Tag Archives: political parties

No Connection

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There were no ties between Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her State Department on the one hand and the Clinton Foundation run by ex-President Bill Clinton, daughter, and…his wife Hillary.  That’s the claim by no lesser lights than Bill and Hillary.

Thus, neither

In an exchange from April 2009, a longtime aide to Mr Clinton told three of Mrs Clinton’s top advisers that it was “important to take care of” a particular person, whose name has been redacted from the document. That person had written the aide, Doug Band, under the subject line “A favor…” to thank him for the “opportunity to go on the Haiti trip,” which the person called “eye-opening.” Mr Band was a chief adviser in helping Mr Clinton launch the Clinton Foundation after leaving the White House.

nor

Huma Abedin, a longtime confidante of Mrs Clinton who is now working for her campaign, replied to Mr Band: “We have all had him on our radar. Personnel has been sending him options.” Mr Band responded: “Great.” Mr Band was an important figure in helping Mr Clinton set up his post-presidential career and has since co-founded a New York company called Teneo Holdings.

While at the State Department, Ms Abedin received a special designation that allowed her to work at the agency while also doing outside work. During that period, she held two other positions, at the Clinton Foundation and at Teneo.

nor

In a separate exchange, Mr Band asked Ms Abedin and Cheryl Mills, another top aide to Mrs Clinton, to set up a meeting between a State Department official and a top donor to the Clinton Foundation.

“We need Gilbert Chagoury to speak to the substance person re Lebanon,” Mr Band wrote in April 2009. “As you know, he’s key guy there and to us and is loved in Lebanon. Very imp.”

Mr Chagoury, a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire, has donated between $1 million and $5 million to the foundation, according to its disclosures.

mean anything at all.

There’s no connection.  Mm, mm.  From that, of course we don’t need to wonder about the content of those meetings, or trips, or favors, nor should we worry about what Federal goodies were given to folks like these.

Nah.  Not at all.

Another Reason This Election Matters

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I wrote earlier about what a Clinton Supreme Court would look like.  President Barack Obama (D) already has largely succeeded in fundamentally altering our judicial system, an outcome obscured by the high profile battles fought over Supreme Court and DC Circuit Court nominations.

Obama has already appointed 329 judges to lifetime jobs, more than one third of the judiciary, and they’re already moving American jurisprudence in Obama’s direction. He got two left-leaning women onto the Court: Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic justice, and Elena Kagan, his former solicitor general. He also flipped the partisan balance of the nation’s 13 courts of appeals; when he took office, only one had a majority of Democratic appointees, and now nine do.

That’s borne fruit, too.

His appointees have already taken the progressive side in cases involving issues like gay marriage and transgender bathroom choices, as well as cases involving his own health reforms and carbon regulations.

Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says she intends to go even further.

Elections have consequences.  And the last two at the Presidential level already have had.

Well, Yeah

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Here’s Gene Sperling, Bill Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s economic advisor, on Republican Party Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s tax proposal.

If you look at how [Trump’s] tax code has been judged, almost 90% went to the top 1%. What he has doubled down on is this ‘15% solution’. That means that not only will the biggest companies pay 15%, but everybody who has any type of pass-through income. More than half of the 400 richest people in the U.S. have pass-through income[.]

And

Anybody who has any kind of business income, whether you’re a consultant, a lobbyist, a hedge fund manager, investment banker, or corporate lawyer, you would now pay 15%, lower than most middle-income families. The largest multi-national companies that people think have paid too little would pay 15%.

Never mind that Warren Buffet already, proudly, pays only a bit more than those 15% (and while he demands that everyone like him should pay more, he refuses to make a donation to the Treasury—insisting that his views be imposed on those who disagree).  Never mind, either, that with our current gerrymandered tax code, folks like those 400 are driven to the breaks and deductions that lower the investment income portion of their tax bill.

Leaving aside Sperling’s politically motivated exaggeration about those 90%, here are some actual facts.

The top 1% of Americans in income pay nearly 47% of US income taxes—even after adjusting for capital gains and other investment-related income.

The top 20% pay roughly 84%% of US income taxes.

The bottom 50% pay roughly 4% of US income taxes.

It’s obvious to anyone with a 3rd grade lesson in arithmetic that any across-the-board cut in taxes—or even any cut that merely lowers tax rates without materially affecting the tax brackets—is going to yield a bigger dollar cut for the better off.  Sperling surely has at least that level of training in arithmetic.

The Left always demands that the rich should pay their fair share, but the Left always refuses to say what that fair share is.  Except per Sperling the Left insists, tacitly, that 47% or even 84% isn’t it.

PRC Provocation

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This episode comes as President Barack Obama (D) continues his retreat from the global stage, a retreat with which Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is completely on board.

Six coast guard ships of the People’s Republic of China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy escorted a large fleet of fishing vessels into the waters around Japan’s Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.  Japan was left to summon PRC diplomats and formally protest, as the Obama administration kept carefully silent on the matter.

Japan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement it filed the protest after Japan’s coast guard spotted the vessels Saturday along with a fleet of 230 Chinese fishing boats swarming around the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands.

Of course, the PRC demanded that Japan not take “any action that could lead to a tense or complicated situation,” notwithstanding that it’s PRC behavior that’s provoking tensions and complications.

This action marks an escalation of PRC aggressiveness in the East and South China Seas since the PRC’s seizure of the South China Sea was ruled illegal by an international court in The Hague, and it’s an escalation encouraged by Obama’s considered silence.

Cynical

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The DC Circuit, in a mixed ruling, has said the trial court judge had erred in dismissing a collection of Tea Party suits he said had become “moot” because the IRS had apologized for its misbehavior and had said it had stopped such practices.

Of course, the IRS had said it had stopped—sort of—only conditionally.  DC Circuit Judge David Sentelle, writing for the majority (the ruling can be seen here), noted that the IRS only had suspended the screening “until further notice.”

A violation of right that is “suspended until further notice” has not become the subject of voluntary cessation, with no reasonable expectation of resumption, so as to moot litigation against the violation of rights. Rather, it has at most advised the victim of the violation—”you’re alright for now, but there may be another shoe falling.”

Sentelle took issue with “suspended,” understanding that suspension is not cessation.  He took separate issue with that “until further notice” bit, as noted above.

In fact, too, the IRS had not stopped at all.  As Sentelle noted,

…it is absurd to suggest that the effect of the IRS’s unlawful conduct, which delayed the processing of appellant-plaintiffs’ applications, has been eradicated when two of the appellant-plaintiffs’ applications remain pending.

After how many years are these applications still pending? It’s been two years since the trial court made its erroneous dismissal.

Of course, the trial judge knew these things. Based on his logic, too (even if he had been as ignorant as he seemed to be claiming he was), it would seem he would have dismissed charges against Willie Sutton had that worthy only apologized and averred he’s stopped. No consequence should ensue, this judge would seem to insist, for the banks Sutton had already robbed.

How cynical is that?

These are the trial courts and the IRS that will be heavily impacted by the Presidential elections.