HRC

[57Brave]

https://www.hillaryclinton.com/brie...intons-comprehensive-agenda-on-mental-health/

Today, Hillary Clinton announced her comprehensive plan to support Americans living with mental health problems and illnesses—by integrating our healthcare systems and finally putting the treatment of mental health on par with that of physical health.
..................................................

An NPR show a few months ago propositioned

Business loses more in productivity to garden variety depression than the common cold.

Hearing that made me sit up in my chair.
Factual or not - unique notion.

Comprehensive plan is an understatement.
Her proposals are so detailed and in the weeds that I'd bet 99% of the people that read this article have attention span issues after reading the headline and perhaps the first bullet point .
Guilty here, have to make myself read on
But, reading on it impresses me that her campaign gives me the credit to understand and comprehend the point she is making.
......

Or, we could focus on her email servers.
So maybe her campaign does give too much credit

 

[jpx7]

just like every other Clinton story of the past 25 years.
Show something troubling with some legs. Then I'll again be at least interested
.................................................. .................................

So as near as I can tell, Chagoury (a) is tied up in some of the less savory aspects of Lebanese politics, (b) has contributed to the Clinton Foundation, and (c) wanted to discuss Lebanon once with someone at State, but never did. Later on, he had trouble getting a US visa thanks to suspicions of past connections with Hezbollah, which Chagoury denies

" ... but never did."

seems to be a common thread running through all of these stories.
Again, for over 25 years.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-dr...hillary-and-clinton-foundation-turns-out-be-n

Focusing on proven, quid pro quo impropriety misses the point in the sphere of institutional politics—as Democrats have themselves claimed in the recent past, when the questionable-donations shoe was on the other personal-charity foot (emphasis mine):

In fact, Democrats and media figures roundly criticized the public interest foundations set up by Republicans and funded by lobbyists and special interest groups, including nonprofit organizations affiliated with Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush.

Earlier this year, in similar fashion to the questions raised about the Clinton Foundation, Democrats in Arizona raised influence peddling concerns regarding the reported $1 million donation from the Saudi Arabian government to the McCain Institute for International Leadership, a nonprofit group closely affiliated with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. As chairman of the Armed Services Committee, McCain oversees a range of issues concerning Saudi Arabia, including arms sales. But none of the pundits rushing to the defense of the Clinton Foundation defended McCain.

[...]

In one telling argument in defense of the Clinton Foundation, Media Matters, another group run by David Brock, argued this week that there was “no evidence of ethics breaches” because there was no explicit quid pro quo cited by the AP. The Media Matters piece mocked press figures for focusing on the “optics” of corruption surrounding the foundation.

Such a standard is quite a reversal for the group. In a piece published by Media Matters only two years ago, the organization criticized conservatives for focusing only on quid pro quo corruption — the legal standard used to decide the Citizens United and McCutcheon Supreme Court decisions — calling such a narrow focus a “new perspective of campaign finance” that dismisses “concerns about institutional corruption in politics.” The piece notes that ethics laws concerning the role of money in politics follow a standard, set forth since the Watergate scandal, in which even the appearance, or in other words, the “optics” of corruption, is cause for concern.

And there's a good reason for these optical concerns. Because of the difficulties of parsing a politician's intentionality in their decision-making—and thus proving graft in the context of these ostensibly-charitable donations, which may also be mutually back-scratching machinations (it can be both)—the specter of impropriety is nearly as substantial as the bald fact of it.

Meanwhile, the outlines of such specters are rendered more stark because personal charities represent a conveniently much-less-regulated, alternative avenue of monetary influence on politicians (versus say, traditional campaign funding or PACs or secret sacks of cash or what have you). So, even if the charities do good work, that public service becomes very difficult to divorce from the individual's institutionally-circumscribed duties to the public, either as an elected or appointed representative; and it deserves particularly scrutiny, since influence-peddling is already such a scourge.

