"People should and do trust me" - Hillary Clinton

[kscarbel2]

In 11th hour bid for votes, Democrats embrace $15-an-hour minimum wage

CNN  /  July 9, 2016

Democrats amended their party platform late Friday to call for a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage -- a victory for Bernie Sanders, who is fighting to push the party leftward before his expected endorsement of Hillary Clinton.

The amendment calls for the change "over time" -- less specific language than Sanders had wanted, making it a concession for Clinton.

But it is much more specific than the previous draft of the platform, which said Americans "should earn more than $15 an hour" but didn't mention the federal minimum wage specifically.

The change came at the Democratic National Committee's platform meeting in Orlando. They're set to finalize the party's policy positions -- and attempt to bridge the gaps between Clinton and Sanders -- ahead of the Democrats' convention in Philadelphia later this month.

The amendment calling for the $15-an-hour federal minimum wage was introduced by former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner, a Sanders supporter.

"Raising the federal minimum wage sets the moral standard in this country that we as Democrats affirm over and over again that ensuring that we don't leave a sister or a brother behind is how we roll," Turner said. "Raising the federal minimum wage is the beginning of creating an America as good as it's promise."

Mary Kay Henry, the international president of the Service Employees International Union, proposed adding language that included the phrase "over time."

Both were adopted without a fight -- the product of hours of negotiations between the Clinton and Sanders camps at an Orlando hotel on the first day of the two-day meeting.

The minimum wage language pushes Clinton left of the position she's taken on the campaign trail. She has supported a $12-an-hour federal minimum wage, as well as local efforts to set higher minimum wages in places like New York and California.

Another big fight looms over the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Sanders' camp has pressed for language that would call for the 12-country trade deal to never receive a vote in Congress -- after a new president is sworn in or in a lame-duck session beforehand. That, though, would be a stinging rebuke of President Barack Obama, whose administration negotiated it.

[kscarbel2]

The Washington Times  /  July 12, 2016

The Obama administration circled the wagons around Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, with Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch refusing to detail why she didn’t pursue criminal charges against the former Secretary of State, and the State Department going to bat for her, saying she shouldn’t have to testify under oath about her secret email account.

Facing irate Republicans on Capitol Hill, Lynch repeatedly passed the buck to others in the Justice Department, saying that while she announced she wouldn’t pursue charges against Clinton, the decision was made by the FBI and career prosecutors and she had no public thoughts on the matter.

She said refusing to divulge details of her decision protected her employees from political pressure, but Republicans said she was the one engaging in politics by protecting the Clintons as repayment for having been appointed as a prosecutor by President Bill Clinton.

Lynch claimed to have decided, even before her ill-timed meeting with Bill Clinton at a Phoenix airport, that she would accept whatever recommendation the FBI would make about prosecuting Bill Clinton.

She said she finalized her decision after meeting last week with FBI Director James B. Comey, his agents and career Justice Department prosecutors.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Republican, asked Lynch whether she agreed with Comey’s conclusions that Hillary Clinton may have broken laws, and also asked her to detail her understanding of the key parts of law that govern classified information.

Ms. Lynch replied that the law speaks for itself and refused to say any more.

Many Republicans on Capitol Hill feel Clinton is guilty of “gross negligence” in her handling of classified information..

Republicans were stunned that Ms. Lynch refused to answer questions.

“You are in charge of the Department of Justice. The buck stops with you,” said Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican.

He said Lynch created a credibility gap by prosecuting members of the military for sending emails with classified information but failing to go after Mrs. Clinton.

“You have a problem, Madame Attorney General,” he said.

She replied: “Every case stands on its own separate facts.”

Lynch refused to say that Clinton appeared to have broken open-records laws — something Comey asserted in his own testimony to Congress last week, citing a State Department inspector general’s conclusions.

[kscarbel2]

In 2007, the UK’s new Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said of Hillary Clinton in his Telegraph column:

"She's got dyed blonde hair and pouty lips, and a steely blue stare, like a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital."

"For all who love America, it is time to think of supporting Hillary, not because we necessarily want her for herself but because we want Bill in the role of First Husband. And if Bill can deal with Hillary, he can surely deal with any global crisis."

 

[kscarbel2]

 

[kscarbel2]

Hillary and Bill Clinton: The for-profit partnership

The Financial Times  /  July 21, 2016

They have made $22 million from the education industry since 2010

In 2010, Bill Clinton made a deal that drew him closer to some of the most high-powered investors in the world, including the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Citigroup, hedge fund managers Steven Cohen and George Soros and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

Under the arrangement, the former US president would serve for five years as honorary chancellor of Laureate International Universities, a global network of for-profit institutions of higher education that had been taken private in 2007 in a $3.8bn leveraged buyout by its founder Douglas Becker and the KKR-led consortium.

Mr Clinton’s duties included providing advice on “issues like social responsibility, youth leadership and civic engagement” and visiting 19 campuses in 14 countries, Laureate’s website says. His pay exceeded $16.5m — or more on an annualised basis than the president of Harvard University.

The one-time commander-in-chief had become a globetrotting connector par excellence, as Mr Clinton explained during a speech in November 2010 at Malaysia’s Inti International University, one of dozens of Laureate schools serving more than 1m students around the world. “I agreed to be the honorary chancellor of Laureate because it is first of all a true global network of universities and I’m very big on establishing networks,” he said. “I think tying people together across national, religious, ethnic [and] ideological lines is the key to the 21st century.”

Soon, Mr Clinton will find out whether his sense of the situation was correct. In the coming weeks, the Clinton brand of networking will be put to the political test as his wife Hillary, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, takes on Donald Trump, her Republican rival and proprietor of Trump University, his own for-profit education business, in what promises to be a rugged general election campaign.

Learning curve

For the Clintons, the Laureate connection has been a profitable step in one of the most lucrative post-presidential business careers in US history. After leaving the White House in 2001 in self-described penury, Mr and Mrs Clinton made close to a quarter of a billion dollars, largely by giving speeches, publishing books and consulting.

The question is whether voters will understand. Today’s electorate is wary of the well connected. In the Democratic primaries, Mrs Clinton struggled to fend off Bernie Sanders, foe of the wealthiest 1 per cent of the citizenry and advocate of free public universities. On the Republican side, Mr Trump won the nomination by casting himself in the role of a tycoon beholden to no one.

The Clintons, by contrast, have profited financially by using their connections to the global elite — including in such highly regulated sectors as for-profit education, finance and healthcare. Big banks such as Goldman Sachs and UBS, which have together paid almost $2m for speeches from the Clintons since 2013, are the obvious example.

“In the realm of appearance, it’s just unnecessary,” says Robert Reich, who served as Mr Clinton’s labour secretary from 1993 to 1997. “It would be one thing if they were financially needy. But from all the accounts I have read that doesn’t seem to be the case. So why take the risk of the appearance of impropriety? Why give ammunition to the vast networks of people looking for ammunition? It’s a complete mystery to me.”

The Clintons’ income from for-profit education could prove an especially sensitive subject at a time when US student debt exceeds $1.2tn. Critics argue that for-profit operators devote too much revenue to marketing and providing themselves with a return, and too little to teaching. Their case is made stronger by evidence that students at for-profit schools are less likely to pay back their loans or find jobs.

Tax returns released by Mrs Clinton’s campaign show that she and her husband reported income of more than $22m from interests in the for-profit education industry since 2010.

In addition to the $16.5m that Mr Clinton received from Laureate between 2010 and 2014, he was paid $5.6m as honorary chairman of the Varkey Gems Foundation, the charitable arm of Gems Education, a Dubai-based company founded by Sunny Varkey, an Indian-born billionaire. Payments from Laureate and the Varkey foundation continued in 2015, according to another filing by Mrs Clinton, which says only that the amounts in each case exceeded $1,000.

Laureate, in turn, donated between $1m and $5m to the Clinton Global Initiative, says a representative of the education company. The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation also lists Gems Education as a donor in the same $1m-$5m range.

