RUTHFULLY YOURS

That the Clinton Foundation’s operations are nothing but a cash cow scam is seen in a brilliant analysis and exposé of its operations in Colombia, a country beset by internal strife and an ongoing battle with drug cartels. The truth, as reported by Ken Silverman and the American Media Institute in Fusion, a joint venture of ABC and Univision, hardly Trump surrogates, explains in part how the Clintons amassed a small fortune without holding any job or running any business:

Colombia should be the Clinton Foundation’s best case study. Ground zero for the drug wars of the 1980s and 90s, racked by uneven development and low-intensity conflict for half a century, Colombia has received more foundation money and attention than any other nation outside the United States. Bill and Hillary Clinton have visited the country often and enjoy close relationships with members of Colombia’s ruling party. Colombia has also been home to the vast oil and natural gas holdings of the man who is reportedly the Clinton Foundation’s largest individual donor, Canadian financier Frank Giustra….

Many of the Colombian “success stories” touted on the foundation’s website — the ones specific enough for us to track down — were critical about the foundation’s effect on their lives. Labor leaders and progressive activists say foundation programs caused environmental harm, displaced indigenous people, and that it concentrated a larger share of Colombia’s oil and natural gas reserves in the hands of Giustra…

We interviewed young women in the foundation’s job-training programs; female business owners who sought help from its programs; workers who toiled for the foundation’s biggest individual donor’s firms; indigenous fisherman who were promised jobs and aid; and union leaders, social-justice activists, and progressive lawmakers. Some say they lost money. Others said they were used as props. Still others simply thought that the foundation had wasted a lot of their time. “They are doing nothing for workers,” one Colombian union official told us, with disgust. “I don’t even know what they are doing in this country other than exploiting poverty and extracting money.”

That the Clinton Foundation’s operations are nothing but a cash cow scam is seen in a brilliant analysis and exposé of its operations in Colombia, a country beset by internal strife and an ongoing battle with drug cartels. The truth, as reported by Ken Silverman and the American Media Institute in Fusion, a joint venture of ABC and Univision, hardly Trump surrogates, explains in part how the Clintons amassed a small fortune without holding any job or running any business:

Colombia should be the Clinton Foundation’s best case study. Ground zero for the drug wars of the 1980s and 90s, racked by uneven development and low-intensity conflict for half a century, Colombia has received more foundation money and attention than any other nation outside the United States. Bill and Hillary Clinton have visited the country often and enjoy close relationships with members of Colombia’s ruling party. Colombia has also been home to the vast oil and natural gas holdings of the man who is reportedly the Clinton Foundation’s largest individual donor, Canadian financier Frank Giustra….

Many of the Colombian “success stories” touted on the foundation’s website — the ones specific enough for us to track down — were critical about the foundation’s effect on their lives. Labor leaders and progressive activists say foundation programs caused environmental harm, displaced indigenous people, and that it concentrated a larger share of Colombia’s oil and natural gas reserves in the hands of Giustra…

We interviewed young women in the foundation’s job-training programs; female business owners who sought help from its programs; workers who toiled for the foundation’s biggest individual donor’s firms; indigenous fisherman who were promised jobs and aid; and union leaders, social-justice activists, and progressive lawmakers. Some say they lost money. Others said they were used as props. Still others simply thought that the foundation had wasted a lot of their time. “They are doing nothing for workers,” one Colombian union official told us, with disgust. “I don’t even know what they are doing in this country other than exploiting poverty and extracting money.”

Donald Trump’s best chance to be President has always been to make the campaign about something larger than himself—reviving the economy, replacing Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, defeating Islamic State, something to make the case for change to a country unhappy with the status quo. In Wednesday’s debate Mr. Trump showed what might have been had he fought more on the issues, even as he also exposed his Achilles’ heel of a thin skin and petulant ego.

Mr. Trump is never going to out-argue Hillary Clinton on details, but for much of the debate he was able to draw a contrast on philosophical direction that is his best chance to close his polling deficit. He was effective on the Supreme Court and the right to bear arms, as well as embracing the original meaning of the Constitution.

Mrs. Clinton tried to muddy her opposition to the landmark Heller case that upheld an individual right to bear arms in the Constitution, but Mr. Trump nailed her on it. She certainly would appoint Justices who will sharply curtail if not overturn Heller.

