Trump won. You lost. Get over it.

The whole "Trump won, you lost, get over it" thing is baffling to me.

Kind of reduces our presidential election to a Trumpian tweet on a high school basketball victory.

"I won, you lost, Na...na...na, na...na!"

Kind of juvenile.

It's not like I had money on it or anything.

I've voted in every presidential election since 1972 and - with the exception of Richard Nixon and Barack Obama (twice) - they have ALL lost.

Whether I or any other Clinton voter got their heart's desire for president (and for Bernie fan Clinton voters, that wasn't even in the cards) is insignificant.

The fact that I and pretty much every professional poll and prediction model - including Trump's - got it wrong is an issue for the polling and prediction professions - not me.

MY issue is that we have a president-elect with enormous conflicts of interest who is completely ignorant (and proudly so) on foreign policy, inexperienced in government or military service, and temperamentally thin-skinned and unstable taking command of the most powerful, nuclear-armed military in the history of the world.

And he was elected with an almost 3 million deficit in the popular vote through a combination of nativist, xenophobic, racist, and violent rhetoric going WAY beyond "dog whistles" and appealing to the lowest human impulses imaginable, all adorned with factually assertions that were demonstrably untrue.

And, of course, the Russian intelligence services.

Now, as president-elect, he uses Twitter to dabble in real time with decades worth of bi-partisan foreign policies, allows his children to quite nakedly sell access to the president-elect's family, and gives every indication of screwing his very base by stocking the cabinet with Goldman Sachs, Exxon, conspiracy theorists, and people publicly committed to destroying the agencies they are being selected to run.

And those who voted for him - EDUCATED PEOPLE WITH EVERY REASON TO KNOW BETTER - don't care about ANY OF IT.

So, Trump voters, the bare fact that your horse won and my horse lost is the very LEAST of my concerns at the moment.

Being 62 years old, unmarried, and childless, I'm far more concerned about the future YOUR children and YOUR grandchildren will inherit than that my $2 bet on "Road Apple" in the 4th didn't payoff for me.

Maybe it's a good time to remind Christians, if no others, that while we go along wishing everyone a "Merry Christmas," it is actually Advent: a time of fasting, mourning, and mindful of the return of Christ in judgment.

******************
"While it is difficult to keep in mind in the midst of holiday celebrations, shopping, lights and decorations, and joyful carols, Advent is intended to be a season of fasting, much like Lent, and there are a variety of ways that this time of mourning works itself out in the season. Reflection on the violence and evil in the world cause us to cry out to God to make things right—to put death’s dark shadows to flight. Our exile in the present makes us look forward to our future Exodus. And our own sinfulness and need for grace leads us to pray for the Holy Spirit to renew his work in conforming us into the image of Christ."


What is Advent?

The Trump Event

He lost the popular vote but won the electoral college vote. The system worked exactly the way it was envisioned by the founders such that the industrialized, increasingly populated cities (at that point mostly in the north) couldn't run roughshod over the agricultural south. And, yes, slavery and the 3/5 compromise were also big parts of that equation. The "fly over" states wanted their rights protected even before there were airplanes to fly over. :-)

If the Electoral College, today, determines that he is unqualified for the office of president due to his lack of relevant knowledge, experience, and temperament the system WOULD ALSO work exactly the way it was envisioned by the founders.

That's not going to happen. (Though I've been so thoroughly wrong on this - along with most other folks - that who the hell knows?)

If it DID happen, the House of Representatives would surely decide in his favor, the never-trumpers evaporating like the morning dew on a hot day.

So Donald Trump will become the next president of the United States and - emolument clause or not - is not going to be impeached on Day One. Don't worry, the Republican lawyers will come up with something.

It's not impossible that he might turn out to be a good - maybe even a great - president.

I just see no grounds beyond an unsinkable optimism to believe he will be. Certainly nothing he has done since the election has given any reasonable grounds for hope to anyone other than Goldman Sachs and the fossil fuel industry.

And Vladimir Putin, of course. Well played, sir, well played!

It may be that Trump's campaign - and maybe Trump himself - were aware of and thankful for Putin's help. If so, that's treason.

But it may be that Putin decided he was just the "useful idiot" he was looking for and did all the rest on his own.

If that's the case, IT REALLY DOESN'T MATTER which candidate he was tipping the balance for because his TRUE target was the delegitimization of western, democratic institutions.

And THAT clash of civilizations and war of ideas is a challenge to which President Trump must rise.

Republican No Longer :-(

I have updated my voter registration to Party: None.

I may VOTE Republican again on a case-by-case basis (as I did this election), but I no longer wish to wear that label under the burden of a Trump administration and a craven Never Trump GOP that caved despite the very real threat it represents to American security, the US Constitution, and democratic institutions such as a free press, freedom of religion, civility, and a commitment to the facts whether or not the facts on any given occasion support one's ideology.

FOR THE RECORD...

FOR THE RECORD... I hope President-Elect Trump's administration proves capable and successful. America cannot afford otherwise which, apparently, was not a concern when the Republican party did everything it could to de-legitimize President Obama for partisan gain.

And we're only a week into this.

But with his naming of a white nationalist, anti-Semite to be his director of strategy - a position he puts on par with Chief of Staff - as well as putting all his assets in an Eyes-Wide-Open Non-Trust with his three adult children running the show AND planning on giving all three of them Top Secret security briefings (no conflict of interest there, no sir! :-) ), I see no reason to be hopeful in that regard.

Triaging Trump

Despite systematic and strategic obstruction on the part of Republicans, President Obama will be remembered as a successful president who left the office with the country in better shape than he found it.

Unlike the Republican "scorched earth" approach to Obama I hope President Trump, too, is a successful president who leaves the office with the nation in better shape than when he assumed it.

But while I think it bad for the nation to hope for Trump's failure as a president, Republicans must not be rewarded for their attempted de-legitimization of the nation's first African-American president.