But don't take my word for it; read some folks who specialize in the ethics of money in US politics:

The key to understanding why good government advocates are upset about the new revelations is to first get past the argument that Clinton Foundation donors were transactionally rewarded for their gifts. [...] Instead, the heart of their complaint was that the foundation’s contributors appear to have gained a greater ability to make their voices heard by Clinton’s State Department by virtue of donating to her husband’s private foundation.

This is why they see the new email disclosures as such a big deal. Talking with top government officials obviously isn’t the same as getting them to do your bidding, but doing so can help structure how they think, whom they turn to for advice, and, ultimately, what they decide to do. And the emails at least strongly suggest that foundation donors had a better opportunity to mold the secretary of state’s worldview than they would have otherwise.

[...]

"Politicians like to say things like, I would have given the lobbyist for Exxon a meeting regardless of their donation,' and that might be true. But the problem is that it’s impossible to know if the meeting would have happened anyway, if the meeting was given out of a favor, or what.

"So they don’t get the benefit of the doubt. It’s their job to make sure they avoid the appearance of a conflict in interest in the first place — because if a politician has made a decision that affects a major donor [whose money they want], then it becomes basically impossible to sort out why they did it. It calls into question the decision even if it’s totally legitimate and the best one they could make.

"That’s why the very idea that access to government depends on how wealthy you are — and how much you give — is so dangerous. What the Clintons did here helps create the impression that if you’re a small-business person who wants to talk to the secretary of state, then you’re out of luck. But if you donate a few million dollars to her husband’s charity, you can talk to her."

In other words: Since it’s so difficult for anyone to ever prove a quid pro quo, it’s incumbent on politicians to recuse themselves so it can’t even look like they’re swapping favors for private donations — or to not take those donations in the first place.

Or simply let Mr Colbert lay it out most succinctly:

[video]https://youtu.be/Odg0tP1Ulcg?t=7m30s[/video]

 

[57Brave]

you asked if I was troubled
and said no

1992 I might have.
Guess that is what Clinton Fatigue means to me.

....

How far do you want to go with gaining influence in the White House ?
Ever read Julius Ceaser? Is it in your mind that people didn't bend pay and scrape to get close to he ?
Do we go after Eisenhower for taking up the Chiquita Bananna cause in Central America ?
Reagan for pumping up the Defense Industry of California -- that administration was wraught with defense industry captains?
Hell, Civil War, duPont family financed the better part of that war, to a degree both sides..

This is where the rubber meets the road
And how did the Clintons prosper ? (oh yeah, the speeches!)
By donating monies in Ethiopia?
This in 10 years will look as silly as any of the other Clinton "Scandals" of the past 25 years

Another reason I am not bothered ?
Many of these contacts were Clinton family friends -- long before the Clinton Foundation. In some cases before he was POTUS.

I remember the Scandal de Jour when the White House Travelogues were missing.
Do you ?
...............................................................................................................
curious here:

What do you think of her Mental Health proposal ?

 

[57Brave]

Meanwhile, the outlines of such specters are rendered more stark because personal charities represent a conveniently much-less-regulated, alternative avenue of monetary influence on politicians (versus say, traditional campaign funding or PACs or secret sacks of cash or what have you). So, even if the charities do good work, that public service becomes very difficult to divorce from the individual's institutionally-circumscribed duties to the public, either as an elected or appointed representative; and it deserves particularly scrutiny, since influence-peddling is already such a scourge.

Funny, not ha ha funny, thing about the Benghazi hearings , is to my knowledge, to, keep it from happening again, no meaningful reforms were suggested by the x number of committees.

Same thing here. I see no reforms suggested to an antiquated system dealing with electronic info as if it were a memorandum taken down by a stenographer with a paper trail.

 

[57Brave]

and now a new one.
I'd give it three days before someone here brings this up using identical verbiage.

.....

Inquiring minds want to know

 

[jpx7]

How far do you want to go with gaining influence in the White House ?

Do we go after Eisenhower for taking up the Chiquita Bananna cause in Central America ?
Reagan for pumping up the Defense Industry of California -- that administration was wraught with defense industry captains?
Hell, Civil War, duPont family financed the better part of that war, to a degree both sides..

