whembly wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Sounds about right, but time will tell. We may have another Obama-like candidate, unknown, and a good campaigner. I'd say Obama is better at campaigning than anything else.

That's a rather... back handed insult to Obama.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I'm sure many Americans remember the Clinton years with fondness on the economic front. I can't speak from experience (I was 5 when he left office), but from what I have read and heard, it certianly seems that way. Although the question is, will Hillary be as good as Bill?

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Whilst you guys are talking about Presidential candidates, over at the UK politics thread, we're talking nuclear weapons, guns, hotdogs, and Russian invasions! That's how we roll. We seem to acting more American than the Americans

On the subject of Presidential candidates, for the life of me, I cannot see anybody who can stop the Clinton bandwagon. I've been doing some in depth reading on this.

Bill's charm offensive will win the ground war, and as long as Hilary walks a straight line, I can't really see any serious blows landing on her.

I could be wrong.

 skyth wrote:
Should be trespassing if they bring a gun into a business with a no gun sign.

 CptJake wrote:
Sanders will run as a D if he wants any chance of winning.

 CptJake wrote:
Jumping in as an I would kill the D candidate's chance, stealing way more of their votes than the R candidate's.

No way he does that.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Really, my dream is a complete election system re-boot. Instant runoff system (to allow for people to vote third party without "lost" votes), either shortest split lines, or an indipendant re-disticting commity to remove gerrymandering, changes to how running for office work to make officials (especially in the house) less of part time congressman, full time fundraiser, the list goes on..

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Whilst you guys are talking about Presidential candidates, over at the UK politics thread, we're talking nuclear weapons, guns, hotdogs, and Russian invasions! That's how we roll. We seem to acting more American than the Americans

On the subject of Presidential candidates, for the life of me, I cannot see anybody who can stop the Clinton bandwagon. I've been doing some in depth reading on this.

Bill's charm offensive will win the ground war, and as long as Hilary walks a straight line, I can't really see any serious blows landing on her.

I could be wrong.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I'm sure many Americans remember the Clinton years with fondness on the economic front. I can't speak from experience (I was 5 when he left office), but from what I have read and heard, it certianly seems that way. Although the question is, will Hillary be as good as Bill?

 CptJake wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Whilst you guys are talking about Presidential candidates, over at the UK politics thread, we're talking nuclear weapons, guns, hotdogs, and Russian invasions! That's how we roll. We seem to acting more American than the Americans

On the subject of Presidential candidates, for the life of me, I cannot see anybody who can stop the Clinton bandwagon. I've been doing some in depth reading on this.

Bill's charm offensive will win the ground war, and as long as Hilary walks a straight line, I can't really see any serious blows landing on her.

I could be wrong.

She lost last time she ran.

That really should tell you a lot.

Since then, she resided over a foreign policy that many in her party, especially the progressive base, see as massively bellicose and poorly run. That does not help her case at all.

Bill and her don't seem to appear together much in public lately. I suspect there are reasons for that. Yeah, he'll campaign for her, but don't expect him to be as effective as he has been in the past, the party has moved way left of the crowd he most appeals to, and with a major theme so far being 'Time for a woman president', Bill and his very checkered past when it comes to women is not a good thing to be putting in front of the public.

Basically, it almost seems as if the Ds are taking a very poor page from the R campaign book and running a candidate because it is Their Turn and They Are Owed It. Again, that does not play well to the populist and progressive base. She is going to be (correctly) portrayed as a corporatist with a crappy track record AND a previous loss to a no name senator.

She may well win, but it will be because the Rs can't run a national level campaign to save themselves. If she does have to face a bloody primary (say Sanders and or Warren jump in, let alone O'Malley) she will have a difficult time in the general election as she comes out of the primary as bruised and beat as the eventual R candidate will.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Really, my dream is a complete election system re-boot. Instant runoff system (to allow for people to vote third party without "lost" votes), either shortest split lines, or an indipendant re-disticting commity to remove gerrymandering, changes to how running for office work to make officials (especially in the house) less of part time congressman, full time fundraiser, the list goes on..

Hell, I would go a step further. Put up every seat in the House, Senate, and the White House up for reelection all at once. And if you've already served, too bad, you don't get to run in this round.

I've got a question regarding the various possible candidates for President, R or D. How many of them feel like, for lack of a better word, a real statesman? How many of them can you actually look at and think "This person would be the person I want representing America to the world, the person who will set our foreign policy, the person who will order our military, the person who will tell us everything will be ok after another national tragedy, etc.?" I'm not sure I think that about any of them. The Rs just seem to be too much of a "me too" bunch, running because they can, and the Ds seem to have basically just handed it to HRC, barring any massive blunder on her part. But what have any of them actually accomplished? What great tragedy were they the hero of? What great lasting legislation did they craft to make our country a better place? What great military conflict did they help command us to victory in? What great treaty or deal with another nation did they help create that made the world a better place?

I know I've said it before, I feel like our country is circling the drain because our congressmen aren't worth a damn when it comes to actually working together to do something productive for the nation and not their own petty self interests. Environmental issues, foreign policy issues, military engagements, energy issues, civil rights, etc., these all feel like they're coming to a head within the next few years, as everything seems to be getting worse every year. I feel like 2016 may end up being one of the most important elections ever, and what do we have to show for it?

Maybe I'm just overly pessimistic from what I've seen in the headlines lately.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Whilst you guys are talking about Presidential candidates, over at the UK politics thread, we're talking nuclear weapons, guns, hotdogs, and Russian invasions! That's how we roll. We seem to acting more American than the Americans

On the subject of Presidential candidates, for the life of me, I cannot see anybody who can stop the Clinton bandwagon. I've been doing some in depth reading on this.

Bill's charm offensive will win the ground war, and as long as Hilary walks a straight line, I can't really see any serious blows landing on her.

I could be wrong.

The problem with the HRC campaign is that her support is as thick as a Fremen spice blow ambush. It looks massive but its only on the surface, and by the time you realize it you're already dead (you Harkonnen dog).

Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation as Russians Pressed for Control of Uranium Company

The headline in Pravda trumpeted President Vladimir V. Putin’s latest coup, its nationalistic fervor recalling an era when the newspaper served as the official mouthpiece of the Kremlin: “Russian Nuclear Energy Conquers the World.”

The article, in January 2013, detailed how the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom, had taken over a Canadian company with uranium-mining stakes stretching from Central Asia to the American West. The deal made Rosatom one of the world’s largest uranium producers and brought Mr. Putin closer to his goal of controlling much of the global uranium supply chain.

But the untold story behind that story is one that involves not just the Russian president, but also a former American president and a woman who would like to be the next one.

At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One.

Frank Giustra, left, with former President Bill Clinton at a Clinton Foundation news conference in 2007. Credit Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
Beyond mines in Kazakhstan that are among the most lucrative in the world, the sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States. Since uranium is considered a strategic asset, with implications for national security, the deal had to be approved by a committee composed of representatives from a number of United States government agencies. Among the agencies that eventually signed off was the State Department, then headed by Mr. Clinton’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.

And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.

At the time, both Rosatom and the United States government made promises intended to ease concerns about ceding control of the company’s assets to the Russians. Those promises have been repeatedly broken, records show.

The New York Times’s examination of the Uranium One deal is based on dozens of interviews, as well as a review of public records and securities filings in Canada, Russia and the United States. Some of the connections between Uranium One and the Clinton Foundation were unearthed by Peter Schweizer, a former fellow at the right-leaning Hoover Institution and author of the forthcoming book “Clinton Cash.” Mr. Schweizer provided a preview of material in the book to The Times, which scrutinized his information and built upon it with its own reporting.

Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown. But the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation, headed by a former president who relied heavily on foreign cash to accumulate $250 million in assets even as his wife helped steer American foreign policy as secretary of state, presiding over decisions with the potential to benefit the foundation’s donors.

