The Associated Press story this week revealing that as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton frequently met with donors to the Clinton Foundation, set off a firestorm in the media. Many Democrats and sympathetic pundits are criticizing the article — and have made the sweeping claim that, contrary to many deeply reported investigations, there is no evidence that well-heeled backers of the foundation received favorable treatment from the State Department.
While there are some legitimate criticisms of the AP story — its focus, for instance, on a Nobel Peace Prize winner meeting with Clinton distracts from the thesis of the piece — it is nonetheless a substantive investigation based on calendars that the State Department has fought to withhold from the public. The AP took the agency to court to obtain a partial release of the meeting logs. Other commentators took issue with a tweet promoting the AP piece, which they said might confuse readers because the AP story reflected private sector meetings, not overall meetings.
But in challenging the overall credibility of the AP story, Clinton surrogates and allies are going well beyond a reasoned critique in an effort to downplay the serious ethical issues raised by Clinton Foundation activities.
One frequent line of attack heard this week is that stories concerning the Clinton Foundation, at best, only reveal that some foundation donors received help at the State Department with visa problems:
The assertions above obscure the problems unearthed through years of investigative reporting on the foundation. Journalist David Sirota, who has reported extensively on the Clinton Foundation, rounded up a sample of the stories that provide a window into Clinton Foundation issues:
The Intercept has also reported on the Clinton Foundation and the conduct of the State Department under Clinton. Leaked government documents obtained by The Intercept revealed that the Moroccan government lobbied Clinton aggressively to influence her and other officials on the Moroccan military occupation of Western Sahara, which holds some of the world’s largest reserves of phosphate, a lucrative export for the kingdom.
As part of its strategy for influence, the Moroccan government and companies controlled by the kingdom donated to the Bill Clinton presidential library, the Clinton Foundation, and hired individuals associated with the Clinton political network. Despite a statement by the Obama administration that suggested it would reverse the previous Bush administration support for the Moroccan government and would back a U.N.-negotiated settlement for the conflict in Western Sahara, Clinton announced there would be “no change” in policy — and has gone on to praise the Moroccan government’s human rights record.
As recently as Monday, we learned that after being denied an official meeting with the State Department, Peabody Energy, the worlds largest coal company, used a consultant who donated heavily to the Clinton Foundation to back channel and attempt to set up a meeting with Clinton via her aide Huma Abedin. The consultant, Joyce Aboussie, wrote that “It should go without saying that the Peabody folks” reached out to her because of her “relationship with the Clinton’s [sic].”
Peabody and Aboussie have declined to comment, and it is unclear if the meeting took place.
There may be many other potential influence-peddling stories, but the State Department has not released all of the emails from Clinton’s private server and other meeting log documents, while redacting identifying information that could shed light on other stories. For example, Mother Jones and The Intercept have reported that Clinton used the State Department to promote fracking development across the globe, and in particular her agency acted to benefit particular companies such as a Chevron project in Bulgaria and ExxonMobil’s efforts in Poland. Both ExxonMobil and Chevron are major donors to the Clinton Foundation.
The release of more meeting log documents and emails would certainly reveal a better picture of potential influence.
In further criticizing the AP, Yglesias wrote on Thursday that the Clinton Foundation faces a double standard and that similar charitable groups set up by Republicans were not criticized closely by the press. In fact, Democrats and media figures roundly criticized the public interest foundations set up by Republicans and funded by lobbyists and special interest groups, including nonprofit organizations affiliated with Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush.
Earlier this year, in similar fashion to the questions raised about the Clinton Foundation, Democrats in Arizona raised influence peddling concerns regarding the reported $1 million donation from the Saudi Arabian government to the McCain Institute for International Leadership, a nonprofit group closely affiliated with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. As chairman of the Armed Services Committee, McCain oversees a range of issues concerning Saudi Arabia, including arms sales. But none of the pundits rushing to the defense of the Clinton Foundation defended McCain.
In fact, the more Clinton’s allies have worked to defend big money donations to the Clinton Foundation, the more closely they resemble the right-wing principles they once denounced.
In one telling argument in defense of the Clinton Foundation, Media Matters, another group run by David Brock, argued this week that there was “no evidence of ethics breaches” because there was no explicit quid pro quo cited by the AP. The Media Matters piece mocked press figures for focusing on the “optics” of corruption surrounding the foundation.
Such a standard is quite a reversal for the group. In a piece published by Media Matters only two years ago, the organization criticized conservatives for focusing only on quid pro quo corruption — the legal standard used to decide the Citizens United and McCutcheon Supreme Court decisions — calling such a narrow focus a “new perspective of campaign finance” that dismisses “concerns about institutional corruption in politics.” The piece notes that ethics laws concerning the role of money in politics follow a standard, set forth since the Watergate scandal, in which even the appearance, or in other words, the “optics” of corruption, is cause for concern.
Photo: Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein speaks as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton applauds at the Clinton Global Initiative.
Apparently to all the Stein- Baraka haters, the is why Clinton is much more qualified than Jill and the ONLY veteran running for executive office, Ajamu Baraka.
Well you can forget about Donna Brazile “cleaning up” the Democratic Party. Voice your concerns about Hillary and her corrupt network (No, I’m not “with” the GOP, foo) and you get two answers:
1. Sit Down and STFU.
2. I’m working for free so how dare you complain.
There ain’t no “Revolution” heah, folks.
Yes, Hillary absolutely has broken a “glass ceiling” – she has demonstrated, without a doubt, that a Woman can be as greedy, self-serving, vile and corrupt as any Man alive.
You GO, Girl!
Go Away…
These media outlets could scarcely afford to take a credibility hit as it is. I already only visit those sites to see what the Clinton camp’s talking points are for the day. By digging in this hard to cover for her they’ve abandoned any appearance of objectivity even if they never had any. Then Donna Brazille goes on TV and says this type of influence is normal for Democrats?
Democrats this election season are repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot– with a 12-gauge.
Vox, Daily Kos, MMA, and Blue Nation Review are all in the Clinton camp. I can’t forget how they went all out against Sanders during the Democratic Primary. Some of the attacks on him were so nasty that I couldn’t imagine the Republicans doing worse.
Millions of Americans are starting to ask these questions :
“How many tons of food has the Clinton Foundation bought and shipped to starving people – when – where ?”
“How many tons of medicine has the Clinton Foundation bought and shipped to dying people – when – where ?”
“How many tons of building supplies has the Clinton Foundation bought and shipped to be used to build shelters – when – where ?”
Should be easy to answer – a few google searches should do it – try ?
Photo: Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein speaks as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton applauds at the Clinton Global Initiative.
1. goldy sackers rob america
2. not prosecuted
3. hellary commits pay for play and influence peddling and lies to America
4. not prosecuted
5. comey + hsbs. hellary + goldy sackers
seeing the picture yet?
Media Matters only two years ago, the organization criticized conservatives for focusing only on quid pro quo corruption
@Lee Fang,
Thanks for pointing out the hypocrisy of other outlets. It’s important to highlight this as it dings them on credibility. There is too much partisanship in the world. We don’t need it in our information networks.
quid pro quo – those are the old days
today- corruption is a team effort
but neither the doj nor the f…b…i… will prosecute corruption because –
they too are corrupt.
Western Sahara territory isn’t occupied since 1975. The Western Sahara community is sovereign south Morocco and will remain sovereign even the algeria propaganda and maneuvers. Algeria agents in the US are attacking Hillary Clinton with fallacies and inconsistencies. The US policy on the Western Sahara issue will remain the same since 2007: autonomy is a good basis for political negotiation. Thanks
Thanks, Lee. Having it all aggregated here is very helpful.
Hellary Clinton, who counts on ruling the US with the help of her best friends who robbed Americas, defrauded investors, crashed the economy, cajoled their pimped out whores in congress to hand the bailout bill to everyday mainstreet Americans, has a problem. So does her partner in crime. T3 is rejected and Hellary and Obama are despised across Europe for being the robber baron’s they are.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/04/24/eu-us-trade-deal-will-fail-us-refuses-concessions-german-minister/
i am as far left as you can get. But the dem party has gone crazy. And working for the thieves that loot America on a regular basis is a really bad thing to do.
Breitbart should NEVER be used as a source, even if a writer might have a point. Please remember your sources.
Jill Stein is not bought! Whoever you plan to vote for, let’s have a real discussion and introduce some honesty. http://www.jill2016.com/openthedebatespetition
(Repeated post from another thread; same point applies as it’s the same subject).
It is ridiculous to claim that the good deeds done by the Clinton Foundation offset the obvious corporatism, warmongering and shady dealings of Hillary Clinton and her institutional positioning (maximizing undemocratic power and influence to her supporters and of course the Clintons themselves).
Despite this, defenders are claiming that yes it does make a difference that the charity is to a large extent genuine – even here in the “aren’t we all clever intellectuals” Intercept comments this argument is implied.
And it’s ridiculous.
Obama being a murdering, Gitmo force-feeding, dirty-war pursuing, torturer-excusing bastard and moral degenerate is not offset by his signing the Lily Ledbetter Act nor by his beautiful speeches.
Charles Manson being a cruel mesmerist responsible for several horrible murders is not offset by the fact that he is a talented musician promoted into the Laurel Canyon counter-culture by Neil Young.
Ted Bundy’s unfathomably vicious domination, rape and torture of scores of women is not offset by the fact that he saved many lives as a suicide hotline worker.
G.W. Bush’s good work in Africa does not offset his horrendous war crimes.
Just so, Hillary Clinton’s corrupt history of supporting stupid wars, shady dealings (within and without the Foundation), friendship with tyrants and highly dubious actions as State Secretary (including spearheading the brutal assaults on Libya which butchered countless civilians) – none of this is offset by her charitable work or any other good deeds.
When the wickedness is great, it just can not reasonably be mitigated or diminished by other more virtuous actions (certainly not without massive repentance, apologetic humility and a promise to do no more harm – none of which she has evidenced in the slightest degree). Clinton is utterly undeserving of public trust and should not be given any more power, even if she announced the needed personality shift away from evil.
Vote Jill Stein to make things fine.
great post
great analogies
By Hellary’s formula, supporting the capital theft of Jeusalem and murder of Palestinians for it and their land, one wonders how much of $10B of American citizen money taken by israel will go for the CGI apology fund – what, $50 a person? $100/acre? Does Hellary have a published menu of prices?
Let’s see the CGI DOLLARS TO DEATHS ratio
And about that goldbag sachs speech she wont release, looks like IT is reciprocating.
All I can say is, IF the Clinton Foundation were a real charity wouldn’t they be focusing like a laser on the Flint Michigan situation where thousands of children (mostly african americans) are being poisoned by lead in their water?
Is there some reason they have not done anything about this?
I think it is quite telling about this “charity”.
