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As Hillary Clinton is expected to officially launch her presidential campaign in the next couple of weeks, her famous, former president husband talked to Town & Country magazine, which went along with him to Haiti in February.

Here are four takeaways from that interview:

1. The Clinton Foundation is not going away — even if Hillary Clinton wins.

"Whether I'm running it or not," he told Town & Country, which described it as a "priority" for the 42nd president. "I've told Hillary that I don't think I'm good [at campaigning] anymore, because I'm not mad at anybody. I'm a grandfather, and I got to see my granddaughter last night, and I can't be mad."

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and husband Bill Clinton at an event for the Clinton Global Initiative. Mark Lennihan/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Mark Lennihan/AP

The Clintons have been criticized for taking donations for the foundation from foreign governments, even while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. It's no surprise that Bill is out front defending the foundation, which encapsulates so much of his legacy and the kind of work he wants to do in his post-presidency.

2. He's attempting to take some of the slings and arrows for the foundation.

"[O]ur plan is to spend this whole year working on the foundation, which is, by a good long stretch, the most transparent of all the presidential foundations and more transparent than a lot of other major foundations in the country," he tells the magazine. "It should be, both because I believe in it and because Hillary is in public life, and we'll get criticized, as some people are criticizing me, for taking money from a foreign government. We did a review of the whole foundation last year. ... We got suggestions from a great law firm that also does pro bono counsel for Doctors Without Borders, and we implemented every single one of them."

Politically, Bill Clinton is attempting to redirect any criticism of the foundation away from his wife and onto him. That's no accident at the precipice of another Hillary Clinton presidential run.

3. He affirmed the rumors of how Hillary Clinton will run in the presidential primary.

Despite his claim to recede to the background — busy with running a foundation and being a doting grandfather — don't expect him to take a back seat in his wife's run. In the same interview, he was offering up strategic advice for how she should campaign.

"I think it's important," he told the magazine, "and Hillary does too, that she go out there as if she's never run for anything before and establish her connection with the voters. And that my role should primarily be as a backstage adviser to her until we get much, much closer to the election."

Bill Clinton's comments also affirm reporting that advisers are telling Hillary Clinton she should not take anything for granted. That means campaigning frequently — even without strong primary opposition — in early states like Iowa and New Hampshire.

And why not? They are swing states in a general election, and it doesn't hurt to build up some energy and a base of activists and supporters. Hillary Clinton was also criticized early on in the 2007-08 primary race for running on name recognition. By the time she found her voice as a candidate, the math was against her, and Barack Obama had all but sewn up the nomination.

4. He's still not sure what kind of "first dude" he'd be.

Bill Clinton also weighed in on his potential role as "first dude."

"First, I would have to assess what she wants me to do," he said. "And second, we might have to change the [foundation] rules again. But we haven't talked about that yet, and I don't think we should. You can't. It's hard for any party to hang on to the White House for 12 years, and it's a long road. A thousand things could happen."

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President Obama is in Jamaica Thursday, meeting with Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller and more than a dozen other leaders from throughout the Caribbean. It's the first stop on a three-day tour that also includes a hemispheric summit meeting in Panama. Topping today's agenda is a looming energy crunch in the Caribbean, and a chance for the U.S. to seize the initiative there from leftist leaders in Venezuela.

Unlike the United States, which is suddenly awash in cheap oil and natural gas, countries like Jamaica and the Dominican Republic are heavily dependent on imported oil, not only to run their cars but also to keep the lights on.

"The economic achilles heel for these small islands is really electric power generation," says Jorge Pinon, who directs the Latin America and Caribbean Program at the University of Texas. "That's very important for their tourism and for hotels. So affordable and reliable electricity has a very high economic value for those small islands."

For years, Venezuela has offered an energy lifeline to the Caribbean, selling oil to countries there and in Central America on very favorable terms. The program known as "Petrocaribe" was launched a decade ago by Venezuela's anti-American president Hugo Chavez.

"Back then, because of the high price of oil, Venezuela had a lot of extra money to throw around," says Jason Marczak, Deputy Director of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council. "And it was using that extra money to try to secure support from different governments across the hemisphere."

The picture today is very different. Chavez is dead. The price of oil has fallen sharply in the last year. And with Venezuela's economy in deep trouble, the flow of cheap oil to the Caribbean is in danger of running dry.

"That's going to create a huge economic hardship," says Pinon, who's also a veteran oil industry executive. "As you well know, with economic hardship comes social disruptions that the United States certainly doesn't want in the Caribbean."

Analysts warn a sudden energy shortage could create security problems not far from U.S. shores and even trigger mass migration. But thanks to its domestic energy boom, the United States has a rare opportunity to get out in front of the crisis and possibly build some goodwill of its own.

"Ten years ago, we never would have thought about being able to export U.S.-produced gas or oil," Marczak says. "We were frankly just worried about having enough gas and oil ourselves."

