) who said something to the effect that "If only the Clintons would go away, then we might at least forget them..., but they won't."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI believe Bubba was Chairman of the Board of Advisors for Teneo and not of their Board of Directors.
Not sure what the Advisors were there for, but given the retainer, it was probably to function as rainmakers. The Directors (or senior partners or whatever) would have had oversight of the activities of the firm.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNR in an editorial perhaps 30 years ago explained it quite succinctly:
The influence of money over politics is directly proportional to the influence of politics over money.
Limited government, anyone?
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