Bernie Sander’s Campaign Requested to Put City and State on Podium Signs

20160204_0545 Bernie Podium Sign Request v1.jpg WASHINGTON (Feb. 4, 2016) — In an effort to better archive the many speeches Senator Bernie Sanders has been giving on his campaign for President 2016, a request has been made to have his podium campaign signs include the city and state on them.

“There are many, many video’s out there of Bernie’s speeches,” said Daryl, a Sanders supporter. “Not having the city and state written on his podium signs causes confusion and a lack of attention to particular speeches of notable mention.”

Daryl points out that from the start, Republican candidate Donald Trump has had the city and state written on his podium signs making it very clear as to where he is speaking from.

“Republican candidate Donald Trump’s signs had had the city and state on them from the start,” said Daryl. “If the Sander’s campaign would just have this little bit of information on their podium signs, it would make tracking the speeches more accurate and less time consuming.”

Daryl later added that he thought the Sander’s campaign was merely trying to cut costs by not customizing their podium signs for each location on the campaign trial.

“I bet there must be some kind of expense conservation going on here,” Daryl said. “But what good is saving a couple of bucks if people can’t follow your current or past speeches without loosing interest and getting frustrated trying to find the right video.”

It may just be too much work to keep up with preparing dedicated signs for each of the different locations Sanders plans to speak at along the campaign trail.

And if there are any changes to any of the event locations, then a new sign would have to be printed on the fly.

Having to print and have delivered a special sign for each venue may add too much to the campaigns expense budget, and which may have prompted their using the same sign for each podium along the campaign trail.

With the price of color printers have gone down over the years, you would think this would not be a problem for the Sander’s campaign which has boasted record donations in the last quarter upwards of $20M.

Only time will tell if the Sander’s campaign will upgrade their podium signs.

“His speeches are so moving and are already part of history,” Daryl said. “You never know which one of those speeches will be responsible for realizing the political revolution he so eloquently has been advocating for.”

Richland County Rep. Neal endorses Sen. Bernie Sanders

20160202_1314 Richland County Rep. Neal endorses Sanders (theState).jpg Richland County Rep. Neal endorses Sanders for White House
By Tim Flach, The State

COLUMBIA, SC (Feb. 2, 2016 13:14 ET) — Veteran state Rep. Joe Neal, a Lower Richland Democrat, Tuesday endorsed underdog Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

Neal cited Sanders’ willingness to tackle “income inequities that have been devastating the middle class” in backing the U.S. senator from Vermont.

People Neal Joseph H SC State Rep Endorsement ScStateHouse-gov Page.jpg Representative Joseph H. “Joe” Neal Official State Website
Democrat – Richland
District 70 – Richland & Sumter Counties
Columbia Address
309B Blatt Bldg.
Columbia 29201
Business Phone (803) 734-2804
Email

South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus
1105 Pendleton Street, Suite 207
207 Solomon Blatt Building
Columbia, SC 29201-3732
Phone: 803.734.3041 | Fax: 803.734.8711

20160202_1200 SC Rep. Joe Neal Endorsing Bernie (Brent Zeller)(YT).jpg Video Press Conference:

SC Rep. Joe Neal Endorsing Bernie
By Brent Zeller Published on Feb 2, 2016
(Feb. 2, 2016) Noon time press conference at the SC State House. Another African-American coming out for Bernie saying that it’s his job to get the black voters of SC to know who Bernie is and what he represents.



Read more here:

Iowa Caucus: “An arcane and draconian process for democrats”

DES MOINES, Iowa. In a post to an article posted on the Washington Post’s website, one user summed up his feelings about the Democratic Party’s caucus process.

The commenter with the username “Pyrrho” made a pointed comment by stressing how bad the cause process really is which has left the nation in turmoil resulting in a delay of posting the narrow final results between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton’s run for president.

The comment posted by Pyrrho at 1:07 a.m. reads:

As a flaming liberal, I’m outraged why there are not a 100 articles out yet on the arcane and draconian process for democrats to caucus in this state called Iowa.

Literally flipping coins in school gymnasiums to determine who gets the delegate because the race is so tight.

Having Iowa be the state that sets the tone for the election cycle is an embarrassment on the democrat side. We would not accept current practices in Iowa if we were observing elections in third world countries.

We also don’t need to mention how underepresentative Iowa is of the rest of the country in race, ethnicity, and religion. One of the most homogeneous of the states.

How could you vote democrat after learning of the choke hold democrats put on their caucus voters in Iowa.

The Republicants got this one right. Write your G.D. candidate’s name on a piece of paper and count it. If that happened on the left, Sanders would be leading. Not this fuzzy , stupid sh!t we’ve come up with on the left. Good grief.

Rigged caucus on the left. How embarrassing!

I believe Pyrroh’s comment sums it if for a lot of disappointed Democrats this morning, still waiting for the final results to be posted reported as 49.8% to 49.6% between Sanders and Clinton respectively.

The name and link to the Washington Post’s article bearing Pyrrho’s comment is located below.

“These are the caucus-night images Bernie Sanders hoped for. Will they be enough?”

The Clinton System

20160130_1000 Clinton System (mybooks).jpg The Clinton System
by Simon Head Jan. 30, 2016
Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bill Clinton during the seventh annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), New York City, September 22, 2011.  [Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images]

On January 17, in the final Democratic debate before the primary season begins, Bernie Sanders attacked Hillary Clinton for her close financial ties to Wall Street, something he had avoided in his campaigning up to that moment: “I don’t take money from big banks….You’ve received over $600,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs in one year,” he said. Sanders’s criticisms coincided with recent reports that the FBI might be expanding its inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s emails to include her ties to big donors while serving as secretary of state. But a larger question concerns how Hillary and Bill Clinton have built their powerful donor machine, and what its existence might mean for Hillary Clinton’s future conduct as American president. The following investigation, drawing on many different sources, is intended to give a full sense of the facts about Clinton and not to endorse a particular candidate in the coming election.

