The Clinton Foundation reported Thursday that it has received as much as $26.4 million in previously undisclosed payments from major corporations, universities, foreign sources and other groups.

The disclosure came as the foundation faced questions over whether it fully complied with a 2008 ethics agreement to reveal its donors and whether any of its funding sources present conflicts of interest for Hillary Rodham Clinton as she begins her presidential campaign.

The money was paid as fees for speeches by Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton. Foundation officials said the funds were tallied internally as “revenue” rather than donations, which is why they had not been included in the public listings of its contributors published as part of the 2008 agreement.

According to the new information, the Clintons have delivered 97 speeches to benefit the charity since 2002. Colleges and universities sponsored more than two dozen of these speeches, along with U.S. and overseas corporations and at least one foreign government, Thailand.

The payments were disclosed late Thursday on the organization’s Web site, with speech payments listed in ranges rather than specific amounts. In total, the payments ranged between $12 million and $26.4 million.

The paid appearances included speeches by former president Bill Clinton to the Ni­ger­ian ThisDay newspaper group for at least $500,000 and to the Beijing Huaduo Enterprise Consulting Company Ltd., an investment holding company that specializes in the natural gas market, for at least $250,000. Citibank paid at least $250,000 for a speech by Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The disclosures underscore how much the Clintons have leveraged their star power to draw more money not just for their personal enrichment but also for the benefit of their philanthropic work.

The foundation, which has raised $2 billion since Bill Clinton left the White House, has emerged as a political headache for Hillary Clinton amid recent controversies over donations. The foundation, along with the Clintons’ paid speaking careers, have provided additional avenues for foreign governments and other interests to gain entrée to one of America’s most prominent political families. Some Republicans have charged that Hillary Clinton, during her tenure as secretary of state, was in a position to reward foundation donors.

Thursday’s disclosure is one of a number of instances in recent weeks in which the foundation has acknowledged that it received funding from sources not disclosed on its Web site.

The ethics agreement was reached between the foundation and the Obama administration to provide additional transparency and avoid potential conflicts of interest with Hillary Clinton’s appointment as secretary of state.

The agreement placed restrictions on foreign government donations, for instance, but the foundation revealed in February that it had violated the limits at one point by taking $500,000 from Algeria.

Thursday’s release regarding speaking fees follows earlier disclosures showing how the lecture circuit has also made the Clintons personally wealthy.

Last week, Hillary Clinton disclosed that she and her husband made around $25 million since January 2014 from speeches; Bill Clinton also was paid more than $104 million from 2001 through 2012 by delivering speeches.

The Clintons reported that income on federally required personal financial disclosure forms filed by Hillary Clinton as a senator, secretary of state and now a declared presidential candidate.

But the new disclosure indicates that the former president has also spent considerable time speaking on the foundation’s behalf — 73 times since 2002.

Hillary Clinton has delivered 15 such speeches, including one address to Goldman Sachs and another to JPMorgan Chase. Chelsea Clinton, who has taken on an increasingly active role at the foundation, has collected fees for the charity from nine organizations.

The foundation did not provide dates for the speaking engagements.

Vincent Salamone, a spokesman for the Office of Government Ethics, said this week that speeches delivered by public officials or their spouses acting as an “agent” of a charitable group in which the payment is made directly to the organization need not be disclosed in financial filings of public officials.

Brian Fallon, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said that analysis explains why the Clintons did not disclose the speeches while Hillary Clinton was a senator and then secretary of state.

While the Clinton Foundation has annually disclosed its donors since 2008, the foundation said Thursday that organizations that paid for Clinton speeches have not before been included in those lists because they were paying for a service and not making a tax-deductible donation.

Craig Minassian, a spokesman for the foundation, said the new release came as part of the foundation’s continuing commitment to transparency. Nonprofit groups are not required by law to release any information about their funders.

“In addition to the more than 300,000 donors who are all listed on our web site, posting these speeches is just another example of how our disclosure policies go above and beyond what’s required of charities,” he said in a statement.

“Like other global charities, the Clinton Foundation receives support from individuals and organizations across all sectors of society, backgrounds and ideologies because they know our programs are improving the lives of millions of people around the world,” he also said.

A foundation official indicated the speech dollars have been disclosed as revenue in annual tax filings to the IRS. The official indicated that the foundation will now update the public speech list four times a year, much as it has said it will do with other donors now that Clinton’s campaign has launched.

The Clintons have indicated that they donate significant personal funds to the foundation each year. The foundation official said that the couple have not considered speech revenue to be part of their personal charitable giving, and Fallon said they have never taken a deduction on their taxes for the fees.

There was one entity clearly associated with a foreign government that provided speaking fees, of $250,000 to $500,000 for a speech by Bill Clinton: The energy ministry in Thailand.