You are right. Most of those foundations are “cover” for tax evasion or for-profit activities. The Clinton Foundation is no exception. It may spend one-time funding on vaccinations in Africa, and will drop the project if it turns out to be not very profitable. This kind of whims of private charities have done much damage in the longer spectrum of global aid to the poor and the sick. It makes all the sense that the former Secretary of State was working to increase her Foundation’s wealth, seen from this mechanism of non-profit cover of the for-profit activities. Most mainstream media deems it as not only acceptable but honorable. In some ways, Koch brothers are more honest than the Clintons, in that the former reveal their naked ambition without hiding behind the name of the charity.
faux charity
token charity
sneaky charity
cover story charity
sortof charity
charity in name only
personal charity
many facets charity
order weapons slaughter people then apologise with a gift charity
non-charity charity
part-time charity
TOC charity
The echo chamber of media voices defending the Clinton Foundation are all related to Hillary and her campaign. ThinkProgress is a Tony Podesta operation. Vox and Daily Kos are founded and/or owned by Markos Moulitsas, a self declared Hillary Clinton supporter. Blue Nation Review and Media Matters are founded and/or owned by David Brock who works for the Clinton campaign. All are biased toward the Clintons.
This article is the seventh in a series I have written for free on Medium. The documentation of what I write is available in the Clinton Foundation’s own public statements, website and press releases. The companies involved themselves issue press releases. And the tax filings are public records. It is illegal for a public US charity to purchase property in a foreign country for the use of a for-profit business. It’s illegal to do that here in the U.S. also. And also illegal for a public charity to directly invest in a foreign hedge fund. There is no legitimate charitable program or purpose conducted by the Clinton Foundation that I have found. They don’t just do it poorly: they don’t do it at all.
https://medium.com/@ASterling/putting-the-clinton-foundation-in-context-corruption-plain-on-the-face-of-it-257e54fe7a41#.ilblt0zb1
I bet the Clinton family’s lawyers would disagree about the legality of these actions as they have found some contorted argument for the legality of each of their various shenanigans over the years. Arguing that the Clinton’s have behaved ethically, however, is impossible as they seem totally indifferent to such quaint behavior.
By the way, Amy Sterling Casil’s article at Medium.com is very good and heartfelt.
I agree Emma Goldman. Amy, Your article should be read by all who want to be well informed about the Clintons. They need to be stopped before wreaking more havoc on the world.
Move along, nothing to see here.
Since the Supremes have decided in a couple of cases ‘United’, McCullough, and the overturned conviction of VA Governor that billionaires can contribute and give presents or even millions of dollars unless there is a quid pro quo, (requiring it now appears a notarized paper stating the gift of millions was a deal to get favors) it can’t be proven taking money and gifts is wrong because the recipient MAY just coincidentally changed policies that favor the donors.
I grew up almost worshiping the courts as the last bastion for justice. But now….?
Clintons actions are as venal as it gets, but now the laws allow what any sane person would recognize as payola.
Yes, but the “progressive” campaign of the Clintons has said that it is their goal to overturn Citizens United while now they use the CU very argument that there is no evidence of quid pro quo relating to her SOS & Clinton Foundation activities. Doesn’t pass the smell test nor does it bode well for her obtaining the highest office.
#LockHerUp
Plus, which of the candidates in the Democratic primary did not take millions form the Super Pac money that Citizens United made legal?
It sure as he11 wasn’t the one who won the nomination!
Just because it is legal doesn’t make it ethical.
Time for the people of the World to unite ‘to bring people-powered politics to decision making everywhere’
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/about.php
very good very nice
Yeah. I’m sure they were talking about Visa problems or maybe golf and grandchildren. The sad part is that many will believe this spin.
Hillary Clinton is REALLY Sick Exposed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC9LlyQ5BqI
Secret Service Agent Tells All – Hillary Clinton is CRAZY – Gary Byrne – Full Interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbJe-Yelp-I
Partisan reactions to this make me laugh but few have tickled me as much as this one:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/hill-beans-article-1.2767540
Yes, Gramps sez this “teapot for this tempest” amounts to “a hill of beans.” (They checked in with youngin Cokie Roberts to find out the latest slang terms the kids are using)
humor highlights include:
” A respected charity watchdog gave it a top rating for spending funds on programs rather than on administration.” —- The “respected charity watchdog” goes unnamed, but I’m pretty sure it was Spot.
“What’s not said is that Clinton did anything substantial for a contributor. The foundation chief sought a meeting for the crown prince of Bahrain that took place — either because of the request or through official channels.” Well no, actually, it is in fact “said” that more was done. A R M S D E A L S for D E S P O T S.
“What’s not said is that the 85 private sector donors who met or had phone calls with Clinton over a two-year period, according to an Associated Press count, appear to have included people with whom she had valid reason to speak. The late Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel was among them.” —- this one make me really happy, how can I count the ways. Hey, can anyone catch the logical flaw here? That some of the 85 donors were on the level, so…..what? Picking Elie Wiesel as the nobel Nobel example is extra funny. He just died you know. Well, I guess that settles it.
Just awesome.
Perhaps it’s time to arrange another co-incidental airport runway meeting? The worst problem with the zionista gosackers club robbing America using their Clinton proxy team is that they have stopped using lubricant. And Hellary loves it that way being the masochist she really is.
So in addition to worrying about Mexicans quite a bit, you think a lot about anal sex. Good to know.
i heard anal sex was better than vaginal sex
in fact, i heard that many women like it better that way
is it legal in israel? or do they execute gay persons like they do Palestinians?
The pay to play corruption scandal might just take the whole democratic party down with it … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1EsZEjDELQ
GOOD, and Trump might destroy the elite faction of the republican party. We the People rebuild. “What to hell do we have to lose?”
Who can believe anything anyone says these days? All I know is that it cannot be as bad as they say. It never is. Vote in the Simple Presidential Poll: http://tiny.cc/qg56dy
Hey Kids, Jimmy here. Like James Carville says, a man who tells the truth, “the one thing I know is that the Clinton Foundation saves lives, and if they shut it down, people are going to die… the NY Times, the Huffington Post… they’re all going to get their way… but if there is one thing I know, people are going to die.” That’s just a fact that the elite don’t care about because… well, they’re the elite. Too bad Pierre doesn’t shut this mess that he’s funding down, after all, he’s given at least a million to the Foundation himself… sure he made a few mistakes back in the early 2000’s with microloans and so forth, but he did come to realize Bill’s genius and donated. But this mess here with Fang and Greenwald, what a shame… Anyway, here is Carville, one of the greats, telling the truth about Bill and the foundation.
http://www.businessinsider.com/james-carville-rant-hillary-clinton-foundation-trump-2016-8
hey jimmie boi, tx for coming aboard. here are some key dots for connecting.
15 april 1865
24 march 1933
15 may 1948
22 november 1963
8 june 1967
20 march 2003
T3 to be decided
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw7P0RGZQxQ#t=489.734625
? how many times has hellary and her criminal golden calf worshipping friend – who also shares immunity from the f…b…i… – slept together? or is it just a money and power relationship?
“…Carville, one of the greats….”
Ha! Good one! You should do stand-up.
I stopped reading at: “James Carville…a man who tells the truth”
I kept reading but it didn’t do any good.
Although a little less direct, the despots and corporate powers who use her influence cause death/destruction elsewhere. By supporting her, you’re probably responsible for a lot more death and destruction around the world than the lives she save. See if James Carville agrees.
When do you liberal ladies suppose The Intercept will dig into this:
DCLeaks Website Down, Twitter Suspended After Releasing Soros Docs
“DCLeaks, a website that releases information on powerful political figures, has had its Twitter account suspended and part of its website taken offline after releasing a cache of documents on billionaire donor George Soros.
The website had previously released 2,500 internal Open Society Foundation (OSF) documents in order to “shed light on one of the most influential networks operating worldwide.” OSF is one of Soros’ networks of organizations.
The leaked documents had resulted in several damaging reports about the organization. OSF had previously confirmed that the documents were legitimate.
Before the website went offline, an OSF spokesperson had called the leaks “a symptom of an aggressive assault on civil society and human rights activists that is taking place globally” in a statement released to The Daily Caller.”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/27/dcleaks-has-website-shut-down-twitter-suspended-after-releasing-soros-docs/#ixzz4IZGgD6hc
2:28 PM 08/27/2016
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/27/dcleaks-has-website-shut-down-twitter-suspended-after-releasing-soros-docs/#ixzz4IZGHCDQT
i used to believe that the rwnj’s were all a bunch of war mongerring freaks. Then, Trump took the helm and suddenly the warmonger freaks disappear and suddenly reappear with the Hellary congregation.
This stuff is adding up real fast.
If their Twitter account was suspended and part of their website taken down after posting internal documents from a private entity, the overwhelming likelihood is that “someone” believed that a copyright had been violated and instituted a DMCA takedown notice. If “DCLeaks” believes that the material is in the public domain or that it is permissible for it to publish it for other reasons, there are procedures in place to challenge the claim.
Just so you know, most of us aren’t going to be digging too deeply into stories with Daily Caller citations. ;^)
there are procedures in place to challenge the claim.there ONCE WERE procedures in place to challenge the claim.
There still are.
http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/responding-dmca-takedown-notice-targeting-your-content
And Uncle Lucifer said to Hellary, “We will publish your branding them as super predators and print dollars for prisons and order the votes for policies that keep them from having real economic power as long as you support jerusalem as our capital and say nothing of our ethnic cleansing.”
And the Lord said to Donald, “Thou shalt treat US citizens as equals.”
“In massive shift, Lutherans vote to halt US aid to Israel”
Who’s the racist?
Hellary’s new family.
Michael Arthur Ledeen , “TOTAL WAR” advocate
Simone Ledeen is the daughter of neo-conservative commentator Michael Ledeen.
In October 2003, Simone Ledeen was posted to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq [1].
Her connection with the Heritage Foundation was apparently key to her getting the job
Hellary didnt just vote for the invasion of iraq, she wanted it.
if you vow war for israel, the zions will get you elected. That’s the deal.
Simone Ledeen is the daughter of neo-conservative commentator Michael Ledeen.
In October 2003, Simone Ledeen was posted to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq [1].
Her connection with the Heritage Foundation was apparently key to her getting the job, as a May 23, 2004, Washington Post article stated: “For months they wondered what they had in common, how their names had come to the attention of the Pentagon, until one day they figured it out: They had all posted their resumes at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative-leaning think tank.”
The TPP TTIP and TISA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw7P0RGZQxQ#t=489.734625
The US, led by a zion cult and needs this T3 plan for global domination and power to then occupy these countries and later to ethnically cleanse by taking the lands to evict the citizens of these countries of whom they deem as lessers as they deem Palestinians. It’s the same NAKBA pattern as in 1948. The same pattern as in the invasion of Iraq for the Yinon Plan.
If you dont see the pattern here, call your doctor now before you need to dial 911.
The U.S. State Department announced this week that it will not release any additional Clinton Calendar information until December, after the Presidential Election. The Obama’s Administration protected Clinton from being indicted, and now the Obama Administration is withholding important information to the American People to help Clinton get elected. The Obama Administration appearance of corruption with Clinton is becoming difficult to ignore.
sounds like President Transparency is full of it. Try to shine the light on something and like the black holes in space, the one in the white house traps the light.
Unsurprising given the cover he has provided for, say for example, Dick Cheney, for whom WH lawyers went so far as to argue in court against releasing the transcript from Cheney’s Plame investigation interview, citing “it might end up as material for the Daily Show”. Democrats learned their lesson from that close call. There is purportedly no such transcript of the Clinton email gate interview.
Salon.com is full of Clinton supporters who are labeling AP story as conspiracy and they are gloating.
The former editor Joan Walsh is a Blind-Democrat.
I’m sure she confidently looks the other way on Clinton Neocon agenda. I’ll bet her replacement is the same.
