It was appear that the Clinton dynasty, recalling the once and future Gore and Chinese Templegate, regards Chinese Americans as a vast campaign money-laundering network. The Washington Post has this bit about "Dishwashers for Clinton."
DONORS WHOSE addresses turn out to be tenements. Dishwashers and waiters who write $1,000 checks. Immigrants who ante up because they have been instructed to by powerful neighborhood associations, or, as one said, "They informed us to go, so I went." Others who say they never made the contributions listed in their names or who were not eligible to give because they are not legal residents of the United States. This is the disturbingly familiar picture of Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign presented last week in a report by the Los Angeles Times about questionable fundraising by the New York senator in New York City's Chinese community. Out of 150 donors examined, one-third "could not be found using property, telephone or business records," the Times reported. "Most have not registered to vote, according to public records."
This appears to be another instance in which a Clinton campaign's zeal for campaign cash overwhelms its judgment. After the fundraising scandals of President Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign, the dangers of vacuuming cash from a politically inexperienced immigrant community should have been obvious. But Ms. Clinton's money machine seized on a new source of cash in Chinatown and environs. As the Times reported, a single Chinatown fundraiser in April brought in $380,000. By contrast, 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry raised $24,000 from Chinatown in the course of his entire campaign.
The LATimes article can be found here. It includes these tid bits:
The tenement at 44 Henry St. was listed in Clinton's campaign reports as the home of Shu Fang Li, who reportedly gave $1,000. ...A tenant living in the apartment listed as Li's address said through a translator that she had not heard of him, although she had lived there for the last 10 years.
A man named Liang Zheng was listed as having contributed $1,000. The address given was a large apartment building on East 194th Street in the Bronx, but no one by that name could be located there...
Salespeople at a store on Canal Street were similarly baffled when asked about Shih Kan Chang, listed as working there and having given $1,000. The store sells purses, jewelry and novelty Buddha statues. Employees said they had not heard of Chang.
Another listed donor, Yi Min Liu, said he did not make the $1,000 contribution in April that was reported in his name. He said he attended a banquet for Clinton but did not give her money.
It is pretty clear that Ms. Clinton has a network of money launderers working for her in Chinese immigrant enclaves. There is no reason to believe that she herself has anything to do with this, but if she doesn't know about then she doesn't know what her own campaign is doing. This could be very bad if someone in her campaign is indicted in, say, February.
Money will find its way into political campaigns, by legal means or some other means. The only thing campaign finance reform accomplishes is to drive fund raising underground and make it more difficult to tell who is behind what political activity. Full disclosure without limits on contributions would bring almost all of this out into the light, where we could judge it. But the advocates of campaign finance control cannot resist the temptation to try to purify politics.
Recent Comments