Therefore I believe that first; the Democratic minority in the Senate must deny consideration of any of President Trump's nominee to the Supreme Court.

Republicans should be put on notice that, should they choose to use the "nuclear option" and remove the filibuster, then Democratic senators will use every imaginable procedural obstacle against their passing of any legislation whatsoever for the balance of President Trump's presidency.

And, of course, they would also leave this game-changing power in the hands of the Democratic majority that will surely succeed them at some future point.

Second, Democrats must use the same tactic to block any attempt by Republicans to weaken the Bill of Rights to further President Trump's oft-repeated threats against women, people of color, Muslims, the disabled, LGBT persons or any other group he attempts to legally marginalize.

Third, Democrats must recognize that - aside from those two extraordinary remedies in response to the Republican Party's extraordinary delegitimazation of Barack Obama as the duly elected President of the United States - Republicans did win the election legally even if they won it through corrupting their public offices for political gain during the last eight years.

For that reason, as well as the fact that America cannot afford a failed Trump presidency or further assaults on democratic institutions (such as not honoring legal agreements with other nations, judges deemed corrupt by reason of their ethnicity, and a reserved willingness to question the legitimacy of free and fair and transparent elections), Democrats must function as the loyal party in opposition ensuring their minority voice is heard but allowing the majority party to decide.

And given that stance, Democrats (and others) must mobilize public opinion to their side to ensure that the Republican majority does the right thing whether or not they choose to do it for the right reason.

UNEASY ABOUT PROTESTS

UNEASY ABOUT PROTESTS against the election results. I share the protesters' alarm, but this was not a stolen or illegitimate election. PROTEST TRUMP'S POLICIES... not the election itself.

The electoral process and peaceful transfer of power should be a source of national pride and an example of TRUE "American exceptionalism - even if I don't feel particular proud of much of the rest.
Thousands of anti-Trump protesters take to streets of U.S. cities (Reuters)

UNEASY ABOUT PROTESTS

UNEASY ABOUT PROTESTS against the election results. I share the protesters' alarm, but this was not a stolen or illegitimate election. PROTEST TRUMP'S POLICIES... not the election itself.

The electoral process and peaceful transfer of power should be a source of national pride and an example of TRUE "American exceptionalism - even if I don't feel particular proud of much of the rest.

Thousands of anti-Trump protesters take to streets of U.S. cities (Reuters)

The So-Called "Non-Educated" Voter

On November 9th, 1936 (I believe) my parents, William F. Bekkenhuis, Jr. and Muriel Murray, were married.

With all the talk about "uneducated", rural, white folk in this election, it occurs to me that neither of my parents had the opportunity my brother and I had to go to college.

But they were not "uneducated." My mom read the newspapers and the "ladies" magazines and my dad read, "True" and various books, including "Conscience of a Conservative," "Crusade in Europe," by Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, and a number of novels.

They both read National Geographic. And watched the TV specials.

He was a Lt. in the National Guard and read books on business by Peter Drucker as well as technical books on oil burner repair (which is how he started with Esso before becoming a salesman). He took courses in piloting small craft and qualified to get a real estate license.

I tried to remember how far they got in school (8th grade? 12th?) but now I'm not sure I ever asked them. Why would I?

It was not an issue.

It was obvious they valued education and were curious and thoughtful.

So when I talk about "low information" or "uneducated" voters, I DON'T mean folks like my parents. Because they VALUED knowledge and aspired to it with every opportunity they had.

I mean those who really have no interest in learning anything new, particularly things challenge their current beliefs and - worst - consider their lack of knowledge some type of high achievement that should command assent to the repeated nonsense they spout.

Thank you, mom and dad, for teaching me to respect educational opportunities, whether formal or from life.

Thumbscrew (def)

My contribution to the political science lexicon.

thumbscrew
noun  thumb·screw \-ˌskrü\
Simple Definition of thumbscrew

: An online posted response to a thoughtful political discussion by a troll constrained by a 140 character limit, the lack of a keyboard, a short attention span, and an inability to engage in complex, abstract,  and non-binary cognition. Often confined to photoshopped memes.

THERE IS NO CONSPIRACY

THERE IS NO CONSPIRACY - but this election is rigged. Rigged by the media which starved Trump's Republican rivals (any of whom, with the possible exception of Ted Cruz, would have at least been bare-bones competent for the job) as well as Bernie Sanders of the "earned media" that they ACTUALLY EARNED through their experience and their policies and their temperament.

And, by doing so, they enabled a minority of Republicans to form a clot which is currently giving the Republican Party a possibly fatal stroke AND TO MAKE HILLARY CLINTON THE NEXT PRESIDENT as well as quite possibly hand her a governing majority.

So, to the Mike Talottas of this world I say, YOU'VE BEEN HAD.

The only POSSIBLE conspiracy is that the Clinton's diabolically nudged Trump into the race knowing - as they know the man - that the rest was a foregone conclusion.

AND IF SHE'S THAT EFFING CLEVER THEN *SHE'S* THE ONE I WANT DEALING WITH PUTIN!

Trump's Mortal Sin: Inconveniencing Me :-)

"War is hell."
-General William Tecumseh Sherman

"Political campaigns are an inconvenient pain in the ass."
-William Francis Bekkenhuis III 

I have again donated more money than I should and have cancelled the Saturday night dinner and movie event through the election to allow me to commit at least half a day on Saturday to the Clinton campaign through to Election Day (which I'm taking off to shuttle folks to the polls if needed).

But even as his campaign and his very personality come unglued, I'll be God damned if I withhold any of the feeble support of which I am capable to the Clinton campaign.

I never liked the Clintons. I never voted for the Clintons.

But eight years of George W. Bush followed by eight years of Republican obstructionism aimed at delegitimizing the nation's first black president and every indication that Republicans will once again double-down and do all in their power to delegitimize the first woman president changes one's perspective.

