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(04-09) 04:00 PDT Washington - — What emerged from Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker’s star Senate testimony Tuesday was the sense that it is the United States, not Iraq, that is at a turning point.

As cameras whirred at the rare Washington appearance of all three senators running for president - and the chance to inherit the Iraq war - Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Crocker, the top U.S. diplomat, described progress as fragile and reversible. They asked for patience and a suspension of troop withdrawals that will leave 10,000 more American soldiers in Iraq through the end of the Bush presidency than before the surge of 30,000 was announced more than a year ago.

But that patience has run out.

Five years of administration requests for more time, more troops and more money have exhausted not just Democrats, but key Republicans, with the important exception of the GOP’s presumptive nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

The party’s two most-respected voices on foreign policy, Sen. Richard Lugar, former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. John Warner, former chairman of the Armed Services Committee, refused to buy the argument.

Small signs of progress, Lugar said, are no substitute for what he called “the political endgame.”

“Simply appealing for more time to make progress is insufficient,” Lugar of Indiana declared. “Iraq will be an unstable country for the foreseeable future.”

Military operations plateau

The ability of the United States to change Iraq through military operations has reached a plateau, he said, and debate over progress “is less illuminating than determining whether the administration has a definable political strategy” to end the war.

Warner of Virginia pressed Petraeus to answer whether the war has made the United States more secure.

“I’ve thought more than a bit about that, senator, since September,” Petraeus replied, referring to the last time he testified before the congressional committees. The question is “perhaps best answered by folks with a broader view and ultimately will have to be answered by history.” Petraeus weighed the lives of the more than 4,000 troops who have died, the strain on the military and the crippling of U.S. capacity to respond to threats elsewhere against the toppling of a ruthless dictator and “the seeds of a nascent democracy that have been planted in an Arab country.”

“Though the germination of those seeds has been anything but smooth, there has been growth,” Petraeus said. “All of this, again, has come at great cost.”

McCain, by contrast, urged the United States not to “choose to lose.” He was backed by such stalwarts as Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Republican leaders who have cast their lot with the surge and denounced Democrats for minimizing the consequent reduction of violence.

The GOP split on Iraq demonstrates the challenge McCain faces. While press releases from party leaders state unequivocal support for the troop surge, now that the surge is over and no end to the war is yet in sight, McCain may be compelled to do what has eluded President Bush for five years: outline the end game.

“We’re no longer staring into the abyss of defeat, and we can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success,” McCain said, defining success as “a peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic state that poses no threats to its neighbors and contributes to the defeat of terrorists.”
Republicans unconvinced

Yet Republicans were in no mood to find glimmers of hope in the swirl of Iraqi politics that Crocker and Petraeus described.

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told Petraeus, “People want a sense of what the end is going to look like,” correcting himself for using the word victorious. “I don’t even want to use that word,” he said.

Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said that the war is “bankrupting our country” and that the United States needs to “show with some urgency that we are on our way out.”

The endgame in Iraq poses its own challenges for Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidates. McCain has challenged both candidates to explain how they would avoid the chaos that is expected to fill the power vacuum that will emerge once U.S. forces begin to leave Iraq.

Petraeus described Iran’s extensive activity in Iraq, including the widespread infiltration of its elite Quds forces and sophisticated weapons among Shiite factions. Crocker outlined an Iranian strategy of seeking a “Lebanonization” of Iraq with Hezbollah-like terrorist surrogates that keep the country destabilized.

“If this were easy, or if there were a very clear way forward, we could all perhaps agree on the facts about how to build toward a resolution that is in the best interest of the United States, that would stabilize Iraq and would meet our other challenges around the world,” Clinton said, without offering her own solution other than a gradual withdrawal.

Obama outlined a plan of sharply reduced expectations. He suggested abandoning efforts to eliminate al Qaeda in Iraq, and accepting some Iranian influence, a far cry from McCain’s standard.
‘Parade of horribles’

Brushing aside what he called “the parade of horribles” that might follow a U.S. retreat, Obama asked whether the current “messy, sloppy” status quo in Iraq, minus the presence of all but 30,000 U.S. troops, would be tolerable.

