Big Money Influences Hillary Clinton, a huge beneficiary of the Citizens United court decision

[imagine2015]

Money Influences Everybody. That Includes Hillary Clinton
Democrats were quick to criticize Republicans who flirted with banks and big oil. Why won’t they admit that Hillary’s links are a problem too?
by Trevor Timm
April 14, 2016

The Clinton campaign has spent the last few weeks furiously pushing back at the criticism that she is influenced by the vast donations her campaign receives from backers in the oil and financial industries. Her supporters have been vigorously arguing there’s no evidence of a quid pro quo.

How quickly they forget. As journalist David Sirota reported earlier this week, in the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, Clinton harshly criticized then senator Obama for accepting donations from oil and gas executives – and even cut a campaign commercial about it. The kicker? It was less money than Clinton has accepted from people working for fossil fuel companies so far this campaign season.

Then there are the closed-door speeches that Clinton gave for Goldman Sachs and other big banks after she left her role as secretary of state. While she has steadfastly refused to release the transcripts, she’s claimed it has never affected her position on the banks one iota. Which is fine, if that’s the principled stance you want to take, but it’s not one her party has had in the past. Mitt Romney was hit hard in the 2012 presidential campaign by Democrats for the speeches he gave to financial institutions.

The president of Citizens United even told the Center for Public Integrity last week: “Wouldn’t you know that Hillary Clinton has become one of the greatest beneficiaries of the Citizens United supreme court decision. It is an irony that is not lost on me.”

Sure, even hardcore Sanders supporters will admit there is no evidence of direct quid pro quo when talking about large donations various parties made to the Clinton Foundation when Clinton was secretary of state. But it would be difficult not to worry about at least the potential for a conflict of interest, when weapons manufacturers and Saudi Arabia were making donations to the Clinton Foundation while their weapons deals were approved by the State Department, oil companies were doing the same before the State Department approved the oil sands pipeline project, and other fossil fuels donated at around the same time the secretary was advocating increased fracking abroad.

Clinton supporters are essentially adopting the reasoning of the Roberts court that they claim to abhor – that unless there is direct evidence of overtly trading money for votes, corruption doesn’t exist. As Lawrence Lessig has written, Democrats have been slowly embracing this stance for years, but the Clinton campaign seems to cementing it as the party’s policy.

No one has made this point better than Clinton surrogate and former representative Barney Frank – or should I say, the 2012 version of him. .... Frank sang an altogether different tune about the influence of campaign contributions when he was leaving Congress in 2012.

“People say, ‘Oh, it doesn’t have any effect on me,’” Frank told NPR at the time about the constant need to continually raise money as a congressman. “Well if that were the case, we’d be the only human beings in the history of the world who on a regular basis took significant amounts of money from perfect strangers and made sure that it had no effect on our behavior.”

I guess we can assume Clinton is the first person in the history of the world to avoid this problem altogether then.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/14/money-hillary-clinton-banks-oil-links-presidential-campaign

HILLARY CLINTON; THE FORMER SENATOR FROM WALL STREET





Hillary Clinton and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein

[Thinkingabout]

1. What issue has she been influenced? We do know the NRA ran ads

Against Sanders and then Sanders voted on five times against the Brady Bill.

[imagine2015]

3. What issue? Read her Wall Street speeches and you'll find out!

Is she backing down from releasing the transcript of her closed door speeches to her Wall Street benefactors now that Bernie has released his complete tax returns that she demanded?

Hillary's Wall Street and corporate pals are running tons of TV commercials in support of Clinton. Who do you think is pouring tens of millions of bucks into her super duper Pac's? You won't find any NRA ads in support of Bernie's campaign. They don't exist.

[Thinkingabout]

6. Do you know when she was a Senator? Do you know when she was SOS?

Do you know when she gave the speeches? What has she voted on since the speeches?

[Blue Meany]

5. He did, but he voted for a lot of other gun regulations that

the NRA did not like:

banning assault weapons
gun lucks to protect children
gun registration
closing the gun show loophole
empowering the Attorney General to block gun sales to people who
were suspected terrorists

I think he voted against the Brady bill because his consitutents did not support it.