Why do you think GGreenwald left Salon?
The comments threads at Salon and Slate are just the worst, as are most of their political columns. At least at the Guardian the comments are majority-skeptical of the paper’s mostly Blairite/Clintonite shills, and the New York Times reader comments used to be an effective counterweight to the blatant Clinton cheering/Sanders slanders, until in about May the Clinton-commentator army noticed the glaringly obvious discrepancy between articles and reception, and started making sure to upvote properly Clinton-supporting comments.
Of these four pillars of the stooge-fake-liberal media, I’d say Slate is the most likely to be shit top to bottom, the NYT does the most damage and is the only one that arguably has blood on its hands, Salon is mostly miles of parking lot, and The Guardian is a real variety show of mostly idiocy and some insight.
Hellary’s advisor wants more war
Ledeen is listed in WIKISPOOKS
another “it” creature of her crooked campaign
Ledeen was involved in the Reagan administration’s Iran-Contra scandal. As a consultant of National Security Advisor Robert C. McFarlane, Ledeen vouched for Iranian intermediary Manucher Ghorbanifar. In addition, he met with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, officials of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to arrange meetings with high-ranking Iranian officials as well as the much-criticized deal with Iran, whereby moderate Iranians would be given weapons by Israel, and would proceed to negotiate with Hizbollah terrorists for the release of hostages in Lebanon.[10] Ledeen’s own version of the events is published in his book, Perilous Statecraft.[11]
Yellowcake forgery allegations
The Intercept has quickly become by go-to place for investigative journalism. Grateful for all who work there.
“…“new perspective of campaign finance” that dismisses “concerns about institutional corruption in politics.”…”
Or it could be said:
What we have is a democratic façade. Our Republic exists as two sides of one tarnished corporate coin.
When the farce of an election is over and Hillary’s puppet Presidency is sanctified by the controlling elite little will change, and not because the mean Republicans will block her phony altruistic agenda. Little will change and things will surely become much worse for the middle class and poor of America, environment, and those suffering from never ending wars of profit and of service to the interests of foreign powers that have purchased control over her and our political non-leaders.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=07w9K2XR3f0
George Carlin: Politicians
That is one of his more famous pieces. It is enjoyable. The blame it on the voter thing misses the point as that is the way they spin it to take it off of them. They are like a degenerate poker player as they are either lying, distracting, or setting up the next big lie.
The voter has very little input into who the two ordained candidates are or even the dozen that might get into the race. You can’t blame the voter for having limited choices to begin with.
Exactly!
Paul Wolfowitz, architect of Iraq War will vote for Hillary Clinton
For the world according to Paul Wolfowitz see http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/paul-wolfowitz-says-he-will-likely-vote-for-clinton-a-1109639.html
Iraq war supporters have to stick together. It may not have been the most successful war in the history of the United States. But according to the Ledeen doctrine, “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business.” Considered on these terms, the war was a success. The problem is that people have unrealistic expectations of what war can accomplish and therefore are disappointed that it didn’t lead to peace and prosperity.
“One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today.”
– Michael Arthur Ledeen
He is a man of limited vision. Why does he stop at the Middle East?
Ha ha!
But I am sure the US war machine doesn’t have such a limited vision. Cauldronization can only be done in phases. Some regions must survive to buy weapons, but they remain potential cauldronization targets someday, when it would suit the interests of the US military-industrial complex.
googled his name
this popped up
http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/understandji-3.htm
I got a WOT warning. After bypassing it, there were a few comments from people who defended Mr/Prof MacDonald’s right to speak. After the WOT warning, I got this:
“Google detected badware on the site you were visiting. Firefox uses Google’s blacklist to warn you about “Reported attack sites.” We understand that you may know and trust this site, but it’s possible for good sites to be infected with badware without the site owners’ knowledge or permission. Google detected badware on the site you were visiting. Firefox uses Google’s blacklist to warn you about “Reported attack sites.” We understand that you may know and trust this site, but it’s possible for good sites to be infected with badware without the site owners’ knowledge or permission.”
If the campaign against this website originated w/Google, I had never seen, before today, how a Clinton/Google- Obama/Google relationship affected me.
Do you know anything about this?
Thank you.
sabotage. it is something that outsiders can do to generate these warnings, like a cross scripting post that goes to a hackin site. Google will detect these but, in my opinion, once google has branded your site it is next to impossible to get them to remove that branding.
in this case i would suspect politically motivated sabotage. You can plug the url into norton site safe and see how they read it. It has been my experience tht google says one thing, norton says another. And in my experience, i took norton’s word without a problem.
Glad I asked.
Don’t be too flattered, but I took your word and clicked on the site. I didn’t think you would lead us astray. I was going to complain to Firefox for allowing Google to make political decisions, but you straightened me out. I will let Firefox know that it is a malicious attempt to stifle speech.
Thank you.
sure. he is a zion
Julian Assange Says WikiLeaks Will Release ‘Significant’ Information That Could Damage Clinton
http://time.com/4465817/julian-assange-wikileaks-clinton/
hillary didnt just vote for iraq invasion, SHE WANTED IT.
“Ledeen was a founding member of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and he served on the JINSA Board of Advisors. In 2003, the Washington Post alleged that he was consulted by Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s closest advisor, as his main international affairs adviser.”
“Michael Ledeen had been accused of being involved in the forgery which claimed that Saddam Hussein had bought yellowcake in Niger.”
“Writing in The Nation, a left-wing magazine, Jack Huberman, who describes Ledeen as “the most influential and unabashed warmonger of our time”, attributes these quotes to Ledeen:[19]
BRAVO! BRAVO! Glad someone is still practicing journalism and its purpose to inform us all. You’ll never read anything like this in the Hillary sycophant New York Times, Washington Toast, nor anywhere else in the ugly old USA’s so-called “mainstream media”. Thank you, Lee Fang!
The fact that WaPo and the NYT rushed to endorse her despite the stench of corruption tells you that they are as corrupt as she in the sense that they have abandoned their watchdog role. They are on the side of the powerful.
Why do newspapers feel they have to endorse a candidate?
Like war, truth is the first casualty of elections.
I agree. The Press should never endorse a candidate. But then WaPo and NYT are CIA mouth-pieces. and Hillary helped out the CIA with its Benghazi problem. Hillary is the choice of the American deep-state.
Great piece – thank you for having the courage to point out abuses on both sides. We need a sustained unveiling of corruption throughout government and big business everywhere. Influence peddling and regulatory capture are the norm in contemporary democracies, and only a focused press can start the job of changing things. Clinton surely would be a better president than Trump – but I could not bring myself to vote for her either. Maybe all we can hope for short of radical revolutionary change that would probably do more harm than good, is to start using technology to focus votes in ways that would target the worst offenders and support real systemic reform.
1000 words.
Take a good look at the picture at the top.
Copy it, save it, crop the thing at the podium’s face and enlarge, ask others what comes to mind when they see its face.
Then show them the entire picture.
Hellary is probably as fond of “it” as she is of kissinger, nutinyahu, and her murderous honduran dictator. She probably refers to “it” as Uncle Lucifer.
https://patriotpost.us/pages/72
creepy
What a great piece Lee, thanks. Such a palate cleanser after reading the garbage analysis over at Slate, etc.
I am sorry, but with all due respect, I believe the “pundits” might have lost their moral compass and this election will come with a hefty price, in one way or another, because the very fiber of our democracy is withering away.
http://bit.ly/2bF6jGP Read this.
Why is any of this surprising?
Trump is just the side show.
w O w dude you blew my mind with your brilliant “why is any of this surprising?” comment….well no, I was being sarcastic there…..because actually,
You made THE most cliche comment in the world, Meaning that YOU are the boring unsurprising one.
Step up your game or head back to the Yahoo News Comments.
These should be some of the Clintons new campaign slogans:
Bill isn’t a rapist because nobody could prove he was in a court of law!
The only “truth” that can be known in the universe is that which can be proved in a US court of law!
It isn’t illegal or unethical when the Clintons do a thing!
The appearance of corruption is just bad optics, not reality, especially when the Clintons are involved!
Unimpeachable Unprovable Plausibly Deniable Corruption Uber Alles!
We Clintons are smart enough to destroy the evidence of our corruption–so elect us, because the Republicans are too dumb to do corruption the right way, the Clinton way!
So long as the ends are good (what we the Clintons believe are “good” ends anyway), whatever means employed to achieve said ends are necessarily good and defensible based on the goodness of the ends!
We are multimillionaires because people love hearing us give speeches about how good and special we are!
IOKIYAAC(linton)!
Anybody who doesn’t vote Clinton is stupid, selfish, privileged, going to hell, and a Putin stooge!
Jesus H. Krispy Kreme Christ we could make fun of the Clintons until the cows came home and still never run out of material.
I will say unequivocally I have never been a fan of Bill Clinton as I think he and his brain trust set back liberalism/leftism/progressivism at least two decades. Now it looks like the Clintons will set it back another two decades, with a minor assist from Pres. Obama in some areas like trade policy, drone assassinations, whistleblowers, social safety net . . . .
The modern Democratic Party really does serve to legitimize and normalize a bunch of crap policy that the Republican Party could never normalize on their own.
Well for my part I’m neither “purity” obsessed, privileged, selfish, going to hell or a Putin stooge, and I won’t be voting for Hillary Clinton for President. And I don’t particularly care that others have a problem with that decision in any way whatsoever. I simply don’t believe in most of the policy prescriptions on offer by the Clintons on what I think are the big linchpin issues in our society — unionism, income inequality, campaign finance, international trade, energy policy, health care/insurance policy, corporate-banking regulation, foreign policy, civil rights . . . .
Hey maybe President Clinton will be good for increased family leave, health care for children, voting rights and some marginal civil rights issues, but short of that just don’t see where we don’t get 8 more years of the neoliberal gutting of the American working class, more war, more erosion of civil rights, more bad energy policy, more bad foreign policy, more bad trade policy . . . .
Sheesh what a dismal choice–a racist charlatan, a neoliberal true believer, and two poor souls who can’t attract enough votes, backing or financing to even provide the American people viable alternatives to the first two. Shit choices and crumb sandwiches for the little people. That’s been the story of American politics going on 50 years, if not at all times since this nation’s founding.
So pissed Shillary pundits are playing me bald headed..I have a Juris Doctorate degree; I’m no fool… #NeverHillary
Excellent piece. Smoke doesn’t always indicate fire, but it sure warrants checking for one.
The Hillary Clinton State Department operation, like the Karl Rove White House operation that preceded it, has many hallmarks of a criminal organization. The private email server system was set up to avoid leaving traces that investigators could follow, serving the same purpose as Karl Rove’s gwb43 server:
http://observer.com/2016/03/hillary-has-an-nsa-problem/
A criminal investigation requires a timeline, one linking Bill Clinton’s speeches-for-cash, Clinton Foundation donations, Clinton Foundation handouts, Hillary Clinton emails, Hillary Clinton meetings, and State Department actions.
Perhaps the most disastrous actions Clinton took involved the effort to overthrow Gaddafi in 2011. Here we have involvement of the Gulf cartel states (Qatar in particular), who have been large Clinton Foundation donors, as well as her associate, Sidney Blumenthal. The emails between Clinton and Blumenthal over Libya are very interesting, but one suspects a lot of the scrubbed “private” emails involve this episode. What exists, for example, shows that Qatar’s VITOL was maneuvering for access to Libyan oil by September 2011 with Blumenthal playing some kind of in-between role.
