AP Big Story – AP Sources: Manafort tied to undisclosed foreign lobbying
Follow the bouncing ball on these stories very carefully.
Let’s start with the second item:
A leaked memo from a senior Ukrainian prosecutor published Wednesday further details Manafort’s involvement with former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.
“It was [Manafort’s] political effort to raise the prestige of Yanukovych and his party — the confrontation and division of society on ethnic and linguistic grounds is his trick from the time of the elections in Angola and the Philippines,” reads the memo obtained by The Times. “While I was in Crimea, I constantly saw evidence suggesting that Paul Manafort considered autonomy [from Ukraine] as a tool to enhance the reputation of Yanukovych and win over the local electorate.”
Not good. But it’s also weird. Note:
The senior Ukrainian prosecutor alleges that in 2006 Mr. Manafort orchestrated a series of Anti-Nato, Anti-Kiev protests in Crimea led by Viktor Yanukovych’s pro-Russian Party of Regions–now a designated criminal organisation. The protests forced planned Nato exercises there to be cancelled.
2006 in Ukraine. What else was going on then? Billmon’s musings on this is a map of sorts:
My own take: There was a period both during & after UKR’s “Orange Revolution” (2004-2010) when DC explored a “re-evaluation” of Yanukovych.
Orange Revo basically flopped, devolved into infighting corruption. The Blob saw (or thought it saw) potential for Yanukovych rehabilitation
Manafort (deep connections to Reaganite wing of The Blob; history of working with dictators) was a logical conduit to Yanukovych.Policy in DC changed radically, but Manafort didn’t (as back channel to the new post-2014 opposition? Or just in it for the $$$? Who knows.)
Yes. The cables I cited from the US embassy praising Yanukovych’s non-existent economic reform effort was a Wikileak.
Also like way MSM continues to narrowcast Manafort story, ignoring his ties to The Blob when he was advising Yanukovych. Message discipline.
All of this is the ignored context behind NYT’s hit job. Flushed straight down the semi-official media memory hole.
That said, there’s an amount of decent information in this February 24, 2012 article , if you want to see how MSM has reshaped story into one in which Manafort is rogue Putin agent.
Agree with Billmon that the Jamestown org article is worth reading because it mostly recites facts in an objective manner. However, a disclosure is appropriate: Jamestown Foundation (a Cold War warrior think-tank: about Major supporter of Arkady Shevchenko, a CIA asset in the USSR. (about as reputable as Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen).)
A takeaway is that in 2006 Yanukovych was the “west’s guy.” It was a bit like the wild west with the “orange,” “red,” and “blue” teams jockeying for power during the 2002-2009 period. Why would Yanukovych have been plotting to cede one of his power bases to Russia before his second run for President in 2009?
In kicking over the Manafort-Yanukovych-Putin rock, even Salon felt compelled to disclose other crawly things under it.
Donald Trump’s campaign chairman helped a pro-Russian governing party in Ukraine secretly route at least $2.2 million in payments to two prominent Washington lobbying firms in 2012, and did so in a way that effectively obscured the foreign political party’s efforts to influence U.S. policy.
People with direct knowledge of Gates’ work said that, during the period when Gates and Manafort were consultants to the Ukraine president’s political party, Gates was also helping steer the advocacy work done by a pro-Yanukovych nonprofit that hired a pair of Washington lobbying firms, Podesta Group Inc. and Mercury LLC
That’s good. One Democratic and one Republican lobbyist. (Didn’t realize that Vin Weber was still around and doing very well for himself.)
…Podesta’s firm has previously registered its activities with the Justice Department over its work for Albania, the Republic of Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Georgia, India, Japan, Kenya, Kosovo, the Maldives, Moldova, Morocco, Somalia, South Korea, South Sudan, Vietnam and others. Mercury has disclosed to the Justice Department its work on behalf of government interests in the Cayman Islands, Nigeria, Qatar, Somalia, Turkey, one of the United Arab Emirates, Uganda and others.
(Let’s set Azerbaijan aside for a closer look on another day.)
