No Good Deed...

Needlessly provocative title notwithstanding, here's a well-written, seemingly objective and thorough article about the Clinton Global Initiative, which began with none but good intentions, has had an immeasurable and impressively positive impact on millions of people around the globe, is unprecedented in its ability to mobilize money and action from wealthy people all over the planet from all parts of the political spectrum, and nearly singular in the portion of its money that goes straight to its good works.

Such a huge and successful enterprise gets messy, I guess, when a party to it decides to run for president; questions get raised for legitimate as well as for clearly cynical and purely political reasons. I suppose it'd be par for the course of American politics if the unlikely outcome were to be the end of Hillary's candidacy. Given the enormous good the Initiative has produced, it'd be a travesty if it scared away donors in the process. 

If it's true that no good deed goes unpunished, especially when the dysfunctional mess known as the American way of governance and electioneering is mobilized, there ought to be no way such a plainly altruistic and uncommonly effective effort to help people in need can survive, much less even have existed at all. No ex-president has ever attempted or accomplished such a thing. Some spend their time doing not much more than making paintings of their feet in bathtubs, and cats. And, yes, as the article points out, Bill Clinton hauls in big bucks speaking on behalf of his work. Hey, I got paid for saving lives, too. Admittedly, on a somewhat lesser scale.

I can see why suspicions have been raised. If there was real and significant hanky-panky, we ought to know about it, and shame on them. But, far as I can tell, at its center is a vast organization dedicated to good works; the messiness is a side effect, its impact exaggerated, the claims of the Foxified fallacious. So far. 

[Image source]