Why I left the Democratic Party

Which was negated by this:


The DNC was dirty and corrupt on so many points during 2016, half of them should be in prison.

I don't like the current way campaigns are financed today AT ALL. I want it changed. One party is stating they are willing to change it if given the power to do so.

What I don't want is for my side to lose elections because the other side isn't willing to abide by the same self-imposed restrictions. I don't have a purity check like you claim to. Politics is like a football game played in the mud and ALL politicians get dirty playing that game and it has always been this way.

I do expect "my side" to follow the law and to face whatever the appropriate legal consequences for breaking that law.

I'm not dodging anything; the lawsuit IS politically motivated (as is your reason for posting it), which is all fine and legal (yet still political). If the lawsuit is allowed to continue and they are found to be guilty of breaking the law then I expect them to pay the fines.

Both of those comments are true and do not negate each other.

I hope you don't teach English.

Some people hate corruption. No matter who’s guilty.
I’m one of them.

Well, me too Lash. Who likes corruption?

Corruption exists on a spectrum though. On one side, you have absolutely zero corruption and on the other you have infinite levels of corruption. Where do you think this falls on that spectrum?



This lawsuit though looks like an accounting step was missed. I mean, look at the example it gives. It basically says the Minnesota DNC forgot to add a record of receipt and disbursement to their ledgers. I think your article even says that it would have been completely legal if they did this.

That may very well be against the law. At the least it's against a rule.

The lawsuit will progress if it's valid and the appropriate fines/penalties will be imposed and I'm sure paid. I'm happy for this lawsuit, and I hope that someone is looking over all the public records of the RNC for similar errors.

What else is there to this?

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/why-the-dnc-is-fighting-wikileaks-and-not-wall-street/

The DNC traveling on third rotation around the toilet bowl.

Exactly 200 days before the crucial midterm election that will determine whether Republicans maintain control of Congress, the Democratic National Committee filed a 66-page lawsuit that surely cost lots of money and energy to assemble.

Does the lawsuit target purveyors of racist barriers to voting that block and deflect so many people of color from casting their ballots?

No.

Well, perhaps this ballyhooed lawsuit aims to ensure the rights of people who don’t mainly speak English to get full access to voting information?

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Unfortunately, no.

Maybe it’s a legal action to challenge the ridiculously sparse voting booths provided in college precincts?

Not that either.

Announced with a flourish by DNC Chair Tom Perez, the civil lawsuit—which reads like a partisan polemic wrapped in legalisms—sues the Russian government, the Trump campaign and operatives, as well as WikiLeaks and its founding editor, Julian Assange.

It’s hard to imagine that many voters in swing districts—who’ll determine whether the GOP runs the House through the end of 2020—will be swayed by the Russia-related accusations contained in the lawsuit. People are far more concerned about economic insecurity for themselves and their families, underscored by such matters as the skyrocketing costs of health care and college education.

To emphasize that “this is a patriotic—not partisan—move,” Perez’s announcement of the lawsuit on April 20 quoted one politician, Republican Sen. John McCain, reaching for the hyperbolic sky: “When you attack a country, it’s an act of war. And so we have to make sure that there is a price to pay, so that we can perhaps persuade the Russians to stop these kind of attacks on our very fundamentals of democracy.”

Setting aside the dangerous rhetoric about “an act of war,” it’s an odd quotation to choose. For Russia, there’s no “price to pay” from a civil lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. As the DNC well knows, any judgment against such entities as the Russian Federation and the general staff of its armed forces would be unenforceable.

The DNC’s lawsuit amounts to doubling down on its fixation of blaming Russia for the Democratic Party’s monumental 2016 loss, at a time when it’s essential to remedy the failed approaches that were major causes of Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the first place. Instead of confronting its fealty to Wall Street or overall failure to side with working-class voters against economic elites, the Democratic National Committee is ramping up the party leadership’s 18-month fixation on Russia Russia Russia.