Or should.

A REPUBLICAN GHOST INSIDE THE CLINTON MACHINE

For the first time since I first voted for president in 1972, I have donated money to and participated in a political campaign (rather than just pretending I'm participating with Facebook rants).

It's been educational. "The ground game" is now more than a phrase to me. As Mark Twain allegedly replied when asked if he believed in infant baptism, "Believe in it? Hell, I've SEEN it!"  

I've done three events.

The first was the opening of the Clinton headquarters in center city Bethlehem, PA. It is the second Clinton campaign headquarters in the Lehigh Valley alone. At the time it opened there were only TWO Trump campaign organizations in the entire STATE.

For the second event, two days later, I did an hour and a half of telephone work, calling registered Democrats asking them if they supported Hillary for president.

If they said 'no,' we simply thanked them for their time.

If they said 'yes,' we used a scale to estimate their level of commitment and attempted to get the most committed to volunteer for the campaign.

Then, on Saturday (yesterday) I was one of about fifteen drivers for canvassers. Close to fifty volunteers from New York City arrived on a bus to canvass. New York is considered unreachable by Trump so the Clinton campaign is using those resources to get out the vote in the suburbs of Philadelphia, including the Lehigh Valley.

Drivers dropped off their teams who then knocked on doors asking folks if they intended to vote and – if they did – had them fill out 'commitment cards' such that follow up could ensure that they were registered and could make it to the polls.

While this was going on, back at headquarters, volunteers were registering walk-in voters, doing data entry on the data drivers were bringing back from the field and ensuring canvassers had the forms and cards they needed. At all three events at headquarters there was an ASTONISHING amount of hot and cold food, deserts, and snacks as well as bottled water.

Now, here's the thing.

I've described THREE DAYS at one of TWO headquarters in the Lehigh Valley ALONE.

This type of activity (as well as rallies and get-togethers at people's homes) has been going on for the last three weeks and will continue daily through the election.

That A LOT of people volunteering A LOT of money, in-kind gifts of food and water, and time DAY AFTER DAY AFTER DAY.

And it's happening throughout the battleground states and into some traditionally red states as well.

So the next time you hear about Hillary Clinton's ENTHUSIASM gap, take it with a grain of salt.

Donald Trump's campaign has almost NONE of this, relying almost exclusively on one-off events with no follow up and television mayhem.

I'm pretty sure that while this won't be a Hillary slam-dunk in the popular vote, I am anticipating a WIDE lead in the Electoral College.

An Ontological Election

For the first time in my life, a presidential election is taking place in which the conflict of constituencies has moved from one to three theaters

In every other elections, from Eisenhower / Stevenson to Obama / Romney, the conflict has been at the level of policy, with some modest dirty tricks and questionable voting thrown into the mix.

Nixon brought dirty tricks to new heights and from 1992 on conservatives in general and Republicans in particular began laying the groundwork for the international embarrassment of an election we are having this year.

The 2016 election jumped the rails of normality almost the moment that Donald Trump entered the race.

With his skill at playing the media he went from a joke to the Republican presidential nominee beating a large field of Republican candidates who, for the most part and however much I might disagree with them on policy, would be a competent Commander in Chief.

By the time Trump was nominated, the question was no longer between good policy and bad policy, but between solid if flawed competence and dangerous incompetence at the level of knowledge, experience, and temperament.

Now, in the home stretch, it has become clear that the battle occurs on a third plane: reality itself.

The election pits an understanding of reality that most of us began learning in grade school. A reality that finds the deductive logic of mathematics and the inductive logic of empiricism and the sciences persuasive. A reality in which facts both exist and matter. A reality that produces artifacts such as Scientific American, the Washington Post, the New England Journal of Medicine, etc.

Against that, we have a reality the produces artifacts such as The Drudge Report, Breitbart, and InfoWars. Or maybe, it's more accurate to say those artifacts have created the reality rather than the other way around.

This election is more than just a decision about the nature of America.

It is about the nature of reality itself.

A Secular Ethic In A Christian Context

1. LIFE MATTERS: The universal human experience is that life in its ultimate context or backstory, whether that context takes secular or mythological form, has meaning, value, and purpose beyond itself.
   
2. DEATH THREATENS: The anticipation of death experienced in fear, disappointment, and suffering fundamentally threatens this ultimate meaning, value, and purpose by challenging this context.
   
3. FEAR CORRUPTS: The threat of death, evoked in our continual experiences of people, places, and things - including those dark aspects of ourselves that we, our society, or our culture find unacceptable - corrupts our actions such that we become alienated from and destructive towards ourselves, other people, and nature. These corrupted actions may take the form of:
   
• Aggression: attempting to defeat the threat of death through the control or destruction of those anticipations,
  
• Escape: attempting to flee or ignore or be distracted from those anticipations, or
  
• Servitude: attempting to achieve a “negotiated peace” with the threat of death through service to some talisman vainly thought to possess power over death.
  
4. DEATH IS DISARMED: As compared to the corrupt response to the threat of death, there is a freely available freedom from death and its anticipations that replaces destruction with healing and alienation with reconciliation in this world as we know it.
   
5. PEACE IS ESTABLISHED: While this freedom from death and its anticipations is latent in all human experience, ironically it is most unambiguous and militant in our encounters with death and its anticipations where, rather than being explicitly defeated or destroyed, those encounters are subverted into occasions of healing and reconciliation.

Hillary Clinton: A Notorious Case of Government Corruption

If you clicked on this because you thought Bekkenhuis has finally come to his senses, the blinders have been lifted from his eyes, and he is staring into the naked, bottomless, abyss of Clintonian corruption, conflict of interest, and the stacks of skeletons - in some cases quite literal - in Hillary’s closet…

Slap yourself.

No. I mean REALLY hard!

That’s better.

