Here are our top five most notable sexual harassment cases.

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5. Bill O’Reilly

Bill O’Reilly was charged with sexual harassment and sued for $60 million in 2004 by former producer for The O’Reilly Factor Andrea Mackris. Mackris would claim that O’Reilly would sexually harass her and make crude comments about masturbation, threesomes, and Caribbean shower fantasies.

She would later settle out of court for an undisclosed amount of money.

4. Bill Clinton

While Bill Clinton was running for president in 1991, Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee claimed that Clinton pulled down his pants and asked her for oral sex in a hotel room.

Clinton would wind up paying Jones just under one million dollars, despite never admitting guilt just to keep her quiet.

3. Mark Foley

Mark Foley was a Republican congressman from Florida who was also the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.

Foley became infamous as the first politician caught up in the Internet era of sexual harassment scandals. He was caught sending emails to male congressional pages asking for fellatio and pictures of their penises. He would also send sexually explicit instant messages to young males.

Foley would later enter rehab and claim that he was molested himself.

2. Britney Spears

Britney Spears was sued by former bodyguard Fernando Flores for sexual harassment. Flores would claim that Spears made unwanted sexual advances to him, exposed her private parts to him on numerous occasions, and said that she would abuse her children numerous times.

Spears’ attorney accused the bodyguard of “trying to cash in on Ms. Spears’ celebrity by making salacious claims of misconduct.”

1. Clarence Thomas

When Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court by former president George H.W. Bush, old allegations of sexual harassment were levied upon him from an attorney who worked for him at the Department Of Education. The woman’s name was Anita Hill.

Hill was called to Senate to testify and said that Thomas made comments about group sex, rape, bestiality, and bragged about his anatomy and sexual prowess to her. She also said he once asked, “Who put a pubic hair on my Coke?”

Thomas was later confirmed despite Hill’s testimony.

Despite the fact that Clinton’s law helped prevent Davis from being given a chance for his case to be reviewed by federal authorities, Clinton recently said in regards to the Davis case that if any DNA evidence or physical evidence is questionable, a review must come.

“In any case where there’s any chance that any DNA evidence could change the outcome of the trial — I think that — this is just me now — I think that the appeals process has to be slowed down and organized so that any evidence of innocence can always be presented and then acted upon,” said Clinton.

Read more at Huffington Post

In the year 2010, Clinton earned $10.7 million dollars for 52 speaking engagements, and reportedly earned an additional $15 million advancement for his memoir “My Life” and has more than doubled that amount in actual sales.

In the decade since he departed the Oval Office, Clinton has delivered 417 paid speeches with an average of $181, 000 per speech.

Read More At Politico.com

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“I can’t help thinking since we just celebrated the Fourth of July and we’re supposed to be a country dedicated to liberty that one of the most pervasive political movements going on outside Washington today is the disciplined, passionate, determined effort of Republican governors and legislators to keep most of you from voting next time,” Clinton said at Campus Progress’s annual conference in Washington.

“There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today,” he added.

Read More At Politico.com

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The Clinton Global Initiative America Jobs Summit’s goal is to share the best ideas and brainstorm new ones, so that individuals, cities, states, and companies can help grow the economy, despite strains in Washington.

The summit was streamed live on the CGI’s website.

Read More At TheDailyBeast.com

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Bill Clinton officiated Weiner’s wedding last year, according to NYPost.com.

Weiner, who admitted Monday that he had sent explicit images and messages to a number of women online, called the former president in the past 48 hours to explain his conduct.

Abedin, who is Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has known the Clinton’s for a long time and was said to be extremely close to the family.

Read more at NYpost.com

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NEW YORK, New York — After a ten year stay, former President Bill Clinton is moving the headquarters of his William J. Clinton Foundation out of “The Black Capital Of America.”

Though Clinton will reportedly be keeping a small office on Harlem’s West 125^th street, most of his nonprofit foundation will be moved downtown to the financial district. Citing the need for space and cost-cutting, the move is expected to be finalized in the next few weeks.

“Price was probably the most paramount factor,” said Roshan Shah, senior vice president at CB Richard Ellis, the real estate firm charged with negotiating the foundation’s move.

NY Observer reports:

The move will also allow the foundation to expand from 18,000 square feet to 25,000 square feet, while occupying a single floor instead of potentially being spread out over five. “With every crisis that occurs in the world, when something happens in Haiti,” for example, they need more staff, Mr. Shah noted. “They’ve grown tremendously in terms of size.”

A beloved tenant, Mr. Clinton was welcomed by thousands of Harlem residents in 2001. His foundation has led a number of charitable efforts, including the Harlem Small Business Initiative, child survival programs in Africa, and relief funds for victims of natural disasters around the world.

The presence of the former President also had some unintended consequences, angering longtime Harlem residents who were upset about the subsequent rise in the neighborhood’s property values.

Next week NewsOne will be hitting the streets of Harlem to see if people are sad to see “Bubba” go or if it’s good riddance!

Be sure to check it out on the next edition of On The Corner.

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“Given the impact of my remarks, for which I take full responsibility, I have submitted my resignation” to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to a department statement attributed to the office of the spokesman. In a separate statement released simultaneously, Clinton said she had accepted the resignation “with regret.”

Crowley’s comments about the conditions for Army Pfc. Bradley Manning at a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va., reverberated quickly, from the small audience in Massachusetts where Crowley spoke, to a White House news conference Friday where Obama was asked to weigh in on the treatment of the 23-year-old believed responsible for the largest leak of classified American documents ever.

Manning is being held in solitary confinement for all but an hour every day, and is stripped naked each night and given a suicide-proof smock to wear to bed. His lawyer calls the treatment degrading. Amnesty International says the treatment may violate Manning’s human rights.

Crowley, who retired as colonel from the Air Force in 1999 after 26 years in the military, was quoted as telling students at a Massachusetts Institute of Technology seminar on Thursday that he didn’t understand why the military was handling Manning’s detention that way, and calling it “ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid.” Crowley also said “Manning is in the right place” in military detention.

A day later, Obama was asked about Crowley’s remarks at a news conference. He replied that he had asked the Pentagon whether the confinement conditions were appropriate and whether they met basic standards. “They assure me that they are,” the president said. He declined to elaborate when pressed on whether he disagreed with Crowley’s assessment.

Crowley’s resignation statement said that his comments about Bradley’s pre-trial detention “were intended to highlight the broader, even strategic impact of discreet actions undertaken by national security agencies every day and their impact on our global standing and leadership. The exercise of power in today’s challenging times and relentless media environment must be prudent and consistent with our laws and values.”

In her statement, Clinton said Crowley, 60, who was a spokesman for the National Security Council in President Bill Clinton’s White House, “has served our nation with distinction for more than three decades, in uniform and as a civilian.” She said his service was “motivated by a deep devotion to public policy and public diplomacy.”

Although Clinton had warm words upon Crowley’s departure, he never got along with the secretary’s inner circle. He was well-liked by the press corps, but his often unusually blunt remarks from the State Department podium got him into trouble and he had not traveled with Clinton on overseas trips in more than a year.

