"Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation ..." NY Times

 

 "As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.

And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock."  NY Times

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 We don't usually dwell a lot on US domestic politics on SST but this time...

Was this intersection of favorable developments for "Uranium One" and the Clintons corrupt? I leave it to you, gentle reader, to decide.

What interests me is the willingness of the mass media in the USA to talk about it.   "Morning Joe" this morning featured a shouting match between Howard Dean (a Clinton man to be sure) and Joe Scarborough (tool of unseen forces) over the worthiness of the Clintons as reflected in this NY Times article and the Washpost article linked below.

 Dean attempted to ignore the speaking fees collected by Bill Clinton from foreign donors to the Clinton Foundation in matters in which Hillary was involved as Secretary of State.  This, and a soon to be published book on the subject, are sure to be damaging to HC's chance to become president.

IMO what is happening here is that the "unseen forces" do not want Hillary to be president.  Her level of experience and intelligence would make her an unreliable "asset" in office.  She would not be someone who could be easily "pushed." OTOH there are many among the Republican hopefuls who beg for election money and favor.  Perhaps one of these is thought more controllable.

We shall see where the really big money goes.  pl   

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-clintons-speech-income-shows-how-their-wealth-is-intertwined-with-charity/2015/04/22/12709ec0-dc8d-11e4-a500-1c5bb1d8ff6a_story.html?hpid=z2 

Comments

[GulfCoastPirate]

Dean made 'Joe' look like a sophomore in high school.

Your take on the 'unseen forces' and Hillary is interesting.

[Dave Schuler]

As we say here in Chicago, never take a bribe--just hand 'em your business card.

[oofda]

A sophomore who had turned back a couple years, at that.

[Valissa]

I came across these posts by John Helmer the other day that are relevant here. Both articles are long, especially the first one.

John Helmer discussed Czech oligarch Andrej Babis and Hillary Clinton... also the current dance of US-Czech relations. The second article below details some of relations between the Clinton Foundation and Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk.

The Case Of Andrej Babis, The Potentate Of Prague — How The War Party In Washington Is Losing Eastern Europe, Hillary Clinton Too http://johnhelmer.net/?p=13176
The rise of Babis is also the takeoff of another albatross which is about to hang itself around the neck of candidate to become President of the US, Hillary Clinton. For it’s her campaign booster and pollster, Douglas Schoen and his old firm Penn Schoen Berland (PSB), which claim credit for inventing Babis’s political party, Akce Nespokojených Občanů (Action of Dissatisfied Citizens) – the acronym ANO also means “yes” in Czech – and putting Babis in power. From non-existence in 2011, ANO took 19% of the votes in the Czech lower house election of 2013, a close second behind the ruling Social-Democratic Party; 17% in the Czech senate election of last October. According to the American pollster, PSB’s Czech-educated executive, Alexander Braun is the winner of several US awards for his Czech political campaigns.

Victor Pinchuk’s $200 Million Cashflow, Before And After http://johnhelmer.net/?p=11442
Audited public records reveal that the Clinton family consumed at least $13 million from Pinchuk between 2006 and the end of 2012. Pinchuk’s foundation hasn’t released its accounts for 2013 or the first half of 2014, so the Clinton (right) total is likely to have grown. The Clinton Foundation will not explain the multi-million dollar discrepancy between what Pinchuk says he’s been paying, and what the Clintons claim to have been receiving, so there’s no telling how much extra has been taken by the Clintons in expense-paid trips and speaking fees.
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Is this behavior "corruption" ? I think that depends on one's personal definition of corruption (there are many flavors & levels of corruption) and whether one considers this elite buddy-buddy money & power system to be morally offensive or simply business as normal in the current world situation. One could just as well admire Clinton for her success as criticize her for it and how she got there.

"IMO what is happening here is that the "unseen forces" do not want Hillary to be president. Her level of experience and intelligence would make her an unreliable "asset" in office." pl

That is my take on it as well. That's similar to what happened back in 2008.
Though I am no longer a Clinton fan and haven't decided if I would vote for her (probably not) or stick with voting 3rd party, it would a refreshing "change" to have someone with plenty of experience, colleagues all over the world, and a deep understanding of how the government and government power work as president (even if I don't like them very much). But for some reason, voters seem to prefer a fresh face that they can project their ideals on rather than experience and knowledge of the system. This makes it easy for the unseen forces/US oligarchs to pick someone more manageable/malleable due to their inexperience.

[cville reader]

If Hillary is out of the picture, what viable candidate does the Democratic Party have?

