In picking Virginia Senator and former DNC chair Tim Kaine as her running mate, Hillary Clinton makes no splash. (Has she ever?) She plays it safe, matches Trump’s pick of an average, non-outshining party VP and doubles down on crisp consonants. (Say it: “Clinton/Kaine” crackles, with each name coming on crisp and sharp and ending in luscious, sheet-rumply nnn; “Trump/Pence” starts sloppy, awkwardly hitches in the middle, then hisses away like the air from a punctured tire.)
Alas, Tim Kaine has some connection to Hillary Clinton’s own EB-5 scandal. In December 2009, on his way out as Virginia governor, Kaine wrote to Barbara Velarde, a USCIS official overseeing the EB-5 visa investment program, to support a letter from the Virginia Employment Commission certifying areas of Virginia as “Targeted Employment Areas.” In seeking that designation, the Kaine Administration was trying to lower the investment foreigners had to make to buy their green cards from $1,000,000 to $500,000. Lowering that investment threshold was meant to help GreenTech Automotive and investment firm Gulf Coast Funds Management secure EB-5 funds to build an electric car factory in Virginia. The Kaine Administration had information that the GreenTech/GCFM car plant was a train wreck.
GreenTech was run by Terry McAuliffe, former DNC chair, co-chair or Bill Clinton’s 1996 campaign and chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign. GCFM was run by Anthony Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s brother.
A 2015 Inspector General’s report found Homeland Security deputy Alejandro Mayorkas had created “an appearance of favoritism and special access” in urging the Virginia EB-5 project along.
GreenTech ultimately picked Mississippi over Virginia for its car factory, thanks to lots of tax incentives from Republican Governor and former RNC chair Haley Barbour. The factory flopped.
So, Republicans, ready to talk about EB-5 now?
Pretty damn smart the way C/K tricked Hayley Ballfour into selling out for a company that failed. In the entire history of tools, wingnuts rate more useless than a knuckle-busting crescent wrench.
Cory, it is interesting to me that you claim to be a partisan web blogger, but you keep attacking both sides of the political spectrum. :)
You need to watch Fox News like I do to see how partisan reporting is accomplished successfully. Every guest or story on Fox attacks or criticizes Democrats and the left. There is no balance. I just watched a Fox news guy try to put words in a Sanders supporters’ mouth to try to suggest an ultimatum to the Clinton camp.
Fox business news guest who is a Trump activist just said we have 94 million people out of work. The other guest with Lou Dobbs is also a Trump supporter, so they take turns praising Trump. There is no other side of the story. Lou didn’t take issue with the 94 million figure. That is how you do partisan reporting.
After this story ran, the next thing was a promo for Lou Dobbs covering the DNC next week “bringing you the fairest most balanced coverage.” They should have Trump add in his signature lie “believe me, believe me” it is going to be so fair and balanced.
Fake Noize real motto is “Far Right and Biased.”
Fox business is pretty close with that figure. It is actually 100 per cent out of work as we all sleep sometime.
What Is missed is that we had a possible whistle blower killed because of the EB5. We may never know as there are powerfull political figures involved.
Fox commentators saying that Tim Kaine is not liberal enough to get Bernie Sanders supporters on board. Instead, vote for Trump who is a 1 millionth of one percenter (.000001, I did the math).
Another Fox commentator “Hillary Clinton is at the forefront of every problem that the country has faced in the last four decades.” Pretty soon they will blame Hillary for Trump’s hair and his numerous affairs.
Drumpf murdered the Titanic because they wouldn’t allow him to grope Ivanka on the poop deck as the band played on.
Drumpf personally led the Japanese attack on Pearl because Hawaii wouldn’t allow him to grope Ivanka on sandy Hawaiian beaches.
Drumpf killed Michael Jackson because Jacko wouldn’t let Drumpf grope Ivanka while drinking “jesus juice” slurpees a Neverland Raunch.
