The (Intentional?) Silence of the Republicans

As noted previously, Hillary Clinton has launched a devastating attack on Donald Trump's history of racism and accommodation of white supremacists.  While many in the GOP continue to bloviate about the non-story of Benghazi, Hillary's self-inflicted e-mail problem, and the non-story of the contributions received by the Clinton Foundation, other than Trump himself who ridiculously called Clinton a racist and few Trump surrogates, Republicans have been largely silent when it comes to defending Trump racism.  As a short piece in The Atlantic suggests, the silence is intentional because far too many know that Clinton's allegations against Trump are true (and also true about many in the GOP, in my view):  Here are highlights:

Last night, in Time Capsule #88, I noted the deafening silence of Republican officialdom, after Hillary Clinton delivered her calmly devastating indictment of Donald Trump’s racist themes.

After this frontal attack on their own party’s chosen nominee, the rest of the GOP leadership said ... nothing. The cable-news Trump advocates were out in force, but senators? Governors? Previous candidates? Wise men and women of the party? Crickets.

A reader who is not a Trump supporter says there’s a logic to the plan:

I think you might be missing the GOP strategy here regarding Sec. Clinton’s bigotry speech, and the fact that no Republican came forward to defend Donald Trump. Republicans know that she spoke the truth—the indefensible truth about Donald Trump—and they want to squelch any discussion about it. That’s what they are doing.

Because they don’t want this speech on the airwaves, debated on panels, over several news cycles, with more and more of the dirty laundry getting debated in the mainstream news cycles, leading the Nightly News with dramatic music. Screaming headlines. Any any—ANY—statement by a Republican will trigger that discussion that no GOPer wants.

The mainstream news guys are sitting there at their email boxes, waiting, waiting, for statements, so they can write a piece on it. Benjy Sarlin mentioned it on Twitter, which you probably saw. [JF: I have now] And a couple of other journos, agreed.

But without some outraged statement from Ryan, Cruz, anybody, the mainstream journos have nothing to write about, there is no news cycle, no panels, no screaming headlines, no multi-news cycle. Just a Wow! Clinton gave a rough speech!” End of story. And that’s the strategy. Bury this story. And it’s working.

That’s how the GOP handles this kind of story. And it works just fine, every time. The mainstream journos can't find a both-sides hook, and they are nervous about this alt-right stuff anyway, so the story dies. Journos fear the brutality of GOP pushback. So it goes. Every. Time.

Contrast that with the non-story about the Clinton Foundation. Every GOPer was sending out a truckload of statements to keep that story going. Chuck Todd has stated in the past that he—they—have no choice but to write about whatever the GOP is upset about because they all put their shoulder to the wheel. And the GOP always has something for journos to write about. Controversy! And no fear of brutality from the Democrats. That’s how that goes.

That’s why we hate the media. Still. Even more than ever.

I have to agree with the reader's analysis.  The mainstream media is lazy and largely worthless.  The cowardice and laziness has done much to lead the country's decline in civility and the increasing dishonesty of politicians, especially those on the right. Had the media done its job, the Iraq War could have been avoided.  If the media had done its job and consistently exposed the ugliness of the Christofascists and racists in the GOP, perhaps the GOP would have become the hideous party that it is today.  

Why Hillary Clinton’s "Trustwortiness" Won’t be Fatal

One new national poll shows Hillary Clinton leading Donald trump by 12% nationally.   That said, I cannot relax for fear that some shoe will drop or that douche bag Julian Assange will try to engineer some "October surprise" to push the election to Russia loving Donald Trump.  Even some conservative reporters seem to think that nonetheless, Trump is toast and that Hillary Clinton's lack of "trustworthiness" will not be a fatal flaw that prevents her from being elected on November 8, 2016.   Likewise, the latest scandal that Republicans are trying to inflate over the Clinton Foundation is a case of smoke but no fire.   Indeed, I suspect many will simply shrug their shoulders and say to themselves that the Republicans are "at it again" in terms of maligning Hillary Clinton. An op-ed in the Washington Post looks at these issue.  Here are highlights:

The Associated Press reported yesterday:

More than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money — either personally or through companies or groups — to the Clinton Foundation. It’s an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president. At least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its international programs, according to a review of State Department calendars released so far to The Associated Press. Combined, the 85 donors contributed as much as $156 million. At least 40 donated more than $100,000 each, and 20 gave more than $1 million.

Let’s get one thing out of the way up front: This is almost certainly not illegal. For that, Clinton should send bushels of roses to former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell, his lawyers and their legal defense fund donors, who won a ruling from the Supreme Court that setting up a meeting is not an official act under federal bribery statutes. 

Would she have had these meetings anyway? In some cases, yes. Many of the donors were longtime Clinton friends and donors, international philanthropists and prominent public figures. She also did not see every big donor. But the jumble of public and private interests and the appearance of conflicts of interest were why the whole enterprise was dodgy from the start.