Mrs Clinton has made far less personally from the education sector than her husband. However, after stepping down as secretary of state in February 2013, she was paid a total of $451,000 in 2014 to speak to two for-profit education companies: Academic Partnerships of Dallas, Texas, and New York-based Knewton, founded by Jose Ferreira, a former strategist for John Kerry, Mrs Clinton’s successor at the state department. In 2013, Mrs Clinton received $225,000 to speak to KKR, the Laureate investor.

‘Coalitions of money’

The irony is that the Clintons might have made more money in education than the ostensible industry entrepreneur in the presidential race. Eric Schneiderman, New York state’s attorney-general, says the available evidence suggests Mr Trump received $5m in profits from his real estate university while it operated from 2005 to 2010. The exact figures are unavailable because Mr Trump has refused to release his tax returns, citing a continuing audit.

The comparison is somewhat unfair. Despite its name, Trump University was not a university. A New York judge ruled in 2014 that it was an unlicensed school. Three lawsuits — one filed by Mr Schneiderman, two by former students — have alleged it was a fraud. None of the suits has been tried. Mr Trump has denied wrongdoing and suggested that the US-born judge in the students’ cases is biased because his parents came from Mexico. He has also vowed to reopen his school — now called the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative.

As a business indicator, however, the appearance of both the Clintons and Mr Trump on the for-profit education scene was revealing. During the early years of this century, it seemed like everyone wanted to get in on the act — with investors, technologists and other business interests all looking to upend traditional educational models.

“You had hedge funds, private equity funds, all these coalitions of money that came into the for-profit education arena,” says AJ Angulo, author of Diploma Mills. “There was sort of a feverish approach to build up these institutions as quickly as possible.”

Laureate Education, the university chain’s parent, based in Baltimore, Maryland, was started by one of the more unlikely players in the game. Mr Becker, 50, the company’s chairman and chief executive, never attended university. While still in his teens, he and some friends developed a high-tech medical records card that made them millionaires in the 1980s.

Mr Becker and one of his partners turned to education in the early 1990s, acquiring Sylvan Learning Systems, a publicly traded tutoring company. From Sylvan grew Laureate, which began acquiring for-profit university assets in 1999, starting with the Universidad Europea de Madrid in Spain.

Mr Clinton became honorary chancellor in 2010 as US regulatory pressure on the education sector grew and industry participants realised that dealing with the government had become essential.

“For an education business, having political connections is a reality,” says Michael Moe, co-founder and chief investment officer of GSV Capital, a California fund manager with holdings in more than a dozen education companies. “[In] education, like healthcare, you have to have that as part of the playbook.”

[kscarbel2]

She's an awfully good dramatics actor.

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[1965]

25 minutes ago, kscarbel2 said:

She's an awfully good dramatics actor.

She's AWFUL for sure!

[kscarbel2]

Leaked DNC emails reveal the inner workings of the party’s finance operation

The Washington Post  /  July 24, 2016

In the rush for big donations to pay for this week’s Democratic convention, a party staffer reached out to Tennessee donor Roy Cockrum in May with a special offer: the chance to attend a roundtable discussion with President Obama.

Cockrum, already a major Democratic contributor, was in. He gave an additional $33,400. And eight days later, he was assigned a place across the table from Obama at the Jefferson Hotel in downtown Washington, according to a seating chart sent to the White House.

The 28-person gathering drew rave reviews from the wealthy party financiers who attended.

“Wonderful event yesterday,” New York lawyer Robert Pietrzak wrote to his Democratic National Committee (DNC) contact. “A lot of foreign policy, starting with my question on China. The President was in great form.”

The details of the high-dollar event were captured in the trove of internal DNC emails released last week by the site WikiLeaks that has riled the party as delegates gather in Philadelphia to nominate Hillary Clinton.

Internal discussions of the May 18 event with Obama and other aggressive efforts to woo major donors reveal how the drive for big money consumes the political parties as they scramble to keep up in the age of super PACs.

The DNC emails show how the party has tried to leverage its greatest weapon — the president — as it entices wealthy backers to bankroll the convention and other needs.

At times, DNC staffers used language in their pitches to donors that went beyond what lawyers said was permissible under a White House policy designed to prevent any perception that special interests have access to the president.

Top White House aides also get involved in wooing contributors, according to the emails.

White House political director David Simas, for instance, met in May with a half-dozen top party financiers in Chicago, including Fred Eychaner, one of the top Democratic donors in the country, the documents show.

Laws and ethics

White House officials said Obama’s attendance at DNC events is well within the law and the administration’s own ethics policies.

“As presidents of both parties have done for decades, President Obama takes seriously his role as the head of the Democratic Party,” White House spokeswoman Jennifer Friedman said in a statement. “To this end, the President participates in a range of events to raise awareness and support for the party, and to outline his priorities for making progress for the American people, in line with federal election and ethics laws.”

The leaked emails reveal the relentless art of donor maintenance that undergirds the system: the flattery, cajoling and favor-bestowing that goes into winning rich supporters. It’s a practice that the party fundraisers themselves often find dispiriting.

“He’s just awful and if I could have him sitting outside of the room, I absolutely would have,” a DNC finance staffer said of one Florida donor attending the May 18 event with Obama.

DNC finance officials did not respond to requests for comment. A party spokesman said the DNC had “revolutionized online fundraising and worked to rein in the influence of special interests” during Obama’s time in office. The spokesman said the DNC, while seeking to broaden its donor base to keep up with the Koch brothers and other wealthy conservative interests, had taken steps to “prevent any improper attempt to influence government policy.”

The DNC and its Republican counterpart have both stepped up their hunt for huge checks since a series of legal changes in 2014 gave them leeway to collect expansive contributions for new accounts to pay for building, legal and convention expenses.

The top-tier donor package for this week’s Democratic National Convention required a donor to raise $1.25 million or give $467,600 since January 2015, according to a document in the emails. In return, a contributor got booking in Philadelphia at a premier hotel, VIP credentials and six slots at “an exclusive roundtable and campaign briefing with high-level Democratic officials,” according to the terms.

Those perks were aggressively pushed to donors this spring as DNC staffers worked to try to pay for the party’s share of the convention, a tab that had been covered by public funds in previous years.

When Pietrzak, who had already given his annual maximum to the party, expressed interest in attending the May 18 event with Obama, a party staffer responded to her colleague: “No chance of getting more $ out of them, is there? Push the convention packages as an incentive?”

Pietrzak and other donors did not respond to requests for comment.

The emails also show the intensive efforts to get corporations to sign on as sponsors of the convention’s host committee — a reversal from 2012, when Obama prohibited such donations.

Last year, the DNC, in consultation with Clinton’s campaign, also decided to reverse a ban on donations from the PACs of corporations, unions and other groups.

After those limits were lifted, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other top party officials showered corporate lobbyists with calls, emails and personal meetings seeking convention support and PAC contributions to the party, according to a spreadsheet logging the contacts.

In one May email, a DNC finance staffer asked whether the conglomerate Honeywell could get a hotel room in Philadelphia for a $60,000 donation to the host committee.

“This is $60k we definitely wouldn’t get otherwise and Honeywell is the biggest PAC contributor in the country,” she wrote, adding: “They’re definitely a bit pissy about our PAC policy flip flop and that offering this gesture would definitely help our relationships with them for later in the election cycle and for years to come.”

The chance to build the event around the president in May set off a race inside the DNC finance office to recruit new donors.

“Have at it with Potus. Prefer at a hotel. No pacs and no lobbyists,” finance director Jordan Kaplan wrote to one of his deputies, Alexandra Shapiro, at the beginning of the month, adding: “This will probably be our only event in May. Lot of eyes on this one.”

“Wow! Really?” she responded excitedly, adding three applauding emoji.

Shapiro passed along the message about the event to her colleagues: “New money is the priority so if you have folks that are sitting on their max out, this may be a way to get them in,” she wrote.

Before the invitation was sent, an associate at Perkins Coie, the DNC’s outside law firm, weighed in with a caution on the language.

