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I think Bill Clinton is a better exmple , he went from modest means to millions while president.
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Your whole post is a pack of lies and misinformation, but the biggest one is about Clinton leaving the White House rich. He actually was deeply in debt when he left because of your ilks witch hunt. He didnt get rich until he left and was able to make a fortune because of his charisma & popularity.
Bill Clinton talks his way to fortune
Nearly $40 million in speech fees in 6 years
By John Solomon and Matthew Mosk
The Washington Post
Published February 24, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Former President Bill Clinton, who came to the White House with modest means and left deeply in debt, has collected nearly $40 million in speaking fees over the past six years, according to interviews and financial disclosure statements filed by his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Last year, one of his most lucrative since leaving the presidency, Clinton earned $9 million to $10 million on the lecture circuit. He averaged almost a speech a day--352 for the year--but only about 20 percent were for personal income. The others were given for no fee or for donations to the William J. Clinton Foundation, the non-profit group he founded to pursue causes such as the fight against AIDS.
His paid speeches included $150,000 appearances before landlord groups, biotechnology firms and food distributors as well as speeches in England, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia that together netted him more than $1.6 million. On one day in Canada, Clinton made $475,000 for two speeches, more than double his annual salary as president.
"I never had a nickel to my name until I got out of the White House, and now I'm a millionaire, the most favored person for the Washington Republicans," Clinton told a friendly audience in Kentucky last fall. "I get a tax cut every year, no matter what our needs are."
Indeed, the Clintons--who left the White House with an estimated $12 million in legal debts rung up during the Whitewater, campaign fundraising and Monica Lewinsky investigations--are worth an estimated $10 million to $50 million, according to the Democratic New York senator's most recent disclosure form. That is primarily because of the speaking fees and seven-figure book deals that both Clintons signed after leaving the White House.
The fortune they have amassed gives the Clintons a nest egg for the first time, and it allows them tap into that wealth if the senator, as expected, forgoes public financing in her race for president. It also suggests a sometimes close connection between their personal finances and her political career.
Many of Bill Clinton's six-figure speeches have been made to companies whose employees and political action committees have been among Hillary Clinton's top backers in her Senate campaigns. The New York investment giant Goldman Sachs paid Bill Clinton $650,000 for four speeches in recent years. Its employees and PAC have given his wife $270,000 since 2000, making it her second-most generous political patron.
Banking firm Citigroup, whose employees and PAC have been the senator's top source of campaign donations with more than $320,000, paid her husband $250,000 for a speech in France in 2004. Last year, it committed $5.5 million for Clinton's Global Initiative to help encourage entrepreneurship and financial education among the poor.
Asked about the companies and their relationship to the Clintons, Jay Carson, a spokesman for the former president, said: "It certainly makes sense that reputable New York companies who support the policies and works of President Clinton and his foundation would also be supportive of their senator."
Over the past two decades, speaking for money, especially to foreign audiences, has become a common way for ex-presidents to find financial security. Ronald Reagan raised eyebrows collecting $2 million in Japan shortly after he left office in 1989. And former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter have both traveled extensively to lecture for pay.
Bush, who was wealthy before he became president, had an active speaking schedule after he left the White House, and as recently as 2004 was reported to have been paid between $125,000 and $150,000 for a series of speeches in China. But much of his activity remains private because he is under no obligation to disclose it.
The celebrity factor
Mark Updegrove, author of a book on the activities of former presidents, said Clinton remains a huge draw even six years after leaving the White House. "One thing makes President Clinton slightly different from his predecessors," Updegrove said. "Not only has he carried the prestige of the presidency, but he maintains the mystique of celebrity."
Two-thirds of the former president's speaking money has come from foreign sources. Outside the U.S., clients are willing to pay more to hear him speak, and he can avoid upstaging his wife on the American political scene, associates say.
Yet Clinton continues to book new lectures this year as his wife campaigns for president.
Besides Goldman Sachs, the two firms that have paid Clinton the most over the past six years are foreign-based. Gold Service International, an event organizer based in Bogota, Colombia, brought Clinton to Latin America in summer 2005 for $800,000 in speaking fees. The Power Within, a motivational-speech company in Toronto, paid Clinton $650,000 for speeches in Canada in 2005 and brought him back for an undisclosed sum in 2006. The company was founded by Salim Khoja, a Kenyan immigrant who earlier had been convicted of stock fraud and was barred for life from the brokerage business.
The nearly $40 million total is based on Sen. Clinton's annual ethics report to Congress, which showed that her husband had made more than $30 million from speeches between 2001 and 2005. Under Senate ethics rules, she does not have to disclose 2006 fees until mid-May, and the estimate for that year's totals are based on interviews with speech organizers, who confirmed an additional $9 million to $10 million in fees.
Beyond the millions he has earned personally, the former president has given dozens more speeches that result in payments to the William J. Clinton Foundation, his non-profit charity in New York. His associates say those have yielded millions to help cover the $60 million annual budget the foundation spends to fund his work on AIDS and world hunger.
The Clintons declined to disclose the size and source of the for-pay speeches he delivered on behalf of the charity.
The former president declined repeated requests to discuss his speeches or the income he earns from them. "The reason that he picked paid speeches is that it is an efficient way for him to make a living for his family and allow him a lot of time to do charitable work, which is his passion," Carson said.
The spokesman said Clinton's staff packs as much charitable work as possible--along with political events helpful to Democrats--around for-profit speeches.
"We take a look at the schedule and say, `All right, he has to be in this place for that paid speech. There are these three or four great things we've been meaning to do in this place. Let's do them,"' Carson said.
A fundraising force
Those willing to pay Clinton to speak can pack a hall with people eager to hear his question-and-answer sessions on Middle East peace, his motivational seminars, or lectures on globalization that weave together personal anecdotes and detailed data aimed at inspiring corporate executives to compete better in the global economy.
Clinton can also transform a fundraising event.
In 2005 he helped the U.S. arm of Israel's treasury authority to sell $101 million in investment bonds by speaking at a luncheon. A Catholic group in Canada far exceeded its fundraising goal when it hired Clinton to address a gala for domestic violence services last November.
"We had people buying $500 tickets for a lunch," said Andrew Wilding, of Catholic Family Counseling Center in Kitchener, Ontario. "This was a once-in-a-lifetime event for them."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0702240093feb24,0,125223.story