The federal government still prohibits U.S. companies from exporting crude oil. But the United States has become a big supplier of refined products to the Caribbean. And liquid natural gas could be next.

"Central America and the Caribbean will be a perfect candidate for that fuel," Pinon says. "It is clean — certainly cleaner than oil. And there's going to be plenty of that around."

Vice President Biden launched an effort last summer to diversify the Caribbean's energy supplies. And President Obama is expected to announce additional measures in Jamaica. The moves are partly a strategic tug-of-war for influence with Venezuela, though the Administration will be careful not to couch it that way.

"The U.S. is billing this as a Caribbean initiative," Marczak says. "This is not an anti-Venezuela initiative."

That's important because Obama's next stop on this trip is a weekend summit in Panama with leaders from throughout the western hemisphere. Venezuela and its leftist allies typically use these gatherings to try to paint the United States as an imperial power, riding roughshod over its neighbors.

"These governments really are always looking for an opportunity to kick dust in the face of Uncle Sam," says Cynthia Arnson, director of the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center. "But I think it's also important to keep in perspective the moment today."

The U.S. comes into this summit less isolated from its neighbors, thanks to the diplomatic thaw with Cuba. Cuban President Raul Castro is attending the summit for the first time, setting the stage for a historic handshake with Obama.

What's more, it's now the U.S., not Venezuela, that's set to use its newfound energy strength as a diplomatic weapon.

In the village of Tuffet, a 45-minute rocky drive from the closest city along Haiti's southern coast, several men get down to work in Monique Yusizanna Ouz's rural home. They're wiring up her two-room, dirt floor house with a breaker box, an outlet and a light fixture.

She's 66 years old and for the first time in her life, she's going to have electricity.

Ouz, who has five grandchildren, wants a refrigerator. She wants cold drinks — for herself but also to sell. And she wants ice cream, too.

"I'll figure out a way to pay for the electricity because it's better when you pay for something," she says. "It doesn't go away then."

Haiti has long been dubbed the Republic of NGOs because of its heavy reliance on foreign donors and international charities. But Ouz says charities come to the village and end up leaving when they run out of volunteers or money.

That's why 38-year-old Duquense Fednard is bringing a for-profit electricity company to Tuffet. He says Haiti can't survive on philanthropy alone: "You need an economy that is thriving, where businesses flourish and create jobs and that's how you grow a country.

Fednard has three businesses now: the rural electric company, a data processing one and another that sells a more efficient version of the charcoal stoves found in nearly every Haitian home (his model has a special ceramic liner so it uses less charcoal). He was born in Haiti but left as a teen. In the U.S. he got a master's degree from Columbia University, worked on Wall Street and was a small business consultant.

i

The generators for electricity run on corn cobs purchased from area farmers. Carrie Kahn/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Carrie Kahn/NPR

The generators for electricity run on corn cobs purchased from area farmers.

Carrie Kahn/NPR

"A job in the U.S. to me doesn't have the same impact as a job in Haiti," he says. "Because a job in Haiti means that you are helping 10 people for every job."

Through a college buddy, Fednard got Benjamin Shell, a former microfinance loan manager, to come to Haiti and get the electric company going. "I'd never been to Haiti, I got a really low grade in physics in college, I didn't have any electrical background," Shell says with a laugh. "But I felt confident that I could teach myself.

Like Fednard, Shell subscribes to the same philosophy when it comes to economic aid: A hand out is not going to help.

Which brings us back to Tuffet and the rural electric company — and the cold drinks.

As school lets out, children stream onto the main dirt road, walking past newly installed wooden utility poles. About 300 families live here. Most are bean and corn farmers. Shell says Electricit d'Hati, or EDH, Haiti's electricity monopoly has been promising Tuffet electricity for the last 50 years.

"That's how you get elected in any part of Haiti, especially rural Haiti," he says. "You promise to either bring EDH, electricity or improve the service because it's a chief complaint of anybody anywhere."

If Shell and Fednard's plan works the town will get that service six days a week, ten hours a day.

Shell opens the door to their electric company's new offices, just off Tuffet's main road.

It's a huge warehouse.

Inside, the duo will put a generator that's going to be the company's linchpin. It will produce the electricity — not on expensive and dirty diesel but with corn cobs. It's a biomass gassifier, a new technology that's had success in other developing countries but has never been used in Haiti. The rest of the warehouse is for drying the corn cobs the company will buy from farmers.

"People are almost as excited about getting to sell their corn cobs as they are about getting electricity," says Shell.

Already, 65 people have signed up and have spent 1,500 gourdes, about $35, to get their homes wired. Expectations are high for the day the lights go on.

i

Carol Macaus wants a freezer so she can sell cold drinks and ice cream. Carrie Kahn/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Carrie Kahn/NPR

Carol Macaus wants a freezer so she can sell cold drinks and ice cream.

Carrie Kahn/NPR

Washing clothes at the town's main water well, Carol Macaus says she can't wait. I immediately thought the first thing she and the other half-dozen women here would want is a washing machine. I was wrong.

