I assume you were downvoted because people thought you were making a snide remark or joke. Sanders polling better against Trump is supposedly[1] a fact, and has been repeated often. Not sure why people would jump to downvoting you for something they didn't really know much about.
1: "Supposedly" because the polls I just looked up seemed to be nearly identical for Sanders or Clinton vs Trump, with Democrats at ~50% and Trump at ~38%.
Ah, thanks. The Clinton Poll you referenced is one that I saw, the Sanders one was from another source (which I tried to avoid, but I was only willing to put so much effort into it).
While this isn't polling as such, I've found the FiveThirtyEight Facebook map of candidates to be intriguing. When you drop out the other candidates, Trump vs Sanders is still a competition as you'd expect, but Trump vs Clinton... she barely shows up. Her number of Likes is surprisingly low.
I'd usually ignore Facebook likes, and FiveThirtyEight insists it's for fun as well. However, their throwaway comment "If Facebook likes were votes... Donald Trump [would] garner more support than Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio combined" has actually proven to be accurate.
If Facebook likes were votes Sanders would be trouncing Clinton in the polls and Trump would be the only person left running for the Republicans. However, people discussing politics on Facebook tends to be completely toxic and representative of the most enthusiastic, sometimes vitriolic, people around. It's very, very different than the layout of voters as a whole.
I agree with your opinion of politics & Facebook, it's one of the reasons I ended up closing my Facebook account. But the Facebook likes on the Republican side are closer to the current delegate counts (as of April 6) than I would have expected. If you narrow down to Trump, Cruz, Rubio & Kasich:
Trump: 48% Delegates, 53% Republican Likes
Cruz: 32% Delegates, 28% Republican Likes
Rubio: 11% Delegates, 16% Republican Likes
Kasich: 9% Delegates, 3% Republican Likes
Though if you add Carson back in, it stops matching up. And certainly the Facebook Like counts don't match delegate counts on the Democrat side. But I thought it was odd how closely the Facebook figures were matching for the Republicans.
That is a false choice that the Clinton campaign would love for you to believe. In actuality, the FBI investigation alone would have derailed any other candidate, now this... For all the talk about Trump being teflon, it sure seems Hillary has the some of the same "teflon-ness"
Sanders has won 7 out of the last 8 primaries and yet Clinton, with all her legal baggage and ethical issues, is still the presumed frontrunner.
I was talking about this with a friend last night. Think of all the scandals the Clintons have endured - from Whitewater to Travelgate to Lewinsky to Benghazi...and yet nothing has impeded them. That either means they are in fact predominantly innocent (I think we can rule this out, mostly...) or that they are just such masters of politic and influence that they are able to fend off any investigations into them. Seriously, Clinton lied about cheating on his wife on national television and yet people still love him. They are a very intriguing couple. I eagerly await a Caro-esque look at their role in US history.
It's not "presumed", she is literally the frontrunner by definition, with more votes and more pledged delegates. You're still winning a race even if someone is catching up.
Clinton leads in pledged delegates, superdelegates, and the popular vote. Her presumption as the front-runner is factual and earned. Take away the superdelegates and she's still clearly the frontrunner.
> In actuality, the FBI investigation alone would have derailed any other candidate, now this...
In actuality the investigation would never have happened for any other candidate. The Clintons are scrutinized far more than any other American politicians. (The email scandal came out of the ridiculous Benghazi investigations that the GOP kept running again and again.)
I'm a strong believer that the Russians are manipulating public opinion through social media (and infiltration of the upper echelons of society) to cause unrest in the United States to deteriorate our standing as a world power. The ultimate goal is either civil war or a society that the Europeans no longer are in alliance with (i.e. ultra-nationalist like Trump).
When a crazy person is in charge and European nations start to agree more with Russia and China than the US it will only be a matter of time before they create an Eastern alliance and come into America to take our nukes for fear that we'll elect another Trump.