His departure had been expected in the coming months, but officials said the fact that the president was asked about his comments on Manning led the White House to push for him to go sooner. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel decision.

Crowley will be replaced as assistant secretary of state for public affairs by Mike Hammer, a foreign service officer who recently finished a stint as the NSC spokesman at the White House and was serving as Crowley’s deputy. The department is expected to look for a new full-time spokesman to serve as the face of U.S. diplomacy, the officials said.

The WikiLeaks case has put the State Department in a difficult position with numerous allies and other countries because of the candid and often unflattering assessments of world leaders contained in the leaked diplomatic cables. Crowley and his staff had walked a fine line in trying to answer questions about the documents while not being in a position to confirm the existence or the accuracy of the classified material.

The release of the cables was denounced by U.S. officials, who said it put countless lives at risk by revealing the identities of people working secretly with the U.S. While thousands of the cables have been released, the bulk of those downloaded have not been made public.

Manning was charged in July with mishandling and leaking classified data and putting national security at risk in connection with the release of a military video of an attack on unarmed men in Iraq.

In early March, the Army filed 22 new charges, including aiding the enemy, a crime that can bring the death penalty or life in prison.

The charges involve the suspected distribution by the military analyst of more than 250,000 confidential State Department cables as well as a raft of Iraq and Afghanistan war logs. Thousands of the documents have been published on the website of the anti-secrecy group.

Although aiding the enemy is a capital offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Army prosecutors have notified the Manning defense team that it will not recommend the death penalty to the two-star general who is in charge of proceeding with legal action.

Trial proceedings against Manning have been on hold since July, pending the results of a medical inquiry into Manning’s mental capacity and responsibility.

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Roland Martin joins John King on the set of JKUSA to discuss Rahm Emanuel’s run for the Chicago Mayor’s office with Andy Shaw.

Roland, Shaw and King also discuss Emanuel’s relationship with the African-American community, Bill Clinton campaigning for him and his volatile personality.

WATCH:

Washington — Former President Bill Clinton sought to use his clout with Democratic lawmakers to get President Barack Obama’s tax deal with Republicans passed over the objections of lawmakers in his own party

“This is a good bill,” Clinton said about the compromise agreement Obama reached with congressional Republicans to extend tax cuts and unemployment benefits beyond this year.

Standing alongside Obama after the two men met private in the Oval Office Dec. 10, Clinton called the deal a “significant net plus.” Still, he said he understands the resistance from congressional Democrats to keeping Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and to an estate-tax provision that would set the top rate at 35 percent after a $5 million tax-free allowance per individual.

Read more at Bloomberg

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Washington — This week’s WikiLeaks document release will cost lives and jobs, former President Bill Clinton said in his first public comments on the issue that has embroiled his wife’s State Department.

“I’ll be very surprised if some people don’t lose their lives,” Clinton said while speaking in North Carolina on Tuesday night. “And goodness knows how many will lose their careers.”

Hillary Clinton has said that WikiLeaks’ acts are illegal and the former president echoed that view, saying that the site’s founder and editor Julian Assange knows he did something criminal. “That doesn’t mean that he did succeed in evading the reach of American law,” Bill Clinton said, the Associated Press reported.

Read entire article at Politico.com

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The international community has promised to give Haiti more than $5 billion. But yet these people are living on a median.
VIDEO:

This latest disaster couldn’t have come at a worse time: Haiti was already struggling to recover from last January’s earthquake that killed 300,000 people.

To read entire article at CBSNews.com

I tell you what I think about that. I know this is kind of a funny question for you to ask me. But I think—you know, my daughter introduced me to rap and hip hop music after I said some things she thought were not very smart. She said, “Dad, you need to listen, all these people are smart.” This guy’s smart. And he’s got abilities. And he’s got a new chance now. And what I hope is that this is not just something to brand him as a cool guy, but that it’ll never happen again to him.

You know, I think a lot of these people, they don’t get successful in that—just like in any other area of life—by being really dumb. They’re really smart. But a lot of them had tough lives and they almost think it’s cool to get in trouble every now and then, or they don’t know how to stay out. But what I hope will happen is that he has a good life now.

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Rep. Kendrick Meek said it was “absolutely not true” that he ever agreed to any kind of deal with former President Bill Clinton to drop out of the Florida Senate race, in an interview shortly before 9 p.m. ET Thursday with CNN contributor Roland S. Martin.

“The president came down to do an event for me in Orlando and St. Petersburg. We talk politics all the time. He said I heard this thing about you getting out. I said, ‘I’m not getting out.’ I said Charlie Crist needs to get out of the race. And that was that,” Meek said.

“The whole thing about a chartered plane is untrue. The whole thing about a rally planned is untrue. This whole thing, I don’t know where it came from. I know the discussions I had with the president wasn’t about some sort of wrapped deal with me getting out of the race. I’m not getting out the race,” Crist said.

When asked whether it was true that he confirmed twice to Clinton that he would get out, Meek said: “Not true. Absolutely not true. That’s just where it is. That’s not the case.”

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Nearly nine months after the earthquake, more than a million Haitians still live on the streets between piles of rubble. One reason: Not a cent of the $1.15 billion the U.S. promised for rebuilding has arrived.

The money was pledged by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in March for use this year in rebuilding. The U.S. has already spent more than $1.1 billion on post-quake relief, but without long-term funds, the reconstruction of the wrecked capital cannot begin.

With just a week to go before fiscal 2010 ends, the money is still tied up in Washington. At fault: bureaucracy, disorganization and a lack of urgency, The Associated Press learned in interviews with officials in the State Department, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the White House and the U.N. Office of the Special Envoy. One senator has held up a key authorization bill because of a $5 million provision he says will be wasteful.

Meanwhile, deaths in Port-au-Prince are mounting, as quake survivors scramble to live without shelter or food.

“There are truly lives at stake, and the idea that folks are spending more time finger-pointing than getting this solved is almost unbelievable,” said John Simon, a former U.S. ambassador to the African Union who is now with the Center for Global Development, a Washington think tank.

Nor is Haiti getting much from other donors. Some 50 other nations and organizations pledged a total of $8.75 billion for reconstruction, but just $686 million of that has reached Haiti so far — less than 15 percent of the total promised for 2010-11.

The lack of funds has all but halted reconstruction work by CHF International, the primary U.S.-funded group assigned to remove rubble and build temporary shelters. Just 2 percent of rubble has been cleared and 13,000 temporary shelters have been built — less than 10 percent of the number planned.

The Maryland-based agency is asking the U.S. government for $16.5 million to remove more than 21 million cubic feet of additional rubble and build 4,000 more temporary houses out of wood and metal.

“It’s just a matter of one phone call and the trucks are out again. We have contractors ready to continue removing rubble. … We have local suppliers and international suppliers ready to ship the amount of wood and construction materials we need,” said CHF country director Alberto Wilde. “It’s just a matter of money.”

