September 11, 2012. A Day in the Life of Hillary Clinton’s Career Ambitions

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Margie Burns

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had two chief rivals in the corridors of power–Vice President Joseph Biden and then-Ambassador to the U.N. Susan E. Rice. Each outweighed her in credibility, dependability, and sincerity. Biden posed by far the biggest threat as potential presidential candidate. Rice was being mentioned as next Secretary of State.

Two of the first emails Mrs. Clinton issued before dawn on September 11, 2012, reflected the influence of Biden and Rice.

At 4:39 a.m., Clinton sent her first email, asking to see Stella O’Leary, founder of Irish American Democrats, who had written through channels praising the Clintons’ work with Ireland. O’Leary referenced a meeting with Clinton that week scheduled for Martin McGuinness, Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland. Back on St. Patrick’s Day, 2012, McGuinness had met with President Obama and Vice President Biden. In the ongoing effort to maintain ties with Irish Americans, Clinton needed to catch up. Events later that day–the tragic attacks in Benghazi, Libya–altered the timetable. Clinton met with McGuinness in October.

Pre-dawn on September 11, by 5:15 a.m. Clinton had forwarded eight articles, previously emailed to her. They went to “Russorv@state.gov” (Robert V. Russo), with the request, “Pls print.” (First was a blog post by Paul Krugman at the New York Times, forwarded by Clinton at 4:44 a.m.)

At 4:57 a.m., Clinton forwarded a Foreign Policy article titled “The Point Guard,” by James Traub.

The ‘point guard’ was Susan Rice. The article’s sub-heading read, “Susan Rice calls the plays for Barack Obama at the United Nations. Could she lead his foreign-policy team next? Should she?”

In hindsight, the Traub article seems to have had impact. The piece focused largely on Libya–and on Susan Rice. While administration policy and Rice get mixed marks, the piece nevertheless devotes mega-watt attention to Rice (see at link). Her impressive educational credentials, powerful life story, and phenomenal work ethic are forcefully highlighted.

Of particular interest:

In the entertaining parlor game of “Who would be secretary of state in a hypothetical Obama second term?” Rice is now considered the leader, or perhaps tied with Donilon, though questions about his possible role in the recent disclosure of sensitive national security information to the New York Times could threaten his confirmability. (Handicappers now place both in front of Sen. John Kerry.) It’s unclear that she’d be good at a job like that, though; her smile may be just a trifle too forced, her patience a bit too thin. A State Department official who has known her since the Clinton days says that though Rice is hard-driving, diligent, and effective, “There is a disconnect between that and wisdom.” The president, a shrewd judge of character, may know this about her, but the fact that he trusts her may matter more. Susan Rice is not to be denied. She has never faltered along the steep upward trajectory of her career. Some high-powered women have dropped out of the administration to tend to their families, and Rice says she is sympathetic to their plight; she just doesn’t share it. At one point I asked Rice whether she had ever experienced a serious failure. She thought about it. No, she hadn’t. “Some have tried to take me on,” she murmured. Presumably, they lived to regret it.

Traub also gave Rice forceful credit for her loyalty, her passion, her pragmatism, and her blunt honesty. He also noted that, after working in President Clinton’s administration, Rice chose to support Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. One hesitates to be a mind reader, but it is hard to imagine Secretary of State Clinton shrugging that off. For one thing, four articles Clinton next forwarded to Russo for printing were relatively laudatory as they pertained to her.* For another, Clinton requested that the Traub piece, like the others, be printed.

“Pls print.”

“Pls print” —

Side note: While Clinton as we know set up a private email server at home, she seems not to have set up a printer. Or if she did, she did not use it much. Was her “Pls print” request just a way to save paper and ink cartridges on the home front? Were the State printers that much better than the State email servers?

Or can one assume that when Secretary of State Clinton asked a State employee to use Department resources to print an item, she considered that document to be State Department business?

For perspective, the searchable SecState Clinton emails are posted online here–30,322 emails. Clinton’s frequent “Pls print” request turns up more than 3,400 times. Assuming that many of the results are duplicates or email chains, that’s still hundreds of pages of printing requests submitted to State. (Once again, as when they exited the White House and then had to return White House furniture to the public, the Clintons look like a couple of cheese-parers. But that’s another story.)

For all searchable State Department emails released and not just Clinton emails, go here. In this archive, 13,850 emails contain the private email address “hrod17@clintonemail.com.” Of these in turn, Clinton sent more than 8,200. (Emails received by Clinton begin only about page 413 out of 693–at 20 emails per page.) Again, many are duplicates and/or parts of email chains. But again, the total is hundreds of emails. Probably few people have read all of them. A quick check reveals that many emails sent by Secretary of State Clinton have parts redacted. In other words, either they contain private email addresses or other personal information about non-government employees, or they contain material now deemed classified. As written earlier, one consequence of Clinton’s private email server was to comingle State and off-duty communications.

Back to the early morning hours of September 11, 2012 —

At 5:14 a.m., Clinton replied to Melanne Verveer, who had fulsomely praised an appearance by Bill Clinton. From Verveer (September 6):

H I’m in the business lounge at Dubai airport en route to Dhaka watching your husband’s extraordinary speech and surrounded by countless foreigners all cheering him on. Only he would elicit that kind of reaction at home and abroad! I think it was his most brilliant performance yet, all bias aside. [NAME REDACTED] emailed me in the middle of it to say that you have to run for president so she can work for you!!!

Clinton’s reply:

That must have been a surreal moment–so far from home but so present. He did a great job for the President, the party and the country. Come see me when you have time this week.

At 5:22 a.m., Clinton emailed Cheryl Mills, simultaneously at both her home and work addresses. Subject line: “Need to be sure we talk today.” Message: “What time works for you?” At 5:35 a.m. she emailed Mills again, with the same subject heading and asking “How about 4:30?” At 5:41 a.m., she again emailed Mills with the “need to be sure we talk” and an additional request, “Also, can I call you around 7:30 this morning?” (Mills replied early that she was coming in.)

Clinton’s emails to Mills look increasingly urgent if not agitated. They had nothing to do with Benghazi, where the attacks had not erupted. However, the article on Susan Rice does seem to have inspired an action regarding Libya. Clinton’s next email went to Huma Abedin at 5:50 a.m.:

Request:

Can you get us a copy of Bernard Henri-Levi’s film about Libya? I think Harvey made it and showed it at Cannes last spring.

This would presumably be the documentary about the Libyan war by Bernard Henri-Levy. Other writers have addressed this item.

Clinton then turned to more respectable daily State business, at 5:15 forwarding a CNN article to Russo titled “Chinese media make inroads into Africa,” with “Pls print.” A minute later, she replied to the sender, “I don’t know why we can’t get the Congress (or anyone else in Washington) to care about this.”

Incidentally, the tone and diction of this comment are very unlike Clinton–unusually feeling and colorful, in contrast to the banality of most of her State emails. Either she got hold of a genuine issue for American concerns, or she suspected that Chinese media in Africa would not likely feature her, or both.

At 7:30 a.m., Clinton emailed four people in State with the subject heading “Xi Xinping‘s letter to me.” Message: “I’d like to respond as quickly as possible. Pls get me a draft today. Thx.”

At 8:38 a.m., she sent a message headed “Schedule”:

Pls reach out to schedule the following: Terre Blair–mtg in NY or DC Maggie Williams–she prefers dinner in NY John Kerry–he asked to see me when I saw him last night. Maybe mtg after work– for drinks or dinner? Not sure what’s best.

A few other emails on State matters were followed by a friendly reply to Capricia Marshall at 6:57 p.m.–“Are you still here in office?” Marshall had emailed Clinton at 5:45 that “Jake was simply amazing”– “He was our featured speaker at our State of the Administration on Monday. He really wowed the Ambassadors as he has such a command of your accomplishments. Have a few thoughts on this.”

By coincidence, Susan E. Rice had received word of the Benghazi attacks a few minutes earlier, in a message not yet transmitted to SecState:

From: Pelofsky, Eric 3 Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2012 6:42 PM To: Rice, Susan E (USUN); Singh, Priya (USUN); Ryu, Rexon Y; Oat-Judge, Siobhan Cc: DiCarlo, Rosemary A (USUN) Subject: RE: URGENT – Benghazi I should have mentioned that NEA conveyed to me that all of this is closehold. SBU

From: Pelofsky, Eric 3 Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2012 6:41 PM To: Rice, Susan E (USUN); Singh, Priya (USUN); Ryu, Rexon Y; Oat-Judge, Siobhan Cc: DiCarlo, Rosemary A (USUN) Subject: URGENT – Benghazi As reported, the Benghazi compound came under attack and it took a bit of time for the “Annex” colleagues and Libyan February 17 Brigade to secure it. One of our colleagues was killed — IMO.Sean Smith. Amb. Chris Stevens, who was visiting Benghazi this week, is missing. U.S. and Libyan colleagues . . .

For future reference, emails released show Clinton sending only 29 emails, including a few duplicates, on September 11, 2012. Relatively few emails fore-grounded State concerns over Clinton’s own. Fewer still had anything to do with Benghazi. Word of the attacks came only late in the day.

Only at 8:51 p.m. did Clinton’s emails about Benghazi begin, with the heading “I’m in my office,” sent to Diane Reynolds (i.e. Chelsea Clinton):

Because of attacks on our embassy in Cairo and our office in Benghazi so email when you can talk.

At the time, with incomplete information, she may have guessed that Cairo was the worse problem. At 11:12 p.m., Clinton emailed her daughter again with the heading “I’m in my office”:

Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al Queda-like group: The Ambassador, whom I handpicked and a young communications officer on temporary duty w a wife and two young children. Very hard day and I fear more of the same tomorrow. Let’s try again later.

U.S. Consulate, Benghazi

“Chris Smith” —

After word of the Benghazi attacks, Clinton sent two emails headed “Chris Smith.” Notwithstanding her poignant “I handpicked” Ambassador Christopher Stevens, she seems to have conflated his name with that of Foreign Service officer Sean Smith, who like Stevens was killed in the first attack. CIA contractors Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed in the second attack.

The first went out at 11:38 p.m. It contained a rather weighty question, asking input:

11:38 p.m. “Chris Smith.” “From: H <hrod17@clintonemail.com>Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2012 11:38 PM To: ‘sullivanjj@state.gov’; ‘millscd@state.gov’; ‘nulandvj@state.gov’ Subject: Chris Smith

Cheryl told me the Libyans confirmed his death. Should we announce tonight or wait until morning?

The second went at 11:40 p.m., with the brief message–“Ok.”–in response to Mills’ reply: “We are awaiting formal confirmation from our team. We are drafting a statement while we wait.”