In a statement, Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign, said no one “has ever produced a shred of evidence supporting the theory that Hillary Clinton ever took action as secretary of state to support the interests of donors to the Clinton Foundation.” He emphasized that multiple United States agencies, as well as the Canadian government, had signed off on the deal and that, in general, such matters were handled at a level below the secretary. “To suggest the State Department, under then-Secretary Clinton, exerted undue influence in the U.S. government’s review of the sale of Uranium One is utterly baseless,” he added.

American political campaigns are barred from accepting foreign donations. But foreigners may give to foundations in the United States. In the days since Mrs. Clinton announced her candidacy for president, the Clinton Foundation has announced changes meant to quell longstanding concerns about potential conflicts of interest in such donations; it has limited donations from foreign governments, with many, like Russia’s, barred from giving to all but its health care initiatives. That policy stops short of Mrs. Clinton’s agreement with the Obama administration, which prohibited all foreign government donations while she served as the nation’s top diplomat.

Either way, the Uranium One deal highlights the limits of such prohibitions. The foundation will continue to accept contributions from foreign individuals and businesses whose interests, like Uranium One’s, may overlap with those of foreign governments, some of which may be at odds with the United States.

When the Uranium One deal was approved, the geopolitical backdrop was far different from today’s. The Obama administration was seeking to “reset” strained relations with Russia. The deal was strategically important to Mr. Putin, who shortly after the Americans gave their blessing sat down for a staged interview with Rosatom’s chief executive, Sergei Kiriyenko. “Few could have imagined in the past that we would own 20 percent of U.S. reserves,” Mr. Kiriyenko told Mr. Putin.

Now, after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and aggression in Ukraine, the Moscow-Washington relationship is devolving toward Cold War levels, a point several experts made in evaluating a deal so beneficial to Mr. Putin, a man known to use energy resources to project power around the world.

“Should we be concerned? Absolutely,” said Michael McFaul, who served under Mrs. Clinton as the American ambassador to Russia but said he had been unaware of the Uranium One deal until asked about it. “Do we want Putin to have a monopoly on this? Of course we don’t. We don’t want to be dependent on Putin for anything in this climate.”

A Seat at the Table

The path to a Russian acquisition of American uranium deposits began in 2005 in Kazakhstan, where the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra orchestrated his first big uranium deal, with Mr. Clinton at his side.

The two men had flown aboard Mr. Giustra’s private jet to Almaty, Kazakhstan, where they dined with the authoritarian president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev. Mr. Clinton handed the Kazakh president a propaganda coup when he expressed support for Mr. Nazarbayev’s bid to head an international elections monitoring group, undercutting American foreign policy and criticism of Kazakhstan’s poor human rights record by, among others, his wife, then a senator.

Within days of the visit, Mr. Giustra’s fledgling company, UrAsia Energy Ltd., signed a preliminary deal giving it stakes in three uranium mines controlled by the state-run uranium agency Kazatomprom.

If the Kazakh deal was a major victory, UrAsia did not wait long before resuming the hunt. In 2007, it merged with Uranium One, a South African company with assets in Africa and Australia, in what was described as a $3.5 billion transaction. The new company, which kept the Uranium One name, was controlled by UrAsia investors including Ian Telfer, a Canadian who became chairman. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Giustra, whose personal stake in the deal was estimated at about $45 million, said he sold his stake in 2007.

Soon, Uranium One began to snap up mining companies with assets in the United States. In April 2007, it announced the purchase of a uranium mill in Utah and more than 38,000 acres of uranium exploration properties in four Western states, followed quickly by the acquisition of the Energy Metals Corporation and its uranium holdings in Wyoming, Texas and Utah. That deal made clear that Uranium One was intent on becoming “a powerhouse in the United States uranium sector with the potential to become the domestic supplier of choice for U.S. utilities,” the company declared.

Still, the company’s story was hardly front-page news in the United States — until early 2008, in the midst of Mrs. Clinton’s failed presidential campaign, when The Times published an article revealing the 2005 trip’s link to Mr. Giustra’s Kazakhstan mining deal. It also reported that several months later, Mr. Giustra had donated $31.3 million to Mr. Clinton’s foundation.

Though the article quoted the former head of Kazatomprom, Moukhtar Dzhakishev, as saying that the deal required government approval and was discussed at a dinner with the president, Mr. Giustra insisted that it was a private transaction, with no need for Mr. Clinton’s influence with Kazakh officials. He described his relationship with the former American president as motivated solely by a shared interest in philanthropy.

As if to underscore the point, five months later Mr. Giustra held a fund-raiser for the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative, a project aimed at fostering progressive environmental and labor practices in the natural resources industry, to which he had pledged $100 million. The star-studded gala, at a conference center in Toronto, featured performances by Elton John and Shakira and celebrities like Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Robin Williams encouraging contributions from the many so-called F.O.F.s — Friends of Frank — in attendance, among them Mr. Telfer. In all, the evening generated $16 million in pledges, according to an article in The Globe and Mail.

"None of this would have been possible if Frank Giustra didn’t have a remarkable combination of caring and modesty, of vision and energy and iron determination,” Mr. Clinton told those gathered, adding: “I love this guy, and you should, too.”

But what had been a string of successes was about to hit a speed bump.

Arrest and Progress

By June 2009, a little over a year after the star-studded evening in Toronto, Uranium One’s stock was in free-fall, down 40 percent. Mr. Dzhakishev, the head of Kazatomprom, had just been arrested on charges that he illegally sold uranium deposits to foreign companies, including at least some of those won by Mr. Giustra’s UrAsia and now owned by Uranium One.

Publicly, the company tried to reassure shareholders. Its chief executive, Jean Nortier, issued a confident statement calling the situation a “complete misunderstanding.” He also publicly contradicted Mr. Giustra’s contention that the uranium mining deal had not required government blessing. “When you do a transaction in Kazakhstan, you need the government’s approval,” he said, adding that UrAsia had indeed received that approval.

But privately, Uranium One officials were worried they could lose their joint mining ventures. American diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks also reflect concerns that Mr. Dzhakishev’s arrest was part of a Russian power play for control of Kazakh uranium assets.

At the time, Russia was already eying a stake in Uranium One, Rosatom company documents show. Rosatom officials say they were seeking to acquire mines around the world because Russia lacks sufficient domestic reserves to meet its own industry needs.

It was against this backdrop that the Vancouver-based Uranium One pressed the American Embassy in Kazakhstan, as well as Canadian diplomats, to take up its cause with Kazakh officials, according to the American cables.

“We want more than a statement to the press,” Paul Clarke, a Uranium One executive vice president, told the embassy’s energy officer on June 10, the officer reported in a cable. “That is simply chitchat.” What the company needed, Mr. Clarke said, was official written confirmation that the licenses were still valid.

The American Embassy ultimately reported to the secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton. Though the Clarke cable was copied to her, it was given wide circulation, and it is unclear if she would have read it; the Clinton campaign did not address questions about the cable.

What is clear is that the embassy acted, with the cables showing that the unnamed energy officer met with Kazakh officials to discuss the issue on June 10 and 11.

Three days later, a wholly owned subsidiary of Rosatom completed a deal for 17 percent of Uranium One. And within a year, the Russian government would substantially up the ante, with a generous offer to shareholders that would give it a 51 percent controlling stake. But first, Uranium One had to get the American government to sign off on the deal.

The Power to Say No

When a company controlled by the Chinese government sought a 51 percent stake in a tiny Nevada gold mining operation in 2009, it set off a secretive review process in Washington, where officials raised concerns primarily about the mine’s proximity to a military installation, but also about the potential for minerals at the site, including uranium, to come under Chinese control. The officials killed the deal.

Such is the power of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. The committee comprises some of the most powerful members of the cabinet, including the attorney general, the secretaries of the Treasury, Defense, Homeland Security, Commerce and Energy, and the secretary of state. They are charged with reviewing any deal that could result in foreign control of an American business or asset deemed important to national security.

