Pam and Russ Martens — Brazile Fallout: Hillary Privatized the DNC with Help from a Washington Law Firm

Secret side agreements are a common maneuver by corporate law firms. Here’s how they work. An agreement that is legal and passes the smell test is drafted and submitted to a court or a regulatory body for public consumption. Then, a separate, secret side agreement is written and signed by both sides and it contains all of the smelly, shady, ethically questionable hard details on how the original agreement will be carried out. 

Donna Brazile, the former interim Chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) during the 2016 presidential campaign, has written a new book, “Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House,” and has revealed the secret side agreement that the DNC had with Hillary Clinton’s campaign....

This is how Brazile describes the secret side agreement in her book:

“The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook [Clinton’s campaign manager] with a copy to Marc Elias [lawyer at Perkins Coie] — specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.”

The Clinton camp has now attempted to defend itself by saying these terms are standard because they were not going to kick in until the Democratic Party had chosen its official presidential nominee at its party convention in July 2016. But that’s not what the actual secret side agreement says. It indicates the following: “Beginning October 1, 2015,” the HVF would begin transferring $1.2 million to the DNC at the start of each month with that release “conditioned on” Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign personnel being consulted “and have joint authority over strategic decisions over the staffing, budget, expenditures, and general election related communications, data, technology, analytics, and research. The DNC will provide HFA advance opportunity to review on-line or mass email, communications that features a particular Democratic primary candidate.”

Additionally, the secret agreement states that “the DNC agrees that no later than September 11, 2015 it will hire one of two candidates previously identified as acceptable to HFA” (Hillary for America, the primary campaign fund for Clinton) as its Communications Director. All of this is occurring in the fall of 2015 with the official Democratic nominating convention not taking place until July 2016....

It gets worse.

The question that no one seems to be asking is who are the main beneficiaries of Perkins Coie’s heavy influence at the top of the Democratic Party. Despite Obama’s re-election for a second term, the Democratic Party shed nearly 1,000 seats from coast to coast. The Republicans now control both houses of Congress and the Executive Branch. A man with the lowest approval rating in modern history now occupies the Oval Office.

The primary beneficiaries of this hubris have been the 1 percent – Wall Street and hedge fund titans – and giant multi-national corporations that dominate the client roster at Perkins Coie.

Those within the Clinton camp and DNC who are suggesting to the American people that there is nothing to see here, time to move along, are dead wrong. Just because the Republican presidential campaign may have been corrupted by outside forces doesn’t mean that the Democratic campaign wasn’t also corrupted by its own outside forces. It’s time to follow the obscene political money trail wherever it leads.

And it was the Clinton New Democrats that brought in Perkins Coie in the first place.

Wall Street On Parade
Brazile Fallout: Hillary Privatized the DNC with Help from a Washington Law Firm
Pam Martens and Russ Martens

John Chuckman — Breakdown of the Clinton Money Machine

As troubling as Donald Trump’s election may be, it carries greater hope for some positive good than the alternative of Hillary Clinton, who represented a corrupt, money-churning machine, writes John Chuckman.

Nothing is going to change for the better more than temporarily without getting the money out of politics, ending lobbying, and locking the revolving door.

Exposing the problem is insufficient. It must be solved and after the Citizens United decision, this will take a constitutional amendment in the US.

Other countries face similar challenges.

The fundamental problems globally are elitism — the cronyism to which elitism leads and corruption that the elite legalizes.

These issues will either be solved peacefully or there will be revolutions.

Consortium News
Breakdown of the Clinton Money Machine

John Chuckman, former chief economist for a large Canadian oil company

Favorite tidbit:

In hindsight, it might be just as well that Sanders was cheated out of the nomination. He proved a weak individual in the end, giving in to just the forces that he had claimed to oppose and leaving his enthusiastic followers completely let down. There he was, out on the hustings, supporting everything he ever opposed as personified in Hillary Clinton. Men of that nature do not stand up well to Generals and Admirals and the heads of massive corporations, a quality which I do think we have some right to expect Trump to display.

Jon Schwarz — Yahoo Finance Drops in From Mars to Explain Big Money Hasn’t Bought U.S. Politics

A recent New York Times/CBS poll found that 84 percent of Americans think money has too much influence in U.S. politics, and 85 percent want the campaign financing system completely rebuilt or at least fundamentally changed. Even politicians themselves will tell you that big money controls most of what they do.

