Progressive Elitist Cronyism on Bloomberg Business Radio

While on my way to my laboratory this morning, I heard two federal government ads on Bloomberg Business Radio between 0430 and 0435 hours.  The first was an ad admonishing fathers to spend time with their children.  The second was a FEMA ad telling you to have an emergency plan and to have supplies prepared.

Now Bloomberg Business Radio is very much a Progressive Elitist operation.  Its audience is not one filled with the poor and under-educated.  If the government ad telling fathers to spend time with their children was aimed at reducing federal welfare costs to single-parent families, this is not the audience to be directing such an ad to.  In fact, I am pretty sure that the audience is very heavy in Progressive Elitists who feel quite superior in their parenting skills and in their superior incomes.  Should these generally more educated and wealthy listeners also need to be harangued to have emergency plans and supplies as well?

Should the federal government be acting as the adult in the room to educate and request responsibility from the more educated and wealthy people who listen to Bloomberg Business Radio at the expense of the general population?  It really is not a proper function of the federal government to be running such ads on any radio station, but it is especially odd that it is running them on Bloomberg Business Radio.

Unless, one views this from a rather cynical angle.  Bloomberg Business Radio is quite the dependable supporter of an expansive role for government.  It is very friendly to big government and a government that is a growing government.  So if you are a government agency that appreciates that support, why not encourage it with an advertising budget?  Yes, preferentially spend your advertising budget on a crony business even if the audience is not the right audience for the message.  We will rub each other's backs.  Here is some advertising money so this friendly radio station can stay on the air and continue to praise the benefits of big government.  This is a form of bribery.

Is the Clinton Foundation a Charity?

It is widely being said that the Clinton Foundation gives only about 15% of its income to charity, with the rest going to administrative costs. The truth is actually worse than the unbelievably low 15% pass-through rate. Out of $140 million of donations, the Clinton Foundation has only delivered about $9 million to direct charity work. That is 6.4% or only 43% of the widely stated 15% pass-through rate. It is usually held that a decent charity foundation has a pass-through rate of at least 75%. To be sure, one may make charitable donations to a think tank, where one expects most of the money to go to organization employee salaries, office expenses, and travel to meetings. But, the Clinton Foundation claims to be a charity devoted to women's rights, environmentalism, and mitigating harm caused by catastrophic man-made global warming.

The Clinton Foundation has large contributors from Ukraine, Russia, Saudia Arabia, and other Middle Eastern countries. In view of the following observations, why are wealthy people from these countries giving money to the Clinton Foundation?

• These countries are not very keen on women's rights, environmentalism, or catastrophic man-made global warming.

• There is so much need for charity in work within these countries that they ought to donate their money locally.

• Large donors do their homework to find out what the charity pass-through rate is. If they are really interested in doing charity work, they will not accept a 6.4% pass-through rate to actual charitable aid.

So how else can one provide a motive for the large contributions to the Clinton Foundation coming from nations such as Ukraine, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other Middle Eastern nations? It is very clear that the donations were motivated by a desire to influence Hillary Clinton's decisions as Secretary of State and perhaps after she might become President. Given this clear motivation, Hillary Clinton had to know she had a very serious conflict of interest problem. Yet, the Foundation took the money and hid the fact that it was being given to the Foundation for such purposes.

Then Hillary compounded the bad perception by actually approving the take-over of a company that provides 20% of the U.S. uranium needs by Russian interests with close ties to Putin.  Our extensive aid to Ukraine is now subject to being questioned as the result of bribes, rather than as a result of our national interest as well.  I expect we will learn about many other questionable decisions now that this Clinton Foundation is in the spotlight.

Any rational individual will be greatly influenced by the past history of immorality exhibited by the Clintons in assessing the likelihood that they were actually influenced by these bribes to make decisions that might be contrary to the national interest of the United States.