I'm dismayed to announce that one of Syracuse, NY's own, Robert Congel has possibly messed up our MTE's chances to become SOS. I and my collective's efforts to insure that nothing would stand in her way, are indeed shell-shocked!

We were under the mistaken impression that this Bob Congel was strictly a Rethuglikkan operative, and that he was courting only those in his party. Unknown to us, he secretly met our MTE (probably in Skaneateles, NY and I know there is someone big in the Democratic Party living there because all the Democratic contenders have to make the same pilgrimage there, and I mean all of them, comrades!) and made a donation to her husband's foundation and library in 2004. This only came to light at all because of Bill's promise to make his foundation's donors public, to support our MTE's promotion. I plan to keep close tabs on Mr. Congel as his green mall project progresses. Right now, there doesn't seem to be anything at all going on down there at the site. That's right comrades, it's taken 9 long years, and the expansion is only getting started, sort of. Congel is getting property tax breaks for the new addition and hasn't paid any taxes except sales tax since the first part of the mall opened 20 years ago. Not bad, eh?

WASHINGTON — An upstate New York developer donated $100,000 to former President Bill Clinton's foundation in November 2004, around the same time that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure millions of dollars in federal assistance for the businessman's mall project.


John Berry/The Post-Standard

Robert J. Congel donated $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation as Hillary Rodham Clinton pushed bills to help his mall project.

Mrs. Clinton helped enact legislation allowing the developer, Robert J. Congel, to use tax-exempt bonds to help finance the construction of the Destiny USA entertainment and shopping complex, an expansion of the Carousel Center in Syracuse.
Mrs. Clinton also helped secure a provision in a highway bill that set aside $5 million for Destiny USA roadway construction.

The bill with the tax-free bonds provision became law in October 2004, weeks before the donation, and the highway bill with the set-aside became law in August 2005, about nine months after the donation.

Mr. Congel and Philippe Reines, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, both said there was no connection between his donation and her legislative work on his project's behalf. Mr. Reines said Mrs. Clinton supported the expansion of Carousel mall “purely as part of her unwavering commitment to improving upstate New York's struggling economy, and nothing more.”
Mr. Clinton set up his foundation as he was leaving the White House and as his wife was transforming herself from first lady to United States senator from New York. The William J. Clinton Foundation finances Mr. Clinton's presidential library in Little Rock, Ark., as well as programs that work on AIDS, poverty, climate change and other causes worldwide.

Donations to charities favored by lawmakers have been a recent ethics flashpoint in Congress, including the controversy over Representative Charles B. Rangel's fund-raising from businesses with interests before the House Ways and Means Committee, which he leads, for a center named after him at the
City College of New York. In 2007, Congress enacted a law requiring companies and their lobbyists to disclose donations to charities associated with lawmakers.
But there is no law requiring former presidents to disclose money they collect for their foundations.

Mr. Clinton's foundation last month revealed the identity of its donors as part of an agreement with President-elect Barack Obama, who selected Mrs. Clinton as his nominee for secretary of state.

Most of the attention on the disclosure list has focused on millions of dollars donated by foreign tycoons and Middle Eastern governments, like Saudi Arabia, which have an interest in the United States foreign policy that Mrs. Clinton would direct as the nation's chief diplomat.
But lower on the list was Mr. Congel's name, one of about 180 people who had donated $50,000 to $100,000. A Destiny USA spokesman said Mr. Congel made a $100,000 donation in November 2004.

“There was no connection with Bill Clinton and the ‘green bonds' and the contribution,” Mr. Congel said in an interview. “None at all.”
Mr. Congel had been a prime force behind Congress's passage of tax-exempt “green bonds,” a program to lower the financing costs of some $2 billion in environmentally friendly projects by exempting lenders from paying federal taxes on their income from the private bonds. By some estimates, the program could cost the Treasury about $200 million.
The way the legislation was written, Mr. Congel's Syracuse development, which he agreed to build and run in a way that promotes renewable energy and recycling, was one of just a handful of projects that would qualify.

His contribution is the only known situation so far in which an American donor gave a large sum to Mr. Clinton's foundation while benefiting from his wife's official actions. Mr. Reines said that Mrs. Clinton did not solicit the donation from Mr. Congel or discuss it with him or anyone on his behalf, and that she was unaware of its timing and size until last month.
Mrs. Clinton, who as a Senate candidate in 2000 supported other tax breaks for a Carousel mall expansion to create jobs, did not work alone in getting the subsidies through Congress. The measures had other supporters in the New York delegation, including Senator

Charles E. Schumer, a Democrat, and James T. Walsh, Syracuse's Republican representative at the time.

BTW All of those jobs created in 2000 were retail jobs starting at a whopping $7.25 an hour! Now Congel is promising green jobs paying 30,000+ per year......yeah, right!....when hell freezes over!

PS Sorry, the graphics are screwed up and I don't know why?