After a humongous political investment in depicting Vladimir Putin as a pivotal Trump patron and a mortal threat to American democracy, strategists atop the Democratic Party don’t want to let up on seeking a big return from that investment. Protecting the investment will continue to mean opposing the “threat” of détente between the world’s two nuclear superpowers, while giving the party a political stake in thwarting any warming of the current ominously frigid relations between Moscow and Washington.

In truth, the party’s Russia fixation leaves significantly less messaging space for economic and social issues that the vast majority of Americans care about far more. Similarly, the Russia obsession at MSNBC (which routinely seems like “MSDNC”) has left scant airtime for addressing, or even noting, the economic concerns of so many Americans. (For instance, see the data in FAIR’s study, “Russia or Corporate Tax Cuts: Which Would Comcast Rather MSNBC Cover?”)

They have a strategy of "We're not the other guys." Pathetic.

Like all and every crime. The repukes are always clean in your world view.

Just not guilty of that specific Democrat crime.

I remember so many on this site saying Bernie wasn’t raising money for downballot candidates, and how Hillary was growing the Democrat party with her awesome fundraising.

What a lie.

https://theintercept.com/2018/04/25/hillary-clinton-email-dnc-democratic-party/

HEADING INTO THE 2018 midterms, with Democrats hoping to take back the House of Representatives and even make a run at the Senate, the party has spent more than $2 million worth of campaign resources on payments to Hillary Clinton’s new group, Onward Together, according to Federal Election Commission filings and interviews with people familiar with the payments.

The Democratic National Committee is paying $1.65 million for access to the email list, voter data, and software produced by Hillary for America during the 2016 presidential campaign, Xochitl Hinojosa, a spokesperson for the DNC, told The Intercept. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has paid more than $700,000 to rent the same email list.

Clinton is legally entitled to rent her list to the party, rather than hand it over as a gift, but in 2015, Barack Obama gave his email list, valued at $1,942,640, to the DNC as an in-kind contribution. In 2013 and 2014, OFA had similarly made in-kind contributions exceeding $3.4 million for uses of the list that cycle.

Obama’s list was at one point considered to be the most valuable in politics and raised more than twice as much money for the 2012 Obama campaign as Clinton’s did for hers in 2016. The DNC agreement with the Clinton campaign calls on the debt-ridden organization to fork the money over to an entity of Clinton’s choosing, which wound up being Onward Together, the operation she formed after her campaign ceased to exist.

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Former DNC Chair Donna Brazile told The Intercept the deal was the result of “tough negotiations between the Clinton campaign and the DNC. I wanted to bring back our assets. I wanted to get as much from them as they got from us,” she said. “Under the terms I worked out, we had to pay quarterly for items that the DNC acquired. The final payment would have been in February of this year.”

The DNC announced in April 2017 that Clinton had turned over her email list and related data and tools as an in-kind contribution to the party, with no suggestion that payments would later be made for it.

“[P]utting the DNC on a strong footing is something that she’s been very focused on since the campaign, when she set out to leave the DNC in the black and did so,” said Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill at the time. “But in addition to a strong financial footing, sharing campaign data and resources is something she views as critical to electing Democrats in 2017, 2018 and beyond. It is an important and unprecedented step toward a strong, unified Democratic Party going forward.” Merrill did not respond to a request for comment.

Any negotiation between the DNC and the Clinton campaign would itself be fraught, given the arrangement that gave the Clinton campaign a significant say over DNC finances and staffing.

Hinojosa said that Perez, facing financial difficulties upon arriving at the DNC, renegotiated the payment schedule, putting off the payments until 2018, stretching them until October of this year and redirecting them, at the Clinton campaign’s request, to Onward Together.

According to FEC filings, the DNC has made three payments to Onward Together between January and February, adding up to $570,000; another payment of $135,000 was made in March, bringing the total to $705,000. The full $1.65 million will be paid out by October of this year, Hinojosa said. “This direct investment and in-kind contribution has helped the DNC raise a total of over $30 million via grassroots donation channels since obtaining these lists, which means this investment has more than covered the cost of the lists,” she said.

