Hillary Clinton

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innervation wrote:

The insinuation of danger isn't so much on a 'was Soros right/wrong evil/good' spectrum. The problem is that he's not our Secretary of State, and has no business telling the actual Sec State how to conduct international affairs.

Really?

Well, I guess we need to shut down the Feedback forum immediately. The danger of Feedback threads isn't so much on a right/wrong good/evil spectrum. The problem is that those who post them aren't developers, and have no business telling actual developers how to conduct their affairs. [/sarcasm]

I'm not saying I want a president who listens to Soros, but I do want a President who listens. So no. Hell no. It's entirely on a Soros was/is right/wrong good/evil spectrum. And what Ms. Clinton would do if his advice was wrong and/or evil.

If.

Holy fucking shit.

Vote Hillary Clinton, Trump is for the 1%. =========================>>>>>>>>>>>> Hillary 2016.

If you want to see the consequences of Soros doing his thing, just look at Milwaukee right now.

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NeroNoah wrote:

A good politician hears advice all the time.

So, we all have direct phone and email access to the secretary of state, and will get timely responses to our suggestions?

The implicit here isn't that Hillary was listening to advice, it is that someone has paid (through donations to various groups Hillary is tied in with) to have access to her.

Imagine a Path of Exile forum section for feedback and suggestions that only paid supporters of $1,000 or more had access to, and that developers responded to and took action on a regular basis, and you will begin to see the problem.

Now imagine an ordinary citizen emailing the secretary of state and getting the following response:

. . . . .

"We're sorry, but you have not met the donation criteria of 2 million dollars or more, so your email has been automatically rejected. If you would like to discuss donating to My_Money_Is_With_HER to meet the threshold, please use the following unofficial contacts to arrange the financing [REDACTED]

Sincerely,

H

. . . . .


The problem isn't that government officials are "listening", the problem is that they are listening specifically because of money being funneled towards them using various legal and quasi-legal methods.


Let's say for instance, that Player X felt very strongly that Path of Exile should not have any experience point loss on death. Player X knows GGG would never do this willingly. Whatever is Player X to do? He decides that if there was United States federal law prohibiting any US citizen from financially supporting such games, that he can force his will on GGG.





So, Player X hops in his Gulfstream and flies out to Seattle to attend a "public" fund raising dinner at Bill Gates' house for the Ready for Hillary super PAC, with the caveat that each attendee contribute two million dollars a plate. Hillary herself will be dining at the table with the qualified attendees for 30 minutes. Player X and his wife and Bill Gates are the only attendees and discuss the proposed legislation with Hillary during this time.

After winning the election, Hillary implements the Experience Point Dream act and is lauded by the media for being a "good" politician for listening to advice all the time.

Meanwhile the 99% of players that prefer the experience point penalty are never allowed to discuss the proposed legislation with Hillary.



Sounds fair doesn't it?

It's not the "listening to advice" aspect that people are rightfully concerned about with Soros and Hillary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_to_play

http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=2491

I'm pretty sure she hears a lot of people who didn't pay (specifically, economists...Trump would do good having more than one rather than Hedge Fund managers from banks and even Wall Street). A citizen is supposed to vote, protest or send letters if he/she wants to be heard. Her current position is problematic, of course, but that's not the same than having evidence of wrongdoing.

I don't think Hillary is great, but given the other option, well, that's easy. If you don't want money on politics from corporations at any cost, don't vote for the corporate big cat either. Sanders Johnson for president!

It's also a zero-sum argument, since what you're describing has a word:

Lobbying


We gonna sit here and pretend that this isn't commonplace for every single sitting US senator? This makes her at worst a status-quo politician.

Next.

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NeroNoah wrote:

To hear is not the same than to obey blindly. Way to make a strawman there.

It's not a straw man, paying to get the ear of an elected or appointed official has been a very real concern for politics for a very long time, and it is a rampant problem.

Parks and Glandon (lawyers at Covington & Burling’s election and political law practice, advising corporations, trade associations, campaigns, political parties, and high-net worth individuals on election and political law challenges)

" Although a complicated patchwork of federal, state, and local pay-to-play laws, regulations, and policies exists, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s pay-to-play rule is the most consequential."

"Pay-to-play rules are also changing how campaigns operate. Most famously, pay-to-play considerations reportedly factored into the Romney campaign’s decision not to ask Chris Christie to join the ticket. Similar considerations will almost certainly weigh on future presidential candidates as they make their own Vice Presidential picks. "

"These pay-to-play challenges are by no means insurmountable for covered candidates. Covered candidates may, for example, end up having to rely more on outside Super PACs (which are generally not covered by the SEC pay-to-play rules) than they otherwise would. Nevertheless, the often overlooked obstacles pay-to-play rules impose on covered candidates are real. In a world where the slightest fundraising advantage can make the difference between winning and losing, these rules matter."

This kind of stuff is very real. It has and will affect a very large number of people who don't have access to the kind of funding necessary to "play". Maybe you haven't seen much news coverage of it?

It is "strawman" enough that large fines and prison terms have been handed out.

"..the 2005 arrest of “super lobbyist” Jack Abramoff shamed Congress into action. Abramoff bared the worst excesses of the capital’s influence industry, brazenly feting lawmakers with golf trips to Scotland, sushi dinners and campaign contributions, opening the door for lobbyists to write legislation themselves. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) resigned, and Ohio Rep. Bob Ney went to prison. Democrats seized on the chaos to retake both chambers, promising voters they’d change what they called a “culture of corruption.”


"In announcing a $325,000 settlement with the Connecticut Democratic State Central Committee, the State Elections Enforcement Commission (“SEEC”) has made clear that it will not tolerate efforts to circumvent the state’s pay-to-play laws."