The national security issue at stake in the Uranium One deal was not primarily about nuclear weapons proliferation; the United States and Russia had for years cooperated on that front, with Russia sending enriched fuel from decommissioned warheads to be used in American nuclear power plants in return for raw uranium. Instead, it concerned American dependence on foreign uranium sources. While the United States gets one-fifth of its electrical power from nuclear plants, it produces only around 20 percent of the uranium it needs, and most plants have only 18 to 36 months of reserves, according to Marin Katusa, author of “The Colder War: How the Global Energy Trade Slipped From America’s Grasp.”

“The Russians are easily winning the uranium war, and nobody’s talking about it,” said Mr. Katusa, who explores the implications of the Uranium One deal in his book. “It’s not just a domestic issue but a foreign policy issue, too.”

When ARMZ, an arm of Rosatom, took its first 17 percent stake in Uranium One in 2009, the two parties signed an agreement, found in securities filings, to seek the foreign investment committee’s review. But it was the 2010 deal, giving the Russians a controlling 51 percent stake, that set off alarm bells. Four members of the House of Representatives signed a letter expressing concern. Two more began pushing legislation to kill the deal.

Senator John Barrasso, a Republican from Wyoming, where Uranium One’s largest American operation was, wrote to President Obama, saying the deal “would give the Russian government control over a sizable portion of America’s uranium production capacity.”

“Equally alarming,” Mr. Barrasso added, “this sale gives ARMZ a significant stake in uranium mines in Kazakhstan.”

Uranium One’s shareholders were also alarmed, and were “afraid of Rosatom as a Russian state giant,” Sergei Novikov, a company spokesman, recalled in an interview. He said Rosatom’s chief, Mr. Kiriyenko, sought to reassure Uranium One investors, promising that Rosatom would not break up the company and would keep the same management, including Mr. Telfer, the chairman. Another Rosatom official said publicly that it did not intend to increase its investment beyond 51 percent, and that it envisioned keeping Uranium One a public company

American nuclear officials, too, seemed eager to assuage fears. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission wrote to Senator Barrasso assuring him that American uranium would be preserved for domestic use, regardless of who owned it.

“In order to export uranium from the United States, Uranium One Inc. or ARMZ would need to apply for and obtain a specific NRC license authorizing the export of uranium for use reactor fuel,” the letter said.

Still, the ultimate authority to approve or reject the Russian acquisition rested with the cabinet officials on the foreign investment committee, including Mrs. Clinton — whose husband was collecting millions of dollars in donations from people associated with Uranium One.

Undisclosed Donations

Before Mrs. Clinton could assume her post as secretary of state, the White House demanded that she sign a memorandum of understanding placing limits on her husband’s foundation’s activities. To avoid the perception of conflicts of interest, beyond the ban on foreign government donations, the foundation was required to publicly disclose all contributors.

To judge from those disclosures — which list the contributions in ranges rather than precise amounts — the only Uranium One official to give to the Clinton Foundation was Mr. Telfer, the chairman, and the amount was relatively small: no more than $250,000, and that was in 2007, before talk of a Rosatom deal began percolating.

But a review of tax records in Canada, where Mr. Telfer has a family charity called the Fernwood Foundation, shows that he donated millions of dollars more, during and after the critical time when the foreign investment committee was reviewing his deal with the Russians. With the Russians offering a special dividend, shareholders like Mr. Telfer stood to profit.

His donations through the Fernwood Foundation included $1 million reported in 2009, the year his company appealed to the American Embassy to help it keep its mines in Kazakhstan; $250,000 in 2010, the year the Russians sought majority control; as well as $600,000 in 2011; and $500,000 in 2012. Mr. Telfer said that his donations had nothing to do with his business dealings, and that he had never discussed Uranium One with Mr. or Mrs. Clinton. He said he had given the money because he wanted to support Mr. Giustra’s charitable endeavors with Mr. Clinton. “Frank and I have been friends and business partners for almost 20 years,” he said.

The Clinton campaign left it to the foundation to reply to questions about the Fernwood donations; the foundation did not provide a response.

Mr. Telfer’s undisclosed donations came in addition to between $1.3 million and $5.6 million in contributions, which were reported, from a constellation of people with ties to Uranium One or UrAsia, the company that originally acquired Uranium One’s most valuable asset: the Kazakhstan mines. Without those assets, the Russians would have had no interest in the deal: “It wasn’t the goal to buy the Wyoming mines. The goal was to acquire the Kazakh assets, which are very good,” Mr. Novikov, the Rosatom spokesman, said in an interview.

Amid this influx of Uranium One-connected money, Mr. Clinton was invited to speak in Moscow in June 2010, the same month Rosatom struck its deal for a majority stake in Uranium One.

The $500,000 fee — among Mr. Clinton’s highest — was paid by Renaissance Capital, a Russian investment bank with ties to the Kremlin that has invited world leaders, including Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, to speak at its annual investor conference.

Renaissance Capital analysts talked up Uranium One’s stock, assigning it a “buy” rating and saying in a July 2010 research report that it was “the best play” in the uranium markets. In addition, Renaissance Capital turned up that same year as a major donor, along with Mr. Telfer and Mr. Giustra, to a small medical charity in Colorado run by a friend of Mr. Giustra’s. In a newsletter to supporters, the friend credited Mr. Giustra with helping get donations from “businesses around the world.”

A Renaissance Capital representative would not comment on the genesis of Mr. Clinton’s speech to an audience that included leading Russian officials, or on whether it was connected to the Rosatom deal. According to a Russian government news service, Mr. Putin personally thanked Mr. Clinton for speaking.

A person with knowledge of the Clinton Foundation’s fund-raising operation, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about it, said that for many people, the hope is that money will in fact buy influence: “Why do you think they are doing it — because they love them?” But whether it actually does is another question. And in this case, there were broader geopolitical pressures that likely came into play as the United States considered whether to approve the Rosatom-Uranium One deal.

Diplomatic Considerations

If doing business with Rosatom was good for those involved with the Uranium One deal, engaging with Russia was also a priority of the incoming Obama administration, which was hoping for a new era of cooperation as Mr. Putin relinquished the presidency — if only for a term — to Dmitri A. Medvedev.

“The assumption was we could engage Russia to further core U.S. national security interests,” said Mr. McFaul, the former ambassador.

It started out well. The two countries made progress on nuclear proliferation issues, and expanded use of Russian territory to resupply American forces in Afghanistan. Keeping Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon was among the United States’ top priorities, and in June 2010 Russia signed off on a United Nations resolution imposing tough new sanctions on that country.

Two months later, the deal giving ARMZ a controlling stake in Uranium One was submitted to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States for review. Because of the secrecy surrounding the process, it is hard to know whether the participants weighed the desire to improve bilateral relations against the potential risks of allowing the Russian government control over the biggest uranium producer in the United States. The deal was ultimately approved in October, following what two people involved in securing the approval said had been a relatively smooth process.

Not all of the committee’s decisions are personally debated by the agency heads themselves; in less controversial cases, deputy or assistant secretaries may sign off. But experts and former committee members say Russia’s interest in Uranium One and its American uranium reserves seemed to warrant attention at the highest levels.

“This deal had generated press, it had captured the attention of Congress and it was strategically important,” said Richard Russell, who served on the committee during the George W. Bush administration. “When I was there invariably any one of those conditions would cause this to get pushed way up the chain, and here you had all three.”

And Mrs. Clinton brought a reputation for hawkishness to the process; as a senator, she was a vocal critic of the committee’s approval of a deal that would have transferred the management of major American seaports to a company based in the United Arab Emirates, and as a presidential candidate she had advocated legislation to strengthen the process.

The Clinton campaign spokesman, Mr. Fallon, said that in general, these matters did not rise to the secretary’s level. He would not comment on whether Mrs. Clinton had been briefed on the matter, but he gave The Times a statement from the former assistant secretary assigned to the foreign investment committee at the time, Jose Fernandez. While not addressing the specifics of the Uranium One deal, Mr. Fernandez said, “Mrs. Clinton never intervened with me on any C.F.I.U.S. matter.”

Mr. Fallon also noted that if any agency had raised national security concerns about the Uranium One deal, it could have taken them directly to the president.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, the State Department’s director of policy planning at the time, said she was unaware of the transaction — or the extent to which it made Russia a dominant uranium supplier. But speaking generally, she urged caution in evaluating its wisdom in hindsight.