“When Iraq gets to a point that it can carry forward its further development without a major commitment of U.S. forces, with still a lot of problems out there but a fair certitude that they can drive forward themselves without significant danger that the whole thing slips away from them again, clearly our profile can diminish markedly,” Crocker replied. “But that’s not where we are now.”

Petraeus hinted at the alternative, unpleasant options that await the next president. “We are where we are,” he said. “There are very, very real consequences of the different options that we consider. And I think as long as it’s very clear that we address those and we go into those with our eyes wide open, then that is - the job has been done.”

E-mail Carolyn Lochhead at clochhead@sfchronicle.com.

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TAMPA, FLA—Former middle school English teacher andconvicted sex offender Debra Lafave, sentenced to three years of house arrest followed by seven years of probation after pleading guilty to having sexual relations with a 14-year-old male student will spend the last three months of house arrest on probation. At a hearing Tuesday, Circuit Court Judge J. Rodgers Padgett ruled that Lafave would be released from house arrest on July 11. She had been arrested in June 2004 after the boy’s mother had called police to report that Lafave was having sex with her son. She pleaded guilty in November 2005 to two felony counts of lewd and lascivious battery.Lafave, 27, who has completed two years and four months of house arrest, will now be on straight probation which is less restrictive and doesn’t require her to wear a monitoring bracelet.

Lafave had been arrested in December after Child Protective Services and Lafave’s probation officer conducted an investigation based on information that Lafave was allegedly having contact with a female teenage co-worker at Danny Boy’s Restaurant in Ruskin. They had worked together since approximately October 2006.

Lafave was charged with having discussed non-work related issues with the girl, who has since turned 18, such as family problems, friends, high school, personal life, boyfriend issues and sexual issues.Padgett had ruled that while she violated her probation by talking with the co-worker about her personal life, her actions were neither “willful nor substantial” and she was not penalized. 4-08-08

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LG is going into full tease mode, releasing an image capturing the angles of what’s to be the next model in its Black Label line. The details are few, but the mobile pictured above is a lithe slider set for worldwide release over the summer and third quarter of the year. It’s slim and dark (a stark contrast to the gold and gaudy ‘Ironman’ phone), with a case made of nearly indestructible carbon fiber and a touchscreen of glass (reinforced for pocket duty). On the back, it packs a five-megapixel camera with a little flash, the thinnest phone with such offerings.

Nothing else is known at this point, including when exactly it will be hitting the U.S., what it will cost, or what name or model number it will have, but you can be sure we’ll be keeping an eye out for it.

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Unlike the Koreans, the Japanese are preparing to embrace our new robot overlords. In fact the Japanese are preparing to hand over their jobs to a mechanical work force. The Machine Industry Memorial Foundation, a Japanese think tank, says that by 2025 robots could be filling 3.5 million jobs formerly filled by a human.

This isn’t necessarily bad thing for friends across the Pacific. It seems that much of Japan’s population is getting older. In fact researchers expect to see a drop in the Japanese work force of about 16 percent by 2030, and filling positions as citizens retire is just part of the problem. The number of elderly people in the country is ballooning, and caring for these citizens may be one of the major industries that robots play an important role in.

The Machine Industry Memorial Foundation doesn’t see robots completely replacing humans, but allowing people the time to focus on more important things. Robots could clean house, monitor the health of the elderly, bathe them, read to your kids, and of course, deliver you a beer.

Researchers expect 40 percent of Japan’s population to be over 65 by the year 2055, making the robot workforce a pressing concern.

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SAINI SUNPURA, India (April - A baby with two faces was born in a northern Indian village, where she is doing well and is being worshipped as the reincarnation of a Hindu goddess, her father said Tuesday.

The baby, Lali, apparently has an extremely rare condition known as craniofacial duplication, where a single head has two faces. Except for her ears, all of Lali’s facial features are duplicated - she has two noses, two pairs of lips and two pairs of eyes.

“My daughter is fine - like any other child,” said Vinod Singh, 23, a poor farm worker.

Lali has caused a sensation in the dusty village of Saini Sunpura, 25 miles east of New Delhi. When she left the hospital, eight hours after a normal delivery on March 11, she was swarmed by villagers, said Sabir Ali, the director of Saifi Hospital.

“She drinks milk from her two mouths and opens and shuts all the four eyes at one time,” Ali said.

