The Clintons and UBS Bank: a tale of corruption from July 2015 reporting

I thought I 'knew it all' about the Clintons, more or less, as it pertains to this current cycle. The uranium deals with the Russians....Hillary's state dept working with garment manufacturers to suppress minimum wage in Haiti....the money laundering with the DNC....the hypocrisy of criticizing Citizens United while personifying everything wrong with it....

But apparently I missed the UBS scandal. And who knows how many more are out there? Clinton and her fans use a simple talking point when Clinton corruption comes up :"that's a GOP talking point!". What they are attempting to do is make EVEN THE SUGGESTION of corruption invalid. There's probably a Latin term for this kind of obfuscation.

This Atlantic article from almost a year ago is frighteningly accurate for the problem we have with Clinton right now.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/hillary-helps-a-bank...

Swiss Bank UBS is one of the biggest, most powerful financial institutions in the world. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton intervened to help it out with the IRS. And after that, the Swiss Bank paid Bill Clinton $1.5 million for speaking gigs.

The Clintonistas want us to stop talking about the Goldman Sachs $$ that she got. OK, well then let's talk about Bill's $1.5M.
As personable and intelligent as I find Bill to be, just as Jon Stewart does, I cannot help but be disappointed in seeing him trying to grab the reins of power once more.

"Total donations by UBS to the Clinton Foundation grew from less than $60,000 through 2008 to a cumulative total of about $600,000 by the end of 2014" This happened right after Clinton helped UBS out. The bank then lent $32M to a Clinton foundation initiative.

The conflict of interest here is so obvious. One would think even the 'reality based" hacks at DailyKos / Hillary subreddit would be able to see it. But for whatever reason, they want to stick their heads in the sand.

The best part of article is closing part:

Democrats are hurtling toward a farce. The coalition that insists on the corrupting effect of Citizens United and the unlimited campaign contributions it permits is poised to nominate a couple that has seen riches flow from big banks to their personal accounts.

...

Finance is also the global industry most responsible for the financial crash of 2008. And it is the bane of Occupy, the biggest left-wing protest movement in recent memory.

How can mainstream Democratic Party beliefs about the corrupting effects of money in politics and the perniciousness of Big Finance possibly be squared with elevating as their leaders a couple as cozy with Big Finance as anyone in American politics?

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snoopydawg's picture

There are too many paragraphs in the article to quote here so I encourage people to read it.

Hillary's supporters are deluding themselves about her and what her core beliefs are.
I'm sure that if this was a republican SOS and the spouse who did these types of activities they would believe that the couple is corrupt.
There was a time when progressives were against everything that the Clintons stand for and have done. The conflict of interest between what Hillary did as SOS and the obscene amount of money that both Bill and the Clinton foundation made should disqualify her for president.
They have made money from people's misery in Haiti. Anyone or any corporations that wanted in on the reconstruction of Haiti had to get approval from the foundation and the state department.
The Clintons have been involved in all types of shenanigans in Honduras since 2001 and their friends like Lanny Davis and others have gotten very rich because of the Clintons.
And then there's Bluementhal and what he did during the Libyan war. He would find business opportunities there and forward them to Hillary on her private email server and a lot of the information he sent to her was classified. He also outed an undercover CIA agent through her email server.
The list of corruption is too long for a comment here.
But anyone can search for 'Clinton foundation scandal' and see how many hits come up.

Even Democrats who aren’t concerned about the agenda of Big Finance ought to ask themselves if America is best served by a president and first spouse who care so little about preserving the confidence that the public can reasonably have in the integrity of their actions. They are far from the only members of our elite who’ve put a payday ahead of the common good, but it’s hard to think of a more flagrant example.

needn’t believe that there’s ever been any quid pro quo to see that this matters.

“Any suggestions that Hillary Clinton was driven by anything but what’s in America’s best interest would be false. Period,” a campaign spokesman told The Guardian. Oh, come on. Clinton may well have thought that intervening on behalf of UBS was good for the U.S. There are reports that the Swiss helped our government in various ways in exchange for shielding the bank from a worst-case scenario.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

i can't quote too much but everyone should read it.

great reporting.

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did 9 months in California prison, because Neoliberal Democrats and GOP maggots work together to profit off the drug war

WindDancer13's picture

super pacs They can make ads of whatever they want (cf. swiftboating) without repercussions on the candidate. Can you imagine the ads that Haiti and Honduras alone would engender? Then the whole list of money laundering episodes? They could be run like a soap opera.

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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass

and when they do, the dailykos hacks will try to blame bernie for it somehow

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did 9 months in California prison, because Neoliberal Democrats and GOP maggots work together to profit off the drug war

edg's picture

"If only Sanders had run SuperPAC ads against Hillary, it would have inoculated her against ads by the Republicans that cost us the White House."

