Topic: Is Hillary Clinton Trustworthy? - page 87. (Read 234741 times)

Clinton Proposal Could Allow Feds to Ban Book Critical of Clinton Foundation

Experts: constitutional amendment proposed by Hillary to get money out of politics likely to leave Clinton Foundation untouched




Hillary Clinton’s proposal to get money out of politics could allow the federal government to restrict or ban the publication of a book that has embroiled her presidential campaign in controversy, experts say.

Clinton called for a constitutional amendment to “get unaccountable money out of” politics in an op-ed for the Des Moines Register published Monday. Her campaign did not respond to requests for additional details, but legal experts say similar efforts over the past two years would have profound effects on Americans’ free speech rights.

Constitutional amendments introduced by Democratic senators in 2013 and 2014 could give the federal government the authority to prevent expenditures by a publisher, for example, to produce or publicize books critical of political candidates.

One such book, Clinton Cash by Hoover Institution fellow Peter Schweizer, has roiled Clinton’s campaign over the past two weeks. Schweizer suggests in the book that Clinton’s State Department took actions that benefitted donors to the Clinton Foundation.

Under two recently proposed constitutional amendments designed to limit political spending, “You could be prohibited” from publishing a book critical of a political candidate, “or restricted—you can only spend $1,000 in publishing your book or something along those lines,” according to UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh.

Though Clinton has not outlined specific language of a constitutional amendment, Volokh called it “telling that some of the most prominent proposals introduced by people who are, after all, senators, would, whether intentionally or not, allow very broad kinds of restrictions” on political speech.

One of those amendments was introduced in 2013 by Sen. Jon Tester (D., Mont.). The measure would have eliminated all constitutional rights for corporations, which include not just traditional for-profit entities but also newspapers, book publishers, film studios, churches, and nonprofit groups.

“The Tester amendment would essentially allow any regulation of any kind of speech by any kind of corporation,” Volokh explained. “So if the government wanted to say, ‘corporations can’t speak out about candidates or can’t express unpatriotic views about candidates or can’t express allegedly racist or sexist views about candidates,’ that would be allowed under this amendment.”

The amendment, like similar measures, was billed as a response to the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. That decision, which liberalized regulations on corporate political speech, came after the federal government tried to prevent the distribution of a documentary about Hillary Clinton produced by the conservative nonprofit group Citizens United.

Like Schweizer’s book, the film, titled Hillary: The Movie, did not ask its audience to vote against Clinton or for her primary opponents. But it was highly critical of the then-New York senator.

Federal law at the time prohibited nonprofits from releasing “electioneering communications” mentioning a candidate for federal office within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election.

Under pre-Citizens United campaign finance law, Clinton Cash would likely have fallen under the same restrictions.

“This is just another attempt by the Clintons and the left to ban opposing voices,” Citizens United president David Bossie said in an emailed statement. “Let’s not forget, the federal government claimed they could ban books as they sought to restrict Citizens United’s free speech rights as we tried to promote Hillary: The Movie.”

Prior to the court’s 2010 decision, the FEC provided “a safe harbor for communications that … do not take a position on any candidate’s or officeholder’s character, qualifications, or fitness for office,” according to a 2008 memo from Washington law firm Holland & Knight.

As ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos noted in a segment on Schweizer’s book, he “raises serious and alarming questions about judgment of possible indebtedness to an array of foreign interests and ultimately, a fitness for high public office.”

Before the court’s decision in Citizens United, the federal government could not ban books outright, noted Justice Stephen Breyer, who dissented from the court’s 2010 decision. “What you do is put limitations on the payment for them,” he said.

The relevant limitations at the time had to do with the window before an election in which electioneering communications took place. But the two amendments offered in 2013 and 2014 would go much further: Tester’s would remove all First Amendment protections for speech by corporations and nonprofit organizations that criticize a candidate.

The other proposal, authored by Sen. Tom Udall (D., N.M.), would give Congress and state governments the authority to prohibit “corporations or other artificial entities created by law … from spending money to influence elections.”