We'll have Russian and Chinese troops leading an effort in America to reform our government and little pockets of resistance will form leading to a half century of war and the devastation of the world economy, but it will only effect the poor and middle class. China and Russia will prosper as they plunder our resources and the resources of Africa and other regions with no one to hold them in check.
Invasion of the US would be a lot more difficult than you make it out to be. A large portion of the US is surrounded by water, so Russian and China would have to overcome the two largest navies in the world (the US Navy and the US Air Force) in order to even set foot on land if they were to come that route. Of course the other option is to come over the top through Canada. But then you have to defeat the largest Air Force in the world: the US has 2x more aircraft than Russia and China combined.
I'm Canadian so I'm not a patriot of the US by any measure, but I think it'd at least be a pretty fair fight.
Russia and China understand their losses would be devastating, so I doubt they'd wage that war. Not to mention they'd likely be waging a two-front war with Korea and Japan as US allies.
And I welcome them with open arms, as do a majority of the rest of the citizens of the US.
My only reservation is that I don't personally think they're being treated well enough.
Anyone who comes to the US with plans to make a life here and obey the laws are exactly the kind of people I want in the US. Even if they're only here long enough to wait out a horrible regime back home, I welcome them.
Some of the "socialist" programs the US has? Sure. I'm guessing you don't know the difference between a US "socialist" program and the "USSR" kind of socialist, though.
Socialism in the USSR was actual socialism (the government owned the companies, dictated exact salaries, completely regulated supply, etc), whereas in the US the government goes through all kinds of steps to determine which private company (non-profits) gets funding to perform the tasks.
The difference, in principle, is a spectrum, with actual socialism on one end, and US social programs (not socialism) on the other.
Yes, "degree of control" is not at question, it's the "degree" itself that's at question. The USSR had a much higher degree of central planning for the USSR's economy than the US does. This question is worded explicitly to draw a parallel when there is none, another example of which would be, "Do both Obama and Stalin read books?"
Yes, but again, this question is not about a boolean yes/no, but rather the degree to which it happens. There's also a strong question of what "forced" means in this context. Does the US force resource allocation to the growth of corn? No. Does the US encourage the growth of corn in the form of subsidies? Yes. The USSR simply would have started growing corn, as the agriculture business was directly under the control of the government, whereas the US has no mechanisms to legally force farmers to grow crops of any kind.
Of course it wouldn't be simple. The Russians want faith in society and government to break down so that any government effort against the invasion is stagnant: our soldiers won't want to fight for our do-nothing government that's not helping the middle class. The hard part will be defeating the organizations that form in the wake of intervention, Russia will have their own Al-Qaeda to deal with in the form of American ultra-nationalist militants.
>Russia and China understand their losses would be devastating
It's not about human life, the elites in charge of these world power nations just care about power and money. I see them making much more money without US intervention in places like the south china sea or Africa. It's in the interest of Russia and China to see America as a super power fail. To watch our infrastructure fall apart. To come in and change our regulations so they can ship us even cheaper goods that are considered unsafe by current standards (exploit us).
All I know for sure is that I'm moving close to the Canadian border soon so I can escape this mess when it all goes down.
The US has the highest gun ownership rate in the world. There are literally enough privately held small arms to arm every man, woman, and child in this country. The territory is so large as to be impossible for all but the Chinese [EDIT: and Indians, however no one ever suggests that India will be a potential invader] (with mass conscription) to try to hold with manpower.
The only effective way to invade would involve some combination of nuclear/chemical/biological agents and subterfuge leading to a coup of some sort in multiple regions so that people were peaceful to the invaders.
Given the paranoia present in US culture, and its general xenophobia, this second part seems unlikely.
Instead, you'd end up with a massive, bloody war with low chance of success (at least, the US may be wiped out, but the cost of conquering would decimate the invaders resources).
As for an effective economic coup, that's more feasible. But I'd say the US will do it to itself without needing anyone to push us along. We've been pretty shortsighted about our relationships with other countries for most of our existence, but the past 50 years or so in particular. And we're fucking up our next generation by weakening our education system, driving them into debt for college, and poor mentorship/apprenticeship practices for beginning careers.
