The Clinton's Money-Losing Charity

The concept of a non-profit charity is pretty simple: The money taken in minus any expenses is given to the charitable cause netting the organization zero profit. Some charities do this very well, operating very frugally and returning the majority of the money donated to the charitable cause. Others not so much. But rarely do non-profit charities run $40 million deficits like the Clinton Global Initiative:

Today, big-name companies vie to buy sponsorships at prices of $250,000 and up, money that has helped subsidize the foundation’s annual operating costs. Last year, the foundation and two subsidiaries had revenues of more than $214 million. 

Yet the foundation’s expansion has also been accompanied by financial problems. In 2007 and 2008, the foundation also found itself competing against Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign for donors amid a recession. Millions of dollars in contributions intended to seed an endowment were diverted to other programs, creating tension between Mr. Magaziner and Mr. Band. The foundation piled up a $40 million deficit during those two years, according to tax returns. Last year, it ran more than $8 million in the red.

These two paragraphs are the heart of what is a long New York Times story about the Clinton's charity and I'm not going to delve in the story any further -- you can read it, it speaks for itself. My question is, does it really surprise anyone that the opportunistic political power couple of the last 20 years would have a charity that is bleeding cash while they have become fabulously wealthy over the past dozen or so years?

The journey of this couple from two Arkansas shysters to the darling of the leftist political establishment is the number one political story of the last 20 years -- and not in a good way. These two have managed to parlay the mediocre political career of hack Arkansas governor and lousy United States president into a fortune rivaled only by Slick Willie's VP Algore. Slick gets upwards of $400,000+ a speech, Mrs. Bill Clinton gets $200,000+. This folks who barely had a pot to piss in during their Arkansas years, are worth tens of millions if not over $100 million dollars -- enough to give their daughter a reported $5 million wedding. And all of this made off their political fortunes. Does anyone really think they care about the fact that their charity ran an $8 million dollar deficit last year -- a fact that by it's very definition is crooked at the least and criminal at worst. 

This story reveals one important truth about hard core leftists: Although they claim to care more than the rest of us about "the poor" and :"the middle class" and "fairness", the only thing they really care about is making sure they get theirs. They're different, they're better than the rest of us, and they deserve it more than we do.