Last week the inaction bore tragic results. On Friday an isolated storm destroyed an estimated 8,000 tarps, tents and shacks in the capital and killed at least six people, including two children. And the threat of violence looms as landowners threaten entire camps with forced eviction.

In Washington there is confusion about the money. At a July hearing, Ravij Shah, director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, thanked members of Congress for approving the funds, saying, “The resources are flowing and are being spent in country.”

It wasn’t true then, and still hasn’t happened.

When the earthquake hit, U.S. agencies sent troops, rescuers, aid workers and supplies to the devastated capital, Port-au-Prince. On March 24, President Barack Obama asked Congress for $2.8 billion in emergency aid to Haiti — about half to pay back money already spent by USAID, the Defense Department and others. An additional $212 million was to write off debt.

The heart of the request was $1.15 billion in new reconstruction funds.

A week later, Clinton touted that figure in front of representatives of 50 nations at the U.N. secretariat, the president of Haiti at her side.

“If the effort to rebuild is slow or insufficient, if it is marked by conflict, lack of coordination or lack of transparency, then the challenges that have plagued Haiti for years could erupt with regional and global consequences,” Clinton said.

That was nearly six months ago. It took until May for the Senate to pass a supplemental request for the Haiti funds and until July for the House to do the same. The votes made $917 million available but did not dictate how or when to spend it. Without that final step, the money remains in the U.S. Treasury.

Then came summer recess, emergencies in Pakistan and elsewhere, and the distractions of election politics.

Now the authorization bill that would direct how the aid is delivered remains sidelined by a senator who anonymously pulled it for further study. Through calls to dozens of senators’ offices, the AP learned it was Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma.

“He is holding the bill because it includes an unnecessary senior Haiti coordinator when we already have one” in U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten, Coburn spokeswoman Becky Bernhardt said.

The bill proposes a new coordinator in Washington who would not oversee U.S. aid but would work with the USAID administrator in Washington to develop a rebuilding strategy. The position would cost $1 million a year for five years, including salaries and expenses for a staff of up to seven people.

With the bill on hold, the State Department is trying to move the money along by avoiding Congress as much as possible. It sent lawmakers a “spending plan” on Sept. 20 and gave legislators 15 days to review it. If they fail to act on the plan, the money could be released as soon as specific projects get the OK.

“We need to make sure that the needs of the Haitian people are not sacrificed to procedural and bureaucratic impediments,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry told the AP by e-mail. “As we approach nine months since the earthquake, further delays on any side are unacceptable.”

Asked when the money will actually come, State Department spokesman Charles Luoma-Overstreet said the department expects to start spending in the coming weeks and months. He added that $275 million in “bridge” funds were released in March and have gone toward agriculture, work, health and shelter programs — not long-term reconstruction.

Haitian advocates say that is not enough.

Jean-Claude Bajeuax of the Ecumenical Center for Human Rights in Port-au-Prince said this phase was supposed to be about building semi-permanent houses.

“Where are they? We haven’t seen them,” he said. “There is not much money that is being used. There is not much work that has actually been done.”

Of course there is no guarantee that the money would lead to the successful rebuilding of Haiti. Many past U.S. aid efforts have fallen short.

“I don’t think (the money) will make any difference,” said Haitian human rights advocate Pierre Esperance. “Haitian people are not really involved in this process.”

But officials agree the funds could pay for new approaches to make Haiti more sustainable, and rebuilding projects could improve millions of lives.

The AP found that $874 million of the funds pledged by other countries at the donors conference was money already promised to Haiti for work or aid before the quake. An additional $1.13 million wasn’t ever going to be sent; it was debt relief. And $184 million was in loans to Haiti’s government, not aid.

The Office of the Special Envoy has been tracking the money delivered so far but does not know who got it. The envoy himself, former President Bill Clinton, told the AP in July and again in August that he was putting pressure on donors to meet their pledges.

On the streets of Haiti, many simply feel abandoned. Mishna Gregoire, 22, said she was happy when she heard about the donors conference. But six months later she is still in a tarp city with 5,000 other people, on a foul-smelling plaza in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Petionville.

“I thought it was something serious they were really going to do,” Gregoire said, standing amid tarps torn apart by the sudden storm. “But nothing has been done. And I don’t think anything will be done.”

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Barack Obama introduced his wife, Michelle at the Clinton Global Initiative, and praised her “moral voice” according to Politico.

“While I get plenty of good advice from a lot of people during the course of the day, at the end of each day, it is Michelle — her moral voice, her moral center — that cuts through all the noise in Washington and reminds me of why I’m there in the first place,” he added, praising her work as “a partner to me, and the best mother that I know.”

Read The Whole Story

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A former soldier arrested after a hostage incident at a military base in Georgia faces multiple charges that include threatening to kill President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton, according to federal court documents filed Tuesday.

Robert Anthony Quinones, 29, of Hinesville, Georgia, was arrested Monday after the two-hour hostage situation at Winn Community Hospital on Fort Stewart, about 45 miles from Savannah, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Officials and a family member said he had demanded mental health care at the hospital.

Text continues after gallery:

Quinones is charged with assault of a federal officer and kidnapping in the incident, which ended with the gunman’s surrender and no injuries.

After he was taken into custody and during interviews, Quinones “expressed his plans, preparation and intentions to kill President Obama and former President Clinton,” according to an affidavit filed in federal cour. “Quinones detailed his studies of Secret Service protocols, sniper techniques and means of disguise and weapons concealment to implement his assassination plans.”

A search of his residence resulted in the discovery of 11 long guns, four pistols, multiple rounds of ammunition and dozens of bayonets and knives, according to the affidavit.

Authorities also found books and manuals about FBI hostage rescue teams, Osama bin Laden, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, the Russian Mafia and other topics, according to the affidavit signed by FBI and Secret Service agents.

Read entire article at CNN.com

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I’m in love with Michelle Obama and out of respect I wish Barack a long and prosperous life because if anything should happen to the brother, I’m changing my last name, becoming RK Onassis, and stepping up like, “Michelle… what’s good?”

And it’s not just because she’s a “big, fine woman” in the Juvenile sense of the expression, it’s also that she embodies all the possibilities that we’ve come to expect when we decided that Black females were Superwomen except that she’s actually made all those grandiose positive stereotypes come to life.

She makes marrying a nanny and subsequently having to cough up $750 million in the aftermath look patently absurd.

And remember when she was the fine young lawyer, already a partner in her firm, who refused to date Barack because he was a bum at the time?

Now see her as the First Lady. And make no mistake; she’s the reason that Barack is President. Without her, Mr. Obama becomes Harold Ford.

So you can imagine that it burns me to no end when, not only is Michelle Obama criticized, but she’s criticized ridiculously and unfairly.

This latest media escapade paints Mrs. Obama as “Marie Antoinette” (dig, the same Marie Antoinette that was justifiably guillotined during the French Revolution) simply because she vacationed with daughter Sasha in Spain– and looked fantastic while doing so.