There’s always been something strange about the sudden push to overthrow Qaddafi; he had in 2003 aligned himself with Bush & Blair and opened his country to the oil majors; Condi Rice was apparently a good friend – he was the counterexample to Saddam (and Gaddafi, unlike Saddam, really did have stocks of chemical weapons as well as uranium yellowcake, which he retained through 2011). Why did this U.S. ally suddenly need to be overthrown?
It looks rather like an alliance between Clinton and the Gulf Arab monarchies via the Clinton Foundation was behind this. Gaddafi was not a Clinton Foundation donor, and there was this ongoing long-term civil war between Arab nationalists and Gulf monarchies across the region. The monarchies are absolute client states; without external support from the U.S. their royal families would soon fall from power. Clinton, with her financial ties to the monarchies via the Foundation, appears to have tried to assist them in expanding their power and influence, the result being the Libya debacle (and perhaps Syria too.)
Democratic media pundits who refuse to acknowledge this out of some misguided sense of political loyalty or fear of Trump should really think twice about the consequences of a Hillary Clinton presidency – it would be an epic disaster. She seems to operate entirely on the basis of personal crony connections and payoffs, with no understanding of the potential consequences of her actions.
Thanks. Good post.
Now, if we can just get another leak out of the NSA to retrieve her 33,000 emails from their database (cuz we know they have copies of them) we could accurately assess her criminality.
I have little doubt that they have them. They already monitor many of the people she was communicating with, so her server was an automatic selection. They won’t produce them because it’s a “national security issue”. I don’t think you need more emails to assess her criminality, naiveity to the law has never worked as a defense in front of a judge, Mr. Comeys’ assessment was laughable at best.
I bet some kind of collaboration / kickback with Qatari oil interests was involved; see this Sep 5 2011 Financial Times article:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/93aecc44-d6f3-11e0-bc73-00144feabdc0.html
And from the Sidney Blumenthal (Clinton Foundation employee, paid $10,000 per month as he advised on Libya)-Hillary Clinton correspondence, Sep 16, 2011
Here is where U.S. actions possibly influenced by Clinton may have come into play:
And, on Sep 22, 2011, Hillary Clinton had a meeting with the Amir of Qatar Hamid bin Khalifa Al Thani. I bet they had a discussion of VITOL oil and Libya and I wonder what else? Then there is the Blair’s wife – Clinton – Qatar email angle, too:
Interestingly, the publicly traded oil majors like BP, Exxon,etc. all refused to get into any deals with the Libyan NTC. Too shady and corrupt for them, apparently, which says a lot.
I’m thinking the whole Libyan operation is best classified as a racketeering game involving the U.S. State Department, elements of the French and British governments, the Clinton Foundation, private oil firms, and the Qatari Royals – which killed many thousands of people and helped create a refugee flood into Europe – and which likely would not have happened had Gaddafi coughed up millions for the Clinton Foundation.
Now, if we had a functional International Criminal Court, this could be prosecuted there. . . and anyone who says, this is just business-as-usual, buying access, no big deal – that’s ludicrous.
I understand you have that perception problem. But, anyone sincerely interested in what you are talking about would need to depend on Wikileaks for that. Sending information to The Intercept would be a waste of time.
I think it’s the Clinton that have a perception problem. I’m frustrated at the fact that they just waive their hand, delete evidence and then haven’t any fear of punishment.
I understand you’d like the Intercept to move up their timetable. But perhaps there are some facts you aren’t aware of that may be causing this?
Back in 2004/2005, Glenn wrote about the CIA snail mail interception program that was occurring during Bush administration. He said he was hesitant to disclose the actual method of how this was being done, if he knew.
I was upset by this statement as I was a victim of this invasion of privacy policy. So, in the comments section, I outlined how it was done.
But I believe his reasoning may have been was the process can be used as legitimate means of national security. That it’s the perversion or misuse of the process that is at the heart of the issue and not the process in of itself.
This is how I view the Intercepts latest disclosure of the ShadowBrokers. It’s not the fact that espionage of a person’s computers is inherently wrong, it’s the fact that it’s used against the public without cause.
Since the ShadowBrokers released the “How” of these invasive programs, the Intercept then wrote a story of How these tools could be used against the public.
This seems to be an Intercept Policy decision. You can call it spineless, which is what I get when I read your post, but it is their policy.
If you want them to change it, provide good reasons to change it…ie…the public good.
Hopefully Julian, one of my heroes delivers a timely Sunday Punch to this carpetbagger, Clinton.
“But I believe his reasoning may have been was the process can be used as legitimate means of national security.”
An imperialist monstrosity like the United Snakes has no legitimate national security concerns, since its “national security” is in direct conflict with the legitimate security concerns of the great majority of the world’s people(s).
From what I’ve read there is an app out there called BleachBit or something and they advertise that they were the company that shredded Hillary’s emails so they could never be retrieved.
If not true, the company is guilty of false advertising.
I agree with you but in regards to Hillary attemting to hide her communications I think she was more concerned with journalists and FOIA requests than FBI, DOJ or any other three letter agency, which is even more concerning and telling.
I was reading your link and found this:
“But personal electronic devices—your cellphone, your Blackberry—can never be brought into a SCIF. They represent a serious technical threat that is actually employed by many intelligence agencies worldwide. Though few Americans realize it, taking remote control over a handheld device, then using it to record conversations, is surprisingly easy for any competent spy service. Your smartphone is a sophisticated surveillance device—on you, the user—that also happens to provide phone service and Internet access.”
Great article.
I think it was the TIs’ own Sec. guy talking about mobile exploits on the Vice spot with Snowden, it’s a good video.
About those phones:
https://deibert.citizenlab.org/2016/08/disarming-a-cyber-mercenary-patching-apple-zero-days/
That’s our NSA/private contractor/Israeli ally agenda: spying on journalists and politicians and propping up decrepit old monarchies in the Middle East.
P.S. The NSO Group’s owner, Francisco Partners Management, is headquarter in the U.S. (San Francisco, California) and just purchased Dell’s software suite, according to Bloomberg:
Who wants to buy some internet security software to protect their data from the owner of NSO Group? Backdoors included gratis!
Zero day exploits are only a small piece of the mystery.
But thanks, it’s a good read. Useful.
On morning joe today, joe and mika spoke with hillary and tried to get her out of her denial and hillary, as usual, defended the perception of the CGI with vigor and lots of iffies blathering relentlessly. Finally joe and mika had to continue with the “praise hillary” scripted infomercial. It appeared that joe and mika were going against their grain which is fishy. Trump had a point that racism is a matter of political policies – which exists in both parties which Trump seems to abhor – yet the media refuses to give any credit to. sniff sniff, so i checked about and found this.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ryan-rodrick-beiler/massive-shift-lutherans-vote-halt-us-aid-israel
“Under Clinton’s leadership, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation, according to an IBTimes analysis of State Department and foundation data. That figure — derived from the three full fiscal years of Clinton’s term as Secretary of State (from October 2010 to September 2012)” -International Business Times
Hellary Clinton supports and advocates drafting women. Her mind has computed the scenario by which she needs to do that. Reconciling that – just as she voted to invade Iraq, filling in the blanks – means she has a war in mind. In my honest and sincere and humble opinion, any person who would force women to fight a war is evil. On top of that she’s nuts and completely in denail about her criminal activities using the CGI as a front for weapons for genocide and war.
With all due respect, barabbas, why care about gender at all? Why not focus on the true subject: the draft. Either you have a problem with a draft or you dont but essentially supporting a false dichotomy twists the conversation from one about war/corruption/invasion/whatever to one about gender equality. Or do you believe anybody should be forced to fight a war? I am not a pacifist, however I tend to believe everybody should be permitted to choose to fight or not (provided they are capable of doing so). And if someone does choose to enlist then they are soldiers and officers (not male soldiers or female soldiers, male officers or female officers).
So is your problem with the draft? Or with women being drafted? Or with a woman supporting one or the other? If it isnt about the first thing, why not?
“Karen” Finney is just earning her pay here by just defending the indefensible.
Use your full name and current position so that everyone knows your a paid shill.
Her posts are largely incomprehensible; why would anyone pay for that?
She’s trying to sound like regular folk…
That’s pretty funny, but in point of fact she’s just ended up sounding massively defensive and red-faced with denial about the obviously compromising nature of the corporatist, militarist and imperialist funders of the Clinton Foundation. Karen keeps asking for a ‘motive,’ as if positioning oneself in the corrupt system institutionally to maximize power and influence isn’t a motive.
I used to believe HIllary was a good person. I actually favored her until about a few months back. Trump kept saying crooked HIllary. I figured he was blowing smoke. Then i read about her weapons to syria from libya deal, the TPP, the Honduras, Haiti or some island, then i re-examined Bill’s trade deal, the Lanham act. When i saw the extent and nature of her big money backers the alarm went off. It got worse from there. This woman lies and deceives like no other woman i have ever known or heard of. It’s CREEPY.
So, IOW: When you fell off the turnip truck maybe you hit your head…
i am not a party person. i was uninformed simply because i was kept in the dark by the wallstreet media. It is difficult for most Americans to gleen the meaning of events because many events are withheld from exposure. MAINSTREET IS BEING MINED BY WALLSTREET just as the colony was being mined by england until 1775.
The money changers have placed Americans onto their turnip truck. When people start to question what gives and get off, the money changers hit you on the head. The currency system established by the zionist rothschilds in 1913 must be replaced.
@barabbas-I agree with you completely. The Moneyarchists (the letter e and the letter y are silent) is the 21st century tyrannical Royal Crown.
I realized Hillary was a creep back in ’08 when she darkly suggested that she had to stay in the race for the Dem nomination because she was concerned Obama might be assassinated. Threat Throwback
The Clintons lost me with the indiscriminate bombing of Yugoslavia the reasons for which were murky at the time (and as we know now, probably were fudged). Post-Vietnam, Carter had no public interventions. Reagan’s – Grenada and the occasional bomb – were still highly controversial. However, the media all proclaimed the Vietnam ghost had been laid to rest after Bush One went into Panama, which set the stage for the Gulf War. But it really wasn’t until a Democrat joined in that the Vietnam ghost was really slayed. The second round of bombing – which insiders attest to Hillary having talked Bill into – was probably just to get his affair off the front pages.
What lies affected any policy ?
in Hellary’s jumbled up mind she figures she can balance good with evil. Worse, she places a false upside valuation on the good she puts on her scale and a false downside value on the evil she precipitates.
that makes hellary is a destroyer, not a builder.
ps- she cant really put in writing a policy of selling weapons and making war for donations. That policy is the one in her head.
the paying for access is why campaigns are financed,. Trump his self pointed out in a recent speech that he expected access for donations. To paraphrase Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now cutting down on this kind of corruption was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500. Up until recently you could give money and get a sleep over at the white house.
It seems unfair just to pick on one person for a practice that is the commonest form of corruption that almost every elected official commits day in and day out.