The U.S. Islamic World Forum also provided $250,000 to $500,000 to the foundation for a speech by Bill Clinton, according to the new disclosure. The event was organized in part by the Brookings Institution with support from the government of Qatar.

In addition, the list is studded with overseas corporations and foundations.

They included the South Korean energy and chemicals conglomerate Hanwha, which paid $500,000 to $1,000,000 for a speech by Bill Clinton.

China Real Estate Development Corp. paid the foundation between $250,000 and $500,000 for a speech by the former president. The Qatar First Investment Bank, now known as the Qatar First Bank, paid fees in a similar range. The bank is described by Persian Gulf financial press as specializing in high-net-worth clients.

The Telmex Foundation, founded by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, provided between $250,000 and $500,000 for a speech by Hillary Clinton.

The new data shows that a number of public education institutions paid the foundation for speeches by Bill, Hillary or Chelsea Clinton.

Those speeches drew backlash on some campuses, as universities paid hundreds of thousands to the Clinton charity at a time of rising tuitions and slashed university budgets.

After the academic sponsors, financial services and health-industry-related firms heavily populated the list of domestic sponsors.

At least 20% of Americans are gay says....more than half of Americans?

Wow! Anyone wanna throw their $.02 in on why we think we're surrounded by gay people?

Who the hell cares Nausi?

Seriously. People are gay, good for them.

If they hit on me, I will politely tell them that I'm not interested. They continue to hit on me, I will politely tell them to go *** themselves, since they didn't get the message the first time.

But why would it matter if a different human being is gay or not to you?

During the 2010 campaign for governor, Scott Walker famously promised to create 250,000 jobs in his first term.

Toward this end, one of his first acts as governor was to privatize the state's economic development agency. Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) opened its doors in July 2011. After a series of damning audits, which highlighted mismanagement and incompetence, and news reports of special treatment for Walker donors, this week Democratic state lawmakers called for a federal investigation of the scandal-plagued entity.

Walker missed his jobs goal by 43 percent. Now we know why.
Scott Walker, Chairman of the Board

When Walker created WEDC in 2011, he named himself Chairman of the Board.

Although it was a privatized agency, WEDC was in charge of a staggering amount of taxpayer dollars: $519 million in bonds, grants, loans, and tax credits in 2011-2012 alone, and the WEDC board is ultimately responsible for those dollars. While experts debate the role state government plays in job creation, one set of jobs Walker can more precisely lay claim to are those created by the economic development corporation he governs.

In 2012, new reports indicated WEDC had lost track of $12 million in loans because it never asked businesses to pay back them back. The federal housing authority demanded changes at WEDC after determining it had spent some $10 million in federal funds without authorization. A damning 2013 audit by Wisconsin's professional, nonpartisan state audit bureau made headlines when it documented dozens of ways in which the new agency was breaking the law. The audit showed that WEDC made awards to ineligible recipients, for ineligible projects, and for amounts that exceeded specified limits.

WEDC promised to clean up its act and reported to the legislature and the state audit bureau in October 2013 it had addressed all the concerns raised in the May 2013 audit.

But a new May 2015 state audit shows the situation is even worse.
WEDC Can't Account for Jobs Created and Isn't Even Trying

In 2014, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) spent weeks analyzing data and determined that for a two-year period (FY 2012 and FY 2013), WEDC could only lay claim to creating some 5,860 jobs. During the same period, the agency misled the legislature and the public by claiming to have created 60,000 jobs. Instead of counting the "actual" jobs created, the agency used the cooked-up phrase "impacted." CMD's report documented how jobs lost to plant closings in the state over the same period (13,616) trumped the job creation numbers.

A new audit by the state's audit bureau helps explain why.

The new audit details that WEDC failed to demand that jobs be created with each contract. WEDC failed to make sure that projects hit wage targets. And it failed to demand sufficient documentation, such as payroll records, to show that jobs were actually being created or retained.

In one instance, WEDC executed a $4 million contract and allowed $1.6 million of it to be used for debt repayment. WEDC would not answer CMD's inquiries on the topic, but a check of the WEDC data base suggests this award was made to SHINE Medical Technologies of Monona, who pled "business sensitive information" when contacted by CMD. In another instance, WEDC gave a business $517,000 in tax credits for "retaining" jobs even though it determined that the business employed 307 fewer eligible employees than a year earlier. A check of the WEDC database finds Plexus Corp. of Neenah, a company that has come under fire for taking taxpayer support then offshoring jobs, recording a 307 job drop.

On the jobs numbers, the audit gives us an update on the 5,840 CMD previously recorded.

Table 14 shows that in FY 2011-2012 WEDC programs were expected to create 8,754 jobs, but firms self-reported only 4,391 to WEDC. In FY 2012-2013, WEDC programs were expected to create 10,552 jobs, but firms reported only 3,503 to auditors. The 7,894 total is far less than the 19,296 promised.

