Clinton Foundation – monoblogue

Haiti needs electricity. Hillary gives them a sweatshop (and her foundation gets a new donor)

Commentary by Marita Noon

Until Hurricane Matthew hit Haiti nearly a month ago, on October 4, the impoverished island country was out of the headlines – pushed aside by election news. But new emails which were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Republican National Committee and then shared with ABC News, made public on October 11, make Haiti part of the U.S. election news, as they highlight the cozy connections between the Clinton Foundation, Hillary Clinton’s State Department and the Clinton’s cronies. The corruption that has been brought to light is nothing short of scandalous – though, since it’s merely one more such story, few are probably following it.

I’m aware of this new information due to my multi-year collaboration with Christine Lakatos and her Green Corruption Files. She alerted me to the “bombshell new evidence” and she now has a full 26-page report available.

Hurricane Matthew made clear that the billions of dollars that poured into Haiti after the 2010 earthquake did little to help the 1.5 million people who were displaced when the 7.0 magnitude earthquake destroyed their homes in 2010. According to the New York Times, 55,000 people were still living in shelters when Matthew hit. However, earlier this year, HBO’s VICE newsmagazine series did a segment titled: The Haitian Moneypit. In it, Vikram Gandhi takes viewers through the deplorable conditions found in the refugee camps that have no electricity, fresh water, or functioning toilets. He claims: “hundreds of thousands of survivors are still displaced.”

Gandhi says that despite the $10 billion in relief that came into Haiti after the earthquake, “many parts of Port-au-Prince still look like the earthquake struck just yesterday.” He addresses the Zoranje model home project – described as a $2.4 million dollar showroom and the first approved reconstruction project headed by Bill Clinton and the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission. However, Gandhi reports, the homes were unsuited to Haiti. Once the expo was over, zero homes were built for Haitians. Today the model homes are occupied by squatters who live in the makeshift village without plumbing or electricity.

Perhaps the homes were never built because the companies didn’t donate, or didn’t donate enough, to the Clinton Foundation. In his film Clinton Cash, Peter Schweizer relays a story about a Florida firm with extensive disaster relief experience. The company spent $100 million getting equipment into Haiti, but only made a small contribution to the Clinton Foundation. The company didn’t get any relief contracts. Many contracts went to relief organizations that were also involved in the Clinton Foundation – which brags about its role in Haiti.

Lakatos explains: “In digging through over 1000 emails from Hillary’s State Department related to Haiti, I discovered additional damning proof that the Haiti ‘reconstruction plan’ was a huge pay-to-play scheme for filling the coffers of the Clintons and their cronies.” She continues: “We now have an ocean of evidence confirming that our former president Bill Clinton and his wife, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, exploited the poor Haitian people in the wake of the 2010 earthquake.”

In 2015, in an article titled The King and Queen of Haiti, Politico summarizes: “The amounts of money over which the Clintons and their foundation had direct control paled beside the $16.3 billion that donors pledged in all.”

While Lakatos’ complete report provides details with links to the supporting documentation, due to space here I am jumping to what I believe is the most dramatic example: The Caracol Industrial Park (CIP) – a $300 million project that was planned before the 2010 earthquake and was built in a part of Haiti that was not impacted by the earthquake (therefore not helping the victims.) The CIP was originally lauded by Secretary Clinton as creating 100,000 new jobs in Haiti, but got revised down and down – with current jobs at a dim 8000-9000.

The comingling of players, companies and organizations is overwhelming – but one of Hillary Clinton’s closest confidants, Cheryl Mills, is at the center of it. Addressing the project and the Clintons’ “public-private web,” the New York Times (NYT) states: “Cheryl D. Mills worked ceaselessly to help a South Korean garment maker open a factory in Haiti, the centerpiece of United States government’s efforts to jump-start the island nation’s economy after the 2010 earthquake.”

In short, “Sea-A Trading secured millions of dollars in incentives to make its Haiti investment more attractive,” writes NYT. Sea-A Trading’s chairman Woong-ki Kim became a Clinton Foundation donor after his firm secured the lucrative contract in Haiti. NYT calls Kim: “the sort of enlightened global capitalist the Clintons favor.” Adding to the intrigue, when Mills left the state department, she started a company called BlackIvy Group – for which Kim is a financial backer. NYT describes the relationship this way: “The partnership with Mr. Kim sheds light on the business activities of Ms. Mills – a longtime Clinton loyalist who is likely to play a significant role in any future Clinton White House – as well as the interlocking public and private relationships that have long characterized the Clintons’ inner circle.”

