clintons' ties to company that exploits old people

i remember when ronald reagan left office in 1989, there was a media outrage which ensued when he made a speech in japan where he made a million dollars. how DARE a former US president use his status to enrich himself!!???

this bar has apparently been raised.

from the new york times, no less...

The company, infoUSA, one of the nation’s largest brokers of information on consumers, paid $146,866 to ferry the Clintons, Mr. Gupta and others to Acapulco and back, court records show. During the next four years, infoUSA paid Mr. Clinton more than $2 million for consulting services, and spent almost $900,000 to fly him around the world for his presidential foundation work and to fly Mrs. Clinton to campaign events.

Those expenses are cited in a lawsuit filed late last year in a Delaware court by angry shareholders of infoUSA, who assert that Mr. Gupta wasted the company’s money trying “to ingratiate himself” with his high-profile guests.

"Mr. Gupta" is Vinod “Vin” Gupta, the CEO and Chairman of InfoUSA , and his dealings with the clintons are summarized here on former clinton advisor/toe-sucking fiend dick morris's website, dickmorris.com...

The links between Gupta and the Clintons are extensive:

• Gutpa raised over $200,000 for Hillary’s Senate campaigns and contributed thousands to the DNC and Democratic House and Senate campaigns.

• InfoUSA was one of the sponsors of the Aspen Festival of Ideas last summer where Bill and Hillary Clinton both spoke.

• Gupta built the Bill Clinton Science & Technology Center and the Hillary Clinton Mass Communications Center in his hometown of Rampur, India

• Bill and Gutpa traveled to India together

• Gupta reportedly paid for a golf outing for Bill at a legendary Scottish course

• InfoUSA appointed Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton’s longtime money man to the Board of Directors of its subsidiary company videoyellowpagesusa.com

• Clinton appointed Gupta to the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees only a few days before he left office

• Clinton also nominated Gupta as Consul General of Bermuda and U.S. Ambassador to Fiji, but Gupta was never confirmed

• Gupta’s company co-sponsored the 2006 Clinton Global Initiative

• Gupta sent a $7000 treadmill to Chappaqua days after the Clintons left the White House. After the NY Post disclosed the gift, the Clintons returned the gift.

according to the story in the New York Times...

...an investigation by the authorities in Iowa found that infoUSA sold consumer data several years ago to telemarketing criminals who used it to steal money from elderly Americans. It advertised call lists with titles like “Elderly Opportunity Seekers” or “Suffering Seniors,” a compilation of people with cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. The company called the episodes an aberration and pledged that it would not happen again.

dick morris points out on his site that the NYT reported...

InfoUSA compiled and sold lists that disclosed the names of elderly men and women who would be likely to respond to unscrupulous scams. The lists left no doubt about the vulnerability of the elderly targets. The Times reported, for example, that InfoUSA advertised lists of “Elderly Opportunity Seekers,” 3.3 million older people “looking for ways to make money,” and “Suffering Seniors,” 4.7 million people with cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. “Oldies but Goodies” contained 500,000 gamblers over 55 years old, for 8.5 cents apiece. One list said: “These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change.”

it's amazing to me to see all of the attention that dick cheney's association with halliburton attracts, yet, this gets none at all. at least cheney's association was in the open.......