I think you have this upside down. The US has the two largest air forces in the world: the USAF and the US Navy. The USAF hardly has any ships, though.
In addition the US Navy isn't just the biggest navy in the world, it's the biggest by a landslide. Any way you measure it whether by supercarriers[1] or water displacement it's larger than the worlds other navies combined.
When I was a child, people would say this kind of thing about the Soviet Union, and later it became the Japanese, the Mexicans, then the Chinese, and now I guess it's wrapped back around to Moscow.
Is this really the most interesting thing in the Panama Papers touching the Clintons?
If I'm reading this right, there's a well-known group of lobbyists/Washington insiders (the Podestra brothers) with ties to the Clintons and Obama, and the new revelation is that the lobbying firm is also retained by Russia's biggest bank? (As opposed to, being retained by the US's biggest bank?)
That is exactly what I was thinking after reading it. That's the "connection"? I imaging that if you count connections like this, almost every politician in Washington has only two or three degrees of separation from every large institution in the world.
Didn't one of the leakers say something like, "Wait for what is coming next," when it comes to American people of interest? It's not surprising that some articles seem like they're reaching if the leakers are holding back.
They don't just have ties, John Podesta is Clinton's campaign chairman. And the Podestas aren't just lobbying for Russia's biggest bank. As the article states, the majority shareholder in Sberbank is the Russian Central Bank. From the Wikipedia page on Sberbank of Russia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sberbank_of_Russia#Ownership):
"The majority shareholder of Sberbank is the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, owning 50%+1 voting share of Sberbank's voting shares."
Effectively, the Russian Central Bank controls Sberbank, but ostensibly Sberbank is a private institution. The Podesta Group registered as a lobbyist for Sberbank, which effectively gives the Russian Central Bank a lobbyist in Washington. If the Russian Central Bank had registered directly with the Podesta Group, as the article states the Podesta Group would have to register as agents of the Russian government under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
"...[requires] that agents representing the interests of foreign powers in a "political or quasi-political capacity" disclose their relationship with the foreign government and information about related activities and finances. The purpose is to facilitate "evaluation by the government and the American people of the statements and activities of such persons.""
Arguably, the Podesta Group is not facilitating evaluation of statements its making on behalf of Sberbank, and by extension the Russian Central Bank, because it registered as a lobbyist for a bank controlled by a state-owned bank. The Russians suffered heavy sanctions recently. It doesn't stretch the imagination that the Podesta Group received money from Russia to lobby Washington to drop those sanctions.
As the article states towards the end, if Clinton wins the election, John Podesta stands to gain a position of power in a Clinton administration. If John Podesta benefited from money provided by a foreign government (again, Sberbank is controlled by the Russian Central Bank), then that's a relationship the Clinton campaign needs to explain.
What is the revelation here though? It seems to me that there are two primary data points in this article:
- Podesta group lobbies for Sberbank
- Sberbank is owned by the Russian government
Neither of these things were revealed by the Panama papers, and neither of these things were hidden by any of the parties involved. Sberbank is transparent about its ownership by the Russian government, and the Podesta Group registered as its agent of its own accord prior to the leak.
If this were going on in the shadows, maybe there'd be something here, and I grant you that it's slightly unsettling that they have access to such a powerful lobbying firm. But isn't that sort of the point of running a lobbying firm? You lobby for who hires you, and the politicians you lobby are aware of that and take what you have to say with the appropriate grains of salt.
From the article: "As reported at the end of March, the Podesta Group registered with the U.S. Government as a lobbyist for Sberbank, as required by law"
And are those things different? Maybe Russian corporate law is different than it is in the US, but owning 51% of a company generally gives you control of that company, unless there are weird share structures like non-voting shares a la Google. But generally speaking, majority ownership and control are synonymous.