Both proposals would give the federal government sufficient power to restrict or ban outright the publication of Clinton Cash and any other book published by a corporate entity that reflected poorly on a political candidate, according to Volokh.

Even if a book doesn’t explicitly urge readers to vote for or against a candidate, it could still be interpreted as affecting an election if it criticizes or praises a candidate, Volokh explained.

“My book is about candidate X, I think candidate X is a horrible person, and I don’t want to see him elected and that’s why I’m writing my book,” he said hypothetically. “Well, that’s spending money to influence elections. You could be prohibited from doing that.”

The purpose of campaign finance laws is “the prevention of corruption and the appearance of corruption,” according to the Supreme Court. However, while both the Tester and Udall amendments would limit political speech, they would not address other avenues for corruption or the appearance thereof.

The precise activities detailed in Clinton Cash, for instance, would not be addressed by an anti-Citizens United constitutional amendment even though 63 percent of likely voters think foreign government donations to the foundation affected Clinton’s activities as secretary of state, according to a poll released on Wednesday.

“Any proposed campaign finance restrictions aimed at preventing one possible kind of indirect corruption, indirect bribery let’s say, and it doesn’t cover all of them like foreign donations, or for that matter domestic donations, to the Clinton Foundation,” Volokh said.

He added that “it would be impossible to take care of all” possible avenues for corruption through federal legislation, but noted that Clinton’s proposal would not address any apparent quid pro quo at her 501(c)(3) charity.

That fact drew charges of hypocrisy from Clinton critics.

“Even if [Clinton] believed in such an Amendment—and decades of their political-financial history shows it as little more than a cheap line tossed out to their gullible throngs—it would do nothing and would have done nothing to stop the flow of influence peddling gifts from hostile foreign governments through their foundation,” said campaign finance attorney Dan Backer, who helps run the anti-Clinton Stop Hillary PAC.


http://freebeacon.com/politics/clinton-proposal-could-allow-feds-to-ban-book-critical-of-clinton-foundation/




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That is why we are all here, no matter our agenda.
Unless you are paid by the clintons or people like them, most of us understand the value of free speech. Money is free speech. Bitcoin is free speech. A future decentralized publishing platform based on some kind of a network no one can block will be free speech... Yes, there will trolls, liars, spin doctors. There will be free speech too...

A plane carrying former President Bill Clinton had to make an emergency landing in Tanzania Wednesday after one of the four engines on his plane stopped working, CBS News has learned.

Everyone on board the plane is safe.

Clinton was traveling in the East African nation to visit projects that have been funded by his family's foundation. The plane made an emergency landing at the Dodoma fueling station, where the engine had to be fixed.

The plane was a Canadian turboprop Dash 7, traveling from Iranga, a city in the center of Tanzania, to Lake Manyara, which is in the north.

Clinton is touring projects intended to boost agriculture, health, education and wildlife conservation. He and his daughter Chelsea are also scheduled to visit Kenya, Liberia and Morocco.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-clinton-plane-emergency-landing-tanzania/

Is The Clinton Foundation Just An International Money Laundering Scheme?






[...]

... For the past several years, the Clinton Foundation has basically been a foreign money-laundering operation. The scheme works like this: collect millions of dollars in foreign money, dump it into a foreign charity, pretend that the law prohibits you from ever disclosing the identities of those foreign donors to the foreign charity, then have the foreign charity bundle all the cash and send it to the Clinton Foundation. Then, when the time comes–whether it be a Clinton Foundation conference or a lavish Clinton Foundation trip overseas–make sure those individuals get some me-time w/ the Clintons…


[...]

The foreign-to-domestic laundering scheme satisfies a number of key Clinton objectives. First, it gave Secretary of State Hillary Clinton total plausible deniability about the millions in foreign cash that were being funneled into her family’s non-profit coffers. She wasn’t on the board of CGEPartnership, and wasn’t even named to the board of the Clinton Foundation until 2013, so how could she have known about this? Second, it gave Hillary’s allies the ability to claim that wealthy foreign individuals were not sending cash to the Clinton Foundation.

