Big shots are cool! They bring us lots of great stuff, even the ones who’re Democrats. Without 'em, we’d be living Little House on the Prairie lives.
Personally, I have no trouble with someone living through 4-8 years of a meatgrinder like the Presidency making some money off it afterwards. The only one who really had a life upgrade from it, coincidentally, is the one who served two years: Gerald Ford.
The Late Great Molly Ivins:
Apparently it bled over into Arkansas.
Looks like another non-scandal bites the dust. Yes, she was negligent, but not enough to be considered criminal or corrupt. Still along ways before the National Elections. Do you think Republican’s will go back to crying Benghazi again? Because they surely weren’t crying “Benghazi” the entire time they were investigating her email servers.
No, we’re going to get a Greatest Hits of the Republican Clinton Mudslinging Machine.
My personal favorite (self-legitimized conspiracy theories are too easy) is the ‘enabler’ line and how she ‘destroyed’ the lives of the women who supposedly cuckolded her. I’m sinking deeper; I can’t shovel fast enough not to get covered.
According to Politico, Trump plans to attack Clinton over Whitewater.
For those of us who remember all this stuff from the first time around, it’s gonna be a long summer.
By coincidence, Kenneth Starr was on the front page today. He’s getting demoted from his role as President of Baylor University because of a sexual assault cover up scandal. (He’s not implicated in any way other than being the man in charge when it happened, afaik)
Certainly it is possible, maybe most here believe probable, that she has not engaged in any unethical transactions. But shouldn’t our representatives avoid even the appearance of improprieties? These types of issues raise ethical questions for me.
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Soliciting donations to your foundation from the same companies/countries that have ongoing interactions with the state department
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Soliciting election contributions from the same companies/countries that are awarded foundation grants
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Soliciting personal compensation from the same companies/countries that have ongoing interactions with the state department
People are rightly concerned with campaign funding and in particular “shadow” type of contributions. Their Foundation solicits anonymous contributions that are shielded from disclosure requirements.
Statements saying she has resigned her position at the Foundation, so there aren’t any conflicts are insane. Her husband and only child are incredibly active with the Foundation. Her longtime aide was working simultaneously for her in the state department, the Foundation, and the Clintons personally.
Any ethics expert would agree that there are massive appearances of conflicts of interest here that are unlike any other situation in our country’s history. This family is getting massive personal and foundation money inflows from the same companies and countries that are receiving massive public benefits (policy or monetary) that are directly controlled by the members of the same family. That’s an absolutely unacceptable breach of ethics.
You same people throw a fit if a Supreme Court justice hears a case involving a company that has financial ties to that justice’s family. You same people throw fits when governmental contracts were awarded to companies that had former ties to members of prior administrations. Why do you have such a blind spot with the Clintons? Is it because they’ve been accused of bullshit scandals in the past so you will just ignore any issue going forward even if legitimate? Is it because their political opponents are worse? Is it not that you ignore it, but that you recognize it as bad baggage that is overcome by the other good qualities they have?
Of course I don’t have any proof of any bribes. If a regular person like me had proof they would already be in jail. What I am instead saying is that they have unacceptable appearances of conflicts of interest. They also aren’t transparent, but even if they were, this situation demands more than transparency. They need to sever all ties with the Foundation and cease accepting personal compensation from foreign governments while they are active politicians. They can go back to doing those types of activities once they are no longer our public representatives.
You seem to be characterizing his demotion as just collateral damage from a scandal he wasn’t involved in. He absolutely neglected his duties of oversight, was actively engaged in a cover up, and his problems are just beginning with his demotion. These Baylor guys are criminals.
Longhorn, when the job you’re shooting for is to “run America”, it is very hard to both avoid Americans and earning an income from them. I know I haven’t done that admirable goal and I’m not even running for President!
I don’t really know what you expected them to do once Bill left the WH - campaign for Senator on $20 donations via internet mechanisms that didn’t exist in 2000? Are you saying that because HRC was still in the game, Bill shouldn’t have given speeches? Do you feel this way about the Bush’s? Poppa Bush works for his boys, got two of them elected Governor and 1 elected President.
Were you decrying in the Jeb thread about how the Bush’s gamed the system by using a family member who was an ex-President (and had oil interests to boot!) to promote the Bush brand and help his sons raise tens of millions of dollars?
Yes? Good man.
No? Then don’t argue from principle, because this is obviously not a principled point for you.
Starting…NOW!
I know the buck stops with him but I haven’t seen anything that says Starr was “actively engaged in a cover up”. I find it hard to believe they would keep him on as Chancellor and a law prof if that was the case. But I guess this doesn’t belong in this thread.
Some of the stuff they do isn’t that hard to avoid. What other Secretaries of State have had trouble avoiding things like receiving millions of dollars in donations from the Saudis?