I see. It’s “unfair” to expose corruption and serious ethical lapses in the candidate who happens to be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States. Especially since this site never looks at any other politicians on that score. pffft
This is one of my favorites. One by inference, one expressly stated. It’s a combination of “realpolitick” (“everybody does it and always has, so just move along nothing to see here”) + “whataboutery” (“if you don’t illuminate every instance of corruption by every politician, simultaneously, you’re a hypocrite or hyperpartisan”).
I love the comments section. It simultaneously, on a near daily basis, demonstrates how poor many people’s critical analytical skills are, coupled with an almost pathologically attendant demonstration of exactly how morally and/or ethically bankrupt certain people are. Just like a bunch of little Henry Kissinger’s.
It’s a weird country full of weird people. It’s why I think public schools should require teaching philosophy and American jurisprudence beginning in the 7th grade and continuing on until high school graduation as a part of every American child’s compulsory education. At least one semester of each for 6 continuous years. And then have both subjects be part of both SAT/ACTs.
@rrheard-Absolutely! Uh, to your last paragraph. The USConstitution and the Declaration of Independence should be committed to memory and debated vigorously throughout high school. I believe being a productive American in America should start with completely memorizing and understanding the founding documents that this country was built on.
Both are generally part of classes on “American jurisprudence”. Though to be technically accurate, and I wasn’t–I would want “history of jurisprudence” taught in public schools focusing particularly on “western” legal principles underlying both documents. And when you take it in law school for a year which I did, it is more like a history of western civ course, with a real emphasis on legal theory(ies). Although there is a lot of other interesting subsets of that general endeavor i.e. jurisprudence.
And that is not to say that studying jurisprudence in the context of other “legal” systems isn’t interesting too, just that my background is primarily in “western” legal systems dating back to Roman law or civil law underlying most western (though not all) legal traditions.
The USConstitution and the Declaration of Independence should be studied in the context of the system of slavery and genocide that they provided window dressing for.
Realpolitik & Whataboutery
Great definitions! I often refer to the Realpolitik arguments as “Tradition”. People hang on because just what they’ve always done, so why bother.
I’m gonna borrow the term Whataboutery if you don’t mind. It’s perfect. Those always seem like Red Herring arguments to me.
Ie..X cannot be defended because Y& Z exist. Thanks
good comment, except for the delusion that child’s compulsory education is ever going to be anything other than indoctrination as regards crucial civil information — who do you think is paying for that stuff to happen anyway?
every president and every candidate for president has done the same exact thing. why the outrage in just this one case? we should be outraged at all the cases and condemn them all.
“every president and every candidate for president has done the same exact thing.”
Why that’s just a big fat unsubstantiated lie.
Bernie Sanders? Jimmy Carter? FDR? Jill Stein? Dennis Kucinich?
Try again, Pattie boy.
Thanks, you saved me the time. There’s also the constant insistence that Hillary is the true “progressive.” You know, the one who “gets things done.”
every president and every candidate for president has done the same exact thing. why the outrage in just this one case?
Because it is the most current example available and is the one that will cost us the most in the next 4-8 years.
we should be outraged at all the cases and condemn them all.
Some people have been. Greenwald has been excoriating both sides ever since he started his blog back in ’05.
Just because you haven’t been seeking out these writers does not mean they don’t exist and haven’t been writing about it.
Patrick, you should run for office on the platform: “Together on common forms of corruption”.
Perhaps if we all starting doing a crime each day, so that all crimes become common, then we could do away with the legal system!
Great article! Thanks for writing and publishing this. Another phony point of defense to note is claims by Clinton and her defenders that the Foundation’s AIDS work proves they did nothing wrong. Setting aside the merit of such a hilarious claim (one right fixes many wrongs?), the AIDS project was spun off into a legally separate organization in 2010. It’s no longer even part of the Clinton Foundation.
Excellent reporting, and very clear writing. Thanks.
To get a flavor for how the Clinton’s “roll”, this article in VanFair offers a glimpse:
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/08/chelsea-clinton-foundation-nbc-first-daughter
A sample:
“In early 2008, David Shuster, then an MSNBC reporter, found himself near her [Chelsea] at an event and tried to ask a few questions. He wasn’t surprised that she declined to speak with him—that was her prerogative. What did surprise him was getting warning calls 24 hours later from the campaign telling him Chelsea was off limits. Shuster recalls saying, “Look, she handled herself just fine. I respected her desire not to talk. But what’s wrong with you guys, feeling like you need to protect her or beat me up for asking questions?” The campaign responded that she was still the daughter of the president, and that was that.
“But soon Shuster would find his job in peril. A few nights later he engaged in a typical breezy on-air exchange about Chelsea’s role in the campaign, and remarked that it seemed she’d been “pimped out” by the campaign. It was a terrible choice of words, to be sure. The campaign called for his head, making calls to Steve Capus, the head of NBC News, and to executives at General Electric (then NBC’s parent company), accusing Shuster of having called Chelsea a prostitute. Hillary issued a statement essentially demanding that Shuster be fired, and the campaign threatened to boycott an upcoming debate that was to air live on NBC. Under pressure from his bosses, Shuster wrote an e-mail apology and sent it to Howard Wolfson, Hillary’s communications director, to pass on to Chelsea. Shuster says he followed up with a call, in which Wolfson informed him that he had received the apology, but wouldn’t be forwarding it to Chelsea—no reason given. (Wolfson says he has no recollection of the call.) NBC suspended Shuster for two weeks and denied him any future Clinton stories. It was a warning to journalists: Chelsea needed to be handled with kid gloves.”
This, of course, was the same Chelsea Clinton who was ultimately hired as a part-time rookie “reporter” for the rock-bottom sum of $600,000:
“Her stint at NBC was a disaster, perhaps because it ran so contrary to her instincts. ‘Most of us were baffled [by the hire], because she never even spoke to the press,’ says an NBC veteran. ‘She’d walk by with the imperial stare, looking forward, and interacted not at all.’ The feeling inside NBC was that she had been hired to maintain access to and curry favor with the Clintons. When news broke that she had been getting paid $600,000—for a part-time job—NBC staffers were appalled.”
One can only wonder why.
“…how the Clintons’ roll” is a great expression. I wonder what guides their rolling other than greed and extreme self-importance and rightness. It’s amazing what we’re observing right now.
It’s criminal what we’re observing now and nobody is stopping it. WTH, people?
‘What do all groups (cult and non-cult) offer a potential recruit? Answer: friendship, identity, respect and security. They also offer a world-view: a way of discerning right from wrong; good from bad. “
Not only is it how the Clinton’s roll, but also a method of dealing with controversy that has extended deep down into the ranks of their supporters and minions.
Neera Tanden got into a twitter spat with Matt Breunig, a promising young socialist writer over her participation in the roll-out of the “welfare reform” package the Clinton’s pushed and supported. Apparently, those reforms meant that benefits were taken from Matt’s mother, a woman raising her kids in poverty. When Breunig confronted Tanden – and Joan Walsh, another execrable Clinton laver many here may be familiar with from her tenure at Salon – they got him fired from one of his jobs writing at Demos, a liberal think tank. What was his sin? He called Tanden a “scumbag” using a reference to a common internet meme that she was unfamiliar with. Less than two days later he’d been fired….while his wife was expecting their first child.
He also disappeared from twitter at the same time and, other than references to him by his wife on twitter, very little has been seen of him. That’s a damn shame because he was a young, gifted writer who’d been critiquing them from the left and scoring major points. He essentially took on the powerful PUMAs still in Clinton’s orbit and they took him out, threatening his ability to support his family, and short-circuiting his writing. That’s what they do when you’re successfully challenging them.
As for his accusations that Tanden was involved in welfare reform. She denied them at the time but there has since been proof offered that she was involved with implementation. In fact, it came from TI’s Zaid Jilani:
https://shadowproof.com/2016/08/24/clinton-aide-neera-tandens-role-welfare-reform-questioned/
Clinton and her people are shameless. They will stop at nothing to destroy their critics, and their sycophants have learned to do exactly the same.
I’ve often wondered what the Clintons had on their creature, Brock, who used to be a conservative critic of the Cintons and is now their chief minion and propagandist. How did they get him to do a 180? Big bucks or blackmail or a combo of the two?
Her mother is being pimped out by Luciferous Gosackers.
Why would chelsea have any objection to being pimped out?
I bet her marriage doesnt last 4 years.
wait a minute – chelsea went all erdogan
thin skin easily insulted
like wanting john the baptist’s head
maybe Hellary is the monster’s mother
I bet her marriage doesnt last 3 years.
The #PayToPlay quid pro quo issue is of course seminal to any evaluation of HRC’s judgement and integrity, and it is to be hoped that, sooner rather than later, emails and perhaps yet other materials will enable some kind of a definitive forensic verdict in that respect. All the same, it seems to me that what we are confronted with here is, at bottom, the Clinton’s sheer unprofessionalism in having rendered themselves liable, prospectively, to all kinds of conflicts of interest by dint of and/or by leave of their incontinent acceptation — let alone solicitation — of obese monetary donations from umpteen powerful and influential quarters over time.
It takes nothing to envisage how the acceptance, right now, of an apparently no-strings-attached gift could well complicate, hinder, prejudice, and compromise a future decision to be made by the recipient in some or other (unforeseeable) matter involving the former benefactor. But just such a conflict of interest could also ramify and burgeon in respect of a third party who, let’s say, might one day fall into bitter acrimony with that same benefactor — and this to the potential detriment (operating roughly on the model of ‘guilt by association’) of that former beneficiary, now held by the third party to be deeply compromised by the prior largesse s/he had once upon a time received.
Thus both the Clintons and their Foundation have over the years — thanks largely it would seem to the intermediation of Huma Abedin — accepted generous speaking fees and donations from the massive Hizmet congregation (or, as many would prefer, cult) of the Hoja Fethullah Gulen who, after fleeing charges of conspiring to subvert and usurp the Turkish government, has lived a sheltered and comfortable life in Pennsylvania since 1999. And now that the Ankara government is once again at war with Gulen, demanding his extradition from the US as the leader of a “terrorist” organization directly responsible for instigating the recent abortive coup in Turkey, then HRC will assuredly face a profound conflict of interest should she ever become POTUS — here just to assume that the Obama (or Biden) administration will not have assented to the extradition of a former CIA asset / liability by January 2017.
Moral of the story:- beneficium accipere libertatem est vendere (to accept a favor is to sell one’s liberty).
What is wrong with government of the oligarchs, by the oligarchs and for the oligarchs? They will ensure that whatever remains, once they have helped themselves and deducted the operating expenses, will be distributed equally and fairly as charity through the Clinton Foundation. Anyone who objects to this deserves the resulting government which is unlikely to even care about the common people.
Would somebody please compile an Intercept anthology for publication under the title:
THE WIT & WISDOM OF BENITO MUSSOLINI
I’ve submitted a request to create a 16 byte storage record. I’ve been told they’ll do it as soon as they can find that much storage space in the Utah Data Center.
I hear Hillary Clinton runs private servers. She may have space available.
I need secure servers.
But I was proposing an anthology for publication and sale, meaning filthy lucre. Could I perhaps interest you in contributing an appendix to a brand new edition of my 1901/1904 classic, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life? Or, instead, one to my 1905 masterpiece, On Jokes & the Unconscious? Or how about one to my 1899/1900 magnum opus, The Interpretation of Dreams? I humbly invite you to take your prick, Maestro.
SIGMUND FREUD ON BRINK OF DEAL WITH BENITO MUSSOLINI?