How? Because they were sending cash to the Canadian CGEPartnership. And while Bill Clinton’s name is obviously in the organization’s name, he never actually served on its board while Hillary was Secretary of State. Instead, Clinton retained control of the organization by placing Bruce Lindsey on CGEPartnership’s board. Lindsey, a long-time Clinton confidant and adviser, currently serves as the chairman of the board of the Clinton Foundation. He was also the Clinton Foundation’s CEO for over a decade.


http://thefederalist.com/2015/04/29/is-the-clinton-foundation-just-an-international-money-laundering-scheme/

Slush: Hillary donors go on safari with Bill on the Clinton Foundation’s dime



Earlier this week, Sunlight Foundation official Bill Allison said that the mixture of big dollars, political influence, and stingy charitable outlays made “it seem[] like the Clinton Foundation operates as a slush fund for the Clintons.” Politico’s Anni Karni reports that this hasn’t stopped the Clintons and their family foundation from slushing around, either. The Clinton Foundation will host a nine-day trip to Africa for wealthy donors — and political bundlers:



On their nine-day trip to Africa, Bill and Chelsea Clinton are traveling with 20 wealthy donors and foundation supporters, a group that includes fundraisers for Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid and others who are expected to give generously to her campaign.

The opportunity to accompany Bill Clinton on trips across the globe on behalf of his philanthropic foundation has for years been considered both a reward for past donations and an inducement for future giving, say sources familiar with the foundation’s finance operation. This trip, they say, was an especially coveted invite — one that was extended to wealthy Clinton supporters. …

Along this year for the annual foundation trip abroad is Jay Jacobs and his wife, Mindy, longtime Clinton fundraisers and foundation supporters. Jacobs, who has donated between $500,000 and $1 million to the foundation, is also a “Hillstarter,” a “Ready for Hillary” donor, and is planning to be a major fundraiser for Clinton campaign, as he was in 2008. Last month, Jacobs, the CEO of a chain of summer camps, brought Clinton in to give a paid speech at the American Camp Association, where he also lead a q-and-a session with her on the stage.

Lynn Forester de Rothschild is also on the trip; the billionaire CEO has donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to the foundation and her extended family has invested in the Clinton’s son-in-law’s hedge fund. De Rothschild has been a fierce Clinton supporter for years, and was one of the leading “PUMA” (“Party Unity My Ass”) activists after Clinton lost the Democratic primary to Barack Obama in 2008, going so far as to back Republican John McCain in the general election.


A Clinton Foundation spokesperson insisted last week that this trip “has nothing to do with the campaign.” Riiiiiight. It’s just another way of seeking out wealthy donors to keep funding that 6.4% passthrough rate on direct grants to actual charitable work. Hey, those travel expenses won’t just materialize on their own, y’know.

But this is what we’ve come to expect from the Clintons — sleazy deals and privilege hidden behind sanctimonious assertions of virtue. In my column today for The Week, I argue that we’ve arrived at a situation best described as the soft corruption of low expectations, the latter mainly driven by the media and the Democratic Party that can’t quit the Bill and Hillary Show:


George W. Bush often spoke about the disparities in how the government treated different groups of people, especially students that our system assumed could never succeed. These students, Bush said, suffered from “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

Well, in this election cycle, the American body politic has been afflicted with the soft corruption of low expectations — and it’s getting worse. …

Ron Fournier laments that the “no evidence” standard is the Clinton team’s only answer. “Clinton’s crisis management team makes a big deal of the fact that Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer hasn’t proven a “quid pro quo,” Fournier notes. “Really? It takes a pretty desperate and cynical campaign to set the bar of acceptable behavior at anything short of bribery.”