“Let’s remove the word round table on page 2 at the top (‘$33,400 — Round table discussion guest’),” Ruthzee Louijeune emailed Scott Comers, the DNC’s finance chief of staff. “As you know, WH policy restricts the use of language that gives the appearance that contributors can pay for policy access to the President.”

A place at the table

But the emails show several instances in which DNC fundraisers pitched donors with promises of a “roundtable” chat with Obama. On May 6, the southern finance director emailed ­Cockrum, the Tennessee donor, about packages available for the Philadelphia convention.

“If [you] were willing to contribute $33,400 we can bump you up a level to the Fairmont,” he wrote, referring to a luxury hotel. “Additionally, your generous contribution would allow you to attend a small roundtable we are having with President Obama in DC on May 18th or a dinner in NYC on June 8th.”

On the afternoon of the event, the place of honor, at Obama’s side, went to New York philanthropist Phil Munger. Kaplan noted to Shapiro in an email that Munger was one of the largest donors to Organizing for Action, a nonprofit group that advocates for Obama’s legislative agenda.

“It would be nice to take care of him from the DNC side,” Kaplan wrote, adding: “He is looking to give his money in new places and I would like that to be to us.”

DNC officials said there are no discussions with the nonprofit organization about its donors, noting that Munger’s support to the group is disclosed online.

Before the event, Simas, the White House political director, received a briefing from the DNC on what to expect of the contributors attending.

“They are interested in a conversation focused on business and economic concerns but many are also committed to education and social issues,” the memo read.

The next day, Shapiro told her colleague that the event had been a success.

“Q&A went well, very foreign affairs focused,” she wrote. “Dick got two questions in and Bill Eacho was very pleased with his seat. He seemed very open to the idea of doing something for us in the future, too. Thank you again for your help on this one! We raised a good chunk of change which was nice for a change (sorry for the pun, I had to).”

[TeamsterGrrrl]

I'm a party official, and I admit this is disgusting. Both the DNC and RNC have annual budgets in excess of one hundred million dollars. With those millions they can make or break campaigns, and thus prevent any independent candidate from getting nominated, never mind elected. We need to get these billions (yes, the total campaign spending is in the billions) and return to the people the right to elect the candidates and elected officials of their choice.

[kscarbel2]

The most damaging information in the DNC’s leaked emails

The Washington Post  /  July 24, 2016

Thousands of leaked emails have sealed the fate of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's uneven five-plus-year tenure as DNC chair.

Wasserman Schultz's resignation announcement Sunday afternoon comes as a bad situation just keeps getting worse -- and appears as though it might continue to do so. That's because {veil lifter}WikiLeaks has so far released nearly 20,000 emails, new details are still being discovered, and there is still the prospect of additional, damaging emails coming to light.

Many of the most damaging emails suggest the committee was actively trying to undermine Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign. Basically all of these examples came late in the primary -- after Hillary Clinton was clearly headed for victory -- but they belie the national party committee's stated neutrality in the race even at that late stage.

Below is a running list of the most troublesome findings for Wasserman Schultz and her party. As new revelations come out, we'll update it.

1) Targeting Sanders's religion?

On May 5, DNC officials appeared to conspire to raise Sanders's faith as an issue and press on whether he was an atheist -- apparently in hopes of steering religious voters in Kentucky and West Virginia to Clinton. Sanders is Jewish but has previously indicated that he's not religious.

One email from DNC chief financial officer Brad Marshall read: “It might may no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist."

Marshall added in a later email: “It’s these Jesus thing.”

In response, CEO Amy Dacey said: "Amen."

2) Wasserman Schultz calls top Sanders aide a "damn liar"...

On May 17, after controversy erupted over the Nevada state Democratic convention and how fair the process was there, Wasserman Schultz herself took exception to Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver's defense of his candidate's supporters.

"Damn liar," she wrote. "Particularly scummy that he barely acknowledges the violent and threatening behavior that occurred."

3) ... and says Sanders has "no understanding" of the party

That wasn't the only time Wasserman Schultz offered an unvarnished opinion about the Sanders operation. And in one late-April email, she even questioned Sanders's connection to the party.

"Spoken like someone who has never been a member of the Democratic Party and has no understanding of what we do," she said in response to a Politico story about Sanders saying the party hadn't been fair to him.

Sanders, for what it's worth, wasn't a Democrat before entering the Democratic primary. He caucused with the party but has long been an independent.

In that way, Wasserman Schultz's comments could be read simply as her defending her party; Sanders was attacking the party, after all. But her comment also suggests a particularly dim view of Sanders that she didn't feel the need to obscure in conversations with other DNC staff.

4) A Clinton lawyer gives DNC strategy advice on Sanders

When the Sanders campaign alleged that the Clinton campaign was improperly using its joint fundraising committee with the DNC to benefit itself, Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias offered the DNC guidance on how to respond.

"My suggestion is that the DNC put out a statement saying that the accusations the Sanders campaign are not true," Elias said May 3 in response to an email about the issue sent by communications director Luis Miranda to other DNC stuff that copied Elias and another lawyer at his firm, Perkins Coie.

Elias continued: "The fact that CNN notes that you aren’t getting between the two campaigns is the problem. Here, Sanders is attacking the DNC and its current practice, its past practice with the POTUS and with Sec Kerry. Just as the RNC pushes back directly on Trump over 'rigged system', the DNC should push back DIRECTLY at Sanders and say that what he is saying is false and harmful the the Democratic party."

Elias's guidance isn't perhaps all that shocking; he's Clinton's lawyer, after all. But the fact that he was talking to the DNC about how to respond would appear to suggest coordination between the DNC and Clinton campaign against Sanders in this particular case.

5) Plotting a narrative about how Sanders's campaign failed

On May 21, DNC national press secretary Mark Pautenbach suggested pushing a narrative that Sanders "never ever had his act together, that his campaign was a mess."

After detailing several arguments that could be made to push that narrative, Paustenbach concludes: "It's not a DNC conspiracy, it's because they never had their act together."

Paustenbach's suggestion, in that way, could be read as a defense of the committee rather than pushing negative information about Sanders. But this is still the committee pushing negative information about one of its candidates.

6) Mocking Sanders for his California debate push

One of the chief complaints from Sanders and his supporters was a lack of debates. They said the fact that there were so few was intended to help Clinton by reducing her opponents' exposure and their chances to knock her down.

After the Sanders campaign presumptuously declared that an agreement for an additional debate in California had been reached, Miranda responded to the Sanders campaign's release on May 18 simply:  "lol"

As noted, the release from the Sanders campaign was presumptuous in declaring that an agreement had been reached. Miranda could simply have been responding to the somewhat-silly tactic. But

The debate never actually happened, as the Clinton campaign later opted not to participate.

7) Wishing Sanders would just end it

Many of these emails came as it was clear Clinton was going to win -- which makes the apparent favoritism perhaps less offensive (though Sanders supporters would certainly disagree).

But it's also clear that there was plenty of cheerleading for the race to simply be over -- for Sanders to throw in the towel so that Clinton could be named the presumptive nominee. The party, of course, was still supposed to be neutral even though the odds and delegate deficit for Sanders looked insurmountable.

On May 1, in response to Sanders again saying he would push for a contested convention, Wasserman Schultz said, "So much for a traditional presumptive nominee."

8) Calling an alleged Sanders sympathizer a "Bernie bro"

The term "Bernie bro" -- or "Berniebro," depending on your style -- over the course of the campaign became a kind of shorthand for the worst kind of Sanders supporter. These were the supporters who couldn't be reasoned with and verbally assaulted opponents, sometimes in very nasty ways.

Some in the DNC apparently used the pejorative to refer to one particular radio host seen as overly sympathetic to Sanders, Sirius XM's Mark Thompson.

"Wait, this is a [expletive] topic," Miranda wrote on May 4 after Thompson's program director, David Guggenheim, requested an interview on a Clinton fundraising controversy. "Where is Guggenheim? Is he a Bernie Bro?"

