
$153M in Bill and Hillary Clinton speaking fees, documented - doener
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/05/politics/hillary-clinton-bill-clinton-paid-speeches/
======
ksar
There are prevailing market rates for high profile appearances. There is an
associated economic rationale: celebrities who show up at the club, earn those
places more money.

Spending this kind of cash on public servants serves an economic purpose too:
it buys access, influence, and favour by association. You can't really prove
it, but you can reason that this is to the detriment of the public at large.

~~~
Alex3917
> There are prevailing market rates for high profile appearances.

The problem isn't that they charged for the speeches, which is standard. The
problem is that they kept the money for themselves, which is a huge ethics
issue.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Both of them are currently private citizens. They have no ethical obligation
to do anything with their income.

~~~
maxxxxx
Right now not. But it's definitely a warning sign if somebody who is running
for president is indebted to banks.

They are also greedy. After the first 100 million they have made they should
be rich enough to give their wisdom to non profits who have less money than
banks.

~~~
peteretep

        > indebted to banks
    

So the money was a loan? Are you implying the banks can withdraw the money if
they're unhappy with performance?

    
    
        > They are also greedy. After the first 100 million
    

You know, I think you should be giving everything over your first $15,000 to
charity too. It's cool for me to tell you how to spend your money, right?

~~~
maxxxxx
The bankers are not stupid. They don't give a lot of money for nothing. They
expect that the Clintons will open doors for them. The Clintons know that too
so if they want to keep the money rolling they better be useful for the banks.

I am not telling them what to do with their money but it should be clear to
everybody who their paymasters are.

~~~
peteretep

        > They don't give a lot of money for nothing
    

Your explicit assumption there is that having the former president of the US
give a speech at your Xmas dinner doesn't carry the speaking fee in terms of:

\- Impressing your clients: "Of course we're large, powerful, and trustworthy
- Bill came to talk us last week"

\- Hospitality to your clients; offering important clients a chance to come
and watch the speaker

\- Making the partners feel like Very Important Peoples

\- Morale boosting for current and future employees

As a random example, I note that CareerBuilder had Condoleeza Rice speak at
their Empower 2015 sales conference. Do you think there was a political /
regulatory angle there?

~~~
maxxxxx
I think the bankers hope for some more direct benefits but I really don't
know. It certainly would be interesting to find out if they pay the same money
for other celebrities. One theory could be that by paying lots of money to
former politicians they send a signal to active politicians that there is a
lot of money to be made later if they play nice now. This seems to work for a
lot of regulatory agencies where people switch to highly paid jobs in industry
later (see SEC for example or Eric Holder could be an example too).

I don't know about CareerBuilder's motivations and I don't know how much they
paid.

~~~
peteretep

        > It certainly would be interesting to find out if they
        > pay the same money for other celebrities.
    

This is an interesting article, and I've no particular reason to doubt City AM
(a well-known but very localized UK publication) as a source:

[http://www.cityam.com/221317/forget-politicians-salaries-
its...](http://www.cityam.com/221317/forget-politicians-salaries-its-
afterwards-they-make-big-bucks)

Blair is an interesting one - USD $600,000 (converted from GBP) for a speech.
I'm really not sure what political influence the Filipino company that paid
him that could have hoped to get, but I can certainly understand the PR
benefits from their perspective.

------
maxxxxx
I have read that they also get paid around 300k for college commencement
speeches. I think a lot of people think those speeches are made for free to
support young people. So the speaker gets a boatload of money and a lot of
credit for doing something good for youth. A double win.

~~~
bobwaycott
Is this funded by tuitions?

~~~
_delirium
It's typically funded by university budgets, so in part by tuition. Sometimes
universities will claim it's funded out of non-tuition money, but money is
fungible so it's hard to really say that credibly, unless you can demonstrate
that it's funded by entirely separate money that wouldn't have existed had it
not been for the commencement speaker. For example claiming it's funded
entirely by a major donor is misleading if it's money the major donor would
have donated anyway.

------
dforrestwilson1
It truly astounds me that people just shrug and say "That's politics" when you
point this sort of thing out.

It was not always this way. There is a clear conflict of interest.

~~~
peteretep

        > It was not always this way
    

Citation?

~~~
kzhahou
Citation:

[1] The good ol' days.

~~~
sb057
The good ol' days being approximately 95 years ago.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teapot_Dome_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teapot_Dome_scandal)

~~~
Grishnakh
Wow, if that happened today, it wouldn't even be in the news, much less result
in a scandal and someone going to prison.

------
KKKKkkkk1
Let's say I'm a VP at Google and I'm moonlighting as a consultant for
startups. If you were Google and you found out that I earned $153M from this,
how would you feel about this?

