Ever wondered what $750,000 could buy you in Washington? For the former Clinton Administration, bedeviled by sex scandals, it might very well have bought the silence of the National Organization for Women.
Recently, Tammy Bruce, the former chairman of the Los Angeles-area chapter of the National Organization for Women, admitted that the group received $750,000 from the Clinton-era Department of Health and Human Services. The money went to fund N.O.W.’s “Love Your Body”anti-smoking campaign.
Was the money wisely used? We’ll let Ms. Bruce answer that: “We don’t have proof that this money was linked to Monica Lewinsky or Paula Jones, in the sense of hush money,” she said. “But there is certainly the appearance of impropriety. I have to tell you I haven’t seen any anti-tobacco efforts by N.O.W. that seem to be worth three-quarters of a million dollars.”
The results speak for themselves. According to a “Monitoring the Future Study” from the University of Michigan, smoking among high school-age Americans rose steadily during the Clinton years.