"Must be a Bernie Bro," DNC broadcast booker Pablo Manriquez responds. "Per Mark’s sage, I turned him down flat (and politely) and inquired into opportunities next week to talk about something else.

9) Flippant chatter about donors

While the Sanders emails have gained the most attention, some of the more interesting emails involve a peek behind to curtain of how party officials talk about major donors.

In a May 16 exchange about where to seat a top Florida donor, national finance director Jordan Kaplan declared that "he doesn’t sit next to POTUS!" -- referring to President Obama.

“Bittel will be sitting in the sh---iest corner I can find,” responded Kaplan's deputy, Alexandra Shapiro. She also referred to other donors as "clowns."

Here are some other things Kaplan and Shapiro said about donors, via Karen Tumulty and Tom Hamburger:

Kaplan directed Shapiro to put New York philanthropist Philip Munger in the prime spot, switching out Maryland ophthalmologist Sreedhar Potarazu. He noted that Munger was one of the largest donors to Organizing for America, a nonprofit that advocates for Obama’s policies. “It would be nice to take care of him from the DNC side,” Kaplan wrote.

Shapiro pushed back, noting that Munger had given only $100,600 to the party, while the Potarazu family had contributed $332,250.

In one email attachment from Erik Stowe, the finance director for Northern California, to Tammy Paster, a fundraising consultant, he lists the benefits given to different tiers of donors to the Democratic National Convention, which starts next week in Philadelphia. The tiers range from a direct donation of $66,800 to one of $467,600 to the DNC. The documents also show party officials discussing how to reward people who bundle between $250,000 to $1.25 million.

 

[kscarbel2]

CNN  /  July 25, 2016

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was booed by his own supporters earlier Monday when he spoke about the need to elect Clinton.

"We have got to defeat Donald Trump and do everything we can to elect Hillary Clinton to the White House," said Sanders.

[kscarbel2]

The Guardian  /  July 25, 2016

The DNC issued an apology on Monday to Bernie Sanders and his supporters over leaked emails that showed bias among party officials towards his opponent, Hillary Clinton, as the DNC opened amid chaotic scenes of Sanders supporters booing the nominee.

“On behalf of everyone at the DNC, we want to offer a deep and sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the inexcusable remarks made over email,” Democratic Party officials said.

The controversy led to the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz as party chair on Sunday. Wasserman Schultz was booed off stage by delegates from her home state of Florida

The FBI announced on Monday it was launching an investigation into the hack of the DNC’s email server that led to the publication of the emails.

Sanders supporters who had long doubted the neutrality of national party officials.

Sanders supporters adopted one of Donald Trump’s attack lines against Clinton outside the hall, chanting “lock her up” .

Sanders himself seemed incapable of controlling some of his more passionate supporters. Loud boos could be heard from within the closed-room meeting as the Vermont senator told them: “We have got to defeat Donald Trump and we have got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine … This is the world we live in.”

Clinton will formally accept the Democratic nomination for president on Thursday, after speeches from Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama.

Trump seized on the scandal during a rally in Roanoke, Virginia, to bolster his charge that Clinton was representative of a “rigged system”.

“Debbie was totally loyal to Hillary and Hillary threw her under a bus,” Trump said of Wasserman Schultz’s departure.

“It didn’t take her more than five minutes to make that decision,” he continued. “Man, I don’t want her covering my back, I’ll tell you right now.”

Trump mocked the assertions at his campaign event, pivoting instead to the possibility that foreign governments might have access to Clinton’s private email server.

“She worked very, very hard to rig the system. Little did she know that China, Russia – one of our many, many ‘friends’ – came in and hacked the hell out of us,” Trump said.

“Why did Hillary get rid of her middle name? Hillary Rotten Clinton,” he added. )Clinton often goes by her full name, Hillary Rodham Clinton.)

Regardless of its origins, the DNC email leak has emboldened Sanders supporters, showing up in numbers with banners and T-shirts declaring “Bernie or Bust” and “Feel the Bern”. They have argued all along that the DNC tilted the scales in Clinton’s favor.

Although the emails do not contain evidence that officials actively worked against the senator, top staffers exchanged emails that showed personal bias toward Clinton and a desire to push narratives in the media that would hurt Sanders’ campaign.

 “The WikiLeaks emails reaffirm in the minds of delegates that we were given a raw deal and the primary was rigged from the very beginning to favor Mrs Clinton,” said Karen Bernal, a Sanders-supporting delegate from Sacramento.

“People will ask: ‘Why can’t we have party unity, we are here to pick a nominee,’ but Sanders owes his success to protest movements outside the party. So it should not come as a surprise that a lot of the expressions that we see are going to reflect the zeitgeist outside the convention.”

“We are a little pissed off,” added Manuel Zapata, another angry California delegate. “Since the moment we got here, people have looked down on us when they walked past them with our campaign swag on.

“They throw party unity around as if it’s something that should make us jump for joy when her name is mentioned but everything that has happened over the last year pulls away from that.”

[kscarbel2]

"Any objective observer will conclude that -- based on her ideas and her leadership -- Hillary Clinton must become the next president of the United States," said Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

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[kscarbel2]

1990s scandal returns to haunt the Clintons

Associated Press  /  July 28, 2016

A Chinese billionaire at the center of a 20-year-old Clinton foreign donor scandal is being called in to answer questions from Congress about his role in the influence-buying scheme, in a move that could revive yet another Clinton controversy from the 1990s.

The House Oversight Committee says it will seek an interview with Ng Lap Seng, 68, who evaded congressional investigators for years.

He has now re-appeared in the United States and is being held in New York on “unrelated” bribery charges.

Ng, a Macau businessman with ties to the Chinese government, was accused of funneling over $1 million in illegal foreign donations to support Bill Clinton's reelection campaign in 1996. 

At the time, Ng refused to come to the U.S. to cooperate with congressional investigators in the case, which became a sweeping national scandal and raised suspicions about Chinese government efforts to influence the U.S. election.

Congressional investigators say Ng laundered the illegal campaign donations through a close Clinton associate in Arkansas named Charlie Trie during the 1996 election. 

Trie, who sent the donations to the Democratic National Committee and Clinton's legal defense fund, pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws in 1999.

The House Oversight Committee said it will take the opportunity to finally question Ng about the foreign donation scheme now that he is under house detention at a $3 million Manhattan apartment, awaiting trial on separate charges that he tried to bribe a top UN official.

Then Republican Senator Fred Thompson chaired the committee and said that it found that China's Communist government was involved in a plan 'to pour illegal money into American political campaigns' in an effort to 'subvert our election process'.

However, other lawmakers, including Senator Joe Lieberman, said there was not convincing evidence that China was directly involved in the funding. 

Ng's attorney, Hugh Hu Mo, who has also represented Chinese government entities, said he would oppose any efforts by Congress to question his client. 

The House Oversight Committee could override this by issuing a subpoena for Ng's testimony.

The timing could be a blow to the Clinton campaign, reigniting a decades old foreign corruption scandal just as Hillary Clinton has secured the Democratic presidential nomination. 

The Clinton Foundation has previously faced scrutiny for accepting millions from foreign governments while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.

The House Oversight Committee's move comes on the heels of a letter from the watchdog group Citizens United, which asked Ng's attorney to make him available for interviews with congress.

David Bossie, president of Citizens United, was the former chief investigator for the House Oversight Committee during the foreign donor probe in the late 1990s. 

He said in a letter to Ng's attorney on Wednesday that the committee had obtained substantial evidence of Ng's involvement in the donation scheme.

'Although Mr. Ng did not cooperate, the Committee's investigation uncovered substantial information about financial transactions involving your client that appear to have been aimed at influencing the outcome of the 1996 presidential election in favor of Bill Clinton,' wrote Bossie.

Bossie said that now that Ng is under house arrest in New York, 'I ask that you consider making him available for an interview with Congress to answer questions about his alleged role in influencing the 1996 presidential election.'

