US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5636

On October 19 2016 02:23 CannonsNCarriers wrote:


Do you bother to read the articles? This whole election season is just people taking headlines they like and not bothering with the text.

On October 19 2016 02:24 Acrofales wrote:


I clearly don't see the whole picture here, but isn't it against the constitution to deny people the right to settle a dispute in court, and thus the clause that forced arbitration seems quite dubious in the first place? Seems that arbitration is a logical first step in the case of a dispute, but if it can't be settled in arbitration, court should be a possible next step?

On October 19 2016 02:12 GreenHorizons wrote:


Appearance of impropriety would be not disclosing donations

Personal benefit seems kind of obvious, besides bragging about it's work to increase her public profile, traveling for free, and it leading to many well paid speaking opportunities for Bill, they also used it to protect money from taxes so they could spend it as they wished (#3).

I mean that's not it but those are a couple.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said Tuesday that the Senate won't "stonewall" Hillary Clinton's choice to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court if she is elected president in November.

During a conference call with Iowa reporters, Grassley said that the Senate has a "responsibility" to consider the nominee chosen by the winner of the election.

"We have the same responsibility for Trump," Grassley said, adding that he would categorize Trump's potential nominees as "strict constructionists" as opposed to Clinton's preference for "judicial activists."

Grassley went on to cite his rationale for refusing to confirm President Barack Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, to the Supreme Court.

He reiterated that he wants the next president to fill the seat left empty by the late Justice Anthony Scalia, but added that he would be open to working with whichever candidate wins in November: “If that new president happens to be Hillary, we can’t just simply stonewall."

On Monday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said in a radio interview that congressional Republicans would be "united" against Clinton's Supreme Court nominee if she was elected.

His office later walked those comments back in a statement, saying that "of course" McCain would vote on any Supreme Court nominee put forward by the next president.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her husband former President Bill Clinton made almost $28 million last year and paid about $10 million or 36% of that in federal taxes, according to tax returns her campaign released Friday.

The Clinton campaign made public eight years of returns — covering 2007 to 2014, essentially filling in the public record since she ran for president unsuccessfully eight years ago. As a result of the earlier campaign and her husband’s political career, the couple’s returns back to 1977 are now public.

The returns do show some financial tactics that could draw criticism. They reveal that Hillary Clinton used a limited liability company — ZFS Holdings, LLC — to receive her speech income and royalties from her books. Delaware state records show ZFS was created in February, 2013, just eight days after Clinton stepped down as secretary of state and began making paid speeches.

Bill Clinton’s use of a similar entity for his speech and business income drew press attention earlier this year because of concern about so-called “shell” or “pass-through” companies being used to shield income from taxation.
The Clintons gave just over $3 million to charity in 2014, about 11 percent of their overall income. Almost all of it was directed into a family foundation which doles out money to other charities and is separate from the better-known Clinton Foundation, a global charity they started.

On October 19 2016 02:33 KwarK wrote:

Okay. So a few things to unpack here.

Firstly, arguing that a foundation is run for personal benefit because all that AIDS medicine they give out makes the person running it look good so really they're getting personal benefit from it is fucking bonkers. That's a ridiculous standard of personal benefit to hold a foundation to. If it was anyone else's foundation that argument wouldn't be used. Take the Trump Foundation. When a Florida court fined Trump $120,000 and he settled for a $100,000 charitable donation and then used the Trump Foundation to pay the fine rather than his own money, that's personal benefit. Trump personally had a $100,000 liability which he settled by taking money from the Trump Foundation. So, now we've established what personal benefit is and is not, would you like to try again? Maybe with some kind of actual personal benefit rather than this bullshit "charity makes the giver look good so it's really actually selfish" argument.

Secondly, increasing the public profile of former President Bill Clinton? With who? The readers of 'I live in a cave and my only source of news is charity newsletters' Monthly?

Traveling for free? Presumably this is traveling to Foundation events because otherwise they wouldn't expense it (let me know if they've been paying for non Foundation related trips). So your argument is that she's using the Foundation to score her free trips to events she has to go to because they're necessary for her as the operator of the Foundation. Presumably this was right after she joined an amateur hockey team to score free bus trips to her own hockey matches. And just before she went on a road trip to a gas station to buy gas to replace the gas consumed by the road trip.

Your source, the dailywire, references them as "the sleazy political power couple". That doesn't make you look good. At all. Could you find any source that wasn't an internet tabloid? But let's take it at face value. They donated money to charity and got tax deductions. I'll assume that you're not sure how a tax deduction works. Basically if you donate a million dollars then you don't have to pay tax on a million dollars. The top tax rate for income tax is 39.6% at the moment. Let's assume the whole million dollars was taxed at that. Their effective rate will be a little lower but I'll be generous. Your theory is that they donate $1,000,000 in order to save $396,000. Now I'm pretty sure that will actually leave them $604,000 behind but maybe I'm missing something here.