This foundation scandal is in the realm in between “perfectly ethical and legal” behavior and illegal behavior. Call it sleaze or the appearance of corruption. Chalk it up to the Clinton’s habitual blindness to impropriety. 

In a sense, there is nothing new here. We already knew the foundation served two purposes — one altruistic and one entirely selfish. It was a sort of super PAC, a big pot of money to which friends, favor- and publicity-seekers, do-gooders and celebrities all could donate. It, in turn, would generate lucrative speaking engagements for Bill Clinton and later Hillary Clinton, employ cronies like Sid Blumenthal and pay for lavish travel.

Mostly, it would keep Hillary Clinton connected to the rich and famous for what everyone knew would be one last opportunity to win the White House. The latest revelation won’t change many voters’ minds, with the exception of one category of voters. Some Republicans who planned to vote for her may either stay home or vote for third or fourth candidates, especially in states that are not all that competitive. If the disgusted Republican voters stay home, it will actually harm down-ticket Republicans, one more irony in the Clinton wars.

Yes, Clinton will “get away with it,” in the sense that the foundation antics in all likelihood won’t land her in jail or cost her the presidency. But it does further diminish her. It makes the public more cynical and therefore governance that much harder. That means voters are once again the losers.

Finally, it cannot be said enough: Republicans would be winning easily against this deeply flawed opponent with virtually any other candidate but Trump. The sheer stupidity of the Republican primary electorate’s decision and of the reaction of party leadership, which could have blocked or dumped him, is more maddening than even Hillary Clinton’s shadiness.

I definitely agree with the author's lament about the stupidity of Republican primary voters.  That said, it must be underscored that it was the so-called GOP establishment who invited these knuckle draggers into the party and haughtily approved dog whistle messaging that played to their racism, homophobia and general misogyny.  Trump is the natural result of the GOP establishment's self-prostitution to the  swamp fever ridden masses of Christofascists and white supremacists. 

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Bush Foundation Accepted Foreign Donations Too - Where's the Media?

The right wing slime machine has had near orgasms and provided breathless reports about the Clinton Foundation accepting donations from billionaires and foreigners.  As past posts have noted, despite all of the hoopla and hysteria, no "smoking gun" of wrong doing has been revealed.  What the right wing media is ignoring is the fact that the Bush Foundations have likewise accepted money from big donors and even foreign governments no doubt seeking influence.  Occupy Democrats notes in part as follows:

As the conservative media networks drive themselves into a muckraking feeding frenzy over the prospect of the upcoming work of fiction titled Clinton Cash, written by a professional right-wing conspiracy theorist and political hitman, the rest of America has picked up the question of foundation accountability out of curiosity and the tempting allure of scandal. But, in one of the countless hypocritical reversals that are all too common in modern American politics, it turns out that the Bush family foundations have been acting like they have something to hide, while the Clintons have publicly released key information about all their donors, such as identity and approximate amount donated. In typical Republican fashion, they are projecting their own corruption onto Democrats and accusing the transparent Clinton Foundation of accepting the same kinds of secret bribes that the Bush Foundation has been taking for years.

Nonprofits are not obligated to reveal their sources, but the Clinton Foundation has been revealing their donors since 2008, ever since Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State, to avoid the very allegations her campaign is now being falsely smeared with. Foreign governments could have donated to her foundation in secret, as the “investigative author” fictitious propaganda writer Peter Schweizer has alleged- but the donor list, made public in a searchable database, reveals that the foundation is clean. Tom Watson of Forbes even wrote that “in truth, the Clinton Foundation is among the most forthcoming of major charities and nonprofit foundations—especially those headed by public figures.”

On the other hand, the George Bush Foundation raised $361.8 million dollars between 2010-2013 with no attempt at accountability or transparency.

David Corn of Mother Jones puts it in perspective: “Anyone who wanted to gain favor with the Bush clan while George W. Bush was president could have anonymously donated an unlimited amount of money to his father’s foundation, and now that Jeb Bush is in the hunt, anyone looking to fashion a relationship with the Bushes can contribute millions to either of these Bush foundations and keep that connection a secret.”

Similarly, the George Bush Presidential Library has assets of $47 million and receives $3 million a year from undisclosed donations, functioning as yet another vehicle to funnel campaign and influence money through with no record or transparency, and was accepting donations all throughout George W. Bush’s presidency- another way for the millionaires of America to buy power and favors while trampling over the American democracy.

It’s worth repeating; the Clinton Foundation publicly releases the names of every donor and the amount of each donation, while the Bush Foundations accepted secret, anonymous donations of undisclosed quantities.

Here are a few highlights of what the Dallas Morning News discovered about Bush Foundation donations:

The secretive nature of high-dollar donations to presidential libraries often raises questions, though legislation to require more transparency has repeatedly fizzled.