Now c’mon! You bozos should have known better than to expect a stay at home mom as your First Lady since the days of Eleanor Roosevelt!

You’ve been electing co-presidents at the very least since Bill and Hillary Clinton and possibly even since John and Abigail Adams.

Her simple-minded critics seem to forget one thing: as the world’s most visible woman, Michelle Obama has all the top designers literally Kamikaze-ing themselves trying to get her to wear their creations.

She probably doesn’t pay for clothes at all except in those girly-girl moments that overtake all women when they feel the irrepressible urge to go on a quest for the perfect scarf, gloves or shoes—and maybe not even then.

The idea that the beautiful, cultured, poised, sophisticated and accomplished Michelle Obama should represent our country abroad in anything but the highest form and the grandest manner is an affront, not only to women everywhere, but indeed to these very United States of America.

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While our sister site asks if a bad husband can be a good father, I’m convinced that a good man has been perhaps the worst president of all time.

George W. Bush is a good man. All evidence suggests he’s been faithful to his wife. He’s raised two beautiful daughters. He’s been true to his Christian Faith. He is honest.

But when you take over a country that has no debt, no war and turn it into a nation in extreme debt with two wars, you didn’t do a good job. Say what you want about that pig Bill Clinton, he ran an effective nation. The country was in the black when he left. Nobody wanted it with us.

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When W left, we were tussling with Iraq and Afghanistan (of all people!) and we were deep in the hole to Red China. Barack Obama must have felt like he was coming in on the losing side of a fourth quarter blowout. But the Christians wanted a Christian. A real one. Not some guy that would forever sully the definition of “intern,” making it something vile and degenerate to the point now when even males under such title are looked at strangely and regarded with suspicion.

So the people elected Bush (actually, the people didn’t—Bush had the Supreme Court tell them that they did).

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And as soon as W gets in office, New York City is looking like a war zone. The only good news is that David Dinkins wasn’t mayor at the time and David Paterson wasn’t governor.

But I give W credit.

When Misty May-Treanor, the white girl with the biggest butt in beach volley ball stuck her butt out for Bush to smack, he took a swipe at the top of her back and deliberately missed. He wasn’t gonna disrespect his wife on television. Good move, Georgie. And when that Iraqi nut Muntadhar al Zeidi tried to bean our guy with his shoes, our Prez, dipped both attempts like a dodge ball champ or a cheerleader.

Happy Trails, Mr. Bush.

It might not have even been as bad as it seemed—but it probably was.

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From HuffingtonPost.com:

On his commitment:

“I don’t want to be naive. It’s going to be a stretch. It’ll be hard, but I’m excited about it. Enough so that after a couple of heart incidents and being sixty-three years old, I am prepared to spend three years on it. They want the right things for their country.”

On cleaning up the devastation:

“You may have seen where someone said it may take us two and a half years to clean the rubble out of Port-au-Prince even if we had a thousand trucks all working round the clock, because of the volume of material… That’s premised on the assumption that the roads are bad, and we have to take the rubble out to centralized dumps and all that.” He shifts from one hip to the other, then sits forward. “So I got ‘em working on a thing now where they go into, let’s say, a two-square-block area, and let’s say there are twenty lots that are devastated. They collect all the rubble and store it right there on two or three lots, whatever you have to do. You clear the others out and let people rebuild by lottery…. We’re going to have to be clever, but if people can see the homes coming back, and if we could put many, many more people to work, I think that would make a huge difference.”

Click Here To Read More.

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OPINION: SLOW EARTHQUAKE DEBRIS REMOVAL HINDERS HAITI’S RECOVERY

ONE MONTH AFTER THE HAITI EARTHQUAKE, AMERICARES RELIEF STILL DESPERATELY NEEDED

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Former U.S. President Bill Clinton officially inaugurated the commission overseeing Haiti’s post-earthquake reconstruction on Thursday, pledging to accelerate and organize a process that has raised less than 1 percent of the money promised by international donors.

The Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission aims to oversee every rebuilding dollar that comes to Haiti through next year. The hope is that it will ensure transparency and encourage investment, helping transform a dysfunctional, cripplingly poor country crushed by the Jan. 12 earthquake into a self-sustaining nation with a prosperous middle class.

Text continues after gallery …

“The prime minister and I have made a commitment to the people of Haiti and the people of the world to make this process both transparent and accountable,” Clinton told reporters before the meeting.

Outside the cracked, upscale hotel where it met in a convention room, a better future seems a long way off. More than five months after Port-au-Prince shook, collapsed buildings line the streets and families live under leaky tarps at risk from floods, hunger and disease. Rebuilding has been hampered by organizational problems, government disfunction and the scale of the disaster itself.

Long-term money has also been slow to arrive. Some $3 billion has been committed for humanitarian aid such as immediate post-disaster rescue, medical care, emergency shelter and food, according to the United Nations.

But despite international pledges of some $5.3 billion over two years at the United Nations donors’ conference for Haiti in March, only a fraction has actually been delivered — just $40 million from Brazil. Though other pledges are expected to be delivered soon, much of that to be held in a Multi-Donor Trust Fund administered by the World Bank, Haitians are growing restless.

Enter the commission. The 26-member body was empowered under an 18-month emergency declaration by Parliament passed shortly before most members’ terms expired and the body essentially dissolved last month.

Half its voting members are Haitian officials, the rest representatives of each donor pledging at least $100 million or $200 million of debt relief: the United States, Canada, Brazil, Spain, France, Norway, Venezuela, Japan, European Union, Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank. President Rene Preval has a veto.

The concept is that the commission will oversee the spending of every donation above $500,000 to Haiti. Organizations will present their projects to the fund, needing its approval to get government and other support to move forward. The process will be tracked on the commission’s website.

On Thursday, Clinton and Bellerive announced the commission’s first approved spending projects:

_ $45 million from Brazil and Norway in direct funds for the Haitian government, closing a quarter of its estimated $170 million budget shortfall.

_ $1 million from the Clinton Foundation for buildings that can be used as storm shelters in the quake-ravaged towns of Leogane and Jacmel, which are often in the path of Atlantic hurricanes.

_ A $20 million fund to provide loans to small- and medium-sized Haitian businesses, provided by Mexican communications magnate Carlos Slim and Canadian mining investor Frank Guistra.

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From HuffingtonPost.com:

Rush Limbaugh has written an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal titled “Liberals and the Violence Card.”

The crux of the op-ed is that conservative protests like the tea-party are not driven by hate but “by a love of what America stands for.” In making his argument, Limbaugh attacks Presidents Obama and Clinton and responds to TIME’s Joe Klein, who last week accused him of sedition.

“Like the millions of citizens who’ve peacefully risen up and attended thousands of rallies in protest, I seek nothing more than the preservation of the social contract that undergirds our society,” Limbaugh wrote. “I do not hate the government, as the left does when it is not running it. I love this country. And because I do, I insist that the temporary inhabitants of high political office comply with the Constitution, honor our God-given unalienable rights, and respect our hard-earned private property. For this I am called seditious, among other things, by some of the very people who’ve condemned this society?”