At some point, exact time and author not given, a “Statement on the attack in Benghazi” was issued. The initial email is archived with several others issued over the next few days–with progressively more personal statements over Clinton’s name, about the four Americans killed, some repeating the personal asseveration that she had handpicked Ambassador Stevens.

The take-away here is hard and painful. First, for a sitting cabinet member to send emails by private email server at home was almost pathologically stupid. Despite GOP bloviating, there are genuine security issues involved. Add in the optics of cost-saving by sending your emails to be printed at government expense, and the set-up doesn’t get any smarter or sunnier. Add in the banal light in which they present the Secretary of State herself.

Second, while a Secretary of State might not be determined responsible for security concerns, it should be a given that s/he show concern as a matter of character. Mrs. Clinton’s emails are devoid of that concern. They show–and again, these are the emails written by Clinton herself–a public figure self-engrossed, self-advancing, and relentlessly concerned about image. Some State Department personnel seem to have concerted with her. At 9:46 p.m, after the attacks had commenced, then U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul sent this email, subject line “Help”:

Clintn with Putin was on front page of Kommersant yesterday. Jake Sullivan, head of policy planning, wants to get a copy. Could you help me find it electronically ? Thanks mike

(McFaul resigned as ambassador in 2014.)

Paradoxically, the rigid concern with image leads to a gargantuan tin ear. Setting aside if one could the deeper issue of character, this is the issue for Mrs. Clinton as a campaigner. The problem with her hoarse yelling is not that she is a woman, but that she comes across as inauthentic. People can yell in passion, but when Hillary Clinton yells, it’s not from passion. She is trying to sound like a genuine dyed-in-the-wool pol on the hustings. Channeling Bill Clinton. Channeling Bernie Sanders. But it’s not who she is. So she always comes across as trying to seem — something. This is not a feminist issue. True it is that any woman in public life will be on the receiving end of misogynistic attacks. Equally true is that the Clintons are not the messengers for that message.

*5:01 a.m. forward “The Comeback Vegan,” by Maureen Dowd; 5:06 a.m. forward “A Touchy Relationship,” a NYTimes editorial; 5:10 a.m. forward “Faithfully Democratic,” a Washington Post blog post; and 5:15 a.m. forward “The Two Clinton Legacies that Obama Should Continue,” from The Hill.

The Clinton disaster for Democrats continues

Posted on March 16, 2016 by Margie Burns

So far, in election 2016, Mrs. Clinton has won primaries in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and possibly Missouri. What commentators call her “Southern sweep” is complete.

Now let’s evaluate her chances of a Southern sweep, or any kind of sweep, or the narrowest electoral win, in 2016. Clinton’s total so far is fifteen states.* Of the fifteen states in which she has defeated or may have defeated a stronger Democrat and much more appealing candidate,

Four states–Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas–have not gone Democratic in a presidential election even once since 1976
One state–North Carolina–has gone Democratic in a presidential election once since 1976, in Barack Obama’s commanding win in 2008
Six states–Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee, and Virginia–have gone Democratic in a presidential election twice since 1976 (Georgia in 1980 and 1992, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Tennessee in 1992 and 1996, Virginia in 2008 and 2012)
One state–Florida–has gone Democratic in three presidential elections since 1976 (1992, 2008, and 2012)
One state–Ohio–has gone Democratic in four presidential elections since 1976 (2008 and 2012, 1992 and 1996)
Illinois has gone Democratic in every presidential election from 1992 on
Massachusetts has gone Democratic in every presidential election from 1988 on

So far, the electoral math is daunting. Reversing the order above to start with the results most favorable to the Democratic Party,

Illinois and Massachusetts combined have 31 electoral votes
Ohio and Florida have a combined 47 electoral votes
The eleven states which have gone Democratic no more than twice in the past forty years have a combined 62 (never) + 15 (once) + 64 (twice) = 141 electoral votes

So far, that’s 141 electoral votes quite possibly in the GOP column, to 78 votes possibly going Democratic (in an optimistic view of 2016 Illinois and Ohio). Add in Iowa’s six electoral votes for the Dems, and the total goes up to 84.

Run the same numbers more optimistically, and give weight to recent wins for Democratic nominees–or rather, for Democratic nominee Barack Obama. Obama won Virginia in 2008 and 2012 and North Carolina in 2008. Assuming for sake of argument that Hillary Clinton can replicate Obama’s success in both states, that’s another 28 electoral votes plused for Dems, minused for Repubs. The total so far then becomes 113 electoral votes for the GOP, to 106 for the Democrats.

This is Mrs. Clinton’s ‘inexorable’ series of victories in Democratic primaries, vaunted by the national political press, mostly, as a juggernaut. The fact that Clinton’s wins have mostly occurred in solidly red states or dicey swing states has not been foregrounded.

Turnout is discouraged, when media representations relentlessly shove one candidate down the public’s collective throat as inevitable.

Speaking of turnout, let’s look at some other numbers–again, just for the states in which primaries have already taken place. The Economist article linked here summarizes 2016 turnout, the take-away being that–as Trump has said–Trump has boosted GOP turnout over 2008. Primaries won by Clinton had lower turnout than in 2008. Hillary Clinton is no Barack Obama.

There are a few other points to make about 2016 turnout, scanted so far in major media outlets.

Except for Louisiana, Democratic turnout in the old Confederacy states has been significantly less than Republic turnout. Alabama had 857,000 GOP votes and 398,000 Democratic votes. Georgia had 1.3 million GOP votes to 761,000 Democratic votes. South Carolina had 741 GOP votes to 371,000 Democratic votes. Virginia had 1.02 million GOP votes to 783,000 Dem. (Louisiana had 301,000 GOP votes and 312,000 Democratic votes.)
The same pattern holds for Arkansas, Tennessee, and Texas. Clinton’s erstwhile home state of Arkansas had 221,000 Democratic votes to 411,000 for Republicans.
Since no one is counting on southern states for the Democrats, it is yet more scary to look at turnout in Ohio last night. GOP votes: 2.04 million. Democratic votes: 1.2 million.
Only in Illinois, last night, did Democratic turnout exceed GOP, 1.9 million votes to 1.4 million. And Clinton barely won Illinois.

In my view, the disparity between the major parties in southern states is intensified by set-in-concrete media emphasis on ‘minorities’. Commentators also emphasize ‘minorities’ in northern and midwestern states, of course–county by county, precinct by precinct. I am caucasian myself, but as someone concerned for racial justice I cringe at the relentless pigeonholing that links Democratic votes–or in 2016, Clinton votes–to ‘minorities’ or to ‘African-Americans’. The pigeonholing itself is dispiriting and discourages turnout. The keep-hope-dead crowd is still in there, embedded as ever.

Only candidate Obama was able to overcome these representations; I see no indication that candidate Clinton can–even after hiring some of Obama’s people (disappointingly, David Plouffe went over to Clinton, even though he must remember the 2008 election).

On the less elevated plane of partisan politics, if you want a good thumbnail view of what this linkage does to Democrats in elections, you might look at the electoral history of the state of Mississippi over the last fifty years. “Republican” is effectively a synonym for “white” in Mississippi; thus any precinct in which whites are the majority is effectively a lock for the GOP.

(It also makes me cringe to see stagily diverse, if small, crowds of voters pathetically holding up signs for Clinton that read “Fighting for Us.” When? When did Mrs. Clinton ever fight for ‘us’?)

Back to the electoral college–

Looking at states Mrs. Clinton has won so far, it is hard to envision her game plan for winning the general election in November. In a highly optimistic view, she wins all of New England; California and New York; Maryland and New Jersey; Illinois and Pennsylvania; at least a couple of western states; and enough of the battlegrounds–the old industrial states, Florida, and Virginia–to eke out the total needed. This view disregards the fact that several of the states referred to have recently elected Republican governors or have deep internal divisions among Democrats. What are the Clintons imagining? That Bill Clinton can pull in the states he got in 1992 and 1996? That Hillary Clinton has the same appeal for the minorities her campaign focuses on so much that Barack Obama did in 2008 and 2012? That the Republicans, or Trump, will sink themselves–even though Donald Trump and John Kasich are both infinitely better speakers and campaigners than Hillary Clinton? That Hillary Clinton will automatically get all Bernie Sanders voters?

Or do they cling to the idea, regardless of reason or evidence, that there is a national groundswell of devotion to the Clintons?

Bill Clinton in 2016

Or are they counting on their entrenched media supporters to carry them across the finish line?

The most plausible successful scenario I have seen comes from University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato:

Electoral college scenario 2016

This particular electoral map generates a scary 270 electoral votes for Clinton, 268 for Trump.

This is scary from more than one perspective. One is that a race predicted to be this close carries the seeds of its own defeat, where the public interest is concerned. This is an Al-Gore-in-2000 campaign in the making. In such a scenario, Clinton from her perspective would have every excuse to trim toward ‘centrist’ positions on domestic issues, and to hint at hawkish intentions in foreign policy. She would thus be justified, were she to win the nomination, in ‘pivoting’–that nice media euphemism for abruptly disclosing that the candidate has been lying about her/his positions all along.

That one does not enhance turnout either.

The low-class Washington, D.C., chattering classes

Posted on March 14, 2016 by Margie Burns

The chattering classes are lower-class than the masses.

We have seen this before. In 2002 and 2003, millions of ‘ordinary’ Americans figured something was wrong about wantonly invading Iraq. That perception was not shared, however, by established media authorities including George F. Will, Charles Krauthammer, the entire Republican noise machine, the three original major television networks and Fox, The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the major cable outlets. The upshot was a bloody and unconstitutional invasion of a sovereign nation that basically amounted to the betrayal of the less educated by the (nominally) educated.

Now we are seeing it again. The newest representation is our more elevated media mouths’ reaction to Donald Trump.

Typically inadequate commentary about Trump’s rise or support can be found here and here, among many other places.

The ground rule of pundits like these: always blame the many rather than the few. So much for participatory democracy. So much for each-one-teach-one. For Democrats, so much for winning in November 2016.

In commentary pieces like these, however well-meant they may be, a good guideline is to look at what is missing. Thus, in these particular pieces linked and in many others, there is no account of the staggering dearth of valid information in what passes for ‘political reporting’ in our big media outlets. Nothing about the paucity of genuine information in our politics coverage. (Far too typical. Did we learn about segregation and desegregation from the big media outlets? — not until the latter was dramatized by protests that lighted racial justice up on the big board. More recently, did we hear about insurance companies’ stiffing their own customers? — not until John Grisham and Michael Moore and, on a lesser scale, I, voiced the issue. For that matter, when was the last time Wolf Blitzer used the word ‘redlining’?) Nothing about the infotainment dished out by what Chris Matthews actually called (with a straight face) “Washington insiders.” Nothing about the brutal assaults on public education that leave many students unknowing about checks and balances. Nothing about the internal corruption in the Democratic Party that shut out an excellent candidate, Vice President Joseph Biden, away from voters who would have liked more choices. The behind-the-scenes money-and-connections apparatus, you will recall, did its collective best to lock up the party nomination for the deeply flawed Clintons. One result was that 17(?) 27(?) 127(?) GOPers were salivating at the chance to run against Hillary Clinton. And one result of that was Donald Trump–the cue ball banging into the rack, with the arithmetic of the field always in his favor.

