US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5637

On October 19 2016 03:11 Rebs wrote:


What did he say now ?

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

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

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.

Sounds like a pretty reasonable interpretation.

On October 19 2016 03:26 KwarK wrote:

How is building a Presidential Library not charity work? If giving to a megachurch so the megadeacon can buy a new private jet is charitable then building a library certainly counts.

And I'm still pretty confused at which demographic doesn't know who Bill Clinton is but it going to find out due to his charitable activities. Presumably the demographics of the Chappaqua Volunteer Ambulance Corps, Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, the Arkansas Community Foundation and the University of Arkansas, which received donations from the Clinton Family Foundation.


You're somehow still failing to get this. If you take your money and donate it to a charity then you can no longer spend it as you wish. It can now only be spent on charitable things. The Clinton family cannot spend the money in the Clinton Family Foundation as they wish. Yes, the money in there is shielded from taxes. No, the money in there is not theirs. They didn't avoid taxes, they avoided having the money the taxes were due on. That's not how you get rich from tax avoidance.

The Washington Post article you linked disagrees with you. It says that the CFF, which they made their tax deductible donations to, didn't make any donations benefiting the Clinton family. I'm sorry GH, I recommend you read your own sources.

How is building a Presidential Library not charity work? If giving to a megachurch so the megadeacon can buy a new private jet is charitable then building a library certainly counts.

(The CF isn't unusual other than the potential influence and access, though we're assured that it didn't happen)

On October 19 2016 03:49 Acrofales wrote:
Underwear gnomes of course

On October 19 2016 03:50 TheYango wrote:
I think it's plausible that the Clintons are corrupt, but given the connections that both no doubt already have in place from their terms as president/SoS, their high-profile charity that's consistently subject to scrutiny seems like just about the dumbest possible vehicle for said corruption available to them. If they wanted to do some questionable things why the hell would they do it through the Clinton Foundation?