Do the "unseen forces" want a Republican to win?

It is interesting how Rubio, a young and relatively inexperienced senator, seems to have become the assumed front runner on the Republican side. I would love to know where most of his financial support is coming from. Wealthy Miami donors, perhaps?

[GulfCoastPirate]

All:

Maybe Joe should check his sources a little better. Unless, of course, you think Minnie Mouse is turning America gay and the Koch's represent clean government.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/fivepoints/peter-schweizer-clinton-cash-5-points

[Jose]

IMO what is happening here is that the "unseen forces" do not want Hillary to be president. Her level of experience and intelligence would make her an unreliable "asset" in office. She would not be someone who could be easily "pushed."

Why push when she can be bought?

Also, what experience and intelligence are you talking about?

Counter argument, "unseen forces " are pushing her to be President despite a record of incompetence and lack of sound judgement.

[Martin Oline]

We shall see where the really big money goes. pl
Well I know where the little money goes, at least my little money; another $50 to Jim Webb for President exploratory Committee.

[JerseyJeffersonian]

cville,

In these times of enormous pools of "dark" funding, who can even tell where it comes from since it is possible to engineer that the sources remain anonymous? And owing to this cloak of secrecy, the recipients are then unaccountable for influences on their positions, or assuming their subsequent election, their ACTIONS, that could be traceable to the provision to them of those "dark" funds. A feature, and not a bug.

All of us "tiny" citizens, each with our one wan little vote, stand not much chance going against the designs of the "gigantic" citizens - fabulously wealthy individuals and corporations alike - with their voices roaring like thunder influencing the affairs of the empire.

What little agency I retain, I refuse to let them take, although frankly, it seems as if this agency is in reality limited to that of Voltaire's Candide, who concludes after hard schooling that what is left to us is to "cultivate our garden".

[Adam L Silverman]

The NY Times tried to turn this into something back in 2008 and it was quickly debunked by Forbes - of all publications. Here's the link to the Forbes article:
http://www.forbes.com/2009/01/12/giustra-clinton-kazakhstan-pf-ii-in_rl_0912croesus_inl.html

The NY Times went all in on the Arkansas Project in the 1990s. When none of the alleged scandals actually panned out and all that remained was President Clinton lying about a consensual affair in a civil lawsuit, the Times didn't get what they wanted: a scalp! Unfortunately a large portion of our current news media personalities - from reporters to analysts to pundits to editors to publishers to owners - all came of age during the period of time that Gene Lyons and Joe Conason chronicled and labeled "The Hunting of a President". They are programmed for this and they'll be exploited accordingly. Lyons, a long time reporter from Little Rock did yeoman's work covering what actually happened, which is not what everyone thinks/remembers happened. His first solo work chronicles how the media got duped and his second, coauthored with Conason, goes through the entire oppo research campaign against President Clinton, which was intended to hamstring his administration and seems to have served as a partial template for a similar attempt to delegitimize President Obama. I highly recommend both books
:
http://www.amazon.com/Fools-Scandal-Media-Invented-Whitewater/dp/1879957523/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y/176-4317517-8704339
http://www.amazon.com/The-Hunting-President-Ten-Year-Campaign/dp/0312273193

[robt willmann]

cville reader,

Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton is not out of the picture. She is the only formally declared candidate in the Democratic primary, which gets underway in February 2016, nine months from now--

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/democratic-party-approves-2016-presidential-primary-schedule/

http://www.uspresidentialelectionnews.com/2016-presidential-primary-schedule-calendar/

Anybody else who wants to run as a Democrat only has nine months to put together an organization, get lawyers to go through the mine field that is federal election law, and, of course, raise money to pay to the oligopoly that is the mass media in the U.S. for the advertising side of it.

Who else will run as a Democrat? O'Malley? Elizabeth Warren? (probably not). Jim Webb? (he better announce no later than July). The aforementioned Howard Dean would have been the strongest, and there was a rumor that he might run in 2016, but much to my dismay, he has said he is supporting Hillary C.--

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/12/howard-dean-ready-for-hillary-113444.html?hp=r2_3#.VTl8KyjcFkC

Dean is a physician, as is his wife. He was governor of Vermont for more than a decade, and had a balanced budget almost all the time. He is articulate and has a lot of native intelligence, unlike the Un-Texas Governors Rick Perry and George W. Bush, although Bush jr. had a kind of instinctive cunning in the political context. When the 2004 election season was getting under way, a friend who had been involved in national Republican politics in the 1960's and 70's said that Dean was a formidable candidate, and that he looked like a real American guy. Dean was against the 2003 invasion of Iraq and was something of a danger to the "status quo". So a media hit job was done on him after the night of the 2004 Iowa primaries, in which an encouraging yell from him to his supporters was portrayed as the crazy scream of a madman, done by Matt Drudge on the Internet and by television and radio. Dean has drunk the Kool-Aid on centralized health care (and on Hillary), but he is a decent person and can comprehend and think through details very well. But it looks as if he will not be in it.