Some of these guys in media commentary have even found ways to be unfair to Donald Trump–not a feat any ordinary person could pull off. Trump has at moments engaged in more accurate political commentary than the analysts covering him–one example being when he called out Ted Cruz for megaphoning that Ben Carson was liable to drop out of the race, just before the Iowa caucuses. The result was that Cruz came out on top in Iowa, beating Trump by a few points, with Carson well down toward the bottom. (Incidentally, the loss may have helped Trump in the long run. If he had ‘won’ Iowa and gone on to win the next couple of races, the rest of the field and the party establishment would have homed in on him that much sooner.)

More importantly–to do Donald Trump justice, it is Trump who has repeatedly criticized George W. Bush’s wanton and unconstitutional invasion of Iraq. Only Trump has had the temerity to point out that for George W. Bush to take credit for our ‘safety’ when 9/11 occurred on his watch is a dubious claim. (Imagine what would have happened to the principal of Columbine High School, had he gone around boasting, à la Bush/Pataki/Giuliani, about his actions in the immediate wake of the tragic events there). One predictable outcome is that all the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) signatories are now up in arms against Trump. PNAC was co-founded by Dick Cheney and Jeb Bush, and all the apologists for the Iraq War, all the movers and shakers who think the problem is that we just didn’t spill enough blood, are now joined with the remains of the GOP establishment to take an imaginary moral high ground against Trump.

PNAC

WOULD THAT HILLARY CLINTON AND THE SO-CALLED MAINSTREAM DEMOCRATS HAD MADE THE SAME CLEAR STATEMENTS, in recent years. Hillary Clinton never does, for obvious reasons; she voted for the Bush war. But too many Dems who see themselves as either connected or cerebral have spent the last seven years on the sidelines. Worse yet, too many of them dug in with passive-aggressive tactics against President Obama– undoubtedly partly out of the pettiest and most parochial envy/jealousy/competitiveness, partly out of spite because they underestimated him, and partly out of residual bigotry that afflicts some leftish writers as well as some rightwingers. So you have GOPers blaming President Obama, rather than GWBush, for every disaster in the Middle East. And the Blue Dog ‘centrist’ types and the sideline sitters seldom or never step up to the plate to defend one of the best presidents we have had. (Hillary Clinton now claims to be his defender, having adopted the line from people with my view that Obama should get more credit. Meanwhile, her emails show her as SecState chiefly intent on gauging Obama’s and Biden’s popularity. Read some of them.)

Priorities

I might add that the same left-ish media sources are not exactly eager to pay their own writers and lower-level staff; look at Arianna Huffington, Daily Kos’ Markos Moulitsas, and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow for examples. Too many producers take advantage of the passion of populist writers by paying, if at all, on the Walmart model–calling them Kossacks, or bloggers, etc., rather than employees, even contract employees. The treatment of PT/contingent workers has affected our republic of letters. This again is something you do not hear discussed by Hillary Clinton-type candidates–not for decades. Not until her people pick it up via social media from someone like me, or until some event makes it safe and popular.

The Democrats underestimate Trump at their peril in 2016. And downplaying Trump’s supporters as dumb will not help. Quite the contrary.

If some of the guys/gentlemen who have profited most from their media positions could be a little more concerned about fellow human beings and a little less concerned about vague notions of status, they might pull off some actual analysis once in a while. In the meantime, their accuracy will inevitably be hobbled by their vulgarity. It is quintessentially vulgar to proceed on an assumption that some individuals are worth more than others, purely on the basis of position or status or anything else extraneous to merit. The assumption also leads to a very simple but very obtuse logical slide–the view that if So-and-so is not important, then misrepresenting him is also not important.

Financial-political corruption is not just a “single issue”

Posted on March 8, 2016 by Margie Burns

Lead Paint and the Tangled Web of Corporate Finance

Back in August the Washington Post ran an excellent, heartbreaking article on rip-offs of victims of lead paint poisoning. The article linked here should be read in full, but the short story is that finance companies induce poor people with annuities to cash their annuities in for a lump-sum pittance. In Baltimore, which like other older cities has been plagued by paint containing lead, some sufferers had received compensation for damage to their health from lead paint. But some recipients later sold their valuable annuities for pennies on the dollar. This nasty turn of events followed–of course–the previous heart-rending saga, beginning with the harm to human and animal victims and progressing to most landlords and property owners coming out financially unscathed, or close to it–while the victims fell disproportionately on the public welfare rolls. (Some lead-paint sufferers were then cleansed off the welfare rolls in President Bill Clinton’s ‘welfare reform’.)

The annuities were intended to protect the victims, somewhat, for the rest of their lives, giving them a steady monthly income, since a number of the people harmed were left so affected or ill as to be unemployable. But many of the annuities have been bought up, sold in exchange for ‘ready cash’ by the recipients or by unsophisticated relatives. This kind of scheming is not new. It figures as a plot point in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, published in 1811:

Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor sufficient for her comfortable maintenance, and I learnt from my brother that the power of receiving it had been made over some months before to another person. He imagined, and calmly could he imagine it, that her extravagance and consequent distress had obliged her to dispose of it for some immediate relief.

Two hundred years later, this particular suppurating pimple of financial chicanery has cropped out on the face of Wall Street, with some of the same blaming the victim, too.

Less poetically, we can narrow down the focus from Wall Street.

One company involved is Access Funding, located according to its Zoom Company Information in the LexisNexis database at 6900 Wisconsin Avenue, Bethesda, Maryland, Suite 700.

Company records suggest that the company has recently dwindled. Access Funding recently listed $5M – $10M in revenues and 20 to 50 employees–including a “Director of Lottery Services.” However, its recently updated entry in the Lexis database lists “two employees” and revenue in six figures. Public investigations are under way, though slowly. After I recover fully from pneumonia and bronchitis, I hope to do some research in, among other things, the company’s interest in “Lottery Services.” Presumably the link is lottery winners who choose to take their winnings in annuity payments.

For the moment, I am interested in the murk of property ownership. The umbrella concept is responsibility. Property owners can sometimes be held to account for what happens on their property. The idea is that even a wealthy and politically connected landlord is still a landlord, and what happens on the property may be the responsibility of the owner, unless investigation reveals that full responsibility lies elsewhere. According to general principle, however, at least the question of responsibility is to be investigated. This general principle is supposed to apply, so far as I know, regardless of whether the owner is an individual or a corporation. If any harm done turns out to be exclusively the fault of a tenant, so be it, but a light has to be shone. Needless to say, this is exactly the kind of principle under attack by the Republican Party, under the guise of releasing “small business” from the burden of “regulation.” Instead of transparency and investigation, the public gets closed records and murky corporate layers that conceal ownership and responsibility. Instead of accountability, the public gets privatization of the rewards (dignified as “investment”) and socialization of the damages. Ethically or rationally under-qualified insiders do the harm; the public pays for the harm. (As goes the GOP, so go the Clintons. The secretive Clintons have triangulated exactly the same undermining of transparency and accountability throughout their careers, or at least since Bill Clinton lost an early election in Arkansas. This “Republican lite” pattern tends to be under-reported in political commentary, but it is a consistent theme in Hillary Clinton’s life since she was in college–following a track created by paralleling bad actions, but to a lesser degree or in a more secretive way, under the guise of mediating between opposing sides. More on that later.)

Corporate ownership is not an easy trail to follow.

The database of the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation indicates that Access Funding, based in affluent Chevy Chase, Maryland, had at least a couple of previous avatars, now canceled or forfeit. State records indicate the owner as “6900 Wisconsin LLC”–a limited liability company, not required to disclose details of individual personnel or ownership. The owner’s address is given as “c/o Washington Property Company, 4719 Hamden Lane FL 3, Bethesda MD 20814-2909.” Ironically, the secured party for both 4719 Hampden Lane and 6900 Wisconsin Avenue properties is the American Equity Investment Life Insurance Company. Thinking outside the box, it could be helpful if life insurance companies took an interest in health issues connected with the properties they underwrite. But then, American Equity may not have known of any connection between its property interest and the lead paint sufferers. This is one of the unimaginative principles guiding our eponymous ‘Wall Street’: sometimes it pays not to know. Again–this is exactly the guiding principle consistently upheld by a) the GOP, and b) the Clintons. (What is the ‘centrist’ number of lead poisoning cases?)

6900 Wisconsin Avenue

As mentioned, the “Washington Property Co” is pretty faceless, judging from public record. Checking political donations at opensecrets.org, from the Center for Responsive Politics, we can find that some Washington Property Co. exec donated more than $7,000 to candidate Mitt Romney. Peering closely at the state database, we can see an unhelpful typo in the street address of Washington Property Co., listed as “Hamden Lane” rather than “Hampden Lane.” (Typos and other mistakes that impede research are typical for these databases.) For the rest, Washington Property Co. has been active in Maryland since 2004, is as said located at 4719 HAMPDEN Lane, and the owner of 4719 Hampden Lane is “Hampden Lane Project LLC.”

Ah, now we’re getting somewhere.

Except that we’re not. The owner of the soul-stirringly named “Hampden Lane Project LLC”? — “c/o Washington Property Company 4719 Hampden Lane Fl 3 Bethesda MD 20814-2909.”

Let’s follow a different version of the company name and see whether that one pans out–the corporate name, rather than the Limited Liability Company name. Washington Property Company Inc., as opposed to Washington Property Co LLC, originated in August, 2004, in Delaware.

This one actually gets us somewhere. Owner name: “c/o Morgan Stanley, Suite 800, 3424 Peachtree Rd, Atlanta GA 30326.” Again, there is a typo in the public record: the name “Morgan Stanley” is misspelled. Again, typical of corporate records in state databases, in Maryland and in other states, adding to obstacles including LLC, LC and corporate names; old names; lack of disclosure of key personnel; and use of registered agents.

The 3424 Peachtree Rd building currently has spaces for lease btw.

