I am really skeptical of articles suggesting that there is something dubious about Clinton's fundraising. I am especially dubious about any that imply there is something inherently wrong with getting money from non-Anglo sources.

I haven't read the articles, maybe they are well sourced and this time the news media have done their jobs. I just think we need to beware.

This is just too similar to a million other Republican and right-wing efforts over many years, involving any Democrat who might be on a path to impact the Republican machine.

I would be very wary of promulgating this storyline without a lot more hard evidence.  There appears to me to be a lot of innuendo and unproveable implications in these stories.  And their throwing in the allegation of some historical link between Clinton's campaign and human trafficking seems quite a stretch.

I'm not a Hillary fan, but a lot of this just doesn't pass the smell test.

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity"

One of the things I notice which is out of the ordinary is that Hilary returns illegal donations rather than donating them to charity.  That makes it well worth it for them to press the edge of legal and give things back when they get caught.  In the bundling by felon case bit ago, they were hoping that the individual donors would re-give.

Yet more reasons why we really should be financing our campaigns with public money instead of forcing our politicians to spend far too much of their time asking for it.

My job is not to represent Washington to you, but to represent you to Washington- Obama
Philly for Obama

This kind of thing is distasteful and, just as bad, totally unnecessary. Obama, Dean and others have demonstrated that you can bring in considerable amounts of money without having to rely on these shady fund-raisers to do the dirty work. I wish our candidates would figure this out instead of taking the "easy" route.

it dovetails rather nicely with an article in the latest edition of the nation, by russ baker and adam federman, a very interesting read:

Hillary's Mystery Money Men

In the Clintons' pursuit of power, there is no such thing as a strange bedfellow...Norman Hsu, the mysterious businessman from Hong Kong who brought in $850,000 to Hillary Clinton's campaign before being unmasked as a fugitive. Her campaign dismissed Hsu as someone who'd slipped through the cracks of an otherwise unimpeachable system for vetting donors, and perhaps he was. The same cannot be said for the notorious financier Alan Quasha, whose involvement with Clinton is at least as substantial--and still under wraps.

Political junkies will recall Quasha as the controversial figure who bailed out George W. Bush's failing oil company in 1986, folding Bush into his company, Harken Energy, thus setting him on the path to a lucrative and high-profile position as an owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, and the presidency. The persistently unprofitable Harken--many of whose board members, connected to powerful foreign interests and the intelligence community, nevertheless profited enormously--faced intense scrutiny in the early 1990s and again during Bush's first term.

Now Quasha is back--on the other side of the aisle. Operating below the radar, he entered Hillary Clinton's circle even before she declared her candidacy by quietly arranging for the hire of Clinton confidant and longtime Democratic Party money man Terry McAuliffe at one of his companies. During the interregnum between McAuliffe's chairmanship of the Democratic Party and the time he officially joined Clinton's campaign, Quasha's firm set McAuliffe up with a salary and opened a Washington office for him.

Just a few years earlier, McAuliffe had publicly criticized Bush for his financial dealings with Harken, disparaging the company's Enron-like accounting. Yet in 2005 McAuliffe accepted this cushy perch with Quasha's newly acquired investment firm, Carret Asset Management, and even brought along former Clinton White House business liaison Peter O'Keefe, who had been his senior aide at the Democratic National Committee. McAuliffe remained with the company until he became national chair of Hillary's presidential bid, and O'Keefe never left. McAuliffe's connection to Quasha has, until now, never been noted.

Another strong link between Quasha and Clinton is Quasha's business partner, Hassan Nemazee, a top Hillary fundraiser who was trotted out to defend her during the Hsu episode--in which the clothing manufacturer was unmasked as a swindler who seemingly funneled illegal contributions through "donors" of modest means.

In June, by liquidating a blind trust, the Clintons sought to distance themselves from any financial entanglements that might embarrass the campaign. Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson argued that the couple had gone "above and beyond" what was legally required "in order to avoid even the hint of a conflict of interest." But throughout their political careers, Bill and Hillary Clinton have repeatedly associated with people whose objectives seemed a million miles from "a place called Hope." Among these Alan Quasha and his menagerie--including Saudi frontmen, a foreign dictator, figures with intelligence ties and a maze of companies and offshore funds--stand out.

"That Hillary Clinton's campaign is involved with this particular cast of characters should give people pause," says John Moscow, a former Manhattan prosecutor. In the late 1980s and early '90s he led the investigation of the corrupt Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) global financial empire--a bank whose prominent shareholders included members of the Harken board. "Too many of the same names from earlier troubling circumstances suggests a lack of control over who she is dealing with," says Moscow, "or a policy of dealing with anyone who can pay.

[...]

lots more: the nation

along the same lines, an article in the previous issue by nicholas von hoffman: For Hillary, There's No Such Thing as Dirty Money.

daw whatever conclusions you wish, but like the old adage says: where's there's smoke, there's fire.

lTMF'sA

the revolution will not be televised...