Hillary Clinton’s Interesting New Math. (It doesn’t appear to have been devised by academics, and hopefully it will not become part of public school curriculums.)
Defending herself from claims that she’s too cozy with Wall Street, Clinton responded, “Not only do I have hundreds of thousands of donors, most of them small….”
The Federal Election Commission defines a small donation as less than $200. Her campaign has received $13.3 million in small donations, just a fraction of her total haul of $76.1 million this cycle. There’s no way to know how many individual donors made up that group, percent, because they don’t have to be disclosed. But her statement is certainly misleading. Her money comes from chiefly big donors.
— Clinton’s money isn’t from “small” donors, Isaac Arnsdorf, Politico, today
Hmmm. And how many of the big donors are from the private-prison-industrial complex—directly and indirectly? How sick. Good thing Bernie Sanders made private for-profit prisons an issue back when Clinton was losing ground to him. After all, Clinton probably will be the nominee, and then (hopefully) the president. And now she’s promised to … something about them. The something probably isn’t aggressively supporting enactment of a law prohibiting them federally and in state and local systems, but we can’t have everything, can we?
And how many of her “bundlers” are lawyers or lobbyists for the finance industry?
And how long does she expect to get away with her version of the new math, in which, y’know, $76.1 million is wayyyy less than $13.3 million, and in which long division doesn’t exist? As in, the fewer the number of people who provided the donations in the $76.1 million group, the more influence those folks are likely to have over her?
Just askin’.
Also wonderin’ how many people out there think the big finance guys who’ve maxed out their direct donations and are supporting her two super PACs are doing this in gratitude for all that federal assistance she helped obtain for Manhattan after 9/11, as she (dismayingly) claimed last night. And how many people think the federal government wouldn’t have provided extensive recovery assistance to Manhattan were it not for Clinton’s absolute insistence that it do so.
I think AB should take a poll on this.
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UPDATE: So Clinton’s fondness for ridiculous non sequiturs has finally caught up with her. Usually she uses these as cutesy slams against her campaign opponent, these days Bernie Sanders. But this time it was in defending herself against the charge that she is compromised by her acceptance of huge amounts of money in donations from the finance industry, and it was so transparently absurd that no one needed to explain the background of the falsity, or whatever.
This penchant of hers for non sequiturs suggests she thinks that most of the public won’t catch on because the public will learn of the underlying facts only later. And, y’know, … women. But catching on to this one didn’t require some background information. So now I’m wondering: How stupid does she think the public is?
Added 11/15 at 8:59 p.m.
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P.S. Was I the only one who was surprised that Clinton mispronounced Paul Krugman’s name? I said when I heard that, “Okayyy. She’s definitely not Jewish.” But she also is definitely not someone who’s ever watched or listened to him being introduced.
Just sayin’.
Added 11/15 at 9.29 p.m.
Hmmm let me see. Not only do we now know that Mrs. Clinton cannot be trusted but we can also see there is more obfuscation over the use of fuzzy math of non disclosure of political contributors to political campaigns. Mrs. Clinton’s cozy ties to Wall St. would imply that the millions they may have contributed to her campaign would be well spent money on their part to do noting as far as regulatory and oversight are concerned. In other words the Fed and the SEC will continue to do business as usual is what Wall St. wants and may not be in the best interest of the American people. For more on people gaming the banking system I would advise reading Wallstreetonparade.com IMHO.
Beverly,
You are certainly right that HRC has gotten lots of money from Wall Street (I do not know about the private prison complex crowd) and when confronted about it by Sanders, is fumbling and obfuscating and making herself look silly with nonsensical and misleading arguments.
But then, as you seem regularly to do, you overdo it and make youself look silly with your visceral hatred of her. The problem is this final bit about pronouncing Krugman’s name. I happen to know him, but I have nver heard him say his name, and as far as I am concerned the proper pronunciation of somebody’s name is how they do it. I have heard people pronounce his hame at east three different ways: Kroogman, Kroegman, and Krugman, with the middle one the most common, probably based on the name once having an umlautt over the u. But I hate to tell you that there is no proper “Jewish” way to pronounce his name (are we talking German, Polish, or Russian Ashkenazi?).. And I know several well known economists who have their names mispronounced by the vast majority of people introducing them (Daron Acemoglu is one example), with these prominent economists generally not complaining when people do so because they are used to it, and it is an utterly silly issue to complain about.
So, until you hear him pronounce his own name, I would suggest that you go pick your brain back up off the sidewalk where you let it fall out onto and reinsert it into your head. .
Probably more relevant for what is “Jewish” pronunciation is to compare how Krugman’s name would be pronounced in Williamsburg versus Park Sope versus Brighton Beach.
And to be even more specific, regarding Williamsburg I am referring to the Satmar enclaves, not the hipster coffee shops where they talk like people in Park Slope.
Well, I don’t know about the Satmar enclaves, but as a descendant of Austrian, Polish, German, Lithuanian and English Ashkenazi Jews, and as someone who grew up in a heavily Jewish area of a large metropolis and who has known people named Krugman, I can attest that the name is pronounced Kroogman. And that it is a far more common name in this country than Acemoglu.
And, yes, I wish she would talk less like a Madison Avenue copywriter and more like some semblance of someone who can speak in normal and logical statements.
Some people overdio it into more like “Krooogman,” which is silly.