Ailes has been neutered, who gives a damn about fox? Me, I like to watch them act out.
Darin! Funny how much Fox News can purport to know about how liberals will vote. Funny also that their narrative about Clinton would not have changed no matter whom she chose. Also likely not changing due to Kaine: the number of Sanders supporters voting for Clinton. According to FiveThirtyEight on July 12, Clinton had 80% of the Sanders vote. Whatever chunk of the remaining 20% she can get, I’ll bet she’d have gotten them just as fast no matter which VP she chose, with the exception of maybe Elizabeth Warren, who would have accelerated that gain a bit. Similarly, no VP choice was going to get the diehard #NeverHillary faction to put down their Jill Stein petitions.
Thus, Clinton realized she didn’t need to take a risk here. She could pick a guy she trusts from past campaigns and DNC chairing.
But here’s my Foxy game, Darin: I would welcome the Republicans to tear into Kaine’s involvement with his state’s EB-5 scandal. I would welcome the Trump media machine to shout “EB-5! EB-5!” for the next three months. I would love to see them send Chuck Grassley on the stump to talk about all of the corruption and national security risk he saw in EB-5. I would love for EB-5 to be treated as a substantial issue on which a candidate’s qualification for office really can hinge.
And then, when they don’t find quite enough on Kaine to support the GOP’s hollering, I would love for the national media to turn to Mike Rounds and ask, “What the heck were you up to with EB-5 in your state? Unlike Kaine, you came up with the idea and appointed the key players. Your state got sued, and you got served. You had a $150M beef plant get built on EB-5 money, run way late, go bankrupt, and leave your friend Joop Bollen buying Egyptian artifacts and making gravy on TIF bonds on the plant. And your friend Richard Benda is dead. Tell us more, Mike Rounds.”
See, Darin? I’m just a partisan. I’m just much better at it than Fox. ;-)
I’m not going out on a limb here to suggest the 80% number is inflated. Many Sanders supporters were Independents when this election cycle began. Thousands, if not millions, of Independents were unable to vote in the primaries. Many registered D in order to support the better candidate. Some even had their votes counted. Still, many cannot wait wash the D off before November. Some will go Green. More will remain unaffiliated. Believing 80% will vote Clinton is a mistake.
Cory, you are too smart for your own good and burdened with logic, reason, and ethics. You assume that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. This is politics, so you need to put aside your burdens to understand that they are not going to connect any dots or shed any light on GOP shady deals in SD based upon what happened in Virginia. They will simply attack Kaine without examination of Rounds.
Take the Hillary Clinton email debacle as an example. Republican Colin Powell as secretary of state and Condi Rice’s immediate staff used private email servers as well which were found to have classified material on them.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/03/07/state-dept-concludes-past-secretaries-of-state/209044
Did you see any Republicans or media going after Powell or Rice? Where is the massive investigation of these Republicans? Hypocrisy is no vice when attacking Hillary and there is no historical perspective. They go so far as to attack the Republican FBI director for not prosecuting Hillary.
Let’s compare Hilary’s email situation with the Valerie Plame scandal. Hillary’s private emails inadvertently had some classified information; some retroactively made classified. The FBI found it to be unintentional, albeit negligent. The Republicans are going crazy for her to go to prison.
Compare the Valerie Plame scandal where Karl Rove and an Undersecretary of State, Richard Armitage, deliberately disclosed the top secret identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame for political purposes. The revelation compromised untold human assets and operations that Plame was involved in including investigations into whether Iraq had WMD’s as well as operations to stop nuclear weapon proliferation. This was an intentional disclosure by Rove and Armitage, but did you see endless investigations and millions spent investigating Rove and Armitage? Nope. Did either of them go to jail? Nope. Did the Republicans care? Nope. This was a top aide in the White House and a top official in the Secretary of State’s office.