I’ll get to Hillary Clinton. But, reading the nonsense coming from the right - adopted, post-Bernie, by some on the left who should KNOW better - it seems apparent that a lot of folks would not recognize REAL CORRUPTION if they saw it.

So, let’s look at the sad story of Mark Ciavarella. Most readers will be unfamiliar with his story and, for those who ARE familiar with it, they probably didn’t know the guy’s name because, unlike Hillary Clinton, he does not have two-plus decades of politically-driven, often government financed, media circus making him a household name.

Because, you see, you only HAVE two-plus decades of feces blizzards when your political enemies HAVE FAILED TO UNCOVER any evidence of government corruption WHATSOEVER.

In the case of former judge Ciavarella, there WAS evidence, a LOT of it, and he is in federal prison and will quite possibly die of old age in prison. And most people will have never heard of him.

Who is Mark Ciavarella?

Ciavarella pleaded guilty on February 13, 2009, pursuant to a plea agreement, to federal charges of honest services fraud, wire fraud and tax evasion in connection with receiving $2.6 million in kickbacks from Robert Powell and Robert Mericle, the co-owner and builder respectively, of two private, for-profit juvenile facilities. In exchange for these kickbacks, Ciavarella sentenced children to extended stays in juvenile detention for offenses as minimal as mocking a principal on Myspace, trespassing in a vacant building, and shoplifting DVDs from Wal-mart.[7] More specifically, the crimes charged were: conspiracy to deprive the public of the "intangible right of honest services", or corruption, and conspiracy to defraud the United States by failing to report income to the Internal Revenue Service.[8] Ciavarella tendered his resignation to Governor Ed Rendell on January 23, 2009, prior to official publication of the charges.[2]

The plea agreement[9] called for Ciavarella to serve up to seven years in prison, pay fines and restitution, and accept responsibility for the crimes.[10] However, Ciavarella denied that there was a connection between the juvenile sentences he rendered and the kickbacks he received.[11][12] In part because of this denial, on July 30, 2009, Judge Edwin M. Kosik of Federal District Court in Scranton, Pennsylvania rejected the plea agreement.

***snip***

On September 9, 2009, a federal grand jury in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania returned a 48 count indictment against Ciavarella and Conahan,[16] which included racketeering, fraud, money laundering, extortion, bribery, and federal tax violations. Both judges were arraigned on the charges on September 15, 2009.[17][18]

***snip***

On February 18, 2011, a jury in federal court found Ciavarella guilty of racketeering. This charge stemmed from Ciavarella accepting $997,000 in illegal payments from Robert Mericle, the real estate developer of PA Child Care, and attorney Robert Powell, a co-owner of the facility. Ciavarella was also on trial for 38 other counts including accepting numerous payments from Mericle and Powell as well as tax evasion.[20]

On August 11, 2011, Ciavarella was sentenced to 28 years in federal prison. On May 24, 2013, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals vacated one count of the indictment against Ciavarella, but upheld all other charges, as well as his sentence.[21]

Mark Ciavarella (Wikipedia)

Okay, boys and girls, THAT’S what REAL corruption looks like. Judge sends teens to a for-profit juvenile detention facility and gets a kick-back (which, at one point, he called an innocent “finder’s fee” :-) ) from the contractor and hides the money he receives, not declaring it on his income tax filing.

Indicted, brought to trial before a criminal court, convicted, sentence upheld on appeal, currently in - and probably will die in - prison, with lurid, media attention every step of the way.

Except for the lurid, media attention - in their case, over decades - with content generated by the “loyal party of opposition” at taxpayer expense, NOTHING OF THE SORT has befallen EITHER Clinton.

And folks have looked a GREAT DEAL HARDER at Bill and Hillary Clinton than they have at this guy whose name you’ve probably already forgotten, as have I. (Might be my age. :-) )

So let’s compare this textbook example of corruption with Hillary Clinton’s relationship to the Clinton Foundation.

First, what is the Clinton Foundation?

********************

The Clinton Foundation (founded in 1997 as the William J. Clinton Foundation,[4] and called beginning in 2013 the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation[5]) is a nonprofit corporation under section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. tax code. It was established by former President of the United States Bill Clinton with the stated mission to "strengthen the capacity of people in the United States and throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence."[6] Its offices are located in New York City and Little Rock, Arkansas.

Through 2016 the foundation had raised an estimated $2 billion from U.S. corporations, foreign governments and corporations, political donors, and various other groups and individuals.[3] The acceptance of funds from wealthy donors has been a source of controversy.[3][7] The foundation "has won accolades from philanthropy experts and has drawn bipartisan support, with members of the George W. Bush administration often participating in its programs."[3]

Clinton Foundation (Wikipedia)

Second, what is the relationship between a conflict of interest and corruption?

A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial interest, or otherwise, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation of the individual or organization.

The presence of a conflict of interest is independent of the occurrence of impropriety. Therefore, a conflict of interest can be discovered and voluntarily defused before any corruption occurs. A widely used definition is: "A conflict of interest is a set of circumstances that creates a risk that professional judgement or actions regarding a primary interest will be unduly influenced by a secondary interest."[1]

Conflict of interest (Wikipedia)

So, what is the “primary interest” in both cases?

In the “Kids for cash” case, Ciavarella was a judge whose primary interest  was to uphold the trust bestowed on him by the citizenry to ensure that people who came before his court all received fair and impartial treatment according to the law.

In Hillary’s case, she was the Secretary of State whose primary interest was to uphold the trust bestowed on her by the citizenry (via presidential nomination and senatorial confirmation) to defend the United States Constitution, specifically, by assisting and advising the President of the United States in crafting and implementing foreign policy.

The “secondary interest” in the Ciavarella case was his relationship with a government contractor who financially benefitted from any youthful offender who was remanded to that contractor’s youth detention facility.