As far as a "liberal" Democrat is concerned, Florida representative Alan Grayson started out well, giving stout speeches and bringing the Democrats around to support Ron Paul's bill to audit the Not-Federal Reserve Bank. Then he lost his race for re-election, but won the next time around. He has been unusually quiet and out of sight, and has most likely been sunk as a national candidate by a rather contentious divorce--

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2014-04-29/news/os-alan-grayson-accuses-wife-of-bigamy-20140429_1_alan-grayson-lolita-grayson-lolita-carson

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/16/alan-grayson-divorce_n_5999804.html

Time is running out for a Democratic challenger to the mean-spirited, warmongering, mendacious Hillary Clinton.

[rjj]

The explanation can only be that the Clintons, intoxicated with greed and power lust, repressed the experience of Whitewater and the Impeachment Show. They clearly assumed nobody would check the foundation books for irregularities.

Gene Lyons was a must read - seemed like a lovely, lovely man. Had to go to some obscure weekly to find him, tho - Arkansas Gazette was it?

[Adam L Silverman]

RJJ,

I'm not saying they don't do things that create an appearance of impropriety or don't seem to think "I may run for office again in the future, how do I do this in a way that will be as transported as possible?" There are really three issues here. The first is what Lyons calls the Clinton Rules - the first of those is that once something is reported, no matter how often it is debunked, the initial report will be treated as true and correct. Essentially, not only is there no check the facts or benefit of the doubt, but that the actual facts don't matter. The second flows from the first: there is clearly a double standard for the Clintons. The third: the news media, which is corporate and concerned with profit, not with accuracy. And they're certainly not in the tank for the Clintons.

As for Lyons he writes for the Arkanasa Times. The original Fools for Scandal coverage is, unfortunately, behind Harper's paywall. My understanding is that he started the project not out of any great love for the Clintons, but rather because he felt that Arkansas and Arkansans were being misrepresented and caricatured in the reporting that came out of the anti-Clinton oppo researched based Arkansas Project. One thing you'll find early on in his reporting is a group called Citizens United, which got its start in its involvement with the Arkansas Project.

For full disclosure: I lived for a year in Conway, Arkansas, which is a bedroom community for Little Rock. I was a visiting professor at the University of Central Arkansas. UCA is the Arkansas state systems equivalent of a public liberal arts college with a smattering of professional and graduate programs. I was very impressed with the students there. It was a beautiful place to live - lots of outdoors stuff to do. One of the best thing was that the cable and high speed internet were provided by the local municipal utility. Service was good, prices were reasonable. Bad thing: dry county!

[rjj]

ALS, thank you !!!

[tv]

The Clintons are amateur criminals.
They're greedy....and sloppy.
Until now., they've gotten a free pass from the media and career-minded prosecutors who see no gain in going after them.
Why the Democrat media is going after them now is a question.
Unless, it's all a scheme to get the dirt out more than a year before the election, assuming the short/non memory of the broader electorate.

[turcopolier]

TV

"is a question?" No. They are seeking to kneecap her so that a Republican who will be compliant with Zionist wishes will be elected. The talking heads on the tube are just following editorial direction and some few are directly complicit in this effort. pl

[tv]

Colonel Lang:
Do you think that Israel is a big enough issue/player to be at the heart of this?
Here's something to ponder:
Rupert Murdoch is a big fan of Hillary and his company (Harper Collins)
is publishing "Clinton Cash."

[LeaNder]

thanks for the hint, Adam. Might be interesting. As European I was slightly amused by the Lewinsky Affair, admittedly, but later over on the US web I was deeply baffled. ... stories started to sound like fiction. Way too exiting. ;)

But I guess, once you manage you create an air of suspicion people willingly add.

[LeaNder]

"Why the Democrat media ..."

Because that is what her potential voters read?