3424 Peachtree

Consulting the donor database from the Center for Responsive Politics, one finds that Morgan Stanley in Georgia donates almost entirely to a) Republicans and b) Hillary Clinton. A quick search of the current election cycle shows Morgan Stanley (Georgia) and its key people donating mainly to Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio–and Clinton. The Peachtree company/office has donated $43,000-plus to the Republican National Committee since 2012, mainly in 2012. It donated $20,000-plus to Right to Rise USA, the Jeb Bush-support PAC, in 2015. As in the 2008 election, Hillary Clinton is the stopgap candidate, the fallback position, for the GOP and for Wall Street.

So much for silk-stocking Republicans as somehow separate from the worst elements of either Wall Street or their party. So much for the Clintons as “Fighting for Us”–the slogan the Clinton campaign produced after jettisoning its earlier “Fighting for You.”

One thing the Bernard Sanders campaign has exactly right is that political-economic corruption is game-rigging. This is not just “one issue.” It touches virtually everything. There is no ‘centrist’ amount of lead in house paint.

One more quick point. First, a number of financial companies are in the business of buying annuities, some more respectably than others. Buying up annuities is big business. Second, all these companies contribute politically–if they donate at all–to the usual suspects: top preference goes to the GOP, next tier is Clinton.

Thus–in a quick look–people at Woodbridge Investments, for example, have donated some $135,000 in recent cycles, to Republican candidates including Carly Fiorina. Corona Capital has donated at least $6,400 to GOPers, including Rep. Todd Young of Indiana and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina. Client First Settlement Funding conveyed a more modest sum of $500.00 to Florida State Sen. Lizbeth Benacquisto, among other donations to GOP candidates and the Republican National Committee. Someone at Settlement Capital Corporation gave $500.00 to John Boehner.

Other company names include Liberty Settlement Funding, J. G. Wentworth, CIYA, Annuity Transfers, RSL Funding, and Sell My Structured Settlement. More research awaits.

One of the biggest of these interested companies is Peachtree Financial Solutions. From company statements in the Lexis Nexis database:

Peachtree Financial Solutions is an affiliate of Peachtree Settlement Funding (Peachtree). Peachtree is a specialty finance and transactional tax-planning firm employing over 150 professionals in three offices located in Georgia, Florida and New Jersey. Peachtree has in excess of $500 million in committed financing lines for its specialty finance businesses and has originated over $2 billion in assets. Peachtree is the primary servicer on more than 5,000 transactions and is backed up by The Bank of New York. Peachtree’s servicing activities are routinely reviewed and subjected to agreed upon procedure audits by our financial partners. Peachtree is a full financial audit client of PricewaterhouseCoopers and its principal outside tax counsel for the WealthBuilder program is Foley & Lardner.
REVENUE: USD 17,500,000 www.wealthbuilder.com

Predictably, Peachtree Settlement Funding has been a big donor to both parties, Republicans and Democrats, in past cycles. Sen. Chuck Schumer has particularly benefited from Peachtree Settlement Funding–like any other office holder connected with Wall Street. Interestingly, in the current election cycle Peachtree Settlement Funding appears only in relatively modest donations such as $1,000.00 to Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida. Either Peachtree Settlement Funding has stayed on the sidelines because of the Trump phenomenon, or it is cooling its jets in the wake of reporting on chiseling suffering people out of their annuities, or both.

Meanwhile, there are other problems with annuities, including problems with the annuities themselves. One of the first things that happened to my late mother after the death of my father was that someone came to her front door and sold her a substandard annuity she did not need. (My mother died in 2012, from Alzheimer’s. Fortunately, she did have a good and honest banker, on the ball, who got in touch with the vendor and reversed the transaction.)

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has reported on yet another scam–that of financial kickbacks in selling annuities in the first place. The information is reported here.

This is the kind of report not produced by Sen. Hillary Clinton, “a workhorse not a show horse,” as she put it, during her time in the U.S. Senate.

Sanders’ claim to turnout is valid

Posted on March 2, 2016 by Margie Burns

Several commentators have disparaged Sen. Bernard Sanders’ argument that turnout will be vital to Democrats in November and that he can help the turnout. He is right on both counts.

Commentators at MSNBC, CNN and now some of the networks have gotten on a train recently, though–pointing to the undoubted fact that Democratic turnout in primaries this year is lower than in 2008. (Barack Obama ran that year. No one has turned out newly energized voters like President Obama.) They also point out that the Democratic turnout is lower than turnout in Republican primaries, where Donald Trump has gotten the GOP moving. So–they go on to gloat–where is the turnout that Sanders promises to deliver? (Some particularly unappealing and smarmy gloating on this item has come from Wolf Blitzer, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Matthews. No surprise there. Matthews’ wife, Kathleen Matthews, is losing her race for Maryland’s 8th District congressional seat, in spite of locking hips with the Clinton team and its donor base behind the scenes; you can’t expect him to be a good sport–a man who uses the phrase “Washington insiders” with a straight face is hardly going to be an objective observer of the nation’s fortunes. Blitzer and a tiny handful of others at CNN have been drawing envious blood from Obama since moments after the president’s election November 4, 2008. They apparently resent both his and Vice President Biden’s independence of the DC media establishment. Maddow seems long since to have bought in to the notion that careerism=feminism, or something to that effect. In between fawning on Brian Williams, she seems to be pretty much engaged in boosting the most mediocre women she can find in public life.)

But there is a factor at work this year that did not weigh on turnout in previous elections. The factor is “superdelegates.” Regardless of how hard Sanders’ ardent supporters work–and most of his supporters are ardent–Hillary Rodham Clinton and her team quietly sewed up somewhere around 450 party insiders, to paste her into the nomination should she have difficulty with voters.

Senator Sanders

Hint to analysts: if you want to be an analyst, it might help to analyze. Is there any realistic possibility that the mass of offstage superdelegates would not discourage turnout, among any voters who knew about them? Or among voters who just saw the delegate tallies for the candidates, without clarification?

So much for hope and change. The insider campaign against both–again, by ‘Washington insiders’–has been relentless–while it has also been picayune, bigoted, petty, envious and competitive. Money does not mean sense.

Nor, in the media establishment, does it mean rigorous adherence to journalistic standards. (You read it here first.) Any political analyst is intellectually required to clarify those superdelegates, in the public interest. That is not happening.

The accrual of more than 400 superdelegates by the wealth- and foundation-supported Clintons should also have been rigorously and accurately reported as it occurred. That did not happen either.

This process will have to change, and will change. In the narrowest partisan terms, it is disastrous for the Democratic Party. Democrats are living in a dream world if they think that a Hillary Clinton campaign can just skate by a nominee like Donald Trump. Trump has already appealed to independents–and to Democrats. It is unrealistic just to assume that a gravely flawed candidate like Clinton can defeat him. This is a pipe dream, and that’s even before the rest of the information on the private-server emails comes out. The insecurities about Hillary Rodham Clinton as a candidate are already manifest, in the behind-the-scenes efforts to prevent anyone else from even running.

Vice President Biden

This strategy is also being feverishly boosted by the Maddows and Matthews of the media world. Maddow spent a lengthy segment one evening on some whack-job’s push to get a death penalty(?) for gays. The clear implication was that Hillary Clinton is our only firewall against measures such as, as Maddow put it, “executing homosexuals.” Do Maddow and her ilk really think that executing homosexuals would be opposed only by a Clinton? They don’t think a candidate like, for example, Vice President Joseph Biden would step up to the plate? They don’t think Biden would oppose executing homosexuals? Do they really think Jim Webb would not have opposed these ills, if he had been allowed in the field? Lincoln Chafee? Wouldn’t even Gov. Martin O’Malley have opposed executing homosexuals, at least if the polls were going the right way?

Bernie Sanders could crush Trump. But he has to become the nominee to do so.

Meanwhile, when these over-promoted, overpaid, and under-qualified folks joined up behind scenes to paste Clinton into a nomination she has not earned and does not deserve, they took away part of my vote. They will not get the rest of it. I will not be blackmailed into voting for the ‘electable’ candidate. For one thing, she’s not. For another, the blackmail is being pushed by the very people who put us in this situation in the first place. This is not a process, a candidate, or a strategy that can withstand accurate scrutiny.

The Elephant and the Denatured Donkey in the Room

Posted on February 8, 2016 by Margie Burns

As the New Hampshire presidential primary approaches (February 9), the national political press is consumed with speculation over Donald Trump’s lead in the GOP. Secondarily, it is speculating over how well Sen. Bernie Sanders’ lead on the Democratic side will hold up. The corollary re the GOP is that establishment candidates must be ‘winnowed’, so that Republicans can ‘coalesce’ around an alternative to Trump or Ted Cruz. The corollary re the Democrats is that loaded-with-minuses Hillary Clinton is in for the long haul, on her way to her still-inevitable nomination. Commentators do not always put it that way, but that’s the gist.

Not too ironically, one of the more interesting aspects of the 2016 race is what the national political press is not discussing. This has happened before. An avalanche of commentary in 2014 failed to disclose that the GOP ‘wave’ had a key cause: in state after state, the GOP saw to it that, while tea party candidates proliferated, party-establishment candidates had a clear path to nomination. Thus the arithmetic of the field virtually always prevailed, and in favor of the party’s preferred candidate. The relatively plausible candidate then went on, in most races, to win–especially against Blue-Dog, Clinton-like, triangulating-type Dems. More on that later.

The insurgent types seem to have learned a lesson from 2014, by the way. Trump may be a human cue ball, but most of the ‘winnowing’ this time has occurred in the non-establishment lane, as it’s now being called. Dropouts so far Bobby Jindal, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum would all be competing for the insurgent vote, if they were still in; Rick Perry and Scott Walker somewhat; only George Pataki and Lindsey Graham perhaps not. Thus with nine presidential candidates remaining, the GOP now has six candidates competing for establishment support–Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Jim Gilmore, John Kasich, and Marco Rubio. Only two are competing for the tea party-evangelical vote–Ben Carson and Ted Cruz. Trump is running sui generis, salesman that he is.

I do not pretend to have a forecast for the New Hampshire primary. In the interest of full disclosure–to make my own position clear–if I lived in NH I would be voting for Senator Sanders. My own guess is that if Trump were to drop out of the GOP race or to do so poorly as to become irrelevant, his supporters would scatter or drop out, too. Pretty dreary prospect.

Sanders 2016

Back to what’s not being reported. First, the Republicans.

Whatever the outcome in New Hampshire, for anyone who can do arithmetic, the GOP candidate with the best chance long-term is still Jeb Bush–IF he chooses to stay in the race. Christie is ghastly. Fiorina is being sidelined pretty emphatically, in spite of her efforts to out-ugly the uglies. She would probably be sidelined more explicitly, except that the party is trying (sort of) to keep some women voters. Gilmore is being thoroughly ignored. Kasich is under none-too-subtle pressure to make like Scott Walker and bow out; that happens to GOP candidates who occasionally pay lip service to working people. The focus of commentary at the moment is on the GOP candidate most like Bush–Rubio. A few weeks of voting should answer some questions. Bush has the backing to survive not being voted for; Rubio may not. The big question is whether Bush and his backers stay in.