The company makes clothes using Haiti’s cheap labor (roughly $6.85 a day – though reports claim the factory doesn’t pay that much and accuse the factory of sexual harassment, bullying and humiliation.) Workers complain that after they pay for lunch and transportation, they don’t have enough money left to feed their families. Many feel that they were better off farming the land they were thrown off of to make room for CIP.

The primarily female workforce makes clothes for large American retailers, including Walmart and Gap Inc., which get special tax breaks for importing the clothes made in Haiti. Both companies are Clinton Foundation donors: Walmart has given $1 million to $5 million and Gap has given between $250,000 and $500,000 to the foundation.

Part of the $124 million in “incentives” the U.S. government provided (an unwitting donation from taxpayers) for CIP was to build a power plant to run the factory. While I have been unable to ascertain what fuels the plant, video makes it clear it is not wind or solar that Clinton touts. My research revealed: “Haiti is highly dependent on imported fossil fuels for electric generation.” It is most likely oil-fueled.

The electricity provided by the Caracol Electrification Project also powers some of the surrounding communities. The USAID site features stories of people living with electricity for the first time and elaborates on the dramatic improvement in health and quality of life since the area has reliable power. Many other similar reports exist.

A few months ago, Lakatos and I wrote about Hillary’s clean cookstove initiative: The developing world wants natural gas and electricity, Hillary Clinton sends cookstoves. This story is similar. Haiti needs electricity and Hillary gives them a sweatshop.

Considering the conditions in the Sea-A Trading factory and the hundreds of thousands of people throughout Haiti living in plastic tents and without electricity and the benefits it provides – one must wonder if the hundreds of millions of dollars that went to enriching Clinton Foundation donors, like Kim, wouldn’t have been better spent providing reliable fossil-fuel power to the people of Haiti. Doing so would have boosted the economy and helped families improve their lives. But that’s not how the Clintons operate and their fingerprints are all over the Haiti recovery efforts. Obviously, they have hurt the Haitian people, while helping themselves and their friends.

On November 8, America will decide if this is the kind of leadership we want.

The author of Energy Freedom, Marita Noon serves as the executive director for Energy Makes America Great Inc., and the companion educational organization, the Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy (CARE). She hosts a weekly radio program: America’s Voice for Energy – which expands on the content of her weekly column. Follow her @EnergyRabbit.

The Buffalo Billion fraud and bribery scheme: corruption and pay-to-play, a symbol of everything they’re doing

Commentary by Marita Noon

When New York’s Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo gushed over SolarCity’s new solar panel factory in Buffalo, New York, the audience likely didn’t grasp the recently-revealed meaning of his words: “It is such a metaphor – a symbol of everything we’re doing.”

The 1.2 million square foot building, being built by the state of New York on the site of a former steel plant, is looking more and more like another political promise of help for one of the poorest cities in the state that ends up enriching cronies without ever achieving any potential for the people.

Yes, it is a symbol of everything they’re doing.

Previously, during her first senatorial bid, Hillary Clinton also promised jobs to the economically depressed region of the state of New York – 200,000 to be exact. Citing a report from the Washington Post, CBSNews states: “Jobs data show that job growth stagnated in Upstate New York during her eight years in office, the report said, and manufacturing jobs dropped by nearly a quarter.” The Post’s extensive story reveals that jobs never materialized – despite “initial glowing headlines.” It claims: “Clinton’s self-styled role as economic promoter” actually “involved loyal campaign contributors who also supported the Clinton Foundation.” Through federal grants and legislation, she helped steer money to programs, companies, and initiatives that benefitted the donors but failed to reverse the economic decline of the region.

Now, new corruption charges reveal the same pay-to-play model linked to Cuomo’s upstate “Buffalo Billion” economic revitalization plan – and the promised jobs also look they will never materialize.

Back on January 5, 2012, Cuomo announced a $1 billion five-year economic development pledge for Buffalo. It was to be the governor’s banner economic initiative with the SolarCity factory as the cornerstone and a pledge of 1,460 direct factory jobs. Other companies, including IBM and a Japanese clean-energy company were also lined up.