So impropriety in the past justifies inaction vis-à-vis present-day corruption?

All of what you listed was bad then and would remain bad now. I want to go as far as rooting that sort of string-pulling out of our government, as opposed to paying lip-service to reform, while ignoring corruption and embracing fully-bought candidates when it's ideologically convenient.

you asked if I was troubled
and said no

1992 I might have.
Guess that is what Clinton Fatigue means to me

I think one should be troubled, even if one takes the most charitable position on her possible wrongdoing in this case. It's yet another example of poor decision-making with respect to transparency and accountability; and—even more troubling to me—it's simply the latest example of her extreme coziness to high-finance and big capital.

You can chalk this one example up to Clinton-Scandal Fatigue. But, given your specific justifications for writing-off this particular example, it appears you're also totally untroubled by the influence-peddling, the oligarchical tidewaters, and the ideals of monied meritocracy that seem to be pillars of Democratic Party in 2016. It's no coincidence that they've begun to court center-right neo-liberals ("neocons") as they willfully undermine the left.

Ever read Julius Ceaser? Is it in your mind that people didn't bend pay and scrape to get close to he ?

Did you get to the end yet?

 

[jpx7]

Funny, not ha ha funny, thing about the Benghazi hearings , is to my knowledge, to, keep it from happening again, no meaningful reforms were suggested by the x number of committees.

Same thing here. I see no reforms suggested to an antiquated system dealing with electronic info as if it were a memorandum taken down by a stenographer with a paper trail.

I don't give a **** about Benghazi, and my issue with the Clinton Foundation is really only tangentially related to emails. But you clearly didn't read the passage of mine that you quoted if you think the issue I'm discussing is the "paper trail". It's instead best summed by what I quoted: "it’s incumbent on politicians to recuse themselves so it can’t even look like they’re swapping favors for private donations — or to not take those donations in the first place". Clinton clearly failed here, and—given her past—it's pretty hard to just give her an "oopsy" pass on this.

 

[57Brave]

Our national agenda is based on what it looks like?
Really ?

Don't get too substantive here on me now. That is as bad as the two pages devoted to what she wore at a debate

My point is if politicians start recusing themselves for contacts (which, there is no evidence proving this was anything more than who knew who !! )
we'd never get a pot hole filled.

What past -----
Travelgate ?
...........................

This looks bad because
a) her name is Hillary Rodham Clinton
b) her name is Hillary Rodham Clinton
c) her name is Hillary Rodham Clinton

d) all of the above
......

did you miss Dick Cheney's 2001 Energy Conference that excluded anyone that didn't have money in the fossil fuel industry?
Influence - to the victor the spoils

 

[sturg33]

I very much appreciate jpx being able to objective look at our system the way he has. Even though we don't agree on much, I lie independent thinkers.

I think the good of the Sanders camp is that it magnified the corrupt system much more than the Paul campaign was able to do. To that, I appreciate Sanders.

 

[jpx7]

Our national agenda is based on what it looks like?
Really ?

Are you merely not reading, or are you not internalizing what you're reading? This isn't a question regarding "our national agenda" (whatever you mean by that), it's a question of keeping money in our institutional politics above-board. Clinton, whether she acted with the best and most charitable intentions or not, clearly subverted that goal with her family's foundation. This is nothing like critiquing her sartorial choices—I too loathe that line of "debate"—because here the appearances are substantial; the appearance of impropriety must be treated seriously exactly because proving quid pro quo motivation is so next-to-impossible with even halfway-competent politicians (and Clinton is clearly well above that threshold of competency).

Even if it's ultimately not enough to convince you, or anyone else, out of voting for Clinton, it still should be at least somewhat troubling. Certainly plenty of her own party have found it troubling when The Other Guys were doing the same thing.

My point is if politicians start recusing themselves for contacts (which, there is no evidence proving this was anything more than who knew who !! )
we'd never get a pot hole filled.

