Who has done more to brighten the lives of the world’s less fortunate: Hillary Clinton (1947-present)? Or the Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997)?
Put another (less trollish) way: What has Hillary Clinton done for poor people that distinguishes her from any other liberal celebrity with a massive bank account and a burning desire to prove to the world how much she cares by raising money and attending galas? What has she done recently, now that her salary is no longer funded by the American taxpayer?
Obviously, the Clinton Foundation does some laudable work, as do many well-funded charity organizations, such as the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation. On the other hand, it has also gone to great lengths to bolster the Clintons' political and financial aspirations. For example, the foundation has raised a ton of money from corporations and Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and J.P. Morgan Chase. And as the New York Times reported in 2013:
For all of its successes, the Clinton Foundation had become a sprawling concern, supervised by a rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction and threatened by conflicts of interest. It ran multimillion-dollar deficits for several years, despite vast amounts of money flowing in…
And efforts to insulate the foundation from potential conflicts have highlighted just how difficult it can be to disentangle the Clintons’ charity work from Mr. Clinton’s moneymaking ventures and Mrs. Clinton’s political future, according to interviews with more than two dozen former and current foundation employees, donors and advisers to the family.
The foundation’s website touts Clinton’s extensive accomplishments, such as "winning respect as a champion of human rights, democracy, civil society, and opportunities for women and girls around the world."
As Secretary of State, Clinton not only successfully "negotiated a ceasefire in the Middle East," she also "pushed the frontiers of human rights and demonstrated that giving women the opportunity to participate fully is vital to security, stability, and prosperity."
Since then, it is not clear what Hillary has personally done to "battle against inequality," something she has "spent her entire life" doing, in the words of one Clinton adviser. That is, apart from writing another memoir and giving paid speeches at $200,000 a pop.
Apparently, Hillary Clinton actually believes that accepting large sums of money (whether for herself or the Clinton Foundation) to say words in an auditorium is akin to "battling inequality"—even when that money comes from a publicly-funded university whose students oppose the lavish speaking fee. ABC News reports [emphasis added]:
Last week, students at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, where Clinton is scheduled to speak at a fundraiser in October, asked the former secretary of state to return her fee of $225,000 back to the university. If she does not, the students said they plan to protest her visit.
When asked to respond to the students’ plea during the ABC News interview, Clinton made no suggestion she would do as they’ve requested. Clinton said that as she travels the country speaking, she is presenting new ideas to help strengthen the economy, which in turn, will help lower income inequality.
"It’s been my experience," Clinton said, "That they’re not worried about my speaking or my household, they’re worried about their own. And that’s the kind of debate I think I’m furthering as I go around the country speaking."
You know, just like Mother Teresa did.