Big Source of Clinton's Cash Is an Unlikely Address

Wall Street Journal:

One of the biggest sources of political donations to Hillary Rodham Clinton is a tiny, lime-green bungalow that lies under the flight path from San Francisco International Airport.

Six members of the Paw family, each listing the house at 41 Shelbourne Ave. as their residence, have donated a combined $45,000 to the Democratic senator from New York since 2005, for her presidential campaign, her Senate re-election last year and her political action committee. In all, the six Paws have donated a total of $200,000 to Democratic candidates since 2005, election records show. [...]

It isn't obvious how the Paw family is able to afford such political largess. Records show they own a gift shop and live in a 1,280-square-foot house that they recently refinanced for $270,000. William Paw, the 64-year-old head of the household, is a mail carrier with the U.S. Postal Service who earns about $49,000 a year, according to a union representative. Alice Paw, also 64, is a homemaker. The couple's grown children have jobs ranging from account manager at a software company to "attendance liaison" at a local public high school. One is listed on campaign records as an executive at a mutual fund.

Read the whole story: Wall Street Journal

Comments

[naijaman]

10:50 PM on 08/28/2007

Even though I'm not a Hillary supporter, I don't see anything in the story that indicates Hillary knew about any funny business with this "donor".

[ohiomark]

07:30 PM on 08/28/2007

THIS is the woman who is going to lead the Dems to the White House?

Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!!!!

[nunzia]

07:08 PM on 08/28/2007

This OMG-Asians-gave-her-money crap again?
Take your lily-white bigotry to a Repub website; it'll work better there.

[accountability]

08:12 PM on 08/28/2007

Yay YOU!

[lucid]

05:29 PM on 08/28/2007

It really doesn't matter Clinton will get her money one way or another.

[accountability]

04:34 PM on 08/28/2007

PART 2

To be sure of the limits I got this quote from a site.

"The FEC's limits on who can give how much in Presidential races are fairly complex but basically it comes down to this: an individual can give a candidate a maximum of $1,000 during the entire primary season and another $1,000 for the general election."
So that would mean the 5 people from the Paw family gave a total of $4,600.00 or $400.00 under the legal limit.

Back to the $720,000.00 It is not clear how many individuals, or who gave what over how many years. Is it 3 years or one year.
Let's assume its three and the average per year would be $240,000. This year the Paw's gave $4,600.00 that leaves $235,400... to ALL democratic candidates. How many are we talking about? 3? 4? 8? 12?
All *presidential* candidates, or are all other candidates included?
I don't know and the author doesn't tell us. More obfuscation.
This article is a bunch of biased, obfuscated, deliberately confusing piece of trash trying to stir up as much trouble in the form of Hillary hate as possible.

I really hate that crap. The author knows that most people will not do the math, will not read the article critically, will just read it from their own viewpoint and jump to the conclusion he is directing the reader too.

And again, I support Obama as of now, there is much I don't like about Hillary, but I also support fairness and don't want to go down the dangerous road of letting the neo-cons vast right wing conspiracy... and I think we can see she was right about that... set the tone and agenda and divide and conquer the Democrats again.

[accountability]

04:30 PM on 08/28/2007

Has anybody done all of the math here?
Has anyone looked at the article and see the obvious unspoken bias, and the holes that have been chosen to not be filled?

I won't go back over the cultural, civic and financial aspects that I covered in my comments to others.

But look at the numbers:
"Mr. Hsu and ***five of his associates*** gave Mrs. Clinton a total of $47,500." Divide that by 6 and it is an *average* of $ 7,916.66. We don't know how much each person gave, we can only note the average. Note that the Paw family is not included in this group.
They are brogut in next.

"In all,
*the family,*
* Mr. Hsu*
* and his associates*
have given Mrs. Clinton $133,000 since 2005"

So I am assuming that would be 2005, 2006, and 2007.

So in 3 years 12 people gave $133,000 to Hillary. The average is $3,694.44 per person each year.

Where did I get 12 givers? Mr. Hsu, five of his associates= six,+ the 6 people in the Paw family. Perhaps it isn't all 6 in the Paw family, maybe only 5, Mr.Hsu and 4 children as it says later in the article.
The math doesn't really change all that much when it is divided up.