“Russia was not a country we took lightly at the time or thought was cuddly,” she said. “But it wasn’t the adversary it is today.”

That renewed adversarial relationship has raised concerns about European dependency on Russian energy resources, including nuclear fuel. The unease reaches beyond diplomatic circles. In Wyoming, where Uranium One equipment is scattered across his 35,000-acre ranch, John Christensen is frustrated that repeated changes in corporate ownership over the years led to French, South African, Canadian and, finally, Russian control over mining rights on his property.

“I hate to see a foreign government own mining rights here in the United States,” he said. “I don’t think that should happen.”

Mr. Christensen, 65, noted that despite assurances by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that uranium could not leave the country without Uranium One or ARMZ obtaining an export license — which they do not have — yellowcake from his property was routinely packed into drums and trucked off to a processing plant in Canada.

Asked about that, the commission confirmed that Uranium One has, in fact, shipped yellowcake to Canada even though it does not have an export license. Instead, the transport company doing the shipping, RSB Logistic Services, has the license. A commission spokesman said that “to the best of our knowledge” most of the uranium sent to Canada for processing was returned for use in the United States. A Uranium One spokeswoman, Donna Wichers, said 25 percent had gone to Western Europe and Japan. At the moment, with the uranium market in a downturn, nothing is being shipped from the Wyoming mines.

The “no export” assurance given at the time of the Rosatom deal is not the only one that turned out to be less than it seemed. Despite pledges to the contrary, Uranium One was eventually delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange and taken private. As of 2013, Rosatom’s subsidiary, ARMZ, owned 100 percent of the company.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Sorry, Frazz, the White house is going blue again

Sorry, Frazz, the White house is going blue again

 Frazzled wrote:

Sorry, Frazz, the White house is going blue again

No, not with HRC. her time is done.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

Sorry, Frazz, the White house is going blue again

No, not with HRC. her time is done.

I'd say it's time for another Texan in the White House: Kinky Friedman 2016!

 Frazzled wrote:

Sorry, Frazz, the White house is going blue again

No, not with HRC. her time is done.

 Ouze wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Sorry, Frazz, the White house is going blue again

The current electoral demographics in the US are such that, in my opinion for the foreseeable future, the Republicans will have a hard time winning the Presidency, and the Democrats will have a hard time taking Congress, while the Senate will continue to flip around.

Of course the election is a lifetime away; time for any number of gaffes, scandals, and other political bedpoopings that Hillary can't overcome. I would bet against it, but not a lot of money.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
We've already had a cyborg vice-president.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I was under the impression that the Hispanic population was rising, and that the Hispanics were naturally conservative (Catholic background, family values etc etc )

Don't tell the Republicans fethed that one up as well

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I think you may have had an English malfunction there whembly, what are you saying?

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Well, I just have a possibly over-enthusiastic dislike of the bush administration. They were in power for the all of the beginning of my life. I was 6 when bush was elected (2001).

That being said, robo-Cheney is still america's greatest super-villian.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Well, I just have a possibly over-enthusiastic dislike of the bush administration. They were in power for the all of the beginning of my life. I was 6 when bush was elected (2001).

That being said, robo-Cheney is still america's greatest super-villian.

6 years old in 2001...

I feel old

Damn you to hell!!

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Well, I just have a possibly over-enthusiastic dislike of the bush administration. They were in power for the all of the beginning of my life. I was 6 when bush was elected (2001).

That being said, robo-Cheney is still america's greatest super-villian.

 Jihadin wrote:
I turn 45 in November......you all have a inner school glow to yourselves

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Jihadin wrote:
I turn 45 in November......you all have a inner school glow to yourselves

Hey, your younger than my parents at least.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I said parents not ancestors.

The qualities of an effective presidency do not seem to transfer onto a post-presidency. Jimmy Carter was an ineffective president who became an exemplary post-president. Bill Clinton appears to be the reverse. All sorts of unproven worst-case-scenario questions float around the web of connections between Bill’s private work, Hillary Clinton’s public role as secretary of State, the Clintons’ quasi-public charity, and Hillary’s noncompliant email system. But the best-case scenario is bad enough: The Clintons have been disorganized and greedy.

The news today about the Clintons all fleshes out, in one way or another, their lack of interest in policing serious conflict-of-interest problems that arise in their overlapping roles:

The New York Times has a report about the State Department’s decision to approve the sale of Uranium mines to a Russian company that donated $2.35 million to the Clinton Global Initiative, and that a Russian investment bank promoting the deal paid Bill $500,000 for a speech in Moscow.
The Washington Post reports that Bill Clinton has received $26 million in speaking fees from entities that also donated to the Clinton Global Initiative.
The Washington Examiner reports, “Twenty-two of the 37 corporations nominated for a prestigious State Department award — and six of the eight ultimate winners — while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State were also donors to the Clinton family foundation.”
And Reuters reports, “Hillary Clinton's family's charities are refiling at least five annual tax returns after a Reuters review found errors in how they reported donations from governments, and said they may audit other Clinton Foundation returns in case of other errors.”
The Clinton campaign is batting down the darkest and most conspiratorial interpretation of these stories, and where this all leads remains to be seen. But the most positive interpretation is not exactly good.

When you are a power couple consisting of a former president and a current secretary of State and likely presidential candidate, you have the ability to raise a lot of money for charitable purposes that can do a lot of good. But some of the potential sources of donations will be looking to get something in return for their money other than moral satisfaction or the chance to hobnob with celebrities. Some of them want preferential treatment from the State Department, and others want access to a potential future Clinton administration. To run a private operation where Bill Clinton will deliver a speech for a (huge) fee and a charity that raises money from some of the same clients is a difficult situation to navigate. To overlay that fraught situation onto Hillary’s ongoing and likely future government service makes it all much harder.

And yet the Clintons paid little to no attention to this problem. Nicholas Confessore described their operation as “a sprawling concern, supervised by a rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction and threatened by conflicts of interest. It ran multimillion-dollar deficits for several years, despite vast amounts of money flowing in.” Indeed, as Ryan Lizza reported in 2012, Bill Clinton seemed to see the nexus between his role and his wife’s as a positive rather than a negative:

Regardless of Bill Clinton’s personal feelings about Obama, it didn’t take him long to see the advantages of an Obama Presidency. More than anyone, he pushed Hillary to take the job of Secretary of State. “President Clinton was a big supporter of the idea,” an intimate of the Clintons told me. “He advocated very strongly for it and arguably was the tie-breaking reason she took the job.” For one thing, having his spouse in that position didn’t hurt his work at the Clinton Global Initiative. He invites foreign leaders to the initiative’s annual meeting, and her prominence in the Administration can be an asset in attracting foreign donors. “Bill Clinton’s been able to continue to be the Bill Clinton we know, in large part because of his relationship with the White House and because his wife is the Secretary of State,” the Clinton associate continued. “It worked out very well for him. That may be a very cynical way to look at it, but that’s a fact. A lot of the stuff he’s doing internationally is aided by his level of access.”
The Obama administration wanted Hillary Clinton to use official government email. She didn’t. The Obama administration also demanded that the Clinton Foundation disclose all its donors while she served as Secretary of State. It didn’t comply with that request, either.

The Clintons’ charitable initiatives were a kind of quasi-government run by themselves, which was staffed by their own loyalists and made up the rules as it went along. Their experience running the actual government, with its formal accountability and disclosure, went reasonably well. Their experience running their own privatized mini-state has been a fiasco.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Can we get Biden again, I don't want to lose him.

squidhills wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Can we get Biden again, I don't want to lose him.

If nothing else, his verbal gaffes would be hilarious.

squidhills wrote:
Whembly, I don't like the Clintons any more then you do, but let's both face facts: unless video surfaces of Hillary actually eating a live human baby, she will get the democratic nomination.
.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
She doesn't have a chance, IMO. She doesn't have near enough experience. Then again, Obama was only on his second term or something.

