July 19, 2015

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July 19, 2015

Bernie Sanders draws his biggest crowd yet — in Arizona of all places

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/07/19/bernie-sanders-draws-his-biggest-crowd-yet-in-arizona-of-all-places/?tid=hpModule_ba0d4c2a-86a2-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394&hpid=z8

July 18, 2015

For Clintons, a Hedge Fund in the Family

'...being part of the Clinton family has provided Mr. Mezvinsky with another perk: access to wealthy investors with ties to the Clintons.

When Mr. Mezvinsky and his partners began raising money in 2011 for a new hedge fund firm, Eaglevale Partners, a number of investors in the firm were longtime supporters of the Clintons, according to interviews and financial documents reviewed by The New York Times. Tens of millions of dollars raised by Eaglevale can be attributed to investors with some relationship or link to the Clintons...


Mr. Lasry, a co-founder of the big hedge fund Avenue Capital and a longtime friend and financial backer of both the former president and Mrs. Clinton, said he invested $1 million in Eaglevale. In an interview in his Park Avenue office, adorned with many photos of him with the former president, he said that he recommended that his relative by marriage, Craig Effron, another hedge fund manager, also invest in the fund.

“I gave them money because I thought they would make me money,” said Mr. Lasry, whose $13 billion firm was one of the first places Chelsea worked after graduating from Stanford.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/23/business/dealbook/for-clintons-a-hedge-fund-in-the-family.html

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Yet Hillary won't support a $15 minimum wage hike. Shades of Mitt Romney...

July 16, 2015

John Kerry is the best Secretary of State in my lifetime

The path to a final Iran nuclear deal: Long days and short tempers

It was not until late Monday that they realized they had accomplished what they set out to do. Early Tuesday, when they knew they had a deal, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif sat one last time with Kerry and U.S. negotiating partners from Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union. They asked most of their staff members to leave the room.

Kerry and Zarif, in particular, had barely left the Vienna hotel where their conversations were held for more than two weeks while the world outside debated their efforts. Each was about to head home to the new and possibly more difficult tasks of selling the deal to their countrymen, and making it work.

One by one, in alphabetical order by country, the diplomats spoke about the meaning of what they had achieved and the challenges that lay ahead. Kerry, speaking last, talked about the opportunity they now had and the need for the agreement to be effectively implemented to be credible.

At the end, he spoke about going to Vietnam at the age of 22 and coming home with the belief that no young person should ever have to go through that experience unless nations had exhausted all other alternatives to war. He choked up, and paused, as several others were visibly moved, said two officials who witnessed it.

The diplomats began to applaud.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/long-days-and-short-tempers-the-path-to-a-final-nuclear-deal/2015/07/15/bb90235c-2b1d-11e5-bd33-395c05608059_story.html?hpid=z1

July 16, 2015

Hillary Clinton Lags in Engaging Grass-Roots Donors

'Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has responded with a new program, the Hillbuilder Initiative, intended to build a more robust online presence and harvest the grass-roots money and enthusiasm that can come with it. But the slow start has bewildered some longtime supporters, who recall small-donor enthusiasm as a crucial piece of Mr. Obama’s win over Mrs. Clinton in 2008.

Relying more heavily on large donors could also present an unwanted contrast not only to other candidates, like Mr. Sanders, but with Mrs. Clinton’s own statements about fighting for those who feel locked out of the economy. Mrs. Clinton has attended 46 fund-raisers since she entered the campaign, many of them for donors giving the largest possible check. Mr. Sanders has attended two.

“We’re spending our time talking to people, rather than sitting around in small rooms talking to very wealthy people,” Mr. Sanders said in an interview on Wednesday, as he prepared for a campaign rally in Phoenix. “These are working people, middle-class people who are making these contributions.”...

Some Democrats privately said that Mrs. Clinton’s campaign fund-raising is less impressive than it appears. Aside from Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor, who reported raising $2 million for his campaign, Mrs. Clinton has no competition for the Democrats’ big-donor establishment, which handed out a combined $80 million to a crowded Democratic primary field during the equivalent fund-raising period in 2007, the last open primary.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/16/us/politics/hillary-clinton-lags-in-engaging-grass-roots-donors.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0