Hillary campaign manager calls on Trump reveal all “employees & advisers ties to Russian or pro-Kremlin entities”
Akin Gump, firm fundraising for Hillary & its partner serves as campaign treasurer, was hired by Yanukovych to dig up dirt on opposition.
Mark Penn, a longtime adviser to Hillary (& supposedly still advising Bill) worked for Gazprom & his firm B-M was contracted by Yanukovych
What about Hillary campaign ties? Tony Podesta lobbies for a Russian bank against Obama’s sanctions
Billmon again:
You can go on and on with this stuff: There is Russian AND Ukrainian oligarch $ spread all over DC.
(Check out Ihor Kolomoyskyi if you like falling down rabbit holes.)
This iceberg is very deep and there more than enough “bad guys” associated with both US political parties and the current nominees.
People who live in glass houses should be careful when throwing stones.
What in the world is “The Blob”?
Term used by Ben Rhodes — Obama’s foreign policy advisor whom he shares most in common — to describe the Foreign Policy Establishment. The ones who love them some Clinton.
It’s a graphic and multi-purpose term for any group that one opposes and disparages as mindless. The specific use depends on the position of the speaker in relationship to that group and the context of what the speaker says. Thus, for HillFans, BernieBuster can be The Blob and vice-versa.
Gove referred to teachers and teachers unions as The Blob. A rightwing publication used it in support of Scott Walker who was fighting The Blob.
Neoliberacons and the MSM are The Blob. etc.
Good post, Marie, thanks. And a compelling topic too. Have you been following the alleged NSA hack? This seems a real story.
That stuff makes my head hurt. Thus, I’m like totally dependent on techies to tell/explain what’s what and others to identify which techies are white hats and black hats and have no confidence that any of it’s true.
Anyway, found this interesting:
In comparison with the NSA statement — essentially no comment other the “we keep Americans safe.”
As all this stuff is secret compartmentalized, fractured, multi-national, trans-national, and global, have to hope the the combined independent actions of this assholes doesn’t one day cascade into blowing up the planet.
need to take a good look at all of this
You write:
Or…in Hillary’s/the PermaGov’s case:
Watch.
If she should win, HRC’s grass house will not support her throne.
Watch.
AG
Anthony Bourdain:
Some Americans didn’t have to travel to Cambodia to acquire the same level of visceral revulsion for Kissinger. Democrats not repulsed by Hillary Clinton’s cozy relationship with Kissinger clearly need to make the trek to Cambodia to get their heads straight.
Yeah. Teh people willing to snuggle with Kissinger and Netanyahu, but asking everyone to have hysterics over Putin…
Netanyahu/Mossad–shakes head….
Didn’t Bibi interject himself into the 2012 presidential election? Or did I just imagine him endorsing Mittens? And liberals had to suck it up for fear of being labeled an anti-Semite, secret Hamas agent.
If you didn’t catch it, Hecate’s Open Sesame 08/20/16 at caucus99percent is a work of art. (Although the champeen swimming liars should have been included.)
Thank you. It is a thing of beauty.
Did you see this?
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/does-henry-kissinger-have-a-conscience
This (and other) true stories get told again and again but never seem to be heard by those not in the choir. Trenchant:
Day in and day out, Obama and HRC (and their flacks) in public and private (all those big dollar fundraisers) bash the crude and pathetic language of the hairball and meanwhile, there was Henry K an honored guest at Obama State dinners and HRC vacationing with the murderer.
sigh.
Unlike the US, Russia doesn’t breed crazy lone wolves that take out inconvenient politicians, media folks, celebrities, etc, have airplanes that conveniently crash to take out politicians, etc, and politicians, etc. that commit suicide. So, Putin/Kremlin hire hit men that shoot, stab, poison, etc. its “inconvenient” people.
What a shame J Edgar Hoover had to wait for that lone wolf to take out MLK, Jr. when MLK, Jr. declined to take the proper way out and kill himself.
Yes, let’s compare Vladimir Putin to a conspiracy theory about J. Edgar Hoover so we can make the argument that United States is as bad or worse than Putin’s Russia. Let’s do that that. Let’s do exactly that.
