Four conservatives pile on Hillary Clinton, no liberal or even moderate voice on "fair and balanced" FOX and Friends
Reported by Chrish - October 22, 2007 -
In a typically one-sided interview on FOX and Friends this morning 10/22/07, conservative Wall Street Journal columnist (and now colleague in the ever-expanding Murdoch media empire) John Fund appeared with the three-for-one team of conservative hosts to offer up a second dose of Hillary-bashing. This time the issue was relatively large donations from Chinese-Americans who, it would appear, can ill afford them.
John Fund, Grover Norquist's best friend, was happy to conflate "similar allegations" from1996 with Gretchen ("I only listen to the voices in my own head") Carlson. Fund referenced an LA Times article, which said 1/3 of the 150 donors they attempted to locate could not be found, and most of those who were located were not even registered to vote! He acknowledged that this is not necessarily illegal, but followed that saying many of them were "ordered" to make these donations by neighborhood associations.
Fund and Friends neglected to mention that the Clinton campaign was the first to vet these donations (from a fundraiser last April, oh by the way), as reported in the same article:
"We have hundreds of thousands of donors. We are proud to have support from across New York and the country from many different communities," campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson said. "In this instance, our own compliance process flagged a number of questionable donations and took the appropriate steps to be sure they were legally given. In cases where we couldn't confirm that, the money was returned."
Steve Doocy, Carlson, and Fund tied this storyline to the Hsu scandal from several months back, apparently in an effort to establish a pattern of sloppy vetting on the Clinton campaign's part. But as of September 11th, "Officials at the campaigns of top Republican candidates -- including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, ex-Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Arizona Senator John McCain and former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson -- didn't immediately respond to queries about their vetting policies."
Fund asserted that this relates back to 1996, and this is why there's some suspicion here: in 1996, over 100 people either invoked their Fifth Amendment rights or fled the country, and 24 pled quilty "to various charges." He wrapped up the talking points: the same people who were in charge of fund-raising in 1996 are in charge again (Harold Ickes and Terry McAuliffe) and they can't seem to "get it right;" and after Hsu we were assured this type of thing wouldn't happen again, yet here we are.
I anxiously await the fair and balanced reporting on Rudy Giuliani's fund-raiser extraordinaire, New York hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, who
"has identified himself as the mystery financer of the proposed California initiative to apportion the state's 55 electoral votes by congressional district instead of winner-take-all.... He said he provided the $175,000 to initially finance the petition drive to get the measure on the June 2008 ballot."
So Giuliani's guy can privately fund a movement clear across the country to change another state's election laws to increase his candidate's chances of taking the White House, and FOX doesn't see fit to report that. No, the only mention of Singer found at the FOXNews website is that "For travel, Giuliani benefited from leased jets supplied by Elliott Asset Management, a firm controlled by Giuliani backer and fundraiser Paul Singer, a New York venture capitalist. Employees of Elliott Associates, a New York hedge fund founded by Singer, have given more than $120,000 to Giuliani's campaign." Hmm, were they "coerced"? Nobody investigated, that we've seen.
And while we're on the tangent of FOX not reporting about Giuliani's campaign contributions, he is still in receipt of a possibly illegal donation from the New York Times, who ran an ad for him September 14th - as requested - at the same "standby rate" - as requested - given MoveOn.org for the controversial General Petraeus ad . MoveOn, in "an abundance of caution," paid the difference in rates to the New York Times but Giuliani's campaign, to date, has not. Lane Hudson has filed a complaint with the FEC, charging that the discounted ad rate for the Giuliani campaign amounts to "the receipt of corporate soft money contribution in excess of the limits established by the Federal Elections Campaign Act of 1971 and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002."