The “secondary interest” in the Clinton case is her relationship to a charitable foundation that receives funding - sometimes a great deal of funding - from persons and entities whose is dependent to some degree or other to the foreign policy of the United States.

I BELIEVE IT FAIR TO SAY THAT A CONFLICT OF INTEREST OBTAINS IN BOTH CASES.

So what is the difference between the two cases?

Why is Ciavarella in jail and Hillary, come January, will - in all likelihood - be sworn in as President of the United States?

If you live in the Alt Right’s Alt Reality, it’s because people who “know the truth” about the Clintons end up dead or silenced. (Putin was their star pupil at the One-World Government academy.)

But for those still living on the home planet, there is a much simpler, in-your-face explanation (and its simplicity and the public character of its evidence ALONE disqualifies it from Alt Reality’s “Boys List of Nefarious Facts.”)

The fact that the one case involves a for-profit business and the other a non-profit charity is insignificant. The fact that there might have been personal relationships between judge and contractor and Clinton and donor MIGHT be significant… or it might not.

It is an ordinary thing that one’s relationship might influence one’s decision. It’s a commonplace in government service.

It is perhaps regrettable but not particularly surprising that politicians in high office are ALWAYS ambitious and OFTEN of the financial elite.

It’s also not particularly surprising that elites tend to have elite neighbors, elite coworkers, elite associates, attend elite churches, and send their kids to elite schools. And when they get involved in business projects or charitable causes and need help, they work their elite friends in high places rather than call Joe the Butcher at the local grocery and ask him to donate $10 bucks to the local food pantry.

Bernie Sanders AND Donald Trump say this “government by elites” (and particularly financial elites) IS the number one problem in American politics and they will champion the cause of ordinary, non-elite folks (in Trump’s case, somewhat ridiculously - like a serial arsonist leading a fire safety campaign :-) )

Again, that may or may not be true (at least it’s a belief that appears to have come from the home planet) BUT THAT’S NOT THE ISSUE..

The SIGNIFICANT issue is NOT whether judges and Secretaries of State HAVE secondary interests that could confuse their personal and civic obligations but rather whether the secondary influence is so compelling that it “unduly” influences the execution of what should be one’s PRIMARY responsibility.

In the Ciavarella case, there was a great deal of evidence that it did.

Youthful offenders were given inappropriate, lengthy detentions for their offenses (this, the “quid) and the judge received, in essence, financial compensation (for that, the “quo”) for USING HIS PUBLIC TRUST to advantage the contractor’s business.

Was there a quid pro quo in the Clinton case?

I think Vox’s article by Matthew Yglesias says it best.

Here’s the bottom line: Serving as secretary of state while your husband raises millions of dollars for a charitable foundation that is also a vehicle for your family’s political ambitions really does create a lot of space for potential conflicts of interest. Journalists have, rightly, scrutinized the situation closely. And however many times they take a run at it, they don’t come up with anything more scandalous than the revelation that maybe billionaire philanthropists have an easier time getting the State Department to look into their visa problems than an ordinary person would.

***snip***

The real news here ought to be just the opposite [of corruption]: Donors to the Clinton Foundation may believe they are buying Hillary Clinton’s political allegiance, but the reality is that they are not. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is someone, somewhere whom Clinton met with whom she wouldn’t have met with had that person not been a Clinton donor of some kind. But what we know is that despite very intensive media scrutiny of the Clinton Foundation, we don’t have hard evidence of any kind of corrupt activity. That’s the story.

The AP’s big exposé on Hillary meeting with Clinton Foundation donors is a mess (Vox)

So, yes.

Hillary Clinton has a significant conflict of interest between her public duty as President and her private interest in the affairs of the Clinton Foundation - and, IF ELECTED, those need to be addressed. 

And it’s more than fair game, it’s their OBLIGATION AS JOURNALISTS for the members of the media to hold her feet to the fire until she says NOW, BEFORE the election, HOW she intends to address conflicts of interest.

But that deserves NO MORE ATTENTION than the issue of how Donald Trump will disentangle himself from his far more complex and international business interests that go beyond simply driving out Paul Manafort for playing footsie with Putin’s man in the Ukraine and not being completely forthcoming about it.

And I haven’t heard squat about that.

I also wish Republicans, so eager to spend taxpayer-funded time on endless Hillary investigations rather than, say, passing legislation or confirming judges or authorizing - or not authorizing - Obama’s use of force, had given the Bush / Cheney administration a Hillary-level investigation regarding the relationships THEY (and much of their cabinet) had with the fossil fuel industry.

Most of the activities of the Energy Task Force have not been disclosed to the public, even though Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests (since 19 April 2001) have sought to gain access to its materials. The organisations Judicial Watch and Sierra Club launched a law suit (U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia: Judicial Watch Inc. v. Department of Energy, et al., Civil Action No. 01-0981) under the FOIA to gain access to the task force's materials. After several years of legal wrangling, in May, 2005 an appeals court permitted the Energy Task Force's records to remain secret.[14][15]

In 2001, the energy task force that Cheney had commenced in secret finally went public.[16] Soon afterwards, the United States House of Representatives approved the measures and decided to legalize the new policy set forth by Cheney. Upon revision of the policy it was evident that many of the regulations and recommendations were pro-Oil company.[citation needed] The policy assigned little accountability for mistakes or harmful actions to those in authority, especially the government officials. This policy was to provide very specific guidelines to run the Energy Task Force efficiently and effectively.[17]

Energy Task Force - Controversy (Wikipedia)

BUT, in comparison to Mark Ciavarella, THERE IS NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that Hillary’s relationship with the foundation corrupted her judgment as Secretary of State.

Resources for Economics

Resources for Economics

Stolen, in its entirety, from various Wikipedia sources.