The low bar extends to the campaign itself. In a very real sense, Hillary Clinton has prepared for a presidential campaign since 2000. Every move since — running for the U.S. Senate, the first memoir, and the Clinton Foundation itself — was designed to propel her to the White House in 2008. Her term as secretary of state and the second memoir was designed for the 2016 campaign. And yet Hillary Clinton has yet to articulate why she’s running for president. She penned an op-ed for the Des Moines Register this week filled with platitudes but saying nothing about her plans to govern. Over the two weeks since she announced her candidacy, she’s taken a grand total of seven questions from the press.

The Hillary Clinton campaign is the epitome of the soft corruption of low expectations. By refusing to hold her to a higher standard, Democrats and the media are in effect endorsing the kind of cronyism the Clinton Foundation and the Clintons themselves represent. We should forget the standards of indictments and smoking guns, and ask ourselves whether the Clintons are really the best America can do for leadership. That’s the standard that matters, and the standard that the media at one time claimed to support.


The real question is whether Americans will passively swallow this sleazy circus a second time.


http://hotair.com/archives/2015/04/29/slush-hillary-donors-go-on-safari-with-bill-on-the-clinton-foundations-dime/

Not a chance.  Candidates are nothing more than appointees of the uber wealthy and corporate interests.

People that have shown they are willing to 'play ball', such as the Clintons or the Bush's, which is why those names keep popping up.  They're a known quantity for the bribers, so they represent less risk than some guy who might just get it into his head to do what is best for the entire constituency.

There's that and the fact that the American electorate is woefully lazy.  They recognize the names and faces and that's all the research they need.

The whole system is fucked.  It's fucked on the inside with these corrupt assholes and it's fucked on the outside with hundreds of millions of people that will spend hour upon hour keeping up with the Kardashians but won't take an hour to research the candidate they're thinking of voting for.

What about a variation of a sky burial for the death penalty to make it "greener"?

 

Agreed.
And then there is the money issue. I can't see a party that represents normal people competing with the now billions of dollars spent to elect millionaires. What a mess. Is it really going to take a violent revolution to do away with all this? I hope not, but history shows that if you let the pressure keep building things fall apart.

Unfortunately, unlike most of the other nations, the United States is having a strict two-party politics. There are fringe political movements such as the Libertarian Party and the Green Party, but none of these fringe elements are likely to get more than 2% of the national vote. So the aim should be to get someone who agrees a lot with our views elected as the nominee in any of the two main parties.

I'm pro death penalty, and support conceal carry. Not very green, I know. 
That is the problem with a third party. By the time they have a platform that attracts an audience big enough to win they look just like the two parties we have. 

... Anything with "party" in it is corruptible... Brown party, Black party, Red party, Blue party...

What bothers me is that each election cycle we end up with the same bosses to vote for. Is this really as good as we can do? Another Clinton and another Bush? What is this a European monarchy?

And the other candidates are even worse. Unqualified, ignorant, and there to enrich themselves. They should be tared and feathered not awarded the special status of making their own laws for us to obey.

I think I'm going back to voting with the Green party. 

The author of a book hammering Hillary Clinton says he has full-time security



The author of a controversial new book about Bill and Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday that he has arranged full-time security for himself.

Asked during a Bloomberg interview if he received any death threats over his controversial book,"Clinton Cash," Peter Schweizer would only say he has "security."

"I'll just say we have security. And that security is not something that just came because we decided to have security. And we'll just leave it at that," he said.

Pressed as to whether he specifically has full-time security, Schweizer said "yes." He didn't specify what type of security he had arranged or whether he had hired a security detail.

The allegations in "Clinton Cash" have been dogging former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign since last Thursday, when a number of news outlets published critical stories that were at least partially based on Schweizer's investigation.

Schweizer's book, out May 5, accuses Clinton of distributing special State Department favors in exchange for speaking fees to her husband and for donations to their nonprofit, the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

In one of the most notable stories based on Schweizer's work, The New York Times called attention to the State Department's approval of a deal that sold US uranium-production rights to a Russian state agency. Many of those who stood to benefit from the deal, the story said, gave millions of undisclosed dollars to the Clinton Foundation at the time.