~~~
beambot
The VP is likely required by employment contract to submit all such
relationships (contracting, consulting, advisor boards, board of directors,
and maybe even angel investments) to Google beforehand so that Google can run
a conflict if interest check and give their blessing or prohibit the activity.

------
frogpelt
It's no secret that Bill Clinton has made somewhere in the neighborhood of
$250k per speech since he was president.

This number doesn't surprise me.

I'm surprised people want to hear what he has to say that much but I say if he
can get that much, he should keep giving talks.

~~~
tn13
It is not content. It is about buying contacts. Bill makes some phone call
that enables a meeting with someone somewhere which leaves you rich and you
pay some kickback. This is blatant corruption by people who are supposedly
fighting for poor.

~~~
cromwellian
Kate Couric got $110,000 for a speech and she's a newscaster/anchor. I think
you need to look at the broader market for paid speeches before you throw out
such accusations.

The Clintons were not born with silver spoons in their mouth, and they grew
from modest origins to where they are today. I don't hold it against them that
they're able to command such high speaking fees anymore than some musicians
can command high prices for concerts, or actors can command high salaries for
movie parts.

The whole campaign to argue Hillary is corrupt hasn't really worked, and
that's essentially what these kinds of articles are, an extension of the
Sanders campaign argument. But her voting record is among the most liberal in
Congress, more than her husband, more than Obama, it's more liberal than 82%
of all congressional votes. (Susan Sarandon was on Bill Maher the other day
and simply didn't want to hear the facts he raised about her voting record.)

Clinton has a penchant for policy wonkishness that doesn't sit well with young
impatient progressives who want to make a quantum leap from here to there. So
for example, if one is for a $12 minimum wage first, instead of forcing the
entire nation to $15 instantly, because one is worried about the effect of a
200% increase to say, Bob's coffee-shop in Nebraska, one get's raked over the
coals. Why is it so hard to understand there's a huge cost of living
difference in SF/NYC vs other states and a federal minimum wage quantum jump
like that should be done cautiously?

If one is for fracking as a temporary bridge, because natural gas is cleaner
than coal and releases less CO2 _if your regulate methane leakage and protect
ground water_ , as well as sending less money to regimes which spread
Wahhabism with the money, then of course, you're really just a neo-liberal
owned by the Kochs. But is it realistic to ban fracking and coal and switch
totally to renewables without a transition? You can't just be against
something without a viable alternative.

I agree with pretty much everything Sanders wants to do, but I want a
realistic vision of how to accomplish it and a reasonable time span. I don't
like the way anyone who wants to advocate an iterative, incremental approach
is shouted down as an establishment sell out. There's too much guilt-by-
association going on, and not enough realistic discussion of the nuanced
policy choices we face.

~~~
tn13
You are mistaking political propaganda for economic arguments.

------
Grishnakh
I really have to question why this article is on HN; this site seems to
normally highly discourage political discussion, and I really don't see what
this has to do with tech. If you mods want to have political discussions, go
ahead, but don't be surprised if they turn nasty, as they usually do in online
forums.

------
puppetmaster3
In most EU countries they would be jailed.

~~~
luckydata
why? It's not illegal to speak for a fee in any country of the EU as far as I
know.

~~~
Jerry2
Payments they're receiving are not really for their speeches. It's just a way
to legally funnel money into their organization so they can sell access and
influence.

------
Gratsby
The only reason this is an issue during this election is that nobody would pay
Sanders anything significant to speak.

A former POTUS and the woman who has come closest to the office in history?
That's a draw. It's worth paying for.

~~~
pessimizer
You must be confusing these speeches with concerts. The groups who pay for
these speeches are not selling tickets to them and pocketing the difference.

edit: I worked for a sometimes controversial lobbying organization who hired
H. Clinton to speak, and they 1) knew exactly what they were buying, and 2)
weren't interested at all in the content of the actual speech.

~~~
comex
Your second paragraph is a valid criticism, but the first is illogical.

> The groups who pay for these speeches are not selling tickets to them and
> pocketing the difference.

It seems that in some cases they are doing exactly that, if you count private
fundraisers (not Clinton's own campaign fundraisers):

[http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clinton-
what-225000-and-p...](http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clinton-
what-225000-and-pair-nikes-buys-you)

In other cases, attending the speech is presumably a perk of being in a high
position at the companies in question, and like any other perk it can be
priced despite individuals not directly paying for it.

(I suspect that a significant part of the demand is neither bribery nor
related to the content of the speeches, but based on the attendee's desire to
feel prestigious by being at an exclusive event. To this extent, it makes
sense to hide the cost for the individual attendees behind indirections such
as perks or fundraising for charity, because a more direct quid pro quo would
cheapen the prestige by assigning it explicit monetary value. This is not to
say that influence is not also a factor, which it surely is.)