THE best laugh I’ve had in a while!
I am actually trying to figure out if that was a Freudian slip at the end there or not, myself. I am going to need to think about that for a bit.
Believe me, it was a fake Freudian slip tendered as junk-food for the masses so that my theories of human psychology & behavior will not only survive but prevail. To tell you the truth, I was undecided for a few moments whether to write “take your prick” or “take your dick” instead of “pick”, but then one of my quasi-autonomous index fingers, which has a personhood all its own — much as do Donald Trump’s, I might say — decided the matter for me in the determined political spirit of “Occupy” (= cathexis = demoniacal possession) by impetuously clicking on “Submit” out of his/her sheer respect for the Maestro, Benito.
“I need secure servers.”
I keep mine in the garage. And yes, I have disconnected the door opener, plus I bought a really strong pad-lock. I also have a cloth for wiping the hard-drive if the need arises …
But is the padlock a Schlage? What is the door made of? How heavy is the chain? Do you encrypt your mail? What about mx records? Wait, what do you do with the car?! Lol.
“The Clinton Foundation is an excellent charity,” Charity Watch president Daniel Borochoff said Aug. 24, 2016, on CNN. “They are able to get 88 percent of their spending to bona fide program services and their fundraising efficiency is really low. It only costs them $2 to raise $100.” Sandra Minuitti at the group Charity Navigator used the same general calculation when talking to our colleagues FactCheck.org, though she did not include the Clinton Foundation’s affiliates. By that measure, in 2013, 80.6 percent of spending was on program services.
I don’t think so!!! The Federalist reported that in 2014 The Clinton Foundation reported 91 millions in expenses and 5.1 millions went to charity!!! From 2009 to 2012 the Foundation raised 500 millions and gave only 75 millions to charity!!!
The Federalist is not in the business of understanding nor let alone rating charities, Charity Watch, Charity Navigator and others are. In all cases, they come up with a resoundingly positive rating for Clinton Foundation. Back in 2005 when my husband and I were looking into it, Charity Navigator gave them five stars and rated them within the top five in the country, along with Doctors Without Borders, the Catholic Relief Services and just a few others. They’re going to re rate the charity as they lost that ability as it spun off into multiple satellite organizations. So, you are dead wrong. Sorry. Back to Go.
Politifact: The Clinton Foundation spends between 80-90 percent on program services, which experts say is the standard in the industry to define charitable works. It spends the majority of its money directly on projects rather than through third-party grants.
Conversely, only between 10-20 percent is spent on management of the foundation and fundraising activities, which is tagged as “overhead.”
“Charitable” is the murky word here. Ask the Haitians about it. The Clinton Foundation serves wealthy interests around the globe, some of which – like AIDS spending – are a universal cause. Others, however, are top-down mechanisms, which makes liberals (the well off ones anyway) feel good while they rape destabilized nations.
Here is never use real facts Karen yet again, shilling for the Clinton team. Her dubious statistics are not from The Clinton Foundations’s formal filings.
There is no reason the Clinton Foundation cannot be two things at once. Being an excellent charity doesn’t preclude it also being used for political purposes and personal gain. Bill Clinton got $150 million in speaking fees from engagements arranged by the Foundation. That ain’t pocket change, and it didn’t go on the books of the Foundation and wasn’t used in Charity Watch’s assessment.
Bill Clinton was the most famous, most powerful man in the world… It is pure fantasy, and naivete to imagine that he set up the foundation in order to get those speaking fees… Look at the fifty others whom his agency represents. Your facts as simply wrong. Sorry, back to Go.
really?
i mean, really?
obviously you have no clue how the criminal mind operates.
This is parody, right?
You are very likely a paid Clinton hack.You recite the same talking points the last one, Jimmy, did. From the “White Messiah” crap you’ve spewed in other threads to claims that you and your spouse once donated to Assange and Wikileaks but now see how oh-so-wrong you were. It’s all the same shit.
Mona, my dear but sometimes naïve friend, this is obviously “Karen”:
Meet the woman who speaks for Hillary Clinton
“Karen Finney, Clinton’s strategic communications adviser and senior spokesperson, is the candidate’s media maven. Among her duties: tackling sticky issues like Clinton’s use of private email and donations to the Clinton Foundation.”
“What does Finney see as her central challenge for 2016? Creating an environment were voters can see the “real” Hillary Clinton, she says. “People think they know her,” Finney says of her candidate. “But she’s the most unknown well-known person in the world.”
http://fortune.com/2015/05/27/karen-finney-hillary-clinton/
Karen Finney is not assigned to posting in comments sections. Finney is busy in her role as “Strategic Communications Advisor and Senior Spokesperson” for Hillary Clinton, and, among other things, appearing all over TeeVee. They’d never waste her on a comments section.
They’d never waste her on a comments section.
Maybe not, but it certainly doesn’t preclude her from doing such on her own time (such as it is).
After all, Neera Tanden doesn’t let her positions as head of CAP and Clinton cs.mpaign flack stop her from engaging in knockdown dragouts on twitter with even the smallest of egg avatar accounts. Literally.
Discipline does not seem to be a quality the Clintons value highly (if at all).
“The Clinton Foundation is an excellent charity” is perhaps true – if you also admit that their real beneficiaries are their corporate and foreign donors.
This whole Tracfone / Carlos Slim donation group is interesting, for example. They donated together what looks like over $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. Tracfone is apparently a top beneficiary of something called the “Lifeline” program, which has a $1.75 billion budget to give phones to needy people without internet access. While this might sound like a good social program, if Tracfone is the top recipient of these contracts, is there a conflict of interest?
While there may be no “smoking gun”, the chain of coincidences – big Tracfone contributions to Clinton campaign, followed by large expansion of a government program to finance a free phone program that greatly benefits Tracfone, followed by stories like this:
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/obamaphone-fcc-lifeline-097684
Republican pundits have not really hopped on this one, probably because the Tracfone entry into the program began in 2008, under George W. Bush – but the program appears to have been rapidly expanded under Obama. However, the fact that the Clinton Foundation has Tracfone as one of its top donors – are we supposed to believe that this is completely unrelated to Tracfone lobbying efforts, that it’s all “for the children”?
P.S. What do you think about the notion on Libya, that if Gaddafi had donated as much to the Clinton Foundation as Bahrain’s Crown Prince had ($32 million), Clinton would not have pushed for his overthrow?
The Charity Watch statistics are useful in one context only: they do in this case show that 88% of the funding in 2014 went to the causes they champion while only 12% was spent on overhead. Their fundraising costs were very low, only 2%. But these numbers do not tell the entire story.
The other thing that bears discussing is the almost complete disconnect between the sources of revenue and the avowed aims of the Foundation. Aside from the disconnects pointed out in Glenn’s article, there is also that between the Foundation’s acceptance of donations from big oil and big coal while claiming to be devoted to mitigating the effects of climate change. Furthermore, as Secretary of State, Clinton used her office to promote the very industries that she was supposed to be working to regulate. How can someone at the same time negotiate an international treaty to combat climate change while promoting fracking?
Perhaps, indeed, the Clinton Foundation is an “excellent” charity. But the money they spend is dirty money, and its leaders are two faced liars.
Exactly.
I’m not going to roll around in the sandbox here much longer with you but dirty money? You realize this is a billionaire funded website and that it’s likely Pierre has a good bit of his money in the stock market, companies like Peabody, GE, Monsanto… and by your ridiculous assessment, then this website, whatever good in the world it does, has been cancelled out because the money or some of it at least is dirty… This is kindergarten. Who gives a rats ass about the sources of funding? Time to remove the lollipop and take a look around the world. It’s all dirty money.
Karen, you make some valid points of course — the way CGI is being portrayed by Trump and his followers doesn’t square with the facts of their charitable work. That said, it’s pretty clear that CGI gave lobbyists a convenient additional venue to target, and it’s clear from the reported incidents that the rules that were established beforehand to mitigate against that were not sufficient.
The proposed ban of foreign government donations if Clinton is elected is a good start. But there are inherent ethical issues in operating a charity under your name while governing. A better long term solution would be to transition CGI into a more obviously separate entity and to reduce the Clintons’ involvement in it. As First Gentleman, Bill would have other ways to bring attention to important issues.
Eric, You make valid points. I agree, sure, the foundation was an additional venue to target, and I do agree that the foundation needs to be transferred to other foundations if the Clinton’s make it into the White House, and even right now, it should be rapidly wound down, if it can be done without taking lives who are dependent on it. I do think that the Clinton’s should take their name off of it. It’s just too complex for the average person to understand. But yes, I do agree with most of your comment and I appreciate it.
Hilarious, Karen, trying to sell Hillary Clinton as a Robin Hood who steals from the rich and gives to the poor. More like a Machiavelli who takes donations from private interests and in return, counsels the Prince to take actions which benefit those private interests.
I bet Prince Obama seriously regrets ever listening to anything the Hillary the Machiavellian had to say about Libya, don’t you?
I assume Charity Watch has the Clinton Foundation financial records. Would you ask them to let me see them.
Ditto FactCheck.
We hope that charitable foundations perform admirably, are transparent, help hundreds of thousands or millions of people, avoid conflict, and do excellent work. When a notable American personality, especially a former president, began his post-presidency phase, dammit, we expect good things to follow. Too many Clinton defenders are simply deflecting, as usual.
Former Pres Bill and former Sec’y Hill are wonderfully transparent when they choose to be and terribly opaque when they do not. There are no degrees here. Offering twenty years (+/+) of tax returns doesn’t negate her lying about, withholding, deleting, or slow-walking official records, and refusing to release the Wall Street (as a category, not a locale) transcripts.
There was a girl who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good, she was very, very good.
And when she was bad, she was horrid. (Nursery Rhyme)
When looking for a good place to spend some money, CN is an excellent source. While not endorsing or condemning the charity, CN cites the reasons they removed The Clinton Foundation from their website. Remember the amended tax returns?
What continues to drive me nuts is how most of the media milk the newer Benghazi, email & server, and DNC/DCCC hack stories while there is so much delightful history that should help sink Mrs Clinton’s White House bid.
So when the opposition party/candidate chooses to create conspiracies where there are none and the echo-chamber bounces a bogus health issue, when Mrs Clinton’s trail is long and winding, ya gotta wonder where are the brains? Does anybody have some? Are they functioning?
I digress. Not only is this page a gem, but read further than the first citation, which says, “On February 19, 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported that as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton “was one of the most aggressive global cheerleaders for American companies, pushing governments to sign deals and change policies to the advantage of corporate giants such as General Electric Co., Exxon MobilCorp., Microsoft Corp. and Boeing Co.”
https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.profile&ein=311580204
Why you and others are defending the Foundation and bitching about the AP coverage, please link us to the Clinton Camp’s defense of and subsequent slamming of the WSJ. I have forgotten more about this campaign than I care to remember.
Thank you.
Karen is one of the, “Democratic Pundits Downplaying Serious Ethical Issues Raised by the Clinton Foundation.”
Even if this were true, which it does not appear to be, it’s totally irrelevant. This article is about corruption regarding donors getting political favors, not how effectively donations are used.
Just thank you.
Way to go, Lee. Great work!
“Yglesias wrote on Thursday that the Clinton Foundation faces a double standard ”
I wonder how big a disbursement the Clinton Foundation gave to Matty …
There is well known acronym on many democratic sites called IOKIYAR – “It’s OK if you’re a Republican. ” Yglesias now wants his own: IOKIYAD.
