“They made it crystal clear that the ask was from Hillary”

[Man from Pickens]

http://www.salon.com/2015/03/21/they_made_it_crystal_clear_that_the_ask_was_from_hillary_inside_the_clinton_fundraising_machine_as_secretary_of_state/

Exactly as I suspected - Clinton leveraged her position as Secretary of State to extort money for the Clinton Foundation, Salon just blew it wide open. Put a fork in it, she's done.

[MADem]

1. Did you even read that article??? That was legal, too.

The money she raised was for a FAIR in China, not the Clinton foundation....and it was all LEGAL. The article decries the "legality" of the law (calling it a crime), not that Clinton operated entirely within it.

...The U.S. government had soured on the world’s fair idea after a scandal involving the American operation at the 1998 expo in Lisbon, and Congress had subsequently placed a nearly comprehensive ban on the State Department directly funding pavilions at future world’s fairs. But lawmakers had left a loophole for staff to raise money from private donors, corporations, NGOs, and foreign governments. That loophole was just the right size for Balderston and his new shop to fit through. Under federal law and ethics regulations, Hillary could even express her support to potential donors without making a direct appeal for money—a wrinkle in the law that would create great controversy when the secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sebelius, helped raise private funds to promote Obamacare in 2013.

As a second bonus, setting up a fund-raising operation for the fair gave Hillary an invaluable early opportunity to strengthen and expand her network among top American business executives, a potential source of campaign contributions if she decided to run in 2016.

Balderston was a political operative but not a fund-raiser per se, and Hillary turned to two longtime Clinton money bundlers, Elizabeth Bagley and Villarreal, to jump-start the capital campaign....In addition to the sheer magnitude of the fund-raising challenge, Villarreal, Bagley, and Balderston faced a set of rules that complicated their effort. They had to raise all the money from private donors, and Hillary couldn’t solicit corporate contributions directly. To make matters worse, several of America’s biggest players in China, including Coca-Cola and GM, were already building their own pavilions to safeguard their own relationships with the Chinese. As a result, they were not likely to contribute money to the official U.S. pavilion.

Hillary had a lot riding on her ability to turn an international slip into a diplomatic coup that saved face for both the United States and China. The talk about her clout as an international celebrity was nice, but could she deliver? Her fund-raising commandos didn’t have the luxury of time. They couldn’t wait for the charitable-giving arms of major corporations to process requests. Instead, they went straight to CEOs, and they made it crystal clear that the ask was from Hillary....Sources say she carefully walked on the legal side of the line, but there was no doubt that she was engaged.

Not sure what your problem is, here, other than you're trying to use an article about her skills using a law that the authors don't like, and paint it in a negative light against HER, rather than the law that she operated entirely within.

[merrily]

4. Yep. Legal. The story is subtitled "Sometimes in D.C., the crime is what's legal: Inside the

massive Clinton fundraising operation at State"

I see no distaste for the law coming from the authors. To the contrary, it seems as though they thought the loophole Hillary's guy used was a potential problem, both from the subtitle and from the idea that raising money from private sources raised issues of quid pro quo.

[HereSince1628]

11. "It was legal" think about how often that pops up around certain political celebrities.

Why should it be that, "it looks bad but it's legal" is sold as high virtue?

Would a virtuous person, other than a corporate lawyer, spend a lot of time in the moral/ethic grayness of the boundaries of legality?

Common sense says, No.

Now, to be fair, such a judgment must be fairly and carefully made. That isn't easy.

On one side is the risk of being taken in by mud-slingers, on the other side is the risk of being taken in by apologetic sycophants and paid image-managers.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

13. The housing crash was also legal as was the bank bailouts.

Why was it legal? Because the corporatists paid the politicians to make it legal.

Is our world somehow going to be magically saved from the corporatists because the corporatists write checks to the people on our side of the ballot? Our government is being auctioned off.

[MADem]

14. Comparing raising money for a pavilion at a fair in China to the housing crash is a bridge too far.

You lost me. Too much drama and not enough to be genuinely outraged about.

he saved US "face" with that effort--as the article notes--but hey, whatever. Maybe you should write to your senators and congressmen and urge them to give the State Department sufficient funds to bankroll these kinds of international outreach efforts, instead of blaming a former SECSTATE for pulling off the effort in an entirely legal fashion? That would be helpful, perhaps?

[delrem]

2. On the other hand, the "ask" was for funding a US pavilion.

Since the US couldn't seem to get around to it without such charity.
Cool.

[merrily]

5. Apparently, the US was not that anxious to get around to it.

The U.S. government had soured on the world’s fair idea after a scandal involving the American operation at the 1998 expo in Lisbon, and Congress had subsequently placed a nearly comprehensive ban on the State Department directly funding pavilions at future world’s fairs.

As for the charity:

. But the government generally doesn’t raise money from the private sector, in large part because of the potential for corporate donors to give with the expectation that they will get specific government actions in return.

and

But lawmakers had left a loophole for staff to raise money from private donors, corporations, NGOs, and foreign governments. That loophole was just the right size for Balderston and his new shop to fit through. Under federal law and ethics regulations, Hillary could even express her support to potential donors without making a direct appeal for money—a wrinkle in the law that would create great controversy when the secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sebelius, helped raise private funds to promote Obamacare in 2013.

From the story, it doesn't seem Hillary was overly attached to the pavillion.

I remember a kerfuffle in 2008 about the Hillary campaign having accepted donations from China and her giving back the money after the story hit the fan. Whatever the story, I very much doubt this was done without a firm eye on what would benefit the Clintons.

[merrily]

3. Not a flattering story, but I doubt it will end anything.

[bemildred]

6. Nah.This is vanilla US politics, and likely a feather in her cap.

Since we don't believe in taxing people with money to pay for government, fundraising is a big part of the job.

[Scuba]

7. Nothing here that even reflects poorly on Hillary. On the other hand, her pro-war, pro-TPP ....

... pro-Wall Street and other policies long ago disqualified her in my judgement.

[stonecutter357]

8. you seem desperate!

[tularetom]

9. Drip, drip, drip

Yes, like the email thing, it was all perfectly legal. But with each new revelation, the sense that something's rotten in Denmark gets a little stronger. Nixonian, is what it is.

Still, I guess I could tolerate four years of Clinton drama and scandal if it weren't for the crappy pro war and pro Wall Street policies that come with it.

[riversedge]

10. Nothing drip about it. She got the job done. Simple as that. Good for her.

[riversedge]

12. The content is from a new book: ‘HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton,’

Actually it looks interesting. Will have to check the local library and get a copy. The book has been out for a over a year. time fo rme to do some catching up. Lots of reviews with Google search. Here is just one:



?uuid=teCrQo96EeOyJxKkXRCeAw

HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton,’ by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes


By Liza Mundy February 6, 2014


.....In this way, the book tells a number of stories. It is the story of Hillary Clinton’s foray into global diplomacy as well as management of a vast bureaucracy; and of her resurrection from the setback and mistakes of 2008. The authors describe her State Department leadership as strong but not dazzling: a “workmanlike enhancement of diplomacy and development” with “deliverables” that were real but not high-profile — no “marquee peace deal,” for example. But she elevated the stature of State, which lost influence to the CIA and Pentagon during the years when two wars dominated the foreign policy landscape. She worked to win over her employees, fighting for budget increases and going to bat for Foggy Bottom bike commuters. As a member of the Cabinet, she brought star power and a venerable understanding of Washington’s “levers of power.” She defended the president’s health plan against doubting Cabinet colleagues, a moment the authors describe as “pivotal, if underappreciated.”

Part of the rapprochement between Clinton and Obama is the result of self-interest and the ability, of professional politicians, to work together when they have to; but it’s also because people tend to go through what one D.C insider calls the “stages of Hillary.” First, the person explains, you dread working with her, then you begin to grudgingly respect her, and one day you find you like her — won over by her fortitude, her sense of humor, and her ability to overlook episodes like the one where Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau stood beside a cardboard cutout of her and cupped a breast. That Hillary laughed off this punkish disrespect suggests that hit list or no hit list, she is capable of magnanimity.

Her diplomatic achievements were of course marred by the tragedy of Benghazi, where Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were murdered. The book concludes, plausibly, that Hillary was not personally to blame for inadequate security at the diplomatic compound, but the fact that Stevens was there in the first place was the result of her philosophy of “expeditionary diplomacy,” which holds that the United States should have a presence even in dangerous places..............




HRC State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton

By Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes

Crown. 440 pp. $26.

[mylye2222]

15. Thanks for exposure.

Another confirmation of what she really cares. Herself. And she and Bills pact. Not American people.