Thursday, August 25, 2016

Citizens United

Surely no liberal Clinton supporter would have been opposed to the Citizens United ruling that said corporations can give money to political campaigns because, as we all know, there is no quid pro quo in politics.  They certainly don't have any problem with the Clinton Foundation collection of millions of dollars from foreign countries while Hillary was Secretary of State.
During the four years Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, the Clinton Foundation run by her husband took tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments and corporations.

Many of these donors had a lot riding on Clinton’s decisions. Saudi Arabia gave the foundation up to $25 million, and Clinton signed off on a controversial $29 billion sale of fighter jets to the country. Oil companies gave the foundation around $3 million, and Clinton approved a lucrative gas pipeline in the Canadian tar sands they’d long sought.

  Vox
Still, you can't PROVE a connection.
[A]nother media feeding frenzy over the foundation kicked off again on Monday, when the State Department was forced to release emails showing that the foundation’s leadership tried to land its top donors meetings with the secretary of state.

[...]

Certainly, none of them offers proof that Clinton was willing to trade government favors directly for big contributions. Moreover, as Mother Jones’s Kevin Drum writes, most of the donors’ requests to see Clinton were actually turned down.

[...]

So if there was no quid pro quo, does that mean Clinton's conduct was aboveboard?

[...]

Talking with top government officials obviously isn’t the same as getting them to do your bidding, but doing so can help structure how they think, whom they turn to for advice, and, ultimately, what they decide to do. And the emails at least strongly suggest that foundation donors had a better opportunity to mold the secretary of state’s worldview than they would have otherwise.
No, I think the Saudis gave money to the Clinton Foundation because they're such great humanitarians. It was all about charity. They just wanted meetings with the US Secretary of State to personally thank her for allowing them to further the cause of women's rights the world over.
As the AP has pointed out, the State Department is stonewalling the release of Clinton’s schedule — meaning we probably only know a fraction of the actual meetings she held with donors.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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