How did that work out for the unemployed?
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Hillary’s jobs plan sponsors have history of enriching Bill
When Hillary Clinton stepped in front of a podium this week to announce a new initiative to train and hire unemployed young Americans, some familiar corporate logos were plastered in the background behind her. Companies like JPMorgan Chase, Microsoftand Courtyard Marriott donned the backdrop.
They were familiar to most Americans as household corporate names. But for former President and Mrs. Clinton, they were familiar in a different way, as big-ticket entries in their personal checkbooks.
Long before getting behind Mrs. Clinton’s latest public service effort, all three companies enriched her husband, former President Bill Clinton, with six-figure speaking fees that turned the 1990s Arkansas middle-class family into millionaires on the strength of his gilded tongue. And some of the companies were also gracious sponsors to the former president’s Clinton Global Initiative foundation that provides him his day job in retirement from the White House.
The episode is the latest example of how the Clintons have intertwined their public service and private gain, often tapping the same sources for money that benefits them politically, personally and charitably. And that exclusive club of philanthropic and corporate interests will also likely be at the top of the list of companies seeking favor should Mrs. Clinton run for the White House and win.
“One of the big problems in democracy is that these relationships are developed over long periods of times,” said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, noting that political dynasties like the Clintons or Bushes often have long-term relationships with many different people and corporate interests.
“The payoff may be far in the future,” she said. “That’s especially difficult for the press, researchers and ultimately the public to connect the dots.”