CLINTON TAX RETURN: $141M IN 8 YEARS

This week’s Friday night document drop included the Clintons’ tax returns, as summarized by CNN:

Hillary and Bill Clinton earned nearly $141 million over the course of eight years and paid $43 million in federal taxes, according to tax returns her campaign released Friday.

In a lengthy statement and on her campaign website, Clinton detailed that she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, paid more than $43 million in federal taxes from 2007 to 2014, over $13 million in state taxes and donated nearly $15 million to charity over the same period.

The couple earned a total of $140.9 million, with an adjusted gross income of $139.1 million, the returns show.

Not bad for a couple that produces nothing, adds nothing to the economy, and gets all of their money based solely on political connections. Many of us are old enough to remember when liberals were very, very upset at the thought of rich people running for President – three years ago, to be exact.

“We’ve come a long way from my days going door-to-door for the Children’s Defense Fund and earning $16,450 as a young law professor in Arkansas – and we owe it to the opportunities America provides,” Hillary Clinton humorously humble-bragged in a statement accompanying the tax info. Or is it possible she’s being serious? She really thinks the millions raked in by a political couple paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to give empty speeches, by powerful special interests who wish to take advantage of their connections, has even the slightest relationship to the “opportunities America provides” for the vast majority of its citizens?

Oh, and about those charitable donations…

From 2007 to 2014, nearly 99% of the Clintons’ charitable giving went to their foundation, “The Clinton Family Foundation,” which is used to distribute the family’s philanthropic giving to different charities.

In total, the Clintons donated $14,959,450.00 to charity over that period, with $14,769,000 of that going to the foundation.

And most of the 1% of donations that didn’t go to their foundation went to Clinton associated groups. In 2013, the Clintons donated $57,000 to the Clinton Global Initiative and $21,000 to the Humana Challenge, a Clinton Foundation-sponsored golf tournament. In 2012, the couple donated $25,000 to the same golf tournament.

In the Nineties we got to enjoy the Clintons writing off their underwear as tax deductions.  Now they make charitable donations to the organizations that keep their political operatives well-paid until they’re needed for campaigns.

And, of course, Hillary postures as the scourge of the Evil Rich and their rotten tax “loopholes.”

“I want more Americans to have the chance to work hard and get ahead, just like we did. And reforming the tax code can help,” said Clinton, before criticizing the tax reform proposals of Republican opponents.  Good Lord, she really is serious about pretending she got filthy rich by “working hard” and pursuing the same American dream available to middle class voters. Keep voting Democrat, folks, and maybe one day you, too, will be paid vast sums of money by oil sheikhs and Russian oligarchs to give canned speeches!

Via: Breitbart

Continue Reading....

Law Prof.: Obama’s Climate Agenda Is About Changing The Constitution

President Barack Obama’s push to unilaterally commit the United States to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions in the coming years is about changing the constitutional system that similarly hampered former President Bill Clinton’s global warming goals, according to a law professor.

In a congressional hearing Thursday, George Mason University law professor Jeremy Rabkin told lawmakers that Obama’s argument that he unilaterally commit the U.S. to a United Nations agreement without Senate ratification was “a real change in our Constitution.”

“So, now we’re going to have some body, in some entity, in some foreign country that’s going to be directing us?” Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions asked Rabkin during Thursday’s hearing on Obama’s emissions-reduction promise to the United Nations.

“We have certain background assumptions about how our government is supposed to work, that’s why we have a Constitution,” Rabkin responded.

“And what this is fundamentally about is saying, ‘ah, that’s old-fashioned, forget that, that didn’t work for [President Bill] Clinton– we’re moving forward with something different which the president gets to commit us,’” Rabkin added. “That’s a real change in our Constitution.”

Late last year, Obama committed the U.S. to cut CO2 emissions 26 to 28 percent by 2025. Obama made the pledge in conjunction with China’s government, which promised to merely peak its CO2 emissions by 2030. Republicans immediately came out against Obama’s pledge, saying it was unworkable and they wouldn’t ratify it.

The threat of Senate opposition successfully scared Clinton into abandoning his plan to get lawmakers to ratify the Kyoto Protocol in the 1990s, but the Obama administration is arguing its international climate pledge doesn’t even need congressional approval.

The U.S. submitted a document to the UN last year that suggested a “bifurcated approach” to a deal on global warming. The president says it is not a treaty the Senate needs to ratify, as it requires every country to submit individual CO2-reduction promises they will use domestic policies to achieve.

Obama wants to make signing a global climate deal part of his presidential legacy, but knows such an agreement would never be ratified by a Republican-controlled Senate. Therefore, the administration is doing everything it can to argue a UN deal would not need lawmakers’ approval.

Here’s the problem, though: Any promise made by Obama to the international community on this scale would likely need to be ratified by the Senate in order to be considered a treaty, according to Rabkin.

“The word treaty is usually reserved for things that are ratified by the Senate,” he told lawmakers.

Via: Daily Caller

Continue Reading....

Report: Bill Clinton’s ‘closest political adviser’ voting for Romney

Former President Bill Clinton greets President Barack Obama to speak at a campaign event at the Waldorf Astoria, Monday, June 4, 2012, in New York. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Douglas Band, former President Bill Clinton’s top aide, plans to vote for Mitt Romney in November, according to a report in The New Yorker.

In an extensive article on the complicated and often unpleasant relationship between Bill Clinton and President Obama, the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza reports that Band intends to cast his ballot for the former Massachusetts governor this fall.

“According to two people with direct knowledge, Douglas Band has said that he will vote for Romney,” Lizza writes. “Band declined to comment.”

Lizza explains that Band believes an Obama defeat will bode well for Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects.

“For [Bill] Clinton, the politics are more complicated,” he writes.

“His associates take it as a given that he would like nothing more than to see his wife become President. Hillary Clinton will step down as Secretary of State after the campaign and begin the process of deciding whether she will run in 2016. By some measures a defeat for Obama in November would leave Hillary the undisputed leader of her party and propel her toward the Oval Office that much faster. At least one of Clinton’s closest advisers seems to be backing that strategy.”

Lizza describes Band, 39, as “Clinton’s closest political adviser.”

Bill Clinton will give a keynote address to the Democratic National Convention Wednesday night.

Via: The Daily Caller

Continue Reading...