The letter, which was copied to House Oversight Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz and Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley, also suggested that Congress could grant immunity on the pending bribery charges to Ng 'in exchange for his critical testimony concerning the alleged foreign influence of our nation's sacred presidential election process'.

Ng was arrested in New York last year and charged with bringing suitcases of cash into the U.S. to bribe officials, including the former president of the UN general assembly. Prosecutors say the scheme also involved Chinese government officials.

John Ashe, 61, the former president of the UN general assembly accused of accepting the bribes from Ng, was allegedly killed by a barbell weight while working out last month. He was also under investigation at the time. 

In 1997, investigators on the Senate Government Affairs committee said they found evidence linking the Communist Chinese government to the foreign donation scheme. 

The issue of foreign meddling in US elections has been in the spotlight in recent days, with the Clinton campaign trying to link Donald Trump to the Russian government's suspected role in the recent hack of internal DNC emails.

But the Ng case shows that allegations of foreign influence in presidential campaigns is not new, and that outside governments have long been suspected of working to sway outcomes and purchase political influence.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Disgraced ex-UN official’s death ‘conveniently timed’

Reuters  /  June 26, 2016

The death by barbell of disgraced UN official John Ashe could become a bigger obsession for conspiracy theorists than Vince Foster’s 1993 suicide.

Ashe — who was facing trial for tax fraud — died Wednesday afternoon in his house in Westchester County. The UN said he’d had a heart attack. But the local Dobbs Ferry police said Thursday that his throat had been crushed, presumably by a barbell he dropped while pumping iron [or.....it was made to appear that way].

Ashe was due in court Monday with his Chinese businessman co-defendant Ng Lap Seng, who is charged with smuggling $4.5 million into the US since 2013 and lying that it was to buy art and casino chips.

Ng was identified in a 1998 Senate report as the source of hundreds of thousands of dollars illegally funneled through an Arkansas restaurant owner, Taiwan-born Charlie Trie, to the Democratic National Committee during the Clinton administration.

Ng and Trie had visited the White House several times for Democratic fundraising events and were photographed with then-President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton

“During the trial, the prosecutors would have linked Ashe to the Clinton bagman Ng. It would have been very embarrassing. His death was conveniently timed,” said one source.

Ashe’s lawyer Jeremy Schneider argues that Ashe’s death was an accident. “There is not one iota of evidence that it was homicide. This is nothing at all like Vince Foster.”

Police in Dobbs Ferry village are keeping the investigation open pending an autopsy by the Westchester medical examiner.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chinese Plan to Buy U.S. Influence Alleged

The Washington Post  /  July 9, 1997

The Senate yesterday began long-awaited hearings on the campaign finance improprieties of 1996 with an accusation that the Chinese government is trying to buy influence with American politicians.

In the most direct and aggressive statement to date about alleged foreign interference in the U.S. political process, Senator Fred D. Thompson (R-Tenn.) said that investigators from his Governmental Affairs Committee had found evidence of a Chinese plan "designed to pour illegal money into American political campaigns." He said its aim was to "subvert our election process" and that it touched the 1996 presidential campaign and state elections that year.

Thompson described the plan as the work of "high-level Chinese government officials" who committed "substantial sums of money" to achieve their goals. "Our investigation suggests the plan continues today," he said.

The chairman's opening statement was intended to get the delayed hearings off to a dramatic start and to draw attention to what Republicans hope will be one of the most productive parts of their investigation.

Following Thompson, Senator John Glenn (Ohio), the committee's ranking Democrat, also sought a dramatic beginning, disclosing that John Huang, a central figure in the morass of questionable Democratic fund-raising practices during the last election cycle, had agreed to testify before the committee if given a limited grant of immunity from prosecution.

Huang, a prolific fund-raiser and former Commerce Department official who some Republicans have suggested may be guilty of espionage, previously had said he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination if called before the committee. The panel later voted to pursue his offer, but several members, including Democrats, urged caution and expressed skepticism that a limited immunity agreement could be reached.

Glenn also took aim at what he and other Democrats on the panel hope to make as much a focus of attention as Huang – the National Policy Forum established by then-Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour, which Glenn charged was "little more than a front for the RNC" that was used to funnel foreign money to the GOP.

Yesterday's session was devoted to relatively brief presentations by each of the committee's nine Republicans and seven Democrats. Witnesses will begin appearing this morning, led by Richard Sullivan, the former finance director of the Democratic National Committee, who will be followed by other party officials, White House aides and independent fund-raisers.

Thompson provided no specific details about the alleged Chinese plan, saying that the committee would have further discussions about it in closed session. He said the committee's information had been developed along with a continuing FBI investigation. Committee Democrats and White House officials said later they thought Thompson had exaggerated the significance of the Chinese effort.

Saying that he has seen the same information as Thompson, Glenn said that Thompson's charges "went a little further than I would choose to go," which was why "I was not willing to sign off" on the statement.

Foreign governments routinely engage in lobbying efforts to advance their interests, a legal activity. But contributions to U.S. political candidates by foreign individuals, companies or governments are illegal under U.S. election laws.

Led by Thompson, GOP members of the panel focused attention on allegations of widespread campaign finance abuses during the last election cycle by the DNC, the White House and President Clinton's reelection campaign.

"There apparently was a systematic influx of illegal money in our presidential race last year," Thompson said. "We will be wanting to know: Who knew about it? Who should have known about it? And was there an attempt to cover it up?"

Thompson promised to hold hearings later on broader issues of campaign finance reform such as the growing use of unlimited "soft money" contributions to the two major political parties. But, he added, "we cannot move forward unless we have accountability for the past. We cannot let calls for campaign finance reform act as a shield to prevent examination of the violations of existing law. Otherwise, calls for reform will be viewed as merely partisan and the cause of reform will be hurt, not enhanced."

Other Republicans echoed these sentiments. Asserting that "we are here today largely because of an ethical indifference which some in the Democratic National Committee and the White House displayed toward fund-raising in the 1996 presidential campaign," Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) urged Democrats on the panel to "go where the evidence leads."

"The White House and others under scrutiny must be more forthcoming," she added. "The president cannot credibly preach the gospel of campaign finance reform unless his aides and supporters are prepared to let the light of day shine on their activities."

"Some would suggest . . . we really don't need these hearings, we only need to reform the campaign laws," said Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.). "But reforming the laws will not solve the problem if officials are already ignoring or violating those already on the books."

But it was precisely broad finance reform that the Democrats most wanted to talk about. If all the committee does is expose illegalities, including the use of foreign money in campaigns, Glenn said, "we will have failed in this investigation, and failed miserably."

"The measure of success for this investigation will be whether it produces congressional action for campaign finance reform – substantial reform, not the 'little bit of reform' some in Congress might advocate to reduce public pressure."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Underdog]

Seems like John Ashe got the " Vince Foster" treatment.

[grayhair]

Interesting, but the people that will vote for Hilary just don't care.

[41chevy]

11 hours ago, grayhair said:

Interesting, but the people that will vote for Hilary just don't care.

You Are Wrong!!  The do care...............................about freebies, Welfare, Free Phones, Food Stamps, Section 8 Housing , free Insurance and more ( act now and Social Securiy will add in a free BMW).    Trump will end 90% of them........

[kscarbel2]

The Clinton Foundation, State and Kremlin Connections

Peter Schweizer, The Wall Street Journal  /  July 31, 2016

Why did Hillary’s State Department urge U.S. investors to fund Russian research for military uses?

Hillary Clinton touts her tenure as secretary of state as a time of hardheaded realism and “commercial diplomacy” that advanced American national and commercial interests. But her handling of a major technology transfer initiative at the heart of Washington’s effort to “reset” relations with Russia raises serious questions about her record. Far from enhancing American national interests, Mrs. Clinton’s efforts in this area may have substantially undermined U.S. national security.

Consider Skolkovo, an “innovation city” of 30,000 people on the outskirts of Moscow, billed as Russia’s version of Silicon Valley—and a core piece of Mrs. Clinton’s quarterbacking of the Russian reset.