Onward Together, a dark money group dedicated to “advancing the vision that earned nearly 66 million votes in the last election,” officially launched in May 2017. On March 3, 2017, HFA turned over its materials to the DNC, and the transfer was registered in FEC files as an in-kind contribution. But just under a year later, on January 8, the money began to flow to Onward Together. The DCCC, which is contesting scores of expensive races around the country, has pumped more than $700,000 toward Onward Together in recent months, FEC records show.

Onward Together has focused largely on supporting other progressive organizations. Emails it sends to its list tend to generally do fundraising for groups that it supports, among them Alliance for Youth Action, Run for Something, Arena Summit, iVote Fund, Latino Victory, Color of Change, Emerge America, Indivisible, Collective PAC, Voto Latino, and Swing Left.

The DCCC has made four payments adding up to $710,000 between December 2017 and February 2018, FEC filings show. The DCCC did not respond to requests for comment.

DESPITE OBAMA’S WILLINGNESS to gift the DNC with his email list, he is not seen as a savior within the building. After he was elected in 2008, he turned his campaign organization, Organizing for Action, into a parallel DNC, starving the real one of funds. During that time, if a party committee such as the DCCC wanted access to OFA, it had to rent it. When he finally turned the OFA list over to the DNC in 2015, it had been battered like a rental car, and the organization was a shell of itself, mismanaged and neglected to the brink of insolvency. It was in that context that the party committee struck up its secret deal with the Clinton campaign to salvage itself — setting off the charges of favoritism in the 2016 campaign that continue to dog the party today.

The 2016 election left the DNC in shambles, with the organization struggling to attract new donors — evidently despite the HFA assets. It has been reporting disappointing fundraising figures for well over a year. In 2017, the DNC managed to raise roughly $67 million in comparison to the RNC’s $125 million, according to its latest FEC filings.

The DNC has taken out $1,700,000 in loans since January 2017, roughly equal to the amount it owes the Clinton campaign, bringing its debt burden to $6.6 million with just $10,093,347 cash on hand. (The RNC has $42,442,531 and no debt.). The Clinton campaign, following a secret August 2015 memo of understanding, would have had full visibility into the DNC balance sheet.

Republican National Committee spokesperson Rick Gorka recently told Fox News that Hillary Clinton will continue to be a target for Republicans’ strategy in the 2018 midterms. The DNC recently announced that the former secretary of state would be headlining a fundraiser next month in Washington, D.C., with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

Clinton’s willingness to turn her email list over has been flagged as evidence of her commitment to the Democratic Party, often as a counterpoint to the refusal of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to do the same. Sanders has argued that the DNC would misuse the list, spamming it with off-message entreaties that would do net damage to the goal of building progressive power.

A joint fundraising agreement she had struck up with the DNC during the campaign was hailed as evidence of her commitment to build the party’s infrastructure. Politico later revealed that the money she raised jointly with the DNC through the Hillary Victory Fund was almost exclusively going to her campaign, with little left over for the state parties. Onward Together has continued using the list for its own purposes, even, in one case, when that may conflict with the DNC. In April, she sent her list a request for people to pay $10,000 to join the Onward Together Leadership Council, which would be hosting an event on April 30 in New York City. That same day, Tom Perez planned to host a DNC event.

Hillary for America did not respond to requests for comment. Corey Ciorciari, a former Clinton aide, tweeted on Saturday that the sale of lists is “routine,” and noted that Clinton does not take a salary from Onward Together.

Meanwhile, Perez has been working to rebuild the state parties after years of neglect under Obama. He’s implemented a costly “every ZIP code” strategy consisting of $10,000 monthly payments to the state parties and additional funds through a “resistance summer” program in 2017. The centerpiece of this renewed effort, however, is a competitive $10 million grant program known as the “State Party Innovation Fund.”

As one might expect, the DNC’s financial troubles have hobbled the fund’s payout process to approved state parties, making it frustratingly slow and complicated for state leaders.

“We have not had time to apply yet,” Nancy Worley, chair of the Alabama Democratic Party, told us in an email noting that the money and resources the Alabama party gets from the DNC does not go very far. “We use that for our two full-time employees and a few other program expenditures.”

