Millionaire ex-presidents can pay their own way

From the files of Jeff Jacoby at The Boston Globe

U.S. Presidents G.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, G.H.W. Bush

The avarice of Bill and Hillary Clinton is a wonder to behold. They crave wealth, it seems, even more than they crave power, and display no qualms about exploiting their political stature to amass it.

According to a required financial disclosure filing last week, the former president and his wife have collected more than $30 million since January 2014, most of it from speaking engagements for which they charged an average of $240,000 each. To put that figure in perspective, what the Clintons earn per speech is nearly five times what the median US household earns per year.

Since leaving the White House in 2001, the Clintons have made more than $125 million just from what The New York Times has called "the family speechmaking business." Huge book advances have been worth many millions more. For all their poor-mouthing about being "dead broke" and needing to "pay our bills," the Clintons' income puts them well within the top one-tenth of 1 percent of all Americans.

So why, pray, should taxpayers be giving Bill Clinton an allowance that amounts to another million dollars a year?

Indeed, considering that every living past president is a multimillionaire, why should taxpayers have to fund an allowance for any of them?

That question has been on the minds of US Representatives Jason Chaffetz of Utah and Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the chairman and ranking Democrat, respectively, of the House Oversight Committee.

Under a bill they have introduced, presidential pensions would be capped at $200,000 yearly, as would the amount available for office space, travel, and staff.

For any former president making more than $400,000 a year, the expense account (though not the pension) would be reduced dollar-for-dollar, zeroing out once an ex-president's earnings surpassed $600,000. That's about two-and-a-half speeches, at Bill Clinton's usual rate.

On Tuesday, the committee voted in favor of the measure, sending it to the House floor. Now House members ought to do the right thing and advance it, with bipartisan approval, to the Senate.

For most of American history, presidents weren't showered with taxpayers' money after leaving office. Nor were most former presidents willing to cash in on their White House service by chasing paid speaking gigs or lucrative board memberships. Calvin Coolidge spurned offers to endorse commercial products.

The money was being dangled "to hire not Calvin Coolidge, but a former president of the United States," he said, and it would be shabby to "make that kind of use of the office."

It wasn't until 1958 that Congress, learning of Harry Truman's financial struggles, enacted the Former Presidents Act to provide a pension and expense account for retired presidents.

Its purpose, the Congressional Research Service explained in a 2014 report, was "to maintain the dignity" of the presidency, and ensure that no ex-president would be forced to engage in activities "which would demean the office he has held or capitalize upon it in any way deemed improper."

In that more innocent era, members of Congress took it for granted that former presidents would be loath to devote their post-White House years to hustling six- and seven-figure honoraria, or peddling their availability to influence-seeking special interests.

Most former presidents refused on principle to
chase paid speaking engagements or accept
lucrative corporate offers. - I could never lend
myself to any transaction, however respectable,
Harry Truman wrote - that would commercialize
 on the prestige and dignity of the office of
the Presidency.

Well, those days are gone, and they vanished long before the Clintons were on the scene.

Gerald Ford devoted his after-presidency to aggressive moneymaking, accepting the kind of corporate directorships and consultant contracts that earlier presidents avoided on principle.

"I have to earn a living," he offered as a justification. Ronald Reagan cashed a $2 million check from a Japanese media conglomerate in exchange for giving a couple speeches and attending a dinner.

George H. W. Bush took the money-grubbing to new heights: Within four years of leaving the White House, reported The Wall Street Journal in 1997, he had "earned millions of dollars speaking publicly for about 40 companies."

His son has followed suit, amassing a fortune of his own in speaking fees and royalties.

Bill and Hillary Clinton didn't start the fire of post-presidential buckraking. What makes their greed distinctive is the way they have pushed it to previously unimagined levels, leveraging Hillary's political career to advance their financial interests, and vice versa.

It's crass and unseemly; it would have appalled Coolidge and Truman. But if former presidents are hell-bent on turning the prestige of the presidency into a license to print money, there's little the rest of us can do to stop them. Electing leaders with better character would help.

In the meantime, taxpayers shouldn't have to treat fabulously wealthy ex-presidents to even more wealth. The Clintons and Bushes won't go hungry if they have to cover their own office rent and retirement expenses.

After all, they're not royalty. Even if they are richer than 99.9 percent of their fellow citizens.

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Iraq and the White House time machine

From the files of Jeff Jacoby at The Boston Globe

In an interview, Jeb Bush was asked whether, "knowing what we know now,"
he would have authorized the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Everyone had a field day with Jeb Bush's mishandling of the Iraq question Megyn Kelly posed during a TV interview last week: "Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?" Over the course of several days, Bush's answer switched from a firm yes ("I would have") to a firm no ("I would not have gone into Iraq").