• In economics, a market that runs under laissez-faire policies is called a free market, it is "free" from the government, in the sense that the government makes no attempt to intervene through taxes, subsidies, minimum wages, price ceilings, etc.
• Well-functioning markets of the real world are never perfect, but basic structural characteristics can be approximated for real world markets, for example:
• many small buyers and sellers
• buyers and sellers have equal access to information
• products are comparable
• There exists a popular thought, especially among economists, that free markets would have a structure of a perfect competition.[citation needed] The logic behind this thought is that market failures are thought to be caused by other exogenic systems, and after removing those exogenic systems ("freeing" the markets) the free markets could run without market failures.[citation needed]
• As an argument against such a logic there is a second view that suggests that the source of market failures is inside the market system itself, therefore the removal of other interfering systems would not result in markets with a structure of perfect competition.
• Thus according to this view, capitalists are not enhancing the balance of their team versus the team of consumer-workers, so the market system needs a "referee" from outside that balances the game. In this second framework, the role of a "referee" of the market system is usually to be given to a democratic government.

Market (economics)

• Adam Smith, in his seminal work The Wealth of Nations, described wealth as "the annual produce of the land and labour of the society". This "produce" is, at its simplest, that which satisfies human needs and wants of utility.
• Adam Smith saw wealth creation as the combination of materials, labour, land, and technology in such a way as to capture a profit (excess above the cost of production).[8] The theories of David Ricardo, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, in the 18th century and 19th century built on these views of wealth that we now call classical economics.

Wealth

• An economy (From Greek οίκος – "household" and νέμoμαι – "manage") is an area of the production, distribution, or trade, and consumption of goods and services by different agents in a given geographical location.

Economy

• Macroeconomics (from the Greek prefix makro- meaning "large" and economics) is a branch of economics dealing with the performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole rather than individual markets.
• Macroeconomists study aggregated indicators such as GDP, unemployment rates, national income, price indices, and the interrelations among the different sectors of the economy to better understand how the whole economy functions. Macroeconomists develop models that explain the relationship between such factors as national income, output, consumption, unemployment, inflation, savings, investment, international trade and international finance. In contrast, microeconomics is primarily focused on the actions of individual agents, such as firms and consumers, and how their behavior determines prices and quantities in specific markets.

Macroeconomics

• Microeconomics (from Greek prefix mikro- meaning "small") is a branch of economics that studies the behavior of individuals and firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of limited resources.[1][2][3]
• One goal of microeconomics is to analyze the market mechanisms that establish relative prices among goods and services and allocate limited resources among alternative uses. Microeconomics also analyzes market failure, where markets fail to produce efficient results, and describes the theoretical conditions needed for perfect competition.
• 2    Microeconomic topics
  2.1    Demand, supply, and equilibrium
  2.2    Measurement of elasticities
  2.3    Consumer demand theory
  2.4    Theory of production
  2.5    Costs of production
  2.6    Perfect competition
  2.7    Monopoly
  2.8    Oligopoly
  2.9    Market structure
  2.10    Game theory
  2.11    Labour economics
  2.12    Welfare economics
  2.13    Economics of information

Microeconomics

• The business cycle or economic cycle is the downward and upward movement of gross domestic product (GDP) around its long-term growth trend.[1] These fluctuations typically involve shifts over time between periods of relatively rapid economic growth (expansions or booms), and periods of relative stagnation or decline (contractions or recessions).
• Within mainstream economics, the debate over external (exogenous) versus internal (endogenous) being the causes of the economic cycles, with the classical school (now neo-classical) arguing for exogenous causes and the underconsumptionist (now Keynesian) school arguing for endogenous causes. These may also broadly be classed as "supply-side" and "demand-side" explanations: supply-side explanations may be styled, following Say's law, as arguing that "supply creates its own demand", while demand-side explanations argue that effective demand may fall short of supply, yielding a recession or depression.
• This debate has important policy consequences: proponents of exogenous causes of crises such as neoclassicals largely argue for minimal government policy or regulation (laissez faire), as absent these external shocks, the market functions, while proponents of endogenous causes of crises such as Keynesians largely argue for larger government policy and regulation, as absent regulation, the market will move from crisis to crisis.

Business cycle

• Mercantilism was an economic theory and practice, dominant in modernized parts of Europe during the 16th to the 18th century,[1] that promoted governmental regulation of a nation's economy for the purpose of augmenting state power at the expense of rival national powers.
• Mercantilism includes a national economic policy aimed at accumulating monetary reserves through a positive balance of trade, especially of finished goods.
• Historically, such policies frequently led to war and also motivated colonial expansion.
• High tariffs, especially on manufactured goods, are an almost universal feature of mercantilist policy. Other policies have included
  
  forbidding colonies to trade with other nations
  monopolizing markets with staple ports
  banning the export of gold and silver, even for payments
  forbidding trade to be carried in foreign ships
  subsidies on exports
  promoting manufacturing through research or direct subsidies
  limiting wages
  maximizing the use of domestic resources
  restricting domestic consumption through non-tariff barriers to trade.

Mercantilism

• Smith’s classical message is what he states at the very beginning: the two ways to create the “Wealth of Nations”. First, make productive labour even more productive by enhancing markets to deepen the division of labour (moving the neoclassical production curve to the right); and second, use more labour productively instead of unproductively, i.e., produce more goods and services that are inputs to the next economic reproduction circle, as opposed to goods used up in final consumption. In the words of Adam Smith:
• "The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes ... . [T]his produce ... bears a greater or smaller proportion to the number of those who are to consume it ... .[B]ut this proportion must in every nation be regulated by two different circumstances;
  first, by the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which its labour is generally applied; and,
  secondly, by the proportion between the number of those who are employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed [emphasis added]."[67]
• For neoclassical economists Smith’s central message is the Invisible hand[69] mentioned deep in the books and seen as a proto-neoclassical statement of the neoclassical General equilibrium theory:
• "[E]very individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain; and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.”[70]