It’s an axiom of Washington politics in the age of Citizens United and Super PACs that corporations and the very rich can channel almost unlimited amounts of money to candidates for high office to pave the way for later favors. According to the public service website Open Secrets, in the 2016 campaign, as of October, in addition to direct campaign contributions, Jeb Bush had at his disposal $103 million in “outside money”—groups such as PACs and Super PACs and so called “dark money” organizations that work on behalf of a particular candidate. Ted Cruz had $38 million in such funds, Marco Rubio $17 million, and Chris Christie $14 million.

Yet few have been as adept at exploiting this big-money politics as Bill and Hillary Clinton. In the 2016 campaign, as of October, Hillary Clinton had raised $20 million in “outside” money, on top of $77 million in direct campaign contributions—the highest in direct contributions of any candidate at the time. But she and her husband have other links to big donors, and they go back much further than the current election cycle. What stands out about what I will call the Clinton System is the scale and complexity of the connections involved, the length of time they have been in operation, the presence of former president Bill Clinton alongside Hillary as an equal partner in the enterprise, and the sheer magnitude of the funds involved.

Scale and complexity arise from the multiple channels that link Clinton donors to the Clintons: there is the stream of six-figure lecture fees paid to Bill and Hillary Clinton, mostly from large corporations and banks, which have earned them more than $125 million in the fifteen years since Bill Clinton left office in 2001. There are the direct payments to Hillary Clinton’s political campaigns, including for the Senate in 2000 and for the presidency in 2008 and now in 2016, which had reached a total of $712.4 million as of September 30, 2015, the most recent figures compiled by Open Secrets. Four of the top five sources of these funds are major banks: Citigroup Inc, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and Morgan Stanley. The Clinton campaign meanwhile has set a goal of raising $1 billion for her Super PAC for the 2016 election.

Finally there is the nearly $2 billion that donors have contributed to the Clinton Foundation and its satellite organizations since Bill Clinton left office. It may seem odd to include donations to the foundation among the chief ways that corporations and the super-rich can gain access to the Clintons, earn their goodwill, and hope for future favors in return. The foundation’s funds are mostly spent on unequivocally good causes—everything from promoting forestation in Africa and helping small farmers in the Caribbean to working with local governments and businesses in the US to promote wellness and physical fitness.

Moreover, not all donors to the Clinton Foundation and its affiliated institutions are corporate. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for example, ranks among the largest contributors to the Clinton Foundation, having made grants totaling more than $25 million since its inception, and with a special focus, to quote a 2014 Clinton Foundation press release, on a partnership “to gather and analyze data about the status of women and girls’ participation around the world.”

But among the largest contributors to the foundation are many of the same donors that have supported Hillary Clinton’s political campaigns and that have paid the Clintons six-figure lecture fees. For these mainly corporate donors, access to the Clintons may be as important as the purposes for which their donations are used. According to a February 2015 analysis of Clinton Foundation funding by The Washington Post, the financial services industry has accounted for the largest single share of the foundation’s corporate donors. Other major donors to the foundation have included US defense and energy corporations and their overseas government clients.

Former US presidents have long used charitable foundations as a way to perpetuate their influence and to attract speaking fees as a lucrative source of income. But the Clintons are unique in being able to rely on the worldwide drawing power of former president Bill Clinton to help finance the political career of Hillary Clinton—with the expectation among donors that as a senator, secretary of state, and possible future president Hillary Clinton might be well placed to return their favors. The annual meetings of the Clinton Global Initiative have provided a prime setting for transactions between the Clintons and their benefactors. Among the corporate sponsors of the 2014 and 2015 CGI conferences in New York City, for example, were HSBC, Coca Cola, Monsanto, Proctor and Gamble, Cisco, PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Blackstone Group, Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobile, Microsoft, and Hewlett Packard. For sponsorship of $250,000 or more, corporate executives attending the CGI meetings can enjoy special privileges up to and including direct access to the Clintons.

Frank Giustra speaks as former President Bill Clinton looks on during a press conference announcing the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative, New York, June 21, 2007.  [Shannon Stapleton/Reuters/Corbis]

In a 2013 investigative article for The New Republic, Alec MacGillis described the annual CGI meeting as a complicated give and take in which CEOs provide cash for CGI projects in exchange for access to Bill Clinton. MacGillis focused on the activities of Douglas Band, a former low-level aide in the Clinton White House, who at the CGI meetings arranged favors for selected CEOs such as “getting them on the stage with Clinton, relaxing the background checks for credentials, or providing slots in the photo line.” At the CGI’s 2012 meeting it was Muhtar Kent, then CEO of Coca Cola, who, The New York Times reported, “won a coveted spot on the dais with Mr. Clinton.”

