Hillary owes more money to Mark Penn now than she did earlier.

[madfloridian]

What is going on here? This is drastic amount of change in money owed. Mark Penn was never one of my favorite people, and I think he is vastly overcharging her. These figures from the LA Times are shocking.

Hillary's debt to Penn grows

Penn is by far her biggest creditor -- 72% of what she owes.

And the debt to his firm increased by $82,000 to $5.36 million between October and November, according to Clinton’s latest campaign finance report filed with the Federal Election Commission this evening.

Whether Penn is ever repaid in full remains to be seen. Some in Clinton’s organization blame Penn for mishandling aspects of the one-time front-runner’s campaign.

If Barack Obama were to select Clinton as his secretary of State, her ability to raise money could be seriously curtailed.

The Hatch Act generally limits federal employees from getting involved in fundraising activities, although it’s not clear how that law would apply to a former presidential candidate who becomes a Cabinet official.

Maybe the Obama campaign could help raise some more money, as previously promised.

This is sad the amount is going higher. Mark Penn is one of those "gravy train" consultants.

He is not mentioned in the part of the book I transcribed, but trust me, he was talked about often in Crashing the Gate.

These are pages from the Chapter entitled The Gravy Train.
This statement is from Brad Carson. He is telling of his bad experiences with the DC consultants sent to work his campaign.
Page 74.

"They're above you in the food chain," said Carson. "You have to negotiate about what you do in your commercials. They call up the DSCC and complain if you're not doing the 'right thing.' They're a source of intelligence to people back in D.C. And these guys are all powerful people, prominent people. They aren't even working for you. It's an amazing thing in a lot of ways, really amazing." Carson lost the election 53 to 41 to Tom Coburn."

From page 75:

Sometimes the party takes complete control of a campaign. Missouri state treasurer Nancy Farmer, who ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004, is a good example. A successful statewide candidate, Farmer had no real Democratic primary opposition and could take aim
straight at the three-term Republican incumbent, Senator
Christopher “Kit” Bond. The DSCC officials told her that they’d
build her campaign and help her raise up to half of her campaign
funds. Faced with an incumbent who was clearly going to raise three
times as much, Farmer wasn’t in the position to tell the party committee
to leave her alone; that as state treasurer, she already knew
how to win a statewide race in Missouri. So not only did the DSCC
pick almost all the consultants for her campaign, they eventually
forced significant changes in her campaign staff, including ousting
her hand-picked campaign manager—the same one who had successfully
managed Farmer’s previous campaigns—in midstream and
bringing in one of their own. Farmer lost to Bond by a 56-43 margin.

Mark Penn is one who lectured the Obama campaign, telling him not to return to his "base."

Mark Penn, the high-priced strategist who did such a good early job of launching Hillary Clinton's Democratic presidential campaign to doom at the hands of Obama, tells CBS.com he's worried that the Windy City gang will repeat the mistakes of the last two losing Democratic presidential campaigns by returning to the base after their convention instead of staying more on the convention message of centrism.

He was harmful to her campaign, though loyalty remained.

He was eventually supposedly let go, but he remained at the outskirts of the campaign. This is the old politics.

I would like to think we are getting the newer politics now. I am worried, though, that the progressives, bloggers, liberals, and the fellow who enthused us in 2003 and then in 2005 as chair are not getting nods yet.

[Submariner]

1. The Clinton's have or had about $110 million during the campaign

didn't they? That's an obscene amount of dough. I doubt they will ever have trouble paying their bills.

[Whisp]

2. and Shame on You, Barack Obama, for not helping poor Penn out!

o my.
the trough, it gets wider all the time.
you can gauge it by the friendly smiles of the rich ones holding out their tin cups, they get wider and wider.

[democracy1st]

3. Sen. Clinton cuts her campaign debt to less than $7.5 million (Link)

Clinton cuts down the size of her debt

WASHINGTON – Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has reduced the size of her presidential campaign debt to less than $7.5 million as of Nov. 1, according to campaign finance reports filed Thursday.

The documents show Clinton raised nearly $690,000 in October, a minor sum compared with the $218 million she amassed in her failed presidential bid.

Of the $7.5 million owed to vendors, nearly $5.4 million was to her former adviser and pollster, Mark Penn. Clinton owed vendors a high of $12 million at the end of June. That was the month she abandoned her presidential campaign and ceded the Democratic nomination to now President-elect Barack Obama.

The amount she owes Penn has been her longest outstanding debt.

She also lent herself nearly $13.2 million. Under federal law Clinton can only repay herself $250,000 with private donations. The report also showed that she had nearly $1 million cash on hand at the end of October.

Obama is considering Clinton for secretary of state. As a Cabinet member Clinton would face fundraising restrictions to retire her vendor debt.

A 2001 advisory opinion by the federal Office of Special Counsel said a federal employee who still had a campaign debt would be prohibited from "personally soliciting, accepting or receiving political contributions."

Clinton could name an agent from her campaign committee to continue to organize and hold fundraising events to retire the debt. Clinton would be limited to attending a fundraising event and simply stating her appreciation to donors.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081121/ap_ca/clinton_money#full

[madfloridian]

4. I guess Penn was sending in $82,000 in updated bills.

Can't figure it.