Don Fowler, a DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee and at-large member who previously served as chair of the DNC and the South Carolina Democratic Party, cautioned that the lack of adequate funding could be devastating to the party’s electoral prospects. “The state parties in most of these states that continually vote for Republicans, they don’t have either the money or the talent to build a party in a systematic way,” he explained. “You have to have financial backing, people who know how to do these things, and you don’t know how to do these things just because you want to do them.”

http://www.businessinsider.com/poll-medicare-for-all-public-option-bernie-sanders-plan-support-2018-3?r=UK&IR=T

A new poll found that a majority of Americans support a radical change to the US healthcare system

Make it rain, Bernie.

I'd rather have a voucher to pick a plan of my choosing off the Obamacare exchanges.

Not guilty of any crime in your view. You're as fake as a FAUX journalist.

What crime are they guilty of?

So, big empty accusations...?
Name a crime.

Meanwhile, looks like Hillary Clinton’s days of unaccountability May be finally coming to a close. We’ll see if there’s any semblance of justice left in this country.

Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released 281 pages of newly uncovered emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from the U.S. Department of State sent and received over her unsecure, non-“state.gov” email system. The emails, dated 2010 through 2013, contain classified information and detail collusion between the Clinton State Department and the Clinton Foundation.

Ten emails contain classified information redacted “in the interest of national defense or foreign policy,” including confidential sources, and concern Israel and the Middle East. Most of the emails include exchanges with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The emails show Hillary Clinton conducted classified and sensitive negotiations about the Israel-Arab conflict on her unsecure, non-governmental server.

A document labeled “plan” was completely redacted as classified.
A November 2012 email chain discusses the “Mid East” and includes then-Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan, Blair as “aclb” and Clinton.
Another November 2012 email chain discusses the “Mid East” and includes Sullivan, Clinton’s office manager Claire Coleman, Blair and Clinton.
A November 2012 email chain fully redacted is titled “Mid East Peace” and includes Blair, Clinton, Obama’s Special Envoy to the Middle East David Hale as “[email protected],” Sullivan and Blair’s Chief of Staff and former Downing Street aide Catherine Rimmer.
In an April 2011 email exchange between Blair, Clinton and Sullivan concerning “Israel,” Blair says he “had another long session with BB [Netanyahu].”
A May 2011 exchange concerns “Israel” and includes Blair, Clinton and Sullivan.
A May 2011 email concerns “Palestinians” and includes Blair, Clinton and Sullivan. Blair says, “I’ve also sent you a paper.”
A June 2011 email regarding “Israel” includes Blair, Sullivan and Clinton. Blair says, “Saw Israeli PM. Put the concept of a Q statement. He was receptive. Palestinians interested too. I know there are discussions also you guys are having. And the French initiative….”
In a July 2011 email – with several national security redactions – written by Blair to Clinton and Sullivan, Blair says, “I saw BB….. Molcho [chief negotiator in the Israeli negotiating team with the Palestinians] will speak to David Hale. I can see Cameron and Sarkozy with David…. I saw Egyptians….”
A September 2010 email exchange is titled “Info for you,” and includes Sullivan, Blair and Clinton. Blair writes that he just spent three hours with Netanyahu, and Sullivan, using his Sprint BlackBerry, he writes “We have pitched this to [redacted].”
These new classified and other emails appear to be among those that Clinton had attempted to delete or had otherwise failed to disclose. The documents are part of the November 2017 accelerated schedule of production ordered by U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg. The State Department must now complete processing the remaining documents by September 28, 2018. There were 72,000 pages recovered by the FBI in its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s illicit email server. The State Department’s original production rate would have put the completion date into 2020.

The newly obtained documents came in response to a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed on May 6, 2015, after the State Department failed to respond to a March 4, 2015, FOIA request (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00687)) seeking:

All emails sent or received by former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in her official capacity as Secretary of State, as well as all emails by other State Department employees to Secretary Clinton regarding her non-“state.gov” email address.