Not. A. Conspiracy. Theory.
For someone that’s so keen on being informed about CoIntelPro, you don’t seem to get the entire landscape of what was simultaneously emerging from different agencies and how it and the propaganda that facilitated it in real time looked and smelled.
Where did I say that the US is as bad or worse than Putin’s Russia? I merely pointed out that you’re quick to accept allegations of Putin employing hit men to bump off inconvenient people in Russia while nothing like that ever happens in the US. Seems odd to me that crazy lone wolves don’t exist in Russia.
Even if Hoover’s FBI was behind the assassination of MLK, which is not far-fetched at all, but still unproven, Hoover’s FBI hasn’t existed since Hoover died forty-three years ago.
You are very keen to find any equivalency you can to deflect criticize from Putin and to run down your own country, but the extremes you must resort to are quite telling.
You might as well talk about civil rights in this country or South Africa as if Jim Crow and Apartheid still existed in all their glory.
Where did I say that Hoover was behind the assassination of MLK, Jr? We all have no choice but to accept that assassinations in the US are perpetrated by lone wolves because nothing other than that is proven. (Hoover’s team only did what they could and failed to drive MLK, Jr. to commit suicide. Haven’t a clue if that was the one and only such attempt and if it wasn’t whether or not other attempts failed or succeeded.)
You’re the one that’s keen to trash Putin on unproven allegations. Therefore, you’re using two different standards; always a lone wolf in the US and never a lone wolf in Russia. Even if true, why are Russia’s domestic affairs of so much interest to you? Casting Putin as the big, bad boogieman is classic Cold War propaganda. Deflects from the fact that the US has been directly creating havoc (death, destruction, destabilization) in various parts of the world in this latest round for fifteen years.
As an informed adult, you didn’t personally experience the ugliness of the Cold War and how it was maintained for US domestic consumption, but you did have a front row seat at the Saddam = Hitler parade twice. Saddam wasn’t a nice guy, but not so different from dictators that are US BFFs. Until they’re not and then get taken out by the US. But they didn’t have nukes; so, no skin off our noses.
Somehow this country avoided nuclear annihilation during those forty years, and I don’t think it was merely a matter of the US being the wise adult player in the conflict. Quite mind boggling that you can’t see the slippery slope you and this country have gotten on with all this Putin/Russia bashing and fear mongering. J Edgar, Alan Dulles, etc may be long gone, but the institutions they ran haven’t changed much. Nor, apparently has the psyche of ordinary Americans as they lap up the Putin/Russia as the boogieman.
As you’ve expounded at length on how Obama is one of the best Presidents ever, odd that you’d join the chorus of Putin bashers and neocons– as Robert Parry explains:
“He has become a major impediment to the grand neocon vision of “regime change” across the Middle East in any country considered hostile to Israel. That vision was disrupted by the disastrous outcome of the Iraq War, but the goal remains.”
Exactly. Putin is making the US look like the international outlaws in Syria, as indeed we are. Proxy wars for our client(?) states Saudi and Israel. Why is our treasure and good name being used for their purposes?
interesting; I’ve been wondering where all this was coming from
Foreign Policy Survey of America’s Top International Scholars
Who was the most effective US Secretary of State in the past 50 years:
#1 – Kissinger 32.2%
#2 – don’t know 18.3%
#3 – Baker 17.7%
#4 – Albright 8.7%
#4 – Clinton 8.7%
#13 – Kerry .03%
Closing these damn schools would be a good step in the right direction. Vance was possibly the only one worth a damn.
Josef Stalin was an effective leader. Effective is not the same as moral. So, Henry Kissinger was “effective” in that sense.
As the duties for US SoS are defined “effectiveness” is measured in relationship to those duties. For example on administration of the State Dept, did HRC even touch that?
Who was the last SoS that actually served as a President’s principal adviser on Foreign Policy? The job has effectively been reduced to being the US Senior diplomat. Diplomacy = negotiations. Effective negotiators keep the country out of war. Sidestepping a SoS goes back at least to James Monroe when Madison and the congressional War Hawks initiated the war of 1812 that didn’t go well. War either means an SoS is ineffective, has been sidestepped, or actively participated in fomenting war.
