Rand Paul Heads To Guatemala To Conduct Charity Eye Surgeries
ANTIGUA, Guatemala — Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is visiting Guatemala to perform pro bono eye surgeries, a trip his political advisers are saying is strictly charity work but offers an important platform for the Kentucky Republican at the epicenter of the border crisis.
“It is an honor for me to be able to use my skills as an ophthalmologist to give back to the community,” Paul told Breitbart News. “I am thrilled to join a team of ophthalmologists in Guatemala to perform life changing and sight-restoring surgeries.”
While many details of the trip are temporarily withheld for security reasons, Paul’s trip is being run by the Moran Eye Center from the University of Utah. It’s funded by charity—no taxpayer dollars will be used for Paul’s mission. Spokesman Sergio Gor told Breitbart News he’ll be meeting with several patients of his from who can now see after Paul performed surgery on them when they were younger.
The team of doctors is expected to perform around 300 surgeries, Gor said, over the course of several days in Guatemala.
While Paul isn’t pushing a political angle, thousands of unaccompanied children are currently traveling illegally from Guatemala to the U.S., and the nation has hosted several key delegations of American lawmakers in recent weeks.
The pro bono work also gives Paul a chance to offer an apolitical perspective of himself to voters headed into what’s expected to be a brutal battle for the GOP nomination in 2016.
Paul’s trip allows him to say he supports private charity that isn’t funded by the government, and that he wants to help the people in Central America who are legitimately struggling. But he doesn’t want to do so through encouraging U.S. government intervention, or illegal immigration to the U.S.
But Paul’s team is adamant the trip is apolitical. When Paul’s hometown paper, the Lexington Herald-Leader, asked him what the political ramifications were for the trip, Paul replied that he “doesn’t know.”
“It’s just something I kind of miss in my life, and I want to be able to give back,” Paul told the local paper.
The circumstances make it a key political opportunity.
“They won’t see him attached to just the ideological or partisan policy debates that take place in Washington,” veteran GOP consultant Kevin Madden told the Kentucky newspaper. “He can step out of that and let people see him through a different lens, that of a doctor helping people.”
While the vast majority of Guatemala’s population suffers from harsh economic conditions, there is a sliver at the top in Guatemala—the “one percent,” or the elites—who are doing more than fine. The disparity between the rich and the poor in this country goes back centuries.
“This unequal pattern dates back to the colonial era when the Spanish crown granted large extensions of land to colonizers,” the World Bank wrote.
The income disparity here seems more up-and-down and all over the place when it comes from one person to another than the geography of the nation. In between Guatemala’s two coasts are mountains, valleys, volcanoes and ruins, and laced throughout the peaks and hollows is what appears to the naked eye as a developed nation.
While landing at Guatemala City international airport, one can’t help but notice the hundreds, maybe thousands, of residences for inner city families below as the plane gets lower and lower—row upon row of rusted tin roofs lining dusty dirt roads, conditions Americans wouldn’t let happen on U.S. soil. But drive around the nation’s capital city for a while, and you’ll find luxurious casinos, Chuck E. Cheese pizza parlors with video games for kids, brand new McDonald’s and Burger King locations shinier than American counterparts, Shell gas stations, booming supermarkets, big box electronic stores, and billboards pushing the cutting edge of culture—so sharp that if the language weren’t in Spanish, Guatemala City would feel a lot like Los Angeles, California.
Paul raised tens of thousands of dollars through various donors, including real estate magnate Donald Trump, to help cover the Moran Eye Center’s trip costs.
“It’s a great opportunity for us to bring attention to the global burden of blindness, because I don’t think people really realize how much of it is out there and how much of it is preventable and curable,” Michael Yei, the Moran Eye Center’s outreach manager, told the Lexington Herald-Leader.
For Hillary Clinton, Nothing Less Than A Gulfstream G450 Will Do
Posted By Chuck Ross On 11:37 PM 08/16/2014 In |
Wherever Hillary Clinton is going, she needs at least a Gulfstream G450 to get there.
The once nearly “dead broke” former First Lady now makes steep demands when she gives speeches to corporations, groups and universities, according to emails between Clinton’s agent and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where Clinton will earn $225,000 for a 90-minute speech in October.
The school received a bit of a break from the $300,000 Clinton requested during initial negotiations, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which obtained the emails that were sent last year.
The correspondence showed that Clinton normally requires “round-trip transportation on a chartered private jet.”