The Wealth of Nations

• Classical economics (also known as liberal economics) asserts that markets function best with minimal government interference.[1]
• Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations in 1776 is usually considered to mark the beginning of classical economics.[2]
• The fundamental message in Smith's influential book was that the wealth of nations was based not on gold but on trade: That when two parties freely agree to exchange things of value, because both see a profit in the exchange, total wealth increases.
• Classical economics originally differed from modern libertarian economics in seeing a role for the state in providing for the common good. Smith acknowledged that there were areas where the market is not the best way to serve the public good, education being one example, and he took it as a given that the greater proportion of the costs of these public goods should be borne by those best able to afford them.[2]
• Classical economics assumes flexible prices both for goods and wages and predicts that supply can create its own demand – in other words, that production will generate enough income to allow its own products to be purchased. The Model T Ford serves as real-world example of this idea, which can be generalized when the goods being produced are affordable and have a clear benefit to the buyer.
• Many classical economists also believe in a gold standard.[2] and believe that the pervasive use of fiat money explains why classical economics has not worked in the short term.
• Classical economists blame the government for the Great Recession. They point to plans such as debt cancellation and taxing consumption instead of production as solutions to our economic problems.

Classical economics

• Neoclassical economics is a set of solutions to economics focusing on the determination of goods, outputs, and income distributions in markets through supply and demand. This determination is often mediated through a hypothesized maximization of utility by income-constrained individuals and of profits by firms facing production costs and employing available information and factors of production, in accordance with rational choice theory.[1]
• Neoclassical economics dominates microeconomics, and together with Keynesian economics forms the neoclassical synthesis which dominates mainstream economics today.[2] Although neoclassical economics has gained widespread acceptance by contemporary economists, there have been many critiques of neoclassical economics, often incorporated into newer versions of neoclassical theory.
• The change in economic theory from classical to neoclassical economics has been called the "marginal revolution", although it has been argued that the process was slower than the term suggests.[14] I

Neoclassical economics

• Marginalism is a theory of economics that attempts to explain the discrepancy in the value of goods and services by reference to their secondary, or marginal, utility. The reason why the price of diamonds is higher than that of water, for example, owes to the greater additional satisfaction of the diamonds over the water. Thus, while the water has greater total utility, the diamond has greater marginal utility.[1] The theory has been used in order to explain the difference in wages among essential and non-essential services, such as why the wages of an air-conditioner repairman exceed those of a childcare worker.[2]
• Although the central concept of marginalism is that of marginal utility, marginalists, following the lead of Alfred Marshall, drew upon the idea of marginal physical productivity in explanation of cost. The neoclassical tradition that emerged from British marginalism abandoned the concept of utility and gave marginal rates of substitution a more fundamental role in analysis.[citation needed] Marginalism is an integral part of mainstream economic theory.
• Marginal rate of substitution: In economics, the marginal rate of substitution (MRS) is the rate at which a consumer is ready to give up one good in exchange for another good while maintaining the same level of utility. At equilibrium consumption levels (assuming no externalities), marginal rates of substitution are identical.
• The "law" of diminishing marginal utility (also known as a "Gossen's First Law") is that, ceteris paribus, as additional amounts of a good or service are added to available resources, their marginal utilities are decreasing.
• A pioneer farmer had five sacks of grain, with no way of selling them or buying more. He had five possible uses: as basic feed for himself, food to build strength, food for his chickens for dietary variation, an ingredient for making whisky and feed for his parrots to amuse him. Then the farmer lost one sack of grain. Instead of reducing every activity by a fifth, the farmer simply starved the parrots as they were of less utility than the other four uses; in other words they were on the margin. And it is on the margin, and not with a view to the big picture, that we make economic decisions.[9]
• However, if there is a complementarity across uses, then an amount added can bring things past a desired tipping point, or an amount subtracted cause them to fall short. In such cases, the marginal utility of a good or service might actually be increasing.

Marginalism

• Keynesian economics (/ˈkeɪnziən/ kayn-zee-ən; or Keynesianism) are the various theories about how in the short run, and especially during recessions, economic output is strongly influenced by aggregate demand (total spending in the economy). In the Keynesian view, aggregate demand does not necessarily equal the productive capacity of the economy; instead, it is influenced by a host of factors and sometimes behaves erratically, affecting production, employment, and inflation.[1][2]
• Keynesian economists often argue that private sector decisions sometimes lead to inefficient macroeconomic outcomes which require active policy responses by the public sector, in particular, monetary policy actions by the central bank and fiscal policy actions by the government, in order to stabilize output over the business cycle.[3] Keynesian economics advocates a mixed economy – predominantly private sector, but with a role for government intervention during recessions.
• Keynesian economics served as the standard economic model in the developed nations during the later part of the Great Depression, World War II, and the post-war economic expansion (1945–1973), though it lost some influence following the oil shock and resulting stagflation of the 1970s.[4] The advent of the financial crisis of 2007–08 caused a resurgence in Keynesian thought,[5] which continues as new Keynesian economics.
• Keynes rejected the idea that cutting wages would cure recessions. He examined the explanations for this idea and found them all faulty. He also considered the most likely consequences of cutting wages in recessions, under various different circumstances. He concluded that such wage cutting would be more likely to make recessions worse rather than better.[10]
• Keynes, excessive saving, i.e. saving beyond planned investment, was a serious problem, encouraging recession or even depression. Excessive saving results if investment falls, perhaps due to falling consumer demand, over-investment in earlier years, or pessimistic business expectations, and if saving does not immediately fall in step, the economy would decline.
• Classical economists have traditionally advocated balanced government budgets. Keynesians, on the other hand, believe that it is entirely legitimate and appropriate for governments to incur expenditure in excess of taxation revenues during periods of economic stagnation such as the Great Depression, which dominated economic life at the time he was developing and publicizing his theories.[12]
• Contrary to some critical characterizations of it, Keynesianism does not consist solely of deficit spending. Keynesianism recommends counter-cyclical policies.[13] An example of a counter-cyclical policy is raising taxes to cool the economy and to prevent inflation when there is abundant demand-side growth, and engaging in deficit spending on labour-intensive infrastructure projects to stimulate employment and stabilize wages during economic downturns.
• Classical economics, on the other hand, argues that one should cut taxes when there are budget surpluses, and cut spending – or, less likely, increase taxes – during economic downturns.
• Two aspects of Keynes's model have implications for policy:
• First, there is the "Keynesian multiplier", first developed by Richard F. Kahn in 1931. Exogenous increases in spending, such as an increase in government outlays, increases total spending by a multiple of that increase. A government could stimulate a great deal of new production with a modest outlay if:
• The people who receive this money then spend most on consumption goods and save the rest.
  
