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> Update: By the downvoting I know that you all know I mean the Clintons. Except for the late-1970s cattle futures investment (which was legal and documented,

by geofft 8y ago

> Update: By the downvoting I know that you all know I mean the Clintons. Except for the late-1970s cattle futures investment (which was legal and documented, just surprisingly unlikely), I think everything about the Clintons can be explained by their straightforward participation in private business like speaking engagements, consulting, and selling books. If you count their "official salaries" as salaries just from their jobs as public servants, you'd get a lower number, yes, but you don't need to speculate about bribery or corruption to figure out where the rest of the money comes from. (I suppose you could construct an argument that these forms of private business are in fact morally equivalent to overt corruption, but I'd be curious to hear the details of that argument, especially as basically all of them were after Bill left office. There's a huge difference between bribing a current politician and a former one, in that the current one can meaningfully look the other way or send you kickbacks.)

ForHackernews 8y ago
I mean, it's no shocker why bankers were eager to pay the Clintons hundreds of thousands of dollars for speaking engagements, and it's not because of the Clintons' keen market insight.
- gaius 8y ago
  You can clearly see both speakers fees and "donations" to the Clinton Foundation fall off a cliff after she lost the election. Goldman's paid her a lot, didn't they?
a1369209993 8y ago
> There's a huge difference between bribing a current politician and a former one, in that the current one can meaningfully look the other way or send you kickbacks. Actually there isn't[0], because the former one can have looked the other way or sent you kickbacks while they were in office, in the knowledge that you would bribe them later, when it no longer officially 'counts' as corruption. This is the standard way that corruption works in the US, since there are laws against just directly bribing a politician the way you would in some other countries. 0: Edit: isn't a huge difference; obviously there is a little difference, just not enough to do more than slow down the development of corruption.

by geofft 8y ago

ForHackernews 8y ago

I mean, it's no shocker why bankers were eager to pay the Clintons hundreds of thousands of dollars for speaking engagements, and it's not because of the Clintons' keen market insight.

gaius 8y ago
You can clearly see both speakers fees and "donations" to the Clinton Foundation fall off a cliff after she lost the election. Goldman's paid her a lot, didn't they?

a1369209993 8y ago

> There's a huge difference between bribing a current politician and a former one, in that the current one can meaningfully look the other way or send you kickbacks. Actually there isn't[0], because the former one can have looked the other way or sent you kickbacks while they were in office, in the knowledge that you would bribe them later, when it no longer officially 'counts' as corruption. This is the standard way that corruption works in the US, since there are laws against just directly bribing a politician the way you would in some other countries. 0: Edit: isn't a huge difference; obviously there is a little difference, just not enough to do more than slow down the development of corruption.