During Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, Corning lobbied State on various trade issues, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The company also donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to her family’s foundation. I know, I know—as Clinton Foundation contributor and trained Clinton spinner George Stephanopoulos—he’s an objective journalist too, you know!—will indignantly remind you, that’s no smoking gun. Then,last July, knowing Clinton would run for President  in 2016, Corning paid an obscene $225,500 honorarium for Clinton to speak to them. Notes Vox, reliable Democratic cheer-leader Ezra Klein’s liberal commentary website,

“The $225,500 speaking fee didn’t go to help disease-stricken kids in an impoverished village on some long-forgotten patch of the planet. Nor did it go to a campaign account. It went to Hillary Clinton. Personally.”

Got that? This isn’t a well-laundered foundation donation that benefits the Clintons but is plausibly deniable since it is given to their slush fund/charity. This, says Vox correctly, “involves the clear, direct personal enrichment of Hillary Clinton, presidential candidate, by people who have a lot of money at stake in the outcome of government decisions.” Hillary and Bill Clinton cleared $25 million on the lecture circuit over the last 16 months, according to  Hillary Clinton’s personal financial disclosure required of presidential candidates. That’s unprecedented prospective influence peddling, and objectively disgusting. As Vox writes in a masterpiece of understatement, “There’s a reason government officials can’t accept gifts: They tend to have a corrupting effect.” That, and the fact that it looks awful, reduces trust, and makes the profession of government look like a self-enriching scam, like in Mexico, or Africa. “True,” says Vox, “Hillary Clinton wasn’t a government official at the time the money was given. But it is very, very, very hard to see six-figure speaking fees paid by longtime political boosters with interests before the government — to a woman who has been running for president since the last time she lost — as anything but a gift.” Of course it’s a gift. If I pay someone $100 for walking in the room, it’s a gift. If you pay me $1000 for scratching my butt, it’s a gift. And if a corporation pays Hillary— as someone who gets $5000 to speak for three hours and is a lot better speaker, I still have trouble accepting this—almost a quarter of a million dollars for a canned speech of less than an hour—it’s a gift too. After all, it’s not like the company is selling tickets and making a profit off of the attraction. What does it get out of paying all that money? What does it think it gets? What does Hillary think it thinks it’s getting? What do you think they get, will get, or hope they get?

Come on.

Corporations do not, indeed, cannot, throw their stockholders’ money away. In addition to Corning, Qualcomm and salesforce.com also lobbied the State Department, and donated to the Foundation and paid Hillary those $225,000 fee on the same day, October 14, 2014. A half-million dollars on one day, to deliver the same speech twice! (God, I’m cheap.)   $225,500 sales force.com had also paid her that same fee to speak eight months earlier. Gee, what was in it for them? What was in it for the Godfather, when he paid bails, and rents, and overdue loans, and when he sent regular “gifts” to mayors and city council members, police chiefs and judges? Just good will, insurance, “future considerations.” These are bribes, without specifying the future quid for the present quo. Oh yes…Microsoft, the American Institute of Architects, AT&T, SAP America, Oracle and Telefonica all paid Bill Clinton six-figure fees to speak during the same period. Move along, nothing to see here. Other companies lobbied State while Hillary was in charge, and later paid the queen’s ransom for her to speak to them:  Xerox, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries. Concludes Vox:

“But there’s something very important to see that is different than the past stories. This time, it’s about Hillary Clinton having her pockets lined by the very people who seek to influence her. Not in some metaphorical sense. She’s literally being paid by them. And while most Democrats will shrug it off — or at least pretend to — it’s the kind of behavior voters should take into account when considering whether they want to give a candidate the unparalleled power of the presidency. It goes to the most important, hardest-to-predict characteristic in a President: judgment.”

Oh, I don’t know about that. It seems, so far at least, that Clinton has judged her support very well. Studies show that ignorant, gullible, “low information voters”  are especially willing to vote for demonstrably corrupt politicians. This is Hillary’s base, and she’s judging that she’ll be able to accept her bribes— in the open!—and still get elected so she can deliver on them. Anyone who is not ignorant and gullible and who still insists that Clinton is trustworthy and worthy of high office, however, demonstrates abject failure of judgment, values and citizenship. ___________ Source: Instapundit, Vox