Meredith McGehee, policy director for the Campaign Legal Center watchdog group, said the biggest issues are presidents raising money in office and the “pitfalls of access, influence and conflict of interest.”

Unlike political campaigns, presidential library fundraisers can take foreign donations. Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, for instance, each gave the Bush Center $1 million or more after Bush left office.

[A] top Bush Center booster, California investor Elliott Broidy, pleaded guilty in 2009 to a role in a corruption scandal. Another big donor, Dallas oilman and major SMU supporter Edwin L. Cox, had his son pardoned by former President George H.W. Bush.

Hillary Clinton’s Money Issues

Since Bill Clinton left the White House, the Clintons have done very well financially and, with income inequality a new hot ticket item - even Republicans are pretending to be concerned about the issue even as GOP controlled state legislatures are passing tax cuts for the rich while raising "user fees" that hit the poor hardest - the question becomes whether or not the Clintons' ties to big money will undermine Hillary's would be populist message.  A piece in The New Yorker looks at the situation.  Here are highlights:

This week, as the Democratic National Committee was preparing to announce that Philadelphia will host the Party’s 2016 convention, Hillary Clinton’s still undeclared Presidential campaign was running into a media squall about money—two of them, actually. First, David Brock, the conservative activist turned liberal activist, resigned from Priorities USA Action, a big money-raising group that is supporting Clinton, and accused the group of taking part in an “orchestrated political hit job” on two other pro-Clinton groups that Brock is involved with. Then, the Guardian revealed that a number of wealthy donors to the Clinton Foundation, a philanthropic organization set up by Bill Clinton, were clients of the Swiss division of H.S.B.C., a big bank that is embroiled in a tax-avoidance scandal.

The upshot of the Brock story was that Hillary’s money guys and gals are squabbling, and that Priorities USA Action, the political-action committee that spent seventy-five million dollars supporting Barack Obama, in 2012, is off to a slow start this year. (According to Politico, it had less than half a million dollars in the bank at the end of 2014.) The Guardian story, which was based on leaked documents from H.S.B.C., identified seven rich donors to the Clinton Foundation who had bank accounts at H.S.B.C.’s Geneva branch. One of them, Richard Caring, a British entrepreneur, “used his tax-free Geneva account to transfer $1m into the New York-based foundation,” the newspaper reported. “The HSBC records suggest Caring’s $1m donation was paid in return for former president Bill Clinton’s attendance at a lavish costume charity ball organised by Caring in St Petersburg, Russia.”


Outside of the political bubble, I doubt that one likely 2016 voter in twenty noticed either of these articles, or the follow-ups. But, at a moment when Hillary is reported to be consulting with numerous experts about how to tackle rising inequality, the articles raise anew an awkward question: How far will the Clinton family’s ties to moneyed interests complicate Hillary’s efforts to fashion a populist campaign built around the theme of defending the middle class?

One way of seeking to answer that question is to point out that, in politics (and philanthropy, too), cultivating donors and raising a lot of money are unavoidable parts of the business. And, although some people, myself among them, will never be wholly persuaded that he who pays the piper doesn’t call the tune, the average voter doesn’t seem to judge candidates by their financial backers. 

Perhaps Clinton can recapture the spirit and message she displayed in the summer and fall of 2008. First, though, she will need to reinforce her defenses against the attacks that are sure to come from the left and the right.

One way to do that is to put together a formidable campaign apparatus and a big war chest. Until the Brock story broke, few people in the political world had believed that these objectives would present a major issue. Evidently, they might. The first task facing John Podesta, the departing White House official who is slated to become chairman of the Clinton campaign, will be to gather together the various Democratic fund-raising groups and persuade them to coöperate. That won’t necessarily be easy.
The issues relating to the Clinton Foundation, which Bill Clinton founded in 2001, go beyond internecine conflict and bruised egos. Some people close to the Clintons have long been concerned that the foundation’s biggest venture, the Clinton Global Initiative, could present some vulnerabilities for Hillary. In its own words, the C.G.I. “convenes global leaders to create and implement innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges,” 

The Guardian was careful to avoid any suggestion of illegality. “It is not unlawful for US or other non-Swiss citizens to hold accounts in Geneva and there is no evidence any of the Clinton donors with Geneva accounts evaded tax,” the story said.. . . And, in addition, “it is not against US law or charity regulation to accept donations from non-US citizens, or from overseas accounts.”

This is a legitimate debate to have—and Hillary, at some point, may well be obliged to engage in it. Indeed, she might be eager to do so. From her perspective, discussing how many lives the Clinton Foundation has improved in sub-Saharan Africa and other deprived regions would be a lot more palatable than getting dragged into the tax affairs of some rich “friends of Bill” or the infighting among her fundraisers.