Yahoo Finance, however, has done a study on money in politics, and determined that everyone else in America is wrong…. 

The Intercept
Yahoo Finance Drops in From Mars to Explain Big Money Hasn’t Bought U.S. Politics

Jon Schwarz

Lee Fang — Former Koch Industries Official Says He Ghostwrote Letters On Behalf of Congressmen

Richard Tucker, a former communications manager at Koch Industries from August 2010 through March 2012, wrote in his LinkedIn profile that he was responsible for “op-eds and letters to the editor that were signed by company leaders, members of congress and citizen activists.” Tucker, a writer and editor for a number of conservative websites, said he also wrote “regular blog posts for company employees to help explain important Washington policy debates” and was a member of the “crisis communication team that produced swift responses to negative press coverage.”

Way more than access.

The Intercept
Former Koch Industries Official Says He Ghostwrote Letters On Behalf of Congressmen

Lee Fang

Nadia Prupis — "I'm In": Lawrence Lessig Confirms White House Run

Some good people stepping up. It will make the debate more interesting and potentially shift the Overton window leftward. Lessig will get a lot of bipartisan support on campaign finance reform as an anti-corruption and anti-cronyism candidate. Policy won't change without it, since both parties are the pocket of the wealthy donors.

Common Dreams
"I'm In": Lawrence Lessig Confirms White House Run
Nadia Prupis, staff writer

Matt Taibbi — Eric Holder, Wall Street Double Agent, Comes in From the Cold

Smackdown.

Who appointed this guy anyway?

Rolling Stone
Eric Holder, Wall Street Double Agent, Comes in From the Cold
Matt Taibbi

Michael Krieger — Clinton Foundation’s Deep Financial Ties to Ukrainian Oligarch Revealed

Oh my.

Between 2009 and 2013, including when Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state, the Clinton Foundation received at least $8.6 million from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, according to that foundation, which is based in Kiev, Ukraine. It was created by Mr. Pinchuk, whose fortune stems from a pipe-making company. He served two terms as an elected member of the Ukrainian Parliament and is a proponent of closer ties between Ukraine and the European Union.

In 2008, Mr. Pinchuk made a five-year, $29 million commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative, a wing of the foundation that coordinates charitable projects and funding for them but doesn’t handle the money. The pledge was to fund a program to train future Ukrainian leaders and professionals “to modernize Ukraine,” according to the Clinton Foundation. Several alumni are current members of the Ukrainian Parliament. Actual donations so far amount to only $1.8 million, a Pinchuk foundation spokesman said, citing the impact of the 2008 financial crisis

The Pinchuk foundation said its donations were intended to help to make Ukraine “a successful, free, modern country based on European values.” It said that if Mr. Pinchuk was lobbying the State Department about Ukraine, “this cannot be seen as anything but a good thing.”
– From the Wall Street Journal article: Clinton Charity Tapped Foreign Friends

Heads downhill from here.

Liberty Blitzkrieg

Clinton Foundation’s Deep Financial Ties to Ukrainian Oligarch Revealed
Michael Krieger

ht Zero Hedge

Bill Allison and Sarah Harkins — Fixed Fortunes: Biggest corporate political interests spend billions, get trillions

Between 2007 and 2012, 200 of America’s most politically active corporations spent a combined $5.8 billion on federal lobbying and campaign contributions. A year-long analysis by the Sunlight Foundation suggests, however, that what they gave pales compared to what those same corporations got: $4.4 trillion in federal business and support. 

That figure, more than the $4.3 trillion the federal government paid the nation’s 50 million Social Security recipients over the same period, is the result of an unprecedented effort to quantify the less-examined side of the campaign finance equation: Do political donors get something in return for what they give? 

Four years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court suggested the answer to that question was no. Corporate spending to influence federal elections would not “give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption,” the majority wrote in the landmark Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision. 

Sunlight decided to test that premise....

In its Citizens United decision, the court took for granted that “favoritism and influence” are inherent in electoral democracy and that “democracy is premised on responsiveness” of politicians to those who support them. We found ample evidence of that.

“The appearance of influence or access,” the court said, “will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy.”

It appears that the electorate — who stayed away from the polls this year in droves — might not agree.

Banana republic.