Following his 2009 visit to Moscow, President Obama announced the creation of the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission. Mrs. Clinton as secretary of state directed the American side, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov represented the Russians. The stated goal at the time: “identifying areas of cooperation and pursuing joint projects and actions that strengthen strategic stability, international security, economic well-being, and the development of ties between the Russian and American people.”

The Kremlin committed $5 billion over three years to fund Skolkovo. Mrs. Clinton’s State Department worked aggressively to attract U.S. investment partners and helped the Russian State Investment Fund, Rusnano, identify American tech companies worthy of Russian investment.

Rusnano, which a scientific adviser to President Vladimir Putin called “Putin’s child,” was created in 2007 and relies entirely on Russian state funding.

What could possibly go wrong?

Soon, dozens of U.S. tech firms, including top Clinton Foundation donors like Google, Intel and Cisco, made major financial contributions to Skolkovo, with Cisco committing a cool $1 billion. In May 2010, the State Department facilitated a Moscow visit by 22 of the biggest names in U.S. venture capital—and weeks later the first memorandums of understanding were signed by Skolkovo and American companies.

By 2012 the vice president of the Skolkovo Foundation, Conor Lenihan—who had previously partnered with the Clinton Foundation—recorded that Skolkovo had assembled 28 Russian, American and European “Key Partners.”

Of the 28 “partners,” 17, or 60%, have made financial commitments to the Clinton Foundation, totaling tens of millions of dollars, or sponsored speeches by Bill Clinton.

Russians tied to Skolkovo also flowed funds to the Clinton Foundation.

Andrey Vavilov, the chairman of SuperOx, which is part of Skolkovo’s nuclear-research cluster, donated between $10,000 and $25,000 (donations are reported in ranges, not exact amounts) to the Clinton’s family charity.

Skolkovo Foundation chief and billionaire Putin confidant Viktor Vekselberg also gave to the Clinton Foundation through his company, Renova Group.

Amid all the sloshing of Russia rubles and American dollars, however, the state-of-the-art technological research coming out of Skolkovo raised alarms among U.S. military experts and federal law-enforcement officials.

Research conducted in 2012 on Skolkovo by the U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Program at Fort Leavenworth declared that the purpose of Skolkovo was to serve as a “vehicle for world-wide technology transfer to Russia in the areas of information technology, biomedicine, energy, satellite and space technology, and nuclear technology.”

Moreover, the report said: “the Skolkovo Foundation has, in fact, been involved in defense-related activities since December 2011, when it approved the first weapons-related project—the development of a hypersonic cruise missile engine. . . . Not all of the center’s efforts are civilian in nature.”

Technology can have multiple uses—civilian and military. But in 2014 the Boston Business Journal ran an op-ed placed by the FBI, and noted that the agency had sent warnings to technology and other companies approached by Russian venture-capital firms.

The op-ed—under the byline of Lucia Ziobro, an assistant special agent at the FBI’s Boston office—said that “The FBI believes the true motives of the Russian partners, who are often funded by their government, is to gain access to classified, sensitive, and emerging technology from the companies.”

Ms. Ziobro also wrote that “The [Skolkovo] foundation may be a means for the Russian government to access our nation’s sensitive or classified research development facilities and dual-use technologies with military and commercial application.”

To anyone who was paying attention, the FBI’s warnings should have come as little surprise.

A State Department cable sent to then-Secretary Clinton (and obtained via WikiLeaks) mentioned possible “dual use and export control concerns” related to research and development technology ventures with Moscow.

And in its own promotional literature Skolkovo heralded the success of its development of the Atlant hybrid airship.

“Particularly noteworthy is Atlant’s ability to deliver military cargoes,” boasts the Made in Skolkovo publication: “The introduction of this unique vehicle is fully consistent with the concept of creating a mobile army and opens up new possibilities for mobile use of the means of radar surveillance, air and missile defense, and delivery of airborne troops.”

Even if it could be proven that these tens of millions of dollars in Clinton Foundation donations by Skolkovo’s key partners played no role in the Clinton State Department’s missing or ignoring obvious red flags about the Russian enterprise, the perception would still be problematic.

(Neither the Clinton campaign nor the Clinton Foundation responded to requests for comment.)

What is known is that the State Department recruited and facilitated the commitment of billions of American dollars in the creation of a Russian “Silicon Valley” whose technological innovations include Russian hypersonic cruise-missile engines, radar surveillance equipment, and vehicles capable of delivering airborne Russian troops.

A Russian reset, indeed.

Mr. Schweizer is president of the Government Accountability Institute and the author of “ Clinton Cash.” A larger report on the subject of this article is available at Cronyism.com.

[kscarbel2]

Clinton's private server held emails about just executed Iranian nuclear spy

The Washington Examiner  /  August 7, 2016

Hillary Clinton recklessly discussed, in emails hosted on her private server, an Iranian nuclear scientist who was executed by Iran for treason, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said Sunday.

"I'm not going to comment on what he may or may not have done for the United States government, but in the emails that were on Hillary Clinton's private server, there were conversations among her senior advisors about this gentleman," he said, speaking about Shahram Amiri, who gave information to the U.S. about Iran's nuclear program.

The senator said this lapse proves she is not capable of keeping the country safe.

"That goes to show just how reckless and careless her decision was to put that kind of highly classified information on a private server. And I think her judgment is not suited to keep this country safe," he said.

The revelation could cause further political damage to Clinton, who was already on the defensive Sunday after commenting oddly last week that she had "short-circuited" in a statement related to her honesty about the email scandal.

Republican nominee Donald Trump seized on the statement to question her mental stability.

Iran confirmed on Sunday that Amiri had been hanged for treason. He was convicted of spying charges in a death sentence case that was upheld on appeal, according to the Associated Press.

"This person who had access to the country's secret and classified information had been linked to our hostile and No. 1 enemy, America, the Great Satan" a spokesman for the Iranian judiciary said. "He provided the enemy with vital and secret information of the country."

His body was returned to his mother with rope marks around the neck.

It would appear possible that discussion on an unclassified — and quite possibly hacked — email system about a person who was hanged as a spy will have a chilling effect on others who might want to engage in espionage for the United States.

Amiri disappeared while on a religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in 2009, but he then resurfaced a year later in the U.S., where he visited the Iranian interest section of the Pakistani embassy and demanded to be sent home to Iran. While Amiri told reporters that he was held against his will by both the Saudis and the Americans, U.S. officials said he was receiving millions of dollars for information he provided about Iran's nuclear program.

The scientist shows up in Clinton's emails back in 2010, just nine days before he returned to Iran.

"We have a diplomatic, 'psychological' issue, not a legal one. Our friend has to be given a way out," the email by Richard Morningstar, a former State Department special envoy for Eurasian energy, read, according to the Associated Press. "Our person won't be able to do anything anyway. If he has to leave so be it."

Cotton Sunday also accused the Obama administration of "working like a gun cartel" by sending $400 million to Iran in what many regard as ransom for hostages.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Associated Press  /  August 7, 2016

Shahram Amiri, who was hanged on Sunday for 'revealing secrets to the enemy', was in the US and informing on Tehran's extensive nuclear program during Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State.

At the time, Clinton stressed the researcher had been in the US of his 'own free will' and was described as 'our friend' in correspondences.

But Amiri maintained he had been kidnapped by intelligence agents.

Emails sent by Clinton's advisers point to the scandal involving Amiri - suggesting it was a 'diplomatic, psychological issue', but not a 'legal one'.  

One aide also warned he would lead to 'problematic news stories'. 

Richard Morningstar, a former State Department special envoy for Eurasian energy wrote to Clinton: 'We should recognize his concerns and frame it in terms of a misunderstanding with no malevolent intent and that we will make sure there is no recurrence.

'Our friend has to be given a way out. Our person won't be able to do anything anyway. If he has to leave so be it.'

Senior adviser Jake Sullivan sent another email about Amiri on July 12, 2010.