 CptJake wrote:

squidhills wrote:
Whembly, I don't like the Clintons any more then you do, but let's both face facts: unless video surfaces of Hillary actually eating a live human baby, she will get the democratic nomination.
.

A lot of folks said that in 2007-8

 Easy E wrote:
What do those lines even represent?

Spoiler:

 Ahtman wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
What do those lines even represent?

Whatever you want them to.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

 Easy E wrote:
What do those lines even represent?

 Easy E wrote:
What do those lines even represent?

 whembly wrote:

Black line. Favorable...

Red line. Unfavorable...

See the trend?

 shasolenzabi wrote:
Now what would happen if Warren decided to run?

 whembly wrote:

This is Jonathan Chait!

 shasolenzabi wrote:
Now what would happen if Warren decided to run?

Ahtman wrote:

 shasolenzabi wrote:
Now what would happen if Warren decided to run?

Werewolves of London is popular but not that popular.

dogma wrote:

 shasolenzabi wrote:
Now what would happen if Warren decided to run?

Lucas would catch her.

 shasolenzabi wrote:

Lucas? who is that?

 Jihadin wrote:
Think last thing Hillary need is her performance as Sec of State coming up. Which kind of coincide with financial transaction from various countries around the world to the "Clinton" charity organization.

 shasolenzabi wrote:
As has been the case for the most part, Republican Politicians seek to shift money to their Corporate pals and the already Uber wealthy, with some of the "Conservative Democrats" helping them make "Corporate Welfare" while robbing the social safety nets to do so.

At least the Democrats will try and toss the regular Joes like us a crumb or two off the table, and that is why i tend to like Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren but I would take HRC over a Ted Cruz anyday, too bad Canada stuck us with him along with Bieber

 whembly wrote:

And no GOP is campaigning to rob/devalue safety nets...

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

And no GOP is campaigning to rob/devalue safety nets...

Quite a few conservative politicians have campaigned on the basis of eliminating such safety nets. In the event that they are eliminated, where do you suppose supporting funds will go?

 whembly wrote:

IF anything, most conservative candidate wants to reduce the size of government spending. There's a distinction.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

IF anything, most conservative candidate wants to reduce the size of government spending. There's a distinction.

Yes there is, but to pretend that US conservatives don't emphasize the US social safety net as a source of "waste" with respect to government spending is willfully ignorant.

 whembly wrote:

Nah... you're just projecting.

 whembly wrote:

IF anything, most conservative candidate wants to reduce the size of government spending. There's a distinction.

And no GOP is campaigning to rob/devalue safety nets...

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/25/politics/walker-rubio-foreign-policy-2016/index.html

Short version: Rubio claims he can be ready to be commander-in-chief on Day One whereas governors cannot possibly be ready to handle US foreign policy. Walker claims governors must innately have the ability to lead, and not just to "make speeches."
I wonder how they handle the fact that HRC has foreign policy experience as a First Lady, as a senator, and as a Secretary of State?

Part of that article shows the various candidates' foreign policy "credentials." Most of which seem to consist of "sat on a Senate committee." Of them, the only two that seem to stand out to me as having some real cred are Jeb Bush and HRC.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

Hilary may have experience, but what did she accomplish? Our current POTUS bypassed this by being a fresh face, and being a change to previous Administrations; something Hilary cannot claim.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
I asked much the same question a page or so back: what has any of these candidates truly accomplished that qualifies them to lead our country in war, in peace, in good economic times, in bad economic times, through natural disasters, and through man-made disasters? Sitting on Senate committees, slapping your name on a few bills, and making speeches on the Senate floor just doesn't cut it anymore, in my opinion. More than anything else, we really need the next President to be a uniter, not a divider.

Ironically, I think some of the Rs are hoping to do well for the exact reasons you said: "by being a fresh face, and being a change to previous Administrations" The Ds can't try for the second, but some may hope for the first.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
I asked much the same question a page or so back: what has any of these candidates truly accomplished that qualifies them to lead our country in war, in peace, in good economic times, in bad economic times, through natural disasters, and through man-made disasters? Sitting on Senate committees, slapping your name on a few bills, and making speeches on the Senate floor just doesn't cut it anymore, in my opinion. More than anything else, we really need the next President to be a uniter, not a divider.

Ironically, I think some of the Rs are hoping to do well for the exact reasons you said: "by being a fresh face, and being a change to previous Administrations" The Ds can't try for the second, but some may hope for the first.

Looking at it from the eyes of a political amateur who has only started to follow US politics since he moved here I can see that a lot of the R candidates being fresher faces could mount serious opposition to Hilary. While voters may be more forgiving of first and second term politicians not having stand out political achievements, someone who has been in the political spotlight for decades in a variety of roles should have managed to achieve something concrete that can be pointed to as a metric of what can be expected from their Administration.

Serious question; given our currently highly partisan political environment could any genuinely bi-partisan candidate get nominated by their party?

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Sitting on Senate committees, slapping your name on a few bills, and making speeches on the Senate floor just doesn't cut it anymore, in my opinion.

Russian Hackers Read Obama’s Unclassified Emails, Officials Say

WASHINGTON — Some of President Obama’s email correspondence was swept up by Russian hackers last year in a breach of the White House’s unclassified computer system that was far more intrusive and worrisome than has been publicly acknowledged, according to senior American officials briefed on the investigation.

The hackers, who also got deeply into the State Department’s unclassified system, do not appear to have penetrated closely guarded servers that control the message traffic from Mr. Obama’s BlackBerry, which he or an aide carries constantly.

But they obtained access to the email archives of people inside the White House, and perhaps some outside, with whom Mr. Obama regularly communicated. From those accounts, they reached emails that the president had sent and received, according to officials briefed on the investigation.

White House officials said that no classified networks had been compromised, and that the hackers had collected no classified information. Many senior officials have two computers in their offices, one operating on a highly secure classified network and another connected to the outside world for unclassified communications.

But officials have conceded that the unclassified system routinely contains much information that is considered highly sensitive: schedules, email exchanges with ambassadors and diplomats, discussions of pending personnel moves and legislation, and, inevitably, some debate about policy.

Officials did not disclose the number of Mr. Obama’s emails that were harvested by hackers, nor the sensitivity of their content. The president’s email account itself does not appear to have been hacked. Aides say that most of Mr. Obama’s classified briefings — such as the morning Presidential Daily Brief — are delivered orally or on paper (sometimes supplemented by an iPad system connected to classified networks) and that they are usually confined to the Oval Office or the Situation Room.

Still, the fact that Mr. Obama’s communications were among those hit by the hackers — who are presumed to be linked to the Russian government, if not working for it — has been one of the most closely held findings of the inquiry. Senior White House officials have known for months about the depth of the intrusion.

“This has been one of the most sophisticated actors we’ve seen,” said one senior American official briefed on the investigation.

Others confirmed that the White House intrusion was viewed as so serious that officials met on a nearly daily basis for several weeks after it was discovered. “It’s the Russian angle to this that’s particularly worrisome,” another senior official said.

While Chinese hacking groups are known for sweeping up vast amounts of commercial and design information, the best Russian hackers tend to hide their tracks better and focus on specific, often political targets. And the hacking happened at a moment of renewed tension with Russia — over its annexation of Crimea, the presence of its forces in Ukraine and its renewed military patrols in Europe, reminiscent of the Cold War.

Inside the White House, the intrusion has raised a new debate about whether it is possible to protect a president’s electronic presence, especially when it reaches out from behind the presumably secure firewalls of the executive branch.

Mr. Obama is no stranger to computer-network attacks: His 2008 campaign was hit by Chinese hackers. Nonetheless, he has long been a frequent user of email, and publicly fought the Secret Service in 2009 to retain his BlackBerry, a topic he has joked about in public. He was issued a special smartphone, and the list of those he can exchange emails with is highly restricted.

When asked about the investigation’s findings, the spokeswoman for the National Security Council, Bernadette Meehan, said, “We’ll decline to comment.” The White House has also declined to provide any explanations about how the breach was handled, though the State Department has been more candid about what kind of systems were hit and what it has done since to improve security. A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment.