With the state-of-the-art solar panel factory ready for equipment to be installed, the wisdom of the entire program is being scrutinized – and is coming up short.

First, on September 22, two of Cuomo’s closest aides – along with several others – were charged in corruption and fraud cases involving state contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Addressing the press at his Manhattan office, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara asserted: “that ‘pervasive corruption and fraud’ infested one of the governor’s signature economic development programs. Companies got rich, and the public got bamboozled,” reports The Observer. Bharara described the bid-rigging and bribery arrangement: “Behind the scenes they were cynically rigging the whole process so that the contracts would go to handpicked ‘friends of the administration’ – ‘friends’ being a euphemism for large donors. Through rigged bids, state contracts worth billions of dollars in public development monies, meant to revitalize and renew upstate New York, were instead just another way to corruptly award cronies who were willing to pay to play.”

The 79-page criminal complaint notes that campaign contributions to Cuomo poured in from people connected to the bribe-paying companies as soon as those businesses began pursuing state projects.

One of the companies that received the lucrative contracts was LPCiminelli – run by “Cuomo mega-donor” Louis Ciminelli. He allegedly offered bribes to Cuomo confidante Todd Howe – who has admitted to pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars from developers to rig bids on multimillion-dollar state contracts linked to Buffalo Billion projects.

Ciminelli received the $750 million contract to build the SolarCity plant. The Buffalo News cites Bharara as saying: “the state’s bidding process for the factory being built for SolarCity at RiverBend in South Buffalo turned into a ‘criminal’ enterprise that favored LPCiminelli, where company executives were given inside information about how the deal was to be awarded.”

Part of Cuomo’s deal with SolarCity – in which the state owns the building and equipment with SolarCity leasing it under a 10-year deal – requires the company to meet a timetable of job-creation quotas or pay hefty penalties. Even before the building was complete, however, the company slashed its job commitment from 1460 to 500. According to the Investigative Post, SolarCity claims it will still employ the original number, but due to automation, the majority of them will not be at the Buffalo plant. With the state’s $750 million investment, that works out to $1.5 million per manufacturing job. In a press release, Cuomo promised 1460 “direct manufacturing jobs at the new facility.”

Even the 500 jobs will only materialize if the plant actually starts production – currently slated for June 2017. SolarCity’s future is, as Crain’s New York Business puts it: “uncertain.”

Amid the company’s myriad problems are the facts that it has never been profitable, nor does it have manufacturing experience.

In February 2014, SolarCity’s stock price peaked at about $85 a share. Today, a share is less than $20. Microaxis gives it a probability of bankruptcy score of 48 percent. Crains reports that it posted a $251 million loss in Q1 2016 and a loss of $230 million in Q2. To “stop the bleeding,” Elon Musk (a donor to both the Obama and Clinton campaigns and the Clinton Foundation), who owns more than 20 percent of the company, announced that Tesla (of which he also owns more than 20 percent) would purchase SolarCity – this after as many as 15 other potential buyers and investors looked at the company and decided to pass. SolarCity even considered selling the solar panel manufacturing business.

Both SolarCity and Tesla are, according to the Buffalo News, facing a “cash bind” – this despite receiving billions in federal and state grants and tax credits as I’ve previously addressed. Tesla is described as “cash-eating electric vehicle and battery making businesses.” For SolarCity, its model – which finances its solar panel installations in order to make a profit on a lease that can be as long as 30 years, while it collects the lucrative government incentives worth billions (a practice for which Solar City is currently under Congressional investigation) – requires constantly raising new money from investors. Once the Tesla deal was announced, SolarCity’s lenders started to pull back.

The Buffalo News reports: “Stock in SolarCity…now trades for $4 a share less, or 19 percent less, than what Tesla is offering – a gap indicating that investors are uncertain the deal will be completed.” Additionally, the deal is being challenged by four separate lawsuits – which could delay the deal. Addressing the merger, one analyst said: “We see a lot more that can go wrong than can go right.”

Then there is the manufacturing angle. Originally, the Buffalo plant was going to manufacture high-efficacy solar panel modules developed by Silevo – a company SolarCity bought in 2014. Crain’s reports that it will instead produce complete solar roofs: something it says “Dow Chemical recently abandoned after five years because it could not find a way to make a profit on the technology.” But then, the Buffalo News says: “The initial production in Buffalo is expected to include photovoltaic cells that SolarCity purchases from suppliers and are used in the products that will be assembled in the South Park Avenue factory.”

