Shocking revelations show that at least four Clinton Foundation board of directors have either been charged or convicted of financial crimes, including bribery and fraud.
This newest, startling revelation is just one more of many in Peter Schweizer’s bombshell book Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, the book that has sent the Hillary Clinton campaign and the media scrambling.
The book shows that there are many problems with the Clinton charity. In fact, the Clinton Foundation is so unlike a real charity that even charity watchdog group Charity Navigatorrefuses to rate the Clinton Foundation because of its “atypical business model.”
One of those problems is the fact that the Clintons put big donors and close pals on the board for reasons that are hard to fathom. In fact, at least four of these “board members” have either been charged or convicted of serious financial irregularities, crimes including bribery and fraud.
The most well-known of these board members is Vinod Gupta.
by JOEL GEHRKE May 2, 2015 3:24 PM
Carly Fiorina made the case for her prospective presidential candidacy on Saturday, just days before she’s expected to officially jump into the race, telling a room full of conservative activists and writers that she has the policy background and the political skills to beat Hillary Clinton in a general election. “Hillary Clinton may be a vulnerable candidate, in many ways, but we should not underestimate her,” Fiorina said at the National Review Institute Ideas Summit. “We have to have a nominee who can take punches, but we [also] have to have a nominee who will throw punches.”
Fiorina’s political ambitions have met with derision among political experts, given that the only people to serve as president without holding prior elected office were war heroes. Fiorina argued that her experience rising from the secretarial pool to CEO at Hewlett Packard makes her a true outsider who can direct the general disgust voters feel toward Washington, D.C. — and toward crony capitalism in particular — at Hillary Clinton.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Saturday that the culture wars show off the cozy relationship between Democrats and corporate America.
Speaking in South Carolina, Cruz bemoaned the “perfect storm of the Democratic Party and big business coming together,” according to Bloomberg.
The Texas Republican was specifically referencing the recent fight over Indiana’s law on religious freedom. But Cruz noted that there’d been similar spats in Houston and elsewhere in the U.S., and insisted conservatives needed to gear up for the battle to defeat gay marriage.
“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you,” Cruz said.
For all her recent efforts to prove her progressive credentials to Democratic primary voters and caucus participants, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has not made those on her party’s left entirely comfortable with her. And she never will.Because of that, a credible alternative would have the capacity to rally progressive Democrats behind a challenge to the former first lady, possibly even creating an entertaining skirmish or two.
The only question right now is if a serious contender will emerge. Not everyone, after all, would be equally capable of galvanizing anti-Hillary sentiment within the Democratic Party.
At first glance, the idea of a backbencher mounting even a moderately interesting challenge to Clinton is preposterous. After all, she will have the deepest war chest in history, begins with a lengthy résumé of accomplishments, has a flood of endorsements and institutional support, and holds the “first woman president” card in her hand.
But Clinton has as much chance of convincing Democratic progressives she is truly one of them as Mitt Romney had of convincing tea party conservatives and evangelicals he shared their values and views. That is: zero chance.
There is simply too much suspicion of Clinton on the left — and too much history to allow progressives to embrace her completely before they must.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Saturday said Democrats had gone to extremes in their persecution of Christians.
“Today’s Democratic Party has decided there is no room for Christians in today’s Democratic Party,” he said at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition summit in Waukee, Iowa.
“There is a liberal fascism that is going after Christian believers,” the 2016 GOP presidential candidate continued.
“It is heartbreaking,” Cruz argued. “But it is so extreme, it is waking people up.”
Cruz said same-sex marriage had produced rabid zealotry in Democratic ranks. This ideology, he argued, was excluding people of faith.
“Today’s Democratic Party has become so radicalized for legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states that there is no longer any room for religious liberty,” he said.
The Texas lawmaker said this stance was against America’s traditional values. Religious liberty, Cruz claimed, was one of the nation’s founding principles.
“We were founded by men and women fleeing religious persecution,” Cruz declared.
“We need leaders who will stand unapologetically in defense of the Judeo-Christian values upon which America was built,” he concluded.
How the Midwest Is Scaling Back Big Labor’s Special Privileges
James Sherk / @JamesBSherk / April 25, 2015
Labor unions have traditionally been the 800-pound gorilla of special interest groups. They have secured handouts and subsidies that other organizations’ lobbyists could only dream about. But that may be changing.
