Letters to the Editor
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Uncle Fester on excuses
She had a good excuse, she was stuck in the Senate.
Poor Hillary, stuck in the Senate!
No, but seriously, excuses aren't the issue. We know how much Senators make. I just mean that for someone like Clinton, the fact that most of her joint earnings came from her husband — and that she's been bankrolling her campaign at least in part with those funds — might be a sore point for her, personally.
And heck, who knows, maybe it's something that really would embarrass her among the sorts of people whom she's trying to win over. The conventional wisdom is that being known to have money hurt Edwards when he tried to talk about poverty — though frankly I think it was more that you could take the man out of trial law but you couldn't take the trial lawyer out of the man. His speeches all sounded like closing arguments in an accident liability case.
So I don't know — though it doesn't pass the smell test. I doubt there's much "there" there. So far it still seems like a non-issue.
I mean, think about it: consider a married couple in which both spouses work and average, let's say, $65 thousand a year each. (That's total, before any taxes.)
For a young couple that would be pretty well-off but not enough to put them entirely out of what we consider the middle class. For an older pair of working empty nesters at the height of their career earning power, it would even be more modest. Yet over seven years they'll gross a million dollars, give or take. Does that make them millionaires? The idea is laughable. In fact in some parts of the country it might not even pay the bills.
So taking the Clintons' tax returns and aggregating their gross income since 2000 is just a way of exaggerating their good fortune since the end of Clinton's husband's presidency. We know they've done well. Is saying, "a hundred million dollars" over and over going to make many people get a bad feeling in their tummy? It seems hard to believe.
There are better questions to be asking about the candidates. If nothing else, as other people have pointed out, this whole time nobody has been asking pretty much anything about McCain.
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The Point?
What will this tell us that we did not know? I knew they made lots of money: book advances and royalties, speaking fees, etc. I see that they paid their taxes (no fiddles) gave their tithes (10%) and made this over a period of 7 years. Mr Koppelman: what reasons are you referring to? I don't recall the Clinton's claiming poverty altho' Bill did not come from a wealthy home and Hillary looks pretty middle class to me.
Doesn't Hillary have to file annual financial returns with the Senate? Is that different from tax documents?
This is bs pure and simple.
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Speaking fees
It seems to me that paying Bill Clinton to talk is like paying the average teen age boy to masturbate.
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@HRH
Insert joke about "growth industry" and/or "if I got paid $100k for every time.."
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Where are the superdelegates?
Once again the supercowards are sitting back, refusing to endorse Obama.
If there is anything the reveals the inherent crookedness and selfishness of the Clintons, it's the news of their role as corporate whores to international business. The unregulated globalism that passed with the Clintons blessing in the nineties profited them greatly. At the same time they destroyed health care reform and gutted welfare for the middle class and poor.
We are not entering a great recession after years of declining wages.
Set aside Burkle. Set aside the Cayman Islands.
How can the superdelegates, even in their most Machiavellian machinations, think that nominating this pair of robber barons, so beholden to international corporate elites, can be good for the party or the country?
Where are the superdelegates? Smoking cigars in their gilded halls?
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Read the news, supercowards
80,000 JOBS LOST
CLINTONS MADE 109 MILLION
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Missing the point
I don't think the Clintons being rich has anything to do with either their commitment or ability to relate to the working class or poor. Nobody forgets what being poor is like, and there's a history of rich folk in the Democratic Party who have done right by the common American.
What worries me about these returns are basically three-fold:
1) Why'd they wait so long? I'm not going to speculate; I just want a straight answer from them.
2) Why the Friday dump? It automatically creates the impression that there's something shady there.
3) Why are they incomplete? Seriously, they waited this long to release some, but not all, information?
I don't think it's sexist or Clinton-hating or unreasonable to raise these questions. And it's certainly not my fault that the Clinton campaign has released these documents in a way that naturally leads people to be skeptical about their contents.
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The Clintons profited from American wage stagnation and job loss
Sorry, there is no way around it. That's how the people who paid off the Clintons made their money.
Their money belongs to American workers. Let's take it back.
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Where are the promised 2007 returns?
From what I remember, they had promised to produce the 2007 returns by April 15th in response to questions from the Obama campaign about how Hillary could loan herself $5-million.
The old trick of providing a ton of paper so no-one will notice what is NOT produced.
Interesting to note that no-one has picked up on this. Too dazzled by all the paper the Clintons provided I guess. To be honest, Christ Matthews did point out on his show that they did not give us 2007 returns as promised but so far, he is the only one to point this out.
The Clintons counted on the media being easily distracted and they won.
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IOIYAR
"Bill Clinton could tell voters he felt their pain. That particular line suddenly got a whole lot less believable."
As many have noted, that's a bunch of baloney, straight from Republican baloney factory: Being rich is a fault if you're a Democrat, but an asset if you're Republican.
How could you write such non-thinking drivel?
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Crabs in a barrel
Our country is in some serious trouble (perhaps Salon readers are too financially insulated to notice), people. It does seem a bit hypocritical that Mrs. Clinton pretends to be a working Joe (she went to Wellesley for god's sake--why are you pretending she's from a middle-class family that scrimped and saved to send her to a state school in Illinos. Ick.) when she's clearly very wealthy. I don't think the Roosevelts ever did this. I think noblesse oblige, no matter how patronizing, goes down a lot easier than a nouveau riche person pretending to be down with an America that's stressed and overextended. I understand why people are defending Hillary so vehemently--she represents what many people aspire to. That's why we never get anywhere in this country--the biggest shmo thinks if he works hard or greases the right hand, he, too, may be able to get in on some screwy deals and make it big. Do you seriously think Mrs. Clinton gives a hoot about auto workers, starving children, or even the average white-collar worker? If she did, she and her husband would have not have passed legislation that set the course for the Bush years. I don't think Obama is god, but to act as if every criticism of Mrs. Clinton is an attack from the dreaded Obama camp is childish and silly. I personally think McCain will win. Don't be surprised is Mrs. Clinton becomes even tangentially involved in his administration. At the end of the day, she's a master politician, not a woman of the people. Although the Republicans do not care about my demographic (woman of color, way left of Obama, still believe in the hippie ethos, sans drugs and irresponsible behavior), it would tickle me pink if McCain won and really made an effort to get people working, feed poor kids, improve our educational system, and improve relations with the world around us. That's my delusional pipe dream, or audacity of hope, if you will. I'm just so bloody sick of the Democrats.