Sinister rumors connect Hillary Clinton with tree-planting in Malawi

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is impressive. I do not care, at all, for Windows, and tend to have a poor emotional response to the very word “MicroSoft.” I also think that billionaires should be presumed guilty until proven innocent. Yet the work of the Gates Foundation — the overall effect of it, and the level of personal commitment to it — makes me think favorably of Bill Gates, as a person.

Yes, I also think his foundation, in some areas (education “reform,” in particular) may be doing more harm than good. But the bottom line is that it’s doing an awful lot of good on a remarkable scale. It’s a well-intentioned and largely effective effort to contribute to human flourishing and to generally make the world a better place.

So it would be really strange if the only references we ever saw to the Gates Foundation were vaguely sinister assertions that its existence and the work it does were somehow a dark stain on the legacy of Bill and Melinda Gates. That would be weird, misleading, churlish and inaccurate.

It would be really strange if every mention of the Gates Foundation implied that it was something sinister, or if thousands of voices were hinting that they were going to expose the real truth of what that foundation really does while at the same time never ever mentioning, even in passing, any of its actual programs, efforts, successes or achievements.

That would be just … weird.

Now, how many references have you seen to the Clinton Foundation? How many times have you seen that name invoked in articles, or heard it uttered by cable newsreaders, or seen it hurled as an accusation on social media?

And how many of those references have ever bothered mentioning what the Clinton Foundation actually does? Anything at all about what it does?

This is a remarkable thing. Somewhere it was decided, apparently, that promoting girls’ education and sustainable agriculture and access to medicine are all shameful crimes against humanity that the Clintons should be ashamed to be connected with in any way. You know … (whispers darkly) … the Clinton Foundation. It’s discussed like the legendary “Whitey Tape” — like something that will one day come to light to expose Hillary’s darkest secrets of scandalously helping poor girls learn to read and of planting trees in Malawi.

That’s just … weird.

Ah, but it has to do with the fundraising. You see, the Clintons have raised money for their charitable work from wealthy people — from 1 percenters. And not just wealthy people here in America, but from wealthy foreigners. They’re laundering the ill-gotten plunder of global plutocrats into schooling and medicine and tree-planting and …

Is this supposed to offend my conscience? Is this something I should be indignant about?

Here’s a Counterpunch piece based on a Real News Network interview with Michael Hudson titled “Is the Real Scandal the Clinton Foundation?” (The question mark there is a hint of what you’ll find in the piece. Whenever you see a question mark in a headline, you can read that question as this: “Do we have any evidence to back up what we’re suggesting here?” And the answer is almost always No. If we did, we’d have made a statement, not asked a question.)

This is a left-wing piece, but it parallels similar speculation promoted on the opposite side via Fox News and talk radio. It never mentions anything the Clinton Foundation does, anything it has done, or anything it plans to do. Nothing at all about the actual work of the foundation.

They, like, apparently help girls in the developing world and, like, poor farmers or some stuff like that. Whatever. Irrelevant. Hudson isn’t interested in any of that. He’s not interested in what the charity is doing, but he’s very, very interested in insidious speculation about what it maybe possibly could be imagined to maybe possibly have done.

This is the strongest case against the Clinton Foundation. And there’s no there there:

JAY: As far as we know, there’s no direct evidence that she did precisely what you’re saying. And that they actually say – “Give money to the foundation; I will facilitate such-and-such a contract.” There’s no evidence of that, correct?

HUDSON: That’s right. And partly there’s no evidence because her private emails are not subject to [inaud.]. They’re not subject to finding out this. We don’t have any evidence one way or the other. So certainly there is no evidence. There is only the appearance of what looks to me to be an inherent conflict of interest with the foundation.

JAY: And there’s no direct evidence that any abnormal amount of money has gone to Bill Clinton, in terms of fees and expenses. One can assume he’s well-compensated. But it does have charitable status, it has to file a 990. They are under charitable law regulations, and so far I don’t know of any reporting that says that they have violated the law.

HUDSON: You’re right. The advantage of being under charitable law is it’s in a foundation that – you can look at it in effect as your savings account. And you can treat it – you can do with a foundation whatever you want.

Now, if you or I had a quarter billion dollars, what we’d want to do is influence policy. Influence the world. Well, that’s what they want to do. They want to use the foundation to support policies that they want.

Hudson imagines this foundation has some kind of agenda — something it wants to accomplish. He may be on to something. If only there were some way of figuring out what they might be up to.