Thwarting a peace agreement in ’68 and presiding over the same FP issue five years later after massive additional loss of lives and destruction isn’t effectiveness but accepting peace after all other options had been exhausted.
Different definitions of effective, but they do touch tangentially.
Is there a different standard for mass murder in pursuit of policy? Like Kissinger in Cambodia? Bush in Iraq? But single assassinations are somehow WORSE?
Where is the equivalent long distance adventurism on Putin’s part? Seems more like our Latin American circle of influence claim for entitlement.
We’re arguing over the meaning of “effective”, which I claim is morally neutral. You can be evil and either “effective” or “ineffective”. Likewise good and either “effective” or “ineffective”. Cheney also was “effective” although most of us think it would have been better if he was “ineffective”.
All true, but the connotation of “effective” is “good.” So, I doubt those FP professors were ranking Dr. K as “effective” because he got evil things done. Hell, they probably don’t know what the man has done other than “Nixon went to China” and he got a Nobel Peace prize for getting and agreement on ending the war five years after it should have been done.
Kerry has had some real clunkers, but overall, I think he’s far exceeded my expectations for him. He is miles more effective than Clinton was. His climate work has been outstanding, he’s pulled some rabbits out of hats with Russia, and his work on the Iran deal was superlative.
Agree that Kerry’s been better than most over the past twenty-five years. Baker was also decent in the immediate collapse of the USSR. Kerry would be better still if he’d stop talking out of both sides of his mouth and promulgating false information.
I think Robert Parry captures Kerry pretty well.
https:/consortiumnews.com/2016/03/14/whats-the-matter-with-john-kerry-2
It is really hard to choose whether friends, like Saudi and Israel, or “foes”, like Putin, do more damage to our already threadbare credibility.
I kinda think it’s the quality of our allies that is worst.
Even Africa has given up on the ICC.
WaPo (not sure how this one got through the editorial censors) Saudi government has vast network of PR, lobby firms in U.S.
The Republican Wurlitzer has sanitized Kissinger.
Wonder why Camp David guy not on the list? Brzezinski?
Cyrus Vance was the Camp David guy. He made the list.
Speaking of Brzezinski, it looks like he’s changed his tune regarding American hegemony.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/25/the-broken-chessboard-brzezinski-gives-up-on-empire/
“Five basic verities regarding the emerging redistribution of global political power and the violent political awakening in the Middle East are signaling the coming of a new global realignment.
The first of these verities is that the United States is still the world’s politically, economically, and militarily most powerful entity but, given complex geopolitical shifts in regional balances, it is no longer the globally imperial power.” (Toward a Global Realignment, Zbigniew Brzezinski, The American Interest)
interesting. is it possible that [I hate to say this because I’m an Obama fan] Obama is selling us out via TPP for the hegemony of the dollar in the region of the world to which BRICS seems to have things sewed up? and ultimately TPP is a losing strategy, because it will weaken us here at home, we become serfs to the dollar.
See my other comment below. It’s not so much that Obama is selling out but that he (and most of DC) are trapped in the American exceptionalism that naturally means we should dominate the world article of faith. Accomplished through both bombs/military displays of power and control of wealth/money. He can see that so far the results aren’t anywhere near the promises of his policy maker predecessors and the only way forward is to double down on the means that got us this far.
I read that. A note of caution. Z-Big is an old guy, but it should no more be read as if he’s had a “come to Jesus” revelation than McNamara attempted to suggest in “The Fog of War.” They both started with an article of faith: the USA is so exceptional that it deserves to dominate the world. From that they gamed out ways to accomplish the agenda. As detailed as McNamara’s calculations on how to bomb our way to winning WWII.