• This extra spending allows businesses to hire more people and pay them, which in turn allows a further increase in consumer spending.
• Second, Keynes re-analyzed the effect of the interest rate on investment. In the classical model, the supply of funds (saving) determines the amount of fixed business investment.
• That is, under the classical model, since all savings are placed in banks, and all business investors in need of borrowed funds go to banks, the amount of savings determines the amount that is available to invest.
• Under Keynes's model, the amount of investment is determined independently by long-term profit expectations and, to a lesser extent, the interest rate.
• The latter opens the possibility of regulating the economy through money supply changes, via monetary policy.
• Under conditions such as the Great Depression, Keynes argued that this approach would be relatively ineffective compared to fiscal policy. But, during more "normal" times, monetary expansion can stimulate the economy.[citation needed]
• The IS–LM model is nearly as influential as Keynes's original analysis in determining actual policy and economics education. It relates aggregate demand and employment to three exogenous quantities, i.e., the amount of money in circulation, the government budget, and the state of business expectations. This model was very popular with economists after World War II because it could be understood in terms of general equilibrium theory. This encouraged a much more static vision of macroeconomics than that described above.[citation needed]
• Monetarism: There was debate between Monetarists and Keynesians in the 1960s over the role of government in stabilizing the economy. Both Monetarists and Keynesians are in agreement over the fact that issues such as business cycles, unemployment, and deflation are caused by inadequate demand. However, they had fundamentally different perspectives on the capacity of the economy to find its own equilibrium, and the degree of government intervention that would be appropriate. Keynesians emphasized the use of discretionary fiscal policy and monetary policy, while monetarists argued the primacy of monetary policy, and that it should be rules-based.[29]

Keynesian economics

• Neoclassical synthesis is a postwar academic movement in economics that attempts to absorb the macroeconomic thought of John Maynard Keynes into the thought of neoclassical economics. Mainstream economics is largely dominated by the resulting synthesis, being largely Keynesian in macroeconomics and neoclassical in microeconomics.[1]

Neoclassical synthesis

• Mainstream economics is widely accepted economics as taught across prominent universities, in contrast to heterodox economics. It has been associated with neoclassical economics[1] and with the neoclassical synthesis, which combines neoclassical methods and a Keynesian approach to macroeconomics.[2]
• Chartalists, who are generally considered part of the Post-Keynesian school of thought, criticise mainstream theory as failing to describe the actual mechanics of modern fiat monetary economies. Chartalism focuses on a detailed understanding of the way money actually flows through the different sectors of an economy. Specifically, Chartalism focuses on the interaction between central banks, treasury and the private banking system. Chartalism rejects critical mainstream theories such as the loanable funds market, the money multiplier, and the utility of fiscal austerity.
• Some economists, in the vein of ecological economics, believe that the neoclassical "holy trinity" of rationality, greed, and equilibrium, is being replaced by the holy trinity of purposeful behavior, enlightened self-interest, and sustainability, considerably broadening the scope of what is mainstream.[8] Ecological economics addresses sustainability issues, such as public goods, natural capital and negative externalities (such as pollution).[19]
• Energy related theories of economic concepts also exist within energy economics relating to thermodynamic concepts of economic thinking, such as Energy accounting.[20] Biophysical economics relates to this area.[21]

Mainstream economics

• Heterodox economics refers to methodologies or schools of economic thought that are considered outside of "mainstream economics", often represented by expositors as contrasting with or going beyond neoclassical economics.[1][2]
• "Heterodox economics" is an umbrella term used to cover various approaches, schools, or traditions.
• These include socialist, Marxian, institutional, evolutionary, Georgist, Austrian, feminist,[3] social, post-Keynesian (not to be confused with New Keynesian),[2] and ecological economics among others.[4]
• ...mainstream economics deals with the "rationality-individualism-equilibrium nexus" and heterodox economics is more "radical" in dealing with the "institutions-history-social structure nexus".[6]
• One study suggests four key factors as important to the study of economics by self-identified heterodox economists: history, natural systems, uncertainty, and power.[9]
• Fields of heterodox economic thought[edit]
  American Institutionalist School
  Austrian economics #[20]
  Binary economics
  Bioeconomics
  Complexity economics
  Ecological economics §
  Evolutionary economics # § (partly within mainstream economics)
  Feminist economics # §
  Georgism
  Gift-based economics
  Green Economics
  Gesellian economics
  Innovation Economics
  Institutional economics # §
  Islamic economics
  Marxian economics #
  Mutualism
  Neuroeconomics
  Participatory economics
  Post-Keynesian economics § including Modern Monetary Theory and Circuitism
  Post scarcity
  Resource-based economics - not to be confused with a resource-based economy
  Sharing economics
  Socialist economics #
  Social economics (partially heterodox usage)
  Sraffian economics #
  Technocracy (Energy Accounting)
  Thermoeconomics
  Mouvement Anti-Utilitariste dans les Sciences Sociales

Heterodox economics