Did I miss something or has the Arkansas oil spill slipped right past the former President and First Lady (of both the country and the now Bounty-covered state)?

As hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil seep across Mayflower, Arkansas, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been as mute as a couple of Exxon executives.  

I certainly hope their silence doesn’t have anything to do with the contributions ExxonMobil has made to the Clinton Foundation. The oil company sponsored the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative in which Rex Tillerson, Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil, participated in a plenary session, ’Invest in Girls and Women.’ In 2008, ExxonMobil gave $3.5 million to the Clinton Foundation’s malaria elimination efforts. Exxon gave $20,348 to Hillary’s campaign in 2008.

As it relates to current policy debates, the oil spill could threaten the Keystone Pipeline which Bill Clinton urged us all to “embrace.” It is worth noting that Keystone lobbyist DLA Piper gave Hillary more than $500,000 during the 2008 election cycle, the most of any candidate they contributed to that year. In the 1992 and 1996 election cycles, Bill Clinton was DLA Piper's number one recipient.

Mayflower is just spitting distance from the green lawns of the Little Rock governor's mansion, but the Clinton's left home a long time ago. Y'all come back now, ya hear?

-Erica Payne