Officials who discussed the investigation spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the hacking. While the White House has refused to identify the nationality of the hackers, others familiar with the investigation said that in both the White House and State Department cases, all signs pointed to Russians.

On Thursday, Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter revealed for the first time that Russian hackers had attacked the Pentagon’s unclassified systems, but said they had been identified and “kicked off.” Defense Department officials declined to say if the signatures of the attacks on the Pentagon appeared related to the White House and State Department attacks.

The discovery of the hacking in October led to a partial shutdown of the White House email system. The hackers appear to have been evicted from the White House systems by the end of October. But they continued to plague the State Department, whose system is much more far-flung. The disruptions were so severe that during the Iranian nuclear negotiations in Vienna in November, officials needed to distribute personal email accounts, to one another and to some reporters, to maintain contact.

Earlier this month, officials at the White House said that the hacking had not damaged its systems and that, while elements had been shut down to mitigate the effects of the attack, everything had been restored.

One of the curiosities of the White House and State Department attacks is that the administration, which recently has been looking to name and punish state and nonstate hackers in an effort to deter attacks, has refused to reveal its conclusions about who was responsible for this complex and artful intrusion into the government. That is in sharp contrast to Mr. Obama’s decision, after considerable internal debate in December, to name North Korea for ordering the attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, and to the director of national intelligence’s decision to name Iranian hackers as the source of a destructive attack on the Sands Casino.

This month, after CNN reported that hackers had gained access to sensitive areas of the White House computer network, including sections that contained the president’s schedule, the White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, said the administration had not publicly named who was behind the hack because federal investigators had concluded that “it’s not in our best interests.”

By contrast, in the North Korea case, he said, investigators concluded that “we’re more likely to be successful in terms of holding them accountable by naming them publicly.”

But the breach of the president’s emails appeared to be a major factor in the government secrecy. “All of this is very tightly held,” one senior American official said, adding that the content of what had been breached was being kept secret to avoid tipping off the Russians about what had been learned from the investigation.

Mr. Obama’s friends and associates say that he is a committed user of his BlackBerry, but that he is careful when emailing outside the White House system.

“The frequency has dropped off in the last six months or so,” one of his close associates said, though this person added that he did not know if the drop was related to the hacking.

Mr. Obama is known to send emails to aides late at night from his residence, providing them with his feedback on speeches or, at times, entirely new drafts. Others say he has emailed on topics as diverse as his golf game and the struggle with Congress over the Iranian nuclear negotiations.

George W. Bush gave up emailing for the course of his presidency and did not carry a smartphone. But after Mr. Bush left office, his sister’s email account was hacked, and several photos — including some of his paintings — were made public.

The White House is bombarded with cyberattacks daily, not only from Russia and China. Most are easily deflected.

The White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and intelligence agencies put their most classified material into a system called Jwics, for Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System. That is where top-secret and “secret compartmentalized information” traverses within the government, to officials cleared for it — and it includes imagery, data and graphics. There is no evidence, senior officials said, that this hacking pierced it.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Serious question; given our currently highly partisan political environment could any genuinely bi-partisan candidate get nominated by their party?

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Hey, it's called the political junkie thread for a reason.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Hey, it's called the political junkie thread for a reason.

Sure, but you still hate to see people hurt themselves so early in the running and have nothing left for the end.

 whembly wrote:

Don't worry... the Clinton saga goes really deep in the rabbit hole.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

Maybe I'm just dense, but it seems to me that these words: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;..." would also mean that, as a lawmaker, you cannot use your religion to create and define law.

 whembly wrote:
Apparently, this is the most transparent administration ever…to our adversaries.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Nah... you're just projecting.

Projecting what? US conservatives have made an issue of "waste" in US social programs for a long time. This is simply fact.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Hey at least the wealthy profit.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Cutting taxes on wealthy individuals was never going to work. If instead they argued to cut corporate taxes, it would make more sense, but individuals making more money is not going to make more jobs.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Cutting taxes on wealthy individuals was never going to work. If instead they argued to cut corporate taxes, it would make more sense, but individuals making more money is not going to make more jobs.

Take Wal-Mart
Walmart increased net sales by 1.6% to $473.1 billion and returned $12.8 billion to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases.

 whembly wrote:

The real issue is that we have a spending problem. I'd be okay with a moriatorium on new taxes... so that, if nothing else, hard choices are forced upon our congressional critters.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
There's enough pork in the US budget to feed a few banquets.

 Medium of Death wrote:
Is Maryland enjoying its Race War?
NSFW

Spoiler:

 whembly wrote:

When roughly half of the population don't pay taxes... things get, tricky.

 Jihadin wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
There's enough pork in the US budget to feed a few banquets.

A certain Czar comes to mind. Believed he tried something along that line in Russia


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Medium of Death wrote:
Is Maryland enjoying its Race War?
NSFW

Spoiler:

Gangs of Baltimore
Blood
Crypts
Black Gorilla Family

Entering a pact to take out LEO's in Baltimore

This is not going to turn out well

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

When roughly half of the population don't pay taxes... things get, tricky.

The myth you're propagating was debunked quite some time ago.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Really though, if enough people are poor enough to not pay taxes, that points to a different issue entirely. Not one of funding, but of income inequality.

 whembly wrote:
:sigh:

When roughly half of the population don't pay taxes... things get, tricky.

The real issue is that we have a spending problem. I'd be okay with a moriatorium on new taxes... so that, if nothing else, hard choices are forced upon our congressional critters.

 streamdragon wrote:

 whembly wrote:
:sigh:

When roughly half of the population don't pay taxes... things get, tricky.

The real issue is that we have a spending problem. I'd be okay with a moriatorium on new taxes... so that, if nothing else, hard choices are forced upon our congressional critters.

It's amazing how many people thinks this drivel is true, or that social program spending is somehow the issue.

The fact that so many people who are employed still depend on social programs, should be a giant blinking red arrow pointing at the source of the problem. Instead, we continue to blame poor people for being poor in the first place.

 whembly wrote:

Put away your pitchfork...
http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/12/news/economy/rich-taxes/

As to "blaming the poor"... erm... so life choices have no bearing?

Not enough bootstraps?

 Ouze wrote:
I feel like there are around 6 conversations going on in this thread that aren't really linked to each other in any meaningful way

 streamdragon wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Put away your pitchfork...
http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/12/news/economy/rich-taxes/

As to "blaming the poor"... erm... so life choices have no bearing?

Not enough bootstraps?

Hahaha, oh my. Of course the rich pay a larger dollar amount. They have more money in the first place. Looking at it as a percentage of their actual income though, and those numbers suddenly drop through the floor as they certainly aren't paying the ~35% that most of the middle class pays. (Including FICA, Social Security, et al) I mean, you have some people's kids throwing away more money in a night than some full time workers make in three years. And it's the worst kept secret in the world that there is more money offshore than the national debt. How much of that gets taxed appropriately?

Life choices most certainly have a bearing, but not as much as people like to point to. Most agree that social mobility has fallen in the US, especially compared to the era where the wealthiest were actually taxed "appropriately". (I put that in quotes, because obviously that's somewhat subjective with plenty of people having no problem with the wealthy paying nothing.) But you'd be hard pressed to argue that social programs in the US give any chance at mobility, when Kansas would rather limit ATM withdrawls (among a list of other "frell you poors!" items) than actually address that their tax cuts aren't bring in new jobs and put the state budget below even it's basic necessary spending.

But yeah, not enough bootstraps.

 shasolenzabi wrote:

, when in reality it was poor political/economic policies that widened the gaps in the first place requiring folks to seek help.

 shasolenzabi wrote:
only a small % of those seeking help tested for drugs were in fact drug users, but hey, that also cost a lot of money to do such screening because someone came up with that failed idea that all poor were junkies, when in fact they are working families who have been "downgraded" job/income wise.

 CptJake wrote:


Aside from it being a waste of tax payer funds, it is (in my opinion) a massive violation of 4th Amendment rights.