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth also mounted a campaign against him after they had damaged Kerry, and it doesn't appear to have affected his voting record.

[Thinkingabout]

11. Try five times against the Brady Bill for starters.

[beam me up scottie]

10. But he never took a dime from them while Hillary took millions from corporations.

In fact it's probably why she stopped fighting for single payer health care:

Hillary Clinton’s Single-Payer Pivot Greased By Millions in Industry Speech Fees

Hillary Clinton’s sudden attack on Bernie Sanders’ single-payer health care plan is a dramatic break with Democratic Party doctrine that the problem with single-payer is that it is politically implausible — not that it is a bad idea.

Single-payer, the Canadian-style system in which the government pays for universal health care, takes the health insurance industry out of the picture, saving huge amounts of money. But the health insurance industry has become so rich and powerful that it would never let it happen.

That was certainly Clinton’s position back in the early 1990s, when she was developing her doomed universal coverage proposal for her husband, Bill.

But in the ensuing years, both Clintons have taken millions of dollars in speaking fees from the health care industry. According to public disclosures, Hillary Clinton alone, from 2013 to 2015, made $2,847,000 from 13 paid speeches to the industry.



Source: Public federal disclosures, Clinton campaign

https://theintercept.com/2016/01/13/hillary-clinton-single-payer/

Democratic Debate 2015: Hillary Clinton’s ‘Enemies’ In Pharmaceutical and Insurance Industries Have Supported Her Campaigns, Foundation

In 2008, Clinton was the among the three biggest recipients of campaign cash from pharmaceutical-related companies, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. In all, the watchdog group reports that she raised $738,000 from employees of pharmaceutical manufacturers and companies classified as “Pharmaceuticals /Health Products.” The center reports that Clinton also raised more than $1.2 million from the insurance industry -- which includes health insurers.

On top of those campaign contributions, the Clintons and their family foundation have benefited from their ties to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.

In 2011, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) -- the primary trade association representing drug companies -- paid Bill Clinton $200,000 for a speech, as the organization was lobbying the Hillary Clinton-led State Department. Last year, the Drug Chemical and Associated Technologies Association, a trade group whose members include major pharmaceutical companies, paid her a $250,000 speaking fee.


Meanwhile, the Clinton Foundation has received between $1 million and $5 million worth of donations separately from drug manufacturers Pfizer and Procter & Gamble, and from health insurers Humana and Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina. Some of those companies made donations as recently as this year, according to the foundation’s website.

That largesse was part of a friendship forged after those industries opposed her 1993 health care initiative -- and which continued after she won reelection to the Senate in 2006.

http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/democratic-debate-2015-hillary-clintons-enemies-pharmaceutical-insurance

[imagine2015]

12. But she gave all of that money to poor working class people and charity.

[beam me up scottie]

13. aka the Clinton Foundation

[Octafish]

2. The pickle.

The president of Citizens United even told the Center for Public Integrity last week: “Wouldn’t you know that Hillary Clinton has become one of the greatest beneficiaries of the Citizens United supreme court decision. It is an irony that is not lost on me.”

Thank you for the heads-up on a most important read, imagine2015. Excellent article.

[Blue Meany]

4. I am not sure that the influence can be measured in votes

so much as it can seen in how issues are approaches and addressed, which in the Senate is done more in committees before a vote is taken.
With few exceptions, Clinton takes a neloiberal approach to foreign policy, which is of great benifit to her donors. For example, her approach to helping Haiti was to bring in foreign companies to create factories where Haitians were employed at some of the lowest wages in the hemisphere. She then lobbied the Haitian government to keep wages low.

[azmom]

8. I agree. There is also many ways to justify a

vote. Conflict of interests should be enough to disqualify politicians.

[azmom]

7. The biggest lie in this campaign has got

to be that Hillary will not be influenced by all those millions. You have to be an idiot to believe that whopper.

[Jefferson23]

9. The arguments they put forth are pathetic..it is only a Republican problem. lol

[imagine2015]

14. I know.