It's not the fact that Sberbank is simply "owned" by the Russian government that should be of interest; its what Sberbank does for the Russian government.
And it is these activities that the recent leaks have shed significant light on.
I agree that what it does for the Russian government is very shady, but it doesn't seem like much of that was revealed by the Panama Papers. This article makes a lot of accusations, but almost all of them are things that preceded this leak.
The only thing actually revealed by the Panama Papers in this article, as far as I can tell is this:
"As reported this week by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a consortium of journalists exploring the Panama Papers leak, Sberbank and Troika Dialog are used by members of Mr. Putin’s inner circle to shift public funds into sometimes questionable private investments"
Which isn't great, but is hardly groundbreaking news.
I think an info graphic showing the connection to Clinton would have been easier to digest for most people. The article just does not seem to make a compelling case by putting a big picture of Hillary Clinton on the front.
So the choice is between Putin's favorite Trump and now apparently Clinton as well? Though Bernie would probably practice appeasement toward Putin too. Can't you Americans elect a strong leader for once?
He dropped out unfortunately. You guys may hate GWB, but he sure kept Putin in check. I think he used to call him something like "pooty-poo", in person!
"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul. He's a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country and I appreciate very much the frank dialogue and that's the beginning of a very constructive relationship," Bush said.
That one was on Dubya's watch - whereby he proceeded to do nothing. It's pretty clear to everyone that Great Powers will do as they please in 'their' sphere of influence.
If Canada and Mexico were on the verge of joining a military alliance with China, there would be Abrams tanks in Ottawa, and F-22s bringing democracy to Mexico City before the week would be out.
This is the biggest non-story I've seen from the Panama Papers. There are a lot of revelations in there, but this has no place in the news at all. A lobbyist group connected to the Clintons is also connected to a Russian Bank. They're a lobbyist group. They take money to lobby the government from many different people. That's their purpose.
Total non-story trying to sound like a huge deal, though.
Everyone else here seems to hear the words "big bank", and think Sberbank must be sort of like Wells Fargo. But the thing is, Sberbank just isn't any old "bank":
Funds moving through Sberbank are regularly used to support clandestine Russian intelligence operations, while the bank uses its offices abroad as cover for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service or SVR. A NATO counterintelligence official explained that Sberbank, which has outposts in almost two dozen foreign countries, “functions as a sort of arm of the SVR outside Russia, especially because many of its senior employees are ‘former’ Russian intelligence officers.” Inside the country, Sberbank has an equally cosy relationship with the Federal Security Service or FSB, Russia’s powerful domestic intelligence agency.
Which make the question of why the Podestas would choose to take their business a very interesting question indeed.
It seems incredulous to me to suppose that lobbyists would reject it on that basis. US banking is a powerful force in the world of international banking, it seems naturally prudent to retain lobbyists to make sure you aren't shut out of the world economy.
I'm sure there are some very large banks in the US that have lobbyist equivalents in other countries that would look at our banks the same way. I'm sure major US banking institutions provide cover for US officers abroad as well.
Just wait until you hear what the cia gets up to. Or the state dept.
I think your surprise all over this thread is due to people not being stunned that water is wet, politicians need money, and associated hangers-on are venal.
Hell, look at the ties between Bush and the Saudi theocrats, whose greatest hits include 9/11 and are currently doing their best to drag us into their Iran proxy war.
I wasn't saying that I was conceptually surprised by the connection. I was just providing background for those who seemed not to appreciate its importance.
The people, whom represent a Russian bank, deliver money to Clintons.
It's apparently not uncommon for banks or their representatives to deliver money to Clintons, but saying it's a non-huge, non-story sounds like what you would expect from apologist propaganda.
How about if we put it in layman's terms: the man who is likely going to be President Hillary Clinton's chief of staff is being paid by the Russian government to lobby on behalf of the (nominally private) bank used most of the Russian intelligence services' operations abroad.
