Category Archives: morality

Those Clinton Foundation Donations

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On the matter of the Clinton Foundation’s need to refile some past tax reporting records because others had discovered that the Foundation had underreported its income, the Foundation’s Acting CEO Maura Pally offered this:

We made mistakes, as many organizations of our size do, but we are acting quickly to remedy them. And [we] have taken steps to ensure they don’t happen in the future.

Fair enough. Based solely on this instance of underreporting, it’s difficult to lay the error off to corruption or incompetence, even though the erroneous underreporting is a massive error, and the underreported donations occurred while Hillary Clinton was sitting in the Secretary of State’s chair.

But then Pally added this:

the group has already announced that it will accept funding from only a “handful of governments….”

Thus, in addition to giving the appearance, if as yet undemonstrated fact, that the Secretary of State’s influence was…available…Clinton, through Pally, is giving the impression that the President’s chair will be similarly available to selected foreign governments, should she be elected.

The woman is either oblivious, and so incompetent, or she’s a corrupt politician, and so unfit.

Hmm….

Protect People, Not Borders?

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That’s what Maximilian Popp, over at Spiegel Online International, thinks. The caption of the lead image is this:

The mass deaths of refugees like those seen this weekend on the European Union’s external borders is not a consequence of politicians looking away. We are in fact causing the problem with our Fortress Europe policies.

The capsizing of a refugee boat with the loss of the lives of hundreds was not caused by European policies, whether national or European. Neither was the murder of seven Christians on another refugee boat by their Muslim fellow refugees. Those were caused by a boat captain’s error and by Muslim murderers.

Sure, to some extent, incidents like those beg the question. But Popp is presupposing the wrong problem.

The mass deaths of refugees at Europe’s external borders are no accidents—they are the direct result of European Union policies.

Why are these refugees flooding the Mediterranean, the land bridges into Europe, or flooding the US’ southern border? They think there’s a much better life to be had in Europe and in the US. It’s as simple as that. EU policies have nothing to do with that, except to the extent that EU policies create an economic, political, and social environment that makes it possible for a man to realize his and his family’s full potential, instead of being held back by the barbarism of the environments these folks are fleeing.

 

A nation must first exist, and then it must first protect its own people, must first secure its own people’s prosperity. It must protect its own borders. Only when a nation has secured itself can it have any means of helping refugees. If borders aren’t protected, and protected first, nations won’t exist, and so there will be no entity extant with the capacity to help refugees. Indeed, rather tautologically, there will be no refugees, only people roaming and searching. And no place for anyone to search for other than “not here.”

No nation has an obligation to let anyone in who demands it, or even who simply comes across its border, no more than does a homeowner have an obligation to allow anyone in through the door, or window, who wants it or succeeds in the penetration. Allowing such a thing would directly destroy the house, and the nation.

A nation, and the men who are that nation, have a Judeo-Christian obligation to help those less fortunate—refugees here—certainly. But that help is best done, not by encouraging the flood of refugees, but by helping them at their source: correcting the barbarism in their originating environment, helping the people of those nations develop—and implement—the policies that will foster an economic, political, and social environment that will allow them to prosper where they are.

Until that’s done, the flood of refugees will only continue, the prosperity of their target nations will be drained away, and there will be no means of helping them anywhere. After that’s done, even after a good start has been made, there still will be a flow of refugees, but it will a trickle easily managed by the receiving nations. And that trickle will have far fewer incidents of boat captain error or of refugee on refugee murder.

Hillary Clinton’s “Reset”

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From Thursday’s The New York Times comes this lurid tale of money and women.

Beyond mines in Kazakhstan that are among the most lucrative in the world, the sale [to Rosatom of a Canadian company with uranium-mining stakes stretching from Central Asia to the American West] 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…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.

2009-2013, you’ll recall, was Hillary Clinton’s term as Secretary of State.

There’s this additional money:

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

Clinton’s response to this? Here it is, through her National Press Secretary, Brian Fallon:

[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.

Notice that. She didn’t deny the NYT‘s reporting, she wholly ignored the question of her involvement in the turning over of American uranium mines to Russia, instead all she had was a “You got nothin’ on me, copper.”

Clinton’s “Reset” button for Russia actually translates from the Russian as “overcharged.”

She’s overcharged for, indeed. For Americans. Cheap, though, for Russia.

But we–and she–are just haggling over her price.

What’s Up With This?

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In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn’t do something evil. They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do.

That’s what FBI Director James Comey said with an absolutely straight face at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s 2015 National Tribute Dinner, and he repeated them in all seriousness in his Washington Post editorial at the link. Poles as a society were accomplices in the holocaust.

This is the same FBI Director who has demanded FBI access to the encryption keys of messages that American citizens send to each other so that his FBI can snoop at will.

Hmm….

Embarrassingly Dysfunctional

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To coin a phrase, this is embarrassing, a Department like this.

Ignored claims, manipulated records, cost overruns and even one facility infested with insects and rodents are among the latest issues uncovered by a blistering VA Inspector General’s report. The auditor’s probe found that more than 31,000 inquiries placed by veterans to the Philadelphia Regional VA office call center went ignored for more than 312 days, even though they were supposed to be answered in five. Perhaps even worse, claim dates were manipulated to hide delays, $2.2 million in improper payments were made because of duplicate records, 22,000 pieces of returned mail went ignored, and some 16,600 documents involving patient records and dating back to 2011 were never scanned into the system.

This is a year after the Veterans Administration promised, to Congress and to us, that they were cleaning up their act.

Disband the Veterans Administration; it’s an affront to our veterans and an embarrassment to our nation. Use the VA budget for vouchers for vets. No more delay. Our vets can’t wait.