Just being willfully dense here, I assume? She, or any other politician, shouldn't and obviously couldn't recuse themselves from any and all contact with the world around them. On the other hand, they can and should be expected to be very judicious and transparent regarding who is dropping coin in their various wallets, so voters can see and judge their governmental action in the context of their wider activities.

You asked for real proposal to fix **** like this. One small start is to guarantee adequate levels of state and federal funding to any and all on-ballot candidates, place more stringent caps on what individuals can contribute directly to campaigns, and eliminate PACs and their shadow-money ilk from the process.

What past -----
Travelgate ?

This has nothing to do with those silly quasi-scandals, which I've already noted I don't care about and which you're obviously raising to distract from and to discredit-by-association what I'm actually outlining.

But I'll play along one more time, even though I should know better. The past to which I refer is her extreme coziness to high-finance and corporate money. She was a champion of welfare-reform and its bull**** merit-testing. Her VP pick is a champion of rolling back banking regulation. She's a fan of global-finance-enriching nation-building schemes, which is why douchebag-from-my-alma-mater Paul Wolfowitz walked right up to the edge of endorsing her. Hell, even her personal brand of feminism is wedded to her faith, foremost, in the ultimate power of money, the virtues of wealth and its accrual, and thus founded in notions of empowerment-through-enrichment:

The belief that what’s best for the market is best for women, which has powered her political career for decades, has lost much of its force, and the promises of empowerment feminism have grown increasingly threadbare. Women now make up half the paid workforce but are still disproportionately represented in the lowest-paying and least-protected jobs. They consistently make less than men across all industries and are still clustered in female-dominated occupations. Mothers, in particular, face steep economic penalties. Having a child, a study by Elizabeth Warren and her daughter reported in 2003, was the single best predictor that a woman would declare bankruptcy.

We've come full-circle, now, and Clinton—dogged for so many seasons by dumb and pointless scandals—can now watch her supporters use the history of bad-faith attacks to deflect or redirect any and all good-faith criticism of her.

I don't think she's monstrously evil, I'm not advocating locking her up, I don't think she shot Harambe, and I'd certainly rather see her President than Donald Trump. But I do think critics, especially from the left, have a right and a duty to attack her faults, keep her on her toes, and bring her further left, so the "most progressive platform ever" she putatively endorsed doesn't simply become a doormat for her coronation. And I think turning a blind-eye to her faults simply because she's Your Team's Candidate is almost as regressive as her position on welfare.

did you miss Dick Cheney's 2001 Energy Conference that excluded anyone that didn't have money in the fossil fuel industry?
Influence - to the victor the spoils

Cool. Good to know your ethical bar is Dick Cheney.

 

[57Brave]

I am no more troubled than with the state of politics. This is the game

The age old state of politics will not change until comprehensive ( think we agree here) campaign reform is enacted.
Campaign reform like everything else in this world will not float down from the top but will be a bottom up exercise.

Tell me, where do your House candidates stand on campaign reform ?
Senate candidates ?
Any of your local or state candidates bringing up campaign reform?

Her name is Hillary Clinton. What she is being punched for today is something that has gone on in governance since the days of Julius Ceaser - Cleopatra and Marc Antony.
It is water Lincoln, Eisenhower,Harding ,FDR, Reagan , B Clinton, Bush 41 and 43 dipped their toes
I am guessing Colin Powell helped raise money, I am guessing John foster Dulles made a ton off of influence.
Jim Baker, ever made a phone call to raise money? Condi Rice ? Do we yet have access to those conversations ?
Wonder where or what happened to those records ?
Her name is Hillary Clinton -- and why is she being held to a different standard than any of her predecessors at State or any one else that has ever ran for POTUS ?
Let me put it this way, if she lived by the standards her critics (on both sides) held her to, she wouldn't get out of bed in the morning because , "it looked bad"
I am still not "troubled" because there is no there there.
No crimes or even a hint of influence was peddled. None.
From my reading the appointments at the center of this never materialized. But it looks bad someone donated to a humanitarian foundation then asked for a meeting that never was.
Really?