Jeb Bush

Meanwhile, in the tea party-ish lane, Ben Carson is facing an onslaught from Cruz, whom nobody can out-ugly. If insurgent voters were to turn on Cruz in revulsion, that whole wing of the GOP would change in a heartbeat. With Cruz hypothetically not a factor, his supporters would probably split among Carson, Trump, the multiple-candidate lane, and dropping out or voting Democratic. It will be interesting to see how they vote in New Hampshire.

So, back to the non-reported: what no esteemed commentator says about Jeb Bush is that the invasion of Iraq cost the United States dearly. No pundits bring up the statistical facts–the Iraqi civilians killed in the invasion and afterward; the assassinations of Iraqi college professors under the Coalition Provisional Authority; the deaths and injuries in American troops. No commentators point that Team Bush has never apologized for the harm done to fellow human beings, or even for the harm done to America around the globe. No mention of Iraqi children, or babies, killed; no reminder of the horrors of the Bush years–Fallujah, collateral damage, sexual assaults in the military and out of it.

Few commentators on the GOP candidates remind the public that George W. Bush used the attacks of September 11, 2001, as a pretext for invading Iraq. Not one major media figure has pointed out what I pointed out in 2002-2003, the luminously simple statement of fact that every American can understand: “The Iraqis didn’t do it.” There were no Iraqis among the hijackers. Nor do commentators tend to bring up ‘weapons of mass destruction’. (Neither do the Clintons; see below.)

Instead, we get commentary-lite, on the Jeb Bush ‘baggage’ in narrowly political terms. Two recent examples come from the pro-GOP Roll Call. One piece refers to “the family legacy” as a blessing and a curse, and to concerns about the effect on the candidate’s electability. The fact that the family has not expressed responsibility, let alone contrition, for our situation in the Middle East is omitted. Indeed, Jeb Bush says that people concerned about the actions of his father and brother need to “get therapy”–to the applause of his audience.

A succinct summary of the ethics-lite perspective is provided in the other piece:

“Bush has plenty of credentials, but they are less valuable this year. The Bush brand, once strong, was severely damaged by his brother, and Jeb himself doesn’t fit the times, when long political bloodlines and deep establishment connections are liabilities, not assets. He is, to put it bluntly, old news at a time when Republicans are looking for something new and different. For many Republicans, his name told them everything they needed to know about him and his candidacy.”

This is the way to acknowledge the biggest foreign-policy mistake in fifty years? Even Donald Trump does a better analysis of the Iraq War. Incidentally, Trump also provided a pretty good thumbnail of the effect (on the GOP) in political terms: “Lincoln couldn’t have gotten elected.” (Of course, Trump like all the GOPers blames President Obama. In my view, this is a cynical ploy to take advantage of voters too illiterate to understand that the invasion of Iraq happened before Obama’s watch, and over his opposition to the war.)

Needless to say, the same utter lack of contrition and the same failure to take responsibility extend to the Wall Street debacle in subprime lending. And the national political media tend to fall in line here, too. Too seldom is Jeb Bush, or any Republican candidate, held to account for his/her sympathy or collusion with the giant perpetrators. Meanwhile, the GOP gets to rail unchecked against the president even while unemployment falls, wages rise, prices stay level, the real estate market recovers, housing ownership revives, and coverage for health care expands. You’d think some of these gains were the capture of Osama bin Laden or the release of captured Americans all over again, they are so thoroughly ignored by big-time Republicans. Give credit to President Obama, the man who risks his life daily? Not on your bippy.

Now to the Democratic side.

As with GOP candidates, what is missing from commentary on the Democrats is exactly the information voters need. Hillary Clinton would be a disastrous nominee for Dems, but she has lined up segments of the media establishment along with her ‘Super Delegates’ and other connections.

Clinton is running basically on four planks, one semi-hidden–her electability; her inevitability (behind the scenes); her being a Democrat; and her “experience,” with the claim that she gets things done. Each claim is spurious. Setting aside longer examination for now, do they stand up to quick scrutiny? In order —

If Clinton is electable, why is she struggling so much for the nomination that she and her donors did their best to sew up beforehand? If Bill Clinton is ‘one of the best politicians of his generation’, then why did the Clintons leave the Democratic Party in shambles in Arkansas? Why was Arkansas a blue state when the Clintons began there, and a red state after their thirty-plus years? Why didn’t Hillary Clinton run for the senate from Arkansas? Speaking of New York, has there been a wave of Blue wins since the Clintons relocated there? Why did Marjorie Margolies (Mezvinsky), mother of the Clintons’ son-in-law, lose resoundingly in her New York district? The simple fact is that the Clintons are not beloved, and their coattails are nonexistent. Much of MSNBC in the tank for the Clintons. How are MSNBC’s ratings nowadays? Virginia results in 2015 were disappointing for Dems. Governor McAuliffe, widely billed as a chief Clinton ally, is not deeply beloved. Neither are the Clintons. After Clinton campaigned in Virginia in 2013, McAuliffe barely squeaked out a victory–and that was over Ken ‘Kook’ Cucinelli.

If Clinton was inevitable, why did her supporters do so much behind the scenes to keep other candidates from running? Do these machinations express confidence in their candidate?

Democrats? The Clintons are triangulators. They may be liberal on social issues, but as their track record shows, they have a pattern of shafting labor–even after receiving generous donations and support from labor, and from working people. Before she started sounding like Elizabeth Warren a few months ago, when was Clinton ever forceful on economic justice? In the senate, she voted for the resolution enabling GWBush to invade Iraq. Before that, as first lady she partnered in Bill Clinton’s anti-populist path. Before that, as wife of the candidate she stood by while Bill Clinton flew back to Arkansas to endorse personally the state’s execution of a mentally disabled African-American man.

What has Clinton ‘gotten done’? Did she work to reduce the backlog of rape kits? She now talks the game on student debt, etc., but did she ever work with her donors who are lenders to help with it before? Did she do anything beforehand to impede the coming subprime-derivatives meltdown? Did she support policies to rein in Wall Street (or the good ol’ boys in the C of C), either in Arkansas or later? Did she support gun control, before this past fall? Does her track record include support for clemency, for anyone besides Marc Rich?

These are character questions as well as economic-policy questions. Hillary Clinton is not Elizabeth Warren, and should not pretend to be. She is not someone who ‘fights for’ people outside her immediate circle. That’s not who she is. Clinton herself touts misogynistic and sexist attacks against her–but she has never stepped outside her comfort zone to defend other women, in her life. She is no Ann Richards–who endured savage and misogynistic attacks but without selling out. Clinton’s State Department emails show no consideration for President Obama, let alone for Vice President Biden. Clinton and her people, inside and outside her office, kept a wary eye out for any signs that anyone else (good) might be popular. She did the same in Arkansas, for decades. So did her husband.

One of the main problems analyzing the Clinton candidacy is that too much is deemed off-limits as ‘personal’. There is an unstated definition of ‘personal’ as ‘private’, even when the person is running for the White House. For obvious reasons, the Clintons themselves try to bat away every question of character, and many questions of policy, as mere gossip. But this strategy misconstrues the concept of the personal. Clinton has been married for decades to a man whose degrading treatment of her and of many other women is amply documented. This is not ‘right-wing conspiracy’. It is fact. It is also spousal bullying. (No, it’s not romance. It’s not intrigue. It’s not titillation. It was probably barely even sex. It’s spousal bullying–aimed at one’s own partner, while also demeaning the numerous other women involved.)

She shows the symptoms, by the way–that weird lack of judgment, that weirdly dehumanized Stay- Puft complacency, the perpetual calculatedness, the inability to empathize with any woman not ‘successful’ or established, etc.

And how did Clinton herself ‘stand up’ to the spousal bullying? –By working for the spouse’s political career, by helping the spouse advance up the ladder, by helping him into the White House. For my money, there is no way Bill Clinton could have won in 1992 if his wife had not stoutly denied every (true) accusation against him. As a result, Hillary Clinton became rich and famous; her husband became rich and famous; Arkansas was left behind. Reminding the public of this track record is not the same as gossiping about a neighbor. To remember the over-all track record of dishonesty, humiliation, and other forms of bullying is not the same as criticizing some poor woman for failing to take exactly the right course of action against an abuser. Clinton is now running for the White House, and now has all the resources in the world–entirely because of her long-term partnership with Bill Clinton. And she’s talking about the man with a credible accusation of sexual assault against him as “First Dude.”

There is not enough space here to discuss the problems with the ‘having it all’ version of feminism. Careerism is not feminism.

But the problems with the GOP and the Democratic races have one hideous parallel–that signature lack of shame. No matter what mistakes they make, no matter what harm they have caused–no shame, no remorse, no contrition. No amends. And the political media establishment is playing along on both sides.

Ironic. Clinton staff criticizes U.S. ambassador for using commercial email

Posted on January 1, 2016 by Margie Burns

The date was August 10, 2010. The subject of the email was “OIG inspection of Embassy Nairobi and Somalia Unit.” Sender: Cheryl Mills, Secretary of State Clinton’s Chief of Staff. Recipient: Hillary Clinton. Here is the irony. Among criticisms Mills reports against the U.S. ambassador in Nairobi are the following:

“He made clear his disagreement with Washington policy decisions and directives concerning the safe-havening in Nairobi of families of Department employees who volunteered to serve in extreme hardship posts; the creation of a freestanding Somalia Unit; and the nonuse of commercial email for official government business, including Sensitive But Unclassified information.” [emphasis added]

“The Ambassador does not read classified front channel messages and has not established a system to have his staff screen incoming cables relevant to Kenya and U.S. interests in the region.”

Secretary of State Clinton

Note that this OIG (inspector general) report about a U.S. embassy was conveyed and discussed in personal emails, before being posted on the OIG web site. Mills sent it via the commercial email system set up by Hillary Clinton in the private home shared with her spouse. The full document dump for emails released most recently is linked here. (A quick search using the word redacted turns up this email alone, in duplicate.)

News outlets have noted that this end-of-year release is incomplete and is less searchable than the previous releases. A series of solid articles by Rosalind Helderman and others in WaPo in 2015 chronicled some previous inconsistencies in Clinton’s explanations about the emails, their partial release, the emails withheld by Clinton, and the private server. See here and here and here, among others. A number of the emails refer to Benghazi or to Libya, but none date from 2012 or after the Benghazi attacks. Apparently the public will have to wait until farther into 2016 to see what if any mention Benghazi drew in Secretary of State Clinton’s email correspondence. Meanwhile, some personnel were frowned upon Dolores Umbridge-style. (The emails reveal close if not snitty attention to Joe Biden, a topic for separate discussion.)