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Limbaugh also responds directly to President Clinton, who in a speech last week tied the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to anger incited by “talk radio” hosts like Limbaugh.

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OPINION: The Tea Party Is Channeling The Confederacy

Bill Clinton Likens Tea Party Anger To Timothy McVeigh

Bill Clinton gave a speech to the Center for American Progress on the anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma city. He compared the political climate of today to the time when McVeigh committed his act of domestic terrorism. He said:

This tea party movement can be a healthy thing if they are making us justify every dollar of taxes we raise and every dollar of money we’ve spent,But when you get mad, sometimes you end up producing the exact opposite result of what you say you are for.

What we learned from Oklahoma City is not that we should gag each other or that we should hold less passion for the positions we hold, but that our words really do matter. There is this vast echo chamber, and the words fall on the serious and delirious alike

Source

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From the NY Times:

WASHINGTON — For years, Bill Clinton tried to negotiate an arms control treaty for the post-cold-war era. He and Boris Yeltsin even agreed on a framework for a new Start treaty in Helsinki. But it never came to be. So when President Obama flies to Prague this week to sign a New Start treaty with Russia, it will culminate Mr. Clinton’s unfulfilled aspiration.

Nine years after Mr. Clinton left office, Mr. Obama has in some ways picked up his Democratic predecessor’s mantle. While they are very different presidents and not personally close, at least some of the unfinished agenda items left from the Clinton administration have found their way to the top of the Obama priority list. And the 44th president is arguably profiting from the work, and the setbacks, of the 42nd president.

Click below to view GALLERY: President Obama

The treaty to be signed this week and the health care overhaul signed into law last month represent the most obvious examples. But Mr. Obama also pushed through an economic stimulus package last year, which Mr. Clinton tried unsuccessfully to do in his first year. Mr. Obama has drawn bipartisan support for lifting the ban on gay men and lesbians’ serving openly in the military, an idea that backfired on Mr. Clinton. And where Mr. Clinton never submitted the Kyoto treaty to a hostile Senate, Mr. Obama is pushing forward with climate change legislation that has a shot at passing.

Other presidents have built on the policy agendas of predecessors. George W. Bush fashioned his presidency as an extension of Ronald Reagan’s, especially in cutting taxes. And Franklin D. Roosevelt completed the legacy of Woodrow Wilson, particularly in building a lasting international organization with American participation.

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In this video it seems as if former President, George W. Bush is trying to clean his hands on Bill Clinton’s shirt after shaking hands with a Haitian man on their trip for earthquake relief.

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Bush And Clinton Head To Haiti For Earthquake Relief

Top 10 Embarrassing Bush Video Moments

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — One restored a Haitian president to power; the other flew him back out again. Former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are visiting Haiti on Monday, reminding the country of its tumultuous recent past just as frustration over an uneven earthquake relief effort is bringing politics back to the surface.

The ex-presidents are spearheading U.S. fundraising in response to the Jan. 12 earthquake. Tapped by President Barack Obama for the role, they are making the one-day visit to assess recovery needs.

Charged memories of their policies toward the impoverished Caribbean nation are already mixing with frustration over deplorable living conditions among the 1.3 million homeless quake survivors. Supporters of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide have scheduled protests for Monday – demanding the return of their exiled leader and pleading for more aid.

“We are going to bring our message to the presidents, that our situation here is no good. The way people are living in Haiti is no way for anyone to live,” said Fanfan Fenelon, a 30-year-old resident of the Bel Air slum.

Monday will be Bush’s first trip to Haiti. Clinton, who is the U.N. special envoy to the country, has made two visits since the quake and five in the past two years. He also visited as president.

The pair will arrive in a country struggling to feed and shelter victims of the magnitude-7 quake, which killed an estimated 230,000 people. Hundreds of thousands still live in dangerous camps, some already flooding ahead of the April rainy season.

On Sunday, a small earthquake caused an apartment building to collapse in the northern city of Cap-Haitien, killing at least three people, according to U.N. spokesman Louicius Eugene. Three people were rescued from the rubble.

President Rene Preval’s government has criticized non-governmental organizations for not being accountable to the Haitian state. In turn, Haitian officials have been accused of ineffectiveness and corruption. On Tuesday, a group of Haitian and U.S. human-rights advocates will ask the Organization of American States for an inquiry into why $2.2 billion in aid has not helped more people.

Those exchanges will only grow more heated with the approach of the March 31 donors’ conference at the United Nations, where the Haitian government will ask for $11.5 billion.

Enter Clinton and Bush, an unlikely duo that have arguably shaped Haiti’s history as much as anyone alive today.

Clinton presided over a refugee crisis borne of the 1991 ouster of Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president. He returned Aristide to power in 1994 with a force of 20,000 U.S. troops.

Many of the country’s elite have disliked him ever since. Aristide’s luster dimmed for others as his two nonconsecutive terms gave way to accusations of rigged elections, pocketed foreign aid and attacks on opponents.

Bush is acutely remembered by many Haitians – especially the thousands in Port-au-Prince’s teeming slums – as the U.S. leader whose administration chartered the plane that flew Aristide back into exile during a 2004 rebellion, then backed an interim government that carried out reprisals against his supporters.

“We don’t have a very good ‘souvenir’ of President Bush, as you might suppose,” said Patrick Elie, who served as a defense official under both Aristide and Preval. “I hope that this crisis is not another opportunity to weaken the Haitian state even more.”

Business leaders and others in positions of power are excited for the presidents’ visit.

“The fact that two presidents of the United States are coming to visit is proof that the subject of the reconstruction of Haiti is not a partisan issue,” said Patrick Delatour, Haiti’s tourism minister and part-owner of a construction company who was tasked by Preval with leading reconstruction efforts.

The nonprofit Clinton Bush Haiti Fund has raised $37 million from 220,000 individuals including Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who gave $1 million, and Obama, who among other donations gave $200,000 of his Nobel Peace Prize. About $4 million has gone to such organizations as Habitat for Humanity, the University of Miami/Project Medishare mobile hospital in Port-au-Prince and the U.S. branch of the Irish charity Concern Worldwide.

The rest has yet to be allocated. There is heated discussion, inside Haiti and out, about where future funds should go.

James Morrell, director of the Washington-based Haiti Democracy Project, said he welcomes the ex-presidents’ efforts but that government corruption will block any serious effort to develop the country.

“They need to go back to Obama and say, ‘Let’s not put all our eggs in one basket,’” he said.

Others want nothing to do with the visit at all.

“Those people have a lot of money. They could do something for Haiti, but they haven’t done it,” said So An, a powerful leader of Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas party. “I don’t want any words from now on, I want action.”

On a street corner in the Bel Air slum this weekend the debate over the presidents’ visit was already under way.