Except much later analyses of the effectiveness of WWII bombing refuted the conclusions that it had made any difference at all and may have been counterproductive. However, McNamara went into the Vietnam War with the mindset that bombing had been the key component in defeating Germany and Japan and that explains why he couldn’t wrap his brain around why the greatly enhanced bombing in Vietnam wasn’t working. So, he bugged out and would win through the World Bank.
The collapse of the USSR reinforced for both of them that they had been right. With the “Bear” out of the way, all that remained was minor clean-up operations before that USA could firmly plant its flag on earth. McNamara lived just long enough to see that the outcome was far less than his models had promised. Being a dozen years younger and of similarly good health, Z-Big has had the benefit of data over another decade to review. Both were/are decent analysts, but only so far as the assumptions they plugged into their models. Left out were people/peoples and wild overestimates of the disposable wealth of the US.
Z-Big has now tweaked that disposable US wealth downward and incorporated many of the ways in which following his agenda hasn’t worked out as planned and drawn the obvious conclusion that USA world domination is not achievable and proposed a more modest agenda that from the perspective of the US is achievable and livable.
However, for current US (and western) policy makers, and politicians, that’s like trying to persuade the forced birthers that it’s bad for the planet and women to continue breeding above a ZPG level because they are stuck with the article of faith that human reproduction is in God’s hands.
Did you see the full article?
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/04/17/toward-a-global-realignment/
thanks for link. for me, fascinating about the dollar – I do not think Obama’s a neoliberal, and he’s been pushing a non-hegemonic form of USA leadership, which is why i don’t understand why he’s pushing TPP – but the brief version linked above seems to shed light on that. would be interested in reading your thoughts about it
Obama may not be a full bore neocon, but he is definitely a full bore neoliberal. Look at the ACA.
I see what you’re saying. fp I like the directions he’s setting, guess economics a different matter
Really? Perhaps that’s the difference between how you and I abstract existing known data. In 2008, the best I could concede on this point was that Obama might not be a neoliberal; whereas, it was known that HRC was. So, the odds were low that he’d be worse than HRC, fairly even that he’d be similar to or slightly better than HRC, and low that he would be much better (but one can hope when there’s a chance). As soon as he began naming his cabinet, hope was out the window IMHO. On balance, it’s been more “similar to” than “slightly better.” On FP (not directly related to economic matters), he’s been more “slightly better.” HRC as SoS (his choice) may have lowered his FP score. However, he gets no pass from me for allowing HRC not to honor her agreement not to mix State Dept and Clinton foundation business.
did he allow that? seems to me it was a stab in the back,
No State Dept IG for four years?
Obama knew enough to nix Blumenthal for a position at the State Dept (mostly because Rahm suspected, correctly, that he was key in HRC’s ’08 campaign on trashing Obama with false claims and innuendos) and to get that signed agreement from HRC not to have any direct engagement with the Clinton Foundation. Yet didn’t get a similar signed agreement from Mills (who remained on the board of the Clinton Foundation for a few months) and Abedin (who was a “special hire” as she also worked for Teneo and the Clinton Foundation). So, words from CF folks as to what was needed from HRC went through them and they made the necessary arrangements.
What was HRC doing hiring an IT guy to work in the State Dept IT section and nobody in that IT department knew what he was doing?
So, you have a former POTUS that has two things on his bucket list — to be the biggest cheese in the world in the non-profit sector and to move back into the WH as the first spouse — and who also hates your guts and you hire the guy’s wife, who also just happens to have the same two items on her bucket list, and give her carte blanche?
he couldn’t afford to have her opposing him from the Senate.
It’s not as if she were in a position like that of Garner in ’32. Reid was the majority leader and Durbin was the majority whip — both on Obama’s team. If she played the bad loser from the Senate she would have alienated most of her ’08 primary support.
Pardon neglected your stab in the back conjecture.