This year a raft of Midwestern states have scaled back some of organized labor’s special privileges. States are starting to treat unions no differently from other private membership organizations.
Many politicians—of both parties—fear that crossing organized labor could cost them reelection. Unions use this clout to engage in massive “rent seeking”—pursuing legislation that transfers others’ wealth to them.
Most prominently, unions in half the country can force workers to pay dues, even if they do not want to join the union. The ACLU, the National Rifle Association, and other private organizations must persuade Americans to voluntarily join and donate. Not unions.
Once they organize a workplace, unions can (but need not) force workers to accept their representation. In 25 states they can also force workers to pay union dues. The other 25 states have “right-to-work” laws that make payment of union dues voluntary.
Unsurprisingly, unions prefer compulsion. They fight right-to-work tooth and nail, and their opposition usually blocks it. Between 1980 and 2010, only two states passed right-to-work laws.
Compulsory dues are just one union handout. Thirty-two states enforce “prevailing wage” laws that effectively require contractors to pay union wage scales on state or local government construction projects. This makes public construction projects a lot more expensive by insulating construction unions against competition from non-union workers.
Many state and local governments go even further by virtually mandating that their construction contractors use union labor. Government bodies often require construction companies to agree to “Project Labor Agreements” in order to bid on public-works projects. PLAs require contactors to use union wage scales and union work rules, and to hire all their workers through union hiring halls. This raises the cost of public construction projects by 12 to 18 percent. Few other organizations’ lobbyists can even dream of getting such special treatment.
Fortunately, all this is changing. Michigan and Indiana both passed right-to-work laws in 2012. At the time, unions promised electoral retribution, but a funny thing happened on the way to the voting booth: nothing.
Conservatives expanded their legislative majorities in both states after the laws passed. Union bosses opposed voluntary dues, but the voters did not. In Michigan, just one legislator who voted for right-to-work lost reelection: a moderate state representative defeated in the primary by a Tea Party challenger. Unions turned out to have more bark than bite.
This victory has given more policymakers the courage to tackle labor reform. Now many Midwestern states have begun reining in unions’ coercive powers. Governor Scott Walker just signed legislation making Wisconsin the 25th state with workplace-freedom laws. Unions can no longer compel Badger State workers to pay their dues.
Missouri may soon follow suit. This year the state House passed right-to-work legislation for the first time in its history. The state Senate will probably do the same. Democratic Governor Jay Nixon has promised to veto it, but term limits will force him out of office in 2016. If the voters elect a conservative replacement, Missouri may soon become right-to-work.
In Kentucky, right-to-work stalled in the legislature, so local governments have taken matters into their own hands. A dozen Kentucky counties have used the “Home Rule” power the legislature delegated to them to pass local right-to-work laws.
Even Bruce Rauner, the newly elected moderate-Republican governor of Illinois, has embraced right-to-work. He has proposed local workplace-freedom zones and filed a lawsuit to block forced union dues for state employees.
The rent seeking rollback has gone far beyond union dues, however. The Indiana legislature just repealed the state’s prevailing wage law, which means Indiana no longer requires taxpayers to pay union rates for construction work. Similar bills have been introduced by high-profile legislators in Wisconsin and Michigan.
Now the Ohio House has also taken a small step toward reform. After the voters repealed SB 5, which placed limits on government unions, in 2011, the state legislature avoided labor issues—until now. With bold new leadership in the Ohio House, the new budget would prohibit state agencies from requiring PLAs on construction contracts. If it becomes law, unions will compete for those projects on an equal footing with everyone else.
Americans have every right to associate with unions, or not, as they choose, but the law should not give them special treatment. Many Midwestern states are finally taking steps to help return unions to membership in voluntary civil society.
Veteran defense lawyers see possible criminal inquiry for Clintons
By James Rosen
Published April 25, 2015
FoxNews.com
With a sitting Democratic senator recently indicted on federal bribery and corruption charges, top criminal defense lawyers in the nation’s capital say Democratic presidential front runner Hillary Clinton could conceivably face similar scrutiny, amid mounting disclosures about the tangled finances of her family’s philanthropic foundation.
The new book “Clinton Cash” by Peter Schweizer, an investigative reporter affiliated with the right-leaning Hoover Institution, has unleashed a torrent of conflict-of-interest allegations relating to the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s own conduct during her tenure, from 2009 to 2013, as secretary of state.
Particular scrutiny – by Fox News, the Washington Post, and the New York Times – has focused on why the State Department, under Clinton’s leadership, green-lighted a foreign transaction that enriched major donors to the foundation while placing an estimated 20 percent of America’s stockpile of uranium – the fissile material that can be used to make nuclear weapons -under the control of a Kremlin-backed Russian firm.
It was, moreover, shortly after the uranium deal went through that former President Bill Clinton nailed down a $500,000 fee for a speaking event in Moscow.
“There’s certainly smoke there,” said Caleb Burns, a partner at the Washington law firm Wiley Rein LLC, who has long experience handling financial and public integrity cases. “The question’s going to be whether or not she took any official action in exchange for those donations. If she did, I think there is going to be a high, high likelihood of additional scrutiny, either from Capitol Hill or from the Department of Justice itself.”
Burns likened the known fact setting in the Clinton controversies to that which led to the federal indictment, earlier this month, of Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, who stands accused of performing favors for a well-connected Democratic donor in exchange for pricey gifts. Menendez has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing.
The financial issues plaguing Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign have become too much even for liberal groups, and now Common Cause is calling for an independent audit of donations to the Clinton Foundation.
Amid suggestions that foreign governments donated to the foundation in hopes of getting special treatment from President Obama’s State Department when Clinton was his top diplomat, the group on Friday said a “thorough review” is needed.
“Six years ago, at Mrs. Clinton’s confirmation hearing for her appointment as secretary of state, then-Sen. Dick Lugar observed that ‘that foreign governments and entities may perceive the Clinton Foundation as a means to gain favor with the secretary of state.’ He was right, and his remarks remain relevant today as Mrs. Clinton seeks the presidency,” said Common Cause President Miles Rapoport.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is drawing a populist bead on lavish Wall Street pay packages as she revs up her march to the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, but in some respects the fat-per-speech fee she can charge puts her far ahead of the top 10 highest-paid American CEOs.
“I think it’s fair to say that if you look across the country, the deck is stacked in favor of those already at the top. There’s something wrong when CEOs make 300 times more than the American worker…,” Clinton said during her first campaign swing last week at an Iowa community college.
Bashing Wall Streeters is part of Clinton’s strategy of remaking her image to appear more sympathetic to middle class voters, while also appealing to left-wing Democrats who are attracted to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and the even more radical supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist who talks of seeking the 2016 nomination.
The book does not hit shelves until May 5, but already the Republican Rand Paul has called its findings “big news” that will “shock people” and make voters “question” the candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,” by Peter Schweizer — a 186-page investigation of donations made to the Clinton Foundation by foreign entities — is proving the most anticipated and feared book of a presidential cycle still in its infancy.
The book, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, asserts that foreign entities who made payments to the Clinton Foundation and to Mr. Clinton through high speaking fees received favors from Mrs. Clinton’s State Department in return.
“We will see a pattern of financial transactions involving the Clintons that occurred contemporaneous with favorable U.S. policy decisions benefiting those providing the funds,” Mr. Schweizer writes.
By Paul Mulshine | The Star Ledger
on April 19, 2015 at 7:53 AM, updated April 19, 2015 at 7:54 AM
That’s not because Amanda Lott is a retiree. It’s because she’s a financial planner. If this plan goes through, financial planners will make a fortune trying to rescue future retirees from its effects.
“The proposed benefit reform could remove more than 20 percent of the retirement income from an American couple,” the email read. It went on to point out how the Christie plan could cause even more retirees to flee New Jersey than are currently leaving.
I decided to give Lott a call at her office in Morristown to learn more about the problems with the plan.
“This punishes people who have been fiscally responsible and have saved all of their lives,” Lott said. “But people who haven’t planned ahead will be rewarded.”
The problem is the “means testing” that is the basis of the plan. Means testing is usually something pushed by Democrats for the obvious reason that it takes from the rich and gives to the poor.
APRIL 19, 2015, 10:36 AM LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, APRIL 19, 2015, 10:36 AM
BY RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — Republican or Democrat, the next president will have the chance to remake the nation’s health care overhaul without fighting Congress.
The law signed by President Barack Obama includes a waiver that, starting in 2017, would let states take federal dollars now invested in the overhaul and use them to redesign their own health care systems.
States could not repeal some things, such as the requirement that insurance companies cover people with health problems. But they could replace the law’s unpopular mandate that virtually everyone in the country has health insurance, provided the alternative worked reasonably well.
A Democrat in the White House probably would use the waiver to build bridges to Republican governors and state legislators opposed to the law. The “state innovation” provision, Section 1332 of the nearly 1,000-page law, has gotten little public attention.
But “you would be hard pressed to find a state that doesn’t know what Section 1332 is,” said Trish Riley, executive director the National Academy for State Health Policy, a nonpartisan forum for state policymakers. “It provides some opportunity for taking the rough edges” off the Affordable Care Act, as the law is known.
For a Republican president, state waivers could be the fallback option to avoid the political cost of dismantling Obama’s law and disrupting or jeopardizing coverage for millions of newly insured people, not to mention the upheaval for insurers, hospitals and doctors.
“If you were a Republican on record as opposing or wanting to repeal the ACA, but really felt deep down that you couldn’t accomplish that even as president, then you could say your second preference would be to use this provision to go down a completely different road,” said Stuart Butler, a health policy expert at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution.
Butler, who was with the conservative Heritage Foundation for 35 years, has long been a voice for Republican thinking on health care policy. “The short answer is, this presents a tremendous opportunity for either party,” he said.
The state waiver was the idea of Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, who has a record of crossing party lines in search of ways to tackle health care costs and coverage.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate, reflected on his heritage Saturday in calling for a renewed emphasis on pursuing the American dream.
Jindal spoke of his parents immigrating from India to Baton Rouge, La., where he was born months later, joking about his dad missing a hospital payment and forcing the couple to return the baby.
“We used to be proud to call America the great melting pot,” Jindal said later in his remarks at the First In The Nation leadership summit in New Hampshire, noting his parents were proud of their heritage.
THE LATEST: PRESIDENTIAL CONTENDERS WOO NEW HAMPSHIRE VOTERS
2:15 p.m. (EDT)
School choice is at the center of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s efforts to woo Republican primary voters.
A crowd of Republican activists gathered in New Hampshire loved what he had to say on the subject.
“We trust the American people more than bureaucrats,” Jindal told the crowd to cheers Saturday. “We have gotta get rid of Common Core.”
The Common Core education standards, adopted by nearly every state, are drawing ire from conservative voters across the country. So far at New Hampshire’s two-day gathering of presidential hopefuls, Jindal is the only person making school choice the focus of his campaign-in-waiting. To make his case, he’s pointing to Louisiana policies enacted during his tenure that make it easier for children to attend private or charter schools.
APRIL 14, 2015, 8:16 AM LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, APRIL 14, 2015, 6:35 PM
BY MELISSA HAYES
STATE HOUSE BUREAU |
THE RECORD
Governor Christie called for raising the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare and suggested wealthier retirees forgo the benefits in a speech in New Hampshire Tuesday.
Christie unveiled a 12-point plan that includes reducing Social Security benefits for retirees earning more than $80,000 and eliminating them altogether for those earning more than $200,000.
The governor told a crowd of about 100 students and other attendees at St. Anselm College that the retirement age for social security should be raised to 69 and the early retirement age should be 64. And he called for the eligibility age for Medicare to be gradually increased to 67 by 2040.
Warning: Undefined array key "sfsi_riaIcon_order" in /home/eagle1522/public_html/theridgewoodblog.net/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-social-media-icons/libs/controllers/sfsi_frontpopUp.php on line 165
Warning: Undefined array key "sfsi_inhaIcon_order" in /home/eagle1522/public_html/theridgewoodblog.net/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-social-media-icons/libs/controllers/sfsi_frontpopUp.php on line 166
Warning: Undefined array key "sfsi_mastodonIcon_order" in /home/eagle1522/public_html/theridgewoodblog.net/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-social-media-icons/libs/controllers/sfsi_frontpopUp.php on line 177