Along with the Clinton Foundation, lecture fees have offered another way for interested parties such as Citicorp and Goldman Sachs to support the Clintons beyond direct campaign donations. Data drawn from the Clintons’ annual financial statements, the Clinton Foundation, and the banks themselves show that between 2001 and 2014 Bill Clinton earned $1.52 million in fees from UBS, $1.35 million from Goldman Sachs, $900,000 from the Bank of America, $770,000 from Deutsche Bank, and $650,000 from Barclays Capital. Since she stepped down as secretary of state in February 2013, Hillary Clinton has been earning comparable fees from the same sources. Of the nearly $10 million she earned in lecture fees in 2013 alone, nearly $1.6 million from major Wall Street banks, including $675,000 from Goldman Sachs (the payments referred to by Bernie Sanders in the January 17 2016 debate), and $225,000 each from UBS, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and Deutsche Bank.

Among the most striking and troubling aspects of the Clinton System are the large contributions corporations and foreign governments have made to the Clinton Foundation, along with Bill Clinton’s readiness to accept six-figure speaking fees from some of them, at times when the donors themselves had a potential financial interest in decisions being made at Hillary Clinton’s State Department. An investigation published in April 2015 by Andrew Perez, David Sirota and Matthew Cunningham-Cook at International Business Times shows that during the three-year period from October 2009 through December 2012, when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, there were at least thirteen occasions—collectively worth $2.5 million—when Bill Clinton received a six-figure speaking fee from corporations or trade groups that, according to Federal Government records, were at the time engaged in lobbying at the State Department.

These payments to Bill Clinton in 2010 included: $175,000 from VeriSign Corporation, which was engaged in lobbying at the State Department on cybersecurity and Internet taxation; $175,000 from Microsoft, which was lobbying the government on the issuance of immigrant work visas; $200,000 from SalesForce, a firm that lobbied the government on digital security issues, among other things. In 2011, these payments included: $200,000 from Goldman Sachs, which was lobbying on the Budget Control Act; and $200,000 from PhRMA, the trade association representing drug companies, which was seeking special trade protections for US-innovated drugs in the Trans-Pacific Partnership then being negotiated.

And in 2012, payments included: $200,000 from the National Retail Federation, which was lobbying at the State Department on legislation to fight Chinese currency manipulation; $175,000 from BHP Billiton, which wanted the government to protect its mining interests in Gabon; $200,000 from Oracle, which, like Microsoft, was seeking the government to issue work visas and measures dealing with cyber-espionage; and $300,000 from Dell Corporation, which was lobbying the State Department to protest tariffs imposed by European countries on its computers.

During Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, US defense corporations and their overseas clients also contributed between $54 and $141 million to the Clinton Foundation. (Because the foundation discloses a range of values within which the contributions of particular donors might fall, only minimum and maximum estimates can be given.) In the same period, these US defense corporations and their overseas government clients also paid a total of $625,000 to Bill Clinton in speaking fees.

In March 2011, for example, Bill Clinton was paid $175,000 by the Kuwait America Foundation to be the guest of honor and keynote speaker at its annual Washington gala. Among the sponsors were Boeing and the government of Kuwait, through its Washington embassy. Shortly before, the State Department, under Hillary Clinton, had authorized a $693 million deal to provide Kuwait with Boeing’s Globemaster military transport aircraft. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton had the statutory duty to rule on whether proposed arms deals with foreign governments were in the US’s national interest.

Further research done by Sirota and Perez of International Business Times and based on US government and Clinton Foundation data shows that during her term the State Department authorized $165 billion in commercial arms sales to twenty nations that had given money to the Clinton Foundation. These include the governments of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Algeria, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, all of whose records on human rights had been criticized by the State Department itself. During Hillary Clinton’s years as secretary of state, arms sales to the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation ran at nearly double the value of sales to the same nations during George W. Bush’s second term. There was also an additional $151 billion worth of armaments sold to sixteen nations that had donated funds to the Clinton Foundation; these were deals organized by the Pentagon but which could only be completed with Hillary Clinton’s authorization as secretary of state. They were worth nearly one and a half times the value of equivalent sales during Bush’s second term.

Among the most important, and lucrative, business friendships the Clintons have formed through the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiatives has been that with Canadian energy billionaire Frank Giustra. A major donor to the foundation for many years, Giustra became a member of its board and since 2007 has been co-sponsor of the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative, or CGGI. In turn, Bill Clinton’s political influence and personal contacts with foreign heads of state have been crucial to Giustra’s international business interests.

In September 2005, Bill Clinton and Giustra travelled to Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan, to meet with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev. At their meeting Clinton told Nazarbayev that he would support Kazakhstan’s bid to become chair of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The OSCE is a body with the responsibility for verifying, among other things, the fairness of elections among member states. According to multiple sources, including the BBC, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, Nazarbayev coveted this position for Kazakhstan, primarily as a mark of European diplomatic respectability for his country and himself.

Clinton’s endorsement of the Kazakh bid was truly bizarre in view of Kazakhstan’s ranking by Transparency International as among the most corrupt countries in the world—126th, on a par with Pakistan, Belarus, and Honduras. Freedom House in New York judges Kazakhstan to be “not free,” with Nazarbayev clocking up Soviet-era margins of victory of 90 percent or more in Kazakh presidential elections. Yet in a December 2005 letter to Nazarbayev following one of his landslide victories, Bill Clinton wrote: “Recognizing that your work has received an excellent grade is one of the most important rewards in life.” It is unclear what influence, if any, Bill Clinton’s support for Nazarbayev may have had in Kazakhstan’s efforts to lead the OSCE, but in 2007, after the United States gave its backing to the bid, Kazakhstan was chosen as the next chair of the OSCE, a position it assumed in 2010.

Possible reasons for Clinton’s support become clearer when we scrutinize the activities of Frank Giustra. In a January 31, 2008 article in The New York Times, Jo Becker and Don Van Natta, Jr., provided detailed evidence that Nazarbayev brought his influence to bear to enable Giustra to beat out better-qualified competitors for a stake in Kazakhstan’s uranium mines worth $350 million. In an interview with the Times, Moukhtar Dzakishev, then chair of the state-owned nuclear holding company Kazatomprom, confirmed that Giustra had met with Nazarbayev in Almaty, that Giustra had told the dictator he was trying to do business with Kazatomprom, and that he was told in return, “Very good, go to it.”

The deal was closed within forty-eight hours of Clinton’s departure from Almaty. Following this successful visit to Central Asia, Giustra donated $31 million to the Clinton Foundation. He then made a further donation of $100 million to the foundation in June 2008.

In an interview with David Remnick for a September 2006 New Yorker profile on Clinton’s post-presidency, Giustra described how his ties to Clinton could work for him and his interests. With Bill Clinton at that moment riding aboard his private executive jet for a journey across Africa (“complete with leather furniture and a stateroom,” according to The New Yorker), Giustra told Remnick that “all of my chips, almost, are on Bill Clinton. He’s a brand, a worldwide brand, and he can do things and ask for things that no one else can.”

The Clinton-Giustra connection became even more important in Colombia, where from 2005 onward Bill Clinton arranged a series of meetings between Giustra and then-president Álvaro Uribe, during which Clinton was frequently present. Giustra was already known in Colombia as the founder and backer of Pacific Rubiales, a Colombian oil company formed in 2003. In 2007, according to The Wall Street Journal, Bill Clinton had invited Uribe and Giustra to meet with him at the Clintons’ home in Chappaqua, New York.

The meetings provided a way for Giustra to lobby Uribe and his administration on behalf of Pacific Rubiales at a time when the Uribe administration was seeking to end the dominance of the national oil company, Ecopetrol, and open up the sector to foreign investors. These contacts appear to have born fruit for Giustra. In 2007 Pacific Rubiales signed a $300 million deal with Ecopetrol to build a 250 kilometer pipeline between Meta and Casanare provinces in Central Colombia. In the same year, Pacific Rubiales gained control of the Rubiales oilfield, Colombia’s largest.

Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe and Bill Clinton in Bogota, Colombia, June 22, 2005. [Miguel Solano/AFP/Getty Images]

Uribe was a singular interlocutor for Clinton and Giustra. The Colombian leader had been viewed by the George W. Bush administration as a crucial ally in the War on Drugs, in which Colombia was often held up as a success story. Yet Uribe and his political allies had longstanding connections to the Colombian drug cartels. In a 1991 intelligence report from the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), declassified in August 2004, described Uribe as “a Colombian politician and senator dedicated to collaboration with the Medellin Cartel at high government levels…. Uribe was linked to a business involved in narcotics activities in the United States. [He] has worked for the Medellín cartel” and is “a close personal friend of Pablo Escobar Gaviria,” the longtime drug kingpin.

A 2011 report on events of 2010 by Human Rights Watch provides detailed evidence that Uribe was not free of this poisonous legacy when he was dealing with Clinton and Giustra. The report described President Uribe’s administration as “racked by scandals over extrajudicial killings by the army, a highly questioned paramilitary demobilization process, and abuses by the national intelligence service,” which participated in illegal surveillance of human rights defenders, journalists, opposition politicians, and Supreme Court justices. Hillary Clinton was warned about these human rights violations when, as secretary of state, she met with Bill Clinton, Giustra, and Uribe during a trip to Bogota, the Colombian capital, in June 2010. In an email message relayed to Secretary Clinton by the US Embassy in Bogota, Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts warned that “while in Colombia, the most important thing the Secretary can do is to avoid effusive praise for President Álvaro Uribe.”

Hillary Clinton chose to ignore the warning. Addressing Uribe in the visit’s keynote speech, Clinton described him as an “essential partner to the United States” whose “commitment to building strong democratic institutions here in Colombia” would “leave a legacy of great progress that will be viewed in historic terms.” During her visit Clinton also affirmed her support for a US-Columbia free trade agreement, from which Giustra and other wealthy investors stood to benefit. This reversed her previous opposition to the agreement during her campaign for president in 2008, on grounds of Colombia’s poor human rights record, especially concerning the rights of labor unions.

Since the Giustra deal, there have also been complaints about the treatment of workers at Pacific Rubiales’s Colombian oil fields, which has been the target of numerous strikes and lawsuits by pro-labor groups. In an August 2011 speech to the Colombian Senate, Jorge Robledo, leader of the Polo Democrático Alternativo (Social Democratic) Party in the Colombian Senate, described the living quarters for Pacific Rubiales employees as “concentration camp-like,” with work shifts that sometimes exceeded sixteen hours a day for weeks on end, inadequate sanitary facilities and shared beds, and with the company relying on third-party hiring halls to avoid unionization and the payment of pension and healthcare benefits. (In April 2015, Peter Volk, general counsel for Pacific Rubiales, denied these allegations, saying that the corporation “fully respects the rights of its workers and demands from companies that provide services to it to also do so.”)

The record of the Clinton System raises deep questions about whether a Hillary Clinton presidency would take on the growing political influence of large corporate interests and Wall Street banks. The next president will need to address critical economic and social issues, including the stagnating incomes of the middle class, the tax loopholes that allow hedge-funders and other members of the super-rich to be taxed at lower rates than many average Americans, and the runaway costs of higher education. Above all is the question of further reform of Wall Street and the banking system to prevent a recurrence of the behavior that brought about the Great Recession of 2007-2008.

So far, Hillary Clinton has refused to commit herself to a reintroduction of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which Bill Clinton allowed to be repealed in 1999 on the advice of Democrats with close ties to Wall Street, including Robert Rubin and Larry Summers. The reintroduction of Glass-Steagall, favored by Bernie Sanders, would prevent banks from speculating in financial derivatives, a leading cause of the 2007-2008 crash. With leading Wall Street banks so prominent in the Clintons’ fundraising streams, can Hillary Clinton be relied upon to reform the banks beyond the modest achievements of the Dodd-Frank bill of 2010?

Original Article

Is former President Bill Clinton’s wife Hillary Clinton too big to Jail? Clinton vs. Patreaus Case Analysis

WASHINGTON (Jan. 29, 2016) — There are laws on the books for walking an elephant down the road during rush hour traffic from back in the day when elephants were used for the transportation of goods.

Since every human act has been codified into a crime at one time or another, merely finding appropriate criminal code to prosecute former President Bill Clinton’s wife, Hillary Clinton, is not the problem. There has been enough information reported thus far to bring charges against her for having mishandled classified information by using private email servers.

So the real question is, “Is Hillary Clinton too big to jail?”

Any criminal prosecution would also be subject to the resources of Mrs. Clinton having a well financed criminal defense team both in terms of actual attorneys to defend the case in court, and the other members of her team used to lobby on her behalf to all of her deep seeded contacts.

The Permission to Prosecute Phase

Lets pretend for just a minute that a junior prosecutor actually gets the green light to launch a prosecution against the former president’s wife. Then what?

The Indictment Process

Any prosecution of Mrs. Clinton would most likely go through the indictment process.

Without regard to the pros and cons of the effectiveness of the indictment process, consider the matter was put forth toward the indictment process if for the sole reason to give the illusion of prosecutorial impartiality by placing the decision to file charges upon the shoulders of the grand jury members empaneled for the indictment.

In this brief analysis of any potential criminal prosecution of Mrs. Clinton, it is a given that at any point along the way any number of motions or pleadings could be filed which can either dismiss the proceedings all together, or stretch it out. And like in the case against Julian Assange, any indictment can be easily manipulated without regard.

The Criminal Prosecution

As with any good political thriller, a prosecution launched against deep seeded politicians, as it would be against a former president’s wife, would be unpredictable at best.

Look how long it took Special Prosecutor Kenneth Star to resolve his investigations into matters surrounding former president Bill Clinton which included the: 1) suicide death of deputy White House counsel Vince Foster; 2) Whitewater real estate investment scandals; and the 3) extramarital affair that Bill Clinton had with Monica Lewinsky scandal. Star’s investigation merely ended with him filing a report with congress called the Starr Report.

Throughout Starr’s investigation, it was later determined that former president Bill Clinton lied about the affair with Lewinsky, which led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton and the five-year suspension of his law license.

So like her husband’s criminal matters, Mrs. Clinton’s criminal proceedings would most likely be subject to a roller coaster of criminal justice twists and turns. None of which would resemble those types of criminal prosecutions regular citizens’ find themselves subject to on a daily basis for crimes as small as possession of marijuana.

The Conviction and Sentencing Phase

Okay, lets say that the criminal prosecution of Hilliary Clinton results in a conviction, and after all the appeals were filed taking several years to resolve, Mrs. Clinton finally is convicted and sentenced for crimes connected with private server, classified email “emailgate” scandal.

Does one really think she will actually be taken into custody and imprisoned? Well, if the case was against a regular citizen, you betcha. However, lets use former U.S. Army General David Patreaus’s 2012 case as an example of potential sentencing Mrs. Clinton may be subjected to.

The Patreaus case involved an extra marital affair between Patreaus and his biographer, Paula Broadwell. In 2012 Broadwell went off the extramarital affair leash and began sending harassing emails to a longstanding family friend of the Petraeuses, Jill Kelley. Kelly reported the emails to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

In the course of the FBI’s investigation in the later part of 2012, they discovered a connection between Broadwell and Patreaus who both had access to an email account investigated in the case.

When the FBI took a closer look into the emails, it discovered that: 1) Patreaus in fact was having an affair with Broadwell, and incidentally, that 2) Patreaus had engaged in the felonious act of providing classified information to Broadwell as well. Purportedly for purposes of writing the biography of Patreaus.

At the end of the day, the criminal prosecution was circumvented by way of the plea bargaining procedure.

In March 2015, Petraeus eventually plead guilty in federal court to a charge of unauthorized removal and retention of classified information. So more than three years after the affair between Pateaus and Broadwell took a turn, the results of the investigation and criminal prosecution led to a mere two years’ probation plus a fine of $100,000.

On top of that, Patreaus was permitted to receive a military retirement package as a general. Despite public outcry to have him demoted in light of the disgrace of the mishandling classified information and extra-marital affair. Soldiers are subject to United States Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) action if they are married, and have an affair. Patreaus, a top military leader, did not suffer any military prosecution for the extra-marital affair because he had retired before the affair became public.

It is a logical conclusion to theorize that the type of “slap on the wrist” outcome seen in the Patreaus case would also been seen in a potential criminal case against Mrs. Clinton for the “unauthorized removal and retention of classified information.”

Post Conviction – Commutation and Pardon

More serious criminal cases have fallen under the commutation and pardon blessings of past presidents. Take for instance the famous 1974 kidnapping case of Patricia “Patty” Hearst, the granddaughter of American publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst.

In 1974 Patty Hearst was kidnapped by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). Hearst would eventually be found 19-months later but not after being implicated in a bank robbery which she claimed she was forced to participate in while being held captive by the SLA.

In 1976, Patty Hearst was convicted of bank robbery and the use of a firearm in a felony. She was sentenced to seven years.

In 1979, former president Jimmy Carter eventually commuted Hearst’s sentence only after 22-months.

On Jan 20, 2001, Patty Hearst eventually receive a pardon from president Bill Clinton on his last day in office.

It is not surprising that a wealthy well connected individual like Patty Hearst’s would be able to receive both a commutation and a pardon from two former presidents. It is also clear that Hearst’s crimes were far more serious than Mrs. Clinton’s potential crimes associated with the email scandals she currently is under investigation for.

So its not a far fetched idea that Mrs. Clinton would be a front runner to receive both a commutation and a pardon for any convictions she would get. Especially since she is the wife of a former president, Bill Clinton.

Final Verdict

In the rare case actual criminal charges were waged against Mrs. Clinton in connection with her using private email servers for classified emails when acting in her official capacity as a government official, she definitely would not be prosecuted under the same criminal justice stratosphere most Americans are prosecuted under in this country.

Her solid government connections, to include being the wife of a former president, would most likely provide her a wealth of opportunities not available to the average American charged with a crime. The very same citizens she has been asking to vote for her during her 2016 run for president of the United States.

At the end of the day, it can easily be projected that any well funded criminal defense team for Mrs. Clinton would simply lay out the potential prosecution scenario briefly outlined above with the hopes of entering into a plea deal.

Add a little grease to the rails by including ‘invisible kickback icing’ on the prosecutor’s future career cake, and it would be highly unlikely any formal proceedings will ever be seen against Mrs. Clinton for the email fiasco.

Even if after a successful prosecution was completed, if we apply the Patreaus precedent, Mrs. Clinton’s final punishment would be reduced to a mere misdemeanor and fine.

(c) 2016 PublicSkeleton.com

(Video) Hillary Clinton lying for 13 minutes straight with Index (01/29/2016)

20160129 Hillary Clinton lying for 13 minutes straight (YT)(12m56s).jpg Hillary Clinton lying for 13 minutes straight with Index
by Michael Armstrong (Posted 01/29/2016)

Index of Video:

00:00 Start / Fair Use Disclaimer.
00:06 On Same Sex Marriage
00:27 On Gay Marriage
Evolution of Hillary Clinton’s position on support vs non-support of gay marriage (2002, 2004, 2010, 2013).
01:04 Gay Marriage
Confrontational interview during an NPR Radio 2014 interview by Terry Gross regarding Hillary Clinton’s views on gay marriage.
02:09 On Core Values
Evolving views and positions she has taken regarding her being a Progressive vs a Moderate.
02:49 On Email Scandal
Various statements illustrating the evolution of claims that the email server was for private emails vs. official government business emails.
05:41 On Wall Street
05:59 On Housing Crisis
Attempts to place blame on debtors for taking out loans they couldn’t pay back. Shifting blame from banks onto the backs of the people taking out the loans instead.
06:26 On Wall Street Relations
Mentions Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley & Lehman Brothers Investment Banks (Top Contributors) during a debate indicating she has plans to curb their questionable behavior (raising eyebrows about same because they are her Top Contributors)
06:52 9/11 Attacks and Wall Street Relationship
Hillary Clinton associates the 9/11 attacks with her dealings with Wall Street in an effort to claim that her time spent with Wall Street was to help rebuild them after the 9/11 attack.
07:17 On Health Care, Universal Health Care
Compares and contrasts Clinton’s 2008 vs 2016 campaign positions for a universal health care. Shows her attacking Obama during the 2008 campaign advocating for universal healthcare. Then, it shows, during her campaign 2016 debate, her attacking Senator Bernie Sanders’ single-payer health care plan.
08:37 On Bosnia Visit
Various clips which contradict claims that her visit to Bosnia underwent sniper gun fire. Shows her freely walking away from plane on flight line. Actually stopping on the flight line to greet an 8-year-old girl, and took group photos. However, it was this same flight line where she later claimed to have taken sniper fire during her speeches to the public.
10:56 On NAFTA
Shows how Hillary Clinton helped get NAFTA approved (while her husband, then President Bill Clinton). Then it shows her making statements against NAFTA.
12:56 End of video.

Donation Downer: Bernie Sanders 2016 ActBlue.com’s Make it Weekly Gimmick Ruined the Giving Spirit

20160123_1930 Bernie Sanders 2016 Weekly Donation Let Down Image 01.jpgYou would think that a simple act of donating $27 to the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign would be a simple and painless process. In my case, it wasn’t.

Feeling uplifted and motivated, I chose to donate the historical amount of $27 to the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign. You see, $27 is the reported average donation amount of the historic 2.5 million donations received by Sanders according to a Jan. 2, 2016 news article.

In any case, the positive uplifting bells and whistles did not occur. Instead, my experience was completely destroyed by ActBlue.com’s payment checkout system.

You see, ActBlue.com is the donation processor for Sanders and as part of their electronic online donation collection process they pepper the check out process with a “make it weekly” gimmick that hustles the donor to make their contribution weekly. Well is that so.

Therefore, if your not careful, you’ll click it in obscurity, and turn your simple one time donation into a weekly deduction.

20160123_1930 Bernie Sanders 2016 Weekly Donation Let Down Image 02.jpg ActBlue.com even makes an attempt to ask for a “tip” during the checkout process.