The lesson Cory is that people like Trump and much of the other GOP attack dogs on the national stage do not know the meaning of the word hypocrisy. Thus, conscience is not an obstacle. The media is not up to the challenge of being evenhanded when Hillary is under attack constantly for 25+ years. They go for the easy story of the current days’ attack rather than a historical perspective.
My advice and the larger lesson here is that Republicans and the media will take care of attacking Democrats. We don’t need to help them.
Cory,
I’m not holding my breath that there will be a national political scandal by either party.
As I understand it South Dakota and Virginia and other states have had their EB-5 scandals, do either party really want to go too far in attacking anyone?
This maybe one issue that both parties will prefer to be left alone.
Of course, I’d prefer it your way.
Now I get it! For the first time, I watched a lot of Fox news and now I better understand what is happening to folks that watch this stuff. It is literally one story after another that either directly attacks Clinton, or attacks Sanders for supporting Clinton. Even, the “Democrats” that they have on there (I assume to give the excuse that they are “balanced”) never support Hillary. One would think that fair and balanced means by viewpoint, not just party registration. Often they use people who used to work for the Democrats and now have made it their profession to rip them apart for money on Fox.
If someone was inclined to watch Fox as your sole news source along with right-wing talk radio, I can understand what that would do to a person’s psyche. It would be a dog whistle response every time you saw Hillary on TV.
I understood that this was happening to a certain extent. I’m not totally naive. But right now Fox news is one big campaign operation for Trump right now. No wonder he thinks he can win without spending his money. He has his own cable “news” network without spending a dime. They are trashing Tim Kaine as well of course.
They criticize Hillary for being too moderate, or too liberal or too conservative. It just depends on the talking head. The only answer if I’m reading Fox correctly is either to vote for Trump or if you are a Bernie supporter, don’t vote at all.
They haven’t gotten around to EB-5 yet.
“Clinton/Kaine” crackles”
Crony Capitalists Clinton/Kaine:
Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine took advantage of the state’s lax gift laws to receive an $18,000 Caribbean vacation, $5,500 in clothes and a trip to watch George Mason University play in the NCAA basketball Final Four during his years as lieutenant governor and governor, according to disclosures he filed.
Now a leading contender to be Hillary Clinton’s running mate, Kaine reported more than $160,000 in gifts from 2001 to 2009, mostly for travel to and from political events and conferences, according to disclosures compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project. The givers included political supporters, a drug company that soon after bought a facility in Virginia, and Dominion, the state’s biggest provider of electricity.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/tim-kaine-virginia-veep-mcdonnell-clinton-224888#ixzz4FHx0WBUs
Sibson, the Donald would laugh at those numbers for Kaine. He wouldn’t get out of bed for that little, believe me, believe me.
You say “The givers included political supporters, a drug company that soon after bought a facility in Virginia, and Dominion, the state’s biggest provider of electricity.”
You mean political supporters are giving money to Tim Kaine. That is crazy! The nerve of those people!
A drug company that bought a facility in Virginia– you mean Kaine got them to come to his state, buy property, invest in the state and provide jobs and in return Kaine got a campaign contribution. He must of read Trump’s Art of the Deal which Trump didn’t write.
A big company in Virginia gave Kaine a contribution too. What is going on? I thought only Republicans could receive money from big business?
It is sad that Kaine does not meet your standards for crony capitalists like Trump does.
Sibson can’t or refuses to admit that his man Trump is the ultimate in crony capitalist, instead of an admission about Trump and racism he calls everyone a crony capitalist.
Trump is a Billionaire, Sibson, you can’t get any more 1% than that and yet you refuse to admit what you hate most, Trump is a crony capitalist.
Like Darin said the amounts of money Kaine got are nothing compared to the Trump bank accounts.
Trump lost millions on New Jersey gambling and crashed the industry there yet he goes merrily on defrauding investors as in Trump University and numerous bankruptcies.
Hell, Clinton and Kaine can’t even come close to that kind of a record.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/after-911-trump-took-money-marked-for-small-businesses/article/2001099
Billionaire “small business owner” takes monies meant to help small businesses recover after 9-11.