As it turned out, it wasn’t. My take is that as set up, it was prepared to exploit an opportunity to do so. To understand this, we have to go back to 2008 and Bill Clinton because he’s the political strategist in the family and he has been firmly convinced from way back when that a majority of the electorate wants a third and fourth Clinton WH. Thus, his view of the ’08 primary is that HRC was cheated and since nobody could be a good a President as he was, Obama was likely to fail and fail quickly. He and she had to be prepared to take advantage of such an outcome and primary Obama in ’12. To hold her ’08 primary support and shift those that had gone with Obama and would want to reconsider. That meant he had to maintain/increase his profile with the public and the big money folks (getting as much money as possible to flow into the foundation and his personal pocketbook*) and she had keep as much of her work under wraps and out of sight from the administration as possible. The 2010 midterms was a good omen for them.
What wasn’t lining up for them was all that much movement away from Obama within the Democratic base. Their window of opportunity was limited to from late spring to September. That effectively closed with the killing of OBL May 2, 2011. So, they went to Plan B.
*As WJC didn’t breakdown his income from speaking fees, consulting, and book advances/royalties from 2001-2005 and no breakdown between speaking fees and consulting from 2006-2011, guesstimates will have to do. The split was about 55% speaking and 45% book sales during those first five years. Or $6 million/year for talking/consulting. That increased to over $10 million/year in 2006-07. Dropped to $5.7 million in ’08 and rose to $7.4 million in ’09, then $11 million, $13 million, $16.5 million, and $13 million over the subsequent four years with an additional $5 and $6 million in consulting fees (GEMS/Laureate) in 2012 and 2013.
at least it looks like Clinton Foundation is finally being reported on
Barely skimming the surface so far.
David Sirota has been more on top of this than other journos, but the Clinton Foundation financial statements are almost impregnable.
There was a lot of AIDs monies out there, the only thing the Clinton Health Initiative did was scoop it all up on the premise that one entity could buy more for less. (Of course that is the opposite of what neoliberals preach for Medicare/Medicaid drug purchases.) From Ken Silverstein’s 11/15/15 review.
And that’s just one of many very serious issues. A financial analyst would have have had to have had this on his/her beat from the beginning of the Foundation to have built the knowledge base adequate to highlight the questionable issues in real time.
one of the cab driver’s I commented on, who expressed strong anti HRC sentiments, was from Haiti
Yes, Haiti, once again, experienced Clinton neoliberalism — not that the Bushes didn’t stick a few knives in that country as well.
Do I have to? One people like this use words like “realignment,” it signals to me that they’re just rearranging the pieces on their old chessboard.
Could have saved myself some effort if I’d read Baldwin’s The High Cost of American Hubris earlier today. Although not until later in the piece when she references Chalmers Johnson’s and Wilkenson and Pickett’s work am I fully in agreement with what she writes. In beginning approvingly with Mearsheimer, it seems weak and too close to Z-big for my tastes. And Michael Scheuer is someone I’ve always been leery of (and I didn’t know that he’d been a Jamestown Foundation fellow which just adds to my prior opinion of him). Yet, even in that section what is in her own words is solid. And like the quote from Seymour Melman:
THAT statement deserves more than four stars. Funny Z makes no mention of the lobbying of big agriculture in the Ukraine. Even more influence than oil in that area.
Not essentially different from what DDE said thirty years earlier except DDE’s statement was a forewarning and Melman was noting what had come to be. Yet even his didn’t go far enough because he didn’t see the privatization of the public infrastructure to keep it from crumbling. So, now another thirty odd years on, we’re more deeply in debt than ever and the deteriorating infrastructure is less public than it once was. The intersection of neoliberalism and neoconservatism with more of that in store for us for at least another four years.
The Intercept — U.S. Defense Contractors Tell Investors Russian Threat Is Great For Business
The very definition of evil. The only change is that the Democratic Party is now in the cat-bird’s-seat and it’s voters are crowing about it.
Brian Sonenstein
A kid that had to get educated (including seeking out knowledge and wisdom from elders that hadn’t fallen for or learned from falling for earlier Cold War propaganda) and grow up real fast beginning in 1966. And then oppose the insanity but never becoming a majority and therefore, had to wait for the war fevers to burn themselves out.
I’m convinced that crouching in school during regular air raid drills, among stacked pallets of grey cans marked “emergency drinking water”, focussed the consciousness of the nascent hippie generation on a better way.
