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Bill Richardson quits as Obama's Cabinet pick


GarandFan

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From the article it looks like he was preparing to be part of the Obama administration by engaging in vintage Illinois "pay to play" politics.

Looks like the Obama people did a really good job of checking out his background... :lol:

 

 

They start to fall one by one............

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Sounds like Clinton might have a few problems also:

 

Link:

 

A donor's gift soon followed Clinton's help

 

By Charlie Savage

Published: January 4, 2009

 

WASHINGTON: A developer in New York state donated $100,000 to former President Bill Clinton's foundation in November 2004, around the same time that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure millions of dollars in federal assistance for the businessman's mall project.

 

Hillary Clinton helped enact legislation allowing the developer, Robert Congel, to use tax-exempt bonds to help finance the construction of the Destiny USA entertainment and shopping complex, an expansion of the Carousel Center in Syracuse.

 

She also helped secure a provision in a highway bill that set aside $5 million for Destiny USA roadway construction.

 

The bill with the tax-free bonds provision became law in October 2004, weeks before the donation, and the highway bill with the set-aside became law in August 2005, about nine months after the donation.

 

Congel and Philippe Reines, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton, both said there was no connection between his donation and her legislative work on his project's behalf. Reines said the senator had supported the expansion of Carousel mall "purely as part of her unwavering commitment to improving upstate New York's struggling economy, and nothing more."

 

Bill Clinton set up his foundation as he was leaving the White House and as his wife was transforming herself from first lady to U.S. senator from New York. The William J. Clinton Foundation finances Bill Clinton's presidential library in Little Rock, Arkansas, as well as programs that work on AIDS, poverty, climate change and other causes worldwide.

 

Donations to charities favored by lawmakers have been a recent ethics flash point in Congress. In 2007, Congress enacted a law requiring companies and their lobbyists to disclose donations to charities associated with lawmakers. But there is no law requiring former presidents to disclose money they collect for their foundations.

 

Last month, Bill Clinton's foundation revealed the identity of its donors as part of an agreement with President-elect Barack Obama, who selected Hillary Clinton as his nominee for secretary of state.

 

Most of the attention on the disclosure list has focused on millions of dollars donated by foreign tycoons and Middle Eastern governments, like Saudi Arabia, which have an interest in the U.S. foreign policy that Mrs. Clinton would direct as the nation's chief diplomat.

 

But lower on the list was Congel's name, one of about 180 people who had donated $50,000 to $100,000. A Destiny USA spokesman said Congel made a $100,000 donation in November 2004.

 

"There was no connection with Bill Clinton and the 'green bonds' and the contribution," Congel said in an interview. "None at all."

 

Congel had been a prime force behind Congress's passage of tax-exempt "green bonds," a program to decrease the financing costs of some $2 billion in environmentally friendly projects by exempting lenders from paying federal taxes on their income from the private bonds. By some estimates, the program could cost the Treasury about $200 million.

 

The way the legislation was written, Congel's Syracuse development, which he agreed to build and run in a way that promotes renewable energy and recycling, was one of just four proposed projects that would qualify.

 

His contribution is the only known situation so far in which an American donor gave a large sum to Bill Clinton's foundation while benefiting from his wife's official actions. Reines said that Hillary Clinton did not solicit the donation from Congel or discuss it with him or anyone on his behalf, and that she was unaware of its timing and size until last month.

 

Hillary Clinton, who as a Senate candidate in 2000 supported other tax breaks for a Carousel mall expansion to create jobs, did not work alone in getting the subsidies through Congress. The measures had other supporters in the New York delegation, including Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat, and James Walsh, Syracuse's Republican representative at the time.

 

Although Congel has sometimes given money to Democrats, he is a major Republican campaign fund-raiser. In 2004, he was a "Bush Ranger," gathering more than $200,000 in bundled contributions for the Bush-Cheney re-election effort.

 

In the most recent election cycle, he donated money to the Republican National Committee and to the Republican presidential primary campaigns of Rudolph Giuliani, Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney.

 

But Congel said there was nothing incongruous about his donation to Bill Clinton's foundation. "I have a huge interest in our country, and I thought Clinton was a great president," Congel said. He added, "I think he's a dedicated, dedicated American, and I'm a dedicated, dedicated American, and when we have a president I think we have a right, privilege and obligation to support that president. And I did that with Clinton, and I did that with Bush."

 

Congel has also given campaign donations to Hillary Clinton and other New York Democrats, including Schumer.

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