State auditors had little patience for the numbers game, noting incredibly that "some information that should remain constant, such as expected results associated with contracts in previous years, changed in the online data from one year to the next." Auditors pointed out one mysterious 607 drop in expected jobs that should have remained constant.

Shar Habibi, Research Director for In the Public Interest, a nonprofit group that studies the impact of privatization, told CMD: "Substantial time and trained personnel are necessary to monitor contracts to make sure taxpayer dollars are not being wasted. Like other privatized economic development authorities, WEDC has failed to provide the transparency needed to hold contractors accountable to their failure to create jobs. Without the professional staff at the state's audit bureau, these abysmal findings may never have come to light."

Habibi also noted that Walker has a history of failed privatizations reaching back to his time as Milwaukee County Executive.

In 2009, Milwaukee County Executive Walker declared an economic emergency and used his special authority to lay off the union security workers at the county courthouse. He then replaced them with Wackenhut officers at a time when the firm was already under heavy criticism for failing to protect the public while patrolling the Milwaukee transit system. In 2011, an arbitrator reversed Walker's outsourcing of courthouse security and the county ended up having to cover back pay for the wrongfully laid off union workers, costing taxpayers an extra $430,000.
Tax Credits Awarded for Jobs Created in the Past Is "Parade Jumping" Say Experts

The audit examined WEDC's management of $88 million in tax credits.

WEDC failed to evaluate the financial soundness of one company reviewed and failed to evaluate whether proposed projects would occur anyway without the tax credits.

But the standout finding of this audit is that in 36 of the 42 contracts examined, WEDC allowed recipients to earn tax credits for projects that began before the contracts were executed. CMD had noted this trend when it wrote about WEDC in 2014, but the audit shows that the problem is systemic. Auditors conclude that 14.9 percent of jobs were created before WEDC executed contracts with recipients.

"This looks like 'parade jumping,' when politicians pay companies to do what they were going to do anyway--or in this case, to do what they've already done. It suggests the state wants to take credit for free market forces instead of addressing so-called 'market imperfections' such as the credit crunch still plaguing small businesses," said Greg LeRoy, executive director or Good Jobs First, a non-profit research group based in Washington, D.C.

The auditors were so surprised to have their 2013 recommendations ignored that they took the unusual step of recommending the legislature make it crystal clear that 1) all tax credit recipients must be required to increase net employment in the state, 2) tax credits cannot be allocated for activities that occur before contracts are signed, and 3) auditors suggested it was now time for the WEDC board to take responsibility for reporting to the public the actual numbers of jobs created and retained.
Writing Off Loans for Campaign Contributors

In case you think the audit is all negative, it's not.

WEDC did reduce the amount of loans past due. $5.5 million in past due loans were decreased by a whopping $4.2 million in 2014. But the privatized corporation achieved this by amending 13 loan contracts to defer payments, writing off 9 loans entirely and forgiving 2 others.

One $500,000 unsecured loan that was written off was a bad risk from the get-go. WEDC approved the loan in 2011 even though the recipient firm was dragged into court for failure to pay its bills in 2010. Plus, the contract did not require that any jobs be created at all. CMD was the first media outlet to flag this problem loan, disclosing that it was made to Walker donor Bill Minahan, owner of Building Committee, Inc. After it got the loan, the firm racked up $757,103 in judgments and liens.

The Wisconsin State Journal recently took a deep dive into this loan, documenting that it came shortly after Minahan gave Walker a $10,000 contribution and linking it to Walker chief of staff Keith Gilkes and Mike Huebsch, Walker's second-in-command as the head of the Department of Administration. In a separate article, the State Journal spoke to one unnamed employee who said that Minahan offered to reimburse him for making political contributions, a practice banned by Wisconsin law.
Walker Steps Up Damage Control

On the day the audit came out, Walker abandoned his effort to merge WEDC with the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority in the new budget.

One week later, and on the same day that WEDC released information about the failed BCI loan to the Wisconsin State Journal, Walker advanced the damage control by recommending to the legislature that they ax the $17 million WEDC grant program and the $19 million WEDC loan program.

Yet Walker continues to defend WEDC in public. This past weekend at the state Republican convention, Walker said of WEDC: "It's been highly effective. That's something that's been consistent throughout all the discussion."

But many in Wisconsin aren't buying it.

In May 2014, One Wisconsin Now ran the numbers on WEDC loans and found that nearly 60 percent of some $975 million in assistance distributed by WEDC since 2011 went to firms that had contributed to Walker or the Republican Governor's Association.

"This new audit confirms that WEDC is the embodiment of the cronyism, corruption and incompetence of the Walker administration," One Wisconsin Now's Scot Ross told CMD.

HuffPo and quite well written for them.

Gay agenda.

I've said too much...

Is that a part of agenda 21?

