The Los Angeles Times continues its reporting on Hillary Clinton’s epic fundraising. At this point in the election cycle, Hillary has raised more money than any candidate in American history, and she’s getting it from an unlikely source: the poorest sections of…Chinatown (you just knew another Clinton fundraising scandal would involve China somehow.) Of course, there’s much of the same shadiness going on with these contributions as there was with the Norman Hsu scandal: poor immigrant donors who have no discernible way to make the contributions they have, donors who cannot be tracked down, donors who’s neighbors don’t even know they exist, donors who don’t even know why they’re donating, and, my personal fav, donors who donated because a Chinese neighborhood organization formally involved in human trafficking told them to:
Dishwashers, waiters and others whose jobs and dilapidated home addresses seem to make them unpromising targets for political fundraisers are pouring $1,000 and $2,000 contributions into Clinton’s campaign treasury. In April, a single fundraiser in an area long known for its gritty urban poverty yielded a whopping $380,000. When Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) ran for president in 2005, he received $24,000 from Chinatown.
At this point in the presidential campaign cycle, Clinton has raised more money than any candidate in history. Those dishwashers, waiters and street hawkers are part of the reason. And Clinton’s success in gathering money from Chinatown’s least-affluent residents stems from a two-pronged strategy: mutually beneficial alliances with powerful groups, and appeals to the hopes an dreams of people now consigned to the margins.
Clinton has enlisted the aid of Chinese neighborhood associations, especially those representing recent immigrants from Funjian province. The organizations, at least one of which is a descendant of Chinatown criminal enterprises that engaged in gambling and human trafficking, exert enormous influence over immigrants. The associations help them with everything from protection against crime to obtaining green cards.
Read the whole article. Clinton’s “two-pronged” strategy is known best by the term “flat-out exploitation.” Here’s the other “prong”:
The other piece of the strategy involves holding out hope that, if Clinton becomes president, she will move quickly to reunite families and help illegal residents move toward citizenship. As New York’s junior senator, Clinton has expressed support for immigrants and greater family reunification. She is also benefiting from Chinese donors’ naive notions of what she could do in the White House.
I’m both surprised and pleased that the LA Times is continuing with its examination of Hillary’s fundraising exploits, which, in this instance, again include improper donations. I wonder, however, like Macranger does, if the Times is covering the story so diligently now so that it’s old news by the time the primaries roll around. That may well be true, but it seems like under each new rock you turn over, a new Clintonian scandal crawls out. Will it hurt her? Unfortunately, probably not. It’s been this way for yearshttp://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-…

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