New York Times: Bill & Hillary Benefitted from public company
May 29, 2007
The New York Times is offering new details regarding Bill and Hillary Clinton’s links to a businessman facing allegations that his public company not only aids scam artists who target the elderly, but has showered money on the Clintons with little to show for it.
NewsMax’s most recent Insider Report disclosed that the firm infoUSA was accused of repeatedly renting marketing databases to unscrupulous persons who used the information to engage in fraud
This weekend the New York Times reported in a page one story that the company and its chairman, Vinod Gupta, have been hit with a lawsuit from shareholders who maintain that Gupta wasted the firm’s money trying “to ingratiate himself” with high-profile persons.
The paper stated these persons included Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Among the expenses cited in the lawsuit – filed in Delaware late last year – is a family vacation the Clintons took in January 2002 in Acapulco, Mexico, with infoUSA paying $146,866 to fly the Clintons, Gupta and others to Mexico and back on a private jet.
Over the next four years, Nebraska-based infoUSA spent nearly $900,000 to fly Bill Clinton around the world for his presidential foundation work and to fly Hillary to campaign events, according to the lawsuit reported by the Times.
Ethics rules for senators and candidates state that the recipient of a flight must reimburse the provider only at a rate equal to a first-class ticket, even though private air travel costs significantly more than commercial fares.
Hillary, Bill Clinton Linked to Elder Scam - How Much Were They Paid?
May 29, 2007
By Dick Morris & Eileen McGann
Since he left office in 2001, former president Bill Clinton has been paid by $3.3 million by InfoUSA, an Omaha, Nebraska company that has been identified as a key provider of specially designed databases that have been sold to criminals who use the detailed information to defraud the unsuspecting elderly.
The consulting fees to the former president were only part of the largess InfoUSA showered on the former president.
Vinod Gupta, the CEO of InfoUSA, lent the Clintons the company’s jet which took them to places like Switzerland, Hawaii, Jamaica and Mexico.
The jet service was worth a staggering $900,000.
And Gupta gave the Clinton library a six-figure gift as well. Indeed, just months after he left the presidency, Bill Clinton was paid $200,000 for a speech given to InfoUSA in Omaha.
InfoUSA is not the kind of company with which a former president and the husband of a presidential candidate should associate.
According to the The New York Times, InfoUSA compiled and sold lists that disclosed the names of elderly men and women who would be likely to respond to unscrupulous scams.
he lists left no doubt about the vulnerability of the elderly targets.
The Times reported, for example, that InfoUSA advertised lists of “Elderly Opportunity Seekers,” 3.3 million older people “looking for ways to make money,” and “Suffering Seniors,” 4.7 million people with cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. “Oldies but Goodies” contained 500,000 gamblers over 55 years old, for 8.5 cents apiece. One list said: “These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change.”
InfoUSA sold lists to companies that were under investigation or closed down by courts because of their criminal activity. The company’s internal emails show that employees were aware that the investigation for elderly fraud involved their customers, but sold the lists anyway.
The Times profiled one unfortunate 92-year-old man who entered a sweepstakes sponsored by InfoUSA. The information that he innocently provided was then sold to the predator marketers. After responding to their telemarketing calls seeking financial information, his entire life savings was stolen from his bank account at Wachovia Bank. These practices, using lists supplied by InfoUSA, were repeated all over the country.
Last week, Hillary Clinton sought and obtained an extension of time to file her presidential candidate financial disclosure statement.
Unlike the information required of Senators, this filing requires her to list not just the sources of Bill’s income but exactly how much they paid him.
While Senator Clinton offered no reason for the postponement, one cannot help wondering if a desire to conceal InfoUSA’s payments to her husband while the company is under fire.
The extent of the company’s payments to Bill only came out as a result of a lawsuit by disgruntled stockholders against the company management.
The relationship between Bill Clinton and Vinod “Vin” Gupta, the CEO and Chairman of InfoUSA is both long-standing and deep.
A frequent Clinton donor, he has stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom, admitted to donating $1,000,000 to the Clinton Library and told the press that he’d consider an additional donation.
Again, since the Clintons refuse to disclose who donated money to the library, we don’t know the total that he actually gave. In late 1999, Gupta gave $2,000,000 for Hillary Clinton’s Millennium New Year’s Eve bash. (They party cost $16 million and was closed to the press!)
The links between Gupta and the Clintons are extensive:
# Gupta raised over $200,000 for Hillary’s Senate campaigns and contributed thousands to the DNC and Democratic House and Senate campaigns.