Everyone gets tax deductions for charitable contributions. That passage in the dailywire is just exploiting gross reader ignorance. It basically reads "did you know that a large amount of the tax deductions the Clinton's claimed were actually for charitable contributions!?!? There were over a million dollars in tax deductions from this. A million!". I mean fuck. At that point you might as well show a video of Hillary buying a Starbucks and have a dramatic voiceover on youtube.

"And watch now as she gives money to the barista. Then she walks slightly further down and waits until, and this part will shock you, a different barista gives her a coffee. Now the mainstream media will tell you this isn't pay for play because the barista she gave the money to wasn't the same as the one who gave her the coffee but this next shocking clip will reveal a link between the two."
*cuts to interview with the barista*
"So you know the barista who gave her the coffee?"
"Yeah, that's Brian, I work with him"
"You work with him?!?!"
"yes"
*voiceover*
"as you can see there can no longer be any doubt that this was pay to play, there were clear links between the barista Clinton paid and her getting a coffee. Corruption. Case closed."


I know you don't like her GH but come on, give us actual specifics. Don't just point out that charitable donation tax deductions exist and hope that nobody knows what they are.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday addressed Donald Trump’s warnings about voter fraud. And he did so by making the kind of argument that might actually get under Trump’s skin.

The president told Trump to “stop whining” and suggested the GOP nominee lacks the fortitude to be president.

It happened in the Rose Garden, during a joint press appearance with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. A reporter asked Obama a question about Trump’s repeated predictions that Hillary Clinton’s supporters would try to steal the election by casting fake ballots, registering non-citizens, and other sorts of illegal activity in cities with large minority populations that tend to vote Democratic.

Trump has been making these warnings more loudly and more frequently in the last few weeks, as his prospects for winning the election have dimmed. A wide swath of political leaders, including some prominent Republicans, have condemned his arguments because they lack basis in fact and because they undermine faith in American democracy.

Obama made these points too, calling Trump’s voter fraud arguments “unprecedented” for a major party candidate in modern history. But he also said that Trump’s focus on voter fraud revealed something about Trump’s character ― and fitness for office.

“It doesn’t really show the kind of leadership and toughness you want in a president,” Obama said. “You start whining before the game is even over? If whenever things are going badly for you, and you lose, you start blaming somebody else? Then you don’t have what it takes to be in this job.”

Obama pointed backwards, at the Oval Office, as he said that ― and he wasn’t done. “There are a lot of times when things don’t go our way. Or my way. That’s OK. You fight through it, you work through it, you try to accomplish your goals.”

“I’d advise Mr. Trump to stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes,” Obama said.

And if Trump were to succeed, and win in November? Then, Obama promised, he would do his best to ensure a smooth transfer of power, just as he expected Clinton would do.

“That’s what Americans do, that’s why America is already great,” Obama said, ironically appropriating Trump’s “Make America Great” slogan. “One way of weakening America and making it less great is if you start betraying those basic traditions that have been bipartisan and have helped to hold together this democracy now for well over two centuries.”

On October 19 2016 03:10 RoomOfMush wrote:
Oh man. Obama bringing down the thunder.

On October 19 2016 02:33 KwarK wrote:

Okay. So a few things to unpack here.

Firstly, arguing that a foundation is run for personal benefit because all that AIDS medicine they give out makes the person running it look good so really they're getting personal benefit from it is fucking bonkers. That's a ridiculous standard of personal benefit to hold a foundation to. If it was anyone else's foundation that argument wouldn't be used. Take the Trump Foundation. When a Florida court fined Trump $120,000 and he settled for a $100,000 charitable donation and then used the Trump Foundation to pay the fine rather than his own money, that's personal benefit. Trump personally had a $100,000 liability which he settled by taking money from the Trump Foundation. So, now we've established what personal benefit is and is not, would you like to try again? Maybe with some kind of actual personal benefit rather than this bullshit "charity makes the giver look good so it's really actually selfish" argument.

Secondly, increasing the public profile of former President Bill Clinton? With who? The readers of 'I live in a cave and my only source of news is charity newsletters' Monthly?

Traveling for free? Presumably this is traveling to Foundation events because otherwise they wouldn't expense it (let me know if they've been paying for non Foundation related trips). So your argument is that she's using the Foundation to score her free trips to events she has to go to because they're necessary for her as the operator of the Foundation. Presumably this was right after she joined an amateur hockey team to score free bus trips to her own hockey matches. And just before she went on a road trip to a gas station to buy gas to replace the gas consumed by the road trip.

