Earlier today I wrote a surprisingly long (even for me!) comment on an article here at DK. The article in question can be found here, and is titled Barbra Streisand sums up the Hillary/Goldman Sachs conspiracy theory — in one tweet. My comment to that article can be found here.
I’m bothering to write this separate post because I read other peoples comments, and it seems to me that a lot of people spent took much time discussing that post without really understanding what it was they were talking about or arguing against. Many of them started with some serious factual errors that resulted in them drawing some pretty poor conclusions, and those flawed conclusions were nearly universally in opposition to HRC as a candidate. Whether you support HRC as a candidate or not shouldn’t be based on innuendo and hype. It should be based on fact and record. I’m just clearing up this bit of muckraking by addressing a few of the more-blatantly flawed claims.
Factual Error 1. HRC was a politician at the time she received high pay for speaking engagements.
This simply isn’t true, and the perception really needs to be corrected! HRC acted as a high-paid speaker only from 2013 to early 2015 — during the window after her political service as Secretary of State and prior to her announcement of candidacy for POTUS. Her highest earning year (the only full year she acted as a paid speaker) was 2014.
In fact, it’s comparing apples to chocolate pudding (after all, oranges are fruit too) to ever compare HRC’s speaking fees while not in any public office to those of Sanders. BTW, he knows it! As a man who has occupied national public office continuously since 1990, Sanders is well aware of the Senate rules for paid public speaking engagements while serving as a Senator. According to the NYT:
Most senators supplemented the $89,000 salary with fees for speeches or appearances, though at least some fees were donated to charities. Under Senate rules no senator can earn more than $2,000 for any speech, and the total amount of honorariums cannot exceed 40 percent of the salary, or $35,800 for all senators except the majority leader and the minoirty leader.
So, Sanders really shouldn’t be bothering to advertise his low speaking fees as though they should somehow compare to HRC’s. They don’t. He isn’t allowed to earn more!
Factual Error 2. HRC’s fees as a speaker are somehow elevated in comparison to other “similar” politicians/public figures.
Again, just not true. HRC was a First Lady of the U.S. which, although not elected, is often considered a political office. (A bad spouse can kill a candidate’s hopes or wreck them outright.) For the same position, Laura Bush reportedly earns $85k for public speaking and appearances, and unlike HRC, she’s never held an elected office.
Next, HRC became an elected official. First she was a New York senator — the first female elected to the position in that state. She served two terms in that role (2000-2009). After that, she served as Secretary of State under the Obama Administration (2009-2013). I believe that if you want to discuss people who are similar politicians to HRC, you should start with those who held the highest ranking elected job she did. You can do that best by comparing her fees to other Secretaries of State. Colin Powell earns up to $200k per appearance and Condoleeza Rice earns up to $150k (source ABC News here). Neither of them resided in the White House.
Quartz posted this article that compares HRC’s fees to comparable male political speakers — and it’s an unfortunately necessary comparison because no other woman has done what she has in American politics. In comments from the previous DK article, some people complained about HRC’s fees only mimicking GOP fees. Well, according Quartz, Al Gore (a past U.S. Vice President and Nobel Prize winner) asked $175k per appearance back in 2013, and Bill Clinton’s highest speaking fee was $750k.
It turns out that, in addition to elocution, rarity does matter in cost for political speakers. HRC is an extremely rare type of politician, and one of very few high-ranking female officials who was available for the speaking circuit while she was on it. It really just makes sense that she would be able to compete for “celebrity-priced” speaking engagements.
Factual Error 3. It’s all gone directly into her pockets, and it’s only from Wall Street.
Nope. If you look at the financial disclosures for the Clintons, you’ll see that for each year reported, the Clintons donated a minimum of 10% of their income to charity (while not yelling to everyone that they were “tithing” in order to buy religious votes) and paid over 30% of their income in taxes. Hillary, Bill, and Chelsea Clinton have all regularly donated fees from speaking engagements to the Clinton Foundation. A breakdown of those speeches can be found here.
As to the claim that HRC’s speaking fees are evidence of her being “bought” by Wall Street, I can understand the concern. After all, she’s now trying to achieve our nation’s highest elected office after she accepted the fees. However, to my mind, the concern is really one-sided. It ignores the fact that she was not in office at the time that she received the fees, and at the time had no guarantee of ever holding office again. (She doesn’t now.) In addition, her fees for Goldman Sachs weren’t somehow markedly higher than those for other banks or other types of groups. Besides that, the concern fails to consider a really important fact: Clinton spoke to (and was paid by) all kinds of groups while on the circuit. Either EVERYONE bought her, or NO ONE bought her — and many directly oppose one another philosophically or politically!