Stephanopoulos

George Stephanopoulos, a Microcosm of the Bigger Clinton Scandal

The View from the Middle

If you haven’t read the book Clinton Cash, you should.  Oh what a tangled web they have woven.  It is revealing as well as entertaining, in a sad, sort of sick way.  But you can get the short version, a microcosm if you will, of the Clinton Cash for influence scheme by following the much easier to understand “George Stephanopoulos” saga.    

George was the White House Communications Director for Bill Clinton back in 1992 before becoming Bill’s Senior Advisor for Policy and Strategy in 1996.  Now he is chief anchor for ABC News and co-anchor of ABC’s Good Morning America.  No potential conflict there, right?

Last week, Stephanopoulos interviewed the author of Clinton Cash, Peter Schweizer, for ABC News.  It was seen immediately as an inappropriate cross-examination instead of an unbiased interview.  Within a few days, George revealed that he had donated $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation over a three-year period, and OOPS, had forgotten to report that to ABC or the world in general.  OK, now I see the conflict of interest.

For sure, he had donated the money because the Foundation does such a good job of making the world a better place.  The Clinton Foundation says that it fights Aids/HIV, childhood obesity, climate change and advocates women’s rights, although it is not named as a top charity for any of these causes. 

In fact, sources suggest that the Foundation gives only 15% of its assets to their causes with the rest of the 85% of its money going to travel, salaries and “other” expenses.  Charity Navigator won’t even give them a rating because (and I’m simplifying here) they don’t understand what the heck the Clinton’s are doing.

Yet despite all of this evidence, George Stephanopoulos couldn’t find a more suitable recipient for his $75,000 to fight Aids, or whatever, than the Clinton Foundation?  I guess the Aaron Diamond Aids Research Center just wasn’t good enough, or the Hewlett Foundation for climate change didn’t quite cut it.

Or could it be that neither of these foundations could also guarantee access to the Clintons for this ABC newsman.  Of course, George will deny that his donations had anything to do with access to the Clintons.  He will say that there are no videos showing he and Hillary shaking hands and with him saying, “OK, for this $75,000 I will get unfettered access to you and Bill for the next three years”.  He’ll say there is no e-mail that lays out a contract between the Clintons and him for future favors.

So, I guess we just have to take his word for all this.  NO!  We can actually use our own brains and decide for ourselves whether this kind of activity is appropriate.  Do we really want this kind of interaction between our politicians and the media?  Do we want this kind of give and take between our politicians and foreign governments? 

By the way, we do have recourse in all of these shenanigans.  We can choose not to watch George or even ABC altogether if we think we are getting a partisan skew to his reporting.  And, of course, we always have freedom of choice when it come to who you vote for.  Remember, when you are in that voting booth and you consider pulling the Hillary lever, you are in effect voting for this kind of behavior.  Is that what we really want in Washington?  Think it over.

Brady, meet Clinton

Tom Brady, Meet Hillary Clinton

 The View from the Middle

While in some ways Tom Brady’s situation couldn’t be more different than Hillary Clinton’s, but in other ways there are striking similarities.  The biggest difference is the actual gravity of the circumstances.  Tom Brady plays professional football, and while we have some rabid fans out there, no matter who wins the Super Bowl, the world order is not in jeopardy.  But, there are many similarities.

First, no matter how big a Tom Brady or Hillary Clinton fan you are, it is clear to most reasonable people that they are both guilty of inappropriate if not illegal activity.  It is interesting that defenders of both have used the same defense.  They say there is “no smoking gun” to convict them.  As if the only way to convict anyone of any crime is to have a video tape of the offense or a letter or email virtually admitting to the actions.

Do we really think Tom Brady is stupid enough to send an email or even a text message to the equipment manager or locker room attendant telling them to deflate the footballs?   Do we really think that a savvy, political operative like Hillary Clinton would be any less careful?

Yet, Ted Wells and the NFL have, in effect, found Tom Brady guilty.  Ted Wells said that he, “could not…ignore the import(ance) of the text messages” sent by James “the deflator” McNally.  Even though McNally never admitted to doing it, the connection was too strong to ignore, and Wells used the “Preponderance of Evidence” standard to make his ruling.

The evidence against Hillary and Bill is probably even stronger.  Of course we don’t have an e-mail from Frank Giustra or Ian Telfar laying out a quid pro quo for their speaker fees to Bill or their donations to the Clinton Foundation, but the connections are undeniable.  I’m sure that Bill is a wonderful speaker, but no one pays $500,000 just for inspiring words or pays millions to a foundation that only gives 10 to 12% of its assets to its beneficiaries.  The preponderance of evidence would suggest that influence was sought and clout was delivered.

The next similarity is the poor judgment used by both Brady and Clinton.  Tom Brady is a gifted NFL quarterback, whom many would argue is the best of all time.  In the very game that the Patriots were accused of deflating the footballs, New England pounded the Colts even worse in the second half, with properly inflated balls than they did in the first half with the illegal balls.  Did Tom Brady and the Patriots even need the advantage created by tampering with the balls?  And, what advantage did these under-inflated balls deliver?

Hillary and Bill Clinton are icons in America no matter which side of the political spectrum you occupy and no one is stupid enough to think that they were in danger of living their lives out poverty-ridden squalor.  First of all, Bill qualifies for his Presidential pension for the rest of his life.  While that’s only a measly $200,000 a year, Hillary probably pulls in another $50,000 from her pensions.  But that is just the tip of the iceberg. 

