How would you tell the difference between:
A. The CGI will be less efficient at its charitable goals after Clinton’s loss.
B. The CGI will be less efficient at bringing money to the Clintons after Clinton’s loss.
and have you at any momenth considered point A?
It’s shut down because they don’t need it and it’s not worth a whole lot to them anymore. Their speaking fees are about to go way down as well.
Yes. And as you may tell, it didn’t sell me on anything.
Let’s say that I am a Hollywood star and I’ve got a charity that I run. My charity helps to keep people fed in impoverished and war torn countries. Then I’m in a car accident and disfigured. I can no longer get starring roles.
Now the question is, do I actually care about saving people from starvation? If so, is there any way that the result of this is that I pack it in? No.
Is my pulling power going to drop? Yes. With time. But, so long as I’ve got enough money that I can continue to live my life, and I still know that fundamentally a charity can run based simply on the work it is doing and salesmanship, there’s no reason for me to quit.
And my Hollywood star is going to drop out of the limelight a lot faster than a former President and former Senator/Secretary of State, one of whom is a great speaker and both of whom still have great influence with one of the major parties in the country. If Bill Clinton calls me up and says, “Hey, do you want to save children from dying AND make connections with other good, charitable donors like yourself? And I’ll give a riveting speech about what I think the country should be doing in the future?” Would I attend? Sure thing.
I’ll grant that it’s reasonable for foreign nations to drop out, if they’re expecting a quid pro quo that (if we are trusting the Clintons) they were never going to get. But there’s zero reason for the Clintons to shut down that branch of their ventures. Scale back, sure. But people don’t stop starving to death because you lost your bid for President.
Where your analogy fails is that the Clintons aren’t shutting down their charitable work. They are shutting down one specific organisational effort. You’re also positing the absurd idea that any celebrity that cares about any issue has to forever spend the time and effort they spent at the max on improving that issue. No opening for deciding to take a breather, no opening for changing ones approach, no opening for making financial decisions.
I care about people starving around the world, but I still limit my charitable contributions to a level where I’m still living in relative luxury. Does that mean I don’t actually care about them? If I stop engaging in spreading my opinions on global inequality because it’s exhausting, or because I’m swamped with a new job, or because I want to focus on another issue local or global, does that mean I never cared at all?
You’re of course entitled to draw negative conclusions about the Clinton Foundation based on the available evidence, but you’re going beyond rational analysis here and into naive rationalization.
I think the question is: Why would anybody establish and run two charities? What’s wrong with just one? That’s the fishy part. Not that it’s closing, but why the hell it existed in the first place. As you pointed out, the Clintons aren’t shutting down their charity. So what is it they just shut down?
CGI already announced in October that they were shutting down, presumably to eliminate the appearance of conflict of interest for Hillary. Nothing new has happened, other than one more piece of paperwork to complete the shutdown.
From the article:
Wouldn’t it be nice if people bothered to find this out before engaging in idle speculation over why it was shut down. And I mean “find out the actual facts about it”.
That’d be real swell.
It’s not two charities. They are just shutting down one of the programs run by the foundation.
Certainly. Every organization is exactly as it purports itself to be. Always. 100% of the time. But hey, I don’t even know what it claims to be.
From its website:
Apparently, it “facilitates action” and “brings together leaders”. It organizes meetings? Clear as mud to me. You’re welcome to try and explain it better.
What’s so muddy? They organized meetings and speakers to get together people who cared or could be persuaded to care about issues they wanted action on. What could possibly be confusing you?
I guess that will lay your suspicions to rest, Sage Rat?
So they accepted hundreds of millions of dollars in donations so that rich people could talk to each other? How is that a charitable function? And why shut it down? Rich people don’t want to talk to each other anymore, since the election?
I don’t think the Global Initiative accepted hundreds of millions of dollars. I also don’t think the Global Initiative is the only venue for rich people to talk. Apparently, the Clintons thought it would be inappropriate to act as hosts for such talks when Hillary became president. As scr4 linked, they chose to close down before the election.
Originally announced, last September before the election but after controversy about foreign donations, CGI is closing down.
More importantly, donations to the Clinton Foundation generally seem to be shrivelling after the election. This seems like evidence of pay for play, even if its not proof.
What say the masses?
Merged in post #53.
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I’d say you’re not over Clinton running. Get over it and rejoice in the coming Trumpocracy.
If you think Clinton was pay to play, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
It is useful maybe to read the Bloomberg article of September 2016 already announcing this and givng the non political summary of the activities. They were very active in the African development area. It seems this announcement is the recycled pseudo news…
Yeah, the one who did not get blow jobs in the White House from interns.
Slee
I guess that is why only hard-right sites are now reporting this - not really breaking news.
Thanks, I hadn’t noticed this in elections. Are the rules of the great debates forum the same as elections?