Whatever the plant builds or manufactures, getting it operating will be expensive – even with the New York taxpayers owning the building and equipment – and will drain scarce cash from SolarCity at a time when its financing costs have increased.

Buffalo residents wonder if they’ll be stuck with the world’s largest empty warehouse and without the promised jobs.

No wonder the entire project is in doubt. Because of the Cuomo administration corruption allegations, other proposed job-creators, including IBM, have pulled out until the probe is completed.

For now, Cuomo is not a part of the criminal complaint – though his name is mentioned many times – and he claims he knew nothing about it, nor does he think he’s a target of the ongoing federal probe. “It is almost inconceivable the governor didn’t know what was going on,” Doug Muzzio, a professor of public affairs at Baruch College, said. “And if he didn’t know what was going on, you can argue he should have known.”

Bharara has suggested that the better name for the program would be: “The Buffalo Billion Fraud and Bribery Scheme.”

Yep, the Buffalo Billion project is a “symbol” of the political promises and crony corruption – “everything we’re doing” – that takes taxpayers dollars to reward political donors and then walks away when the jobs don’t materialize.

Hillary’s energy policies: enriching Wall Street cronies, while the poor are pawns in their political game

Commentary by Marita Noon

In his less-than-enthusiastic endorsement of Hillary Clinton as the Democrat’s choice for President, Sen. Bernie Sanders decried “Greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior” and declared that we couldn’t let “billionaires buy elections.” Perhaps his opposition research team discovered what we have about Clinton’s connections with the very entities he despises: Wall Street – which he’s accused of “gambling trillions in risky financial instruments;” and “huge financial institutions” that he says: “simply have too much economic and political power over this country.”

Wall Street and its “huge financial institutions” are Clinton allies – supporting both her campaign and donating big bucks to the Clinton Foundation.

In the batch of Democrat National Committee (DNC) emails WikiLeaks made public on July 23, DNC Research Associate Jeremy Berns tells his colleagues: “She [Clinton] doesn’t want the people knowing about her relationships on Wall Street.” He adds: “She wants to achieve consistency and the best way to do that is to keep the people ignorant.”

For the past four years, I’ve collaborated with citizen activist/researcher Christine Lakatos (she’s been at it for six years) on what we’ve called: President Obama’s green-energy crony-corruption scandal. Together we’ve produced the single largest body of work on the topic. In her blog, the Green Corruption Files, she posts her exhaustive research – what I affectionately refer to as the drink-from-the-fire-hydrant version. I, then, use her research to draft an overview that is appropriate for the casual reader.

More recently, our efforts have morphed to include the Democrats’ presidential nominee, as Lakatos found the same people are her “wealthy cronies,” too.

In Lakatos’ most-recent, and final Green Corruption File, released on July 19, she states: “While there are numerous ways you can ‘buy access to the Clintons,’ I’m only going to connect the dots to the Green Gangsters, which we’ve already established are rich political pals of President Obama, as well as other high-ranking Democrats and their allies, who were awarded hundreds of billions of ‘green’ taxpayer cash.”

Her lengthy report is “devoted to proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the Democrat presumptive presidential nominee, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is not on only in bed with Big Money (Wall Street, the Uber-Rich, special interests groups and lobbyists) and Dark Money (Super PACS and Secret Cash), she’s also bankrolled and is in cahoots with – directly and through her husband and her family foundation – the wealthy Green Gangsters, who are robbing U.S. taxpayers in order to ‘save the planet.'”

While the dozens of pages prove the involvement of names you know – like former vice president Al Gore, former Governor Bill Richardson, and billionaire donors Tom Steyer and Warren Buffett, and names you likely don’t know: David Crane, John Doerr, Pat Stryker, and Steve Westly – I’ve chosen to highlight the Clinton’s Wall Street connections that have benefited from the green deals that were cut in the Obama White House and that will continue on if Clinton wins.

Lakatos points out: “Clinton’s ‘ambitious renewable energy plans’ move far beyond Obama’s green mission that has been rife with crony capitalism, corporate welfare, and corruption.” Along with more climate rules, she “wants an open tab for green energy.” Remember the DNC’s official platform includes: “the goal of producing 100 percent of electricity from renewable sources by 2050” and “a call for the Justice Department to investigate fossil fuel companies for misleading the public on climate change.”

Three Wall Street names of my limited-word-count focus are Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Bank of America. Each is a top-contributing Clinton campaign supporter and a Clinton Foundation donor. They have benefited from the hundreds of billions in taxpayers dollars given out for green energy projects through the Obama Administration. All three have expectations that Clinton will continue the green programs put in place by the Obama administration.

Goldman Sachs – donated between $1 million to $5 million and the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund has contributed between $250,000 to $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

As Lakatos pointed out in previous reports, Goldman Sachs is connected, via various roles, to at least 14 companies and/or projects that won green taxpayer cash – a tab that exceeded $8.5 billion. One specific example: Goldman is credited as the “exclusive financial adviser” for the now bankrupt Solyndra ($570.4 million loss). Then there is now-bankrupt SunEdison – an early Goldman Sachs investment. SunEdison received $1.5 billion in federal and state subsidies. And, in 2010, Goldman Sachs handled the IPO of government winner, Tesla Motors that was awarded $465 million from the Department Of Energy (DOE) ATVM program – they got much more if you factor in the state and local subsides: $2,406,805,253 to be exact. Also, according to Goldman, “In May 2013, [they] helped raise over $1 billion in new financing for Tesla Motors.”

Citigroup/Citi Foundation – donated between $1 million to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation.

This big bank is connected to approximately $16 billion of taxpayer money. Lakatos, in 2013, reported that Citi was actively involved in securing the 1703/1705 DOE loans; was a direct investor; and/or served as an underwriter for the initial public offering (IPO) of at least 16 of Citi’s clients that received some form of government subsidies. One green company where Citi is a major investor is SolarCity, which has been subsidized through various stimulus funds, grants and federal tax breaks at the tune equaling almost $1.5 billion. Billionaire Elon Musk is CEO of Tesla and Chairman at SolarCity. He’s a Clinton Foundation donor ($25 million to $50 million) and Hillary supporter, too.

Bank of America/Bank of America Foundation – donated between $500,000 to $1 million to the Clinton Foundation.

Bank of America, amongst other green efforts, participated in Project Amp – a four-year, $2.6 billion project to place solar panels on rooftops in 28 states. At the time, the Wall Street Journal reported: “Bank of America Merrill Lynch unit will provide $1.4 billion in loans for the project,” of which “the financing is part of Bank of America’s plan to put $20 billion of capital to work in renewable energy, conservation and other clean technologies that address climate change.” In the final days of the DOE loan program (September 2011), the DOE awarded a partial guarantee of $1.4 billion loan to Project Amp. According to a press release, Bank of America increased its second environmental business initiative from $50 billion to $125 billion in low-carbon business by 2025 through lending, investing, capital raising, advisory services and developing financing solutions for clients around the world.

It’s important to remember that climate change – which is the foundation of the green agenda – is part of the Clinton Foundation’s mission statement: “In communities across the globe, our programs are proving that we can confront the debilitating effects of climate change in a way that makes sense for governments, businesses, and economies.” Additionally, the Foundation’s coffers were enriched when Clinton and her State Department staff solicited contributions from foreign governments to the Clinton Global Initiative, as we detailed in our coverage of her clean cookstove campaign.

In addition to Clinton’s obvious Wall Street connections, one of the many startling realizations that can be gleaned from the report on Hillary’s Horrendous Hypocrisy, is the fact that these companies – some of which would not be in existence without the grants and tax credits – that received millions in taxpayer dollars, took our money and gave it to the Clinton Foundation and to the Clinton Campaign. As was the case with Clinton Foundation donor/campaign fundraiser George Kaiser, these billionaires are making lucrative profits, at taxpayer expense, from bankrupted green companies like Solyndra.

In short, we, the taxpayers, are subsidizing the well-connected millionaires and billionaires – and Hillary Clinton is part of all of it. Meanwhile, she admonishes the average American to combat climate change by driving less and reducing our personal use of electricity.

Bernie Sanders was right to be alarmed. Huge financial institutions do have too much political power. Wall Street billionaires are trying to buy Clinton the White House. In return, she’ll be sure their green energy investments pay off for them by demanding that America go green.