Hillary,s pick of Tim Kaine for VP is a modern day Thomas Eagleton pick. Give it time and she will wonder what the hell was I thinking about when I made that pick.
Don’t fool yourself Greg, Tim Kaine has been on the VP short short list since the 2008 campaign. Tim Kaine has always seemed the most logical pick there ever was. Having seen how Massachusetts politics cannot seem to find a Democrat that can beat Scott Brown, Martha can do one job, but she cannot be the senator from that blue state. The choice could not have been Warren, who else was there to look at that can bring in the votes?
Debbie Waterboy Schultz has to go. Talk about cronyism!
Tim Kaine looks pretty good matched up against Pence. Both Catholics with experience as governors and in congress. Pence way out of the mainstream with downright crazy positions on social issues. Kaine middle of the road and even speaks Spanish. Good choice, Hillary!
It is clear that the Democratic party is now taking the lead in pruning the poisoned branches of Debbie by kicking her sorry behind to the curb. http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/22/politics/dnc-wikileaks-emails/ Shame on her and shame on her republican tactics. Let us hope Tim Canova can help her find a new job someplace else.
Greg, that’s a long reach to compare Kaine to Eagleton. McGovern’s first choice failed because he hadn’t been vetted and because one past, non-political health issue, his treatment for mental illness, torpedoed his public standing. Are you suggesting there is some similar issue with Kaine that would have escaped Team Clinton’s thorough vetting? They already know about the EB-5 issues and must have figured that if McAuliffe could weather the issue in his 2013 bid, Kaine can do the same now at Clinton’s side. What specific issues make Kaine as disastrous a pick as Eagleton… and do you think those issues would actually provoke Clinton to revoke Kaine’s nomination and pick someone else?
I agree with Jerry’s assessment that picking Warren was not worth handing the Massachusetts seat back to Republicans.
http://www.stonekettle.com/2016/07/the-decider.html
Kaine is the right choice according to this gentleman.
mfi, thanks for that link. It was one of the best I have read to date.
Careful Hillary, Tim Kaine is an ambitious politician, and he would gladly take over for you.
Good article, mfi.
Debbie Waterboy Schultz gone. Good riddance. Now for Tim Canova to remove her from congress.
The Democratic Party was right to dump Wasserman-Schultz even if it is after the convention. The good news is that she probably won’t show up for the convention.
Wasserman-Schulz bigger sin was acting like a republican in her support of pay day lenders.
“Wasserman-Schulz bigger sin was acting like a republican in her support of pay day lenders.”
Crony capitalism is bi-partisan. It is inevitable when government has gotten too big and has too much control.
How do you explain this, Sibby?
But wait a minute.
During the one week of the RNC, online porn viewership was higher in Cleveland than in New York City, Miami, and Los Angeles, according to xHamster, a leading porn site.
The News Observer reports that viewership was a full 184 percent higher than usual! How much porn were they watching? In between all the fear mongering, hate speech, Hillary bashing…were they streaming in the bathroom on their iPhones?
Total number of view just during that week – 873,294 views.
Some serious gawd fearing wingnuts you got there,Sib.
My apologies for being way off topic.
mike from iowa,
Would you let me know when Sibson says anything relative or new?
Thanks.
Kaine connection to Honduras repeated over and over again, just makes one wonder about Clinton campaign chutzpah after HER State Deptartment led military coup which deposed democratically elected President Zelaya, and the subsequent and recent death of Berta Caceres, an internationally beloved environmental activist! Stunning Hubris.
Mike FI, I appreciate the comment in the article you cite, from Jim Wright, that Clinton showed some good sense in picking Kaine over Warren, since Virginia’s Democratic Governor will pick a Democratic replacement for Kaine, meaning no loss in the Senate for Dems.