Your source, the dailywire, references them as "the sleazy political power couple". That doesn't make you look good. At all. Could you find any source that wasn't an internet tabloid? But let's take it at face value. They donated money to charity and got tax deductions. I'll assume that you're not sure how a tax deduction works. Basically if you donate a million dollars then you don't have to pay tax on a million dollars. The top tax rate for income tax is 39.6% at the moment. Let's assume the whole million dollars was taxed at that. Their effective rate will be a little lower but I'll be generous. Your theory is that they donate $1,000,000 in order to save $396,000. Now I'm pretty sure that will actually leave them $604,000 behind but maybe I'm missing something here.

Everyone gets tax deductions for charitable contributions. That passage in the dailywire is just exploiting gross reader ignorance. It basically reads "did you know that a large amount of the tax deductions the Clinton's claimed were actually for charitable contributions!?!? There were over a million dollars in tax deductions from this. A million!". I mean fuck. At that point you might as well show a video of Hillary buying a Starbucks and have a dramatic voiceover on youtube.

"And watch now as she gives money to the barista. Then she walks slightly further down and waits until, and this part will shock you, a different barista gives her a coffee. Now the mainstream media will tell you this isn't pay for play because the barista she gave the money to wasn't the same as the one who gave her the coffee but this next shocking clip will reveal a link between the two."
*cuts to interview with the barista*
"So you know the barista who gave her the coffee?"
"Yeah, that's Brian, I work with him"
"You work with him?!?!"
"yes"
*voiceover*
"as you can see there can no longer be any doubt that this was pay to play, there were clear links between the barista Clinton paid and her getting a coffee. Corruption. Case closed."


I know you don't like her GH but come on, give us actual specifics. Don't just point out that charitable donation tax deductions exist and hope that nobody knows what they are.

For Hillary and Bill Clinton, the total is $23.2 million between 2001 and 2015. That figure comes from the Clintons’ joint tax returns, which the Democratic nominee has released.

In that 15-year period — the years since the Clintons left the White House — they earned about $237 million in adjusted gross income, much of it from speaking fees and book royalties. So Clinton and her husband donated about 9.8 percent of their adjusted gross income.

The Clinton Family Foundation is a nonprofit used by Bill and Hillary Clinton for their personal charitable giving. The Clintons are its only donors.

they also used it to protect money from taxes so they could spend it as they wished

the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

That one was founded by Bill Clinton in 1997, while he was still president and was originally known as the William J. Clinton Foundation. Initially, the foundation’s goal was to raise money for the construction of Clinton’s presidential library. After he left office, however, the foundation’s goals and funding expanded rapidly. It soon became the chief vehicle for Bill Clinton’s post-presidential ambitions, a way to help charities and promote his own celebrity worldwide

On October 19 2016 03:11 Rebs wrote:


What did he say now ?

On October 19 2016 03:14 GreenHorizons wrote:



Well I see how you might have misunderstood what I meant by

"Do I think she (like every person with a massive charity) used it for personal benefit?"

I meant "used it for personal benefit", but not exclusively (or even mostly). I mean we could pretend that they only went places they "had" to go and that they never went anywhere they had a personal interest in going but we can't read their minds, and if they did double duty we'd just call it efficiency.

But let's look at the tax thing since that was the one I linked. I thought you would attack the source, even though we both know it didn't matter. But you went ahead and painted us a story entertaining it so I'll do the same.

First their rate:



But you knew they were paying full rate more or less because she's made it one of her talking points about taxes for like a year.

Ah yes deductions are common and work the way you describe, except what is the "Clinton Family Foundation"?



So who do we suppose chooses how that charity spends it's money?

Ah, so:



Sounds like a pretty reasonable interpretation.

But where does the money go? Well one place it went was:


Source

That sounds a lot like using it for personal benefit. Taken that's mostly for Bill's personal benefit as opposed to hers specifically, though I think the benefits of Bill's and the foundation's prestige are reasonably clear.

Considering the response and my lack of time moving forward I doubt this will be very productive to carry on. Like I've said before, what troubles me isn't what happened (The CF isn't unusual other than the potential influence and access, though we're assured that it didn't happen), it's how people are trying to minimize and cover practically everything, to the point that it undermines traditional Democratic positions.

Have the Clinton's foundations done good things? Of course. Does the glossing over of their failings, appearances of impropriety, and shortcomings do all of us a disservice? Yup.