Sunlight Foundation
Fixed Fortunes: Biggest corporate political interests spend billions, get trillions
Bill Allison and Sarah Harkins

Andrew Prokop — Jeb Bush, to donors: Stop giving me so much money so quickly

Money certainly won't be sufficient to hand Bush the nomination — questions about his appeal to the conservative base and actual voters remain — but this fundraising will certainly allow Bush to get his message out, and seems to position him as the man to beat.

Vox
Jeb Bush, to donors: Stop giving me so much money so quickly
Andrew Prokop

Cory Doctorow — Nuanced view of corruption: money doesn't buy elections, it buys influence

Jonathan Soros, son of George Soros and heavy donor to campaigns to get money out of politics, writes a nuanced account of what huge, open campaign contributions do to electoral politics. 

After a certain point, spending doesn't make a huge difference in electoral outcomes (one study says that doubling funding shifts the needle by one percent), but because politicians are entirely beholden to their funders to reach that certain point, the electoral agenda becomes about their donors' priorities. And once in office, every argument is couched in terms that are set by those donors (as Barney Frank quipped, "[Congress are not] the only people in the history of the world who, on a regular basis, took money from perfect strangers and made sure it had no effect on them." 

Soros points out that money was corrupting politics -- albeit less openly -- long beforeCitizens United, and calls for a radical campaign-spending reform to minimize the reach of large campaign donors' priorities on political discourse.… 

Boing Boing

Nuanced view of corruption: money doesn't buy elections, it buys influence
Cory Doctorow

Michael Lelyveld — China bars outside income for military

Breaking the legs of the MICC in China.

China's crackdown on corruption appears to have entered a new stage with a warning from President Xi Jinping that senior military officers will face punishment for any outside income.

On January 17, Xi told "high-ranking military officers" of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) that "any income other than their salaries is strictly forbidden," state media reported.…

The new restriction is a sign that the military will be a key front in Xi's anti-corruption campaign, which has already unsettled cadres of the Communist Party of China (CPC) with punishments of 232,000 officials last year, according to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspections (CCDI).

Xin Jinxing is serious about eradicating corruption. Narendra Modi needs to take a hint. The US? "Freedom, Democracy and Capitalism."

Asia Times Online
China bars outside income for military
Michael Lelyveld

Bill Black — Geithner: “The End of Capitalism as We Know It”

Anyone that wants to save “capitalism” must destroy the current corrupt system “we know” that is posing as “capitalism.” To sum it up, there was no greater service that the Obama administration could have done for (real) capitalism than to produce “the end of capitalism as we know it.” Geithner was absolutely right in his diagnosis and absolutely wrong in his response. Wall Street hates “capitalism” – Geithner and Summers acted to save, rather than exorcize, its corrupt doppelgänger.…

New Economic Perspectives
Geithner: “The End of Capitalism as We Know It”
William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC

John Helmer — The Think-Tank That Blasts From The Past – The Case Of CASE, Cronies Against Self-Sacrifice In Europe

Think tanks, geopolitics, and clandestine operations. Connecting the dots (people).

On April 25, 2013, President Putin publicly identified [Jonathan] Hay as a CIA agent. Referring to Hay’s work on Russian asset privatization for Chubais, and the subsequent US prosecution, Putin said: “we learned today that officers of the United States’ CIA operated as consultants to Anatoly Chubais. But it is even funnier that upon returning to the US, they were prosecuted for violating their country’s laws and illegally enriching themselves in the course of privatisation in the Russian Federation. They did not have the right to do this as active CIA officers. In accordance with US law, they were not allowed to engage in any kind of commercial activity, but they couldn’t resist – it’s corruption, you see.” Note Putin’s reference to when he was briefed – April 25, 2013. According to Boyarchuk of CASE Ukraine, Hay was then supervising that organization.

Dances with Bears

The Think-Tank That Blasts From The Past – The Case Of CASE, Cronies Against Self-Sacrifice In Europe

John Helmer

Paul Buchheit — Democrat Rahm Emanuel Puts Chicago Up for Sale

Chicago is being privatized. Assets are being sold off, Wall Street debt is mounting, and the mayor conducts business with multi-millionaire donors who often reap benefits from their connections to City Hall. The people of Chicago, who will be electing their next mayor on February 24, need to know the facts about their city's financial problems. Some of these facts won't be found in the mainstream media.