[turcopolier]

TV

IMO the Likud government/Zionist interest in this country together are more than enough to be the player in this. A lot of the money behind this is in both parties. pl

[Adam L Silverman]

LeaNder,

We have some interesting (unique?) societal and cultural hang ups. What was really interesting about the fallout from the Lewinsky affair and the impeachment as a result was the damage it did to the House Republican leadership. Speaker Gingrich lost his speakership and resigned from Congress for both mismanaging the impeachment (by mismanaging I mean going on the record that they were doing it 1) because they could and 2) because the Democrats had impeached President Nixon conveniently forgetting that Nixon's impeachment wasn't purely partisan or for partisan gain) and because the national news media decided it would no longer ignore his repeated affairs. As he was leading the charge for the impeachment of President Clinton for lying about a consensual affair he was cheating on wife #2 with the woman who is now wife #3 (and if I'm recalling correctly she was working for him in some sort of staff position).9 Congressman Livingstone, who was chosen to replace Gingrich as Speaker had to resign when it came out he was having an affair. At the same time it finally came to light that Congressman Hyde, who'd made a good portion of his career being high and mighty on questions of sex, sexuality, female reproductive health choices, and abortion was himself having an affair. He'd been having it for decades and this was also with a staffer if I recall correctly. What's really interesting is that Republicans and Democrats learned different lessons on how to deal with these scandals. The GOP politicians all learned from Clinton that you should just brazen it out, which is how Senator Vitter escaped the DC Madame scandal and the revelation of his particular proclivities and preferences for what he likes to do with prostitutes with his senatorial seat and a good possibility of becoming governor of Louisianna one day. And remember Vitter was part of the House GOP caucus that pursued the impeachment. The Democrats learned that you have to take your lumps and resign. For istance, Congressman Weiner, who simply sent pictures of delicate portions of his anatomy to women on Twitter is now a house husband in Brooklyn. I always thought my Dad had the best take on the whole thing. He thought President Clinton should've called a prime time press conference, admit that he'd received consensual oral sex from a twenty-something while at work and assert that he was being prosecuted by a bunch of guys who were jealous because they weren't getting the same thing. Dad reckoned most of the men in the U.S. would've empathized with him. Dad also had a strange sense of humor...

[Adam L Silverman]

tv,

Gotten a pass? From th media? The media has been after them on one bogus or trumped up item or another for the past twenty-four years. Remember it was the Clinton's that were actually scammed in the Whitewater Savings and Loan scheme, they weren't the scammers. And from prosecutors? Well let's see -'the ones in Arkansas found no evidence of any wrongdoing, the first Special/Independent Prosecutor found nothing and the second, Ken Starr, had one thing: lying about a consensual affair in a civil suit. And as for Congress: I refer you to Congressman Burton attempting to recreate Vince Foster's suicide as a homicide committed by Secretary Clinton in his back yard with a pumpkin and a rifle. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's no two politicians in the U.S. who have received the scrutiny from the media that the Clinton's have for the past 25 years. They're not perfect and they're not pure, but they've definitely not gotten a free pass.

[LeaNder]

I love your late Dad's humor. Nothing strange about his humor from my perspective. ;)

The GOP idea to create a Watergate for the democrats feels faintly familiar. Maybe you made the connection before.

"(unique?)": good question. Different system, no doubt. Different history. ... but comparable. My subjective impression over here too was that a conservative doesn't necessarily resign over a scandal but a democrat does. But lately it doesn't seem to work anymore.

******

What's really different it feels, from my limited German/European perspective, is America's puritan heritage. And how it shapes the stereotypes of political self-presentation both as far as religion and the "happy family" is concerned. Nothing wrong by the way, about a stable and happy family life, quite the opposite. But often it is more an ideal then a reality.

I seem to vaguely remember that politicians that present their family life are always considered following the American way. Hardly anyone knows Merkel's husband, and as far as I know there is no family to present.

[Larry Kart]

Go here:

http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com

and scroll down to "The Pseudo-Journalism Rules" for an IMO convincing account of why the NYT's "blockbuster" series on Hillary Clinton, the Russians, and Uranium" is in fact a load of crap.

[Keith Harbaugh]

A very interesting analysis of how the USG screwed up on the Uranium One deal:

"The criminalization of America’s government agencies"
by Admiral (ret.) James A. Lyons
Washington Times Opinion, 2017-11-14
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/nov/14/obama-officials-did-nothing-to-halt-uranium-deal-w/

The criminalization of government agencies by the Obama administration was far more extensive than previously realized. The Uranium One deal is a prime example of how key government agencies have been criminalized.
...