- The story of Hillary Clinton's $100,000 New York State
rip-off was headline news in just about every newspaper just four years
ago. But now that she wants the very same taxpayers she scammed back then
to send her to the United States Senate, New York's mainstream reporters
have suddenly developed amnesia.
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- Reports reviewed by NewsMax.com reveal that just two
years before she moved to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Mrs. Clinton was paid
$101,630 for services rendered, from an agency funded in part by New York
State taxpayers. The first lady's windfall came as a result of a sweetheart
deal between her Little Rock lawfirm, Rose Law, and New York's National
Center on Education and the Economy.
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- When this news hit the fan in January 1996, the question
became: What, if anything, did Hillary Clinton do for that tidy bundle
of cash? Answers weren't immediately forthcoming, so then-New York State
Attorney General Dennis Vacco launched an investigation.
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- Governor George Pataki's reaction at the time was typical:
"To pay $100,000 to an Arkansas lawfirm out of scarce state education
dollars where it seems no vital services were performed is an outrage."
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- The story first surfaced in New York Newsday in April
1994. Back then reporter Lou Dolinar uncovered some very curious details
about the NCEE:
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- "The center, an educational think tank, was heavily
salted with Democrats and the president's political supporters, including
Ira Magaziner, who worked on the Clinton administration's health care proposal
with Hillary Clinton. The center's chairman was John Sculley, then head
of Apple Computer and a principal Clinton backer."
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- Newsday's 1994 report failed to raise investigator's
eyebrows at the time. Why? Probably because those empowered to investigate
answered to the Clintons' number one New York Democratic Party ally, Governor
Mario Cuomo. In fact, it was Cuomo himself who created the NCEE with a
$5 million state grant.
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- Were there any billing records that would show just how
much work Mrs. Clinton had performed for her cool hundred grand? No such
luck, investigators found. The contract drawn up and signed by NCEE Director
Marc Tucker simply pledged to pay Hillary $12,500 at the beginning of every
month with absolutely no requirement that she account for her time.
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- Documents filed with the state said that Mrs. Clinton
was hired to lead the NCEE's "Commission on Workforce Skills."
Director Tucker told Newsday that the project actually consumed some fifty
percent of Hillary's daily work schedule.
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- Without billing records, that's hard to document. But
expense reports show that she attended about a dozen Workforce Commission
meetings, for which, by the way, she was reimbursed an additional $10,797
for travel and other miscellaneous costs.
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- Vacco, now in private practice in upstate New York, told
NewsMax.com this week that the physical work product of Hillary's efforts
amounted to a single report.
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- Surely, for a hundred large, it must have been quite
a voluminous tome.
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- "It was about ten or twelve pages long," Vacco
said, according to his best recollection. Remembering the monthly payments,
we inquired, "You mean, twelve pages a month?"
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- "No," said the former New York AG. "Twelve
pages for the whole eight months she worked on it. That was it."
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- If preparing that report took fifty percent of Hillary's
time, she must be a very slow writer.
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