Saturday, April 5, 2014

Follow The Money (Or Try To)

An IG report released yesterday discloses the fact that during the tenure of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, $6 billion dollars went missing.  As the report states:  “The failure to maintain contract files adequately creates significant financial risk and demonstrates a lack of internal control over the Department’s contract actions.”
 While I understand that Mrs. Clinton was not personally involved in every contract, nonetheless she was in charge of the department during this period, and the blame must ultimately fall on her.  A larger issue, in my mind, is that if we can just lose this kind of money, then government is way too big.  Those who constantly refuse to cut anything in government use the argument that poor people or children will be hurt, yet there is fraud, waste and mismanagement throughout the whole government.  See my post on balancing the budget.  We're spending almost $4 Trillion per year, and I truly believe, based on all the reading I do, that there is at least 15% waste and fat in that figure.  This alone would trim almost $600 billion from our spending.
Going back to the IG report about State, it continues by stating that the situation “creates conditions conducive to fraud, as corrupt individuals may attempt to conceal evidence of illicit behavior by omitting key documents from the contract file.”  So it is being implied here that the missing money might be missing not by mistake, but by design.  Mrs. Clinton has been asked about this and has no idea where the money went. 
Hillary Clinton is the presumptive Democratic nominee for the presidency of the United States.  Her resume now includes a lot of missing money and the fiasco that is Benghazi.  When asked about that episode, during which two diplomats and two true heroes were murdered, her answer was (to paraphrase), "Oh, what the heck does it matter now anyway?"  Mrs. Clinton, at a women's forum on April 3rd, when asked about some of her successes while Secretary of State, could not provide any.  In fact, here is her answer:  “Well, I really see — that was good — that’s why he wins prizes. Look, I really see my role as Secretary, in fact leadership in general in a democracy, as a relay race. When you run the best race you can run, you hand off the baton. Some of what hasn’t been finished may go on to be finished, so when President Obama asked me to be Secretary of State I agreed.”  To that answer I can only say, "Huh?"
The United States is much bigger than just the State Department.  Yet I feel it's clear that not only have billions gone missing, but Mrs. Clinton herself can't name anything of note she's accomplished.  I certainly can't think of anything, although I can name several places that are now imploding that were relatively stable before the Obama presidency.  Egypt and Libya come to mind for starters.  In fact, I can't think of anything Mrs. Clinton did as a senator either.  So this leaves me with two questions.  First, why does anyone think Mrs. Clinton is ready to be president?  Second, where are the missing billions?