Other GOP presidential hopefuls, quick to exploit Bush's fumble, quickly declared that in hindsight they wouldn't have gone to war.

Obviously there will be no do-over of the Iraq war authorization; the next president can't hop a time machine back to 2003. But even as a theoretical exercise, it's impossible to answer Kelly's question without clarifying the meaning of "knowing what we know now."

Was Bush being asked whether he would have invaded Iraq, knowing how the invasion was destined to play out over the next 12 years? Or was he being asked whether he would have invaded Iraq, had he known what mistakes to avoid in order to achieve the most successful outcome? If the former, then the question was whether the war on balance was worth its costs.

If the latter, it was whether, in retrospect, the war and its aftermath could have been managed more successfully. Those are very different queries, to which a thoughtful candidate might well give very different answers.

But why revisit only 2003? As long as we're asking presidential contenders what lessons they draw from George W. Bush's decision — widely supported at the time, remember — to topple Saddam Hussein, why not ask whether, "knowing what we know now," they would repeat other historical presidential decisions.

For example:

Would the men and women campaigning for president today have signed the Iraq Liberation Act, as President Clinton did in 1998, thereby making Saddam's removal from power a matter of explicit US policy?

With 20/20 hindsight, would they have ended the Gulf War after just 100 hours, as President George H. W. Bush did in 1991? Would they, like the first President Bush, have explicitly encouraged the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam — but then, when Kurds and Shi'ites heeded his call, done nothing to stop the dictator from savagely crushing the uprising?

Or take the more recent decision, by President Obama in 2011, to pull all American troops from Iraq, rather than negotiate a new Status of Forces agreement to maintain a substantial US military presence. That wholesale withdrawal — which was also widely supported at the time — created a vacuum that ISIS and Iran have filled with blood and terror. Knowing what we know now, would the candidates have brought those troops home?

President George H. W. Bush rides an armored jeep with Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf
during the 1991 Gulf War. Bush urged Iraqis to overthrow Saddam Hussein,
then allowed Saddam to savagely suppress the uprising and cement
his hold on power for another 12 years.

History is always messy, especially the history of wars and their aftermath. Intelligence failures, battlefield misjudgments, diplomatic fiascoes, wavering public opinion — these have played a role in nearly every conflict, including those we recall with approbation. Rarely does the decision to fight proceed as expected. The same is true of the decision not to fight.

World War II, the "good war," the war to liberate Europe from Adolf Hitler, ended with America acquiescing in the enslavement of Eastern Europe by Joseph Stalin. The Civil War was envisioned as a quick and decisive Northern campaign to put down a Southern rebellion; it turned into grinding, appalling four-year bloodbath.

President Reagan chose to withdraw rather than retaliate after US Marines on a peacekeeping mission in Lebanon were killed by Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsor. That was a signal of weakness that helped convince Osama bin Laden to regard America as a vulnerable "paper tiger," with awful results.

By all means, let's grill presidential candidates on what lessons they've learned from history, and how it informs their approach to national security today.

Let's also remember that politicians always find it easy to tell us how blunders could have been avoided in the past. They're not nearly so adept at avoiding them in the present.

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A special request from Hillary to all women

From the art studios of Dan Youra at Utoons.com

Get Your Daily Humor or Reality from Dan Youra at Utoons.com

Dan Youra is one of the outstanding conservative cartoonists in the trade today who follows in the footsteps of the great political cartoon masters, whose quotes inspire a new generation of followers.

"Outside of basic intelligence, there is nothing more important to a good political cartoonist than ill will." ~ Jules Feiffer, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist.

"Too many of today's artists regard editorial cartooning as a trade instead of a profession. They try not to be too offensive. The hell with that. We need more stirrer-uppers." ~ Bill Mauldin.

Youra was one of the first recipients of a Fulbright Scholarship and worked in Latin America. He served as an editor of Current Thought on Peace and War at the United Nations in New York.

"As long as there are politicians who continue to try and fool the voters, there is no chance of ever running out of material to work with because they create it themselves and about themselves," says Dan Youra.

Dan is the small business owner and operator of the Youra Studios located in the State of Washington.

Visit the Youra Studios at Utoons.com

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Go Away Hillary

Go Away Hillary from Warning Signs by Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

Know Caruba's Warning Signs

Other than earning her law degree, name one thing that Hillary Clinton has accomplished on her own. Her accomplishments—slim as they are—have been achieved on the coattails of either Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.

Had she not been the First Lady, would anyone have ever heard of her in the context of high power political posts? The short answer is no. She had traded on her celebrity and name recognition to become a Senator from New York and then, after a failed bid to become the Democratic Party’s candidate for President, accepted the position of Secretary of State.

Obama wanted to make sure she was “inside the tent” during his first term and, following that, her resignation has permitted her to now begin distancing herself from a man that many regard the worst President the nation has ever had.

