The first of many shoes has dropped in relation to the Clinton Foundation and its donors. This one is coming to us, courtesy of the New York Times: and it’s a “BOOM goes the dynamite” kind of situation. The keywords are “Clinton Foundation,” “Russians,” “donations,” and “uranium:”
As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One [a company responsible for one-fifth of the uranium production in the United States] 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.
Let’s get this out of the way, because right now minions are gearing up to start throwing their bodies on this particular bonfire: yes, the New York Times got the tip on this from Peter Schweizer, author of the upcoming book Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. Said book promises to make for fascinating reading for most of my audience, but it should be understood that this story was not fed to the New York Times. This story is the result of the New York Times vetting particular details.
And the results are nicely problematic for Team Clinton. Basically, this story looks a good deal like the one that recently laid low Oregon Democratic Governor John Kitzhaber: money was given to a person/group affiliated with a politician, and oddly enough that politician made decisions that well-pleased the people giving the money. In Kitzhaber’s case the bagman was his fiancee: in Hillary Clinton’s case… well, ‘bagman’ is such a harsh word, is it not? Nonetheless, there is plenty of reason to be suspicious, particularly since there are now some questions about just how much the Clinton Foundation spends on actual charity.
And the most interesting part? Hillary Clinton apparently cannot provide exculpatory email evidence to the contrary. That’s the flip side to Team Clinton’s amusingly precise statement that nobody “has ever produced a shred of evidence supporting the theory that Hillary Clinton ever took action as secretary of state to support the interests of donors to the Clinton Foundation.” All those emails got deleted. Which means that Hillary Clinton’s main defense is Trust me.
:pause:
No, I don’t think that we’ll do that.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
I think “Uranium” should be the first keyword.
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I mean, this is a much bigger deal than it is made out to be. Hillary Clinton allowed Russia to take over a United States URANIUM company! Did no one stop to think that maybe this was a VERY bad idea?
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If TransCanada Corporation had donated to the Clinton Foundation, maybe we have the Keystone XL pipeline by now.
Can you fix that close tag? Thanks.
That sort of thing flows both ways: “If you don’t pay your ‘expedience fee,’ this project will never see the light of day.”
I used to think that the Clintons and others of their ilk just didn’t understand the damage they were doing to the Republic. That they didn’t grok by acting shamelessly and ignoring the Rule of Law that they were undoing the social contract that served the United States very well. What happens when a critical mass of our society looks at these examples and just decides there is no legitimacy in any authority; it is all just coercion by force instead of enlightened self-interest? Anybody that follows the law\rules when they can get away with breaking them is just a Sucker.
Now I’m convinced that it was the simple lack of holding people to account… especially if there is a [D] next to their name… allowed malignant folks like the Clintons to climb to positions of power and authority without any restriction and helped usher into high positions other like-minded amoral sociopaths. I’m not really astounded by the sheer scale of the Clinton foundation pay-to-play corruption or even the chutzpah of the Harridan calculating that destruction of her subpoenaed emails or her other scandals-in-waiting would not be scrutinized a bit more closely with her run on the Presidency. But I do have a forlorn hope that this primary ‘race’ will finally drive a stake through the Clinton’s political influence and make them toxic enough to finally be shunned by ‘Right-Thinking-People’.
Grue, how many times you’ve slain me ..
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Okay, more seriously, “benefit of the doubt” is a necessary social lubricant, it’s a part of “general trust” .. but as with most useful swords, it cuts both ways.. and Team Clinton have wielded it well – for their own benefit.
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The question is whether the cure – a reduction in societal trust – is worse than the disease.
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Mew
I’m not sure I follow you. “Benefit of the doubt” is useful for tolerance and acceptance of the outgroup, but it doesn’t mean we should trust\permit the in-group to wield so much influence when there is very little (if any) doubt as in the case of the Clintons. They thrived because they are never held to account- the rules only apply to their enemies (their opponents are never legitimate or deserving of baseline respect). With few exceptions “benefit of the doubt” isn’t a double-edged sword… at present it only cuts one way. The genius of Breitbart or even the success of Vox Day for that matter is that they hold up the black mirror for the children of Alinsky and employ their own tactics against them.
We have a ‘high trust’ society…our default expectation is the police aren’t just shaking us down for money when they set up a check point, that most people are going to do their jobs with reasonable diligence without a gun to their head or bribery, and overall most folks aren’t looking for an angle to rip off their neighbors. I’ve lived in ‘low trust’ societies; the levels of corruption, crime, and malfeasance we complain about in the US barely hold a candle in comparison. As far as the ‘cure’, even in the 1940s and 50s the political classes used to fear the general populace, they don’t any longer. Was the prior social climate in the US lower trust environment?