Rural India is deeply superstitious and the little girl is being hailed as a return of the Hindu goddess of valor, Durga, a fiery deity traditionally depicted with three eyes and many arms.

Up to 100 people have been visiting Lali at her home every day to touch her feet out of respect, offer money and receive blessings, Singh told The Associated Press.

“Lali is God’s gift to us,” said Jaipal Singh, a member of the local village council. “She has brought fame to our village.”

Village chief Daulat Ram said he planned to build a temple to Durga in the village.

“I am writing to the state government to provide money to build the temple and help the parents look after their daughter,” Ram said.

Lali’s condition is often linked to serious health complications, but the doctor said she was doing well.

“She is leading a normal life with no breathing difficulties,” said Ali, adding that he saw no need for surgery.

Lali’s parents were married in February 2007. Lali is their first child.

Singh said he took his daughter to a hospital in New Delhi where doctors suggested a CT scan to determine whether her internal organs were normal, but Singh said he felt it was unnecessary.

“I don’t feel the need of that at this stage as my daughter is behaving like a normal child, posing no problems,” he said.

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Larry Ellison, the billionaire head of Oracle Corp., spent at least $200 million to build a house on his 23-acre Silicon Valley estate south of San Francisco.

When San Mateo County tax officials valued the residence, a reproduction of a 16th-century Japanese emperor’s country house, at $166 million, Ellison protested. He argued, through his attorney, that the property was so elaborate no one else would pay that much for it.

After more than two years, Ellison won his case before a county appeals panel, receiving a $3 million tax refund. Now local schools and parents are the ones protesting.

“He’s essentially taking money away from the education of the kids of this county,” said Maren Christensen, 46, parent of a second-grade student at Ormondale school in Portola Valley, California, near the town of Woodside, where Ellison’s estate is located.

The Portola Valley School District estimates it will lose as much as $300,000 from its $10 million budget because of the decision.

“For us, it’s the worst case scenario,” said Tim Hanretty, assistant superintendent. “We’ll survive. This community and school district will rally.”

The school district, with more than 700 students, probably will have to cut six non-teaching jobs from its 120-person staff because of the ruling, Hanretty said.

$25 Billion

Ellison, Oracle’s 63-year-old chief executive officer, is the world’s 14th-richest person, with a net worth of $25 billion, according to Forbes Magazine.

William Bennett, Ellison’s lawyer in the appeal, and Deborah Hellinger, a spokeswoman for Redwood City, California- based Oracle, didn’t return messages seeking comment.

California schools already face budget cuts. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger earlier this year proposed to trim spending by as much as 10 percent from all state agencies to fill a deficit that reached as high as $16 billion in February, caused by the loss of tax revenue amid the worst housing slump in the U.S. in 26 years.

The state’s top education official said an estimated 20,000 teachers and school support staff may lose their jobs as a result.

In its ruling, the San Mateo county assessment appeals board reduced the taxable value of the property belonging to Ellison by $100 million. After that decision, at the existing rate of 1 percent property tax, Ellison would owe $646,770 for tax year 2005, the year he appealed the value of his home through his Octopus Holdings LP.

Fielding Complaints

“Legally, Larry Ellison had every right to do what he did, but it would have been nice if he considered the impact to the Portola Valley School system,” said Angela Schillace, 40, who has two school-aged children in the area.

The school district is trying to make up for the loss of money by asking a local foundation to donate unallocated funds, leaving some jobs unfilled, and exploring cost-saving measures with other area schools. In addition to state-wide cutbacks, the school will face an increase in the enrollment of kindergarten students next year, requiring more teachers to handle the class load, Hanretty said.

While San Mateo County’s Board of Supervisors is fielding complaints from residents, there’s nothing it can do, said Bill Chiang, a spokesman for its president, Adrienne J. Tissier. “This whole thing has little to do with the board,” he said. “It’s not something we allow or don’t allow.”

Residents have called expressing emotions ranging from “upset to outrage,” said Richard Gordon, a member of the board of supervisors.

“Perhaps Mr. Ellison would like to be directed to one of the school foundations” to make a donation, Gordon said.

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Thanks to Spain’s slumping property market, house buyers are as popular as movie stars — and they can cause even more excitement.