By itself it isn't that big a deal but considering the .5 million she was paid to give speeches to Russian investment firms, or the 2.35 million she received from a Uranium mining company that she helped sell to Russia. It is starting to be a pattern of behavior.
Seem to be 2 camps here:
1. dismiss this as a tenuous connection which stems mainly from the fact that Lobbying firms have many big clients
2. grant this connection deserves some attention and perhaps some explanation
For me, I think the author has some thoughts that are bleeding through . But I don't think its necessarily fair to judge an article mainly on its author's history (though an undeniable factor).
While granting this is the nature of a lobby firm, it does seem odd they would agree to representing Sberbank. We're talking John Podesta (Clinton campaign chairman) -> Tony Podesta (CEO Podesta Group) -> Sberbank (Podesta Group client). Is the latter connection really not cause for suspicion?
The tricky thing is that it could be a cause for suspicion, but you could also read it other ways.
Before John Podestra was the campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton, he was the Counselor to Barack Obama. Before that, he was the founder of the Center for American Progress (a left-wing think tank). Before that, Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff. Before that, Deputy Chief of Staff, Assistant to the President, and a senior advisor.
Which is to say, he has been a big part of the Democratic Party / progressive movement for a long time.
And before that, he co-founded a lobbying group, the Podesta Group, with his brother Tony Podesta, who still runs the Group.
So, do I think that a giant bank / nefarious Russian secret agency is likely retaining the Podesta Group because it was founded and still run by the brother of a powerful and influential member of the Democratic Party, who has served in several Democratic administrations and is likely to serve in future ones? Yeah, totally.
And it's probably worth being aware of the potential chain of influence and corruption -- client to lobbyist, lobbyist to advisor, advisor to politician -- but I find it far more likely that John Podesta is in Hillary's campaign (and potentially, future administration) because he's a good, useful guy who gets the right stuff done, rather than that he's there as some sort of corruption-conduit, proof (PROOF!) of Hillary Clinton's unworthiness.
Sberbank (Savings Bank in Russian) engaged the Podesta Group to help its public image—leading Moscow financial institutions not exactly being known for their propriety and wholesomeness—and specifically to help lift some of the pain of sanctions placed on Russia in the aftermath of the Kremlin’s aggression against Ukraine, which has caused real pain to the country’s hard-hit financial sector.
I ended up reading that sentence four or five times before I finally interpreted every word and was able to parse it. I kept accidentally skipping words that changed how it parsed.
I found it pretty clear... just ignore the bit in the em dashes:
> Sberbank (Savings Bank in Russian) engaged the Podesta Group to help its public image and specifically to help lift some of the pain of sanctions placed on Russia in the aftermath of the Kremlin’s aggression against Ukraine, which has caused real pain to the country’s hard-hit financial sector.
I kept getting tripped on on some specific word being missing in the aside, but I can't identify what it was anymore. It's less that it was "just a collection of words" and more that I'm fairly sensitive to reading grammatical errors (even if I'm often rushing too much to prevent them in my own comments), and I kept interpreting one where there wasn't one. That's not necessarily supporting evidence for the original comment, as even though I did remember having some problem with that sentence specifically, the fault could easily have been with me.
It's a sentence (albeit a bit of a run-on). If you omit the part between the long dashes (which act exactly as parentheses), it's perfectly parseable.
In simplified form (subtracting a few subordinate clauses here and there):
"Sberbank engaged the Podesta Group to help its image, and specifically to help lift the pain of sanctions placed on Russia, which have caused real pain to the country's financial sector."
Woohoo, the Sanders people found some lobbyists that have a connection with a foreign bank that happen to be connected to the Clinton's. By their logic, this proves Clinton is a pawn of Vladamir Putin.
This has got to be about the least interesting thing to come out of the Panama Papers.
