Hillary Clinton has come under fire this summer for her speaking fees, including some charged for events at universities and colleges where many students put themselves deep in debt to get their education. Clinton and her defenders insist that those fees get paid out by donors, not the schools themselves, and that some of those fees get donated to the Clintons’ charitable foundation rather than into her pocket. Those pockets get a pretty cushy ride back and forth to these events, though, as the contract for her UNLV speech uncovered by the Las Vegas Review-Journal details:

According to a May 31, 2013 email, Clinton’s standard contract usually includes:

■ Round-trip transportation on a chartered private jet “e.g., a Gulfstream 450 or larger jet,” plus round-trip business class travel for two advance staffers who will arrive up to three days in advance.

■ Hotel accommodations selected by Clinton’s staff and including “a presidential suite for Secretary Clinton and up to three (3) adjoining or contiguous single rooms for her travel aides and up to two (2) additional single rooms for the advance staff.”

■ A $500 travel stipend to cover out-of-pocket costs for Clinton’s lead travel aide.

■ Meals and incidentals for Clinton, her travel aides and advance staff, as well as all phone charges.

■ Final approval of all moderators or introducers.

Her speaking fee hits $300,000, but she cut UNLV a break down to $225,000. According to the LVRJ, she dropped the price because her travel expenses were no longer an issue, although the document didn’t explain why. Laura Myers speculated that Clinton found other donors to cover the cost of her Gulfstream and high-priced accommodations while in Las Vegas.

The private-jet requirement should raise eyebrows on the Left. After all, if Hillary Clinton wants to win the Democratic nomination for President, she’ll have to join in the global-warming demagoguery that has become de rigueur among the progressive cognoscenti. How will her constant demand for private Gulfstream travel play with the AGW crowd? That’s a lifestyle that produces a carbon footprint on a Godzilla scale, if not an Al Gore mansion scale. They’d rally behind her in a general election, no doubt, but in a contested primary Clinton may find herself challenged on authenticity, too.

And perhaps the media should take close note of the requirement for the historical record, too. Clinton didn’t allow for media access to her events despite the fact that (a) she’s trading off of her status as a former public official, and (b) she’s very obviously making a play for a run for higher office. The only person allowed to even keep an official record of her remarks has to be on her payroll [see update — it’s worse than that]. Does that remind anyone of the current administration and its attempt to make Pete Souza the only eyes of the media? If they don’t want a rerun of the past six years, this might be a good time for the national press to start asking what Hillary Clinton has to hide, before they have to do it from the White House briefing room.

ABC’s Good Morning America had a good laugh about the contract this morning:

The “brown M&Ms” reference comes from the contract Van Halen used for years for its stage shows, but it was widely misunderstood. Their contract did include a requirement to provide a bowl of M&Ms with all of the brown-shelled candies removed, but it included a great many other requirements as well, mostly dealing with the technical aspects of their complicated theatrics. If the band arrived in their dressing room and saw brown M&Ms in the bowl, they knew immediately that the venue had not read the contract and could react immediately to the more important failures. It was the canary in the coal mine.

Perhaps the media should stop laughing and look at the canaries in this particular coal mine, especially on the insularity and hypocrisy of the woman they’d otherwise soon start hailing as the Next Political Inevitability.

Update: Actually, as a commenter pointed out, I was wrong about the stenographer being on Hillary’s payroll. The client has to foot the bill for the stenographer — while not having access to the record he/she produces. Yikes.