As I wrote previously, even a quick search of the emails released shows that while using her home email set-up, Clinton was aware that security was an issue. In numerous emails, she referenced the fact that her email server was different from secure set-ups, and she nonetheless conveyed details of schedule and travel, etc., in the emails. These were messages sent by her, over two or more years, as well as messages sent to her.

Clinton staffer set up private email server

Thus it is as said ironic that a top Clinton crony targeted an ambassador for using commercial email. The ambassador in question was Michael E. Ranneberger, a career foreign service officer rather than a political appointee. Ranneberger had served under both the Bush and the Obama administrations. There are mixed views about U.S.-Kenya relations, which have in any case had a mixed history. But there seems no doubt that the ambassador was active and engaged.

Perhaps it is pointless to speculate about motive. However, there are two realistic conclusions. One is that the use of commercial email could not have been that damning. Clinton was doing the same herself. The other is that the Clintons have no track record of rewarding benevolence. They tend to distrust it. Perhaps there was a deeper rub in the ambassador’s conduct:

“The Ambassador’s initiative to redirect programming for nearly S-550 million in U.S. health assistance, while well -intentioned, has proven disruptive and created confusion about its relationship to existing programs. He announced to the Kenyans the establishment of a new unfunded program, called Let’s Live, with the unrealistic aim of reducing by 50 percent in 1 year Kenya’s premature mortality rates for infants, mothers, and noncommunicable diseases.”

Sounds as though Ambassador Ranneberger was a little too highly motivated, and perhaps too willing to be inspired by the new President Obama. Too bad. He sounds like a good man, in hindsight.

Speaking of relationships, if the OIG objected to the use of commercial email, it would be interesting to know what kind of relationship the OIG had with Secretary of State Clinton.

Text in full below:

UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05792759 Date: 12/31/2015 RELEASE IN FULL From: Sent: To: Subject: Attachments: Mills, Cheryl D <MillsCD@state.gov>Friday, August 10, 2012 8:17 AM Fw: OIG inspection of Embassy Nairobi and Somalia Unit Embassy Nairobi redacted ISP-I-12-38A.pdf Fyi From: Kennedy, Patrick F Sent: Friday, August 10, 2012 08:01 AM To: Mills, Cheryl D Cc: Carson, Johnnie; Thomas-Greenfield, Linda(MS); Nuland, Victoria J; Hammer, Michael A Subject: FW: OIG inspection of Embassy Nairobi and Somalia Unit The “Inspection of Embassy Nairobi, Kenya (Report Number ISP-I-12-38A, August 2012)” will be put up on the OIG web site some time Friday morning, WDC time Included in the Embassy Nairobi report are the following key findings [Edited by PK to list only those relevant to Amb.]:

The Ambassador has lost the respect and confidence of the staff to lead the mission. Of more than 80 chiefs of mission inspected in recent cycles, the Ambassador ranked last for interpersonal relations, next to last on both managerial skill and attention to morale, and third from last in his overall scores from surveys of mission members. The inspectors found no reason to question these assessments; the Ambassador’s leadership to date has been divisive andineffeah7e.
The Ambassador has damaged the cohesion of Embassy Nairobi’s country team by underscoring differences _ between offices working directly with Kenya and those with regional responsibilities. Country team members, particularly those from other agencies, relied on the recently departed deputy chief of mission to maintain a sense of common purpose at Embassy Nairobi. Unless corrected there is a risk that the country team will become dysfunctional. The Ambassador needs to broaden his understanding of why various agencies are part of his mission, cease avoiding contact with them, and work with the assistance of a senior Department of State (Department) official and the next deputy chief of mission to restore country team harmony.
The Ambassador’s efforts to develop and focus the mission’s work around what he calls “mission essential tasks” have consumed considerable staff time and produced documents of unclear status and almost no value to the Department in approving priorities and assigning resources. His efforts have also created confusion about the relevance of the embassy’s annual Mission Resource Request (MRR). The Office of Inspector General (01G) team agreed with embassy staff that the mission essential task process added no real value to the management of the embassy.
The Ambassador’s greatest weakness is his reluctance to accept clear-cut U.S. Government decisions. He made clear his disagreement with Washington policy decisions and directives concerning the safe-havening in Nairobi of families of Department employees who volunteered to serve in extreme hardship posts; the creation of a freestanding Somalia Unit; and the nonuse of commercial email for official government business, including Sensitive But Unclassified information. Notwithstanding his talk about the importance of mission staff doing the right thing, the Ambassador by deed or word has encouraged it to do the opposite. The Ambassador does not read classified front channel messages and has not established a system to. have his staff screen incoming cables relevant to Kenya and U.S. interests in the region.

UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05792759 Date: 12/31/2015 UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05792759 Date: 12/31/2015

The Ambassador’s initiative to redirect programming for nearly S-550 million in U.S. health assistance, while well -intentioned, has proven disruptive and created confusion about its relationship to existing programs. He announced to the Kenyans the establishment of a new unfunded program, called Let’s Live, with the unrealistic aim of reducing by 50 percent in 1 year Kenya’s premature mortality rates for infants, mothers, and noncommunicable diseases.

More GOP debates, too few glimpses of decency

Posted on November 11, 2015 by Margie Burns

Public discourse in the 21st-century USA sometimes forgets clear fundamentals, and the problem is most acute in the Republican Party sector.

Yesterday I wrote that I would post a follow-up after watching last night’s GOP lineup on Fox Business News, to see whether any of the candidates would refer to mass deportation. Discussion of the debate is below, at bottom (scroll down).

Meanwhile, forgetfulness has clearly set in among people who oppose any kind of “regulation.” These people are inwardly divided. Some of them want to deport children whose parents were not born in this country, for example, forgetting that there would have to be careful fact-checking before anyone’s parents could be proven not born in this country.

Deportation: more regulation, more government, more cost, more taxes

Note to other writers and journalists: not to join in media-bashing, but why doesn’t some moderator or television reporter or interviewer ask the obvious question, when one of these guys comes out whaling on deporting children of “illegals”? Question:

How would you know that their parents are ‘illegal’?

Follow-up questions:

Who would determine that the parents of a five-year-old are undocumented?

Who, if anyone, would check?

Who would verify?

As we live now, under the Fourteenth Amendment, a person born in the United States is an American citizen. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, who my parents are, or were, is my business. Who your parents are, or were, is your business. (This is America.) Expunging the Fourteenth Amendment would make it anyone’s business, or someone’s business. Exactly whose has not been designated. Donald Trump never mentions who would handle a mass shipping-out, but the facts would have to be checked by duly constituted authorities. The authorities in turn would have to be monitored–Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? There would have to be oversight. There would have to be a route for appeal, in cases tainted by (inevitable) error or corruption. There would have to be meticulous records, documentation (this being the concept, after all), preferably supported by video recording. All of this (nightmarish) process would involve regulations.

Not that deportation is the only work site requiring regulation. (I cannot believe I’m having to write these words.) Fuel manufacturing, handling, and storage require oversight, monitoring, and concern for public health and public safety; and not every human being can or will provide these prompted by conscience alone. In other words, they have to be regulated. So do the manufacturing and handling of all other explosives. The same goes for airplane maintenance; airplane parts should not fall off in the air. Fruit juice fed to babies should not contain pesticides and herbicides. Meat and bread should not catch mold and worse from grocery shelves. Children’s toys, cribs, and car seats should not be accidents waiting to happen, causing the deaths of an actuarially predictable number of toddlers each year. The contents of prescription medications should be what the label says they are, in the proportions specified and prescribed. All of the foregoing are sites where regulation is necessary. So are manufacturing and storage for fertilizer and the many other household and construction products, whether or not created for demolitions, that turn out to be flammable and/or explosive.

Here and there

Fortunately, there are good-faith ways to reduce the need for regulation. Organic farming and local buying alleviate problems connected to toxins, transportation and freight. If any of the current presidential candidates are actually interested in reducing ‘excessive regulation’, they could consider helping the environment. The need for regulations could be made less urgent, and big areas to build improvement include food and water, travel and shipping, and health and medical care. There will be less difficulty regulating toxins and other hazards, when they are not disseminated into the environment in the first place.

(Side note: Look for Hillary Clinton using these or similar words in the next couple of days. Her campaign people are constantly on the lookout for lines she can appropriate. As a voter, and a viewer, I do wish she would stop trying to sound like Elizabeth Warren. My own sense is that if she were going to ‘fight for you’, she would have done it years ago.)

Back to illegal immigration–the undocumented immigration so vilified is a perfect example of lack of forethought, lack of clear thinking, and lack of rational prevention beforehand creating back-end problems. The hysterical eagerness to deport millions of people forgets that such a process would require the ‘regulation’ vilified as much as immigration itself. More importantly, the anti-immigrant hysteria also forgets why this immigration happens in the first place.

The immigration stems from the wish for survival. People risk their lives, and many of them lose their lives, to slip across our border hoping to be able to make a living, hoping for freedom from poverty and worse, hoping to move farther away from imminent danger and the threat of starvation as well as from local dictators. Some of the world’s poor people put themselves into the hands of human traffickers, sometimes getting scammed and virtually always in danger en route. They do so to survive. Heartbreakingly, survival in Latin America is jeopardized by the flood of weapons shipped south of the border, weapons sourced overwhelmingly from the United States. But American citizens have been prevented from taking rational measures to stem the flow of weapons south–largely by the NRA and its bought-and-paid-for operative, the GOP; partly by self-advancing Dems like Rahm Emanuel and the Clintons. Yet the most vehement opponents of gun control also tend to be the most vehement critics–to put it nicely–of illegal immigration.

This failure of logic in the public discourse is not entirely accident. It is intensified by deliberate assaults on logic, information and common sense mounted daily by lobbyists. The loosely defined but well funded gun lobby pressures elected officials; pressures media outlets; pressures schools, colleges and law schools. Scientists and researchers are under pressure. So are scholarly journals. The assault has been blatant, intense and profitable for the last thirty years.

So, back to last night’s debates–in which shootings and weapons were mostly not mentioned, while “regulation” and “free market” were much in the air. Anti-“regulation.” Pro-“free market.”

One quick comment on that “free market” meme. As I wrote years ago–in a small community newspaper that has since been sold out, speaking of markets–“free market” is an oxymoron. If it were free, there wouldn’t be money in it. In economics language, constraints are part of the market. One person or entity has something; another person or entity wants it. Party A conveys same to Party B, for a consideration. Something of value changes hands in each direction.

But the big question going into last night’s debate, for me, was whether any of the candidates would refer to mass deportation, and if so, who, and in what way.