Neighbors crowded into a narrow alley behind partially collapsed buildings to shout their opinions: Bush is bad, Preval ineffective and Clinton disappointing as U.N. envoy.

But all agreed – they’ll take any help they can get.

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Bill Clinton Returns Home After Heart Surgery

Urgent Need For Tent Cities For Haitian Refugees

CHAPPAQUA, N.Y. – Former President Bill Clinton was recovering at his suburban home Friday after leaving a Manhattan hospital where he underwent a heart procedure.

Three black SUVs with tinted windows arrived around 7:45 a.m. Friday and pulled through the high gates at the house. The Westchester County hamlet of Chappaqua is about 35 miles north of New York City.

Clinton adviser Douglas Band said in a statement that Clinton left New York Presbyterian Hospital “in excellent health.”

“He looks forward in the days ahead to getting back to the work of his Foundation, and to Haiti relief and recovery efforts,” it said.

Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chairman and a close friend of the Clintons, told CBS’ “The Early Show” that he expects Clinton will get back to work quickly.

“If I know President Clinton, he’ll be on the phone … calling people asking for more help for Haiti and where he can get pickup trucks so they can deliver food or generators. If I know Bill Clinton, he’ll be raring to go in about 35 minutes,” McAuliffe said.
From the NY Times:

Former President Bill Clinton was taken to a New York hospital on Thursday with chest pains, a White House official said.

Mr. Clinton has had a history of heart trouble but it was uncertain how serious his condition was as doctors evaluated him.

Douglas Band, counselor to Mr. Clinton, issued this statement: “Today President Bill Clinton was admitted to the Columbia Campus of New York Presbyterian Hospital after feeling discomfort in his chest. Following a visit to his cardiologist, he underwent a procedure to place two stents in one of his coronary arteries. President Clinton is in good spirits, and will continue to focus on the work of his Foundation and Haiti’s relief and long-term recovery efforts. In 2004, President Clinton underwent a successful quadruple bypass operation to free four blocked arteries.”

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——–
[4:50 p.m. - 2/11/2010] – BREAKING: Bill Clinton Hospitalized In NYC, Complained Of Chest Pains

From MSNBC:

Former President Bill Clinton has been hospitalized in New York City, NBC News has confirmed.

Early reports indicated that the former president experienced chest pains and has received a stent. A stent is small mesh tube that is used to treat narrowed or weakened arteries.

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Bill Clinton Will Be Inducted Into Black Fraternity

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From The New York Daily News

Bill Clinton helped sink his wife’s chances for an endorsement from Ted Kennedy by belittling Barack Obama as nothing but a race-based candidate.
“A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee,” the former president told the liberal lion from Massachusetts, according to the gossipy new campaign book, “Game Change.”
The book says Kennedy was deeply offended and recounted the conversation to friends with fury.
After Kennedy sided with Obama, Clinton reportedly griped, “the only reason you are endorsing him is because he’s black. Let’s just be clear.”

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Bill Clinton Says Carter Was Wrong For Racism Comment

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From CNN:

CNN has learned from two senior Democratic sources that former President Bill Clinton will attend the Senate Democrats’ weekly luncheon Tuesday to address the caucus about health care.

A notice obtained by CNN went out to Senate Democrats saying, “All Senators should be aware that former President Clinton will be making a presentation on Health Care at tomorrow’s caucus lunch. Senator Reid has requested that all Democratic Senators attend.”

A constant refrain from Democratic leaders is that wavering Democrats must heed what they say is a lesson of the Clinton administration: fail to pass a health care reform bill, and congressional Democrats will suffer on Election Day.

Click here to read more.

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Prominent politicians and celebrities all came out for the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative hosted by Bill & Hillary. Check out the photo gallery below to see who showed up to the event!

Bill Clinton says Jimmy Carter was wrong for racism comment

Are both political parties failing to address poverty?

WASHINGTON — Former President Bill Clinton says he doesn’t think racism is a principal factor in resistance to President Barack Obama’s plan for overhauling health care.

Interviewed Tuesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Clinton said “there’s no question” racism exists in some outbursts in recent months. But he also said he believes “if he were not an African-American, all of the people who were against him on health care would still be against him. They were against me, too.”

Cinton said that “I sympathize with” former President Jimmy Carter’s feeling that racism accounts for the strenuous opposition to Obama, but said “that’s not what’s driving” Obama’s critics. Clinton said: “What’s driving them is they don’t want health care.”

OPINION: Joe Wilson, Portrait Of A Racist

UPDATE: White House Disputes Carter’s Racism Remarks

Zagat launched a new “Spotlight on Harlem” Guide today in a ceremony with Pres. Clinton, Tim & Nina Zagat & Lloyd Williams.  The new guide focuses on northern Manhattan from 96th st north and rates restaurants, nightlife shopping & gourmet food/entertainment Harlem Vintage won for best Gourmet Food/Entertainment location and Nectar won for best Nightlife location. The awards were based on cumulative ratings.

Hillary Clinton has a message for the world: It’s not all about Bill.

The secretary of state bristled Monday when — as she heard it — a Congolese university student asked what her husband thought about an international financial matter.

She hadn’t traveled to Africa to talk about her husband the ex-president. But even there, she couldn’t escape his outsized shadow.

She abruptly reclaimed the stage for herself.

“My husband is not secretary of state, I am,” she snapped. “I am not going to be channeling my husband.”

Watch The Video

Clinton’s presence, so bold in her historic presidential candidacy against Barack Obama, has sometimes been hard to see in the months she’s served as the supposed face and voice of U.S. foreign policy.

The president’s ambitious travels have overshadowed her, heavyweight special envoys have been assigned to the world’s critical hotspots, Vice President Joe Biden has taken on assignments abroad — and then last week her husband succeeded in a North Korean mission to free two journalists even as she landed in Africa on a seven-nation trip.

“You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?” she asked incredulously when the student raised a question about a multibillion-dollar Chinese loan offer to Congo.

“If you want my opinion, I will tell you my opinion,” she said. “I am not going to be channeling my husband.”

The moderator quickly moved on.

State Department officials said the student approached Clinton afterward and told her he had meant to ask what Obama, not Bill Clinton, thought about the Chinese loan. A senior Clinton aide said that Mrs. Clinton assured the student not to worry about it.

The student’s question, according to the State Department translation, went like this: “Thank you. Mrs. Clinton, weve all heard about the Chinese contracts in this country. The interference is from the World Bank against this contract. What does Mr. Clinton think through the mouth of Mrs. Clinton and what does Mr. Mutombo think on this situation? Thank you very much.”

It was unclear whether the French-speaking student or translator had erred. Either way, she was not pleased at the mention of her husband’s name.

The Clintons have always been a complicated couple. An accomplished lawyer and politician in her own right, Hillary Rodham Clinton has struggled for decades to balance her interests and ambitions against his. She has supported his career while looking to blaze a trail of her own — at times proud of, and benefiting from, her husband’s accomplishments, and at other times frustrated by his failings and his habit of overshadowing her, friends say.