It appears he is referring to the scientist just hours before he showed up at the Iranian interests section of the Pakistani Embassy in Washington D.C., demanding he be sent home.

He said: 'The gentleman... has apparently gone to his country's interests section because he is unhappy with how much time it has taken to facilitate his departure. 

'This could lead to problematic news stories in the next 24 hours.'

Amiri went missing in 2009 after leaving for a pilgrimage to Mecca, but appeared in a video - apparently recorded in the U.S. - in which he claimed to have been put under pressure to 'reveal sensitive information' to the intelligence agency.

In interviews, he has claimed he was drugged, put on a plane, and then kept under 'psychological pressure' at an undisclosed location in the U.S.

There he was asked to hand over classified documents, but he claims he never did as he didn't want to betray his country.  

He then walked into the Iranian interests section at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington and demanded to be sent home.  

He came back to a hero's welcome and insisted he was a 'simple researcher'. 

Amiri worked for a university affiliated with Tehran's extensive nuclear program.

He is said to have had an in-depth knowledge of Iran's nuclear program and was kept at a secret location after returning to the country.

According to CBS, he told officials in interviews that he was being held against his will by Saudi and U.S. spies.

American officials said he was set to receive millions for informing.  

Amiri's mother told the BBC that his body had been sent to her with rope marks around his neck.

On Sunday, an Iranian judicial spokesman confirmed the execution had taken place.

He told the Mizan Online news site: 'Shahram Amiri was hanged for revealing the country's top secrets to the enemy (US).'

In another recording filmed when he was missing, the scientist suggested he had fled from the USA, where he had been held against his will. 

But US officials said they paid Amiri some $5 million to defect and provide 'significant' information about Iran's atomic program.

Amiri later fled the U.S. without the money.

Iranian officials previously touted Amiri's claim he had been abducted by U.S. agents while on a pilgrimage to holy sites in Saudi Arabia.

They welcomed him home in 2010 as a hero.

But his family confirmed to the BBC he had been given a lengthy jail sentence after returning to the Middle East. 

The State Department declined to comment on Amiri's execution. 

Amiri's disappearance will raise concerns about the future of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian aid worker being held by Tehran. 

The 37-year-old, who was arrested as she tried to leave Iran after a visit with her two-year-old daughter, appeared in the Revolutionary Court on Monday. 

'We continue to raise our strong concerns about British prisoners in Iran, including Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, at the highest levels in both London and Tehran,' a spokeswoman for Britain's Foreign Office said.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 37, works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, a London-based charity that is independent of Thomson Reuters and operates independently of Reuters News.

The Foreign Office spokeswoman said former Prime Minister David Cameron had repeatedly raised the case with his Iranian counterpart.

'We are deeply concerned by recent reports that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been charged but has not been allowed to see a lawyer,' the spokeswoman said.

'We remain ready to facilitate Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's daughter's return to the UK if requested.'  

.

 

[41chevy]

Her media lap dogs sure do support her.

She makes a big point of Trump ties being made in China, while wearing an Armani $6,000 to $15,000 dollar pants suit,  made in....Indonesia, Bangladesh or China. Ehen questioned about the origin of the suit, she stated hr "people" get her clothes and she has no idea who makes them or where, she just chooses the colors. 

Her Ex CIA Chief no supports her and lied about Bengazi, the E mails and other State Department hacks. He now works for a Clinton Foundation owned company and states that Trump is a Russian Spy because Putin thinks Trump is a tough guy and likes him. Mean while Hillary's PAC and the Clinton foundation have received large donations from the Russian Political Bloc.

Hillary has snubbed the Fraternal Order of Police to support the Black Lives Matter group and blames the Criminal Justice system, LEO's and other first responders for the black crime problems.

Hillary also blamed Trump the the Taj Mahal  Casino closing in Atlantic City and putting 3000 Union workers out of work. But omitted  to mention that 1) Trump does not own the casino. 2) 5 casinos in Atlantic City have closed up since 2014 or 3) that the Union demands and length of strike bankrupted the casino.

[HarryS]

It was also reported today that a wrongful death suit has been filed against Hillary by two of the families of those killed in Benghazi.

[kscarbel2]

Hillary Clinton? Never.

The National Interest  /  August 8, 2016

When Bill and Hillary Clinton arrived in Washington as president and first lady in 1993, the Wall Street Journal editorial page went on the attack, suggesting they brought with them from Arkansas a brand of politics that was inherently corrupt, with personal gain routinely and consistently factored into official decision making. The paper took a lot of heat for this line of editorial criticism in the absence of definitive proof of mendacity on the part of the new president and his wife.

Then came the cattle-futures scandal, in which Hillary hauled down a $98,540 profit in cattle futures in less than a year of trading on a $1,000 investment, without maintaining the normally required fund reserve to diminish the risk of leverage. Further, she was advised on the matter by an outside lawyer for Tyson Foods, a giant Arkansas company with big interests before the state government, where Bill Clinton served as attorney general and then governor.

Thus began a pattern that has led us to Hillary Clinton now as the Democratic presidential nominee even as multiple polls indicate that fully two thirds of Americans consider her dishonest and untrustworthy. During the Clinton White House years, following the cattle-futures scandal, came "travelgate," "filegate," and the Whitewater land investment scandal, in which a box of missing papers, under subpoena for two years, miraculously appeared in the White House living quarters—but only in copy form; the originals were never recovered. It seemed that the Clintons were constantly mired in scandal or hints of scandal, always struggling to stay ahead of nettlesome little revelations that raised persistent questions about their ethical rectitude.

There can be no doubt that these episodes from the distant past, combined with Hillary Clinton’s more recent ethical lapses related to her doing public business on a private email server, have contributed to her reputation as a person who can’t be trusted to tell the truth or conduct herself strictly on the up and up.

Does it matter? That’s for the voters to decide. But every voting booth decision requires a multidimensional analysis that includes an assessment of the favorable and unfavorable attributes of each candidate. Herewith an assessment of Hillary Clinton’s unfavorable attributes, constituting a case against her. This isn’t designed to be definitive for any voting decision but rather a warning that all candidates have downsides, and Clinton’s are significant.

One could argue, in fact, that the Democratic Party was reckless in granting her the nomination, given her past embroilment in scandal and prospects that new revelations could catch up with her during the campaign or through her presidency. Although FBI Director James Comey didn’t recommend an indictment against her related to her email server, he said she was "extremely careless" in her handling of "very sensitive, highly classified information." Thus, he declined to take actions to destroy her candidacy and left it to voters to assess the magnitude of her lapses.

But the recklessness of her behavior is reflected in questions now being raised about whether damaging new revelations about her could be forthcoming from hackers, foreign or domestic, who gained knowledge of her activity via her unprotected server. Security experts have suggested there is a strong likelihood that China, Russia and other hackers gained access to all 63,000 emails on Clinton’s private, unprotected server—including the 33,000 she destroyed under the contention that they were merely personal and had nothing to do with her official actions and decisions.

But if those emails contain evidence of questionable actions, as the Wall Street Journal’s L. Gordon Crovitz has argued, Russian President Vladimir Putin "will have the capacity to blackmail her at will" should she become president.

What kind of evidence of questionable actions could be found there? We don’t know, but it would be imprudent to dismiss the possibility that it could be related to the Clinton Foundation, that international good-works institution created by Bill Clinton that doubles as a repository of political/financial power for the Clintons. It has served as a lucrative way station for Clinton cronies waiting for Hillary Clinton’s next campaign. It has positioned Bill Clinton to collect huge speaking fees from major overseas and American corporations and from foreign governments—some $105 million for 542 speeches between the time he left the White House and the time Hillary left her job as secretary of state, according to the Washington Post.  It has rewarded Clinton friends and political allies within a Clinton network that constitutes a potent political force.

The foundation, we learn (though not from the Clintons), continued to receive money from foreign governments even during Hillary’s tenure as secretary of state, although she had promised that no such money would be accepted during her public service. The money flowed in from such countries as Algeria, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Swiss bank UBS contributed some $500,000 after Secretary Clinton helped settle an IRS problem dogging the bank. The Associated Press reported that Hillary Clinton excised from her official State Department calendar some seventy-five meetings she held with "longtime political donors, Clinton Foundation contributors, and corporate and other outside interests."

