RUTHFULLY YOURS

“Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it”

George Santayana

One of my favorite quotations – it underscores why we endure many of the unnecessary political follies of contemporary society. We as a society don’t know a lot about our history, and/or don’t see the significance of trying to remedy that.

Here is a good “history” example – what is the significance of August 26th, 1920?

Clearly anyone knowing the answer likely indicates an individual who understands something about the Constitution, how the division of labor between the states and federal government come together concerning amendments, and perhaps a bit about our history as a society.

Sadly most people I have asked about the 19th Amendment, if they have any clue at all about the purpose of an Amendment in terms of the Constitution, think it was the law that overturned Prohibition, granting college students the right to play beer pong on campus.

History is poorly taught in the US, as multiple studies by various groups have revealed in the last 10 years. The Nation’s Report Card (1) 2014 study on 8th grader knowledge of US history, geography and civics revealed 29% of the students possessed below basic knowledge in US History. Only 18% were proficient. Let me repeat that….only 18% of 8th graders in the study were proficient about the history of their own country. This isn’t quantum physics talking about the building blocks of the universe, but US history is the building block of our foundation as good citizens. Geography and Civics did somewhat better, but not by much. The increase from 2010 wasn’t inspiring either. In addition, when history is taught, not surprisingly it is increasingly revisionist, and leaning more towards indoctrination than education.

After reading the study results, I became convinced Watter’s World was real, and that is a scary place. The folks he interviews get to vote. OMGosh maybe the Framers were right to be afraid, very afraid of the masses, especially the uneducated. Moreover, Dickens, not missing a beat warned Scrooge about the danger of ignorance.

Against this backdrop, sometimes I am surprised books about history, and great historic figures continue to make the NY Times bestseller list – examples include Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates, Hamilton, The Bully Pulpit, Killing Lincoln, George Washington’s Secret Six, The Quartet, and others.

However, before we take comfort that book sales translate to a knowledgeable public, prepared to spend judiciously and wisely the most precious resource at our disposal – the vote, walk with me through a quick civics experience.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton dismissed questions about conflicts of interest between the Clinton Foundation and her work as secretary of state, saying she made decisions based on the merits.

“My work as secretary of state was not influenced by any outside forces,” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Wednesday evening. “I made policy decisions based on what I thought was right, to keep Americans safe and protect U.S. interests abroad.”

In recent days, she has been under fire for meeting with foundation donors during her time in office, with Republican Donald Trump accusing her of creating a pay-to-play culture.

The foundation said last week it would not accept contributions from foreign or corporate donors if she is elected president. Asked why that set-up was acceptable when she headed the State Department, but not if she is president, Mrs. Clinton said, “Obviously if I am president there will be some unique circumstances and that’s why the foundation has laid out additional, unprecedented steps.”

She also dismissed a report from the Associated Press that found a large share of the meetings she had with non-governmental, non-foreign officials were with foundation donors.

“There’s a lot of smoke and there’s no fire,” she said. She said the AP analysis excluded nearly 2,000 meetings with world leaders and others with government officials. The private citizens she did meet with, Mrs. Clinton said, included leading figures such as the late Elie Wiesel and philanthropist Melinda Gates. She said it’s “absurd” to think that those meetings were “somehow due to connections with the foundation instead of their status as highly respected global leaders.”

“These are people I was proud to meet with, who any secretary of state would have been proud to meet with and hear about their work and their insight,” she said.

On a separate controversy, Mrs. Clinton declined to discuss a New York Times report that she told the FBI that she had been advised by former Secretary of State Colin Powell to use a personal email account. Mr. Powell replied that she was already using private email when he told her about his practices.

She said she appreciated Mr. Powell’s help but would not “litigate in public” their private conversations. CONTINUE AT SITE

This is the week that the steady drip, drip, drip of details about Hillary Clinton’s server turned into a waterfall. This is the week that we finally learned why Mrs. Clinton used a private communications setup, and what it hid. This is the week, in short, that we found out that the infamous server was designed to hide that Mrs. Clinton for three years served as the U.S. Secretary of the Clinton Foundation.

In March this column argued that while Mrs. Clinton’s mishandling of classified information was important, it missed the bigger point. The Democratic nominee obviously didn’t set up her server with the express purpose of exposing national secrets—that was incidental. She set up the server to keep secret the details of the Clintons’ private life—a life built around an elaborate and sweeping money-raising and self-promoting entity known as the Clinton Foundation.

Had Secretary Clinton kept the foundation at arm’s length while in office—as obvious ethical standards would have dictated—there would never have been any need for a private server, or even private email. The vast majority of her electronic communications would have related to her job at the State Department, with maybe that occasional yoga schedule. And those Freedom of Information Act officers would have had little difficulty—when later going through a state.gov email—screening out the clearly “personal” before making her records public. This is how it works for everybody else.

Mrs. Clinton’s problem—as we now know from this week’s release of emails from Huma Abedin’s private Clinton-server account—was that there was no divide between public and private. Mrs. Clinton’s State Department and her family foundation were one seamless entity—employing the same people, comparing schedules, mixing foundation donors with State supplicants. This is why she maintained a secret server, and why she deleted 15,000 emails that should have been turned over to the government.

Most of the focus on this week’s Abedin emails has centered on the disturbing examples of Clinton Foundation executive Doug Band negotiating State favors for foundation donors. But equally instructive in the 725 pages released by Judicial Watch is the frequency and banality of most of the email interaction. Mr. Band asks if Hillary’s doing this conference, or having that meeting, and when she’s going to Brazil. Ms. Abedin responds that she’s working on it, or will get this or that answer. These aren’t the emails of mere casual acquaintances; they don’t even bother with salutations or signoffs. These are the emails of two people engaged in the same purpose—serving the State-Clinton Foundation nexus.

The other undernoted but important revelation is that the media has been looking in the wrong place. The focus is on Mrs. Clinton’s missing emails, and no doubt those 15,000 FBI-recovered texts contain nuggets. Then again, Mrs. Clinton was a busy woman, and most of the details of her daily State/foundation life would have been handled by trusted aides. This is why they, too, had private email. Top marks to Judicial Watch for pursuing Ms. Abedin’s file from the start. A new urgency needs to go into seeing similar emails of former Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills.