Colin Powell’s foundation and Hillary Clinton’s are treated very differently by the media

[ehrnst]

So what about the charity? Well, Powell’s wife, Alma Powell, took it over. And it kept raking in donations from corporate America. Ken Lay, the chair of Enron, was a big donor. He also backed a literacy-related charity that was founded by the then-president’s mother. The US Department of State, at the time Powell was secretary, went to bat for Enron in a dispute the company was having with the Indian government.

Did Lay or any other Enron official attempt to use their connections with Alma Powell (or Barbara Bush, for that matter) to help secure access to State Department personnel in order to voice these concerns? Did any other donors to America’s Promise? I have no idea, because to the best of my knowledge nobody in the media ever launched an extensive investigation into these matters. That’s the value of the presumption of innocence, something Hillary Clinton has never been able to enjoy during her time in the national spotlight."

.......................................................................

AT&T is one of the very biggest donors to America’s Promise, and for much of the Bush administration, Colin and Alma’s son Michael was chair of the Federal Communications Commission, which, among other things, regulates AT&T. I never saw anyone write a story investigating whether AT&T’s donations improperly influenced Powell’s pro-telecom regulatory stances. But it’s genuinely unimaginable that if Powell had chosen not to help AT&T with regulatory matters the press would have blasted him as a hypocrite. That would have been ridiculous.

But once you “know” that a putative charity is really just a nexus of corruption, then even the failure to be swayed by contributions becomes a news story. And of course once your decision-making is put under that kind of scrutiny, your impulse is to shut down and try to keep information close to your chest. But when you “know” that a person is corrupt, her lack of transparency is further evidence of corruption. And any minor information that does slip out is defined as news, even if the information does not actually contain evidence of anything all that interesting.

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/8/30/12690444/alma-powell-clinton-foundation

[MattP]

1. Michael Powell was a horrible FCC commisioner

[ehrnst]

2. And THIS

]But once you “know” that a putative charity is really just a nexus of corruption, then even the failure to be swayed by contributions becomes a news story. And of course once your decision-making is put under that kind of scrutiny, your impulse is to shut down and try to keep information close to your chest. But when you “know” that a person is corrupt, her lack of transparency is further evidence of corruption. And any minor information that does slip out is defined as news, even if the information does not actually contain evidence of anything all that interesting.

Hillary has been treated as "presumed guilty" since 1992. Wouldn't that make anyone keep to themselves, knowing that anything and everything they say will be "proof" that they are guilty/hippocritical/lying.

[pnwmom]

3. So is the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which donated $100,000 to the Citizens United Foundation

in 2014, one year before Trump began his campaign -- running against the Citizens United decision and against super pacs, and promising to fund his campaign on his own dime.

[Native]

4. K&R