Except the Clintons make no money off of the foundation. If they were into the Red Cross, the AIDS foundation or the NY Yankees presumably someone could buy influence through donations to their favorite causes or seasons' box seats. In the real world, Dick Cheney didn't give a fuck and continued to make a profit of his prior business that benefited from his war and energy decisions. Karl Rove as well if I recall. But in our pathetic liberal fantasy world we have to run scared because rightwing dickheads may rail about the left doing something for healthcare, poverty, edcation or global warming so we shit ourselves avoiding any appearance that a fucking well-regulated, rather transparent non-profit doesnt expose a conflict of interest (we as Democrats couldn't protect ACORN from shutting down over criminal slander and misrepresentation, so why should I worry hat the world's most politically powerful couple is protecting theirs?) After we shit ourselves for a year over Hillary's speeches and the worry aboout some quid-pro-quo somewhere. You'd think we'd get tired of this shit, but we revel in it. Our ideal is Joe Biden with maybe $200k to his name despite doing the bidding of he insurance industry all these years, or Bernie Sanders with a shack in Vermont somewhere. It's only people who've no conception of money, not even large-scale charity work, who can save the world's largest economy from the horrid scourge of capitalism and balance the playing field, eh?

Obviously the other party has its problems as well - thinking that anyone with money is smart and can transfer that private skill if exists to government service. A pox on both of our houses.

PS to note - the right successfully egged on the assassination ofan abortion doctor, and instead of fighting back, we let them push on and close clinic after clinic through both intimidation and new draconian laws. But we never fight so hard against them as we fight against our own. Cue Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting - the Republicans are pathetic, we're worse than pathetic.

They're both egregious conflicts of interest. We just have to face the fact that the only people who have proved they don't care about money are unemployed homeless people. Personally I won't vote for anyone with a house or a job, they're all corrupt.

So who are your heroes who understand how to run government, how to get elected in a toxic environment, how to make positive change amidst chaos, how to moderately balance a budget while putting together a reasonably populist/liberal agenda, how to deal with a modern economy and changing priorities in the country and the world, how to align the different needs of 50 states and a vastly heterogenous population?

By 6 years ago, I'd hoped that there would be a new generation of politicians, and even wrote here that I thought it was pretty unlikely that Hillary would have the physical and political energy to actually carry through another campaign, including after her fall & brain bit. But guess what? No new generation stood up - the best we got were 2 other fairly ancient stalwarts, Warren & Sanders with fairly incomplete visions, and fortunately her energy held together to manage to hold together through another glob of media concern and mini-scandals and mockumentaries and whatever.

8 years ago I supported her against Obama, who I thought was too careful and overly-optimistic about the Republicans, changing Washington, how much leverage he had, his lack of experience, etc. Overall it worked out much as I expected - he did better than I thought based on his experience but still got played a lot, wasted time with stonewalling Republicans, shut down the broad grassroots advocacy group that would have helped the Democratic 50 state movement, expanded the surveillance state more than I would have predicted, but more or less held the ground and upheld somewhat an image of being Democrat that I wanted.

So here we are with people wishing the Clintons would just retire and go away. Fine, find someone who isn't 1 step into the grave themselves and who has a broad enough vision and experience and balls to do it with a fair spark in their personality, rather than another Monty Python dead parrot skit (please note, the parrot was also "honest" and anti-establishment and yadda yadda yadda too - but still dead). Yeah, 2016 proved that 2 impossible candidates to actually run government well could get lots and lots of votes, one of them still in the race, especially with media providing free advocacy, hype and scandal to sell the horserace and keep a lukewarm fire hot.

Re: charities, I worked with the Soros OpenSociety people for a time, and while I had my complaints - loud complaints, as you can imagine an even younger and more obstreperous PP - for whatever faults they had, they were the only positive forceful group around with a bit of finance & political savvy for getting something real done, not just where I was, but all over East Europe and ex-Soviet areas, and the end results were quite good. There isn't a charitable foundation around that doesn't have huge embarrassing pockmarks for all to see - it's a business of sucking up to rich self-important people and making big shows with blown-up checks in someone's district or country to stoke someone's ego while a bit goes to something useful. I've seen World Bank folks come in and stay at the classiest hotel around, making in 3 days what I made in a month or two, and walking away with hopefully something accomplished. But I learned to control my class envy and judgment there as well - they guys that I thought had a gravy train with fairly expensive paid housing with servant ended up to be just there on a tough 1-year assignment with little pay behind them. The UN & World Bank and USAID types and whatever didn't create the pay and per diem rates, and some of them did good despite a frequently (required?) bored bureaucratic pace, some of them did poorly, and much of it you wouldn't know amidst all the chaos and poverty for a few years if ever. I had friends who tried to set up private pro-social activities in the Balkans and listened to their stories about the "great sucking sound", how everyone would just use you and take anything not pinned down and take all the idealistic energy you once had. I had a friend doing Peace Corps in a southern African country and Moldova describing his disappointment in how unproductive it all was, with his idealism and horizons scaled back. Another spent years with millions of Afghan refugees in the 90's helping out the truly hopeless back when it wasn't trendy and on the map, but simply forgotten and not part of our expected peace dividend. I know a guy who stepped down as president of a glitzy New York-based family-started non-profit with lots of supermodel fashion connections to raise funds for a reasonable cause but tied too much to the arbitrary whims of the family itself. If you want to pick apart charities and find the warts, it's a fountain of discovery. But in the end, I admire the people who push on despite all the dirt and ugliness - it's still worth the time and energy.

BTW - here's the Politifact analysis of the Clinton Foundation after Rush Limbaugh started his attacks 1 1/2 years ago. Facts, of course, will shut nothing down, and they just found another avenue to continue the smear. Funny how the Clintons are untruthful, but calling a $250 million a year foundation a "$2 billion global empire" is just par for the course (and that's even from the pseudo-upright Washington Post)

" would have to select a president from outside Clinton's inner circle with an impeachable reputation" - Freudian slip?

Given the structure of the Foundation, how would favoritism occur?

What wrongdoing occurred at the Clinton Foundation?

And yes, Trump is exponentially worse than Hillary.

Edit to add:

A charity watchdog found no evidence of wrongdoing at the foundation

https://www.philanthropy.com/article/Charity-Navigator-Removes/234700

2nd Edit to add:

What crime was committed in Benghazi?

What crime was committed with the emails?

Could they partner with the Gates Foundation during her tenure, or would that ever sully the Gates Foundation as well?  I kind of think that the Gates Foundation would then be one more "lefty" organization that would have influence on Clinton. Maybe they should shut down too.  Where does it end?  Answer: It doesn't.  

It is a distraction because the MSM and Democrats have allowed it to become a distraction.  

Trump's indebtedness?  Not a distraction.  His tax returns. Not a distraction.  His wife?  Not a distraction. His changing views on immigration, abortion, taxes...not a distraction because every comment he has made has nothing to do with his beliefs, but just on the latest BS that will further inflame the raging crowds at his rallies.

Thanks barefoot. It's a good piece. That AP story is execrable.

Now that we have approved shutting down the Clinton Foundation, we can now turn our attention to the fact that Wikileaks reports Hillary is dying of indecision fatigue.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/25/wikileaks-plays-doctor-...

The fake scandal of the day brought to us by Julian Assange