Reporters outnumbered bidders as lot No. 1 hit the slate in Europe’s first “Dutch auction” for real estate last weekend in Madrid. Of 216 lots, 194 were withdrawn when they weren’t purchased at the reserve price. One man, investor Manuel Sainz, bought almost half of everything sold.

“Next stop Hollywood!” laughed Sainz, head of property company Las Terrazas de San Blas SA, as he fought off the press after buying 10 properties at discounts of as much as 30 percent.

The event shows the depth of Spain’s housing bust after prices tripled in the past decade. In January, the government’s housing policy director, Rafael Pacheco, called the slowdown “moderate and orderly” after January sales volume fell 27 percent from a year earlier as the global credit shortage forced banks to reduce lending.

“Official figures are one thing and reality is something else entirely,” said Alberto Espelosin, a strategist at Zaragoza, Spain-based Ibercaja Gestion, which manages $12 billion. “It’s really difficult for people to afford a home with the credit restrictions.”

For Tulipp Showrooms and Auctions SA, set up in September, the Madrid auction was the first in a series of monthly events taking place in Malaga, Barcelona and London over the summer.

Dutch Auction

The Dutch auction, developed in 17th century Amsterdam after the collapse of the tulip bubble and used today to sell fish in Spanish ports, starts with the seller’s asking price and then moves down until the property finds a buyer.

“Six months ago if people made an offer below the list price then developers took offense,” said Tulipp managing director Jorge Zanoletty, whose father established Spain’s first regular property auctions 16 years ago. “Now they are in the mood to be more open.”

As higher borrowing costs and rising unemployment deters buyers, Tulipp aims to profit from the slump by providing a new way to negotiate a price.

“People are hanging on and hanging on and when they can’t hang on any longer they have to sell at whatever price,” Espelosin said.

Still, developers in the Tulipp auction capped their discounts at 30 percent off the original sale prices for properties ranging from beachside apartments to family homes in the Madrid suburbs.

Constitutional Right

“We expected that nothing would be sold because the idea is so new,” Zanoletty said. “Now we hope that with the media exposure this is a formula that individuals will get comfortable with.”

Spaniards’ real estate obsession — the right to “a decent and fitting home” is in the constitution — helped drive a 15- year economic boom that saw the economy almost triple to 1.1 trillion euros as the country overtook Italy in income per head.

House prices began their surge in 1998 spurred by falling interest rates as Spain prepared for euro membership. Spain has built about 5 million new homes since then, attracting immigrant labor from Eastern Europe and Latin America to fuel a boom that peaked in 2006.

Now the turmoil in global credit markets is cutting demand.

The world’s biggest financial companies have reported about $232 billion in credit losses and writedowns since the start of 2007 and the credit shortage is filtering through to Spain.

Mortgage Slowdown

In January, mortgage lending in Spain fell 28 percent from a year earlier, according to the government statistics office. House prices rose 4.8 percent in the fourth quarter, the slowest pace since 1998.

“Clients are having problems with financing,” said Eustaquio Moleon, head of Moleon Construcciones, a family construction business in Granada, southern Spain. “Right now you have to try anything.”

With Spain facing the slowest economic expansion in 15 years, even a 30 percent price cut wasn’t enough to persuade most buyers that they were getting a bargain at the Madrid auction.

“We’ve picked out a few properties we like but at the moment we just want to see if there are some good discounts,” said Eva Suarez, who visited the auction with her baby. “If the apartments we like aren’t sold in the auction we’ll talk to the developers and see if we can do a deal.”

Still, for developers such as Madrid-based Sainz, the time to pick up bargains has already arrived. His investments included a 117 square-meter (1,259 square-feet) top-floor apartment on the Costa del Sol with views of the sea. He paid 396,000 euros compared with a sticker price of 565,800 euros.

“I’m a developer and I’ve bought these apartments to sell them,” Sainz said. “Not now, but perhaps in a year or a year and a half, once the crisis has past.”

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April 4 (Bloomberg) — The collapse of the $330 billion auction-rate securities market has brought debt sales by U.S. public student-loan agencies to a halt.