The Republican also managed to convey the large differences between the two candidates on the economy. He’d cut taxes, she’d raise them. He’d replace ObamaCare, she’d expand it. He wants to grow incomes with a stronger economy, she wants to redistribute income. Her claim that her plan would “not add a penny to the debt” was preposterous.

We think Mr. Trump is wrong on trade and his assertions on Nafta are nonsense, but he did manage to show Mrs. Clinton’s double dealing on the issue. Mrs. Clinton said she opposed the Pacific trade agreement only after she had read the text, but the WikiLeaks documents show that she had already decided to oppose it for political reasons before it was completed.

Mrs. Clinton also ducked moderator Chris Wallace’s question on the Clinton Foundation and its “pay to play” acceptance of donations from foreigners while she was Secretary of State. Mr. Trump was right to hit her and her husband for claiming to do so much for Haiti when they have mainly helped their friends to favorable contracts.

The question is whether any of this will matter given Mr. Trump’s manifest flaws in temperament. The Clinton campaign must have done some psychological profiling of Mr. Trump to figure out that his great flaw is his inability to ignore or deflect personal criticism. His GOP opponents made the mistake of trying to take him down on substance. But Mrs. Clinton has tried to disqualify him on character, and Wednesday she continued to set one bear trap after another. Mr. Trump usually walked in.

There is no shortage of serious issues swirling around Hillary Clinton that call into question her judgment, her integrity and, ultimately, her fitness to be the next president of the United States.

I have come to the conclusion that an excellent analog for Hillary would be a virus.

The term “virus” has been defined thusly:

virus |ˈvīrəs|

noun

1 an infective agent that typically consists of a nucleic acid molecule in a protein coat, is too small to be seen by light microscopy, and is able to multiply only within the living cells of a host: [ as modifier ] : a virus infection.

• an infection or disease caused by a virus.

• a harmful or corrupting influence: the virus of cruelty that is latent in all human beings.

2 (also computer virus) a piece of code that is capable of copying itself and typically has a detrimental effect, such as corrupting the system or destroying data.

As noted above, there are two basic forms of viruses, pathogens and computer viruses. Hillary acts as both a pathogen and a computer virus.

Hillary, not unlike a parasitic virus, has for decades, lived off the “host” — in this case, the United States and those who engage in apparent “play for pay” schemes and pay outrageously exorbitant honoraria and speakers fees or contribute to the Clinton Foundation.

On February 13, 2014 the Clinton Foundation posted a press release, “Clinton Foundation And Gates Foundation Partner To Measure Global Progress For Women And Girls.”

Bill Gates has been the prime force behind the effort to bring a virtually unlimited quantity of foreign high tech workers into the United States through the H-1B visa program and by other means to supplant hundreds of thousands of American workers. The press release focused on “women and girls” on the global level.

The WikiLeaks email dumps are giving voters some insights into the realities of hardball politics. It isn’t pretty. Take the recent disclosures that show how the Clinton campaign plotted to raise a bundle of campaign cash but then use the government to attack opponents for trying to do the same thing.

In an email exchange in May 2015, John Podesta, now the Clinton campaign chairman, Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias and other staffers including Jennifer Palmieri and Huma Abedin discussed an article claiming the Federal Election Commission was unable to curb election abuses because its bipartisan makeup led to 3-3 deadlocks.

The campaign crew had been discussing the idea of stacking the FEC with new members to end the tie votes. In the meantime, “[Marc] Elias may have some legal ideas to slow them down,” Mr. Podesta wrote. “We have 3 things we have to do. Raise the primary $ by expanding the bundler network. Get Priorities functional. Use this [theme of FEC dysfunction] to scare our people into giving bigger sums.”

Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook responded, “I agree with you, John. I think we focus hard on raising as much as we can and then throw the kitchen sink at everyone who we believe steps over the line, understanding that has limited impact.”

Marc Elias responded that he thought the article overstated the problem but noted that, “There is every reason to think DOJ will increasingly police the campaign finance laws.” He added, “Every time a GOP candidate does something even close to the line, they are hit by a complaint.”

When my late father got our citizenship papers and first American passport he paraphrased Descartes : “In America, I vote, therefore I am.” He never missed an election and died shortly after voting from Ronald Reagan in 1984 convinced that the franchise was the ultimate form of participation in a democracy.