If you did not intend this, and accidentally clicked the “make it weekly” button, which isn’t hard to do, you may not notice it until 30-days later when the monthly credit card statement comes in the mail.

Though my $27 may appear to be an insignificant amount, what if it was $100?

Getting his weekly for three more weeks, especially if its charging a debit card, is not small potatoes. Then, the reimbursement process takes another wave of time and effort to be made whole again.

Needless to say, my donation experience was a complete let down.

You see, at the very end of the check out process, after working your way through ActBlue.com’s hustle for a weekly contribution, the donor is presented with a strange final check out screen that reads in a large green button “Make it weekly.” Then next to that, a smaller gray button that reads “skip for now.”

Well, after having thought I clicked the skip for now button, it wasn’t absolutely clear that I would not be reoccurringly charged weekly the amount I only intended to be a one time donation.

Especially when feeling uncertain given the ambiguous final screen which prompted to sign up for some kind of subscription. After that screen, a screen indicating the donated amount (without any clarification about any weekly ongoing charges) appeared which presented itself as a receipt. You would think they would have included a “declined the weekly” itemized line on the receipt for the added benefit to the donor. Nope!

Needless to say, I was worried and did not feel confident that my credit card will not be charged any further than the one time donation I thought I was contributing.

Accordingly, I spent another hour navigating ActBlue.com’s website until I reached their “contact” form where I proceeded to type a scathing message explaining to them about my negative experience, to include advising them they were not authorized to charge my credit card for any additional charges other than my designated, one time donation of $27.

Interesting enough, the online contact form had a drop down menu for the subject line to the effect allowing to select an option to change the weekly donation amount. This told me this wasn’t the first time ActBlue.com has had problems with their “make it weekly” gimmick.

So, in a nut shell. I advised ActBlue.com their “make it weekly” trickery ruined my experience to donate to the Sanders campaign. And most likely, will discourage me, on principle, from making any further donations to his campaign. Unless I do so by mail.

Really?

When all is said and done, I am absent of the feelings one would have after having contributed to a worthy cause. Instead, I am combatively, and anxiously waiting for ActBlue.com to affirmatively acknowledge my notice to them they were not authorized to charge my credit card any further.

Video: Bernie Sanders Promo “They’ve all come to look for America…” (01m00s) (Jan. 21, 2016)

Related Articles:

Bernie Sanders, and Simon and Garfunkel, Put Focus on Voters, By NICK CORASANITI, The New York Times

Link: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nwRiuh1Cug]
Description:
Published on Jan 21, 2016
“They’ve all come to look for America…”

———
★ Join the political revolution at www.berniesanders.com

★ Connect with Bernie:
Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/berniesanders/
Twitter → https://twitter.com/berniesanders
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/berniesanders/
Tumblr → http://berniesanders.tumblr.com/
Snapchat → bernie.sanders

★ About Bernie:
Bernie Sanders is a Democratic candidate for President of the United States. He is serving his second term in the U.S. Senate after winning re-election in 2012 with 71 percent of the vote. Sanders previously served as mayor of Vermont’s largest city for eight years before defeating an incumbent Republican to be the sole congressperson for the state in the U.S. House of Representatives. He lives in Burlington, Vermont with his wife Jane and has four children and seven grandchildren.

Bernard “Bernie” Sanders was born in Brooklyn, New York, to immigrant parents and grew up in a small, rent-controlled apartment. His father came to the United States from Poland at the age of 17 without much money or a formal education. While attending the University of Chicago, a 20-year-old Sanders led students in a multi-week sit-in to oppose segregation in off-campus housing owned by the university as a Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) officer. In August of 1963, Sanders took an overnight bus as an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to hear Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech firsthand at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

After graduation, Bernie moved to Vermont where he worked as a carpenter and documentary filmmaker. In 1981, he was elected as mayor of Burlington as an Independent by a mere 10 votes, shocking the city’s political establishment by defeating a six-term, local machine mayor. In 1983, Bernie was re-elected by a 21 point margin with a record amount of voter turnout. Under his administration, the city made major strides in affordable housing, progressive taxation, environmental protection, child care, women’s rights, youth programs and the arts. In 1990, Sanders was elected to the House of Representatives as the first Independent in 40 years and joined the Democratic caucus. He was re-elected for eight terms, during which he voted against the deregulation of Wall Street, the Patriot Act, and the invasion of Iraq.

In 2006, Sanders defeated the richest man in Vermont to win a seat in the U.S. Senate as an Independent. Known as a “practical and successful legislator,” Sanders served as chairman of the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs where he authored and passed the most significant veteran health care reform bill in recent history. While in the Senate, Sanders has fought tirelessly for working class Americans against the influence of big money in politics. In 2010, he gave an eight-and-a-half hour filibuster-like speech on the Senate floor in opposition to extending Bush-era tax breaks for the wealthy. In 2015, the Democratic leadership tapped Bernie to serve as the caucus’ ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee.

Known for his consistency on the issues, Senator Sanders has supported the working class, women, communities of color, and the LGBT community throughout his career. He is an advocate for the environment, unions, and immigrants. He voted against Keystone XL, opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, wants to expand the Voting Rights Act, and pass the Equal Rights Amendment.
To learn more about Bernie on the issues, click here: https://berniesanders.com/issues/

2015 Halloween Brings Scariest News of the Year for YTS (YIFY) Movie Torrent Fans

Yify Torrents New LogoEVERYWHERE, Earth (Oct. 31, 2015) — The leader in small file size movie torrents, YTS has put on the scariest Halloween mask of 2015 by closing its doors from what appears to be a permanent departure from the internet universe.