# InfoUSA was one of the sponsors of the Aspen Festival of Ideas last summer where Bill and Hillary Clinton both spoke.
# Gupta built the Bill Clinton Science & Technology Center and the Hillary Clinton Mass Communications Center in his hometown of Rampur, India.
# Bill and Gupta traveled to India together.
# Gupta reportedly paid for a golf outing for Bill at a legendary Scottish course.
# InfoUSA appointed Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton’s longtime moneyman to the Board of Directors of its subsidiary company videoyellowpagesusa.com.
# Clinton appointed Gupta to the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees only a few days before he left office.
# Clinton also nominated Gupta as Consul General of Bermuda and U.S. Ambassador to Fiji, but Gupta was never confirmed.
# Gupta’s company co-sponsored the 2006 Clinton Global Initiative.
# Gupta sent a $7000 treadmill to Chappaqua days after the Clintons left the White House. After the New York Post disclosed the gift, the Clintons returned the gift.
Gupta’s generosity to the Clintons is only matched by his generosity to himself. InfoUSA has lately been attacked by some of its shareholders, particularly by the Greenwich, Connecticut company Cardinal Capital that went after Conrad Black. Lord Black is now on trial in Chicago for corporate fraud.
Cardinal Capital objected to Gupta’s purchase of a $600,000 skybox at the University of Nebraska, his family’s charges of $13.5 million in private jet charges, and $2.5 million for the long term lease of a yacht – all with corporate funds.
In addition to his 2001 visit to the company’s headquarters, Bill Clinton was back there to speak at a conference on privacy issues in September 2006. Senator Clinton’s disclosure statement for that period has not been publicly released, so we don’t know how much he was paid.
This connection between the Clintons and InfoUSA only underscores the necessity of full disclosure of income sources and amounts by all the presidential candidates and the release of their income tax returns, a step Mrs. Clinton has, thus far, refused to take.
Bill Clinton will be Hillary’s albatross
May 29, 2007

In the May 28th edition of Newsweek, Jonathan Darman’s analysis of Bill Clinton’s impact on Hillary’s campaign is shocking mostly for what is omitted: Darman never mentions that Bill Clinton is a former president who was impeached and a former lawyer who was disbarred. In 1998, the House of Representatives voted to impeach the president on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. In a 21-day trial in the Senate, Clinton escaped conviction. Nonetheless, Bill Clinton was the only elected president ever impeached in U.S. history (Andrew Johnson, also impeached, was not elected but succeeded to office after Lincoln’s assassination in 1865). Bill Clinton was also disbarred from practicing law in Arkansas for five years and, facing the same action by the Supreme Court, he resigned from the Supreme Court bar. These two glaring facts, impeachment and disbarment, are a matter of public record: Bill Clinton’s peers deemed him unfit to perform his duties in the major public capacities for which he had previously earned the people’s trust. As both politician and lawyer, he was sanctioned for unethical and illegal conduct.
As Hillary campaigns in her bid to win the Democratic nomination, she must address an obvious question: If she becomes president of the United States will she uphold the democratic voice of the people and the laws of the land? Evidently, she will argue, she will be vigilant in these matters. Yet, where does she stand on the two judgments against her husband: Does she believe they were both unjust? If so, why have there been no subsequent attempts to set the record straight and restore his reputation (as anyone who was wrongfully censured would do)? If not, then does it mean she agrees with the verdicts?
These are not merely rhetorical questions: they lie at the very heart of her leadership skills. If she is willing to ignore these judgments against her husband and she parades him as an exemplary figure in her campaign, we must ponder by what yardstick she will appoint individuals to cabinet positions or to the Supreme Court. Are individuals who have been either impeached or disbarred eligible or ineligible to stand for office or to serve in her administration? If the answer is that they are ineligible, then why is she campaigning with an individual who has this on his record? Also, if such individuals are ineligible, what role will her husband have in her administration? Will he be allowed to sit in on cabinet meetings and national security briefings? What kind of power will he have as “global ambassador†to represent the U.S. with our allies?
