Greed of the Clintons

 

When Condoleezza Rice headlined a 2009 fundraising luncheon for the Boys and Girls Club of Long Beach, she collected a $60,000 speaking fee, then donated almost all of it back to the club, according to multiple sources familiar with the club’s finances.

Hillary Clinton collected $200,000 to speak at the same event five years later, but she donated nothing back to the club, which raised less than half as much from Clinton’s appearance as from Rice’s, according to the sources and tax filings.

 http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/the-clinton-foundation-non-profit-groups-fees-

If you haven't read Ms. Rice's memoir, I recommend it.  It's very inspiring.

An inspiration for all people, but especially women

Amazing Grace, violin and piano

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hFO6EcC0ls

"Amazing Grace” performed by Condoleezza Rice, former United States Secretary of State, and Jenny Oaks Baker, a world renowned violinist.

What the Rutgers graduates missed when they protested Condolezza Rice,

“a person who grew up poor in Jim Crow Alabama. Who lost a friend and playmate in 1963 when white supremacists bombed Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Who became an accomplished concert pianist before she tuned her ear to the more dissonant chords of international relations.

Secretary Rice was Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Denver and received a B.A. cum laude in political science—back before the worst grade a student had ever heard of was a B-.

The professor who influenced her most was Josef Korbel, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s father.

Secretary Albright and Secretary Rice don’t agree on much about international relations. But they don’t sit-in or teach-in at each other’s public appearances.

Secretary Rice got a master’s in political science from Notre Dame, a Ph.D. in political science from Denver and, in the meantime, was an intern at the Carter administration State Department and the Rand Corporation and studied Russian at Moscow State University.

She rose from assistant professor to provost at Stanford. (Ranked fifth-best university in America by U.S. News & World Report. You’re ranked 69^th.) While she was doing that, she also served, from 1989 to 1991, as the Soviet expert on the White House National Security Council under President George H. W. Bush. . .

Condoleezza Rice was named National Security Adviser in December 2000, less than a year before some horrific events that you may know of. She became Secretary of State in 2005 during an intensely difficult period in American history . . . And she saw the job through to the end of the fraught and divisive George W. Bush presidency, making moral and ethical decisions of such a complex and contradictory nature that they would have baffled Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle . . .

Here you are graduating from Rutgers, which is, as I mentioned, the 69^th-best university in America. Maybe Rutgers should add more vegan selections to its cafeteria fare. U.S. News & World Report scorekeepers go for that kind of thing. Actually, you’re tied for 69^th with Texas A&M, an NFL first-round draft with a small college attached.”

PJ O’Rourke, My Commencement Speech to Rutgers’ Geniuses

In her own back yard

Condi Rice was a Professor at Stanford University, a world traveler, a news analyst, an author, but most importantly for her, the daughter of two educators who sacrificed for her education, piano lessons, and her involvement in sports like skating and tennis. So she was shocked to discover when asked to deliver an elementary school graduation address that the ceremony was elaborate because 70% of the children would not finish high school. She was embarrassed that she'd lived in Palo Alto for a decade and knew little about the community.

"In 1991, Peninsula philanthropist Susan Ford and then Stanford University Professor Dr. Condoleezza Rice co-founded the Center for a New Generation, an innovative after-school academic enrichment program. The goal of the program was to increase the high school graduation rate in the Ravenswood City School District by helping middle school students prepare for high school and college. To accomplish this, the program focused on core subjects including Math and Language Arts. Electives such Art and Music were offered to help students express their imagination and creativity. Since the mid-1990s, CNG has been located at the James Flood Magnet School in Menlo Park . 130 students are enrolled in the program at Flood this year.

In 1996 CNG merged with the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Peninsula . Since that time, the program has continued to evolve. In recent years, 100% of graduating eighth graders have been accepted to prestigious private high schools including St. Francis, Sacred Heart, Eastside College Prep or other college matriculation focused programs in the community." Link

In her book (ch. 32) she points out that their efforts were not welcomed by the various nonprofits in East Palo Alto run by resident of the city. They were little more than job programs for the staffs of the organizations, money flowed to them from foundations and corporations, and there was little accountability. Misguided noblesse oblige, she says does little to help kids and is in fact guilt money.

Reading between the lines with Condi

Having almost finished Condoleezza Rice's memoir, Extraordinary, Ordinary People, I'm impressed and alternately bored. First, it's a remarkable story of a loving, supportive family and a dutiful daughter, an only child. Second, she's quite a name dropper, and I think has included everyone who was anyone or could become a someone or is now a has been. Maybe all autobiographies are that way--I usually read biographies. However, I think she has some subtle messages for conservatives who are so quick (like me) to criticize Barack Obama's administration.

1. Her father was obviously a powerful influence in her life, and the friends he made along the way, who sat at their kitchen table in days before public accomdations for blacks were as good as what whites had, would cause great concern if someone wanted to stir up trouble about her "associations." Her father was, however, a conservative Republican, but believed in honest, confrontational dialogue with those whose political ideas were different--i.e., radical blacks. She also numbers among her friends today many black Democrats. Based on the black Republicans I've seen on Glenn Beck's show, I'm guessing she voted for Obama. If you were black, wouldn't you in 2008, before you really understood what he was about?

2. She makes no apologies for affirmative action that most likely got her established at Stanford at a young age and before she had a strong publication record--she knows she was good enough, or better than other candidates, but she is honest about the need of the department to move ahead with minority faculty hiring.

3. She makes no apologies for the academic tenure system, in fact, calls herself a fan. Even so, she says, "it's true that university faculty since the 1960s have been overwhelmingly liberal. I strongly believe that students would be better served by a wider range of views and an environment that challenges the liberal orthodoxy that is so pervasive in universities today . . . conservative colleagues say that they simply censor themselves in political debates. I have never felt the need to do so." Odd that she doesn't see the similarity to blacks in the south who needed to submit to indignities to keep their jobs and security, nor that being a black female she has a double layer of protection against the anger and narrow mindedness of the left wing academics.

4. She notes from her early experience as a staffer in the National Security Council how many offices and agencies make decisions that could/should be made by Congress or the President. (Iran-Contra was devised and carried out by NSC.) This today is one of the big issues about the Obama government and its growing list of "czars," people appointed who have great power, but have never been vetted or confirmed and who by-pass the representative government. On p. 247, she called Brent Scowcroft "the most important man in Washington whom few Americans could identify in a photo lineup" and who wanted his NSC staff out of the limelight (something she couldn't do as a black woman).