20 years ago she backed welfare reform and trade programs.
20 years ago !!!
You had a Colbert clip earlier.
Still his best line, ever "he believed on Wednesday what he believed on Monday. Regarddless of what happened Tuesday"

"... the appearance of impropriety ..."
what a loaded phrase

Still haven't heard what you think about her mental health proposals.

 

[57Brave]

Democratic Candidates on Campaign Finance Reform
Campaign finance reform has been a prominent element of the leading Democrats’ platforms. Indeed, the attention to campaign finance has been so outsize in this campaign that one early primary candidate, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, ran a single-issue campaign vowing to pass comprehensive voting and election finance reform and then resign from the Presidency. And Senator Bernie Sanders has featured campaign finance reform throughout his campaign, regularly decrying the influence “big corporations” have over the political process.
The two remaining contenders, Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders, have both repeatedly expressed support for overturning Citizens United through a constitutional amendment, and have indicated that any justices they appoint to the Supreme Court would be inclined to reverse the decision.
Secretary Clinton has said that she will push for legislation to require outside groups to publicly disclose significant political spending. In addition, until Congress acts, she will sign an executive order requiring federal contractors to disclose their political spending. Senator Sanders has also said he would sign such an executive order. Throughout President Obama’s presidency, rumors have floated that he is considering such an executive order, although it has never materialized.
Both candidates have stated that they would promote an SEC rule requiring publicly traded companies to disclose political spending – either publicly or to shareholders. This is a proposal with a long history. In 2011, the SEC proposed a rulemaking to require publicly traded companies to disclose political spending, and a 2012 poll found that 81 percent of Americans supported the idea. However, the proposal became a divisive partisan issue: after 44 mostly Democratic senators (including Sanders) wrote the SEC in the fall of 2015 urging them to renew the rulemaking, House Republicans included a provision in the December budget compromise prohibiting the SEC from finalizing any such rule during the current fiscal year.

http://www.corpcounsel.com/id=12027...mpaign-Finance-Reform?slreturn=20160729184630

....

I have never seen regulations on charitable donations to a charitable foundation headed by an ex President regarding his wife as Sec of State.

 

[57Brave]

one more thing

Is this all they've found ?

Someone asked for a meeting

that was never granted

 

[jpx7]

I am no more troubled than with the state of politics. This is the game

I hate that line of thinking.

Tell me, where do your House candidates stand on campaign reform ?
Senate candidates ?
Any of your local or state candidates bringing up campaign reform?

Selectively, amongst Arizona's D candidates, which is a big reason why I'm jumping ship to an alternative party. Ann Kirkpatrick, the candidate for US Senate running against John McCain, is a good example: she's been pillorying him in ads for his charity's taking of Saudi money, and his coziness with the mining industry (which has led to some disastrous legislation), but hasn't leveled those same lines of attack against, say, her party's nominee for President. (In this case, I'll be voting for Kirkpatrick, because McCain has just been unequivocally terrible for the state over the past decade, and it looks like it'll be a close election.)

What she is being punched for today is something that has gone on in governance since the days of Julius Ceaser - Cleopatra and Marc Antony.
It is water Lincoln, Eisenhower,Harding ,FDR, Reagan , B Clinton, Bush 41 and 43 dipped their toes

Again with this. Ok, fine: everyone is above reproach because nobody is below the "well Cheney did it" ethical bar. I'll keep that in mind the next time you throw stones at somebody with the R next to their name.

I am still not "troubled" because there is no there there

Please don't quote Gertrude Stein in vain.

No crimes or even a hint of influence was peddled. None.
From my reading the appointments at the center of this never materialized. But it looks bad someone donated to a humanitarian foundation then asked for a meeting that never was.
Really?