 CptJake wrote:

 shasolenzabi wrote:

, when in reality it was poor political/economic policies that widened the gaps in the first place requiring folks to seek help.

Can we admit the 'war on poverty', as it is currently being fought, is a disaster?

That is why some of us don't see the Federal gov't as The Solution. They have been 'fixing' this problem for a couple of generations at this point. Giving them more resources and power, based on their track record, does not pass the common sense test. Unless you believe "This Time They'll Get It Right!". I don't.

 shasolenzabi wrote:
only a small % of those seeking help tested for drugs were in fact drug users, but hey, that also cost a lot of money to do such screening because someone came up with that failed idea that all poor were junkies, when in fact they are working families who have been "downgraded" job/income wise.

Aside from it being a waste of tax payer funds, it is (in my opinion) a massive violation of 4th Amendment rights.

 whembly wrote:

I was referencing Fed income taxes.

 whembly wrote:

Part of the problem is that the US' tax code is "global" and not "regional" like most of the world.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

I was referencing Fed income taxes.

No, you were throwing out a hackneyed talking point. Federal income taxes are not the only taxes that exist, hell they aren't even the only Federal taxes that exist; emphasizing them in order to score cheap political points is the height of dishonesty. It is an argument designed to rope in uncritical idiots.

 whembly wrote:

Part of the problem is that the US' tax code is "global" and not "regional" like most of the world.

Off the top of my head I can't think of any national tax which is not uniformly applied.

 whembly wrote:

The point being... the wealthy already pays more than their fair share.

 whembly wrote:

I'm more of a proponent to redesign government programs to work better in today's environment. You can't believe that things "are as good as it gets".

 whembly wrote:

The US is a world wide taxation scheme, compared to territorial scheme that's far more common...
http://www.rpc.senate.gov/policy-papers/territorial-vs-worldwide-taxation

Because the U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate in the world...

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
The US tax system is weird. IIRC, were one of the few countires to still charge income tax on people who live outside the US, and make all their money outside the US. Kind of interesting.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
The US tax system is weird. IIRC, were one of the few countires to still charge income tax on people who live outside the US, and make all their money outside the US. Kind of interesting.

I live outside the USA and make money outside the USA. Does that mean Washington is going to tax me?

 whembly wrote:

Part of the problem is that the US' tax code is "global" and not "regional" like most of the world.

And your point about rich being rich? O.o You say that like, "it's wrong to be filthy rich".

Social programs is/should be used to either get folks back on their feet, or prevent folks from truly being destitute.

 CptJake wrote:
Can we admit the 'war on poverty', as it is currently being fought, is a disaster?

 streamdragon wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
Can we admit the 'war on poverty', as it is currently being fought, is a disaster?

No, because it is actually working.

Unless you're referring to the constant attacks on poor people (such as the Kansas bill I linked earlier) in which case, yes, attacking poor people for being poor is a disaster.

Is there more to do? Absolutely. Should we as citizens be ashamed that our neighbors struggle to put food on their table, in a country that produces enough food to feed the world several times over? Absolutely. But to say that the government's War on Poverty (which I admittedly didn't even know was being called a thing) isn't working underscores the 39 million people kept above the poverty line by supplemental assistance programs.

For too long the boogeyman of the person living it up on welfare has been floated around as a reason to cut social assistance. In reality, the vast majority of welfare goes to the elderly, disabled or working poor. People who, despite working, do not make enough money to survive. Welfare can't make a company pay its employees more. Cutting welfare can certainly ensure that those who already struggle, struggle even harder just to survive.

A comparison of 1969 and 2007, which are both years when the economy was at the peak of a business cycle and thus provide a good comparison of long-term trends, shows that the poverty rate declined from an estimated 12.0 percent in 1969 to 9.7 percent in 2007.

 CptJake wrote:

When I look at the increased spending per person at just the Federal level, and watch that poverty number not fluctuate very much, I have a hard time saying it is working.

 whembly wrote:


The point being... the wealthy already pays more than their fair share.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Ah, for feths sake.

I think whembly might be right, she is made of soap.

 Easy E wrote:
I think Jeb and HRC will have a harder time winning the primaries than you imagine Whembly.

I can't put my finger exactly on it, but I have a feeling those two represent the Status Quo too much, and people are fed up with the Establishment and Status Quo. The challenge for those two candidates is how do they capture the populism within their respectives base without alienating the Establishment in the same base.

 dogma wrote:

 CptJake wrote:

When I look at the increased spending per person at just the Federal level, and watch that poverty number not fluctuate very much, I have a hard time saying it is working.

Did you account for inflation? Your graph certainly didn't.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Ah, for feths sake.

I think whembly might be right, she is made of soap.

 streamdragon wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Ah, for feths sake.

I think whembly might be right, she is made of soap.

Uh... isn't this a shining example of when things shouldn't stick. I mean, legitimately nothing wrong or illegal was done. What should have stuck?

 whembly wrote:

 dogma wrote:

 CptJake wrote:

When I look at the increased spending per person at just the Federal level, and watch that poverty number not fluctuate very much, I have a hard time saying it is working.

Did you account for inflation? Your graph certainly didn't.

How 'bout this chart?


http://conference.nber.org/confer/2015/Macro15/Barnichon_Figura.pdf
Declining Desire to Work and Downward Trends in
Unemployment and Participation[/url]

Essentially, at best, it's a mixed bag.

 whembly wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Ah, for feths sake.

I think whembly might be right, she is made of soap.

Uh... isn't this a shining example of when things shouldn't stick. I mean, legitimately nothing wrong or illegal was done. What should have stuck?

Uh... obvious instances of quid pro quo... and still, most people don't give a flying rodent-gak.

Co'tor, she's teflon... not soapy. (which does not garner a good image. )

 streamdragon wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Ah, for feths sake.

I think whembly might be right, she is made of soap.

Uh... isn't this a shining example of when things shouldn't stick. I mean, legitimately nothing wrong or illegal was done. What should have stuck?

Uh... obvious instances of quid pro quo... and still, most people don't give a flying rodent-gak.

Co'tor, she's teflon... not soapy. (which does not garner a good image. )

Are we reading the same article? How is this quid pro quo? She never even saw the thing! She literally had nothing to do with it!

Firms Paid Bill Clinton Millions As They Lobbied Hillary Clinton

Former President Bill Clinton accepted more than $2.5 million in speaking fees from 13 major corporations and trade associations that lobbied the U.S. State Department while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, an International Business Times investigation has found. The fees were paid directly to the former president, and not directed to his philanthropic foundation.

Many of the companies that paid Bill Clinton for these speeches -- a roster of global giants that includes Microsoft, Oracle and Dell -- engaged him within the same three-month period in which they were also lobbying the State Department in pursuit of their policy aims, federal disclosure documents show. Several companies received millions of dollars in State Department contracts while Hillary Clinton led the institution.

The disclosure that President Clinton received personal payments for speeches from the same corporate interests that were actively seeking to secure favorable policies from a federal department overseen by his wife underscores the vexing issue now confronting her presidential aspirations: The Clinton family is at the center of public suspicions over the extent of insider dealing in Washington, emblematic of concerns that corporate interests are able to influence government action by creatively funneling money to people in power.

“The dynamic is insidious and endemic to this system,” said Meredith McGhee, policy director of the Campaign Legal Center, a campaign finance watchdog group in Washington. "The fact is that the wealthiest .01 percent on the outside of government believes -- fervently -- that by paying speaking fees, or making campaign contributions, that it can gain access and influence."

Rules Do Not Apply

Federal ethics rules aim to discourage officials and their spouses from accepting gifts from interests “seeking official action” from a government agency. But the rules do not apply to speaking fees, said Craig Holman an advocate for tightened ethics structures at Public Citizen, a watchdog group in Washington.

The rules at issue “wouldn’t have any regulations that would make this illegal, unless of course there were a quid pro quo, and that would be a violation of the bribery laws,” Holman told IBTimes. “There isn’t an ethics rule that prohibits someone like Bill Clinton from charging exorbitant speaking fees and collecting those speaking fees from businesses that have interests before the administration.”