It is "Strawman" enough that there are laws regarding it. How strange that the United States Congress used a time machine to travel from 1995 to read the Path of Exile forum and my strawman post and then go back in time to enact legislation regarding it. Then they had to use their time machine again in 2007:

The Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 (2 U.S.C. § 1601) was legislation aimed at bringing a level of accountability to federal lobbying practices in the United States. The law was amended substantially by the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007.[1] Under provisions which took effect on January 1, 2006, federal lobbyists are required to register with the Clerk of the United States House of Representatives and the Secretary of the United States Senate. Anyone failing to do so is punishable by a civil fine of up to $50,000. The clerk and secretary must refer any acts of non-compliance to the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia.

The LDA defines a number of provisions attempting to maintain a degree of transparency in the activities of lobbyists. The legislation defines a client as "any person or entity that employs or retains another person for financial or other compensation to conduct lobbying activities on behalf of that person or entity. A person or entity whose employees act as lobbyists on its own behalf is both a client and an employer of such employees."

So, if Soros employs a single person to to conduct such activities, he could be construed to be or employ a lobbyist.

NOTE: Yes, there are workarounds for these laws, and the abuse of them is also a very real concern.


Oddly enough, even Hillary believes in this "Strawman":

"hundreds of millions of dollars of secret, unaccountable money into U.S. elections that is drowning out the voices of ordinary Americans and distorting our democracy."



"Hillary Clinton’s Proposals to Restore Integrity to American Elections

Americans are understandably cynical about a political system that has been hijacked by billionaires and special interests who will spend whatever it takes to crowd out the voices of everyday Americans.

[spoiler]
And with the rise of unlimited, secret spending in our political process, it is virtually impossible for anyone to really know who or what is influencing our elected officials. On issues from climate change to equal pay and immigration reform, voters won’t believe Washington will work for them unless we take on the power and stranglehold that wealthy interests have over our political system.

Hillary Clinton has made revitalization of our democracy a key pillar of her campaign. She will fight to ensure that our democracy works for everyday Americans and leads to government of, by, and for the people, not just the wealthy and well-connected. Her proposals will curb the outsized influence of big money in American politics, bring sunshine to secret spending, and institute real reform to raise the voices of regular voters. Key proposals include:

Overturning Citizens United Decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010, by a 5-4 margin, the Citizens United case helped unleash hundreds of millions of dollars of secret, unaccountable money into U.S. elections that is drowning out the voices of ordinary Americans and distorting our democracy. To undo the harm of Citizens United and other wrongheaded campaign finance court decisions, Clinton will:
Appoint Supreme Court justices who value the right to vote over the right of billionaires to buy elections. Clinton will appoint Supreme Court justices who understand that the Constitution protects citizens’ right to participate fully in the democratic process, and that decisions like Citizens United, which upended campaign finance law, and Shelby County, which gutted the Voting Rights Act, are not good for America.
Support a constitutional amendment. Clinton supports amending the Constitution to allow Americans to establish common sense rules to protect against the undue influence of billionaires and special interests and to restore the role of average voters in elections.
Ending Secret, Unaccountable Money in Politics Outside groups have spent more than $600 million in secret money in the three federal elections since Citizens United, yet it is difficult to know who or what is behind that spending. Clinton believes that the public has a right to know who is spending money to influence elections and the actual sources of funds for those expenditures"[/spoiler]

http://time.com/4024830/hillary-clinton-campaign-finance-proposal/


If you read up on it and still do not understand the very real and continual problem of paying to be heard in politics, I can probably find some good books on it. (Odd that so many people would write books on a strawman that I made up)

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Antnee wrote:

It's also a zero-sum argument, since what you're describing has a word:

Lobbying

Yes, it is lobbying - I didn't/don't know if Nero was familiar with that concept and was in the middle of some info on that.

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Antnee wrote:

We gonna sit here and pretend that this isn't commonplace for every single sitting US senator?

Yes, it is commonplace for sitting and former members of government. That doesn't make it right. The Center for Political Accountability pegs 47% of living former elected officials as getting some kind of money for lobbying.

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Antnee wrote:

This makes her at worst a status-quo politician.

She is possibly one of the worst of the status-quo politicians. Trump cannot be tagged with that label or history, although one could say he has used his efforts at the giving end of the spectrum to various degrees.

Hillary is owned by her finaciers, lock stock and barrel. When they pull the trigger, she barks.

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DalaiLama wrote:

Yes, it is commonplace for sitting and former members of government. That doesn't make it right. The Center for Political Accountability pegs 47% of living former elected officials as getting some kind of money for lobbying.

Right, of course it's shitty. My problem doesn't lie with people calling her out for accepting lobbying money. My problem is that there's a HUGE amount of dishonesty in saying that she's particularly bad for doing so.

If she's shitty for doing it, then so are all other politicians. Thus, this attack has absolutely no meaning.

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DalaiLama wrote:

She is possibly one of the worst of the status-quo politicians. Trump cannot be tagged with that label or history, although one could say he has used his efforts at the giving end of the spectrum to various degrees.

Hillary is owned by her finaciers, lock stock and barrel. When they pull the trigger, she barks.

Ok, and which of our alternative presidential candidates isn't thoroughly bought and paid for? Stein? We... we gonna go Stein here?

You're making me defend Hillary Clinton. Stop. If we're gonna talk about shit she's done that's horrible, can we either paint all politicians with that same brush (deserved) or can we come up with something that's unique to her?

No one is ever completely owned. Even if you have a gun literally pointed at your head, telling its wielder to go fuck themselves is an option. Sometimes the best one.

I'm not saying this to say coercion doesn't exist. Of course it does. Instead I'm pointing out that our societal attitudes towards those who would coerce us is getting soft.