Vox’s Puff Piece on Goldman Sachs Doesn’t Reveal Goldman Sponsors Vox
Missing from this report was any disclosure that Goldman Sachs is a sponsor of Vox’s podcast, The Weeds,
co-costed by Yglesias.
How much exactly Goldman Sachs pays Vox Media is unknown, but any amount should compel the “new media” company to note this fact when reporting on Goldman Sachs — especially when it’s promoting both its economic and political bottom line.
http://fair.org/home/voxs-puff-piece-on-goldman-sachs-doesnt-reveal-goldman-sponsors-vox/
and lets not forget…Hillary’s Goldman handcuffs
Hillary Clinton has been looking into releasing her transcripts for paid speeches to Wall St. and other special interests for
203 days 17 hours 39 minutes 22 seconds
http://iwilllookintoit.com/
California Democratic Governor Jerry Brown has been doing the same thing.
The Democratic Party has a corrupt hidden culture..
Explain this Democrats….
From Watchdog.org
Consumer Watchdog found that twenty-six energy companies including the state’s three major investor-owned utilities, Occidental, Chevron, and NRG—all with business before the state—donated $9.8 million to Jerry Brown’s campaigns, causes, and initiatives, and to the California Democratic Party since he ran for Governor. Donations were often made within days or weeks of winning favors. The three major investor-owned utilities alone contributed nearly $6 million.
An exhaustive review of campaign records, publicly-released emails and other documents at PUCPapers.org, court filings, and media reports, shows that Brown personally intervened in regulatory decisions favoring the energy industry, and points to Brown and his operatives having used the Democratic Party as a political slush fund to receive contributions from unpopular energy companies in amounts greater than permitted to his candidate committee. Between 2011 and 2014, the energy companies tracked by Brown’s Dirty Hands donated $4.4 million to the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party gave $4.7 million to Brown’s re-election.
The full report can be downloaded at watchdog.org titled ” Browns dirty hands “
Consumerwatchdog.org
Yeah, Jerry Brown’s wholesale sellout to fossil fuel interests is pretty depressing – see this also:
California also has suffered the most from jacked-up energy prices in both the electricity and fuel sectors – but let’s also recall, the rigging of California energy prices in 2000-2001 was a George Bush / Ken Lay Enron-linked operation.
But really, this is a joint Republican-Democrat operation to enrich themselves and their cronies at the expense of the American people:
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/files/2015/03/arabia-mccain-polesi-1024×712.jpg
Hillary Clinton is out of control, however – I’m starting to think the only reason Libya was invaded was that Gaddafi didn’t put up any money for the Clinton Foundation – if, like Bahrain, he’d donated $32 million to Clinton’s fund, I’m sure the whole Libya debacle would never have happened. Gaddafi had cut all kinds of deals with the Bush team from 2003 onwards; look at all the pictures of him with Condi Rice, Tony Blair, Sarkozy & Berlusconi. His mistake was not paying off the Clintons, as well.
A pundit noted rather correctly I think that the full throat-ed Democratic party defense of Clinton taking huge amounts of money for pay-to-play schemes is that this will shut down serious discussions and reform of money in politics for the next several generations of presidential elections. Which I believe in turn prevents us from corporate reforms given that the lesson that no consequences for democrats or republicans for openly taking bribe money to influence votes on critical laws.
Good article by the way.
How can any decent sane American vote for this ?
http://www.clintoncashbook.com/
Hellary is the Queen of corruption, and America deserves better
http://www.clintoncashbook.com/
On the contrary, she’s the best queen of corruption that money can buy.
Thanks again (a thousand times over) for Mr. Fang’s outstanding reportage.
Today on CBS a newsy floozy named Suzie claimed that so far she couldn’t find any laws broken by Hillary Rodham Clinton!?!?!
Of course, these are the very same s**t-for-brains newsies who, in 2016, still can’t tell us what laws were broken by the bankers*** in their global economic meltdown.
In other words, none of them (with the exception of David Dayen in his outstanding book, Chain of Title) can tell us anything other than they still are unable to locate their genitals!
***(Law of Fraudulent Conveyance, broken millions of times || contract law, whenever MERS or any other entity, not of the original contract, illegally sued or brought any legal action — millions of times || illegal documents submitted to court for their fraudclosures — millions of times || false affidavits filed (robo-signing) millions of times || notary fraud — at least thousands, perhaps, millions of times || violation of tax laws, millions of times over, as REMIC status invalidated, etc., etc., etc.)
More than half of the people outside the government with whom Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met officially were donors to the Clinton Foundation. Bill and Chelsea Clinton are leading a powerful private philanthropy while Hillary Clinton holds a high-ranking government post, it is guaranteed to create at least the appearance of donations to the foundation in return for access to the government. And Obama, well, Obama just looked the other way after all he wants to be in good terms with the next president of the US. It is always a good idea to be friend with the president. A perfect mafia. What I can’t understand is the innocence of the people who still support this corrupted politician. One reason could be that the alternative is Trump which is not a very attractive alternative. The worst enemy of Trump is his big mouth.
And Bernie. Why Bernie Sanders quit so quickly without given a good fight? Was he just another patsy in the obscure political history of the US? Why did he abandoned millions of his followers and worst of all, why he asked them to support this corrupted Wall Street and warmonger politician? The more I think about Bernie’s decision to quit so quickly the more I think he was just a patsy. And that was the end of the so called,” American Revolution”.
I’m very proud of the way Bernie Sanders ran his campaign. Bernie gave it all he had, but came up short.
The American people aren’t ready to vote for Socialism, not even of any kind.
The Bernie Sanders campaign illustrates the scale of the political and economic problems in the United States – his campaign focused on a rather narrow list of domestic concerns and never touched on foreign policy or defense spending issues. His plans for low-cost college education, publicly financed health care, etc. would never have worked out without addressing the huge military budget; and both Republicans and Democrats in Congress are among the top beneficiaries of defense spending, both economically and politically. Even so, Sander’s limited reforms brought on a full-scale media attack, and the Democratic Party insiders (superdelegates, DNC hacks, debate controllers) worked overtime to sabotage his campaign.
This is why it may be impossible – at least not easy – for real reforms to come from within the Democratic or Republican parties, no more than it was in the Soviet Union under Brezhnev. Even in the Soviet Union, reforms weren’t possible until the system reached a point of near-collapse, and even Gorbachev’s reforms weren’t enough to stave off the eventual dismantling of the Soviet system. The United States is steadily approaching that point of critical collapse, that should be obvious.
As far as socialism, the American system is very socialist – banking socialism (the 2008 Wall Street bailout), police state socialism (the world’s largest prison and mass surveillance complex), fossil fuel socialism (military spending to secure oil), etc. The problem is, this is a form of socialism that only benefits people with close ties to the government, as seen in the Clinton Foundation donor list. It’s socialism for wealthy insiders with political contacts – the corporate welfare state.
It’s the same kind of gross insider corruption that brought down the Soviet Union – it’s why we have crumbling infrastructure, low-quality education, overpriced health care, mass poverty and unemployment, a dead manufacturing sector, huge trade imbalances, all held together by what amounts to tribute from imperial holdings overseen by far-flung military forces. The whole structure is rotten, and when it comes apart, there will also be revolutions in those client states (read: foreign donors to the Clinton Foundation) – without the U.S. propping them up, for example, the Gulf cartel states will go the same way that the satellite colonies of the USSR did.
The fact that we now have two of the most ludicrous and corrupt candidates for President in U.S. history vying for the top slot in this system, promoted by a ridiculously PR-minded corporate media system, well, that should be an indication of how far gone things are.
I don’t think that there is much doubt that Sanders won the support of a majority of Democrats and others (where they were eligible) in the Primaries.
He was ‘counted out’, in Arizona, California, New York, Massachussetts among other states.
Does this matter?
Does corruption matter?
One thing is certain, it can’t be used as an indication that voters reject socialism, only that corrupt party bosses do. And we’ve known that for a long time.
Actually, if you present issues to people in the U.S. objectively without using trigger words like socialism, they actually support socialist concepts and programs.
As to Sanders, he would have won if the process weren’t rigged, as it obviously was before the voting even started. Sanders got virtually no media, and independents, who favored him overwhelmingly, were not allowed to vote in the Democratic primary in a lot of states, including California, the biggest (population) state.
Sorry, I misstated the restriction on voting in the Democratic primary in California. SOME independents were allowed to vote in the Democratic primary. However, as a friend who did so in order to vote for Sanders told me, it was a real hassle. However, you could not vote for Sanders if you are registered with another party (Green, etc.). While I understand that the parties want to legitimately control their own nomination processes, in this particular case many people registered with 3d parties would have voted for Sanders (because as the Democratic nominee he would have had a good chance of winning, while 3d party candidates have virtually no chance in this rigged system).
The democrats and republicans are two arms of the same corruption.
As far as I can tell the two people who are doing the most to ensure
the presidency of Hillary Clinton Inc. are
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
Trump is providing enormous ammunition for her advertisements
while showing little interest in a campaign of his own and
Sanders led millions of mostly young idealistic people
into a dead end alley and then began spooking them with the
images of the monster Trump and insisting that they run into
the shelter of the diseased Clinton whorehouse and its pickpockets.
Right now both parties are competing for Wall Street money. If Trump defeats Clinton it may cause some soul searching in the Democratic Party.
Maybe they will start competing for our votes again.
If pigs had wings….Trump won’t defeat Clinton. Nothing will cause soul searching in the “Democratic” party. It has no soul to search. It just has an infinite abyss, voracious for money and murder.
Sadly, this is the political system we have to work with. The candidates are creatures of it and differ primarily in their degree of embrace. Since the fallout from Citizens United is too clear at this point, its overturning might be a more productive course than continuing to observe the corrupt qualities of American politics.
N.B., the Clinton Foundation turns 20 next year.
Yes indeed Bernie was a patsy and played the role of sheepdog for the “Liberals” from the get-go, and said so right from the start. He told us he’d support Clinton if she “won”. And he couldn’t be bothered to contest the various issues, criminal use of emails, her reveling in war and mass murder for empire, her sleeping with Wall Street, her abuse of State Department, her history of racist and classist war on people etc. etc. His “foreign policy” was almost as benighted as hers, having supported Clinton’s war in the former Yugoslavia, and supported funding for Bush’s wars throughout. His campaign was hollow all along. Many, if not most of his followers were not, and they indeed had fine and noble hopes, expectations and desires. He just blew them off, to be a “Democrat”.
Isn’t this just the inevitable end result of social democracy.. 200 years of slowly dismantling the flawed attempt made by U.S. founders. I just hope the next iteration of popular governments aren’t a repetition of this mess.
What “social democracy” are you talking about?!
As far as I know a social democracy was never allowed to develop
in the faking U$A. There were portions allowed occasionally,
but the history of the so-called USA is overflowing with
predatory capitalism.
“Why Bernie Sanders quit so quickly … ?”
Because he’s not that progressive. Sanders is no more than a New Deal Democrat (despite the fact that he’s an independent, not a Democrat). Compare and contrast Sanders’s positions on issues other than his pet economic issues with those of Dennis Kucinich when the latter ran for the Democratic nomination for president. Kucinich was a real progressive (radical?), unlike Sanders.