But regardless of the rules, he added, the dynamic through which President Clinton has been able to profit from the same companies eager to gain the ear of his wife’s department “poses a very troubling conflict-of-interest situation that is going to continue to dog Hillary over the course of the campaign."
The Clintons did not respond to IBTimes’ questions about the propriety of the speaking arrangements. A spokesperson for the White House referred questions to the State Department and the Clinton Foundation, neither of which responded.

When she became secretary of state in 2009, Hillary Clinton agreed to subject Bill Clinton’s speaking engagements to a conflict-of-interest review by an ethics counsel in Clinton’s State Department. Documents from Judicial Watch show the counsel’s office approving the bulk of the speaking engagements -- even those that came during or after periods when the firms paying Bill Clinton were filing disclosure forms notifying government regulators that they were lobbying the State Department.

The revelation that the Clinton family accepted money from 13 firms actively working to influence the Clinton-run State Department follows IBTimes’ report on Monday showing that Goldman Sachs paid Bill Clinton $200,000 just before the banking giant began lobbying the State Department. It also follows earlier IBTimes reports on money flowing into the Clinton Foundation from Pacific Rubiales and Cisco Systems just before Clinton took actions at the State Department that benefited those companies.

Ten of the 13 firms that both lobbied the State Department and paid Bill Clinton speaking fees did so within the very same three-month reporting period. This group includes five technology firms -- Oracle, Dell, Microsoft, SalesForce and VeriSign -- that collectively paid Bill Clinton a total of $1.05 million.

Federal records show that Microsoft and Oracle were lobbying Clinton’s State Department on, among other issues, immigrant work visas. Oracle was also lobbying in pursuit of legislation dealing with penalties for aiding espionage. Dell was concerned with tariffs imposed by European countries on its computer products. VeriSign was lobbying on cybersecurity and Internet taxation. SalesForce was lobbying on cloud computing, security controls and electronic privacy issues.

Three of the technology firms that paid Bill Clinton while lobbying Hillary Clinton’s agency also received lucrative State Department contracts. Microsoft received almost $4 million in such contracts after receiving none the year before Clinton joined President Barack Obama's Cabinet. Oracle received $6.5 million in State Department contracts, a large increase from prior years. Dell secured contracts worth more than $28 million, up from just $2.5 million in the year before Clinton became secretary of state.

A spokesman for Dell told IBTimes that the company had paid for President Clinton to address the company’s customers at a conference as a means of sharing his insights on global issues.

“As a former president, he has a unique perspective on world affairs and we were eager for him to share that perspective with our customers,” said the Dell spokesman, David Frink. He characterized Dell’s lobbying of the State Department as basic corporate engagement.

“Dell regularly communicates with the U.S. government, and is asked its opinion by government officials, on various subjects,” Frink said. “As a global company, we are happy to share our perspective on trade, technology, taxes and other issues that affect the company, our customers and our team members.”

Microsoft and Oracle did not respond to questions.

'Insightful And Informative'

Bill Clinton received $200,000 from the National Retail Federation in January 2012, during the same time period the group was lobbying the State Department. At that time, the trade association, which represents retail businesses, was opposing legislation to fight Chinese currency manipulation that could cost companies doing business there. The group said its payments to Bill Clinton had nothing to do with its work lobbying the former president’s wife.

“The National Retail Federation works with agencies and speaker bureaus to find prominent national and international leaders to address our members and attendees in the hope that they will find the remarks insightful and informative,” said Stephen Schatz, the group’s spokesman. He said the group’s events have featured similarly prominent speakers in the past.

The mining conglomerate BHP Billiton paid the former president $175,000 to speak at a board of directors meeting in Australia in June 2012. During that time period, the firm's federal disclosures show, it was lobbying the State Department about "mining interests in Gabon."

Other speaking fees flowed to Bill Clinton just before or just after firms lobbied his wife's State Department.

The trade association representing drug companies, PhRMA, paid Bill Clinton $200,000 to speak at its annual members meeting in April 2011 -- only weeks after federal records show it lobbied Hillary Clinton's State Department on the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, which could boost drug company profits by tightening patent protections for pharmaceutical products. After Bill Clinton received the cash from PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America), Hillary Clinton gave a speech in November 2011 promoting the TPP.

Scott Coffina, who served as an associate counsel to President George W. Bush, told IBTimes the payments to Bill Clinton by firms lobbying Hillary Clinton’s agency are “worthy of an investigation.”

“Did she recuse herself from any matters involving foundation donors or entities who paid President Clinton for speeches or other services? Maybe she did, and if so, she should get credit for it,” said Coffina, a former federal prosecutor. “I’d also want to know the opposite -- whether she intervened in a decision-making process on behalf of a donor or benefactor.”

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
There doesn't seem to be a lot of ex-generals running for President these days. A pity, because they have a pretty good success rate.

 whembly wrote:
Read this... yeah, it's IBD... but, they've done research.
>snipped for brevity<
Even if this is 10% accurate, it's troubling no?

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
There doesn't seem to be a lot of ex-generals running for President these days. A pity, because they have a pretty good success rate.

 streamdragon wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Read this... yeah, it's IBD... but, they've done research.
>snipped for brevity<
Even if this is 10% accurate, it's troubling no?

Yes or no: Did Clinton have one single thing to do with the Russian uranium mining deal?

The answer as facts show is: No, she did not have a single thing to do with it.

So explain again: for the Russian uranium mining deal, why should she be held to task for a deal she had not one single hand in?

 Jihadin wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Read this... yeah, it's IBD... but, they've done research.
>snipped for brevity<
Even if this is 10% accurate, it's troubling no?

Yes or no: Did Clinton have one single thing to do with the Russian uranium mining deal?

The answer as facts show is: No, she did not have a single thing to do with it.

So explain again: for the Russian uranium mining deal, why should she be held to task for a deal she had not one single hand in?

Believe she had to sign off on the deal being it concern American Strategic Resource or something to that effect. Russia/Putin in effect can manipulate the prices on Uranium or deny selling to the US

the facts showed that the State Department is just one of nine votes on the committee that had to approve that deal, that Clinton wasn't personally involved in the review, and that other independent agencies also had to approve it.

All the money that allegedly flowed to the Clintons to smooth the way for this deal to go through was so that Clinton would not attempt, as the head of one of nine agencies on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, to veto it? When the State Department's review of the deal didn't rise to the level where the secretary would get personally involved? Oh, and by the way, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Canadian government also signed off on the deal, and if the cabinet secretaries on the CFIUS can't agree on whether to approve a deal, it's not a one-secretary veto situation: the president then decides.

So not only is there literally no way for Hilary to make the final call on this, she was never personally involved one bit. And yet we're supposed to be upset that nothing stuck to her?

I ask again, why?

Jihadin wrote:

So not only is there literally no way for Hilary to make the final call on this, she was never personally involved one bit. And yet we're supposed to be upset that nothing stuck to her?

I ask again, why?

Why was she not involve if a outside entity (Putin) was purchasing a company that provides something like 0ne-fifth of the Uranium production to the US of A?

whembly wrote:Why steam?

Because it's the timing and linkages of donors, donations, speaking fees, and DoS' own publich activites that reflects a highly questionable pattern of malfeasance.

If it were anyone else, the FBI/DoJ was come down hard on this.

Instead, people make excuses for the Clinton’s... ie, "where's the hard evidence?".

While blindly ignoring that we prosecute insider trading (don't you work for the SEC???) and even convict murderers on circumstatial evidence.

'Tis why the Clinton's need to rebrand Teflon™ to non-stick Clinton™.

 streamdragon wrote:

Jihadin wrote:

So not only is there literally no way for Hilary to make the final call on this, she was never personally involved one bit. And yet we're supposed to be upset that nothing stuck to her?

I ask again, why?

Why was she not involve if a outside entity (Putin) was purchasing a company that provides something like 0ne-fifth of the Uranium production to the US of A?

I don't know, you'll have to ask the State Department who made that decision.

Not going to really going to go into this being you have one going (debate) with Whembly