Democrats are just better at this stuff: Obama used executive power for progressive ends — and Hillary Clinton will follow his lead
One overlooked aspect of this crazy campaign: How the president uses his (or her!) executive powers and for what


Even though the 2016 presidential election has become an all-consuming beast, eating up the nation’s time and attention, almost no attention has been paid to what the president actually does. A study released last week by the Tyndall Report shows that the flagship news programs of the big three networks devoted three times as many minutes to covering Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s emails — the same ones that have produced zero evidence of any illegal behavior — as they did covering real issues in the presidential campaign.

The larger media landscape, which takes in the televised debates, has delved a bit more into the nuts and bolts of presidenting and on occasion has dipped into substantive topics like picking judicial nominees, crafting a legislative agenda and conducting foreign policy. Even then, there has been little discussion about the executive duties of the executive office: building and maintaining the various federal bureaucracies that make our government work.

Only the FBI has really gotten extensive coverage this election cycle, and that’s only because the FBI’s director, James Comey, keeps making an unnecessary fuss over a bunch of Clinton emails that have yet to amount to anything.

That’s a shame because it’s in the execution of these executive duties that the president’s true power and influence can be seen. It’s not sexy, but the choices that the White House makes in staffing and directing various agencies can have deep effects on everything from health care access to reducing income inequality and making the justice system work better for everyone.

“Government is a game for wonks,” Ian Millhiser, the justice editor for Think Progress, told me via email. “It not only requires deep policy knowledge,” he wrote, adding that “it requires a creative understanding of where the levers of power are and how to work them to solve problems that aren’t often easily fixed.”

Even though Republicans control Congress and have prevented President Barack Obama from passing progressive legislation (or any other kind), he has been able to wield this executive power in a thousand little ways that don’t make many headlines but do change people’s lives for the better. There is every reason to believe that if Clinton is elected, that trend will continue.

If Republican nominee Donald Trump is elected, on the other hand, he will likely fill the federal bureaucracies with Republicans who, at best, distrust effective government for ideological reasons. At worst, he’ll fill many of these positions with unqualified cronies and yes-men, as he has done for his campaign. On top of that, as Bryce Covert, the economic policy editor at Think Progress, pointed out to me over email, Trump has also promised to reverse every policy that Obama has put into place as president.

What that would look like is terrifying because Obama got a lot done in eight years in the Oval Office, despite Republican obstructionism. What follows is a series of highlights to illustrate this legacy. It’s a legacy that Clinton is committed to preserving and expanding — and that Trump has vowed to destroy.

Continues: http://www.salon.com/2016/11/04/democrats-are-just-better-at-this-obama-used-executive-power-for-progressive-ends-and-hillary-clinton-will-follow-his-lead/

The real Clinton email scandal is that a bullshit story has dominated the campaign
If you agree with her on policy, vote with a clear conscience about the server.



Some time ago, Hillary Clinton and her advisers decided that the best course of action was to apologize for having used a personal email address to conduct government business while serving as secretary of state. Clinton herself was, clearly, not really all that remorseful about this, and it showed in her early efforts to address it. Eventually aides prevailed upon her to express a greater degree of regret, which they hoped would lay the issue to rest.

It did not. Instead, email-related talk has dogged Clinton throughout the election and it has influenced public perceptions of her in an overwhelmingly negative way. July polling showed 56 percent of Americans believed Clinton broke the law by relying on a personal email address with another 36 percent piling on to say the episode showed “bad judgments” albeit not criminality.

Because Clinton herself apologized for it and because it does not appear to be in any way important, Clinton allies, surrogates, and co-partisans have largely not familiarized themselves with the details of the matter, instead saying vaguely that it was an error of judgment and she apologized and America has bigger fish to fry.

This has had the effect of further inscribing and reinscribing the notion that Clinton did something wrong, meaning that every bit of micro-news that puts the scandal back on cable amounts to reminding people of something bad that Clinton did. In total, network newscasts have, remarkably, dedicated more airtime to coverage of Clinton’s emails than to all policy issues combined.

This is unfortunate because emailgate, like so many Clinton pseudo-scandals before it, is bullshit. The real scandal here is the way a story that was at best of modest significance came to dominate the US presidential election — overwhelming stories of much more importance, giving the American people a completely skewed impression of one of the two nominees, and creating space for the FBI to intervene in the election in favor of its apparently preferred candidate in a dangerous way.

Why Hillary Clinton used a personal email account...

Continues in link: http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/4/13500018/clinton-email-scandal-bullshit?utm_campaign=mattyglesias&utm_content=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

The real Clinton email scandal is that a bullshit story has dominated the campaign
If you agree with her on policy, vote with a clear conscience about the server.



Some time ago, Hillary Clinton and her advisers decided that the best course of action was to apologize for having used a personal email address to conduct government business while serving as secretary of state. Clinton herself was, clearly, not really all that remorseful about this, and it showed in her early efforts to address it. Eventually aides prevailed upon her to express a greater degree of regret, which they hoped would lay the issue to rest.

It did not. Instead, email-related talk has dogged Clinton throughout the election and it has influenced public perceptions of her in an overwhelmingly negative way. July polling showed 56 percent of Americans believed Clinton broke the law by relying on a personal email address with another 36 percent piling on to say the episode showed “bad judgments” albeit not criminality.