Like Ouz, she also wants a freezer so she can sell cold drinks and ice cream. At current estimates, a freezer would cost a family about $25 a month to run.

People here have long wanted to have their own businesses but they need electricity to do that, says town leader Cherie Paul Andres. "If you have a freezer you can create your own business," he says. "So when it comes to pay the electricity bill it doesn't have to come out of my pocket."

That's exactly what Fednard and Shell are hoping for. Not only will the electricity boost living standards and help satisfy the thirst for cold drinks, it'll also spark Tuffet's stagnant economy.

But the day I was with Shell, driving down Tuffet's rocky dirt roads, that dream seemed to be slipping away. He got a call from the group that promised to develop pay-as-you-go electric meters, key to making the company profitable. They told him they definitively couldn't do it.

After two years of struggling, Shell says maybe it's time to accept that bringing electricity to this part of Haiti just can't be done — at least not by him.

"There will be somebody that does it that makes it work in the future and the work that we've done definitely won't be wasted," he says. "It won't be for nothing."

I left Tuffet a few months ago, not knowing what happened.

So I call Shell to find out. Turns out, he's still there.

I could hear a whirling sound coming from the background. "That's the generator, the gassifier," Shell tells me. "We are using corn cobs to make electricity."

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Shell found a new company to make the meters and 30 families are hooked up to the company's grid and getting electricity. More meters are coming, Shell has hired five more employees, and Tuffet has one refrigerator and two freezers running. Cold drinks are now being sold in the village.

"We are in business," Shell says.

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Dear March,

We got your news that employers added just 126,000 jobs on your watch. Hate to say it, but you have disappointed everyone. No doubt you'll say you were under the weather — literally. Sure, it was cold, but still ... Let's hope April does better.

Sincerely,

America

On Friday, the Labor Department's report on weak jobs growth left economists scrambling to explain what went wrong in March.

Most had forecast about 245,000 new jobs for the month, but they were way off base. The Labor Department said employers added only 126,000 workers. The unemployment rate, which is determined by a separate survey of households, held steady at 5.5 percent.

The disappointing March report confirms a wintertime slowdown. The average monthly gain in the first three months of this year was just 197,000 new jobs, down sharply from an average of 324,000 in the final three months of last year.

The Two-Way

Economy Adds A Disappointing 126,000 Jobs In March

So while the positive hiring trend did continue into the new year, it clearly has lost momentum. A lot of people looked at the construction industry — which cut 1,000 jobs last month — and blamed the exceptionally cold temperatures for freezing up so much economic activity.

"One cannot be stunned if wave after wave of severe snow storms and [arctic] temperatures curbed hiring, slashed construction activity, and kept consumers from stores," economist Bernard Baumohl, with The Economic Outlook Group, wrote in his assessment.

This winter brought other problems, such as a drop in the oil-rig count and the West Coast port disruptions, which caused supply-chain reactions. Wells Fargo economists noted that currency changes also hurt, making U.S. exports more expensive this winter: "Manufacturing payrolls edged down by 1,000, with the workweek ticking down, suggesting some modest impact from the stronger dollar."

So fingers can be pointed at some extraordinary factors that weighed down job creation.

But maybe the slowdown's explanation is simpler than that. Maybe it just reflects a cooling of the economy after nearly six years of expansion. The unemployment rate has plunged in recent years, and in the prior 12 months, job growth was averaging a robust 269,000 a month.

So at some point, the labor market was bound to take a breather.

"In retrospect, a correction such as this was very likely," wrote Doug Handler, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight.

Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who spoke with NPR, also noted that March's numbers have to be put into a longer perspective. Consider, he said, that private businesses have added 12.1 million jobs over 61 straight months of job growth, the longest streak on record.

In March 2014, the unemployment rate was 6.6 percent. Perez said that if someone had told him then that the rate would plunge to 5.5 percent in one year, "I would have thought it was an April Fools' joke."

The overall job market's performance in the past year has been strong, he said. "I look at trend data," and the trend has been the worker's friend.

So the big question hanging over the economy is: Did job growth just take a rest during the harsh winter, or is it shifting to a much slower pace?

Handler remains fundamentally optimistic. "This result is more of an aberration than a trend," he said. "The April report will be more in line with stronger reports issued earlier in the year, allowing the March data to be discounted."

And PNC economist Gus Faucher saw some hopeful signs in the wage data, which pointed upward. Workers' wages rose by 2.1 percent over the past year — which beats the consumer inflation rate. "The tighter labor market is leading businesses to raise pay to attract and retain workers," he said.

Still, the report showed enough weakness to suggest the Federal Reserve will be in no rush this summer to raise interest rates.

"Today's sluggish job numbers, job revisions and mild wage growth are signs the Federal Reserve should keep interest rates low for the foreseeable future," AFL-CIO economist Bill Spriggs said. "Today is confirmation the economic recovery is incomplete and we have a long way left to go."

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