Specifically, the former Secretary of State must fly on a “Gulfstream G450 or larger jet,” according to the emails.
According to Gulfstream’s website, Gulfstream G450s hold up to 16 passengers.
Clinton has come under fire for pocketing those huge fees and living a luxurious lifestyle while also downplaying her and husband Bill’s enormous wealth. Besides telling ABC’s Diane Sawyer that she and Bill were nearly “dead broke” after leaving the White House in 2001, Clinton said that the couple are unlike the “truly well off.” (RELATED: Hillary Says She And Bill Were ‘Dead Broke’ After White House)
The Clinton’s are estimated to be worth between $100 million and $200 million.
The Daily Caller first reported Clinton’s contract with the UNLV Foundation, which, besides being expensive, also included a list of strict demands. (RELATED: University Contract Details Hillary Clinton Speech Demands)
In her contract, Clinton stipulated that she will have final approval on any moderator used during a Q & A session. She would also have final say-so on any advertisements used at the event and in the event program booklet.
Clinton also required $1,250 for a stenographer to transcribe her speech. No videographers would be allowed and the event is closed to the press, unless approved by Clinton at a later date.
Clinton agreed to pose for up to 50 pictures with 100 people, not including the 20 people she would be allowed to invite to the event.
According to the emails obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, UNLV Foundation officials and staffers were critical of Clinton’s demands. One official called them “meddling” after the agency edited a description in the event program in order to “dumb it down.”
The Clinton team’s required oversight of the materials the Foundation wanted to publish on its website led a web designer to complain that the agency had it “assbackwards in my mind.”
Clinton typically requires funding for “round-trip business class travel for two advance staffers.”
She stipulates that her staff be allowed to select hotel accommodations.
In whatever hotel they choose, the former Secretary of State must be put up in a presidential suite, a fitting room given the likelihood that Clinton will run for president herself in 2016.
Up to three adjoining rooms must be provided for Clinton’s travel aides and an additional two rooms for advance staff, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
On top of that, Clinton’s lead travel aide must be provided a $500 stipend to cover out-of-pocket costs.
Bill Clinton spoke at a UNLV Foundation event in 2012 and was paid $250,000, the Review-Journal reported. Emails showed that the organization did not invite Hillary Clinton to speak last year because they did not want to seen as being biased in favor of Democrats. (RELATED: Rags To Riches! Hillary Clinton Rakes In $1.8 Million Giving Speeches To Cash-Strapped College Students)
Hmmm….one is a douche bag…one uses a douche bag…opps both of those descriptions are of Hillary AKA The Cankles Lady .
Hillary is the yeast in the decomposition of society. Just watch.
Both Bill & Hillary were both dead broke a few years back when entering the White House. How did in the world did they amass such an inconceivable multi-million dollar fortune in just a few years.
That’s because her ass is so big it won’t fit on a Learjet.
Way to go Mr Paul. You may not like him or agree with him. This is stand up stuff.
Rand? Hillery? Who gives a shit? One is a member of the Republican Party and the other the Democrat Party so both are members of criminal organizations. If either Rand or the Sea Hag becomes president most of the 99.9% idiot public will get fucked one way or the other. They probably deserve it too.
If any other republican or democrat is elected president or if congress is still full of democrats and sepublican two years from now we are still fucked and will be getting fucked harder than ever. Remember this six years from now when you line up like a common compliant moron to vote after your voted like a compliant moron four years earlier. But then if your a moron like the vast majority in this nation of diverse morons you will never figure it out.
Here is what must be done. First you kill the bankers. Then you dismantle the Federal Government forever. That is the only way that there is any chance to fix this big ass mess if it can ever be fixed at all. Even if hell freezes over no Democrat or Republican administration or congress will ever, ever, ever make things better.
The Hilda Beast is your enemy, Rand Paul is your enemy, the Federal Government is your enemy. Anyone who supports centralized government anywhere on earth is your enemy. And the centralized, federalized, institutionalized fuckers will rule until people can see both the demons they hate and the demons they love and have the fortitude to slay them all. So……….we are fucked because no one is going to do that. Even the few who are not possessed by a red demon, a blue demon, a flag waving demon, a goody goody dog and pony show demon are fucked because there are too few to make a difference.
About all one can do these days is take all the swag they can from the sheeple before the .01% gets whats left and while fiat can still be traded off for real tangible stuff. But not so much that anyone notices.
We are doomed and It looks like doom will be even worse than expected.