No municipal bonds backed by student loans were sold in the first quarter, the first time that happened in almost 40 years, according to Thomson Financial. The inability to obtain financing differs from states, cities, schools and hospitals, which sold $82 billion of bonds to fund public works and replace failed auction debt that stuck them with penalty rates as high as 20 percent.

Public lenders from Texas to Pennsylvania to Illinois relied on auction-rate bonds to raise money so they could make or buy student loans. Since mid-February, when Wall Street firms that supported the market for more than 20 years stopped buying securities investors didn’t want, almost all of the debt has failed to find buyers, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“The not-for-profit agencies have not raised significant money that I’m aware of in the past few months,” Andrew Davis, executive director of the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, said in an interview from Springfield. “The industry had grown so comfortable with the auction-rate securities.”

Without the ability to finance, public authorities in Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, Texas, Pennsylvania and Iowa have suspended or limited their origination of loans, according to an April 1 report from UBS AG.

Fewer Options

The squeeze means students and parents have fewer options to fund college educations. University financial-aid offices are scrambling to update lists of active lenders and help students find less costly private loan alternatives, said Phillip Day, head of National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators in Washington.

Of the top 10 largest issuers of auction-rate debt among municipal issuers tracked by Thomson from 2000 through 2007, half were student lenders. The two biggest borrowers, Brazos Higher Education Authority of Waco, Texas, and the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, decided in the past two months to stop making new loans. The Illinois loan agency, 10th among issuers, will continue the business, officials said.

“We believe we have liquidity lined up that will take us through most of our needs, but not all of them, for the year,” said John Sinsheimer, chief financial officer of Illinois Student Assistance.

No New Loans

CIT Group Inc., based in New York, and NorthStar Education Finance Inc., a nonprofit organization in St. Paul, Minnesota, said this week that they will stop making new loans to U.S. students after their costs soared.

Auction-rate securities backed by student loans made up about $86 billion of the $330 billion market at the beginning of the year, according to Moody’s Investors Service. The market faltered in February, after dealers stopped acting as buyers of last resort when investor demand flagged.

On April 2, 115 tranches of student-loan bonds came up for auction and 114 failed, based on data compiled by Bloomberg from four major auction agents, including Deutsche Bank AG. The same day, there were 353 failed auctions, or 63 percent, involving a total of 563 municipal issues. Almost all auction-rate securities issued by closed-end mutual funds also failed.

Pegged to Formulas

When auctions fail, investors are unable to get their money and the rate resets to a high level or one based on a formula in the original bond documents and often pegged to money-market benchmarks such as the London interbank offered rate.

The latter situation is typical of student-loan debt, giving investors less of an incentive to buy, because benchmarks like Libor have declined, said Matt Fabian, managing director at research firm Municipal Market Advisors, based in Concord, Massachusetts. The one-month London interbank offered rate fell to 2.74 percent this week from 4.57 on Jan. 2.

“They fail to rates that are pretty low,” Fabian said.

Illinois Student Assistance is paying a taxable rate of 4.20 percent on $70 million of its $885 million in auction debt, compared with a 5.35 percent average during the past year, Bloomberg figures show.

Lender profitability suffered after the U.S. government last year slashed subsidies on guaranteed student loans made through the Federal Family Education Loan Program that back most student-loan auction bonds, according to UBS.

Liquidity `Extremely Expensive’

“The origination of new paper is the problem,” Fabian said. “Liquidity has become extremely expensive, it’s doubled or tripled, and the auction market is broken.”

Missouri’s student loan agency said in February that it would stop making private loans, or those not guaranteed by the federal government, and consolidation loans, which combine different student debts.

“We are non-profit; we operate on a razor-thin margin,” said Will Shaffner, director of business development for the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority in Chesterfield. “It just doesn’t make sense to issue any debt at these prices and under these conditions.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Jeremy R. Cooke in New York at

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By Ryan J. Donmoyer

(Corrects name of foundation in 13th paragraph.)

April 5 (Bloomberg) — Former President Bill Clinton has earned $15.4 million from billionaire Ron Burkle’s Yucaipa Cos. investment firm since 2003, according to tax documents released by his wife, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The earnings represent 20 percent of the approximately $75 million Bill Clinton earned during the same period, according to the documents. That may raise new questions about what services he performed for Los Angeles-based Yucaipa, whose investors include the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid al- Maktoum.

