RUTHFULLY YOURS

“In the final analysis, Hillary Clinton is a woman with a mindset that is totalitarian in every respect. To make matters worse, she is a lying, deceiving, manipulative, self-absorbed criminal without a shred of personal virtue. Truly it can be said that never before in American history has anyone so unfit and so undeserving, run for president. Never.”

Never in American history has anyone as unfit and undeserving as Hillary Clinton run for U.S. President. While she stands on the threshold of being elected to the White House, she quite literally belongs in a prison cell. This article lays out the case against her, chapter and verse.

Clinton’s Private Email Server & the Espionage Act

Throughout her entire four-year tenure as secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton never acquired or used a government email account. Instead, she transmitted — in violation of government regulations — all of her official correspondences via a private email address that traced back to a secret, private, unsecured server that was housed at her New York residence.1 And immediately after those emails were subpoenaed by Congress, Clinton instructed a team of her advisers to unilaterally delete, with no oversight, almost 32,000 of the roughly 60,000 emails in question.2

Clinton claimed that her reason for having used only a personal email account, rather than both a personal and a government account, was that she found it “easier,” “better,” “simpler” and more convenient to “carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two.”3 It was eventually learned, however, that Mrs. Clinton in fact had used no fewer than 13 mobile devices to access emails on her private server, but the FBI was unable to obtain any of those devices in its investigation, in some cases because Clinton aides had been instructed to smash them with a hammer.4

Clinton originally assured Americans that not even one piece of classified material had ever been transmitted via her unsecured, secret, personal server. But now it is known that at least 2,079 emails that she sent or received via that server, contained classified material.5 As the eminent broadcaster and legal scholar Mark Levin has made plain, each of those 2,079 offenses constituted a felonious violation of Section 793 of the Espionage Act.6 And each violation was punishable by a prison sentence of up to ten years.7

In January 2016, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said “the odds are pretty high” that Russia, China, and Iran had compromised Clinton’s unsecured email server.8

But hey, who cares? At least Mrs. Clinton, unlike Donald Trump, never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. And she of course respects women deeply. In fact, she respects all people, including the 315 million Americans whose personal and national security was compromised when Mrs. Clinton willfully allowed top-secret information to wind up in the possession of our country’s most hostile enemies around the world.

The Clinton Foundation Scandals

In an effort to prevent foreign governments, organizations, and individuals from influencing the policy decisions of American national leaders, campaign-finance laws prohibit U.S. political figures from accepting money from foreign sources. But as the Washington Post noted in February 2015, the Bill, Hillary, & Chelsea Clinton Foundation “has given donors a way to potentially gain favor with the Clintons outside the traditional political [donation] limits.”9

As of February 2015, foreign sources accounted for about one-third of all donors who had given the Clinton Foundation more than $1 million, and over half of those who had contributed more than $5 million.10 Foreign donors that gave money to the Foundation included: Hezbollah supporter Issam Fares, who once served as deputy prime minister of Lebanon;11 the Dubai Foundation, which also gave money to the families of Palestinian terrorists killed in action;12 the royal family of the United Arab Emirates; a Dubai-based company that promotes Sharia Law;13 a privately-held Chinese construction and trade conglomerate headed by a delegate of the Chinese parliament;14 and the governments of Saudi Arabia, Brunei, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.15

Even during Clinton’s tenure (2009-13) as secretary of state, the Clinton Foundation received millions of dollars in donations from seven foreign governments.

Bill Clinton earned a total of $48 million from foreign sources for his appearance and speaking fees during his wife’s term as secretary.16

In August 2016, the Associated Press reported that 85 of Hillary Clinton’s 154 scheduled meetings and phone calls with non-governmental personnel during her time at the State Department were with donors who gave $156 million to the Clinton Foundation. The AP report also revealed that the Clinton Foundation had received $170 million in donations from at least 16 foreign governments whose representatives met personally with Mrs. Clinton.17

In May 2015, the International Business Times reported that the Clinton State Department had approved billions of dollars in arms deals with governments that donated to the Clinton Foundation, including governments that were infamous for their appalling human-rights records.18

But the Clinton Foundation certainly does many wonderful things for needy people around the world, doesn’t it? Well, according to a review of IRS documents by The Federalist, between 2009-12 the Clinton Foundation raised over $500 million in total. A mere 15% of that went towards programmatic grants. The other $425 million went to travel expenses, employee salaries and benefits, and “other expenses.”19 In 2013, the Clinton Foundation allocated only 6% of its revenues to direct charitable aid.20

But hey, who cares? At least Mrs. Clinton never engaged in crude, private trash talk that was recorded on tape. And all of her disparaging, condescending, hate-soaked, fiction-laced denunciations of her political rivals are delivered in measured, solemn, well-rehearsed tones. And she deeply respects women, including the millions of women around the world who have never benefited from the charitable services that the Clinton Foundation purports to provide, because the Foundation only spends a tiny percentage of its funds on actual charity.