It’s not her God given right to be a senator, secretary of state, president. Sorry, but in a nation of 300 million people, we’re not forced to have to rely on the spouses (or children or siblings) of former presidents to fill these positions. Other people can step up. However, if they feel she must run for office then I already said what I expect Bill and the rest of the family to do, temporarily cut ties with the Foundation and avoid receiving personal and charitable contributions from foreign governments.
He should have been damned selective about who he received money from. It’s not appropriate or ethical to have the spouse of the secretary of state receiving compensation and donations from foreign governments.
Hell yes I feel that way about the Bushes. First, I absolutely detest the fact that the sons of a president were elected and ran for president. I would personally be in favor of amending the constitution in order to prohibit this. We’re not a monarchy. Second, I think any president’s family should be closely monitored by some sort of compliance regulators for any signs of improper transactions. Same with congress. They shouldn’t have a loophole that allows them to trade securities on insider information, for example. That should be monitored closely.
Look, I realize that I am saying that I expect there to be constraints on what the family of a president should be allowed to do. I’m not that sympathetic though. That comes with a lot of jobs. If I work for JPMorgan (I don’t) then my wife would not be allowed to have a brokerage account that trades individual securities. Further, every trade our family made would have to be pre-approved by a compliance officer. That’s something you need to know and live with if you want a job at JPMorgan. That may sound unfair, but it’s a necessary way to avoid trading on insider information.
I think Clinton herself summarized this election pretty well yesterday discussing the email scandal.
[QUOTE=Hillary Clinton 5/26/16]
“And as I’ve said many times, if I could go back, I would do it differently. I know people have concerns about this. I think voters are going to be looking at the full picture of what I have to offer, my life, and my service, and the full threat that Donald Trump offers our country,” Clinton said. “I have confidence that they’re going to be making the right decision.”
[/QUOTE]
She agrees what she did was wrong and is a problem(although she would certainly highly disagree with me on the extent of its wrongness.) Having said that, take the good and bad she brings and compare her as a future president to Trump and she comes out ahead. I absolutely agree. He’s way worse than her. It goes back to what I think should be her campaign poster.
Not if you believe Bill Clinton.
Explain the value of “temporarily” cutting ties with the Foundation that has his/her name on it? If everyone assumes that they will resume such ties at the appropriate time, how does that fix anything?
I don’t have time to deal with everything right now, but this one caught my special attention. This isn’t a succession. Those sons actually had to run for office, and they can damn well have anyone they want work to get them elected, blood relations or otherwise. If they gained PR benefits from having a father who was President, good for them. You can’t legislate away the right to run for office just because a relation, no matter how close, was President.
An unconstitutional constitutional amendment…good luck with that.
I take that as a compliment, and I thank you for it. It’s also a great idea; I understand that those Clinton’s have lots of money!
But it wasn’t my intention to be a shill for Hillary. I just want an honest look at her reputation for being “shady as hell”.
[QUOTE=madsircool]
May we refer to her as Hillary Rodham Nixon?
[/QUOTE]
I have previously made that comparison, for several reasons. She does not exude charm and charisma, and so she is not great at running for office. But she is a very smart and effective politician who can make a very successful president. It’s also possible (speculating here) that she is paranoid about her enemies, and she may have a list of them somewhere.
It does seem, from the evidence that we’ve looked at, that she drags her feet on producing documents and records, she has an obsession with privacy, and she is not going to promote transparency in government.
I skimmed the Office of Inspector General report on Clinton’s email use* (which was linked to in LonghornDave’s FInancial Times cite), and, if I can paraphrase the findings, Hillary was pretty insisted on using her own personal server (although I do think the point should be made that it was located at a house which had Secret Service protection, and was encrypted enough that she trusted it for her 2008 Presidential campaign).
In context, though, I think that this is an important point:
[QUOTE=elucidator]
the usual timeline is something bad happens, and we look for who to blame. What dire consequence is Ms. Clinton being assailed for?
[/QUOTE]
This seems to be the trend that Hillary is up against every time a scandal occurs. Whitewater was a land investment in which the Clinton’s lost money, but it opened the door into investigating every facet of their lives. Benghazi was a terrorist attack against the U.S. by terrorists, but it has somewhere led to an examination of her record keeping practices. Is it possible that she’s paranoid and deservedly so?
As for her other possible motive for her secrecy? Well, considering that the State Department basically traffics in gossip, and comments made by email can be embarrassing if made public. Is that why she was trying to avoid FOIA requests?
*The findings generally were: All federal agencies suck as record keeping; Albright and Rice never used email; Powell asked for a private line so he could use his personal laptop, and never kept records (although he said he would CC his government account and/or his secretary); Clinton also used her own private account, notwithstanding that stricter guidelines were then in place; and Kerry only occasionally uses private email, which he also copies to his government account and/or assistant. If there is some good that will come out of this, it will be modernization of the communications equipment used at the highest levels of government.