Why is that so familiar?

You gotta get around YouTube some more, lol.

I'm not surprised. If anyone wonders why I automatically assume that people are idiots when it comes to basic statistics, there's an example right there.

Is that a part of agenda 21?

***. Anything from Huff Post is never well written. For one thing, context is a concept that escapes the editorial staff. For another, humility.

You need at least those two traits before you can even think of writing well.

I was talking prose and research. Research is a part of context....

Humility has NEVER been part of writing well.

Josh Duggar on child molestation report: 'I acted inexcusably'

By Dana Ford, CNN

Reality TV star Josh Duggar issued an apology Thursday after reports surfaced that he allegedly molested girls as a teenager, saying: "I acted inexcusably."

Duggar, 27, is the oldest of the children who appear on TLC's hit show "19 Kids and Counting." The Duggars are known for being devout Christians who don't believe in practicing birth control and whose children follow strict courtship rules.

TLC pulled all episodes of the show currently set to air, according to Shannon Llanes, a spokeswoman for the network.

The network had already replaced several scheduled repeats of "19 Kids and Counting" with "The Little People."

"Twelve years ago, as a young teenager I acted inexcusably for which I am extremely sorry and deeply regret. I hurt others, including my family and close friends," Josh Duggar said in a post on Facebook.

"I confessed this to my parents who took several steps to help me address the situation. We spoke with the authorities where I confessed my wrongdoing and my parents arranged for me and those affected by my actions to receive counseling."

Mike Huckabee stands by Josh Duggar, family

He also resigned from his position at the Family Research Council, a nongovernmental organization that says its mission is to "advance faith, family and freedom in public policy and the culture from a Christian worldview."

A statement from the national faith-based group said he did so "as a result of previously unknown information becoming public concerning events that occurred during his teenage years."

The Duggar family has used its celebrity to back socially conservative causes and candidates, which could pose a problem for Republican presidential hopefuls who have aligned themselves with the Duggars.

Duggar's statement appears to refer to a 2006 police report obtained by In Touch magazine detailing the accusations and investigation of child molestation in Springdale, Arkansas. The report is heavily redacted and does not include the name of the person accused of "forcible fondling," but the dates listed in the document seem to line up with Duggar's statement Thursday.

On Thursday, a judge ordered that police report obtained by In Touch be expunged because one of the victims -- a minor -- could be "directly or indirectly" identified in it.

Lt. Scott Lewis of Springdale police told CNN that the police report cited by In Touch had been expunged because of a judge's order

Josh Duggar's parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, who are named in the police report, also spoke out Thursday.

"Back 12 years ago our family went through one of the most difficult times of our lives. When Josh was a young teenager, he made some very bad mistakes and we were shocked. We had tried to teach him right from wrong," they said on Facebook.

"That dark and difficult time caused us to seek God like never before. Even though we would never choose to go through something so terrible, each one of our family members drew closer to God."

The "19 Kids and Counting" series began in 2008 when the Duggar children numbered 17. It's one of TLC's top-rated programs, and the show was heavily featured during a presentation to advertisers last month.

It's unclear whether or not the show will go forward. Last season's premier of "19 Kids and Counting" was the highest-rated debut yet, according to TLC.

But some note that the network cancelled "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" after a tabloid linked a character on the show to a convicted child molester.

TLC declined to comment on the Duggars' statements Thursday.

Can '19 Kids' survive Josh Duggar scandal?

[Source]

I don't watch but someone here might...

So, a guy did something really stupid as a teenager, confessed it to authorities, and sought counseling. Because of that, he should forever be a social pariah, and it's creepy that he now has kids? Judgmental much?

Considering what this "something stupid as a teenager" was, yes, yes he should.

What he did was terrible. Being a judgmental jerk that gives people zero room to make amends for past wrongdoings isn't helpful.

I'm guessing if he weren't a religious person from a family that supports conservative causes you'd have a different opinion on the matter, but I could be wrong.

And I'm guessing that if he weren't a religious person from a family that supports conservative causes you guys would be less harsh on him, but I could be wrong.

And I'm guessing that if he weren't a religious person from a family that supports conservative causes you guys would be less harsh on him, but I could be wrong.

No, I wouldn't be one bit less hard on him. What he did isn't something you can apologize for, say some hail mary's, and pretend never happened. Not only should he have been in prison, he should have to register as a sex offender and pay for the decades of therapy those children need.

Well yeah, he should have the full force of the law brought upon him for what he did. The article left the actual offense, the age of the children, and his punishment out of it, hence why I thought you guys were overreacting. I haven't found that info yet.

From the sound of the information available, whatever his punishment, it was lessened extensively.

Okay, so you don't even have all the details and you're judging him to the max. I'm not in the business of condemning 15-year-olds for life for the stupid crap that they pull, but if it suits your cause then go for it.