Through book deals and legitimate speaking fees, the Clintons could easily coast in at over a million dollars a year in compensation which would put them well into the top 1% of earners that the Obama administration loves to blame for the country’s problems.  The point is, they needed neither more celebrity nor more money, so why did they get involved in things that would risk their legacy? 

What is it about these celebrities that would entice them to risk so much for so little?  For Brady it was clearly not about the money.  His wife is a super model and their current net worth of over $400 million will probably allow them to skate by for the rest of their lives.  The Clintons also want for neither fame nor money.  So why do they do it?

The only thing I can come up with is a kind of greed.  No matter what they have, they always will want more.  Second, they must have a sense of privilege.  The rules are made for others, not them.  And by others, of course, they mean those other people that they feel are less entitled than they are.  And this may be the most disappointing thing about both of these messes.  Here are people whom millions have admired, that have tainted their legacy.  For one this may cost him the designation of the best quarterback that ever played the game.  For the other, it may cost her the White House.

Great new phone app

All,

An LLC that I am involved in, and run by a close personal friend, has just created an IOS Mobile App that was approved in the App Store on Saturday.  The App is called "Recapture".  Our goal is to replace your camera app.  We have four strong features I would like to explain:

1.  This app makes it a snap to move pictures and videos off of your phone and to your private cloud.  This will not only save you space on your phone, but will make it easy for you to search for them later on.

2.  Later, once you begin to use "Recapture" to take your photos and videos, all of them will go directly to your private cloud.  This happens automatically, and we will give you free storage.  You will no longer need to worry about space issues.  This is a powerful feature for anyone who owns an iPhone 16GB (which is about 60% of all iPhone users).

3.  The app will also have it's own personal search engine.  "No more scrolling through your photos looking for a specific picture".  We have created a very easy way to tag your pictures and videos.  The stronger the tags, the stronger the search.  Our hope is to own off-line search. 

4.  All videos shared through "Recapture" do not count against your Data Plan.  This is a great benefit for teenagers on the Family Data Plan.   

You will love the free storage and the search capability.  Use the link below on your phone to download the app and let me know your thoughts.  If you like it, which I am confident you will, forward this to all you friends, they will love it too.  We have found that teenagers, college students, and mom's with toddlers really love this app.

     

http://www.recaptureapp.co

God Bless,

Kevin Canfield

Looking for the Easy answer or the Right answer?

Looking for the Easy or the Right Answer?

 The View from the Middle

Imagine that you’ve been having a consistent, stabbing pain in your abdomen and you recently began to experience blood in your urine.  You go to your doctor and after a lengthy examination, the doctor suggests that this is a product of nerves and all you need is a pedicure and a massage.  You might be relieved.  You like the sound of this solution.  It’s painless and relatively inexpensive.  Life is good!  Right?

Well, the same thing is happening in Baltimore.  There is a tremendous problem of violence, drugs and poverty in the black community there, and the solution is to hang the six cops that arrested Freddie Gray.  In addition, of course, we should spend more money on our crumbling, ineffective public school system in Baltimore.  Wow, I’m relieved.  That sounds easy and relatively inexpensive.  Now we can all go back to our everyday lives and assume all is well in Baltimore and across the country.  But the next time you go to the bathroom, there’s still blood in your urine.

I don’t agree with Elijah Cummings (D-Rep. from Maryland) on much of anything when it comes to policy and I often scratch my head at his dogged defense of Lois Lerner and the IRS.  However, his recent comments in Baltimore caught my attention, because I feel he is very close to the truth.

First, he said, “Our children are living messages that we are sending to a future that we will never see.”  That is very poetic and poignant, and I agree.  He also said that the problems in Baltimore are “broader” than just police interaction with young black men.  He talked about the need for education and training, which I agree with, but I want to take his comments to another level.

Elijah said that our young men and women need to be educated and trained, as if this is something that is done “to” them.  This suddenly made me aware that there are two sides to this equation.  There are things that we need to provide to our young people, and then there are things that our young people must take responsibility for.

Education is one of the keys to success in societies around the world, and there are responsibilities that we adults have to make sure our young people have the best opportunity to get that education.  Our young people then have a responsibility to take education seriously.  They need to go to school.  They need to study and stay in school.  They need to behave in school and not disrupt classes and they need to treat teachers with the same respect they so righteously demand for themselves.

There are still too many young black males in particular who drop out of high school or who are incarcerated and haven’t graduated.  Young black men are also less likely to go to college and way less likely to graduate from college than their white counterparts. 

The rules to avoid poverty are simple.  First, take your education seriously, graduate from High School at least and go to college if at all possible.  Second, don’t get pregnant before you are married and wait until you are 21 to do so.  Today, 70% of black births are out of wedlock (to be sure, the white rate is about 50% so there is need for improvement there), which leads to another problem, and that is single parent households.  God bless all the single moms out there, but that has to be the most difficult job in the world.  Statistics show that children from single parent households are four times as likely to live in poverty than children from two parent homes.

So the answer is simple.  Take your education seriously and stay in school.  Don’t get pregnant outside marriage and wait until you are 21 to do so.  And finally, fathers stay at home with your wives and help raise your kids.

Now, this is not the popular, easy answer like “go get a pedicure and massage” in my first example.  This is the message that says, “you have cancer, and you will have to endure surgery and chemotherapy to save your life.”  It’s not the fun answer, but it is what we need to do to save our children, our living messages to the future, from destruction.

And finally, we need to be relentless as we shout this message from every rooftop.  Every leader, black, white, red or blue needs to be reminding our young people about their responsibility in this “success in life” formula.  If we aren’t relentless, the music industry and the street will overwhelm them with a very different message every day.