SIGHTINGS



Hillary's $100,000
New York State Rip-Off
NewsMax.com
2-15-2000
 

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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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."
 
The story first surfaced in New York Newsday in April 1994. Back then reporter Lou Dolinar uncovered some very curious details about the NCEE:
 
"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."
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Surely, for a hundred large, it must have been quite a voluminous tome.
 
"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?"
 
"No," said the former New York AG. "Twelve pages for the whole eight months she worked on it. That was it."
 
If preparing that report took fifty percent of Hillary's time, she must be a very slow writer.
 
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