The good news: a couple of prominent Republican candidates did indeed mention mass deportation, and mentioned it to oppose it–forcefully.

The bad news: I am so reduced by the level of discourse in general that I for one am pathetically grateful when any GOPer says something decent in public.

Let’s start with the good news. In the primetime debate, when Donald Trump reiterated his ‘plan’ to ship out illegal immigrants, even Trump softened the position somewhat with a throw-away “They can come back.” Neither other candidates nor moderators pursued that softly spoken “come back” line of thought, but he said it.

Better yet, Ohio Governor John Kasich blasted the idea of mass deportation. In a forceful and eloquent statement, Kasich characterized shipping out 11 million people as “silly.” High time someone said it. Following up, Jeb Bush said that “to send them back” is simply impossible. He also pointed out that the plan is not who we are, not in line with American values. Again, high time someone said it. Bush also pointed to the inartful politics–saying that the Clinton campaign was watching this and doing “high-fives.”

(From my living room: I watched the debates with my son and his girlfriend. We all noticed that the GOP mentioned Clinton exclusively. They’re salivating at the chance to run against her, and with good reason.)

Ironically, given the destructive rhetoric Trump has unleashed on the public, at this point I think it’s possible that Trump is better than most of his supporters. Trump is a salesman. He knows his market components. He’s playing to them. That’s why he said “I like this guy,” in a room with the man who accused President Obama of being Muslim rather than Christian, etc. Trump is a salesman. I have no experience in his field myself, but as I understand it, if you as a salesman are in a room full of people, making your pitch, that’s what you focus on. If you catch sight of some guy wearing a white costume with a white pointed hood, you don’t seize that moment to condemn the Klan; you sing out, “Hey, Jim, nice toga.”

But that’s the moment when you’ve gone too far. Trump has unleashed something in the Republican Party that its leaders have long known about–none better–but have long sought to deny and to conceal. I am by no means sure that a President Trump actually would deport millions of people, as declared by my correspondent yesterday. But in the interim, his campaign has exposed a nasty wish to do so, among the electorate courted by the GOP.

More later.

Hillary Clinton’s Emails

Posted on September 14, 2015 by Margie Burns

Actually, the title of this post is a misnomer. They are the public’s emails. But as with the contents of the U.S. Mint, public ownership and public access are two different things.

What we do going forward is what matters most. Facing these State Department emails, let’s start with some constructive recommendations. Here would be my recommendations for policy and best practices, if I could vote on them.

From this time forth,

Work emails for a government agency should be done using government-issued equipment. “GI” wasn’t a bad name for the guys who bore it.
If government personnel choose to send emails or other communications they deem private or personal, on government equipment, it should be with the understanding that the messages are subject to authorized scrutiny. (Many university campuses have pretty much this arrangement, with considerably less of a rationale than the State Department would have.)
When someone’s government service ends, emails and other correspondence should be reviewed by an independent entity (three or more objective people, with enough sense and character to divide up the job equitably). The independent entity would determine which communications are work-related and which, if any, are not.
The non-work-related communications would not be deleted. They would be quarantined for 50 years. The work-related correspondence would be archived according to policy.
To keep the difficulty and expense for others to a minimum, government workers should be advised to keep their personal communications while at work to a minimum. Restrict personal communications to their personal email accounts, and restrict personal emailing or telephoning to their off time (lunch, breaks, after hours).

Emailing is still a relatively new form of communication (if older than IM, texting, or tweeting). Policy to cover communication in government still needs refinement. State and local governments, businesses at all levels, academia, the judicial system and the world of medicine have the same issues.

Not that there aren’t worse problems.

That said, Secretary Clinton’s arrangement is unique. As described yesterday in the Washington Post,

The server that Clinton used as secretary of state was stored at her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., and was shared with her husband, former president Bill Clinton, and his staff. The device was managed during that time by a State Department staffer who was paid personally by the Clintons for his work on their private system.

Setting aside lurid suggestions floated by the GOP, the most rational conjecture as to why Secretary Clinton would set up a private email server is that she wanted to hang on to the material to recycle later, in more books about her career. This is the simplest theory that fits the known facts, including the Clintons’ conduct when leaving the White House in January 2001.

Continuing the saga as outlined most recently in the Post, the server with the emails was taken over by Platte River Networks in 2013; the emails were removed from a second server in 2014; and Clinton’s attorneys then separated the emails they designated as work-related from those they designated as entirely personal. The good news in the most recent Post report is that the deleted emails may be recovered. I hope so; and if there is any question about which emails should released for public reading, that’s what judges are for. My understanding of Clinton’s previous statements is that she and her attorneys intended to turn over all work-related emails.

Clear enough, as far as it goes. However, media discussions of the emails are usually confusing, because the concepts of “public” and “private” are confused. Secretary Clinton’s work as secretary of state belongs to the public. This statement does not mean that all details can be released to the general public. In the public interest, some operations of a public office need to be kept confidential. In the public interest, personnel matters are kept private; government employees like other people have a right to privacy. In the public interest, the safety and security of people who work for us, like the Secretary of State, are protected. Again in the public interest, the safety and security of dignitaries, government officials, and private citizens of other countries are protected.

That matter of safety and security–unfortunately–is one of the places where Hillary Clinton’s private email server fell down.

Some clarification is necessary here.

I have ignored Republican hype about Benghazi from start to finish, partly because I am wrapping up a book on another subject; partly because the investigation so far looks bogus.

(‘Benghazi’ hearings /One /GOP tack to /Undermine /Sense.)

The party that campaigns on “shrinking government” has little room to talk about security. Shrinking “government” means shrinking security. It means shrinking information. It means shrinking advance notice and advance warning and advance planning. It means shrinking tactics, let alone strategy. It means shrinking transparency, oversight, and accountability. It means shrinking the talent pool, in diplomacy, security, and the military as well as in everything else. In practice, it means outsourcing, off-shoring, and subcontracting–all of which are security breaches waiting to happen.

I might add that a party willing to violate the Logan Act, eager to invade other countries, and always ready to downgrade diplomacy and diplomats is not positioned to point fingers over the deaths of heroic foreign service officers and ambassadors. You cannot trust a faction that writes a separate open letter to the state of Iran. And the contestants in the Republican race for the White House have expressed little awareness of what the U.S. Foreign Service, and U.S. diplomats, face. When they bring up dangers abroad at all, it is generally to voice a scurrility about President Obama, who inherited all the disasters left by the previous administration, has done more to contend with such than any other administration in U.S. history–and has had to surmount opposition to even the most common-sense diplomacy, from the very people who created the disasters.

We could also add the party’s over-all allegiance to thuggery, violence, tough talk, and the weapons industry to the list, while we’re at it. The GOP as the party of “security”? Small wonder it scrambles to deflect attention from its own problems, to a lightning rod like either of the Clintons.

So it was a matter of surprise and no little chagrin to learn that the Secretary of State had set up a private email server to handle her State Department work. In other words, she conducted government work on equipment that she purchased and controlled privately. Whether the equipment was “private” in the security sense remains to be seen. Clinton did keep it private in the ownership sense (private property); she did not donate it to the State Department. I am not going to jump to conclusions, especially about security matters, and I have never been a fan of hysteria, especially in politics or the news media. But the emails released so far do reveal a few facts.

Setting aside both the wild accusations and conjecture from the right wing, and the inaccurate or smarmy defenses from Clinton and her allies, some valid statements can be made.

Many of the Clinton emails contained sensitive information. No matter how delusional Republicans in Congress get, the actuality remains that of 4,368 emails released in August, hundreds indicate sensitive details from the daily operations of State and/or negotiations with foreign individuals or entities, in 2009 and 2010. Leaving diplomacy itself out of the picture, if you genuinely care about the safety of the people involved in it, you might care that more than 1,500 emails mention or discuss a “call” or “meeting” or “schedule,” often signaled in the subject line, with the whens and wheres. Thus if some ill-disposed person (besides Sen. Cotton) wanted when-and-where on Secretary of State Clinton or on people she was dealing with, hundreds of emails contained the information. Searching for the predictable word “call” generates 1,409 emails. Many contain “call” in the subject line. Searching for “meeting” generates 836 results, many with “meeting” in the subject line. Some were sent by Clinton, although understandably she received far more than she sent. Often, dates and/or times of the call or meeting are included, and often in the subject heading–along with the names of the people involved. The 2009-2010 emails contain few references to Libya, and none to J. Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, or Benghazi; emails from 2012-2013 will presumably contain more.

While waiting to see those relevant emails, we basically have to hope that no antagonists hacked them or read them, or did so effectively. Clinton’s emails often detailed the when and where of her schedule, with times, dates, places, and names. About 60 emails are a “Mini schedule” for Clinton (heading in subject line). “Mini schedule” emails appear throughout 2009 and 2010. So do emails featuring the word “schedule” in general, with 377 results, sent and mainly received by Clinton, again with “schedule” often indicated in the subject line. The phrase “conference call” generates 31 results, nine from Clinton and the rest received by her; several of these also signal “call” or “schedule” in the subject line.

One oddity is that this set-up was created by someone who, according to the Post, has imposed a series of barriers for reporters trying to get through with questions for her 2016 campaign, and who has complained for years about her lack of privacy, about constant media scrutiny, etc. As Secretary of State, Clinton seems to have assumed that her position protected her privacy, including communication channels she set up outside State.

Hundreds of Clinton’s emails show consciousness of security. References to the “secure” turn up 645 times in the August batch of emails, sometimes in the subject lines. “Secure” includes a “secure line” (15 results), or “talk secure” (13 results, two sent by Clinton), or a “secure phone” (5 results) or a “secure call” (16 results, 2 from Clinton). An email of March 3, 2010, refers to Clinton’s “yellow phone.”

The acronym OPS turns up 148 times. This abbreviation seems to refer to the Watch Officer, State Department Operations Center S-ES/O, 202-xxx-xxxx, Andrew Kim Johnson for one. About 25 of these emails were sent by Clinton, although others are replies with messages sent by Clinton in the email chains. Clinton herself often referred to OPS.

This point brings up a third one.

The email chains show combinations of personal and government, government and political, and personal and political. Partly such combinations would occur in any office or organization. Whose work emails would be devoid of all reference to birthdays, births, or congratulations? But this server and this government correspondence–as we now know–were not in a workplace. It’s funny in a way that Clinton operated a small State Department communications center in her own and her spouse’s private residence. Clinton donors strike me generally as exactly the people who would tend to ridicule a political candidate, for example, whose campaign headquarters were his home.

In any case, some of the email-chain combinations look less benign. There is no denying that Clinton used the OPS secure line for private matters and/or for political matters, not just for high state matters. She refers to doing so. An easy example, not lurid, comes from February 2010.