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thinking person, would just sit back and look at the whole clinton money machine, they would have to face facts that these are some corrupt individuals. There's just a few ways a person can get filthy rich in America today. Be born into wealth. Come up with some great idea and get lucky with it. Win the lottery. But the easiest of all is to get elected to a federal office; congress, senate, president. Easiest, that is, if you lack morals. The clintons are the poster children of a corrupt political system. Two people of modest means who rose through the various levels of politics and in doing so have become multimillionaires. Now I don't begrudge them of cashing in on it, it's the way they are doing it. And compare them to someone like Jimmy Carter, no, don't. These two carpetbagging hucksters shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as President Carter...

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Steven D's picture

Read about her father at Wikipedia.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

TheOtherMaven's picture

How very traditional of him. Diablo

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

compared to the fortune they've acquired since becoming the king and queen of grifters...

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No one would call Park Ridge an affluent suburb. Had family friends who lived there, and friends who went to the same high school (Maine Township) as Hillary. The town's population ranged from those of very modest means to those who were well off. Affluent suburbs were Winnetka, Lake Forest, and Kenilworth with pockets of wealth in Hinsdale, River Forest and Evanston.

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Thaumlord-Exelbirth's picture

you can't "prove" that there's been corruption. I guess that would be a fallacy:
"Argument from silence (argumentum ex silentio) – where the conclusion is based on the absence of evidence, rather than the existence of evidence."
Could it be argued that them trying to make all examples of Clinton corruption invalid by default because some of the examples were fake right wing talking points be a fallacy of composition?
"Fallacy of composition – assuming that something true of part of a whole must also be true of the whole."
Maybe:
"Inconsistent comparison – where different methods of comparison are used, leaving one with a false impression of the whole comparison."

Honestly, looking through the list of fallacies, it's hard not to find one that Clinton supporters haven't used yet.

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did 9 months in California prison, because Neoliberal Democrats and GOP maggots work together to profit off the drug war

Steven D's picture

This isn't even close to the biggest haul Bill pulled in for using Hillary's influence at State to benefit large corporations (that would be the $16 million he got for being an honorary chairman of Laureate International Universities) but it is symbolic of her reliance on the financial industry to fund her campaigns. How anyone can believe she has a better plan to "break up the banks" - much less that she would even attempt to do that - is beyond me. But emotions cloud the mind, and Hillary supporters are in the running for the biggest emotion fueled cult of all time.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

ZimInSeattle's picture

you beat me to it StevenD. The Clinton's are scum.

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"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK | "The more I see of the moneyed peoples, the more I understand the guillotine." - G. B. Shaw Bernie/Tulsi 2020

Steven D's picture

In wrote a diary over at TOP about this - before the exodus - and so I know it off the top of my head. But there are so many instances of corruption that they must number in the hundreds if not thousands. This is who they are and this is what they do.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

comes to mind. No better or worse than Palin, just smarter.

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reveals the three prime methods the Clintons use to enrich themselves:

1) Use of office (State Dept funds to the university)

2) Donations to the foundation

3) Huge speaking fees or symbolic positions

Thank you for researching this and posting it. I have sent it out to a lot of people.

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Lookout's picture

...have become republicans. DWS is the poster girl...supporting the drug war and for profit prison, fighting for payday lenders and against Warren's consumer protection agency....
Why there aren't major stories of the Clinton foundation money laundering is amazing. MSM has nominated Trump and are doing their best to nominate Hellery. May be the TTP is the trade off?

Hillary sellout_2.jpg

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

The estimated figure the Clintons have made, in total, since leaving the White House is over $3 billion. That's $3 BILLION folks. It includes the speaking fees, fundraisers, Clinton Foundation pay-to-play deals, Wall Street donations, and even the usury interest they charged on micro loans to poor women in Third World countries.

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Azazello's picture

See this in the WaPo. Forbes magazine estimates Bill and Hill's combined net worth at $110 million. How did they do that ? You tell me.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

Azazello's picture

She wasn't just "helping" the Swiss bank. Her real service was to wealthy Americans with secret accounts, i.e. her donor base. There were thousands of them and she kept their names out of the news.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

out of the news, and out of tax court. The ROI has been YUGE.

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You keep using that word...

"BULLSHIT" Wink

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Hetrose's picture

Or, in the lovely ancient language - Bovis Stercore

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did 9 months in California prison, because Neoliberal Democrats and GOP maggots work together to profit off the drug war

featheredsprite's picture

has evidence of all of this. And he'll bring it out at some time when he thinks it will be most beneficial.

I wonder about the Biden backup plan. If Trump really doesn't want to run against Uncle Joe, he'll unload a bunch of stuff on Hillary before California. If he doesn't care, he'll hang on to his precious dirt until after the conventions.

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Life is strong. I'm weak, but Life is strong.