HillaryGate
If newspaper editorials are anything more than another way to fill column inches, please advise. At some time in the past when newspapers were the only game in town, editorials may have been useful. Do they really accomplish anything of consequence these days? An example from WaPo would suggest their importance has waned.
In ‘Ms. Clinton’s $850,000 Bundle’ the editorial begins by stating the system needs fixing. How enlightening. Then next paragraph is equally lame. To painfully continue by pointing to failures of the Clinton campaign in handling Norman Hsu’s ‘donations’, rehashing what happened in 1996 Clinton campaign finance plus offering an assumption from an ‘LA businessman’ about Hsu adds nothing to the suggestion box.
That being the author’s ‘first lesson’, lessons two and three will also fall on deaf ears if the intent is to push campaign finance reform. The infamous McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform is the poster child for how much politicians care about flaws and abuse with politics and money. If you have unlimited time to research the lobby disclosure data available through senate.gov it fits as the evil twin of these impotent reforms.
To be completely useless the editorial could have included the suggestion that returning the $850,000 only provides another chance for the money to make its way back to the Clinton campaign without all the fuss. For a newspaper to act in the public interest with the resources they have available, their concern about this issue would be more convincing if something besides the empty chastisement of an editorial were applied.
Does the newspaper have any lobbyists on the payroll and have they contributed any large sums to political organizations? Is the editorial simply for appearances or does the Watergate reporting mentality still exist? Why don’t you chase the Clintons like you chased Nixon? There certainly is as much reason to mount an aggressive investigation. The Watergate investigative journalism was a service to country. How about one more?
Stanford Matthews
MoreWhat.com
Michelle Malkin, Hsu-icide diary: A curious Google searchÂ
Ms. Clinton’s $850,000 Bundle
Wednesday, September 12, 2007; Page A18
The candidate is returning the money, but the system still needs fixing.
NORMAN HSU may turn out to be the best thing that’s happened to campaign finance reform in years. The Hsu episode illuminates how the current system produces bad results and why changes need to be made.
September 12th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
Hillary Clinton loves to talk about her “experience” from being the first lady.
No one calls her out on that. No one asks her to explain, then, why did you pardon Marc Rich even through he consorted with the Iranians during the hostage crisis. Why, Hillary, did you do that? Please someone make her explain. No one makes her explan the damn commodities pay-off she got when she was the first lady of arkansas. No one asks her to explain all of the shady contributions she got in her senate races. No one asks her to explain the $850k funneled to her through hsu. It’s a flipp’n mockery.