Let’s back up a moment. Is there a single piece of major legislation during her term as a Senator from January 3, 2001 to January 21, 2009 attributed to her? The answer is no even though she served on important committees that included the budget; armed services; environment and public works; health; education; labor and pensions; and a special committee on aging. No point reviewing her voting record. If her former votes pose a political problem for her now, they will simply be dismissed.

During her four years as Secretary of State, can you name a single treaty that generated any significant media coverage? Again, no, If what political pundits believe and her own book reflects, her views on foreign affairs, strategic objectives and other weighty matters was entirely directed from the Oval Office of the White House. Now, it is true that the Secretary of State’s job is to carry out the President’s foreign policy, but at this point we know he had no consistent or strategic policy other than to ignore the Middle East and make nice with Russia.

As Secretary of State Hillary spent most of the time flying anywhere in the world so as not to be seen that much with Obama, but when the Benghazi consulate was attacked on September 11, 2012, killing our ambassador and three security personnel, what we learned was that she had previously paid little or no attention to the question of its protection at a time when other embassies in Libya were closing their doors to avoid attacks. The picture that emerged following the attack was that of someone simply occupying the office without devoting much time to the management of the State Department.

It’s one thing to allocate management to those in the Department responsible for its vast responsibilities, but the buck still stops at the Secretary’s desk and what we learned following the attack is that she backed up the absurd lies of the President who claimed that it was the result of a video no one had seen and a casual group of men who decided to attack the consulate. On the anniversary of 9/11!!! Questioned about it by a Senate committee, she famously said, “What difference at this time does it make?” It makes a lot of difference when the President and Secretary of State lie to the nation and the world.

After returning to private life following Obama’s reelection Hillary outrageously claimed that she and Bill were “dead broke” when they left the White House. Hillary’s inclination to say stupid things and lie without any need to should be especially troubling should she run for President and, yes, she has been running for a very long time.

In Hillary we have a person who has given little evidence of legislative or management skills who wants to be the first woman President of the United States. It will look good on her resume.

What, in fact, does she have to offer? Just as Obama offered voters the chance to say they had voted for the first black candidate for President, Hillary offers them the chance to say they voted for the first woman President.

That is not reason enough to elect anyone, black, white, man or woman.

We have learned from the Obama experience that his Marxist ideology, attachment to Islam, and disdain for the U.S. military has proven to be a formula for economic and foreign policy disasters. His signature legislation, Obamacare aka the Affordable Patient Care Act, has proven to be the antithesis of his promises that one could keep their own healthcare insurance and doctor if they wanted. It has been an unmitigated failure since a Democratic Party controlled Congress voted it into law in 2009 without a single Republican vote. In 2010 the voters gave political power in the House to the GOP.

Would Hillary allow Obamacare to be repealed if that was passed by Congress? Would she take steps to destroy the Islamic State threat in the Middle East? Or simply said, would she cease to be an extreme liberal masquerading as a moderate or centrist?

Do we want to elect a woman who in early September told a conference in Las Vegas that “Climate change is the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collections of challenges we face. The threat is real, and so is the opportunity…if we make the hard choices.” This is abject idiocy.

I find all the talk of her candidacy at this point to be obscene. It is an insult to the Democratic Party, but then so is Obama. If she is not opposed by primary candidates within the Party or she floats to candidacy simply as a political celebrity, simply as a woman, then the Party deserves to be massively defeated in 2016. We may get an indication of that in the November midterm elections.

I wish Hillary Clinton would simply go away and permit a serious election to occur.

U.S. - No influence in the Middle East

US No Longer has Influence in the Middle East from the files of Alan Caruba at Warning Signs

Read Caruba Files at Warning Signs

The rise of the Sunni Islamic State (ISIS) and its barbarity may be news to the West, but it is a very old story in the Middle East.

Briefly stated, the Arabs have been at war with one another for some 1,400 years before and since the emergence of Islam and the schism that occurred between its Sunni and Shiite components.

Dr, Daniel Pipes, a noted Middle East scholar, writing in an August 24 Turkish newspaper regarding the announcement of the Islamic State caliphate noted that “The classic concept of the caliphate—of a single successor to Muhammad ruling a unified Muslim state—lasted just over a century and expired with the emergence of two caliphs in 750 CE. The power of the caliphate collapsed in about the year 940 CE.” Arabs could not unite following the death of Muhammad, resulting in the two caliphs who claimed his mantle.

Apparently anyone can declare themselves a caliph as did ISIS’s Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on June 29, 2014. There is some question, for example, whether Abubakar Shakau, the leader of Boko Haram, has acknowledged al-Baghdadi or whether he was declaring his own separate caliphate in Nigeria where his group controls a large swath of the northern part of that nation.