Because Clinton herself apologized for it and because it does not appear to be in any way important, Clinton allies, surrogates, and co-partisans have largely not familiarized themselves with the details of the matter, instead saying vaguely that it was an error of judgment and she apologized and America has bigger fish to fry.

This has had the effect of further inscribing and reinscribing the notion that Clinton did something wrong, meaning that every bit of micro-news that puts the scandal back on cable amounts to reminding people of something bad that Clinton did. In total, network newscasts have, remarkably, dedicated more airtime to coverage of Clinton’s emails than to all policy issues combined.

This is unfortunate because emailgate, like so many Clinton pseudo-scandals before it, is bullshit. The real scandal here is the way a story that was at best of modest significance came to dominate the US presidential election — overwhelming stories of much more importance, giving the American people a completely skewed impression of one of the two nominees, and creating space for the FBI to intervene in the election in favor of its apparently preferred candidate in a dangerous way.

Why Hillary Clinton used a personal email account...

Continues in link: http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/4/13500018/clinton-email-scandal-bullshit?utm_campaign=mattyglesias&utm_content=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

The company that owns the National Enquirer, a backer of Donald Trump, agreed to pay $150,000 to a former Playboy centerfold model for her story of an affair a decade ago with the Republican presidential nominee, but then didn’t publish it, according to documents...

http://www.wsj.com/articles/national-enquirer-shielded-donald-trump-from-playboy-models-affair-allegation-1478309380

In what might be the most “Donald Trump” story of the 2016 election, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the National Enquirer went to extensive (and expensive) means to squash the story of the Playboy Playmate in question, who had intended to tell the world about the affair Trump allegedly had with her while he was married to Melania.

Instead the Enquirer, which is closely tied to Donald Trump, bought the story exclusively with the misleading motivation of never publishing it and making sure she could never publish it anywhere else either. ABC News, a much more respectable news outlet, had been planning to report her story before the Enquirer stepped in and offered her too much money to say no to. However, she’s now taking legal action over the fact that she had been tricked into her legally required silence.

Karen McDougal was the 1998 Playmate of the Year, and she asserts that her affair with Donald Trump took place in 2006. That would place it seven years into Donald’s relationship with Melania, and just one year into their marriage; the same year that their child Barron was born. That fits with the claims of several of Trump’s sexual assault accusers, many of whom say he assaulted them in 2005 or 2006, roughly the period of time in which Melania was pregnant. Trump is on tape as having referred to Melania as being physically unattractive during her pregnancy – and now it appears that his solution was to simply cheat on her.


http://www.dailynewsbin.com/news/melania-pregnant-donald-trump-affair/26517/

For the first time in decades, Americans will likely hit the voting booths on Election Day without being able to review the tax returns of one of the major presidential nominees. Though Donald Trump previously vowed to release his taxes—as all top nominees since Richard Nixon have done—he reneged on that promise and for months fiercely refused to make this basic information public, offering shifting excuses. Trump did submit the public financial disclosure form that all federal candidates must fill out, but that does not cover all the fundamentals of his finances. By withholding his tax information, Trump has ensured that the American public cannot see how much income (if any) he pocketed, how much money (if any) he paid in taxes, and how much money (if any) he donated to charities. Without his tax returns, voters are in the dark about important details regarding his sources of income and his debts.

There are many more questions about Trump's finances and business operations that remain as the 2016 presidential campaign slouches toward its end. Trump is the owner of a private business empire with elements that have been structured in Byzantine fashion. He is a proliferate user of shell companies, as many developers are. He has tried to broker deals around the world with assorted financial players with their own agendas. He has taken on hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. There is a great deal publicly unknown about many of his ventures. Much of his deal-making—probably most—is not transparent. He is asking Americans to vote for a man who has not revealed basic information about his wide-ranging endeavors and associations.

Here is a list of Trump mysteries that will not be solved before Election Day.

* His partners: Trump lists about 500 business entities on his financial disclosure form. Many are shell companies, and if any of them have partners, there is no telling with whom Trump is in business. There is also no way to know if this is an accurate list reflecting all his dealings domestically and overseas. (These disclosures are not vetted by forensic accountants.) These entities would allow anyone seeking to gain favor with Trump to funnel investments and money to him and his family without public disclosure. As Newsweek put it, "Any government wanting to seek future influence with President Trump could do so by arranging for a partnership with the Trump Organization, feeding money directly to the family or simply stashing it away inside the company for their use once Trump is out of the White House...The partnerships are struck with some of the more than 500 entities disclosed in Trump's financial disclosure forms; each of those entities has its own records that would have to be revealed for a full accounting of all of Trump's foreign entanglements to be made public." The magazine added, "The dealings of the Trump Organization reach into so many countries that it is impossible to detail all the conflicts they present in a single issue of this magazine."

Trump's personal financial disclosure form hints that he has international business deals in the works that are still under wraps. There are corporations listed that indicate he may be planning hotels (with or without partners) in China and Saudi Arabia—projects which he has not publicly discussed.

* Huge loans from foreign banks: After Trump's near-crash-and-burn bankruptcies of the 1990s, major US banks stopped doing business with him. But foreign banks picked up the slack, most notably the private banking arm of Deutsche Bank, which Trump owes more than $300 million. His cozy relationship with Deutsche Bank has never been explained. A bank spokeswoman would not talk about how it came to be.

Continues...

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/11/what-we-dont-know-about-trump