That Friday noon air raid siren that I could hear from five miles away did it for me.
heh. When I was in the sixth grade I heard/saw something about air raid drills and schoolchildren crouching under their desks. As I had never experienced it, I asked Mrs. P why we’d never done that. Her response was, “We don’t do stupid things in this school.”
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a much more profound experience for many of my generation. Terrifying and then the recognition that there are alternatives to dropping bombs and launching missiles. Took a few years for the Vietnam War to evolve into a huge military action and to get our consciousness of to speed on it. If only we’d known more earlier.
Mose cost effective to do it with financial weapons. No need for boots on the ground. Still get to have expensive weapons systems.
Yes, standing in our front yard with my father, watching wave after wave of C-119’s(?? “flying boxcars”) heading SouthEast from nearby O’Hare. For HOURS! Later leaned that there were B-47’s there also, on dispersement. Years later talked with a man who was in the Minnesota Air National Guard. He told me of flying into O’Hare the night before. He and the rest of the aircrew slept in the plane, the soldiers slept on the ground under the wings. They thought it was WW III for sure.
Podesta has lawyered up. This gets even more interesting.
Wonder whether it can bring down the Citizens United decision (or Citizens United itself).
Another case of people who live in glass houses….
Not seeing an intersection between lobbying for foreign nations in the US and US political operatives working for candidates in foreign elections with Citizen’s United. Not saying that there isn’t one, but The Intercept has only been able to find one possible foreign donation to a SuperPac. That was to Jeb’s and there’s just enough wiggle room in that instance that it may be deemed legal and didn’t exactly involve lobbying. If the FEC doesn’t act on that one, who else would have standing to do so?
If there are others out there, they’ll be in the dark money PACs, and therefore, absent a whistleblower will never be seen by the public or authorities.
Funny how the Podesta side is ignored by reporters and commenters.
Demonstrates that IOKYAR is a gross misunderstanding of the real operation of politics. Also challenges both- siderism. Heh — HRC’s latest excuse for why she set up her private e-mail system is that Colin Powell recommended she do so and her supporters are running with that. As if Powell actually said that (he denies it), that he didn’t have a State e-mail account (he did), that he owned the server (he didn’t), and that tech and govt standards didn’t change in the four years between when he left office and HRC moved in. As if Rove wasn’t busted and resigned when his use of the RNC for e-mails was discovered (don’t know that he used that exclusively either).
Watch the rationalizations when DNC attendees get the question wrong:
LMAO
AP
Jonathan Swan:
Oh wait — that’s not the Clinton way, there a details, details, details:
Reuters – Clinton Foundation health project still mulling foreign donations:
iirc — lots of public monies from countries around the world funding this “separate entity.” (did the world actually need a new middleman in the delivery of medicine system? Don’t think so.)
Good on them for admitting that its “economic development” and “climate change work” are itty-bitty and the results so non-impressive that they are expendable.
Yep.
Politico — Democrats fret over timing of Clintons’ charity fete They fear the glitzy confab will provide fresh ammunition to Republicans, a week before the first debate between Clinton and Trump.
Politico doesn’t seem to understand the full meaning of inevitable. The Clintons could say, “Let them it cake” and get a huge round of applause from their devoted followers.
“The Clintons could say, “Let them it cake” and get a huge round of applause from their devoted followers. “
Haven’t they?
Not at all. That’s the cool thing about setting up a foundation with the ostensible purpose of helping the very, very poor. Deflects all criticism of hobnobbing with the wealthy elite and getting fat checks from them because “they are doing charitable work.” Liberals are very big on the appearance of “doing good for the poor.”
They fall for the Grameen Bank and Mohammad Yunis fantasy because they lack a solid understanding of cultures, economics, and finance. And Yunis is a terrific pitchman because it’s a formulation that is superficially simple and magically empowers very poor people. Sucked me in until I began to think it through. Yes, it was successful for a number of women in a particular place and at a particular time, but it’s not transferable because the same necessary elements don’t exist in but a few places and are quickly exhausted by the “do-gooders.”