80 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 147 ms ] thread1: "Supposedly" because the polls I just looked up seemed to be nearly identical for Sanders or Clinton vs Trump, with Democrats at ~50% and Trump at ~38%.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/ge...
spread is an average of clinton +10% vs sanders at +16%
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/facebook-primary/
I'd usually ignore Facebook likes, and FiveThirtyEight insists it's for fun as well. However, their throwaway comment "If Facebook likes were votes... Donald Trump [would] garner more support than Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio combined" has actually proven to be accurate.
Trump: 48% Delegates, 53% Republican Likes
Cruz: 32% Delegates, 28% Republican Likes
Rubio: 11% Delegates, 16% Republican Likes
Kasich: 9% Delegates, 3% Republican Likes
Though if you add Carson back in, it stops matching up. And certainly the Facebook Like counts don't match delegate counts on the Democrat side. But I thought it was odd how closely the Facebook figures were matching for the Republicans.
Sanders has won 7 out of the last 8 primaries and yet Clinton, with all her legal baggage and ethical issues, is still the presumed frontrunner.
So he has won the supposed coin flips that the media talks about and lost ground when you analyze the delegate counts.
In actuality the investigation would never have happened for any other candidate. The Clintons are scrutinized far more than any other American politicians. (The email scandal came out of the ridiculous Benghazi investigations that the GOP kept running again and again.)
When a crazy person is in charge and European nations start to agree more with Russia and China than the US it will only be a matter of time before they create an Eastern alliance and come into America to take our nukes for fear that we'll elect another Trump.
We'll have Russian and Chinese troops leading an effort in America to reform our government and little pockets of resistance will form leading to a half century of war and the devastation of the world economy, but it will only effect the poor and middle class. China and Russia will prosper as they plunder our resources and the resources of Africa and other regions with no one to hold them in check.
I'm Canadian so I'm not a patriot of the US by any measure, but I think it'd at least be a pretty fair fight.
Russia and China understand their losses would be devastating, so I doubt they'd wage that war. Not to mention they'd likely be waging a two-front war with Korea and Japan as US allies.
My only reservation is that I don't personally think they're being treated well enough.
Anyone who comes to the US with plans to make a life here and obey the laws are exactly the kind of people I want in the US. Even if they're only here long enough to wait out a horrible regime back home, I welcome them.
The difference, in principle, is a spectrum, with actual socialism on one end, and US social programs (not socialism) on the other.
Would you also say that there is a degree of central planning in both the US economy, and that of the former USSR?
Would you also say that forced reallocation of resources occurs in the US economy, and occurred in that of the former USSR?
Yes, "degree of control" is not at question, it's the "degree" itself that's at question. The USSR had a much higher degree of central planning for the USSR's economy than the US does. This question is worded explicitly to draw a parallel when there is none, another example of which would be, "Do both Obama and Stalin read books?"
Yes, but again, this question is not about a boolean yes/no, but rather the degree to which it happens. There's also a strong question of what "forced" means in this context. Does the US force resource allocation to the growth of corn? No. Does the US encourage the growth of corn in the form of subsidies? Yes. The USSR simply would have started growing corn, as the agriculture business was directly under the control of the government, whereas the US has no mechanisms to legally force farmers to grow crops of any kind.
>Russia and China understand their losses would be devastating
It's not about human life, the elites in charge of these world power nations just care about power and money. I see them making much more money without US intervention in places like the south china sea or Africa. It's in the interest of Russia and China to see America as a super power fail. To watch our infrastructure fall apart. To come in and change our regulations so they can ship us even cheaper goods that are considered unsafe by current standards (exploit us).
All I know for sure is that I'm moving close to the Canadian border soon so I can escape this mess when it all goes down.
The only effective way to invade would involve some combination of nuclear/chemical/biological agents and subterfuge leading to a coup of some sort in multiple regions so that people were peaceful to the invaders.
Given the paranoia present in US culture, and its general xenophobia, this second part seems unlikely.
Instead, you'd end up with a massive, bloody war with low chance of success (at least, the US may be wiped out, but the cost of conquering would decimate the invaders resources).