Now, I can put up with the hyperbole and insult of those with whom I disagree. What upsets me far more is the suspicion of election fraud and the increasing evidence of dead people voting, illegal and non citizens voting, intimidation, and orchestrated violence at Trump rallies. There is documented evidence of all the above by reputable reporters and investigators.

The Republicans mostly ignore it, preferring to bash the messenger rather than protesting the truth, and the Democrats who would howl if it did not benefit their candidate dismiss it. Why wouldn’t they?

I increasingly feel that I vote but it does not count and my fear is that an increasing number of citizens will stop voting and turn to apathy rather than election choices.

We should always be on guard against presentism, but in this instance I do not hesitate to say that the upcoming presidential election is the most alarming in American history. I can make that statement with confidence because I do not believe the most disturbing aspect of the election is the choice of candidates – even though the two major party nominees present the worst choice the American people have faced in my lifetime (Eisenhower was president when I was born), and perhaps ever.

The reason this is such a frightening election is that the Constitution’s mechanisms for reining in or ousting a rogue president are in tatters.

We are not supposed to have transformative elections, contests that will forever change our system of government or enable government to orchestrate cultural upheaval. The Constitution is supposed to be our guarantee against that.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a book called Faithless Execution in an attempt to explain this and campaign, in my own small way, for a restoration. The theory I posited was straightforward. Among the greatest fears of those who founded our constitutional republic was that the powerful new office they were creating, the President of the United States, could be a path to authoritarianism and eventual tyranny. Much of the deliberation over the drafting and adoption of the new Constitution was dedicated to ensuring adequate safeguards against that possibility.

The Constitution’s aim is to preserve liberty and self-determination. Its prescription for doing so is to constrain government (and thus increase the realm of free, unregulated activity) by limiting and dividing governmental powers. Federal authority was balanced by states that maintained sovereign power. The limited powers delegated to the federal government were divided among three branches, each given sufficient inherent authority that it could not be overwhelmed by the others.

John Podesta’s e-mails, which we now have courtesy of WikiLeaks, confirm what we already knew: The Justice Department’s decision not to indict Hillary Clinton was a politicized travesty.

Podesta, a longtime Clinton hand and Democratic party operative, was President Obama’s top political adviser before becoming chairman of Clinton’s presidential campaign in February 2015. As he was transitioning, it was revealed that, as secretary of state, Clinton had regularly transacted government business over a private e-mail account and, in a major national-security breach, had used a non-secure server to send and store highly classified information. Moreover, to (further) evade transparency requirements, Clinton destroyed 33,000 e-mails, falsely representing them as “personal,” having to do with her daughter’s wedding and “yoga.” Nonetheless, the Justice Department declined to bring a case.

FBI director James Comey’s she-did-but-she-didn’t press conference had already made it clear that Clinton was given special treatment, as had investigative reports and interview summaries pried from the bureau by congressional Republicans. Podesta’s e-mails illuminate the improper coordination between the campaign, the White House, and the State and Justice Departments that led to Clinton’s getting a complete pass.

Although it was ostensibly investigating Clinton and her State Department staff (many of whom had become her campaign staff), the Justice Department kept campaign officials in the loop about developments in Freedom of Information Act cases related to Clinton’s e-mails, and about administration efforts to delay and minimize disclosures. The DOJ worked with the Clinton team’s defense lawyers to restrict the FBI’s ability to ask key questions and examine critical evidence. It also declined to present the case to a grand jury, which the DOJ must do in order to subpoena critical evidence and indict culpable suspects. Instead, it gave the suspects immunity from prosecution and made other gratuitous concessions in order to acquire evidence the production of which could have been compelled.

Meanwhile, as the former secretary’s claims about never having sent or received classified information were exposed as lies — in fact, some of her e-mails contained information classified at the very highest levels of secrecy — the State Department colluded with Clinton aides to control the fallout. Newly disclosed FBI documents suggest that high-ranking State Department official Patrick Kennedy leaned on the FBI, and perhaps other agencies, to downgrade classification of Clinton’s e-mails (which might bolster her false denial of transmitting classified information) and to exploit Freedom of Information Act exemptions (which would allow the State Department to withhold disclosure of e-mails that would be politically harmful). This news should come as no surprise. FBI reports had previously indicated that State Department brass were pressuring career officials to change designations to minimize Clinton’s apparent misconduct.