RUTHFULLY YOURS

According to the Australian Associated Press:

The United States’ abandonment of the Iran nuclear deal will make negotiations with North Korea more difficult and leaves America’s credibility “shot”, Hillary Clinton says.

The former US secretary of state and failed 2016 presidential candidate also said there must be concrete concessions from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un amid the current efforts at diplomacy.

Ms Clinton used a talk in Melbourne to again criticise US President Donald Trump’s Iran decision, after tweeting that it was a big mistake.

“Pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal will make it harder to negotiate successfully with North Korea or anyone else,” she said on Thursday night.

“I think pulling out of that agreement makes America less safe and less trusted and Iran more dangerous.

Well-heeled Australians eager to hear what’s wrong with America, its elections and its political leadership were unlikely to be disappointed by this leg of the tour. According to Australia’s Daily Telegraph:

“Free from the constraints of running, Secretary Clinton will share the intense personal experience of becoming the first woman nominated for president by a major party in an election marked by rage, sexism, exhilarating highs and infuriating lows, stranger-than-fiction twists, Russian interference, and an opponent who broke all the rules,” the speaking tour’s website claims.

Meanwhile back in the United States, it’s Clinton fundraising season. This has been true of every season of every year since the late 1970s. But this is a particularly important moment because of a major event that is now less than two weeks away. Last month Axios reported:

Longtime Clinton supporters last week received an invitation offering access to the family (the green invitation features photos of Bill, Hillary and Chelsea) at a Clinton Foundation benefit on May 24 in New York, at prices ranging from $2,500 (”Friend”) for cocktail party and dinner, up to $100,000 (”Chair”) for “Leadership Reception for two, a premium table of ten, program recognition as Gala Chair and invitations to the Clinton Foundation Annual Briefing.”

As ever, Bill and Hillary Clinton are no doubt aiming to raise substantial sums from their vaunted network of high-dollar donors. But it’s still not clear whether their daughter understands the point of all this. Bloomberg reports:

Chelsea Clinton has been asked hundreds of times if she’s going to run for office. The first was when she was 3.

“That says something pretty powerful to me,” Clinton, 38, told an audience at the Bloomberg’s Business of Equality Summit in New York on Tuesday. “We expect you to at least consider to do something important and powerful.”

Clinton, the only child of former president Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, says she now turns the question around.

“Have you ever asked anyone whose last name isn’t Clinton that question?” she said she tells the inquisitor. “Did anyone ever ask you that question?”

Speaking of Clinton questions, campaign trivia buffs may recall that as a candidate Hillary Clinton claimed to have diagnosed a problem with capitalism. She argued that publicly traded companies were too focused on short-term results and therefore didn’t invest enough for future growth. Even if one agreed with her diagnosis, it wasn’t clear that her plan to make capital gains taxes more complicated and costly would provide a solution.

But today brings more evidence that the problem she aimed to solve does not even exist. The Journal’s James Mackintosh notes that capital expenditures at big public companies are rising faster than for business as a whole and reports that large corporations are funding research and development at a historic pace: