Look, the corruption of Bill, Hillary, and the national press has been documented on issues much more compelling than this. Everybody knows it.
Bill is a sexual predator. Hillary participates in the political destruction of the women that accuse Bill of rape, assault, and harassment. The press laughingly refers to the episodes as "bimbo alerts". All the Bernie fanatics got to witness this inside corruption first hand with DNC emails planning fraudulent ways to defame Bernie and his supporters.

We already know what she'll do for power. This "selling State access" is really a step back IMHO.

Ok, do we know if those people who look suspicious subsequently did, in fact, receive help with their problems? And if they did, that would seem to be individual favors exchanged for charitable gifts, not peddling influence that impacts foreign policy. I'm not seeing the benefit that people are accusing the Clintons of having received. Are people questioning whether the donated money was used for charity, or for the Clintons' personal enrichment? Because my understanding is that the charity gets very high ratings from the watchdog groups.

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Slowguy

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Btw...

Hillary is going to be the next POTUS. All these articles talking about how close Trump is are total and complete bull. He is getting killed, and will lose pretty much no matter what. Julian Assange had better have a wiki post 100x more powerful than anything he's done before if he hopes to affect this election. On second thought, not even... It's done.

Are people questioning whether the donated money was used for charity, or for the Clintons' personal enrichment?


I'm not sure what people are thinking but for me it is using her government position for personal gain which seems to be a trend with the Clinton's. They seem to use the elected positions to serve themselves. It was that way Governor Clinton in Arkansas, President Clinton and Secretary of State Clinton. The constant blurring of public office with their personal lives when clear boundaries could easily be established is a regular occurrence.


When very smart people continually do things that have the appearance of being dumb, it tells me they are doing it on purpose. I think after so many years in power, they simply treat elected office as their right. They use their power of persuasion to stamp out people who speak out against them and constantly play the victim card (i.e. the Right lunatics out to get them).

I'm not sure what people are thinking but for me it is using her government position for personal gain

I'm curious as to what was her personal gain from this last round of accusations? I can see that the foundation may have gained, and thus all those worthy causes they support. I hear this all the time, other than an attaboy for helping out the needy in the world, what exactly did she gain? It seems like many of you think there is some direct money involved here, did I miss this story?


And I don't want to hear about travel or the nominal expenses they may take for being associated with the foundation, chump change next to their wealth and really a weak argument if that is where you think the money trail is.

Yeah, I understand that sentiment, but I haven't seen anyone explain exactly what personal gain she received from these interactions. The donations go to the Foundation, which again, seems to be highly rated by the watchdog organizations for how it spends its money and the work it does. Has someone shown that the Clintons skimmed money from the foundation, or benefited in some other significant tangible way?



To be fair, the Clinton Foundation isn't "their personal lives." It's a very public charity organization.

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Slowguy

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Hillary intervened to help Swiss bank avoid issues with IRS; Swiss bank then donates to the Clinton Foundation and pays Bill $1.5M for speaking gigs: http://www.theatlantic.com/...peaking-fees/400067/

A Vox article with a number of experts who discuss what was going on: http://www.vox.com/...y-clinton-foundation

Donations and then approval for weapons: http://www.dailykos.com/...onations-for-Weapons

Just a few. Is it clear cut? Is there a smoking gun? No, but as far as I can tell, pretty much unprecedented for a Secretary of State.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

Edited...the "facts" that I cited turned out to be incorrect.

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You linked the same story about the Swiss all three times.

Based on that story, I guess it's mostly an appearance issue. Unless you think Sec Clinton laid out a plan in Geneva whereby she would solve the Swiss' problems in exchange for 1.5 million, the rest seems fairly benign to me. UBS was already donating to the Clinton Foundation before this incident. They increased a bit over the following 6 years, but not by some ridiculous degree. And it would make sense if you were treated well by someone, that you might find yourself more inclined to support organizations with their name attached in the future. The speaking fees for Bill is probably the most potentially troubling item, although lots of organizations and companies paid him to speak.

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Slowguy

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Trying to rate the Clinton Foundation is actually fairly complex. They don't make charitable grants; they do the work themselves. So, while that means that you can't accuse them of only spending a few cents on the dollar by giving cash grants like some conservative pundits have, it also makes it very difficult to tell just how much money is really going towards helping folks, as you can write just about anything as being part of a some program. For example, if you travel first class somewhere and enjoy five star accommodations while attending some conference on Third World Farming, you could potentially say that was just part of the Clinton Foundation program on assisting Third World Farmers, and it would appear on the books as just an expense for that program.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

I fixed the links. Like I said, there isn't a smoking gun, but there most definitely is a disturbing pattern of donations and favorable treatment.

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Yeah, but the rating for the organization seems to be fairly unanimously positive by all the watchdog groups, so I'm going to go ahead and assume they're generally on the up and up from that perspective unless you provide actual evidence that they're not. I'm perfectly open to the idea that Sec Clinton received some unsavory personal benefit somehow, but I'm not seeing that in the Foundation itself so far.

I understand that people object to people flying first class or staying in first class accommodations when they're on charity trips, but they're just going to have to get over that. Former Presidents travel in style. Heads of large organizations travel in style. That's not some Clinton-specific corruption, and it's not like it would have been any different if she wasn't SecState. It's just how the world works. I'm betting Bono travels pretty well and stays in nice hotels too, but nobody is accusing him of corruption or acting in bad faith towards his charities.

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Slowguy

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Actually, some charity watch dog groups have decided to remove the Clinton Foundation for their site because they can't determine how to rate them (Charity Navigator), so definitely not unanimous. And I wasn't talking about just Bill's travel as counting towards programs; that would go for anyone employed by the foundation. Anyway, I'm definitely not trying to paint the Clinton Foundation as being sleazy, just that the ratings for them are not as clear cut as some would have us believe.

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Thanks. I'll take a look.

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Slowguy

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"Come the fuck on. Have we lowered the bar that much?"

Yes, I have no doubt that if Nixon was President today, and Watergate unfolded he would not have resigned because he would not have been removed from office during impeachment proceedings. As long as it "my guy" doing it, 35% of the people think it's just the other side making shit up, and about 30% don't care.