“YIFI has been releasing movies since 2010, but the group got its own website, YIFI-Torrents.com, only in 2011. In a fairly short period of time, YIFI became one of the most popular movie release outfits,” Softpedia.com, by Eduard Kovacs, Jan. 24, 2014.

YTS’ Halloween mask was not made of a scary zombie character with black teeth and an eyeball dangling off to the side. Instead YTS’ simply wore a mask reading, “closed.” That is the scariest mask ever if your a TYS fan.

YTS’ reach was worldwide with fans reaching internet server status websites for news on its fate.

“Guys i think it’s official, YIFY/YTS has shut down,” said Vishal a user on a website server status site on the web. “Just like you all, I was sad and it was really heartbreaking news for us loyal fans of YTS to hear that the site has been shut down. Thank You YTS/YIFY, for all those amazing uploads, proud to say that am a fan of YTS till the end. ALL HAIL YIFY! :'(”

Yep, YTS appears to have taken their final bow on the torrent stage, and the curtain has been drawn closed. Though alternative torrent sites have and will continue to spring up, none of them will be able to attract the lure and mystery as TYS did over the years. Primarily because of their small file sizes for 720p and 1080p movies which ranged from 700MB to 1.4GB respectively.

Users pored in their support, anger and grief from all over the world about YTS several week detour until it became final the site was down – permanently.

From Egypt, Algeria, Indonesia, Pakistan, Cambo, Saudi Arabia, Panama, Makati, Argentina, Iran, Bangladesh, New Mexico, Greece, Singapore, Philippines, Australia, Oregon, Italy, Indonesia, Lebanon, France , Bali, Kuwait, South Africa, YTS fans stood by with anticipation for word of YTS’ future.

There was a brief shimmer of hope in a post dated Oct. 24, from the TYS Team which includes YIFY, OTTO and Seraph YTS’ founder, encoding and uploading specialist, and administrative manager respectively. The post reported the website had been suffering from a DOS (denial of service) attack and the team was working on the problem.

“Dear YTS Fans,
We are working on it at YTS. We got Dosed. We will be back up in a few days maybe even a week. So from all of us at YTS we are sorry. Also thank you for your cooperation.
Much Love & God Bless,
-YTS Team-,”

the post read.

The leader in movie torrents has been rather quiet much to the dismay of YTS fans. Some have speculated, and one reasonable speculation has been that the operators of YTS may have accepted a lump sum payoff to exclude themselves from the film industry equation.

Even a billion dollar payout would be a reasonable amount paid to YTS to keep them from imposing their will upon the movie industry big players who have dominated the landscape since the motion picture was invented.

A billion dollars when divided between the mega billion dollar players such as Universal and Paramount, to include the online streaming businesses such as Amazon, Netflix and now Youtube. Yes, a quite little arrangement insulated underneath a non-disclosure agreement would only mean several hundred million dollars per player all payable to YTS.

Not a bad payout to YTS if you divide it by the number of years they operated, and split equally between its operators.

As part of the settlement, the film industry most certainly would require that they aquire YTS’ file compression technology, a patent in itself worth millions.

So, torrent fans will eventually transcend YTS and over time learn to live without them.

Scams and wanna-be-yify sites have already popped up here and there seeking to claim a piece of the pie like trying to catch little pieces of the space shuttle Challenger after it exploded over the Atlantic ocean. Then trying to sell them on Ebay.

For now YTS has made this year’s Halloween the most scariest of them all by closing their doors.

May YTS RIP.

(c) 20151031 PublicSkeleton

Ben Carson’s Separation of Church and State Better Off Left to the Constitution

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUJvUDdtp8w

How many ways can you really say that any government position should be free of any religious fanaticism? You can count them using the fingers on one hand.

“I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that,” said Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Perhaps Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, should have stuck to the script when addressing religion and public office. That is, the script out of the United States Constitution. It appears there, is where a less controversial pronouncement of the separation of religion and public office could be made:

The Establishment Clause is the first of several pronouncements in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, stating,

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…

The Establishment Clause was written by Congressman Fisher Ames in 1789, who derived it from discussions in the First Congress of various drafts that would become the amendments comprising the Bill of Rights. The second half of the Establishment Clause includes the Free Exercise Clause, which attempts to guarantee freedom from governmental interference in both private and public religious affairs of all kinds.

The Establishment Clause is a limitation placed upon the United States Congress preventing it from passing legislation respecting an establishment of religion. The second half of the Establishment Clause inherently prohibits the government from preferring any one religion over another; which tends to allow for a greater harmony amongst all of the many denominations in the United States.[citation needed] While the Establishment Clause does prohibit Congress from preferring or elevating one religion over another, still it does not prohibit the government’s entry into the religious domain to make accommodations for religious observances and practices in order to achieve the purposes of the Free Exercise Clause.

Through time, Carson’s declaration will be aired out. And most likely, for his sake, his perspective will fall in line with the First Amendment.

The forbiddings accounted for in the Establishment Clause account for and anticipated incidences such as those in recent and historical times.

Take for instance the Rowan County clerk Kim Davis. She has a very strong religious view which she has permitted to contaminate the responsibilities of the government position she held.

If any form of religious based policy making is imposed upon the citizens under which a public official holds, that is criminal and should be strongly eradicated from our system of government.

Germany’s infamous Hitler had very strong opinions against those of the Jewish faith and heritage. Without restraint, he imposed his will, with the power of the government office he held, upon millions.

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