The Clintons and their allies have repeatedly dismissed Schweizer as a partisan hit man. In particular, Clinton's team has called attention to Schweizer's apparent lack of evidence that Clinton ever took direct action at the State Department to benefit her foundation's donors.

"'Clinton Cash' is nothing more than a tangled web of conspiracy theories backed by no actual evidence," Clinton spokesman Josh Schwerin told Business Insider on Sunday.



http://www.businessinsider.com/clinton-cash-peter-schweizer-security-2015-4

WaPo: Three Pinocchios for latest Clinton Foundation excuse



A particularly slimy series of “coincidences” led (a) the State Department to allow interest in half the world’s uranium to fall into Russian hands while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, (b) Bill Clinton to pocket $500,000 from the bank financing the deal, and (c) the Clinton Foundation to rake in millions from the people who cashed out in the Uranium One deal. At the center of the Uranium One deal was Frank Giustra, the Canadian contributor who poured cash into the foundation during Hillary’s tenure at State. In an attempt to deflect attention from the nexus of cash and influence, Clinton Foundation exec Maura Pally declared that the organization couldn’t disclose the donors to the Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership because Canadian law prevented it:


Like every contributor to the Foundation, the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (Canada) is publicly listed as a donor on our website. But as it is a distinct Canadian organization, separate from the Clinton Foundation, its individual donors are not listed on the site. This is hardly an effort on our part to avoid transparency — unlike in the U.S., under Canadian law, all charities are prohibited from disclosing individual donors without prior permission from each donor.


As Morgen Richmond discovered almost immediately, that didn’t keep them from posting the donors on their website in 2009.  The Washington Post’s Michelle Ye Hee Lee dug a little deeper, and found that Pally’s not telling the truth:


The Clinton Foundation said “all charities are prohibited from disclosing individual donors without prior permission from each donor” under Canadian law. It is unclear whether the foundation is referring to federal or provincial law. If it is the later, the statement would be accurate.

However, the charity’s own memo says it is operating under federal obligations and its fiduciary duty for its board of directors. The federal law does not explicitly ban charities from disclosing individual donor names without permission. In fact, it only applies to commercial use of personal information. The public release of donor names for a non-commercial purpose is not prohibited. The charity, however, interprets the release of donor records as “bartering,” which experts have questioned.


Lee gives the Clinton Foundation three Pinocchios for this lame attempt to deflect attention through a non-sequitur. The issue isn’t with the donors we don’t know (at least for now), but with the donor we do know. Giustra made a fortune off the staged sell-off of Uranium One to ARMZ, which got folded up immediately into Putin-linked Rosatom almost immediately after the final acquisition in January 2013. The Russian interests who made out all started off by kicking a lot of money to the Clintons.

Speaking of foreign interests, Andrew Kaczynski takes us on a nostalgic visit to 1996, when the Clintons expressed all sorts of alarm about foreign cash in American politics. As long as it wasn’t coming their way, that is:


Bill Clinton himself, however, once was the person attacking his opponents for taking money tied to foreign interests. In the midst late of the 1996 Clinton re-election campaign against Bob Dole, the issue of foreign interests improperly funneling money to help Bill Clinton’s re-election efforts became an issue. Dole, seizing on reports of improper contributions attacked Democrats for taking money tied to foreign interests.

Clinton shot back with an ad of his own, accusing Dole of being a hypocrite in an attempt to muddy the waters.

MALE NARRATOR: Bob Dole. Desperate Attacks. President Clinton restricted foreign lobbying, fought for years for campaign-finance reform.

TEXT: Lifetime ban on foreign lobbying by top officials

MALE NARRATOR: Dole and the Republicans took $2.4 million from foreign interests. …

NARRATOR: An independent watchdog cites Dole as the senator “most responsible for blocking any serious campaign finance reform.”


