[mikeash]

From that article: “The origins of the foundation go back to 1997, when then-president Bill Clinton was focused mostly on fundraising for the future Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas. He founded the William J. Clinton Foundation in 2001 following the completion of his presidency.”

[genericone]

Whether its a charity/fundraiser/guest-lecture/business-deal, I imagine it still works the same way, regardless of the stated focus or purpose of said thing: Money goes in, Influence comes out (or Favor_B in exchange for Favor_A). I have neither money nor influence, and the favors I can grant are minuscule, so I can't tell you what ratio of Money:Influence works for powerful people, but I can at least say that they are not inversely proportional. The more you give, the higher your surface area becomes to receive something and the more offended you can act if you don't receive something quid pro quo.

[candiodari]

Here's one thing the public purse gave to the Clinton foundation:

https://nypost.com/2016/10/02/bill-clintons-executive-suite-...

(Of course the real power behind money isn't the money itself, the ownership, but the power to use it. So for taxpayer's money, the power comes from the mayor, governor or president and to a lesser extent congress/senate and their lower level equivalents. For companies the power behind the money is management/directors/CEO, and to a (much) lesser extent shareholders. So one should always make the distinction between ownership and the ability to control something. The control is much better than ownership, for one thing, control is not taxed)

And before you say "but that's the president". Well we know about Bill Clinton, don't we. He's the sort of man that forces people in his employ to service him sexually. So clearly, he's the sort of guy that takes "one service for another" pretty damn (in fact illegally) far.

Now you can say "but Bush, and Obama (and even Trump) are better than that". Perhaps, but first, not likely, and secondly even if it's just the one, the results will be similar, perhaps a bit more limited in time at best.

One wonders just what level of favor that buys, but it must have been ... well let's say at least $20 million worth of favor. If you can put a price on it at all, as this is a property that doesn't get taxed, even gets maintained and serviced by the government for free and normally wouldn't be available at all. So that price is the cost price of this thing, actually buying this as a private individual would have been at the very least 10 times that.

[mikeash]

What do you mean, “the public purse”? That was funded entirely with donations.

[candiodari]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_Presidential_Center

So $165 million, firstly $11.5 million directly from the local government, > 10% from foreign governments, and several high 6 figure "donations" from people he pardoned (on top of those people paying "consultation fees" to close family members of the Clintons).

I probably should have said "by the public purse, among others".