Hillary Clinton going for broke

Well other people around her are going broke anyway. Poor Hillary...she wants to be President so bad that she's decided that it's worth the financial destruction of many of the people and businesses that have supported her along the way.

According to this article from Politico, Hillary's deep in debt due to an inability to raise money as fast as she's spending it so she and her campaign are now regularly stiffing businesses and individuals that they've contracted with.

Now political debt is commonplace in elections, and it's not at all unusual for candidates to "owe" thousands or even millions of dollars to political consultants and other big players, most of which is expected to be written off as part of a quid pro quo deal where the debtor hopes to gain later once that candidate is ensconced in office. But in Hillary's case, in addition to not paying the bills due Democratic backers like pollster and chief strategist Mark Penn (currently owed $2.5 million), direct mail company MSHC Partners (owed $807,000), phone-banking firm Spoken Hub (owed $771,000), and ad maker Mandy Grunwald(owed $467,000), she's routinely stiffing the little guys--average businesses that her campaign contracted with to provide services and who expected to get paid.

She reportedly skipped out on paying Iowa’s Sioux City Art Center Board of Trustees $3,500 for catering and venue costs, New Hampshire’s Winnacunnet Cooperative School District was left without a promised $4,400 in event costs, Qwest is on the hook for $24,000 for phone service, various branches of the Iowa-based supermarket chain Hy-Vee are waiting to be paid $15,000 for food, beverages and catering, and $7,700 to Ohio and Massachusetts branches of the theatrical stage employees’ union, for equipment costs has also gone unpaid as Hillary moves on to other states, leaving debts behind and small businesses wondering if they'll ever be able to recoup the money that they're out.

But word is getting around that Clinton’s campaign does not promptly pay those who labor to make her events look good, said an employee of the event production company Forty Two of Youngstown, Ohio.

“I feel insulted by the way that the campaign treated this company and treated us personally,” said the employee, who did not want to be named talking about a client.

The Clinton campaign paid the company $16,500 to set up a stage, press riser, sound system and backdrops at a Youngstown high school last month for a raucous union rally, where an aggressive Clinton stump speech drew thunderous applause. But the Clinton campaign has yet to pay Forty Two for two other February events, and the employee said the campaign has stopped returning phone calls, e-mails and didn’t respond to a certified letter.

“We worked very hard to put together these events on a moment’s notice and do absolutely everything to a ‘t’ to make it look perfect on television for her and for her campaign,” said the employee. “Sen. Clinton talks about helping working families, people in unions and small businesses. But when it comes down to actually doing something that shows that she can back up her words with action, she fails.”

Show Tyme Exhibits, another Youngstown event production company, has produced political events for years and had never had problems getting paid before Clinton, according to owner Jim Phillips.

He said he’s still waiting for a payment for setting up the sound system and stage for Clinton’s February tour of a General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio.

“It was only $607, but I’m a small guy; I could use that,” said Phillips, adding, “Everyone I can tell, I do tell about it. You tell somebody something bad about somebody, they tell 10 other people.”

Both Phillips and the Forty Two employee said they voted for Clinton in Ohio’s March 4 primary, which she won handily, but regret their votes and are reluctant to work for her campaign again.

Their cautionary tales, combined with published reports about similar difficulties faced by a New Hampshire landlord, an Iowa office cleaner and a New York caterer, highlight a less-obvious impact of Clinton’s inability to keep up with the staggering fundraising pace set by her opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. It's growing painfully obvious to everyone other than Hillary that her race is over and the donors needed to support a Presidential campaign are not longer on board with her. Most of the money donated by Democrats is now going to Obama and all Hillary's going to have at the end of the day is a bunch of the "little people" that she pretends to fight for all standing in a long line with their hands out, hoping and praying that she'll actually pay what she owes before they have to start laying people off or closing their doors for good.

Of course I won't chastise the creditors by reminding them that when you lay down with dogs, you often get up with fleas. I know that they were and are accomplices in her attempt to corrupt and subvert this great country for her own ends, but they're also human beings, many of whom employ or owe money to other human beings, and no one deserves to get stiffed at the end of the day, not even people who sold goods and services to the likes of Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, or Hillary Clinton.