The Bill to be paid 159

Some alumni of Trump University are dissatisfied with what they got for their money. They have been allowed by Judge Gonzalo Curiel [a US District Judge for Southern District of California] to bring a class action. Donald Trump has protested that the Judge is exhibiting bias against him, and suggests it may be because Curiel is a nationalist Mexican and would likely oppose Trump’s plan, if he becomes president, to build a wall on the US-Mexican border to keep Mexican illegal immigrants out of the US.  The media – even conservative media such as Fox News – have made much of Trump’s protest, headlining the issue for the last several days. Behind all the reporting lurks the implication that Trump University is a shady business. As yet there is no evidence that this is the case.

Trump’s rival for the presidency, Hillary Clinton,  has not waited for evidence to denounce Trump University, calling it “a scam” and Trump “a fraud”.

Meanwhile a truly scandalous story about the Clintons themselves and a shady university project that might interest a press dedicated to revealing facts the public should know (a dream press that does not exist), is going unnoticed by the mainstream media.

Bloomberg reports:

Former President Bill Clinton stepped down from his position at Laureate International Universities, part of Laureate Education Inc., on Friday [April 22, 2016]. His five-year term as “honorary chancellor,” the company and Clinton’s staff said, had expired.

But Peter Schweizer [author of Clinton Cash, a book about the Clintons’ financial dealings], suggests a different explanation: Clinton actually resigned in order to avoid a wave of negative publicity. Bloomberg Politics [refers to] … a chapter of the book describing what Schweizer presents as a “troubling” co-mingling of official State Department business with the private financial affairs of Bill Clinton and a nonprofit run by Laureate’s chairman, Douglas Becker.

Laureate, which runs for-profit colleges, hired Clinton just as the Obama administration began drafting tougher regulations for federal financial aid that goes to students who attend for-profit colleges. Around the same time, the Senate committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions launched an investigation into the industry. In his book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, Schweizer writes that after Bill Clinton accepted the position at Laureate in 2010 in exchange for unspecified payment, his wife “made Laureate part of her State Department Global Partnership”.

The State Department subsequently provided tens of millions of dollars to a nonprofit chaired by Becker, the International Youth Foundation. Citing the foundation’s tax filings, Schweizer writes that while IYF had received government grants (mainly from the U.S. Agency for International Development) as far back as 2001, they “exploded since Bill became chancellor of Laureate”, accounting for the vast majority of the nonprofit’s revenue.

In 2010, “government grants accounted for $23 million of its revenue, compared to $5.4 million from other sources. It received $21 million in 2011 and $23 million in 2012″.  

The Clinton campaign disputed Schweizer’s characterization. “This is yet another false allegation in a book that is fast being debunked,” said Brian Fallon, a campaign spokesman. “The International Youth Foundation was funded by the Bush administration, well before Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State. In fact, the group’s USAID funding actually went down in the year that she arrived at the State Department, not up.” [But] a Bloomberg examination of IYF’s public filings show that in 2009, the year before Bill Clinton joined Laureate, the nonprofit received 11 grants worth $9 million from the State Department or the affiliated USAID. In 2010, the group received 14 grants worth $15.1 million. In 2011, 13 grants added up to $14.6 million. The following year, those numbers jumped:IYF received 21 grants worth $25.5 million, including a direct grant from the State Department.

Laureate has declined to say how much it has paid the former president. Hillary Clinton’s financial disclosure forms in 2012 revealed only that her husband received non-employee compensation of more than $1,000 from the company that year. The Clinton Foundation’s donor disclosures showed that Laureate cumulatively gave between $1 million and $5 million through 2014. In his book, Schweizer noted that Bill Clinton, during the period when his wife was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, spoke at Laureate campuses in Honduras, Mexico City, Germany, Spain, Turkey, Malaysia, Brazil, Peru, and the United States. Schweizer wrote that “based on his typical fee scale”, the half dozen speaking events Clinton has done annually for Laureate “means perhaps $1 million per year”. He dubbed this blend of government service and private remuneration the “Clinton blur”.