Tax lawyers said the Yucaipa partnership income for Bill Clinton looks to be a form of salary because it was in round numbers for most years.

“Most people who make that much money work for it,” said Yale University tax law professor Michael Graetz, a former Treasury Department official in President George H.W. Bush’s administration. “What are they being paid for, and if it’s the Sheikh of Dubai paying the husband of somebody who might be the next president of the United States, what do they think they’re paying for?”

Jay Carson, a spokesman for New York Senator Clinton, said in an e-mailed statement that former President Clinton is a partner in a Yucaipa fund and “provides his best advice on potential investments, advocates generally on behalf of the funds, and seeks to create opportunities for investors to consider investing in the fund.”

Carson didn’t respond to a question about whether Bill Clinton did any work for Dubai. In 2006 Senator Clinton opposed efforts by a Dubai-based company to acquire control over six U.S. ports.

Tax Returns

The payments from Yucaipa to Bill Clinton were detailed in seven years of tax returns released by Hillary Clinton, 60, following pressure to disclose them from rival Barack Obama, the Illinois senator who made public his own returns in March.

The returns covered tax years 2000 through 2006. Hillary Clinton’s campaign also released information about the couple’s 2007 income, although they haven’t yet filed a return for that year. Obama has yet to release information on his 2007 income.

The former president, 61, received $1 million from Yucaipa in 2003, $4 million in 2004 and $5 million in 2005. In 2006, he received a guaranteed payment of $2.5 million plus a $156,611 share of the profits. The campaign said he earned $2.75 million from partnership income in 2007.

Amounts `Odd’

“The flat amounts received from Yucaipa are odd,” said Tom Ochsenschlager, vice president of taxation at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, who agreed that it signaled Bill Clinton was performing a service. “That’s quite unusual.”

Previously, Hillary Clinton reported only that the former president earned “more than $1,000” a year from Yucaipa on financial disclosure forms she is required to file in the Senate.

In all, the Clintons earned $109 million from 2000 through 2007 and paid $33.8 million in federal taxes, the returns and campaign documents show. They donated $10.3 million of their income over that time to charities.

The bulk of those charitable donations went to the family foundation. From 2002 through 2006, $5.9 million of the $6.4 million, or 93 percent, of the Clinton’s charitable giving went directly to the Clinton Family Foundation, according to the tax returns and the foundation’s 990 forms. The 990s for 2000 and 2001 were not immediately available and it has not yet filed for 2007.

Cayman Islands Funds

The tax returns indicate the couple paid all the U.S. federal taxes owed on the income from Yucaipa, which controls three funds located in the Cayman Islands. The Cayman Islands doesn’t charge any individual or corporate income tax and has strict bank secrecy laws.

Bill Clinton’s ties to Yucaipa have sparked controversy over the past year, including a September report in the Wall Street Journal that detailed how one of the former president’s aides had helped arrange a partnership with Burkle that dissolved amid litigation over allegations of misused funds.

Yucaipa spokesman Frank Quintero didn’t return calls seeking comment about what services Bill Clinton performed for the company. Forbes Magazine listed Burkle, 55, as the 91st richest American last year, with a net worth of $3.5 billion.

Carson said in December that the former president “is taking steps to ensure” that “there will be an appropriate transition from those relationships” if his wife receives the Democratic presidential nomination.

Rising Income

The 210 pages of documents released yesterday chronicle the Clintons’ rising income since 1999, the last year for which they had previously released a tax return. The couple earned $20.4 million last year, compared with less than $420,000 in 1999, the year before they left the White House.

The bulk of their income, $51.9 million, came from Bill Clinton’s speeches, the campaign said in a summary. The former president also earned $1.2 million from his presidential pension and $29.6 million from royalties and an advance for his autobiography.

Hillary Clinton earned $10.5 million in book royalties and advances and a total of $1.1 million from her Senate salaries since 2001. In 1999, the Clintons earned $417,467, had $334,681 in taxable income after deductions including $39,200 to charity, and paid $92,104 in federal taxes.

At a Democratic Party convention in Grand Forks, North Dakota, last night, Hillary Clinton said that her husband “has made a lot of money since he left the White House doing what he loves most, talking to people.”

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