I caught up on Glenn Greenwald's latest article today, which uses one of my current favorite terms ("Echo Chamber") in its title. I recommend it to all.
After that, I went down the rabbit hole and came across his earlier piece from late August about The Clinton Foundation. There continues to be hysterics anytime someone suggests that there is a clear conflict of interest in the fact that countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the U.A.E. made huge contributions to CFI in order to gain access to the highest levels of power in the United States. To be clear, there is much insinuation but little actual proof,even as the whole thing really stinks. But, Glenn offers up an insight on the topic that should cause everyone to see the merit in the claim -- the pronounced goals of CFI include the empowerment of women and standing up for the rights of LGBT people. I ask, do you really think that Saudi Arabia and other such countries that have donated tens of millions of dollars really care about those causes, and that that's the reason that they ponied up?
And then there is fun bit:
"While this “no quid pro quo proof” may be true as far as it goes, it’s extremely ironic that Democrats have embraced it as a defense of Hillary Clinton. After all, this has long been the primary argument of Republicans who oppose campaign finance reform, and indeed, it was the primary argument of the Citizens United majority, once depicted by Democrats as the root of all evil. But now, Democrats have to line up behind a politician who, along with her husband, specializes in uniting political power with vast private wealth, in constantly exploiting the latter to gain the former, and vice versa. So Democrats are forced to jettison all the good-government principles they previously claimed to believe and instead are now advocating the crux of the right-wing case against campaign finance reform: that large donations from vested factions are not inherently corrupting of politics or politicians."
We should all know better.