The author certainly doesn't make the numbers clear and it seems to be deliberate obfuscation.

"...and a total of nearly $720,000 to **all** Democratic **candidates."** Not just Hillary.
Is that in 3 years? or in one year?

If it is this year and the Paw's gave a total of $4,600 dollars (the last paragraph of the article.) He doesn't really make it clear if *each* member gave $4600.00 or if all 5 of them donated a total of $4600.00 together.
If you didn't know know the legal amount you might assume they EACH gave $4,600.00 seeming as if the total was $23,000. I wasn't sure and looked it up.
I became even more confused! LOL

My post is over the legal word limit, part 2 next.

[gcallaghan]

03:01 PM on 08/28/2007

Without some information indicating otherwise, this doesn't ring completely unlikely. People of all means are rising up to make sure the GOP loses the white house. Many asian-americans live modestly, invest their money wisely and don't tend to spend it on mainstream consumer products. Like Bush, they believe in legacies; only they want the kind left to their descendents to be better than what they received.

[accountability]

08:11 PM on 08/28/2007

Absolutely, a voice of sanity.
Understanding the Asian culture is part of parsing this whole thing. Leaving a decent world for their children and grandchildren insures they will be honored as ancestors. To be forgotten by one's decendents is an unthinkable horror.

$45,000. a year may not be a lot to many people but I assure you there are millions and millions living on far less that own homes and contribute to society, and community, and campaigns seeing it as a civic responsibility more important than owning an IPhone. Furthermore they teach their children this.
AND they pay for their utilities. (that was a stupid comment!)

Which isn't to say that 45,000 bucks a year is all they have to live on. For all we know they received an inheritance, have money from home, (did they come from Hong Kong? I forget.) They could have lived in a 1BR apartment for years saving money, why always assume the worst when it is so obvious a biased article? In any case, when you think about a family of 6 living together, the 4 children working as well as the father the income could be quite significant.

[CaveatMagnusFrater]

03:01 PM on 08/28/2007

…In all, the six Paws have donated a total of $200,000 to Democratic candidates since 2005, election records show…

…Records show they own a gift shop and live in a 1,280-square-foot house that they recently refinanced for $270,000. William Paw, the 64-year-old head of the household, is a mail carrier with the U.S. Postal Service who earns about $49,000 a year, according to a union representative…

…No one in the Paw family had ever given a campaign contribution before the 2004 presidential election…

…A San Mateo County elections official said that members of the Paw family vote "sporadically."…


If this is verified, Sen. Clinton needs to take several steps. She needs to turn all money that has come through Mr. Hsu over to a charity. She also needs to appoint someone to oversight of campaign contributions. Finally she needs to apologize for either cheating the system or for receiving benefits from someone who did. If she was behind it, she needs to drop out of the presidential race and vacate her Senate seat.

mike

[LiberalLibertarian]

04:02 PM on 08/29/2007

While I have always voted since turning 18, I also never gave money to candidates until 2004. 4 years of Bush was enough to radicalize many folk...

By all means, investigate it. But if there is nothing to find, as I strongly suspect as a Bay Arean, then please let it go.

[MissFortunate]

02:19 PM on 08/28/2007

Meh, more red herrings and I don't even like Hillary.

[accountability]

03:10 PM on 08/28/2007

exactly, when you do the math doesn't look like a problem at all.

[mike53]

02:08 PM on 08/28/2007

The Chinese must need more military secrets. They want a Clinton back in the White House and are willing to pay for it.

[seamusnh]

02:08 PM on 08/28/2007

You don't have to follow the money very far... From the article:
"The Paws' political donations closely track donations made by Norman Hsu, a wealthy New York businessman in the apparel industry who once listed the Paw home as his address, according to public records. Mr. Hsu is one of the top fund-raisers for Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign. He has hosted or co-hosted some of her most prominent money-raising events."
Looks like Norman Hsu was using the Paws to get around campaign finance laws. If this is proven, that reflects poorly on Hilary. She should give the money back now to head off any controversey...

