On Sunday evening, Clinton rolled out her new energy policy. Her newly released proposal is, as we have come to expect, lacking:
1. Despite saying she would release details of her climate plan, this plan continues to leave Americans hanging, three times saying the details will be outlined in “over the coming months” or “in the coming weeks.” This might be why climate activists don’t trust Clinton to speak for them.
2. Clinton’s plan contains exactly zero mentions of cost, and Clinton once again fails to detail how she plans to pay for these proposals.
3. There is no mention of cap-and-trade, the first point in Clinton’s 2008 energy policy plan. Has she abandoned this proposal, or does she just have a secret plan to cap carbon emissions?
Hillary Clinton’s communications director Jen Palmieri did her best to spin a week filled with sliding poll numbers and very little grassroots support. On Medium, she mocked reporters for focusing on the facts rather than take Clinton’s positive spin wholesale.
Here’s a taste of what Clinton and her team had to contend with this week:
Hillary Clinton and her team went to great lengths to tell reporters, donors, and voters that things would be different this time. Clinton’s big spending ways from 2007 and 2008 were long gone, replaced with an almost comically cheap campaign manager and spending strategy.
And then her first FEC filing was reported. Clinton spent an astonishing $18.7 million in less than three months.
Who donated? How was it spent? Those questions and more are answered below:
Clinton claimed her campaign was saving costs by sending her campaign chairman on a bus instead of riding the train between DC and New York. Well it turns out that was for show. Clinton spent about $8,700 on Amtrak and only $346 on Bolt Bus and $315 on Best Bus. Zero for all other major bus companies.
For a list of all the registered lobbyists bundling for Hillary Clinton, see here.
Hillary Clinton attacked HSBC for “criminal behavior.” By her own definition, criminals from HSBC donated $3,450 and HSBC Bank $583.
Well-known Florida jerk John Morgan and his law firm donated an astonishing $247,716 to Clinton.
Clinton has spent $900,000 on polling (a solid $300k per month average) and owes another $550,000 in additional polling debt.
Clinton spent more than $275,000 on David Brock’s “Correct The Record,” an organization designed to complain about unfavorable press coverage.
Remember the Scooby Van? Neither does Clinton. She spent $179,268 on private jets through Executive Fliteways.
Clinton donated $280,000 to her own campaign… or about one speech’s worth of cash.
Yesterday, the American Federation of Teachers endorsedHillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. The endorsement came as no surprise to anyone, despite AFT’s attempts to appear fair in its endorsement process by meeting with several Democrat candidates, including Clinton her challengers – Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley.
In addition to AFT endorsing Hillary Clinton in 2008, the Clintons have been close to AFT and its president, Randi Weingarten, for years. AFT has donated $1.1 million to the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative since 2011. Weingarten herself sits on the board of the Pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA, and worked closely with Hillary Clinton while she served as Senator from New York. Weingarten also praised Bill Clinton as the “education President of the last century.”
In a recent interview with CNN, Hillary Clinton stated that “everything I did was permitted” regarding her handling of her State Department emails. Washington Post Fact Checkers dug into this claim and here is what they found:
Regulations Were Put In Place While She Was Secretary of State
In 2009, just eight months after Clinton became secretary of state, the U.S. Code of federal regulations on handling electronic records was updated: “Agencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency must ensure that Federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency record-keeping system.”
Clinton’s system though did not allow for her emails to be easily preserved because “her practice made it difficult to locate records in response to specific requests, because Clinton’s e-mail would be in another official’s inbox — but would not exist in the federal system as part of Clinton’s outbox.”
She Even Told Her Staff To Not Use Private Emails
On top of that, when Clinton was secretary, a cable went out under her signature warning employees to “avoid conducting official Department business from your personal e-mail accounts.”
Clinton Ignored Directives from The Foreign Service Manual
The Foreign Affairs Manual made it clear that before a senior official (such as a Senate-confirmed presidential appointee) departs government service, he or she must prepare an inventory of personal papers that are proposed for removal. The manual states that “correspondence or e-mail received or sent in an employee’s capacity as a Department official is not personal.”
It is now apparent that Secretary Clinton blatantly disregarded these directives. Instead she chose to keep her emails for nearly two years before turning them over to the State Department.
Final Conclusion: Three Pinocchios
In reality, Clinton’s decision to use a private e-mail system for official business was highly unusual and flouted State Department procedures, even if not expressly prohibited by law at the time. Moreover, while she claims “everything I did was permitted,” she appears to have not complied with the requirement to turn over her business-related e-mails before she left government service. That’s a major misstep that she has not acknowledged.
Clinton’s 2016 campaign strategy seems to be one that “does not include town-hall meetings and campaign rallies, media interviews, even public events.”
This is not the first time that it has been pointed out that Hillary Clinton’s campaign events have a staged feeling. During the former Secretaries first trip to New Hampshire WHDH Andy Hiller said, “The way Hillary Clinton is campaigning isn’t real.”
According to the most generous estimates, Hillary
Clinton has answered only thirteen questions from the press during the
first month of her 2016 Presidential campaign. The answers have been
devoid of specifics and laughable at best – for example, when asked
about her campaign finance agenda, Clinton said, “We do have a plan. We have a plan for my plan.”
Today on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Steve Rattner, a former Wall Street banker who is hosting a Clinton fundraiser, had a grim view of Hillary Clinton’s new poll numbers.