Like Detroit in 2013, Chicago is becoming a symbol of a divided nation, of a society crippled by a 35-year-old notion that the "public good" is somehow un-American. Other U.S. cities have learned that their people and their public services are not products to be bought and sold. Chicago, under Rahm Emanuel and Richie Daley and an assortment of Illinois Governors, has been headed in the other direction.…

And Rahm is an up-and-coming Democratic insider with ambitions for higher office. TINA takes on new meaning. There is no alternative to two faction-one party rule in American oligarchic "democracy".

Buzz flash
​Democrat Rahm Emanuel Puts Chicago Up for Sale

Paul Buchheit For Buzzflash At Truthout

Michael Hiltzik — Five Years After Citizens United Ruling, Big Money Reigns

A new study by the public policy think tank Demos and the public interest group U.S. PIRG calculates that U.S. Senate candidates will have to raise an average $3,300 every day for six years to match the campaign chests of the median 2014 winner. As an unsuccessful challenger for a New York congressional seat told the authors, "You find out very quickly that this is not about who has the best ideas; this is about who has the most money."

Demos
Five Years After Citizens United Ruling, Big Money Reigns

Michael Hiltzik | Los Angeles Times

DSWright — Taken For Granted At Davos That US Government Run On ‘Legalized Corruption’

In an interview at Davos with Bloomberg News related to growing concerns about rising wealth inequality and its corruption influence on American politics economist and NYU business professor Nouriel Roubinistated as a matter of fact that it would be hard for the US to overcome wealth inequality because the US political system was based on “legalized corruption” which meant rich people – having more resources to bribe politicians with – would generally prevail.

It's called "stability," you know, versus "rabble rule."

Firedog lake
Taken For Granted At Davos That US Government Run On ‘Legalized Corruption’
DSWright

Steven Rosenfeld — Dianne Feinstein's Husband's Real Estate Firm Poised to Make $1 Billion Selling Post Offices

Today's blood boiler.

Washington business model: spouses spot deals with huge upsides.

Cronyism and corruption are bipartisan values.

AlterNet
Dianne Feinstein's Husband's Real Estate Firm Poised to Make $1 Billion Selling Post Offices
Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet

Ellen Brown — Bail-In and the Financial Stability Board: The Global Bankers’ Coup

On December 11, 2014, the US House passed a bill repealing the Dodd-Frank requirement that risky derivatives be pushed into big-bank subsidiaries, leaving our deposits and pensions exposed to massive derivatives losses. The bill was vigorously challenged by Senator Elizabeth Warren; but the tide turned when Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorganChase, stepped into the ring. Perhaps what prompted his intervention was the unanticipated $40 drop in the price of oil. As financial blogger Michael Snyder points out, that drop could trigger a derivatives payout that could bankrupt the biggest banks. And if the G20’s new “bail-in” rules are formalized, depositors and pensioners could be on the hook. 

The new bail-in rules were discussed in my last post here. They are edicts of the Financial Stability Board (FSB), an unelected body of central bankers and finance ministers headquartered in the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland. Where did the FSB get these sweeping powers, and is its mandate legally enforceable? 

Those questions were addressed in an article I wrote in June 2009, two months after the FSB was formed, titled “Big Brother in Basel: BIS Financial Stability Board Undermines National Sovereignty.” It linked the strange boot shape of the BIS to a line from Orwell’s 1984: “a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” The concerns raised there seem to be materializing, so I’m republishing the bulk of that article here. We need to be paying attention, lest the bail-in juggernaut steamroll over us unchallenged.

Using state capture to institutionalize capitalizing gains and socializing losses through the force of law.

Web of Debt
Bail-In and the Financial Stability Board: The Global Bankers’ Coup
Ellen Brown

Charles Hugh Smith — Is There Capitalism After Cronyism? – Review

Review of Does Capitalism Have a Future?, Immanuel Wallerstein, Randall Collins, Michael Mann, Georgi Derluguian, and Craig Calhoun, Oxford University Press, 208 pages

The American Conservative
Is There Capitalism After Cronyism?
Charles Hugh Smith

Lawrence Lessig — We Should Be Protesting, Too

Lawrence Lessig draws the obvious parallels between Hong Kong authoritarian democracy and American oligarchic democracy and asks why Americans aren't hitting the streets, too. Have American give up or are the too stupid to realize that they are being had.

Lawrence Lessig is Harvard's antidote to Greg Mankiew.

BillMoyers.com
We Should Be Protesting, Too
Lawrence Lessig | Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School, and serves as director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University