[LiberalLibertarian]

03:58 PM on 08/29/2007

Could be, or it could be as happens in this market a lot that friends will buy friends houses for x amount of money (usually a little below the wildly inflated housing market prices). The market is a bit better now, but at one time there was a 0 percent vacancy rate in SF, and houses were selling for hundreds of thousonds MORE than the asking price regularly. I will not be voting for Hillery BTW, she is not nearly liberal enough for me. But from living here all my life (6th generation Californian, 5th gen bay area), the housing market is nuts!

[katlade]

12:10 PM on 08/28/2007

$45,000 since 2005 divided among 6 people is $3750.00 per year. $200,000 divided among 6 per year is $16,666.66. Is that considered so much as to be considered suspect. House may look modest but there are 1 room apartments going for what a nice rambler in the Midwest can be sold for. It is all relative. What about these $5000.00 a plate fundraisers?

[accountability]

03:09 PM on 08/28/2007

Than ks for doing some of the math!
I was just about to post some of the math myself.

Kind of surprised there aren't many Hill Hater Pros on this yet.

[nunzia]

07:10 PM on 08/28/2007

They can't handle math.

[gvincent]

11:50 AM on 08/28/2007

Sounds like what John Edwards was accused of doing when his rich lawyer friends contributed much more money than legally allowed through spouses, kids, friends, and co-workers...
http://www.crookedinc.com

[billu]

11:03 AM on 08/28/2007

OK so we are now suggesting that every candidate do a background investigation on each and every donor? This is silly. If it turns out to be shady Hillary et al should return the $$$ but what candidate can spare the resources to do such investigations?

I still say that donations should be public attributable and go through FEC accounting and then to the candidates. If you take the candidates out of the business of taking cash from donors and make the middleman a Gov't accounting agency there would be much less hanky panky and it would all be 100% accurate and attributable or the candidate would not get the money to spend.

[accountability]

03:07 PM on 08/28/2007

or govt funded elections only. that way there isn't enough to allow for crazy spin machines to do the nasty work, negative ads, etc. The money will have to go to educating American voters on what they want to do if elected. even if they can't do it all... (and who can, really?) there would be a greater chance of knowing what you are getting.

[JScott]

11:02 AM on 08/28/2007

It might be strange. BUT put this in context that 'modest' home is probably worth close to 1 mil.-property IS expensive there-do some zillow listing searches folks, even in the 'armpit' of the SFBay area-East Palo Alto homes there go for the 500,000's to 600,000s (even with the soft real estate market now) and that is backed up next to the fwy. and under an airport flight path, next to the salt evaporation ponds-it's by no means a tony prestigious neighborhood and Daly City isn't really that either.

[mongus]

12:03 PM on 08/28/2007

Don't worry, the 'clinton machine' can, and will, explain EVERYTHING.

Look folks, these people in that house are "real Americans" who represent mail cariers, homemakers, and transients who come and go, leaving thousands of dollars for their hosts.

Come on people, that happens every day here in America, doesn't it?
And to be consistent with their 'Official Campaign Money' policy, they will tell us that they will be PROUD to continue to take money from them, and any other 'real American' who would like to use that house to drop off a few thousand bucks.

After all, we have been doing that for the past few years. What's wrong with that?

Besides, who are YOU to question what the clintons are doing?

[accountability]

04:36 PM on 08/28/2007

oh shush with the scolding... do the math. read the article for what it is. there is nothing to it. really.
It is designed for exactly this reaction.
Sheesh.

[accountability]

03:04 PM on 08/28/2007

exactly.
A MODEST home in SF is not so modest anywhere else. That is a lot of SqFt for a home in SF.

there is a lot of hypocricy in this story, and some anti Asian bigotry to boot.
sick bastards will stoop low to try to bring Hillary down.

[LiberalLibertarian]

03:51 PM on 08/29/2007

As someone who lives in the bay area, that home could easily be worth near a mil at this point. The prices here at astronomical, esp within the city itself. Plus many of us are liberal and really dedicated to a democratic candidate in 08. I know people here who will work from dawn to dusk on political issues, they are very very passionate to the point of spending all their disposable income on activism instead of themselves. I am not among them, but I respect them totally. Unless more comes up here in this story, this is a nonevent.