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]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.
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)
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.Second, what is the relationship between a conflict of interest and corruption?
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)
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.So, what is the “primary interest” in both cases?
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)
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.So, yes.
***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)
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]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.
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)
No comments:
Post a Comment