Was there actual corruption going on here in the form of quid pro quos, or merely the appearance of corruption? We don’t know, though those 33,000 emails may hold the key to that question. But, in any event, we see a pattern that first came to light with the cattle futures scandal—big sums of money flowing to the Clintons as they conducted official business to the benefit of the individuals and organizations providing the money.

Leaving aside the corruption question, the Clinton Foundation represents a giant stride toward American oligarchy—the flow of power from the people at large to clever and connected elites who know how to game the system to their political and financial advantage. It is noteworthy that, in this year of seething political anger directed against the country’s elites, Hillary Clinton is emerging as the likely next president even as she projects herself as the embodiment of what is stirring all that national anger.

Which brings us to another major element in the case against Hillary Clinton. She will give us, as many have suggested, Barack Obama’s third term. The country is deeply divided on the Obama presidency, and it’s appropriate that Americans should debate his legacy as his departure nears after White House eight years. But, whatever one may say about him, it can’t be denied that he failed to solve the country’s crisis of deadlock. When the country needed a new paradigm of governmental thinking to break the deadlock and move the country in a new direction, he doubled down on the stale old politics perpetuating the political stalemate of our time.

There is no reason to believe Hillary Clinton would break the deadlock. She represents the politics of old when the country desperately seeks something fresh, capable of scrambling up the old political fault lines and forging new political coalitions that can give propulsion to a struggling America. Hence, under her leadership, we likely will see the continuation of the current deadlock crisis for another four years. That’s a long time for that kind of crisis to fester, generating ever greater anger, frustration and civic tension.

[kscarbel2]

For Kaine, war powers issue shows a break with Clinton — and a push that fell short

The Washington Post  /  August 8, 2016

Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia is holding fast to his long-held belief that the current military operation against Islamic State forces has not been properly approved by Congress — a position that puts him at odds not only with President Obama but also with his running mate, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Kaine placed the blame squarely on Congress for its inability to tackle the issue.

“I don’t think the current legal authorities are sufficient to wage this war against ISIS,” Kaine said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.

As Obama’s first secretary of state, Clinton supported the president’s position that he had all the authority he needed to wage military action in Syria, Iraq and other trouble spots without first seeking congressional approval.

While she has supported Kaine’s push for more congressional action, Clinton has also been clear that she will continue to act under the same authority Obama has, even when Capitol Hill doesn’t weigh in.

Kaine’s ongoing, unsuccessful effort to draft and win approval for a new war resolution serves as a window into how Kaine views the relationship between the executive and legislative branches. It has also shown the limitations of his ability to coax allies across the finish line, even on his hallmark issue — suggesting that his courtship approach might not work in today’s hyper-partisan era.

Finally, how Kaine handles this issue going forward will offer telling evidence of his influence within the next administration, should the Democrats win.

The first clue came when he delivered his 30-minute acceptance speech for the vice-presidential nomination in Philadelphia last month — without mentioning the war powers issue.

Nowhere did Kaine describe how much he has tried to compel Congress to define the parameters of an increasingly hot war.

After winning election in 2012, Kaine led the effort to draw up a new war resolution to replace those written more than a decade ago to take on Osama bin Laden and then Saddam Hussein. Almost single-handedly, he turned what congressional leaders in both parties had considered a nuisance into a defining cause about congressional duty and the constitutional boundaries a president faces.

“The unwillingness of this Congress to authorize the war not only shows a lack of resolve, it sets a dangerous precedent,” Kaine said in early June, introducing amendments to try to force a debate on the issue. “It’s not hard to imagine a future president using this inaction to justify the hasty and unpredictable initiation of military action.”

But Kaine, 58, and a small band of younger allies in the Senate failed. They never even got full consideration in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on which he serves.

Even Kaine’s close friends recognize that he now must adhere to whatever posture Clinton takes on this issue.

“Tim knows he’s applying for a job that is very different,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a close ally who sits next to Kaine on the Foreign Relations Committee.

However, Kaine’s generation of lawmakers hope that in choosing her running mate, Clinton demonstrated that she wants to engage Congress on a new authorization for the use of military force, as war resolutions are technically known.

Given the past two years of gridlock on the issue, Kaine faces long odds of being any more successful on crafting and passing a war resolution as Clinton’s vice president.

It had been an area of concern for several years, but in the summer of 2014 — as the Islamic State took over more land in Syria and Iraq while committing high-profile murders of Western hostages — Obama ramped up a bombing campaign and sent more U.S. troops into those hostile territories to help advise Iraqi military leaders.

At issue is the president’s authority to take the country to war without first seeking congressional approval. Obama has claimed that congressional authorizations passed in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, permit him to order any actions combating terrorism. And he has bluntly said that he has no timeline for how long the forces would be deployed.

Kaine has said that the post-Sept. 11 authorizations were too “open-ended,” arguing that actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria all required separate congressional approval.

One of those resolutions was meant to target bin Laden, who was killed in 2011; the other dealt with Hussein, who was captured, tried and killed by the new Iraqi government in 2006.

In an early 2015 interview, after Republicans took the Senate, Kaine said that he would judge Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s stewardship of the chamber on a single issue, whether he allowed a full war debate on the Senate floor.

One of the ironies in the fact that it never happened is that Republicans were fully willing to approve a broad, sweeping authorization giving Obama, and any future president, almost unlimited power to go after ISIS. It was the Democrats, including Kaine, who wanted to place limits on both time and deployment of ground troops on any future authorizations.

“There’s no reason for us to give him less authority than what he has today, which is what he’s asking for,” John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), the House speaker at the time, told reporters after a 2015 trip the Middle East.

Key Republicans, including Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), agreed with the president’s view that the 2001 war declaration gave the administration all the authority it needed.

Kaine can sound like a tough military hawk calling for a war debate, but his own position is squarely on the liberal side of the argument. He wants a strict timeline — one proposal called for a three-year war against Islamic State forces, after which the next president would have to withdraw or get new authority to act. He wanted limits on ground forces in those territories, which most Republicans consider a non-starter.

Murphy called Kaine a “strong defender” of Obama’s use of forces so far. “His bone of contention has been that the strategy has been unauthorized,” Murphy said.

Kaine also could never win over his own leadership. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the majority leader in 2014 and now minority leader, essentially told Kaine to drop the matter, Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) and other Democrats said.

“This is an issue that’s easy to brush aside,” Coons said.

Reid preferred letting Obama act on his own. Irritated by Reid’s inaction, Kaine used direct channels into the West Wing, emailing senior advisers to try to get them to push Reid.

But Kaine could never persuade Obama to push Congress to act. Obama periodically raised the issue and said Congress should pass a new resolution, but he never gave it top priority and was content continuing to make his war decisions with no congressional input.

Ultimately, Kaine even lost the support of his longtime allies on the issue. Both Murphy and Coons said that as the Republican presidential primary unfolded, they lost interest in the war resolution bid. The Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, and the second-place finisher, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex., both advocated a forceful use of the military.

Democrats simply decided they couldn’t risk compromising with Republicans and giving more power than they were comfortable with, if Trump ended up winning.

“It’s a different animal today,” Murphy said.

.

 

[41chevy]

Of the 9 investigations of her for Benghazi, 8 found here as guilt free. Of course the media fails to mention that in all 8 investigations the panels were appointed by Hillary or Obama.

And now Clinton emails during her tenure as Secretary of State most likely caused the execution of the Iranian scientist.  

As NY Senator, she promised to turn around the states economy and create 200,000 jobs. Her plan caused the loss of 750,000 jobs and the loss of over 3500 medium to large companies in NYS.         Paul

[grayhair]

And what about Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.   Maybe a Floridian would know the answer to the question that keeps coming up.  If she bites her husband, will he get rabies?

Edited August 10, 2016 by grayhair