It is illegal for foreign persons to contribute to a political campaign.
It is illegal for a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation to donate to political campaigns. If they do so, they lose their status as a 501(c)(3), among other penalties.
You say that it would be unsurprising if the Clinton Foundation funneled charitable donations to Clinton’s campaign fund. Anyone who shows the slightest shred of nonprofit tax law and election finance laws knows that this would a BIG FUCKING DEAL, and there is literally nobody so stupid as to take charitable donations, and launder them into campaign contributions. It’s utterly laughable to believe that this is occurring.
Setting aside that your opinion is already embedded in that, the AP story that is the source of this controversy said that
So first of all, what you said and what the story said are reversed. In order to know whether half of all the people who donated to the Clinton Foundation got a meeting – which is what you said – we would need to know how many people, total, donated big-assed amounts, in your opinion. We don’t.
Moving past that, if we assume what you meant is that half of the people Sec. Clinton met with had donated big-assed amounts of money, in your opinion, we still don’t know if that’s true because we don’t know how many people she met with.
So those two numbers that Richard Parker was talking about – number of donors and number of total meetings – are necessary in order to evaluate whether what you’re saying is true. And we don’t have those. That’s not a question of “interpretation of the facts,” except at the most fundamental level.
The AP’s report of the denominator being 154 IS what they say it is.
They defined what that number was.
Wanna argue that isn’t right? Go ahead. That is another thread.
Now if you wanna argue that by their definition 154 ain’t right go ahead…I’ll listen to specific cases and you can change the number…but you gotta a lot of numbers to change before 154 becomes some OTHER number that really changes the argument.
PS. If you wanna argue that she meet with 150 “private” parties but ALSO meet with a gazillion other “parties” that were part of her “official” duties therefore the 150 number is bogus…well, have at it because IMO that is crock of crap and I ain’t arguing that point.
World, economic, and cultural leaders who donate to charitable foundations are precisely the sort of people one would expect the Secretary of State of the United States to meet with on a regular basis. It, in fact, may have been impossible for her to carry out her duties as SoS without meeting some of these people.
Yes, if you read the whole body of the article and not the misleading headline and tweets, you find that the 154 is defined as meetings, not including U.S. federal employees or foreign government representatives that appeared on calendars obtained by the AP.
So it’s a subset (non-officials) of a subset (partial calendar).
If you’ll recall, this whole line of posts started with your stating that we can infer that donors got special access because of the 50+% meeting rate. But in fact, it’s only 50% when you arbitrarily limit the denominator, and even that is a sample the representativeness of which we have no idea.
In reality, Secretary Clinton met with thousands of people. And meeting with a Nobel prize-winning economist is no less the business of the Secretary of State than meeting with some Saudi prince who donates, so the AP’s cherry-picking seems designed to mislead rather than inform.
That’s not even a remotely accurate re-stating of the already flawed premise of the article. As other sources note, the Clinton Foundation has over 6000 donors. Of that amount, something like 85 people who either donated directly or are affiliated with an organization that donated got meetings with Clinton. Seeing as this group includes quite important and influential people (e.g. a Nobel Prize winner), you should probably winnow out the people that the Secretary of State would have met with as a matter of course. So if I were a donor who wanted to buy access to the Secretary of State, less than 85/6000 seems like pretty long odds.
The responsible media’s take on this seems to be that the AP spent a crap load of time and money on this research project, turned up nothing of interest, and published their results anyway under a click bait headline. Because apparently, “we can massage the numbers to give an appearance of impropriety” seems to be a better news story then “Huh. Looks like Clinton was actually doing the job we tax payers were paying her to do.”
It really strikes me how utterly honest Clinton must be. If this is the kind of weak-assed nonsense that people can come up with, she must be the most honest politician in history.
I am a mayor…I meet with the clerk of court, the tax appraieser, the local DEP guy, the HMS gal, the governor, the city council blah blah blah.
There are a buttload of people/departments that I as a gubment official am expected to and for that matter almost HAVE to meet with…even IF I wanna kick em in the balls.
OTOH, there are a shitload of crazy assed citizens I don’t have to / don’t want to meet with (but they want to meet with me).
IFFF I happen to meet with 50 percent of those folks who “just” happen to donate to my wife’s “save the slug” charity…
welll, that looks like bull crap to say the least.
When people talk about that, they conveniently ignore that Foster was a werewolf, and Clinton’s sliver dental implants were the only things that saved the entire first family.
First, my job is better than yours…because posts and shit.
Second, I now have some unpleasant crap to do NOW and barring a suicide/murder scenario (not out the realm of reason to be honest)…I’ll be outa here for the next 24 hours give or take.
Well, Mr. Mayor, in addition to the fact that Secretary of State is a bit different from your job, it seems that you really are struggling with this “50 percent” that you keep misrepresenting. But you’re misrepresenting it. She did not meet with 50% of the folks who donated. No one but you has suggested this.