The biggest controversy of Bill Clinton’s career — an affair with a White House intern that led to impeachment proceedings — engendered rare sympathy for his wife and helped her win a Senate seat. One of his biggest political miscues — injecting race into her South Carolina primary with Obama — helped seal her defeat in the 2008 Democratic primary.

Since his presidency, Bill Clinton has spoken out about international financial and development aid to poor countries, one focus of his foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative, making his opinion of interest abroad. But the stage in Kinshasa was his wife’s, and she reacted instantly to a suggestion that he shared it.

She had been sidelined for weeks after she fell on her way to the White House in June and fractured her elbow, requiring surgery. Her aides acknowledged her frustrations stemming from the injury, which made her miss out on going to Russia with Obama and attending several European conferences.

But her aides and those in the White House have denied any rift or attempt to marginalize her.

After returning to action following her injury, Clinton made a round of TV appearances and a rousing speech — all in tune with Obama’s priorities, but in her own voice.

She then resumed her frenetic pace, traveling to India and Thailand and then to Africa.

Hours after she left Washington for Africa a week ago, news broke that Bill Clinton had gone on a humanitarian mission to North Korea to win the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, two television journalists who had been arrested and sentenced to 12 years at hard labor.

She arrived in Kenya to find herself peppered with questions about his secret mission.

Clinton quickly recovered her cool Monday and moved on to other subjects. Just before the question that set off her anger, another student had asked if the U.S. and the West felt a need to apologize to the people of Congo for colonialism and postcolonial interference.

That brought a pointed rebuttal as well.

“I cannot excuse the past and I will not try,” she said. “We can either think about the past and be imprisoned by it or we can decide we’re going to have a better future and work to make it.”

UPDATE

North Korea’s official news agency says leader Kim Jong Il has pardoned two American journalists and ordered their release.

The official Korean Central News Agency said early Wednesday from Pyongyang that the order was issued following a request from former President Bill Clinton.

Clinton flew to the North Korean capital on Tuesday on a mission to negotiate the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for former Vice President Al Gore’s Current TV media venture.

SEOUL, South Korea – Former President Bill Clinton met Tuesday with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il on the first day of a surprise mission to Pyongyang to negotiate the release of two Americans, holding “exhaustive” talks on a wide range of topics, state-run media said.

Clinton “courteously” conveyed a verbal message from President Barack Obama, the official Korean Central News Agency said in a report from Pyongyang. Kim expressed his thanks, and engaged Clinton in a “wide-ranging exchange of views on matters of common concern,” the report said.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, however, denied Clinton went with a message from Obama. “That’s not true,” he told reporters.

Clinton was in communist North Korea on a mission to secure the freedom of Americans Euna Lee and Laura Ling, reporters for former Vice President Al Gore’s Current TV media venture who were arrested along the Chinese-North Korean border in March and sentenced in June to 12 years of hard labor for illegal entry and engaging in “hostile acts.”

His landmark visit, which was not announced in advance by North Korea or the U.S., comes at a time of heightened tensions between Washington and Pyongyang, foes during the Korean War of the 1950s, over the regime’s nuclear program.

North Korea in recent months has conducted a nuclear test and test-fired an array of ballistic missiles in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, with Washington leading the push to punish Pyongyang for its defiance.

It’s only the second visit to Pyongyang by a former U.S. leader. Jimmy Carter traveled to North Korea for talks with Kim’s father, Kim Il Sung, in 1994 in a groundbreaking meeting during a time of similar tensions.

Clinton’s meeting with Kim would be the notoriously reclusive North Korean leader’s first with a prominent Western figure since Kim reportedly suffered a stroke a year ago, sparking questions about the future of the nation he controls with absolute authority.

Kim, said to have a taste for fine wines and fancy gourmet food, also is believed to suffer from chronic diabetes and heart disease. The man who once sported a noticeable pot belly has appeared gaunt and gray in recent months.

Though Clinton was in North Korea on a private basis, his visit was treated by North Korea as a high-profile visit, with senior officials — including Kim Kye Gwan, the vice foreign minister who serves as the country’s chief nuclear negotiator — meeting him on the tarmac.

Footage from the APTN television news agency showed the arriving Clinton exchanging warm handshakes with the officials and accepting a bouquet of flowers from a schoolgirl.

Kim later hosted a banquet for Clinton at the state guesthouse, Radio Pyongyang and the Korean Central Broadcasting Station reported.

Photos in state-run media of the visit showed Kim, with a broad smile, standing next to a solemn-looking Clinton. The two also posed with Clinton’s party in front of a mural, and another picture showed the men and others seated around a conference table.

Though Clinton does not hold office, his stature and good relations with Pyongyang could yield positive results, analysts said.

“This is a very potentially rewarding trip. Not only is it likely to resolve the case of the two American journalists detained in North Korea for many months, but it could be a very significant opening and breaking this downward cycle of tension and recrimination between the U.S. and North Korea,” Mike Chinoy, author of “Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis,” said in Beijing.

There was no word in state media on the status of Clinton’s negotiations to secure the release of Ling, 32, and Lee, 36. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton last month urged North Korea to grant the women amnesty, saying they were remorseful and that their families were anguished.

Lee, a South Korean-born U.S. citizen, is married and has a 4-year-old daughter in Los Angeles; a native Californian, Ling is the married younger sister of TV journalist Lisa Ling.

Clinton’s administration had rocky but relatively good relations with Pyongyang, and both he and Gore, his vice president, had been named as possible envoys to bring back Lee and Ling. Also mentioned was New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who in the 1990s traveled twice to North Korea to secure the freedom of detained Americans.

However, the decision to send the former president was kept quiet. A senior U.S. official told reporters traveling Tuesday with Hillary Rodham Clinton that the White House would not comment on the trip to Pyongyang until the mission was complete.

“While this solely private mission to secure the release of two Americans is on the ground, we will have no comment,” Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said later in a statement from Washington. “We do not want to jeopardize the success of former President Clinton’s mission.”

In New York, the Committee to Protect Journalists said it was encouraged by reports about Clinton’s trip.

“This is welcome news and we are pleased to see movement in this case,” said Bob Dietz, the group’s Asia program coordinator. “The fate of these two women should not be linked to broader issues on the Korean peninsula, and to see both sides make a move toward the release of these reporters will bring some relief to them, their families and friends.”

From Examiner

The men of Phi Beta Sigma are hosting their National Conclave this week in New Orleans, Louisiana.

According to sources in New Orleans yesterday the men of this brotherhood voted on several members to be inducted into the fraternity at a later date.

One of those men is former President Bill Clinton and the other is Rev. Al Sharpton.

Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity has not confirmed this information as of yet but sources in New Orleans who wish to remain anonymous have confirmed that this order of business has been voted on and both men will be inducted later this year.