Maybe Debbie Wasserman Schultz will move to Virginia, and former DNC chair McAuliffe can appoint her to replace former DNC chair Kaine in the Senate.
How does the Clinton Campaign and DNC begin triangulating their most recent scandal?
1. The Clinton Camp announced that Russian State actors hacked some email accounts? (So, that’s really a thing.)
2. President Obama calls a fuming Debbie Wasserman Schultz and offers his thanks for her service, which translates to “Ms. Wasserman Schultz, you’re finished.” DWS refuses to resign until after the convention and will speak tomorrow night, unless Anderson Cooper gets his wish and she is prevented from doing so.
3. Hillary Clinton sees an opportunity to bring on a dedicated public servant with years of valuable experience and immediately offers the otherwise disgraced DWS an Honorary Co-Chair position on Campaign. DWS graciously accepts.
Have all the Bernie Sanders people seen the new poster/meme on twitter which was retweeted @DrJillStein?
Sing it, like you did when you were a kid.
Jill & Bernie, sittin’ in a tree…..D…E…M…E…X…I…T!
For some morbid humor:
Tim & Hillary, sailin’ on the sea….K..I..L..L..I..N..G!
Trumpy and Pooty sittin in a tree,
Thinking of ways to screw you and me.
First comes Thuney. Then comes Roundsy
not to forget little NOemy
on her widdle horsey.
These five need replaced, but give the widdle horsey space.
Not to be asinine,
who the hell is Dr. Stein?
Dem Superdelegates need to switch vote for Bernie Sanders now before it is too late. Sanders people petitioned to have Superdelegate status changed, but it was defeated. Superdelegates are therefore free to vote their conscience!
Jerry, Good on y’a! Dr. Jill Stein is running for President of the Green Party.
Leo,
The super delegates won’t be released, remember that Bernie has already endorsed Hillary.
To think otherwise is wishful thinking.
I’m with Roger: Bernie has already seen that train off at the station. This convention will go off with far less drama (no Cruz chaos) and far more optimism and moral example than the Republican convention.
At most what we’ll see is a demonstration of Bernie supporters for a day so, they do deserve to have their voices heard, and than the delegates will get down to nominating Hillary for president.
Roger and Cory, hope springs eternal. None of us peons really know what is going to happen in the next few days, what with the DWS and DNC scandal. I fail to understand why down ticket candidates who have supported Bernie Sanders are not more concerned. By the way Roger, it is my understanding that superdelegates are never bound, so why do you say that “the super delegates won’t be released”?
Cory, now that the evidence of DNC interference and bias is made public via Wikileaks, and to such a degree that the DNC Chairwoman has essentially been terminated by the President, why should you think that Bernie Sanders would not have the justification to challenge HRC for the nomination at the convention? Apparently, the DEM desire is for order, suppression and a lack of fairness, rather than for justice! If DEMS don’t put their corrupt house in order now, they will lose this fall, and it will all be the fault of the DEM establishment for putting up such a flawed candidate who wants to make history for herself, rather than being an honest broker for the people. Don’t dare blame anyone of conscience.
Leo, put your pitchforks away. Bernie has moved on. What right do you have to speak for Bernie? Do you know better than Bernie how he was treated? Do you know better than Bernie what is best for the country?
For Darin: D…E…M…E…X…I…T Now I have “pitchforks”! Wow. You are something Darin. By the way, Bernie never claimed to speak for himself, he spoke for us, he gave voice to the obvious. I know it is hard for you to comprehend. Peace.
Leo, I’m giving voice to the obvious: Bernie supports Hillary. He knows that she is his best chance to work to effect the changes that he campaigned on. They put a lot of Bernie’s positions into the Democratic platform for goodness sake. Now you act like it makes sense to blow up the Democratic party and let Trump take the presidency. Good luck with that!
If you think Trump is going to give Bernie the time of day if he is elected president, I’ve got some snow in Alaska to sell you. In a Clinton presidency, Bernie or one of his surrogates will undoubtedly have cabinet level power.