No one who is so freaked out by Trump that they would support or vote for Clinton is really a progressive (with the tiny exception of those who are concerned with federal court nominations, though Clinton would certainly not nominate anyone that good). There is absolutely nothing progressive about supporting or voting for a neoliberal war monger and further empopwering her corporate war mongering party, regardless of who the other candidate is.
Lee, thanks so much for this. I love the Intercept!! I’ve been fuming the last 2 days after reading, in the DailyKos Mark Sumner story you mention, ‘More than half the people being treated for AIDS around the world receive medication from the Clinton Foundation.’ Rebecca Solnit gave this factlet the big thumbs up and broadcast it to her FB followers, of which I was one until an hour after reading the story when I happily told FB that I no longer want to receive notifications from Ms Solnit. I’ve been searching everything I can find on the CF’s work with AIDs patients, and of course there is no one clear objective authority to relate such facts in 2016, however, isn’t this is one of the instances Glenn Greenwald mentioned yesterday where Hillary Clinton and her apologists cruelly manipulate facts, vulnerable people, and the LGBT community for their own profit. It makes me totally, completely furious. I’m so glad you are doing more on this story. Hooray.
Here is a link that might help demystify how the Clinton Foundation works. It is very hard using Google at least to parse out what exactly the Foundation does as the search results seem to lead to Foundation press releases, or press releases posing as news stories.
One point which gets assumed (which I assumed) which is not true probably for the entire Foundation is that it does not buy nor deliver anything tangible. For example, it does not use its money to buy surplus food to feed starving people.
After reading how the Foundation works, in terms of AIDS, it may be that the Foundation is really taking credit for a lot which it did not do. Hard to tell again, as there is little of substance of the actual working details of their projects.
https://medium.com/@ASterling/clinton-foundation-charity-grade-d-close-all-branches-now-5bed9b74b85b#.8w6jzb78s
The information in this article is more proof of
what I have believed for years.
Disregard any words from democrats because what they
really believe and support by their actions
are the schemes associated with the republicans.
Both of these corporate owned parties lie and mislead,
but the democrats are the better at being bigger liars.
Wow–object journalism. Wish the rest of the MSM could remember how this is done.
Keep up the good work Intercept team.
Lesser of two Evils ? We tout America as the “greatest Nation on Earth” yet our Presidential Candidates’ are Moral failures. The collusion between the Clinton Global Initiative . Clinton Foundation, WJCs’ paid Speeches, HRCs’ paid Speeches, Chelsea’ Husband Hedge Fund failure then purchasing $15,000,000 Penthouse in New York City. Payments shifted between Clinton Global Initiative and Clinton Foundation are Dodgey at best. Let us never forget the source of Reagans’ Crack was flown into Arkansas then swapped for weapons for Nicaragua while WJC was playing Hide the Governors Penis in Strippers then “charmed” His way to the Presidency passing GATT, NAFTA. with devastating policies marginalizing Black/Brown Americans. These People are patently corrupt, Chelsea cannot continue this legacy of corruption, stop Clintons’ now.
Great piece.
I would just change one thing.
Instead of
“The assertions above obscure the problems unearthed through years of investigative reporting on the foundation.”
I would say
“The assertions above are unethical journalistic lies”.
“no evidence that well-heeled backers of the foundation received favorable treatment from the State Department.”
By the legal “Doctrine of Chances” they are proven guilty.
In many cases Bill has been the bagman. He gets the call from the “client” to do a series of 20 min speeches for zillions of dollars. Bribe laundering!!!
let us not forget Bill meeting with the attorney general at an airport on the cup of hearings about this matter and they talked about their grand children. Here it is Friday afternoon on the East Coast and perhaps a snippet will appear albeit briefly on MSM about further revelations.
Dear Mr. Fang,
It has been brought to my attention that, by so savagely attacking Ms. Clinton, you are in fact supporting the Alt-Right and totally fascist Trump. I am sure that you know the real truth which is the following:
– There is zero evidence of any criminal Clinton activity? Proof? No Clinton has ever been criminally indicted or convicted of any crimes so they are good.
– All of the emails coming in and out of Clinton’s mail server were about Yoga and Yogurt so just stop talking about it.
– Clinton is not reckless, incompetent, irresponsible, venal or a constant liar. She is the exact opposite of the above and the opposite of Trump and therefore she must and she will be the next president of the United States.
And, remember, if you are not with her, then you are against her. Think about it.
The guy is a journalist, why do you expect him to peddle your partisan views?
“All of the emails coming in and out of Clinton’s mail server were about Yoga and Yogurt so just stop talking about it.”
LOL! – great.
Yup. She was negotiating passage for the great Canadian yogurt pipeline, carrying the much needed substance from the famed yogurt sands in Alberta
Yes, let’s all line up behind the warhawk queen of Wall St who “is not reckless.” If only we could all get a set of those tight blinders you wear, Arth. Seen with open eyes from almost anywhere else in the world, and particularly in the Middle East, there is little difference between Trump and Clinton. If there is a God then God help us all.
Lee is in the business of facing unpleasant truths. That is the hallmark of a great journalist. To ignore the real connection between Clinton Foundation donors and political assistance by the HRC et al would be irresponsible (at best). That whole ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us’ nonsense is the very stuff that allows for creeping corruption. You can always hide behind the weak ‘A is not as bad as B so be with A, or you’re with B’ argument, but it won’t get you very far… and will likely push you backward. Face the unpleasant facts, Arth…
This was left as an exercise for the reader – so for those still working it out, please skip.
It’s fairly easy to narrow this down to three choices. If you are not with her, then you are with the terrorists, with Putin or with the Alt Right. However, to whittle it down further requires familiarity with Mr. Fang’s general body of work. He has asked Mrs. Clinton to her face whether she would release the transcripts of the Goldman Sachs speeches (she laughed at him). Putin and the terrorists are down with Goldman Sachs, so that leaves only one alternative. The answer is clear: Mr. Fang is a white supremacist.
And a misogynist……
“And, remember, if you are not with her, then you are against her. Think about it.”
Bingo, you nailed it! Don’t vote Hillary or Trump, the lesser of two evils strategy is a vicious cycle, break free buddy.
Ad 1: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
Ad 2: Fang is not talking about the (your) biased sample of Clinton’s emails, but the emails about yoghurt and yoga PLUS all other e-mails from HRC including the 10 000’s that were not provided to the authorities and the public by Clinton, AND the fact that she willingly jeopordized US State security by using an e-mail server that could (and was, it appears) hacked by other countries/persons
Ad. 3 My dog is also opposite to Trump and when I say Trump, he barks like a Clinton. It appears that this qualifies my dog to become next US president, according to your Logic.
Ad 4. The not with us then you’re against us argument. As if everything is black or white. But since you pressed this issue, I did gave it a thought. And concerning this argument in point 4, I actually agree that it is useful to make up your mind about Clinton. If I were American, I would vote for Jill Stein, not Clinton.
lol
You forgot just one thing: We must nominate her for beatification as well. Well… maybe she’ll have to wait for the next pope. Ahhhhh poor thing.
And Mother Teresa was a lying whore……
“if you are not with her, then you are against her. Think about it.”
Ok I thought about it and I had horrible flash back to Bush 2.0 speeches. Then it hit me, you are either Neocon speech writer David Frum, a Neocon promised a position with Clinton, or an imposter posting to make Clinton look like a tyrant. Given your sincere praise for Clinton couple with your desire to stifle dissent and subtlety of your threat, I’m guessing one of the first two options.
I think you should consider another option…
… that Arth is a fan of Benito, and not a fan of Clinton.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.
Interesting option!? Although there is an uncanny commitment to fascism, Benito is so much more intelligent than Arth, that I could hardly fathom them being the same person. If Benito was was posting as Arth, I would expect him to have done something clever, like mentally disarm us with humor, before using Bush era Neocon threats.
Whoops, I was way off in my initial interpretation and response to your comment.
Yes Arth is probably a fan of Benito, yet I’m guessing that he prefers Netanyahu type fascism to the Italian version. Arth’s commitment to Clinton is similar to the commitment that all fascist have to the people they interact with. People are only useful when they do what they are told and the first sign of defiance is swiftly punished so that everyone quickly learns what will and will not be tolerated.
Incisive, devastating. Media Matters should change its name to Media Mutters.
“The New York Times reported that a Russian company assumed control of major uranium reserves in a deal that required State Department approval, as the chairman of the company involved in the transaction donated $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation.”
Hillary sure showed Putin something on this! She cleverly gave the Commie bastard access to American nuclear material so she could prove how .. um.. how.. uh.. she’ll show those Rooskies..um.. TRUMP IS A COMMIE SYMPATHIZER AND HILLARY IS NOT!!
Matthew Yglesias is clearly auditioning for a role inside the Clinton machine and will be a multi-millionaire “consultant” in the next 10 years.
That’s an overlooked part of all this—look at how many people, who are blindly loyal to the Clintons to the point of laughable intellectual dishonesty, end up employed in lucrative roles by the Clinton network. It’s all repulsive.
I really want an end to the Clinton/Bush dynasty. My biggest concern about Trump involves the Heritage Foundation and its economic policies. So, I’m back to considering Trumpzilla again. We can deal with the Heritage Foundation later.
Trump ought to edit the Nigel Farage speech into a commercial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS8yKmAO6n8
Sounds like The Drump flung a pair of turds into YOUR toilet bowl.
The Democrats had EVERY opportunity to nominate someone OTHER than Hillary Clinton.
We BEGGED them not nominate Hillary Clinton.
So. Let the chips fall where they may . . .
BTW, Alan Grayson is running for Senate in Florida.
https://senatorwithguts.com/
That of course would be the same Heritage foundation that gave us Obamacare, and Justice Roberts’ support of it.
AAannd…here comes the “Oh! But…” brigade in 5…4…3…
What a racket, whether run by Democrats or Republicans. The Clintons have gone from “broke” to being multi-millionaires through their pan-handling scamming “charities”. While shamelessly skirting the law, and excelling in semantics, they cannot proclaim innocence. Their protests highlight the importance of integrity and humility. If only they knew the real values of “awe”, and “imagination”.
The lawyers running our country seem to lack those qualities.
Thanks.
This vital piece of journalism outlines one of the mechanisms that have led to the corporate take over of American politics. The “change makers” will continue to change American politics by pushing the Democratic Party far to the right, proving the Clintons will not be out done by the majority of Republicans that have already sold out to corporate greed.
I think it is even worse than that. Not only are the corporations allowed to set national policy, but the politicians are blatantly up for sale.
It would be interesting if someone were to dig into the administration of the Clinton Foundation to determine what fraction of the donations actually wind up going to the charitable causes they ostensibly promote. According to Charity Watch, in 2014 they were given a A rating but as this link http://www.charitywatch.org/ratings-and-metrics/bill-hillary-chelsea-clinton-foundation/478 shows that is partly because of their low reported cost of getting donations. I guess State Department expenditures don’t count as Foundation expenses.
“It would be interesting if someone were to dig into the administration of the Clinton Foundation to determine what fraction of the donations actually wind up going to the charitable causes they ostensibly promote. ”
I was thinking the same thing, gonna look into it.
and what fraction goes to buy the above-mentioned $15,000,000 town houses for once and future presidential daughters