Republicans say that money is speech. Giving Clinton cash for conversation complies
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Version 0 of 1. There is one fundamental question of modern presidential politics: Who are our candidates listening to, and how? Are those people a problem? And how can we get them – either the politicians, or those to whom they are listening – to listen to us? Currently at the center of our national frustration with our pay-for-play political system is Hillary Clinton, because Republican activist Peter Schweizer’s – a man with a strong record of partisan political investigations that can be easily debunked – new book Clinton Cash “exposes” a number of coincidental decisions he’d like people to believe that Hillary Clinton made as Secretary of State. While her husband Bill collected fees for speaking appearances before various groups, Schweizer “reports” that decisions made within the State Department may have had direct and indirect effects on their financial interests. The most eye-catching coincidence involves a deal to sell a Canadian mining company, Uranium One, to the Russian atomic energy agency Rosatom. This deal ultimately gave Rosatom control of one-fifth of uranium production capacity in the US. However, since uranium is classified as a strategic asset – for all the mushroom cloud reasons you can imagine – the sale had to be approved by multiple US agencies, including the State Department. During this transaction, which evolved slowly from 2009-2013, the Clinton Foundation accepted four different donations from the owner and chairman of Uranium One, totalling $2.35m. And Bill Clinton personally accepted $500,000 from a Russian investment bank touting the Uranium One stock and connected to the Russian government for a speech in Moscow. Now, there are many reasons to discount Schweizer’s allegations. For one thing, the State Department was one of nine agencies on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States that had to approve the Rosatom deal, and State didn’t chair it (Clinton, like her predecessors, delegated responsibility for the CFIUS meetings to the Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs). The owner of Uranium One who gave the Clinton Foundation money wasn’t still the owner by the time Clinton became Secretary of State; the chairman said that he committed his money before she took the job or the deal was in the offing. And, in 2010, giving a renegade Putin control of one-fifth of America’s spooky boom-boom metal didn’t seem sinister; it’s only in hindsight that it does seem nefarious, after Putin’s annexation of the Crimea. At the time, outside of the neocon groups huddling in John Bolton’s “we’re all gonna die!” anxiety closet, it was considered a good idea to increase cooperation and defuse tensions between the US and Russia. Lastly, if we know nothing else about Bill Clinton, it’s that he’d give a 45-minute talk about resource allocation to a hot dog sandwich if there were $250,000 in it. But, in the wake of Citizens United and the new operating assumption that money is speech, going into 2016, we ought to ask if Clinton’s position is unique. “Not A Real Jeb” Bush and his family have extensive ties to the energy industry, Poppy Bush having made his fortune in oil wildcatting. The connections that funded Dubya’s surprisingly personally profitable failed energy companies extent to Jeb as well. And don’t forget the family’s deep ties to the House of Saud,the ruling dynasty of the globe’s leading exporter of 9/11 hijackers and the funders of Isis. Jeb, of course, hasn’t formally declared his candidacy yet, partly to avoid putting caps on the amount these groups can donate to him. There’s Ted Cruz, who has declared – most likely because he can’t rake in as much money as Jeb – still has his own billionaire, a tax-dodger named Robert Mercer. Scott Walker was long considered the billionaire Koch brothers’ preferred candidate (you may remember him from the time he was prank called by someone imitating David Koch), but Walker may no longer be the brothers’ favorite. Marco Rubio won the straw poll at the Koch brother’s donor summit – and that’s nothing to sneeze at, considering they’ve stated their willingness to spend up to $889m on political groups, think tanks and endowments through 2016. Rubio, like Cruz, argues that government and regulation are bad because wealthy groups can use “crony capitalism” to influence other elites, and that, if you can eliminate regulation or reduce the influence of government, wealthy people will no longer be able to use their wealth to influence policy. Immediately after declaring his candidacy, Rubio gave a billionaire sugar baron a big hug. There are more candidates to mention, but let’s end with Rand Paul, who also dislikes crony capitalism. He’s backed by Ayn Randroid billionaire Peter Thiel and has spent months courting the billionaire venture capitalists of Silicon Valley. He also used to really hate American funding of Israel, until he met billionaire political donor Sheldon Adelson, who loves Israel and almost singlehandedly kept Newt Gingrich’s laughable 2012 campaign alive. All of this access and all of this funding is completely permissible under the law established by Citizens United. At any moment, these donors can drop a few score million into a PAC that will absolutely, positively not coordinate in any way, shape or form with the candidate’s campaign, even if they are run by personal friends or former aides of the candidate. As long as they pinky-swear that they aren’t taking direction from or giving direction to the candidates on whom they’re spending untold millions, it’s all just free speech according to the US supreme court, which stated that raising this kind of money via third-party PACs does “not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” Whither Clinton, then? If these funds and donors are able to aid the campaigns of these candidates, it is an unfair double standard to argue that she or her husband cannot pursue “global initiatives” without being tainted? And if the argument is that these ties are problematic because Clinton was in office, why is it acceptable that all those other candidates – besides Bush – are cultivating these ties while in office themselves? Condemning Clinton sounds more like sour grapes – like condemning her achievement. Besides, if Citizens United has taught us anything, it is that money is equivalent to speech: to borrow from Clauswitz, it is an expression of one’s convictions by other means. And what job does a diplomat have if not to listen to others’ speech? If anything, it appears that critics are castigating Hillary Clinton for doing her job really, really well. If there is fault to be found in Clinton or the Clinton Foundation possibly giving a more attentive ear to groups and individuals who have the funds needed to empower initiatives, it is in those of us who have not done enough to advance our own political interests by increasing and then donating to politicians our personal wealth. Why should we punish others, and Clinton, for their successes? Instead of tearing them down, maybe we should focus on building ourselves up so we can more effectively express ourselves, through robust outlays of cash. But that’s just my two cents. |