Read The Whole Story

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said Monday that Haiti has the best chance in decades to escape poverty and political upheaval and he will seek in his new job as U.N. special envoy to improve life for the estimated 9 million Haitians.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and was in the throes of a food crisis and political deadlock when four tropical storms battered it last fall, killing some 800 people and doing $1 billion in damage. Hunger worsened, poverty deepened and hard-won stability threatened to come apart five years after a bloody rebellion.

Clinton said he will try to do in Haiti what the U.N. attempted to do when he was the top U.N. envoy promoting recovery from the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami — “to leave things better than they were before the natural disasters.”

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who appointed Clinton to the US$1-a-year post on May 19, told a news conference that “no one is better placed” than the former U.S. president to help Haiti’s president and prime minister promote their new economic development program and to help ensure that governments deliver on the US$335 million they pledged in April for Haiti’s recovery.

“Haiti is at a turning point,” Ban said. “It has a real chance for stability and potential prosperity. … And we wanted to send a message to the international community: Haiti needs and deserves our help.”

Sitting beside the secretary-general, Clinton said that even after the devastation caused by last year’s storms “I think Haiti … has the best chance to escape the darker aspects of its history in the 35 years I have been going there.”

He said this was because of the leadership of President Rene Preval and Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis, the “good job” done by U.N. peacekeepers and international police in improving security, U.S. legislation passed last year giving Haitian products “extraordinary access” to U.S. markets, Ban’s interest, and the success of the donors conference.

Clinton said he will follow the “very impressive program” produced by the Haitian government — which is similar to one commissioned by the U.N. but focuses more on immediate needs — and work to generate new jobs and improve the availability of basic services.

Schools, hospitals, housing, public facilities, roads and infrastructure will be “built back better” and improvements will be made to prevent and mitigate future disasters and speed recovery, he said.

Clinton said he will also encourage international investment, make Haiti a more attractive prospect including by improving power supplies, accelerate efforts to promote clean energy, encourage donors to honor their commitments, and put the spotlight on “both the pain and the promise of Haiti” and its economic opportunities.

“I will be accountable in this work to the secretary-general and the United Nations, and to the people of Haiti and their governmental leaders,” Clinton said.

He said he had read speculation in the Haitian press that his job “was somehow an imperialist plot to take over Haiti.”

“All I want to do is help the Haitians take over control of their own destiny,” Clinton stressed. “That’s all I have ever wanted for Haiti, and that’s all the secretary-general wants.”

Haiti’s Foreign Minister Alrich Nicolas read a letter from Preval praising Ban for focusing attention on Haiti’s urgent needs and saying “our country and our people could not hope for a better friend and advocate than President Bill Clinton.”

Clinton said he would be putting together a small staff over the next few days and hoped to visit Haiti “pretty soon.”

In response to a question, he said both the White House and the State Department had given a green light for him to take the U.N. job. “I would not have done this otherwise,” Clinton said.

The United Nations named former President Bill Clinton on Tuesday as its special envoy to Haiti, with a mission to help the impoverished nation achieve some measure of stability after devastating floods and other crises.

Clinton — who will be paid $1 a year and travel to Haiti several times annually — said he was honored to accept the post.

“I believe Haiti is better positioned to make progress for all its people than at any time since I first visited in 1978,” he said in a statement.

“Last year’s natural disasters took a great toll, but Haiti’s government and people have the determination and ability to ‘build back better,’ not just to repair the damage done but to lay the foundations for the long term sustainable development that has eluded them for so long,” the former president said.

Clinton is popular in Haiti, but the U.N.’s peacekeepers have been widely criticized despite providing the nation with its only real security for years. The peacekeepers have patrolled since 2004 and are training an under-equipped national police force to retake control, but some consider the blue helmets to be an unwanted occupation force.

Having Clinton as the U.N.’s public face in Haiti could temper such sentiment.

Clinton is still well-regarded here for using the threat of U.S. military force to oust a dictatorship in 1994, then sending Army troops and Marines to pave the way for the return of elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been deposed in a coup.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also praised the appointment of such “a high-profile envoy,” without mentioning their marriage or the requirement that State Department lawyers review Bill Clinton’s international activities to avoid conflicts of interest.

“It’s the kind of partnership we are looking for across the board,” she told reporters at the White House, explaining that she had already been preparing a team to help Haiti. “This is going to be an added bit of leverage and focus for us.”

Many poor Haitians — Aristide’s power base — still long for their leader’s return from exile after he was toppled a second time by a rebellion in 2004.

In March, Clinton toured the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince with the U.N. chief to encourage investment after a year that saw a food crisis, destabilizing riots and four devastating tropical storms. The former president was mobbed by enthusiastic crowds.

The following month, he attended a donors conference in Washington that resulted in pledges of $324 million for the struggling country. Haiti is the hemisphere’s poorest nation and has been mired for decades in political and social turmoil.

“I am confident that President Clinton will bring energy, dynamism and focus to the task of mobilizing international support for Haiti’s economic recovery and reconstruction,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said.

Because of the Clintons’ marriage, State Department lawyers must approve some of Bill Clinton’s international activities under an agreement between the U.S. Senate and the Clinton Foundation, which works in Haiti on a number of issues including health care, AIDS, the environment and economic development.

Haiti does not currently have a special U.N. envoy, and it is not clear what Clinton’s duties will be. The Miami Herald, which first reported the appointment, said he will be expected to visit the Caribbean country — a two-hour flight from Miami — at least four times a year.

Clinton visited Haiti as president in 1995 and again in 2003. Hillary Clinton has also visited several times, most recently for an April meeting with President Rene Preval en route to the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad.

Dick Gregory harshly criticized Bill Clinton over his criticism of Barack Obama at the State of the Black Union in New Orleans.

Watch The Video

President-elect Barack Obama hailed a rare Oval Office gathering of all U.S. presidents as extraordinary on Wednesday, while President George W. Bush wished him well and pledged that the office “transcends the individual.”

“I just want to thank the president for hosting us,” the president-elect said, flanked by former President George H.W. Bush on one side and his son on the other.

Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, both smiling broadly, stood with them.

“All the gentlemen here understand both the pressures and possibilities of this office,” Obama said. “For me to have the opportunity to get advice, good counsel and fellowship with these individuals is extraordinary.”

In a swift photo opportunity, the current president wished Obama well before all five men headed off for a private lunch.

“I want to thank the president-elect for joining the ex-presidents for lunch,” Bush said, even though he’s not quite a member of that club yet.

“One message that I have and I think we all share is that we want you to succeed, whether we’re Democrat or Republican we care deeply about this country,” Bush said. “All of us who have served in this office understand that the office itself transcends the individual.”

Bush and Obama also met privately for roughly 30 minutes.

Watch Obama Meet The Ex-Presidents

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From The New York Observer:

Bill Clinton said he’d do “whatever they want” with respect to the vetting process and information he’d have to disclose to the Obama administration to help Hillary Clinton become Obama’s secretary of state.

Standing on stage and signing autographs after a ceremony to rename the Triborough Bridge after the late Robert F. Kennedy, Clinton was asked about the vetting process.

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