Clinton’s Support for the Iran Nuclear Deal

For those concerned above all with what’s left of the rule of law in our republic, the most important dispatch of this nauseating campaign season has been Fox News’ “FBI, DOJ roiled by Comey, Lynch decision to let Clinton slide by on emails, says insider.”

Many of you may have read the first few paragraphs of this article before, but they’re worth reading again for purposes of discussion:

The decision to let Hillary Clinton off the hook for mishandling classified information has roiled the FBI and Department of Justice, with one person closely involved in the year-long probe telling FoxNews.com that career agents and attorneys on the case unanimously believed the Democratic presidential nominee should have been charged.

The source, who spoke to FoxNews.com on the condition of anonymity, said FBI Director James Comey’s dramatic July 5 announcement that he would not recommend to the Attorney General’s office that the former secretary of state be charged left members of the investigative team dismayed and disgusted. More than 100 FBI agents and analysts worked around the clock with six attorneys from the DOJ’s National Security Division, Counter Espionage Section, to investigate the case.

“No trial level attorney agreed, no agent working the case agreed, with the decision not to prosecute — it was a top-down decision,” said the source, whose identity and role in the case has been verified by FoxNews.com.

The article continues:

A high-ranking FBI official told Fox News that while it might not have been a unanimous decision, “It was unanimous that we all wanted her [Clinton’s] security clearance yanked.”

“It is safe to say the vast majority felt she should be prosecuted,” the senior FBI official told Fox News. “We were floored while listening to the FBI briefing because Comey laid it all out, and then said ‘but we are doing nothing,’ which made no sense to us.”

So one anonymous insider said it was unanimous that Hillary should be prosecuted and a “high-ranking official” said the “vast majority” felt that way. Whichever is accurate, there were more than a hundred agents and analysts working with six lawyers on the case, but let’s round that off to an even 100.

What’re we to do about all those agents, analysts and lawyers who are not allowed to speak their minds and tell the American public they serve what they think about what happened?

It’s not the Chicago 7 who need to be freed this time. The situation has flipped. It’s the forces of law and order — the FBI 100.

So let me understand this

Bill Clinton sexually frolicked with Gennifer Flowers, apparently sexually abused Paula Corbin (paying her an $850,000 litigation settlement) and Kathleen Willey. Leveraged his workplace supervisory position over Monica Lewinsky to convert the Oval Office into a sexually hostile workplace environment, even as he gazed into her gullible eyes, inter alia, and promised that he would divorce Hillary and would marry Lewinsky after his presidency. If we are to believe the accuser — as Hillary tells us we must — he raped Juanita Broaddrick. Ultimately, the state bar of Arkansas disbarred Bill Clinton for perjury.

Bill Clinton is the modern-day hero of the Democrat Party. He appears as the star of the Democrat convention every four years. His words inspire Democrats. He is legend. The mainstream media cannot praise and glorify him enough. Hillary Clinton sends him on the campaign trail to stump for her, to speak for her. His word, his endorsement, is sacrosanct.

And yet he has been a serial sexual abuser for decades — “because [he] could.” Alongside him, always defending him and thereby assuring her own continued access to power, to serve her own voracious ambitions, Hillary Clinton actively helped destroy women victims who spoke out.

Suddenly now the same mainstream media, who have found no one more suited in character and temperament for the presidency than Bill Clinton, instruct us that Donald Trump contrarily is disqualified for the presidency because a “hot mic” eleven years ago caught him ogling and boasting disgustingly about sexual exploits?

It is impossible not to be disgusted with all of these characters. We are mired in a kakistocracy of epic proportions. Trump with his bizarre ego, the insults and calumny and falsifications and exaggerations that have allowed others to puncture the urgently important and pure message that he repeatedly has compromised as its leading messenger. Even more, Hillary Clinton with her congenital lying, to the point of lying about why she was named “Hillary.” She inspires no trust in its most absolute vacuum. Travelgate. Rose Law Firm billing records. Cattle Futures. Lincoln Bedroom. Missing White House furniture. Leaving the White House “broke” and emerging a Top One Percenter, worth hundreds of millions without building a thing but instead selling access and influence to government contracts and regulations, while delivering 15-minute backroom “speeches” at $225,000 a pop to Wall Street insiders.

