Media Discovers Library Donors- Silent on Campaign Donors

The Washington Post is aghast today to discover that the governments of Saudi Arabia, Taiwan and other countries have contributed funds to some of the presidential libraries, including those of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. According to the Post's story,

Bill Clinton's presidential library raised more than 10 percent of the cost of its $165 million facility from foreign sources, with the most generous overseas donation coming from Saudi Arabia, according to interviews yesterday.

The royal family of Saudi Arabia gave the Clinton facility in Little Rock about $10 million, roughly the same amount it gave toward the presidential library of George H.W. Bush, according to people directly familiar with the contributions.

Hoqwever, the Post is not satisfied with this, and goes on to dig further into the sources of funding for presidential libraries. They discover that,

Spokesmen for Kuwait and Taiwan confirmed that each government has given the library $1 million. Both governments also donated to other presidential libraries. Kuwait contributed at least $1 million to the library of former president George H.W. Bush, and Taiwan gave $2 million to the Ronald Reagan library.

Calls to the other governments were not returned, and the Middle Eastern individuals could not be located for comment.

Jack Kuei, a press officer for Taiwan in Washington, said his government's donation "is a way to promote a mutual understanding and it's a kind of public diplomacy." Kuwaiti counselor Jasem Albudaiwi called his nation's contribution "a friendly donation from the people and the government of Kuwait to the cause of the library."

Personally, I cannot see the news interest in this story. Do foreign governments contribute to presidential libraries? Certainly, as this report confirms. Does this have any effect on American political decisions? Unless the library donations are used to pay back favors received while the president was in office, I would suspect it does not. Looking at a list of Reagan's foreign donors, this makes perfect sense. Japan and Taiwan were definitely beneficiaries of Reagan's muscular foreign policy, and he was known to be very strong in their defense. Therefore, their donations are unsurprising.

I would wish that the media focused on actual campaign funding issues- such as the Norman Hsu case that they have done their best to bury. Unless Senator Clinton is receiving money from her husband's library, then where said library's donations originate are really not anyone's business. If these are payoffs from her husband's years in the White House, then that is what the media ought to be investigating, but they did their best to kill any and all stories about Bill';s Asian money problem while he was President, so it is a little difficult now.

I suspect that the media has begun to realize that Hillary Clinton has some very serious problems as a candidate and since they are committed to getting a Democrat into the White House in 2008, they are trying to make certain that the Democratic nominee is not Mrs. Clinton, who has extremely high negatives and who would guarantee a high Republican turnout- she is despised and mistrusted by most Republicans. Since the media dares not attack Clinton too directly, I suspect this is a sideways strike to try to ensure that she is not the Democratic nominee.

Hillary's Donors

First it was Norman Hsu. Then it was the mysterious Chinatown donors. Now it turns out that yet another big Democratic donor with ties to the Hillary Clinton campaign has been arrested for impersonating a lawyer and a police officer.

According to Townhall.com, Mauricio Celis, a Democratic party activist in Corpus Christi was arrested and made released after posting 50,000 dollars bail.

Celis has contributed thousands of dollars to state and federal candidates, including the presidential campaign of Sen. Hilary Clinton. Several candidates for state office who accepted campaign cash from Celis have since donated the funds to charity.

Celis, 36, was indicted Friday on charges of impersonating a lawyer, impersonating a police officer, theft and perjury.

He has a controlling interest in the CGT Law Group of Corpus Christi even though he is not an attorney. Texas law prohibits anyone not licensed as a lawyer from owning a controlling interest in a law firm.

Interesting. It turns out that Celis is under fire in the South Texas town of Corpus Christi, where another attorney, one Thomas Henry, is launching an attack on Celis for practicing law without a license. Celis may also have impersonated a police officer, though it seems that he is a genuine reserve deputy. Not being familiar with the rules gtoverning use of a reserve deputy's badge, I cannot say if that charge is jusitifed.

However, it appears that Celis is very active among the Democratic fundraising circles, giving 4600 dollars to one Mikal Watts, a Democrat who is challenging for Republican John Cornyn's House seat. And it also appears that, like Hsu, Celis managed to become a big-time player in Democratic Party circles with little or no investigation.

There is an old saying, "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me." One shady donor could easily have ben an honest mistake. however, when one has a history of shady donations as does Hillary Clinton, then perhaps it is time for we the voters to ask some hard questions about these donors, since the campaign either cannot or will not. And we don't want to be in a position of having buyers' regret come November 2008 if we cannot or will not ask these questions now. After all, the media won't ask them- it is too important for them to get Hillary into the White House.

Media Still Not Interested In Hsu Money

Fugitive Democratic Party donor Norman Hsu was arrested today in Colorado, according to the Associated Press. However, while discussing the fact that many of the politicians to whom Hsu gave money are returning it or giving it to charity, the AP seems strangely reluctant to discuss the mysterious sources of Hsu's contributions. The story talks about several Democrats who are returning Hsu's gifts, and states,

The growing flap over Hsu's contributions prompted Democratic presidential candidate Chris Dodd to release a statement Thursday vowing "to refuse to accept or possess campaign contributions raised, solicited, or delivered by fugitives from justice."

"Growing flap". That's nice. But it would be even nicer if one of the so-called professional media organizations would devote some time to digging into the actual source of Hsu's large contributions. As of this writing, not one has managed to find an actual business that could be said to have supported Hsu- certainly not to the extent of being the grand-scale fundraiser he was, and none of the supposed mainstream media organizations has spent any invetigative resources whatsoever trying to discover exactly where Hsu- a failed businessman with apparently no real business- got the money to live on, let alone give so much to Democratic politicians.

Although few of the mainstream media seem interested, the Wall Street Journal is a prominent exception, and has actually done some investigating. The Journal wrote,

In recent years, he moved to New York, and told acquaintances he was working in the fashion industry. While he did run apparel companies at various times, some of the firms listed as his employer on campaign-contribution records are hard to track.

Mr. Hsu has maintained a very low profile within New York's apparel industry. Representatives of one of the country's main import groups, the U.S. Association of Importers of Textiles and Apparel, said they had never heard of Mr. Hsu. Firms that track shipments to significant U.S. importers also found no record that companies listed by Mr. Hsu had imported goods into the U.S. over the past year.

And now, many acquaintances in New York say they aren't sure what he did for a living.

Good for the Journal. But it would be nice if the rest of the media would take a harder look at this as well, instead of continuing to post front-page stories on Larry Craig. Considering the amount of resources that have been deployed to follow the Abramoff story, the Valerie Plame non-scandal and the equally non-scandal of the fired US attorneys, it would seem possible that the media would be able to devote some resources to dig into a story that may actually lead to evidence of foreign meddling in the US political system- which is a genuine scandal. Don't forget that Charlie Trie, Bill Clinton's Asian financier, fled the country to avoid answering questions. We still don't know the real source of that money. For all we know, it could have come from the Chinese government or the Chinese military- neither of whom are allowed to contribute to U.S. candidates. Norman Hsu is a major question mark. If the media are as professional asx they like to claim, they need to follow this one up- no matter how embarrassing it might be to the Democrats. Oh, wait. Embarrassing to Democrats? I won't hold my breath.

Hat tip to Sweetness and Light for the Wall Street Journal story. Cross-posted on NewsBusters.