If you'd actually read the Intercept article I referenced and linked, you'd have seen that, while there is no evidence of criminal activity, there are at least "hints" that influence might have been peddled:

-- The Washington Post found that two months after Secretary Clinton encouraged the Russian government to approve a $3.7 billion deal with Boeing, the aerospace company announced a $900,000 donation to the Clinton Foundation.
-- The Wall Street Journal found that Clinton made an “unusual intervention” to announce a legal settlement with UBS, after which the Swiss bank increased its donations to, and involvement with, the Clinton Foundation.
-- The New York Times reported that a Russian company assumed control of major uranium reserves in a deal that required State Department approval, as the chairman of the company involved in the transaction donated $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation.

[... and (emphasis mine)] the Moroccan government and companies controlled by the kingdom donated to the Bill Clinton presidential library, the Clinton Foundation, and hired individuals associated with the Clinton political network. Despite a statement by the Obama administration that suggested it would reverse the previous Bush administration support for the Moroccan government and would back a U.N.-negotiated settlement for the conflict in Western Sahara, Clinton announced there would be “no change” in policy — and has gone on to praise the Moroccan government’s human rights record.

Again, it's certainly not proof of criminal activity, but it's certainly more than "Someone asked for a meeting / that was never granted".

20 years ago she backed welfare reform and trade programs.
20 years ago !!!

She hasn't recanted, or to my knowledge really even thoroughly addressed, that abysmal policy failure as such, so forgive me if its temporal distance doesn't inspire confidence or forgiveness.

"... the appearance of impropriety ..." what a loaded phrase

As quoted, it's literally the legal ethical "standard, set forth since the Watergate scandal, [of] cause for concern."

Still haven't heard what you think about her mental health proposals.

It's very, very good that she's both talking about the subject, and talking about conflating mental and physical healthcare, both to decrease the stigma of and increase concern and funding for the former. Nonetheless I haven't really read a "plan" or "proposal" other than the mere fact that she intends to make mental healthcare a policy priority in her administration, and particularly on university campuses.

Still: good on her. That's a lot better than the tactics she'd been deploying—"America's Already Great [Smile. Pause for Applause]"; and "Hey, I'm Not Donald Trump! [Smile. Pause for boos.]"—since the convention. Like I said, her career and her candidacy are not all bad—I'm just well past the point where "not all bad" and "at least left of our country's right" form a sufficient threshold for my enthusiasm or support.

 

[sturg33]

jpx - why waste internet bandwidth?

Hilary and Bill are worth over $111M dollars... both mostly career politicians.

My guess is - they were in on a few secrets in order to push some agendas.

I'm certain that Hilary is well aware that when she tweets about the biotech's she can raise or wreck an entire stock sector for any given time period. I'm sure 57 she's made a buck or two from doing it.

Remember - insider trading ain't illegal for the members of our government (seriously)

 

[Julio3000]

I think it's fair to shine some light on the Clinton Foundation donations and to question the appearance of pay-for-play. Anyone who has worked in the public or nonprofit sector has to tiptoe around the appearance of impropriety, and there's certainly reason to believe that she's fallen short of the mark there. I'm willing to give some leeway for her one-off family situation, as an international power-broker in her own right who is married to an ex-president . . . but that's also cause for concern that she/they haven't been more careful. In this case, just throwing up your hands and saying "nothing to see here!!!" isn't really appropriate.

Whatever the Clintons aren't--murderers, mob bosses, drug smugglers, et al.—I'd like to think I'm not blind to what they are. How aggressively she pursues campaign finance reform is going to be the most salient test for my support of her putative presidency.

 

[57Brave]

Matthew Yglesias ‏@mattyglesias 3m3 minutes ago Washington, DC

Claptongate could be the biggest Clinton Foundation scandal yet

 

[57Brave]

Matthew Yglesias ‏@mattyglesias 7m7 minutes ago Washington, DC

Even in the absence of a clear quid pro quo, the mere trading of rock superstardom for access is troubling.

 

[jpx7]

Yglesias is a joke, bro.

 

[jpx7]

Yglesias is a joke, bro.

Ha: here's a good example:

[tw]770623371654684672[/tw]