It will be wise for Hillary to declare as soon as possible that her husband will not be given any role beyond that of First Gentleman. Yet, this too presents a whole other set of problems for her campaign. The president’s spouse, the First Lady, has traditionally been a symbol of integrity and morality. Moreover, the First Lady has stood alongside the president in public functions as a representative of family unity and harmony. What symbol will First Gentleman Clinton be? As every child will be told, in 1998, when the Monica Lewinsky scandal erupted, Bill pointed his finger at the American people and blatantly deceived them: “But I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I’m going to say this again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time; never. These allegations are false.†Even after he left office, despite all the scandal and disgrace, when he was given the opportunity to explain his actions and perhaps win some kind of sympathy, the best he could muster as to why he had an affair with an intern in the White House was: “Because I could.â€
Thus, we must ask Hillary Clinton what families all across America will have to tell their children about her husband’s past behavior? The best she can do is to insist he was terribly wrong and is now reborn in some way. Yet, if that is the case, the clearest evidence of rebirth is to take responsibility for one’s past and to stop perpetuating more harm. If Bill was truly repentant, he would have the good sense to know when there has been enough damage done to the nation; he and his wife would not once again run for the highest office in the land.
Yet, not only is Hillary not ashamed of her husband, she considers him “the most fascinating man she has ever known.†Thus, her judgment is obviously deeply flawed. In her selection of Bill as her primary campaign partner, we can see clearly that she does not care if an individual has been disbarred and impeached, nor if one cheats and lies: all these vices can be easily brushed aside—for he is so “fascinating.â€
If Hillary wins the Democratic primary and begins the campaign against a Republican opponent, all the names and issues we thought were forgotten will resurface again. Monica Lewinsky is only one of many who will be discussed. There was also Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones (who accused Clinton of sexual harassment and whom he paid $850,000 in a settlement) and Juanita Broderick (who accused Bill of rape and accused Hillary of intimidating her in an attempt to keep her silent). In these instances, if Hillary defends her husband, she will appear as sanctioning the actions of a sexual predator. If she admits he was at fault, she too will have to take responsibility for this disgrace, acknowledge that he cannot be First Gentleman and therefore let another candidate with a better record take the helm of the Democratic Party.
Essentially, Hillary’s plight is now very much like that of the character Dorian Grey in Oscar Wilde’s classic novel, The Picture of Dorian Grey. The handsome Dorian makes a pact with a stunning portrait of himself: he wants eternal youth and to lead a life of revelry; in exchange only the picture will age and bear the mark of his sins. After decades of debauchery, when gazing upon the grotesque figure in the painting, the anguished Dorian stabs the portrait with a knife—and thereby destroys the painting and kills himself. In a similar manner, Hillary is locked in a pact with Bill: she has hitched her star to his. As his reputation plummets, she needs to disentangle herself from him, to take a stab at his record and set herself free. Yet, if she does so, her own fortunes will come tumbling down. This is one man she should never have climbed into bed with in the first place.
Source: Insight Magazine
Hillary skipped reading 2002 Iraq intellegence report
May 29, 2007
A new biography’s suggestion that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton didn’t personally read a key intelligence report before her 2002 vote to authorize war in Iraq has raised eyebrows, but Clinton was not alone.
Clinton did not read the 90-page, classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which summarized the reports of U.S. intelligence agencies, but was briefed on it multiple times, a spokesman said.
The book, “Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton,” is by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. It is one of two upcoming biographies of Clinton, the former first lady turned New York senator.
She is one of four current and former Democratic senators who voted for the October 2002 resolution that authorized President Bush to launch the invasion of Iraq the following March. Two Republican senators, John McCain of Arizona and Sam Brownback of Kansas, also voted in favor of the resolution.
Hillary promotes ’shared responsibility’ over Bush’s ‘on your own’ society
May 29, 2007
Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined a broad economic vision Tuesday, saying it’s time to replace an “on your own” society with one based on shared responsibility and prosperity.
The Democratic senator said what the Bush administration touts as an “ownership society” really is an “on your own” society that has widened the gap between rich and poor.
“I prefer a ‘we’re all in it together’ society,” she said. “I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none.”
That means pairing growth with fairness, she said, to ensure that the middle-class succeeds in the global economy, not just corporate CEOs.
“There is no greater force for economic growth than free markets. But markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed,” she said. “Fairness doesn’t just happen. It requires the right government policies.”
Clinton spoke at the Manchester School of Technology, which trains high school students for careers in the construction, automotive, graphic arts and other industries. The school highlighted one of the nine goals she outlined: increasing support for alternative schools and community colleges.
“We have sent a message to our young people that if you don’t go to college … that you’re thought less of in America. We have to stop this,” she said. “Our country cannot run without the people who have the skills that are taught in this school.”
Beyond education, Clinton said she would reduce special breaks for corporations, eliminate tax incentives for companies that ship jobs overseas and open up CEO pay to greater public scrutiny.
Clinton also said she would help people save more money by expanding and simplifying the earned income tax credit; create new jobs by pursuing energy independence; and ensure that every American has affordable health insurance.
Source: Newsday