Many of the emails involve Abedin, who joined the State Department as deputy chief of staff in 2009. From June 2012-February 2013, she was granted status as a “special government employee,” allowing her to work as a consultant to clients like Teneo and served as a paid consultant to the Clinton Foundation.

Several of the emails demonstrate the commingling of Clinton State Department and Clinton family foundation business:

In a November 2010 email with subject line, “How do I get through to Bill Clinton,” Rafael Anchia, a lawyer with Haynes Boone, asks Clinton campaign official Ed Meier if he could get to the “gatekeepers” to get Bill Clinton to give a speech in Spain, noting that “a large bank is willing to pay for it.”
Meier forwarded the email to former State Department Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan who forwarded it to former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin. Abedin sent it to Bill Clinton’s scheduler at the Clinton Foundation, Terry Krinvic, who provided Clinton’s contact information, to which Sullivan responded, “Awesome.”

In September 2011, Abedin sent Sullivan an email concerning the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) with “Potential questions for Closing Plenary conversation between Secretary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton” in which Abedin included some “proposed questions” to put to Hillary and Chelsea Clinton. Four days later, Sullivan forwards a revised list of questions (completely redacted as interagency deliberative process) to Abedin and Clinton’s Chief of Staff, Cheryl Mills, saying, “Here are my proposed questions.”
In a September 2010 email containing subject line, “President Banda’s MOU [Memorandum of Understanding] with Clinton Global Initiative,” U.S. Ambassador Jeanine Jackson writes to Clinton Development Initiative official Walker Morris, (cc’d to Clinton Foundation official Amitabh Desai) discussing State Department spending in the country of Malawi. In the email, Jackson says, “we will be anxious to collaborate once you have an idea of the MOU’s intent.” Morris responds that “we are very excited about CDI’s [Clinton Development Initiative] future work in Malawi and certainly see great opportunity to collaborate.”
The Clinton Foundation work in Malawi involved a Clinton Foundation owned “for-profit agribusinesses including Tukula Farming Company which operates 7200 acres of commercial farms” in the impoverished country.

Other emails show that Bill Clinton appears to conduct State Department and Clinton Foundation business simultaneously:

In a September 2012 email with subject line “Burma,” Desai briefs Jake Sullivan on Bill Clinton’s discussions in Burma. Desai reports, in part: “WJC mentioned work of CF [Clinton Foundation] and offered to help in any way. TS [Than Shwe, president of Burma] said he already had asked HRC about WJC foundation and wanted to invite WJC foundation to work in myanmar in collaboration with gov agencies and other ngos … TS invited WJC to open offices in Rangoon and Mandelay.” That same day, Abedin writes Desai (cc’s Mills, Sullivan, Fuchs and three other persons whose email address are redacted) with subject line “Re: He had v good meeting with Libya and Burma:” “hrc looking forward to hearing about Burma. We meet at 545. I believe you have downloaded to jake?”
In a September 2012 email with subject line “Columbia / President Santos,” Desai and Toiv discuss a request by Colombian president, Manuel Santos, that Bill Clinton say some positive words about Santos’ initiative reaching out to the FARC terrorist group. Santos provided the Clinton Foundation with suggested language. Toiv said that she would “check” and also mentioned that she was working on a “visa issue.”
According to a report in the New York Post, the Santos request came not long after Clinton “jetted in for a Pacific Rubiales golf tournament at the Bogota Country Club… Accompanied by Giustra, he played a few holes with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.” The event reportedly raised one million dollars for the Clinton Foundation.

“It is shameful that Hillary Clinton attempted to delete or hide classified information and that Obama appointees James Comey and Loretta Lynch refused to prosecute her,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It is clear that the Clintons were using the State Department to run an extensive influence peddling scheme. Americans should be concerned that while untold resources are devoted to the abusive Mueller special counsel investigation of President Trump, this Justice Department seems uninterested in prosecuting the Clintons.”

Impersonating a Chelsea Pensioner.

The guilty must be punished!

You win Lash.

I promise to never vote for Hillary Clinton again.