The death tax is an inevitable point of disagreement in a presidential campaign. Donald Trump would eliminate it to promote growth. Hillary Clinton would raise it—up to 65%, while lowering the exemption for estates to $3.5 million—to promote equality. The outcomes would be as different as their intentions.

What’s less remarked upon is that estate taxes are always double taxation. Estates are built with savings that have already been taxed as income, or soon will be. Even contributions to tax-deferred retirement accounts will be subject to the heirs’ income taxes over time.

The superrich can afford to give away assets during their lives or hire estate planners to help minimize the tax. Their estates often wind up being taxed at a lower effective rate than those of merely affluent individuals. The main victims of the death tax are middle-income savers and small-business owners who die before transferring ownership to their children.

The estate tax is badly structured, with very high rates—up to 40% today—but a very narrow tax base. That’s why it produces so little revenue, only $19 billion last year. But because the tax has recoil effects, even this revenue is illusory.

Because the tax reduces the stock of capital, it lowers the productivity of labor and reduces wages and employment. Much of the burden of the tax is shifted to working people. Research suggests that the estate tax depresses wages and employment enough to actually lower total federal revenue over time.

So what about the plans offered by Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton? Analysts at the Tax Foundation, where I work, have run the numbers using two models: one of the estate tax, based on historical filings, and another to estimate the economic effects on capital formation, GDP, profits, wages and federal revenue from those sources.

Mr. Trump plans to eliminate the estate tax. As a partial offset, he would end step-up in basis—which currently excuses unrealized gains in an estate from capital gains tax—for estates over $10 million. Our models suggest that these changes would raise GDP by 0.7% over 10 years and create 142,000 full-time equivalent jobs. After-tax incomes for the bottom four-fifths of Americans would rise by 0.6% to 0.7%, mainly due to wage growth. For the top fifth of the population, after-tax incomes would rise between 0.9% and 1.7%.

The Treasury would lose $288 billion in estate-tax revenue over the 10-year budget window, assuming no effect on the economy, but only $46 billion after taking the rise in GDP, wages and other income into account. Revenue losses in the first six years would be almost entirely offset by gains later in the decade, with more gains thereafter. Both the public and the government would be net winners.

It’s no secret that progressive elites despise religion, but it’s still striking to see their contempt expressed so bluntly as in the leaked email chains that include Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

The source for these documents is WikiLeaks. The Clinton campaign won’t confirm or deny their authenticity, and Mr. Podesta is implying that Russian intelligence hacked his email to help Donald Trump. Maybe so, and these hacks should be met with a forceful U.S. response. But the emails are now in the public domain, and the left celebrated WikiLeaks that damaged the U.S. effort in Afghanistan.

The emails show that in 2011 Mr. Podesta and Jennifer Palmieri, who is now a senior Clinton campaign official, received a note from their Center for American Progress colleague John Halpin. Mr. Halpin notes a media report that our News Corp. superiors, Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch and CEO Robert Thomson, raise their kids Catholic. Mr. Halpin observes that many leading conservatives are Catholic and opines that they “must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations.”

Ms. Palmieri responds, “I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangelicals.”

This is a window into the intolerant secular soul of the Democratic establishment and perhaps explains why it has done so little to accommodate requests for religious liberty from the Little Sisters of the Poor. Team Clinton apparently views religion merely as a justification people adopt for their views on politics and gender. Don’t Clinton campaign advisers think it’s at least possible that a person might be motivated by sincere belief?

Mr. Halpin’s response to Ms. Palmieri was: “Excellent point. They can throw around ‘Thomistic’ thought and ‘subsidiarity’ and sound sophisticated because no one knows what the hell they’re talking about.”

We’ll leave Thomism to the theologians, but subsidiarity is a concept that the left would do well to consider. It is the idea that social problems are best addressed by the nearest and smallest competent authority, rather than by a faraway state. Individual acts of charity can be highly effective, but the Clinton platform sees virtue only in a centralized bureaucracy sending out welfare checks regardless of results.

Clinton advisers would also rather force the church to accept their teachings. In 2012 activist Sandy Newman emailed Mr. Podesta to say there “needs to be a Catholic Spring, in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages dictatorship.” As if people are forced to believe at the point of a gun. Mr. Podesta responds with an update on what he’s been doing to prepare “for a moment like this.”