Darin Larson, are you telling me that you (secretly) support Bernie Sanders too?
Evidently the EB-5 issue is too messy, and we can only use this post as a springboard to other issues. Now we’re not even talking about Kaine.
That said, the bias that the DNC favored Clinton is not news. We all knew this before Sanders announced his candidacy. And it’s not the DNC’s bias that has decided the nomination: it’s the bias of 27.8 million voters who went 56.8% for Clinton. The 15.8 million Americans who voted for Clinton—3.8 million more than those who voted for Sanders—are not all DNC members.
The DNC doesn’t give Bernie a fair shake and DWS and the DNC are exposed for corruption and collusion which pushes Obama to ask that she steps down……HRC camp makes statement about the resignation and in the same statement indicates they will be hiring DWS…..Talk about giving all the Bernie supporters a big middle finger and this is not news? The leaks are only going to get better each day…Here is the full list of not-news for you. My favorite are the misogynist craigslist ads. These upcoming debates are going to call for a lot of popcorn. Hilary takes care of her people. You screw over the entire party in her personal favor and you will get a job in her camp. I expect her presidency will be a lot of that.
I tried posting a bunch of links but much like the Argus, you must not like sources and blocked it, so I will just include this great source outlining everything. The comments from Bernie Supporters are great.
“Not News” Guide
Now, continue on with your circle jerk about Fox News while the DNC colludes with the Media and Hilary supporters write everything off as “not news”.
Cory, Is this news:
https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/20352
Whoever, being a candidate, directly or indirectly promises or pledges the appointment, or the use of his influence or support for the appointment of any person to any public or private position or employment, for the purpose of procuring support in his candidacy shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if the violation was willful, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.
http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title18/part1/chapter29&edition=prelim
Screenshot of the spreadsheet of donors for potential appointments in the email:
http://dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Screen-Shot-2016-07-24-at-5.36.16-PM-620×526.png
Boy, some people are determined to talk about something other than the original topic of the post, Tim Kaine and EB-5, aren’t they?
I know it is going to be hard for you to post about something so damning to Hilary, but it might keep it all under one topic…..then again, this is going to continue so you might need about 20 topics by the time it is all said and done. Collusion with Hilary’s campaign team, collusion with the media, corruption and possible criminal violations, underhanded campaign strategies……this is only going to get better. You know Hilary is scum, but you are really trying hard not to point it out…and what little insignificant criticism you do have gets you the praise to keep those on your side thinking you are bipartisan.
Daniel, don’t be too hard on Cory, he is running for office, and he has to be careful not to bite the hand that feeds him (look what they did to Sanders!). Gone are the days of the rabble-rousing Kucinich promoter who would rail against corruption on either side of the aisle. So what if there is corruption/cronyism? So what if the the organization responsible for writing the rules for caucuses and primaries favors one candidate over the other, that could not have influence, right? Now is the time to band together, to circle the wagons, and protect the DNC and the Democratic party from naysayers. But don’t worry, I am sure after all the corruption is routed out of the Republican Party, the Democrats will do some self-examination. ;)
Christ, Herr Drumpf sure roused the rabble last week,after he got done groping his own daughter.
Buresh is burning up with Hillary Derangement Syndrome. She makes you that unhappy, stop dreaming about her.
Oh Cory, HRC won, I care that Dems aren’t Dems anymore. Get it? D..E..M..E..X..I..T
Hold up, Joe and Dan: Team Clinton hasn’t fed me.
I point out the EB-5 scandal that could dog Kaine and Clinton, and you guys bag on me for not pointing our corruption on Team Clinton? Daniel, you still dismiss EB-5 corruption as insignificant? Good grief.
On these cussed emails: what scandal do they expose? What do we know now that we did not know before? What action did the DNC take to rig the primary process for Clinton and against Sanders? The only crime that appears to have been committed is that someone hacked into private e-mail accounts.