As for an effective economic coup, that's more feasible. But I'd say the US will do it to itself without needing anyone to push us along. We've been pretty shortsighted about our relationships with other countries for most of our existence, but the past 50 years or so in particular. And we're fucking up our next generation by weakening our education system, driving them into debt for college, and poor mentorship/apprenticeship practices for beginning careers.
I think you have this upside down. The US has the two largest air forces in the world: the USAF and the US Navy. The USAF hardly has any ships, though.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercarrier
As the article itself asks, the main question is why one of Clinton's chief power brokers chose to take their money.
If I'm reading this right, there's a well-known group of lobbyists/Washington insiders (the Podestra brothers) with ties to the Clintons and Obama, and the new revelation is that the lobbying firm is also retained by Russia's biggest bank? (As opposed to, being retained by the US's biggest bank?)
Does anyone else find that weak-sauce?
Russia isn't like the U.S.; and Sberbank isn't simply a "big bank."
That's why this isn't "weak sauce."
"The majority shareholder of Sberbank is the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, owning 50%+1 voting share of Sberbank's voting shares."
Effectively, the Russian Central Bank controls Sberbank, but ostensibly Sberbank is a private institution. The Podesta Group registered as a lobbyist for Sberbank, which effectively gives the Russian Central Bank a lobbyist in Washington. If the Russian Central Bank had registered directly with the Podesta Group, as the article states the Podesta Group would have to register as agents of the Russian government under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
The wikipedia page on the Foreign Agents Registration Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Ac...) states:
"...[requires] that agents representing the interests of foreign powers in a "political or quasi-political capacity" disclose their relationship with the foreign government and information about related activities and finances. The purpose is to facilitate "evaluation by the government and the American people of the statements and activities of such persons.""
Arguably, the Podesta Group is not facilitating evaluation of statements its making on behalf of Sberbank, and by extension the Russian Central Bank, because it registered as a lobbyist for a bank controlled by a state-owned bank. The Russians suffered heavy sanctions recently. It doesn't stretch the imagination that the Podesta Group received money from Russia to lobby Washington to drop those sanctions.
As the article states towards the end, if Clinton wins the election, John Podesta stands to gain a position of power in a Clinton administration. If John Podesta benefited from money provided by a foreign government (again, Sberbank is controlled by the Russian Central Bank), then that's a relationship the Clinton campaign needs to explain.
If this were going on in the shadows, maybe there'd be something here, and I grant you that it's slightly unsettling that they have access to such a powerful lobbying firm. But isn't that sort of the point of running a lobbying firm? You lobby for who hires you, and the politicians you lobby are aware of that and take what you have to say with the appropriate grains of salt.
are you sure? The article says that
so I wonder if you have a reference to back your statement?Also, you say
> Sberbank is owned by the Russian government
but this is not the point of the article. They are saying that Sberbank is controlled by the Russian government, which is subtly different.
And are those things different? Maybe Russian corporate law is different than it is in the US, but owning 51% of a company generally gives you control of that company, unless there are weird share structures like non-voting shares a la Google. But generally speaking, majority ownership and control are synonymous.
It's not the fact that Sberbank is simply "owned" by the Russian government that should be of interest; its what Sberbank does for the Russian government.
And it is these activities that the recent leaks have shed significant light on.
The only thing actually revealed by the Panama Papers in this article, as far as I can tell is this:
"As reported this week by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a consortium of journalists exploring the Panama Papers leak, Sberbank and Troika Dialog are used by members of Mr. Putin’s inner circle to shift public funds into sometimes questionable private investments"
Which isn't great, but is hardly groundbreaking news.
http://20committee.com/about/
Man is obviously insane, needs urgent help.
;-)
Oh, and have you forgotten about the Russian-Georgian conflict over South Ossetia? [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War
That one was on Dubya's watch - whereby he proceeded to do nothing. It's pretty clear to everyone that Great Powers will do as they please in 'their' sphere of influence.
