Firms that paid for Clinton speeches have US government interests
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I doubt we'll ever get either. A simple tax system means one of the chief ways politicians reward donors goes away, and the speech / job thing is just plain too lucrative.
1) the exact wording is more for lawyers than me
I wonder what incremental changes we could make to get people to go vote their interest and to more carefully examine how elected officials make use of the vast power handed to them.
Its a bit more about removing some of the incentives for "bad" behavior. These two are the most problematic to being fair and honest in government.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
Obviously they feel the quarter million is well spent, as a bribe to influence government actions.
Anyone who thinks the bribes don't have the possibility to change a politician's actions is quite gullible.
Of course they do. Having Hillary Clinton speak helps to cement and perpetuate a firm's status and influence in its industry.
Imagine your employer were to host such a speech. Who would they invite? Business partners, clients, investors...
> "You have no reason to remember, but we came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt," Clinton said. "We had no money when we got there, and we struggled to piece together the resources for mortgages for houses, for Chelsea's education.
Why do people like you always rush to defend obvious bribery anyway?
Also such event often makes profit on donations.
Then you should be looking to vote for Bernie Sanders.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/09/i-am-a-...
The problem is the inherent conflict of interest that politicians receiving so much money from private interests creates.
I am not looking forward to a choice between a corporate shill and a racist fool.
Let me put it to you another way... If Bernie had been elected, it's highly likely the vice president would have been Elizabeth Warren. Elizabeth Warren would then have a great platform if she wanted to run for president. Wouldn't you prefer Elizabeth Warren was the first female president over Hilary Clinton?
That said, this is a lesson in why public officials should be concerned about the appearance of impropriety, and not just substantive impropriety. The former can still do a lot of damage (both to yourself, and to faith in government) whether you've done anything else wrong or not. It doesn't look good to public officials to be giving paid speeches while they are still in office.
And I'm sure all these donors' interests are aligned, right?
And, to be a little less flippant, I do think that the company a person keeps affects a person's thinking. So if a company can buy their way into Hillary Clinton's circle, I accept that they have managed to buy some amount of influence. But I think this influence is negligible compared to Clinton's formal advisers and organic professional network. You also have to remember that most of these companies have far more effective ways of influencing government than paying for some lousy speeches, none of which is Clinton's doing.
Eh? I think they're broadly aligned. They're aligned when it comes to how corporations and executives should be treated by the courts and regulatory agencies. They're aligned on the extent and structure of free trade pacts. They're aligned on corporate taxation. They're aligned with Bill Clinton's claim that the only thing wrong with the American economy is a "skills gap."
Sure there's going to be disagreement (often severe) on particular points here and there but the broad thrust the economic "Washington Consensus" that Bill Clinton championed is a point of alignment among Clinton's donor class.
The only case I know of is the State Department's opposition to a minimum-wage increase in Haiti. And this, while I find it objectionable, was clearly done to further U.S. interests as a whole, not to favor one U.S. industry or interest group over another. It's mercantilist, but its not corrupt.
If there are indeed "mountains" of such examples, I expect that HN community should be able to come up with at least a few good examples, no? (But note: legitimate policy choices with which you happen to disagree are not necessarily evidence of corruption.)
Clinton has been strongly against re-instating the Glass-Steagal Act which would have prevented the 2008 disaster. She does this because she's sold out to Wall Street, since obviously they don't want that law back on the books either.
Probably not. The biggest players in the collapse, Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and AIG, were not commercial banks that would have been restrained under Glass-Steagal. In fact, much of the financial structure that eventually collapsed in 2008 began to accumulate well before GLBA in 1999.
And, again, I think you're overlooking the fact that there are non-corrupt reasons to be against bringing back Glass-Steagal. More importantly, you're ignoring the fact that Clinton does support Dodd-Frank, as well as improvements to Dodd-Frank that would be better suited to address the causes of the 2008 collapse than just reinstating Glass-Steagal.
So, she supports fairly robust new bank regulations--she just doesn't support your favorite, so you say she's corrupt (and tell me I'm 'lying' by suggesting otherwise--civil!).
http://theweek.com/articles/583243/what-hillary-gets-right-a... https://www.hillaryclinton.com/briefing/factsheets/2015/10/0...
Your first link is good though, but it also supports reinstating Glass-Steagal (did you read it?). It just makes the case that G-S wouldn't have stopped the 2008 disaster, but that its repeal was part of the same bunch of deregulation that happened at that time period, by the same players. It closes with a call to reinstate G-S, along with other legislation more focused on the actual causes of the 2008 crash, but it does say G-S is a good idea and that the financial system needs as many fail-safes of that kind as it can get.
So, going by your first link and ignoring your second one because it's obviously going to be horribly biased, I don't see any non-corrupt reasons to be against bringing back G-S, but you do make a good case that G-S wouldn't have avoided the 2008 problem. However, again going by your first link, it does point out that Citigroup and Bank of America were also greatly involved in the 2008 housing crash and they would have been restrained from that by G-S, so I do think it's fair to say that G-S would have helped, though it would not have prevented the crash.
As for the article, yes I did read it. And yes, it supports reinstating Glass Steagal but also says "Clinton's plan is the most substantive response to the Great Recession as it actually happened." If that's true (or even close to true), why is it of such overriding significance whether Clinton also supports Glass Steagal, specifically? She doesn't want to reinstate it because she think's it is unnecessary and she has a different proposal that she thinks is better.
I'd love to hear your attempt at these.
Think about how much that would warp your worldview if a large bulk of the people you meet day-in and day-out for decades paid six figure sums to talk to you?
Where's the evidence of any such said corruption?
Just because they received money for speeches doesn't make them corrupt, and if you believe it does well then prove it with evidence you can back up but don't put out false claims. Yes she has gotten a good deal of money from speeches but it isn't the only politician out there (present or past) doing them for large amounts of money.
It's one thing to say you're influenced by lobbyist groups donating to your campaign and whole other to say the speeches are used to influence your policies, they're two separate things.
And even while HRC has gotten a decent amount of donations given to her campaign it's a very small piece of the pie that is shelled out by Corporations and Lobbyist groups, look at the other side for example, do you think they aren't COMPLETELY influenced by lobbyist groups? They practically own the Republican party.
Anyways as I said, more about nothing than something.