It’s no coincidence that Hillary Clinton’s talking about campaign finance reform again, too. Cash for we, but not for thee … The hypocrisy never ends.



http://hotair.com/archives/2015/04/29/wapo-three-pinocchios-for-latest-clinton-foundation-excuse/

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-04-29/clinton-foundation-failed-to-disclose-1-100-foreign-donations



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...'Jaded'...

Very well put. People who are "so jaded" don't realize saying "Both parties do it. So what? Why are you pointing this to me? I'll vote for her because the other one, the one I hate, does it too" is not how a free society should work...

A kingdom with entitled courtesans like the clintons maybe?





 

Of course money for access is how it works, although not many Republicans have multi-billion dollar "Global Initiatives" while their spouse is Sec of State Dept.  More of "the same thing" is different.

In this specific instance the Clintons may have broken laws, and the entire thing reeks of impropriety and conflicts-of-interest.

We're sick of their endless drama.  It's like a rerun of a bad sitcom from the 90s.

Are you so jaded that you think Republican politicians don't do the same thing?

Former President Bill Clinton accepted more than $2.5 million in speaking fees from 13 major corporations and trade associations that lobbied the U.S. State Department while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, an International Business Times investigation has found. The fees were paid directly to the former president, and not directed to his philanthropic foundation.

Many of the companies that paid Bill Clinton for these speeches -- a roster of global giants that includes Microsoft, Oracle and Dell -- engaged him within the same three-month period in which they were also lobbying the State Department in pursuit of their policy aims, federal disclosure documents show. Several companies received millions of dollars in State Department contracts while Hillary Clinton led the institution.

The disclosure that President Clinton received personal payments for speeches from the same corporate interests that were actively seeking to secure favorable policies from a federal department overseen by his wife underscores the vexing issue now confronting her presidential aspirations: The Clinton family is at the center of public suspicions over the extent of insider dealing in Washington, emblematic of concerns that corporate interests are able to influence government action by creatively funneling money to people in power.

“The dynamic is insidious and endemic to this system,” said Meredith McGhee, policy director of the Campaign Legal Center, a campaign finance watchdog group in Washington. "The fact is that the wealthiest .01 percent on the outside of government believes -- fervently -- that by paying speaking fees, or making campaign contributions, that it can gain access and influence."

Rules Do Not Apply

Federal ethics rules aim to discourage officials and their spouses from accepting gifts from interests “seeking official action” from a government agency. But the rules do not apply to speaking fees, said Craig Holman an advocate for tightened ethics structures at Public Citizen, a watchdog group in Washington.

The rules at issue “wouldn’t have any regulations that would make this illegal, unless of course there were a quid pro quo, and that would be a violation of the bribery laws,” Holman told IBTimes. “There isn’t an ethics rule that prohibits someone like Bill Clinton from charging exorbitant speaking fees and collecting those speaking fees from businesses that have interests before the administration.”

But regardless of the rules, he added, the dynamic through which President Clinton has been able to profit from the same companies eager to gain the ear of his wife’s department “poses a very troubling conflict-of-interest situation that is going to continue to dog Hillary over the course of the campaign."


http://www.ibtimes.com/firms-paid-bill-clinton-millions-they-lobbied-hillary-clinton-1899107

Hillary Clinton updates her logo to support same-sex marriage

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton changed her avatar on her Twitter and Facebook pages on Tuesday, when the Supreme Court will hear historic arguments in cases that could make same-sex marriage the law of the land.

The justices will indicate where they stand in the dispute over whether states can continue defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman, or whether the Constitution gives gay and lesbian couples the right to marry.

More...http://mashable.com/2015/04/28/hillary-clinton-logo-same-sex-marriage/

Since she's got nothing, this is her answer to the bribery allegations. Get the small-minded single issue voter types and those that don't want to be called bigots to focus on this and allow Hillary to pull the wool over their eyes on what kind of leader she'd be.