The Germans and the Clinton Foundation

It's one of those German stories that leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

It was reported today by The Welt....the German government gave money to the Clinton Foundation....at some point between July and October.  Five million dollars (4 million Euro roughly).

Reason?  Limited details....related strictly to environmental work apparently.

So I dug into the story. It came via a federal grant from the German Environmental Agency.  It's run by a SPD member....so the odds are that Merkel herself didn't know about the grant.  Did the chief of the SPD Party (Gabriel) know?  Unknown.  The minister in charge of this agency wouldn't have had to brief Merkel or Gabriel.

So unfairness to this reporting?  No.  You can look up the statistics (I did in July time frame).....roughly seven to eight percent of what they take in....actually goes to charity work.  The rest goes to office rent, operational costs, travel of the Foundation members, and salaries.  Yeah....they consume a minimum of ninety percent of their money without any affect on charity concepts.

Did the German Environmental Agency know that percentage?  I seriously doubt it.

Legal Insurrection did a complete write-up of the episode, and their angle or question was....did this have to do with campaign funding?  No.  What was said that they were giving this money NOT for campaign money.....but it was related to the work done by the Clinton Foundation over the International Climate Initiative.

The problem here, is that the more you look at this....you just to ask other questions.  Was this the ONLY payment that the German government made over the past ten years?  Were there other payments?  How much was forwarded to the Clinton Foundation?  Was there some favor anticipated or expected from this?

The odds that public-run TV will talk over this in the news?  Virtually zero.  By next week....it'll be mostly forgotten except by the German print media....privately run.....and you might see another question or two come up over who else in terms of foundations do they fund.

Germans over the past decade, I've come to notice....aren't so thrilled over wild spending of money that has no real value or payback.  You can ask a crowd of twenty Germans about wasteful spending, and virtually everyone has a story or two to tell....way past BER or Stuttgart-21 or the Hamburg Opera Hall.  Four million Euro?  Maybe if that was all that was spent....they'd just grumble.  My guess is that if you dig into this over the past five or six years....there's probably another couple of donations from the government in a form of a grant.