Tag Archives: political economy

What’s Scaring Her So Much?

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Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, with the active support of the State Department which she used to lead, is refusing to release all of her State Department daily schedules until after the elections this fall.  These schedules would reveal with whom she met, for how long, and on what (claimed) subjects.  While some of those schedules have been released already (not voluntarily, but only under court order pursuant to an AP FOIA request that had to be satisfied via AP’s lawsuit), she—and State—are slow walking the release of the rest.  Now why would that be?

Recall that the daily schedules so far released demonstrate that while Secretary of State, Clinton met with or had telephone conversations with thousands of diplomats, other foreign dignitaries, Federal employees, and the like.  The released schedules also demonstrate that Clinton met with 154 private individuals, 85 of whom had given, in aggregate, more than $155 million to her Clinton Foundation.

The Clinton campaign has accused the AP of “cherry picking” schedules by focusing on those 154 individuals, saying that these folks are a tiny per centage of the meetings and telephone calls Clinton had as Secretary of State.

The campaign is correct, as a matter of third grade arithmetic, that those private individuals are a tiny per centage of the total.  What the campaign is carefully ignoring, though, is that Secretary Clinton was obligated to meet or otherwise talk with those thousands of diplomats, other foreign dignitaries, Federal employees, and the like.

What the campaign also is carefully ignoring is that Secretary Clinton was obligated to meet or otherwise talk with zero per cent of those 154 individuals; instead those 154 represent 100% of a population 55% of whom had given her Foundation those $155+ million.

This is of a piece with Clinton’s private email server, on which she conducted official State Department business, and which she had set up for the avowed purpose of concealing her emails from public scrutiny.

What is Clinton so desperate to hide?

Clintons, Clinton Foundation, and Donations

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Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is making the claim, through her campaign staff, that the Clinton Foundation will stop taking donations from foreign countries or from corporations in the event she’s elected President.

Republican Party Presidential candidate Donald Trump and his campaign organization are pointing out a loophole in that Clinton commitment: the promised ban carefully does not include smaller Clinton-tied charities like Alliance for a Healthier Generation, Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership, and Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), among others.

There’s another loophole in Clinton’s commitment, though.  The Clinton Foundation would be permitted to accept donations (only) from

US citizens and independent charities[.]

Notice that.  Foreign governments and other foreign favor-seekers would have only to make their donations to any of a number of those “independent charities,” which then would pass along the money to the Clinton Foundation.  Wall Street donors and their like, US citizens for the most part, can still buy their favors directly through the Clinton Foundation.  That’s a loophole you could drive a truck through.

“Commitment,” indeed.  How very Clinton-esque.

Death Tax

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Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton demurs from Republican Party Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s plan to repeal the death tax—the 40% tax on a man’s estate that the government currently claims because the man was rude enough to die.  Never mind that the man’s heirs might have a claim on the money—no, it’s Government’s money, says the Progressive Democrat.

Clinton claims she wants to build schools, cancel student loans, and provide health care to veterans with the proceeds from that death tax.

Let’s review the bidding.

Clinton has no intention of building voucher or charter schools; she only wants to build “public” schools run by her supporting teachers unions—crony capitalism in our education system.

Clinton’s wish to cancel student loans sends an equally terrible signal: that private citizens aren’t responsible for their own debts or their own actions: government will take care of it for them.  Which puts government in charge of those citizens’ choices, too, but carefully elides that part of her wish.

Clinton’s claims regarding our veterans’ health?  Compare that with the Democratic administration’s handling of the Veterans Affairs and its abject failure regarding our veterans’ health.  The Obama administration has taken no meaningful steps to correct that disaster (some might say refused to take steps), and she brags about wanting to continue President Barack Obama’s (D) policies.  And she says nothing to reconcile the opposition between her veterans-related claims on the one hand and her veterans-related claims on the other.

There’s another aspect to this death tax of hers, too.  Most of the estates being inherited (or which inheritance is blocked by the death tax) are in the form of small, family businesses and farms—businesses which usually have to be sold off to raise the cash to pay the vig tax.  And that leaves the surviving families, those heirs, without the means to earn their livelihood.

The Progressive Socialist Goal Made Manifest

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In the context of Aetna’s decision to sharply curtail its participation in ObamaMart—because such participation was costing Aetna millions of dollars—Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT) has said openly

The provision of health care cannot continue to be dependent upon the whims and market projections of large private insurance companies whose only goal is to make as much profit as possible.

Because making money—the engine of economic growth and the economic welfare of all Americans—is inappropriate when it’s done outside Government control.  American businesses and Americans can’t be allowed to earn more than Government deems fit.  President Barack Obama (D) has held this before Sanders became a public fixture:

I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money. But, you know, part of the American way is, you know, you can just keep on making it if you’re providing a good product or providing good service.

Of course, the Progressive-Democrat Obama considered it to be Government’s role to determine the goodness of that product or service, not the private citizens choosing to buy, not to buy, that product or service.

Sanders’ disdain for private insurers’ market projections and their goal to make as much profit as possible are easily extensible to the economy as a whole.  That Progressives in the Democratic Party are demanding a government option to “compete” with private enterprise in ObamaMart is a clear demonstration of where that Party will take our economy the moment they gain control of our government.

You can bet Progressive-Democrat and Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton soon will be echoing Sanders’ call for government control of our economy in her effort to retain Sanders’ supporters and to extend Obama’s policies.

This will be the Progressive Socialist economy.

SEC and Boardroom Diversity

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The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking to reach inside corporate governance some more because it Knows Better how to run a company than do the leaders and managers of that company.  The latest travesty is a new rule requiring disclosure of the diversity—by which the SEC means ethnic and gender diversity—of a public company’s board of directors.  This would be an expansion of the SEC’s existing 2009 rule requiring companies to disclose their plans for diversity.

Berkshire Hathaway took the correct position in its SEC disclosure regarding those plans:

Berkshire does not have a policy regarding the consideration of diversity in identifying nominees for director. In identifying director nominees, the Governance Committee does not seek diversity, however defined. Instead, as previously discussed, the Governance Committee looks for individuals who have very high integrity, business savvy, an owner-oriented attitude and a deep genuine interest in the Company.

This, though, isn’t politically correct enough to suit the SEC; hence the new rule under consideration.  It isn’t enough that a company should seek actual talent and skill, it must seek the government-directed correct balance of gender and ethnicity.

This raises a question in my mind: would that be biological ethnicity and gender or self-identified ethnicity and gender?

For the record, I self-identify my ethnicity as American, and I self-identify my gender as The US Male.