Dr. Pipes predicts that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria will not survive due to “the hostility both from neighbors and its subject population, it will not last long.” As demonstrated in Nigeria, “other ambitious Islamists will act more boldly by declaring themselves caliph” and this could occur “from Nigeria to Somalia to Afghanistan to Indonesia, and beyond.”

When not fighting with each other as Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and other Muslim nationalities have been united by their disdain of the West which resisted Islam and which manifested its power via the colonization that occurred as the West reached out with its naval capabilities and military superiority wherever it could gain control.

Read Warning Signs

When the Middle East’s decaying Ottoman Empire sided with Germany in World War I, it was dissected by France and Great Britain whose diplomats literally created new “nations” such as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Trans-Jordan by drawing lines on a map. Using local sheiks as their flunkies, they governed through them. In time, military coups by local despots replaced them.

The Islamic State is only the latest manifestation of the ancient desire to not only control the whole of the Middle East, but to reach out and through terror to exert domination over the entire world in the name of Islam. Anyone familiar with the Koran knows this is a demand that is to be fulfilled with jihad or holy war.

In the real world, however, nations deal with threats to their sovereignty and economic interests. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Bush41 put together a coalition to drive him back into Iraq. The U.S. did nothing, however, when he had previously waged war with Iran for eight years after Iran had taken diplomats as hostages in 1979, releasing them in 1981. When al Qaeda attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001, Bush43 launched an attack on al Qaeda’s stronghold in Afghanistan, driving them into Pakistan. Saddam Hussein continued to be a threat to the stability of the region and, in particular the Saudis, so Iraq was invaded to depose him.

In both Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. discovered there was literally nothing resembling a functional government and so remained on to do some “nation building” at the cost of military lives and deployment. The ancient divide between Sunnis and Shiites has continued to make it impossible to modernize, i.e. westernize, the governance of either nation.

Since it took power in 2009 the policies of the Obama administration have proven to be a disaster, leaving the U.S. with no influence and no Arab allies in the Middle East. Even Israel has been rudely treated.

On August 19, as reported in the Daily Caller, “The highest religious authority in Saudi Arabia condemned the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.” The Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Al al-Sheikh was quoted saying “Extremist and militant ideas and terrorism, which spread decay on Earth, destroying human civilization, are not in any way part of Islam, but are the enemy number one of Islam. And Muslims are their first victims.”

When a Saudi cleric worries about “human civilization” at the same time he lives in a nation that routinely punishes its criminals with beheading and amputations, as well as limiting the rights of women, and forbidding any other religion to exist there, one has to also keep in mind the millions of dollars that members of the royal family and other Saudis have given to those advancing the Sunni brand of Islam. It has come back to bite them. Will they muster the courage to join in any military coalition using their air force and other military to defeat ISIS?

The Islamic State, however, has other enemies as well. As IDF Lt. Col. (ret) Michael Segall, a senior analyst at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, has written, Sunni jihadists “now constitute a real threat to Iran’s strategic assets in Syria and Lebanon, and especially its aspiration to restore Shiite supremacy.”

“The United States, says Lt. Col. Segall, “has lost almost all its cards and traditional allies in the region. One open question is whether it will also give up the Iranian nuclear card for a hollow promise from Tehran to help stabilize Iraq.”

Welcome, once again, to the Sunni-Shiite rivalry and animosity. The Islamic State is a challenge to what has been called the Shiite Crescent stretching from Iran to Syria.

Islam has been posing a threat to the West for a very long time now. It didn’t begin with the attack on the World Trade Center towers in 2001. It has its roots in the nation’s earliest years, dating back to when Thomas Jefferson was President, but in more recent times Al Qaeda attacked U.S. embassies in the 1980s.

Israel has been the only focus for unity among Arab nations, having been attacked unsuccessfully several times since 1948 when it declared its sovereignty. The creation of “Palestinians” permitted the wars to continue in other forms. It is currently engaged in a war with Hamas, a terrorist group whose goals mirror those of the Islamic State. The hidden hand of Iran can be found in attacks directed against Israel insofar as Hamas and Hezbollah are Iranian proxies.

For the next two years America’s options to change the course of events in the Middle East will be determined by a President who was elected to get the U.S. out of Iraq and intends to do the same thing in Afghanistan. He is a President who released five Taliban leaders while the nation still has troops in Afghanistan and he did so without consulting Congress. He drew back from taking any action in Syria a year ago.

President Obama has said he wants no “boots on the ground” but even his Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have made it clear that is the only realistic option if the Islamic State is to be destroyed. Military experts say it could be eliminated in months if we used our power to do so.

As always, however, when it comes to the Middle East, Obama arrives late, lacking an understanding of its true dynamics, and lingers too long to make a decision.

At this point in time, the U.S. can settle for nothing less than the destruction of the Islamic State, but it is unlikely to get much support from either European allies or action from the Arab states.