If Canada and Mexico were on the verge of joining a military alliance with China, there would be Abrams tanks in Ottawa, and F-22s bringing democracy to Mexico City before the week would be out.
Georgia did not return to status quo - it lost territory. (If the NATO/UN position on this is to be believed)
The reaction of the West was quite different - it largely sat back, and watched.
Total non-story trying to sound like a huge deal, though.
Funds moving through Sberbank are regularly used to support clandestine Russian intelligence operations, while the bank uses its offices abroad as cover for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service or SVR. A NATO counterintelligence official explained that Sberbank, which has outposts in almost two dozen foreign countries, “functions as a sort of arm of the SVR outside Russia, especially because many of its senior employees are ‘former’ Russian intelligence officers.” Inside the country, Sberbank has an equally cosy relationship with the Federal Security Service or FSB, Russia’s powerful domestic intelligence agency.
Which make the question of why the Podestas would choose to take their business a very interesting question indeed.
I'm sure there are some very large banks in the US that have lobbyist equivalents in other countries that would look at our banks the same way. I'm sure major US banking institutions provide cover for US officers abroad as well.
I think your surprise all over this thread is due to people not being stunned that water is wet, politicians need money, and associated hangers-on are venal.
Hell, look at the ties between Bush and the Saudi theocrats, whose greatest hits include 9/11 and are currently doing their best to drag us into their Iran proxy war.
It's apparently not uncommon for banks or their representatives to deliver money to Clintons, but saying it's a non-huge, non-story sounds like what you would expect from apologist propaganda.
That doesn't bother you?
"Microsoft's Financial Reports Reveal Clinton's Kremlin Connection"
For me, I think the author has some thoughts that are bleeding through . But I don't think its necessarily fair to judge an article mainly on its author's history (though an undeniable factor).
While granting this is the nature of a lobby firm, it does seem odd they would agree to representing Sberbank. We're talking John Podesta (Clinton campaign chairman) -> Tony Podesta (CEO Podesta Group) -> Sberbank (Podesta Group client). Is the latter connection really not cause for suspicion?
Before John Podestra was the campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton, he was the Counselor to Barack Obama. Before that, he was the founder of the Center for American Progress (a left-wing think tank). Before that, Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff. Before that, Deputy Chief of Staff, Assistant to the President, and a senior advisor.
Which is to say, he has been a big part of the Democratic Party / progressive movement for a long time.
And before that, he co-founded a lobbying group, the Podesta Group, with his brother Tony Podesta, who still runs the Group.
So, do I think that a giant bank / nefarious Russian secret agency is likely retaining the Podesta Group because it was founded and still run by the brother of a powerful and influential member of the Democratic Party, who has served in several Democratic administrations and is likely to serve in future ones? Yeah, totally.
And it's probably worth being aware of the potential chain of influence and corruption -- client to lobbyist, lobbyist to advisor, advisor to politician -- but I find it far more likely that John Podesta is in Hillary's campaign (and potentially, future administration) because he's a good, useful guy who gets the right stuff done, rather than that he's there as some sort of corruption-conduit, proof (PROOF!) of Hillary Clinton's unworthiness.
Sberbank (Savings Bank in Russian) engaged the Podesta Group to help its public image—leading Moscow financial institutions not exactly being known for their propriety and wholesomeness—and specifically to help lift some of the pain of sanctions placed on Russia in the aftermath of the Kremlin’s aggression against Ukraine, which has caused real pain to the country’s hard-hit financial sector.
> Sberbank (Savings Bank in Russian) engaged the Podesta Group to help its public image and specifically to help lift some of the pain of sanctions placed on Russia in the aftermath of the Kremlin’s aggression against Ukraine, which has caused real pain to the country’s hard-hit financial sector.
In simplified form (subtracting a few subordinate clauses here and there):
"Sberbank engaged the Podesta Group to help its image, and specifically to help lift the pain of sanctions placed on Russia, which have caused real pain to the country's financial sector."
This has got to be about the least interesting thing to come out of the Panama Papers.