Laureate plays up its Clinton ties in a big way. Its homepage prominently features a photo of Clinton speaking this month at a new campus in Panama. Other pages detail Clinton’s role at Laureate and the company’s relationship with the Clinton Global Initiative. The fact [?] that Clinton only signed on for a five-year term was not publicly disclosed when his hire was announced in April 2010 or at any time before [the day he resigned]. In a statement, Laureate spokesman Matthew Yale said, “The politics and motives of the author are obvious and his claims are baseless. We are proud of our association with President Clinton, who shares our commitment to helping young people change their lives through education. We never needed him to defend us, our results speak for themselves — for example the industry leading repayment rates for our students participating in the U.S. government loan program. Regarding the International Youth Foundation, this is an independent non-profit organization; not an affiliate of Laureate. Their contracts with the US government pre-date Secretary Clinton’s arrival at the State Department.”

Schweizer writes, “Isn’t it troubling that while Bill Clinton was being paid by a private corporation, that corporation was also benefiting from State Department actions? Isn’t it troubling that an affiliate of that corporation is also receiving tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money? Isn’t it troubling that this seeming conflict of interest was not disclosed?

It is. It could be described as the routine corruption of the venal Clintons, and of the those – the media, the agency watchdogs – who do not choose to discover and disclose it.

Why did Bill Clinton “abruptly resign” as “honorary chancellor”?

Was the “honorary chancellor” – a title implying he took no fee for acting in that capacity – really paid only “non-employee compensation of [something] more that $1000”, and “perhaps a million per year” between 2009 and 213 for speaking engagements at Laureate colleges?

Breitbart reports and comments under the headline:  Hillary University: Bill Clinton Bagged $16.46 Million from For-Profit College as State Dept. funneled $55 Million Back:

With her campaign sinking in the polls, Hillary Clinton has launched a desperate attack against Trump University to deflect attention away from her deep involvement with a controversial for-profit college that made the Clintons millions, even as the school faced serious legal scrutiny and criminal investigations.

In April 2015, Bill Clinton was forced to abruptly resign from his lucrative perch as honorary chancellor of Laureate Education, a for-profit college company. The reason for Clinton’s immediate departure: Clinton Cash revealed, and Bloomberg confirmed, that Laureate funneled Bill Clinton $16.46 million over five years while Hillary Clinton’s State Dept. pumped at least $55 million to a group run by Laureate’s founder and chairman, Douglas Becker, a man with strong ties to the Clinton Global Initiative. Laureate has donated between $1 million and $5 million (donations are reported in ranges, not exact amounts) to the Clinton Foundation. …

As the Washington Post reports, “Laureate has stirred controversy throughout Latin America, where it derives two-thirds of its revenue.” During Bill Clinton’s tenure as Laureate’s chancellor, the school spent over $200 million a year on aggressive telemarketing, flashy Internet banner ads, and billboards designed to lure often unprepared students from impoverished countries to enroll in its for-profit classes. The goal: get as many students, regardless of skill level, signed up and paying tuition.

“I meet people all the time who transfer here when they flunk out elsewhere,” agronomy student Arturo Bisono, 25, told the Post. “This has become the place you go when no one else will accept you.”

Others, like Rio state legislator Robson Leite who led a probe into Bill Clinton’s embattled for-profit education scheme, say the company is all about extracting cash, not educating students. “They have turned education into a commodity that focuses more on profit than knowledge,” said Leite.

Progressives have long excoriated for-profit education companies for placing profits over quality pedagogy. Still, for five years, Bill Clinton allowed his face and name to be plastered all over Laureate’s marketing materials. As Clinton Cash reported, pictures of Bill Clinton even lined the walkways at campuses like Laureate’s Bilgi University in Istanbul, Turkey. That Laureate has campuses in Turkey is odd, given that for-profit colleges are illegal there, as well as in Mexico and Chile where Laureate also operates.

A hint there of further corruption – that the governments of those countries were bribed to except Laureate Education from the law.

Shortly after Bill Clinton’s lucrative 2010 Laureate appointment, Hillary Clinton’s State Dept. began pumping millions of its USAID dollars to a sister nonprofit, International Youth Foundation (IYF), which is run by Laureate’s founder and chairman, Douglas Becker. Indeed, State Dept. funding skyrocketed once Bill Clinton got on the Laureate payroll  

Throughout ten Democratic Party debates, Establishment Media have not asked Hillary Clinton a single question about her and her husband’s for-profit education scam.

Posted under corruption by Jillian Becker on Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Tagged with , ,

This post has 159 comments.

Permalink