On February 9, Clinton emailed several colleagues and friends (7:39 a.m.) that New York Times columnist David Brooks “Took a shot at me in his column today,” and asked, “Any idea what prompted it?”

The recommendation in reply was to bring in Brooks, and perhaps other rightwing columnists, “for an OTR with you.”

Clinton agreed but suggested that something more was needed: “Agreed–full speed ahead. But, I think we may also need a more aggressive strategy of pushing our message. Can you call me at home thru OPS? Thx.”

A career State Department employee also replied, but keeping the separate tracks separate, “Philippe and I had an offline conversation about this and I agree entirely” that the Secretary should talk with Brooks and others.

One could argue that mingling social and other emails in the same chains might assist security: the mixed email chains and the mixed subject lines might camouflage, or at least not flag, high state matters. Or so I thought, before I noticed all the emails headed with indicators about what the Secretary would be doing that day, with whom, and when.

More later.

Donald Trump, Staying Puft

Posted on August 19, 2015 by Margie Burns

Fun’s fun. Admittedly, it has been fun to watch Donald Trump ruining the field for sixteen or more other Republican candidates for the White House. He’s like a human-shaped cue ball. Knocked into the rack, he has sent minor and major candidates careening in all directions, colliding with each other and banging up against sides of the green baize table. All their careful game plans gone awry. Their carefully tailored appeals overwhelmed. Their thoughtfully crafted pathways to attention in a crowded field, demolished by the Trump campaign, if you call it that. More oafish and media-baiting than Chris Christie, more openly immigrant-baiting than Scott Walker, more plugged in than Jeb Bush, more ‘centrist’ or unpredictable on some individual issues than any governor, more woman-baiting than any other candidate–Trump has exploded the usual paths to celebrity for other Republicans. He’s stomping on their dog whistles. Red meat? Next to Trump, they look more like pink SweeTARTS®.

Here they are

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of people. As said, the spectacle is fun to watch. Serves them right.

Still, given that some GOP voters out there clearly hope that Trump will swing down in a golden chariot from his Tower, and scoop them up from whatever financial doldrums they’re in, it is only fair to point out that deep questions about Trump’s own finances remain open.

Is Trump distracting attention from something?

A few facts are clear from Donald Trump’s 92-page financial disclosure filing to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). One is that Trump is carrying a heavy debt load. He owes four creditors “Over $50,000,000” apiece; his loans total $215 million-plus to $400 million-plus; and at least $25 million to $125 million in loans come due in the next four years. Trump, who has declared bankruptcy four times, has taken on more than $130 million of the current debt since 2012. Trump has claimed a huge income on air, and also claims to be willing to spend $1 billion on the 2016 election, if that’s what it takes to win, but the debt load is still sizeable from any perspective.

The FEC filing also shows that few people who are not Trump himself employ Trump, or pay him for work. His occupational income seems to be largely speaker fees or fees for managing properties now partly owned by others; his pay for managing his own companies is not shown. The financial disclosure form also shows that Trump has sold or liquidated substantial assets in value stocks and in bank funds from the beginning of 2014 to now, the period covered by the filing.

It is not clear whether the assets were sold to finance Trump’s White House bid or for other reasons. The asset sales generated handsome capital gains; his own more volatile companies and properties–the corporations and LLCs with Trump as officer or member, and the famous hotels and resorts, etc., bearing the Trump name–were not sold. The FEC filing also does not clarify Trump’s net worth. Not a balance sheet or a budget, it does not clarify the proportion of income to outlay. Trump’s campaign and press office, contacted by phone and email on August 13, have not responded to questions.

Trump floated one of his preliminary statements about running for president back in 2011, with sources quoted by Politico putting out word that he was worth $7 billion. The net worth figure was disputed even at the time: “The eye-popping figure is far higher than the $2.7 billion that Forbes Magazine valued his net worth to be last month.” Estimates of Mr. Trump’s net worth have fluctuated, with Bloomberg News and the New York Times among others expressing skepticism when Trump upped his claim to $10 billion. Trump’s own estimates have also fluctuated, although Trump’s much-quoted emphasis on his wealth–“I’m really rich“–remains a constant. Since launching his campaign on June 16, Trump has reiterated the brash statements about his wealth, seemingly at every opportunity.

One statement not being recycled, however, is the unnamed 2011 sources’ claim that Trump’s financial disclosures would indicate “more than $250 million of cash, and very little debt. He is very, very liquid.”

The man at the moment

As of 2015, in actuality, Trump’s financial disclosure filing shows massive debt and undefined liquidity. “Part 8: Liabilities” (page 47) lists fifteen debts. Two are Merrill Lynch mortgages totaling less than $1 million. The remaining thirteen are gargantuan. Trump’s filing shows “Over $50,000,000” owed to Ladder Capital Finance LLC; Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas; Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC; and Capital One, although the Capital One deal has an asterisk showing it refinanced with Ladder Capital. Trump also owes another $25 million to $50 million to Deutsche Bank, due in 2024, and $5 million to $25 million to Deutsche Bank due in 2015. He also owes $5 million to $25 million apiece to seven other creditors including Bank of New York Mellon, Ladder Capital, Royal Bank America, and Amboy Bank. Two of the loans come due in 2015, one in 2016, two in 2017, and three in 2019. Setting up a blind trust for a Trump term in the White House would be a challenge.

One question put to the Trump campaign is whether the debts are in any way problematic. Does Trump expect to pay them all? If so, will he resolve them before entering the White House, should he win? If not, how would they be handled?

Meanwhile, one of Trump’s “Over $50,000,000” notes comes from an entity owned 100% by Trump himself (page A3), called Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC. Chicago Unit Acquisition generates income (page 13) listed as “None (or less than $201).” This Trump-to-Trump loan is Trump’s highest-interest big loan, at Prime + 5%. No deadline year is given; the “Term” column is filled in with the phrase “Springing loan.”

Other questions put to Trump concern this springing loan. Not an MBA myself, and not being Barry Ritholtz, I had to look up the phrase. A “springing guaranty” is a guarantee that takes effect when something bad happens, like bankruptcy. (This arrangement is also called a “bad-boy guarantee.”) According to the asset wizards at Andrews Kurth, in a springing guarantee, “the borrower is required to fund an escrow account serving as additional security for the loan.” This way, if something bad happens–“say a key tenant decides not to renew its lease”–“when funded, the borrower has more skin in the game to offset drops in value.”

One way to keep the feds off your back? Run for the White House. What better position could there be, from which to argue that an investigation is ‘politically motivated’? Ask Hillary Clinton.

On page 13, Trump lists the value of “Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC” at $1,001 to $15,000 (thousands, not millions). So he owes the LLC at least 3,333 times its value, or he owes it to himself, or to a tiny LLC owned wholly by himself, to fund an escrow account, in case things go wrong? If he owes it to himself, is this enforceable? Will the loan be paid off? Does it have to be? If listed as a “springing loan,” is the escrow requirement enforceable, when the creditor is owned by the debtor? Whatever this dizzying arrangement means, the FEC filing makes clear that Trump owes somewhere in the neighborhood of half a billion dollars. Depending on how much over $50 million the phrase “Over $50,000,000” means, he could owe much more. Trump himself has spoken on the campaign trail in favor of transparency. It would be nice to have the debts elucidated. Trump has repeatedly said that candidate Jeb Bush is a “puppet” for donors who give him millions. Point taken, but what about a candidate who has been lent millions, or hundreds of millions?

As listed in “Part 6: Other Assets and Income,” substantial assets have been liquidated or sold since the beginning of 2014, in stocks and funds. These sales did not include the 501 corporations or LLCs for which Trump lists himself as director, president or member. The sales were of Baron funds, Paulson funds, and DJIA major companies. Recently, Trump has sold assets held in twelve of eighteen bank funds (page 35). Amounts are given in ranges, and some capital gains are combined with interest and dividends, but the sales total falls somewhere between $2 million and $15 million. The filing does not make clear how much of the fund assets remain.

Trump has also sold company stocks from several brokerage accounts, although he still owns stock in at least 190 companies. Oppenheimer and one Deutsche Asset brokerage account seem to be the fullest; a different Deutsche Asset account and a JP Morgan account seem to be the emptiest. Many remaining company stocks are listed as producing no income, “or less than $201.” Meanwhile, the JP Morgan brokerage account (pages 44-45) shows stock in forty companies from Amazon to Yahoo effectively cleaned out, their remaining value listed as “None (or less than $1,001).” Stocks sold include several on the current Dow Jones Industrial Average–Apple, Boeing, Caterpillar, Exxon Mobil, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble. The “Over $5,000,000” realized from Bank of America stock appears to be Trump’s best sale or liquidation. Nobody’s wrong all the time. B of A is also one of the largest donors to Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush.

If these sales were connected to the White House campaign, there may be more sales, depending on how much the campaign costs in coming months. (“$1 billion”?) Again, the ranges given on the standardized form do not show much remains viable for further sales and assets liquidation.

Pageant winners

In the past, Trump’s flamboyant business career involved buying the Miss USA and Miss Universe beauty pageants, which deflected media attention from his real estate troubles. He is now putting himself on a pageant stage. How serious the run is remains to be seen, but the effectiveness of the deflection is undeniable. Trump has brashly and repeatedly emphasized how much he has given to politicians–“almost everybody on this stage,” he said famously (and falsely) in the August 6 GOP debate. The emphasis on his giving deflects attention from how little he has received, usually a benchmark of candidate success. (“I don’t care”; “I don’t want their money.”) The campaign website has a button for donating, of course. Data from the Center for Responsive Politics show donors to Donald Trump to be few and far between. Similarly, Trump’s brash emphasis on his own companies deflects attention from the fact that he is not hired as CEO and chair of other people’s large companies. His brash emphasis on his wealth–in general terms–deflects attention from his bankruptcies, his volatility, and the lack of specific disclosures on income and net worth.

Ironically, this is the one GOP campaign getting high marks for truthfulness. Donald Trump, who with one of his lawyers concocted the line that a woman attorney wanted to breast-pump in front of him, is the only Republican getting credit for telling it like it is. Media commentators are paralleling Trump to Bernie Sanders–both ‘outsiders’. Actually, Trump is an insider, as his financial disclosures make clear.

The man himself

A better parallel would be to the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man (with thanks, or apologies, to the late Harold Ramis et al. at Ghostbusters). So long as he can stay on his feet and bully, he can roll through the avenues of New York. Impervious to loss, shame, or bankruptcy, buoyed up (in GOP opinion polls) by pestilential behavior, he stays afloat.

Next up: Hillary Clinton’s emails

Margie Burns

Blog on government, law, and politics

Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton