Confirmed: Iowa Democratic Party Flipped Delegates to Clinton

[mick silver]

Source: The Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/05/iowa-democratic-party-altered-precinct-caucus-results-clinton-sanders)



In the Iowa Democratic party’s chaotic attempt to report caucus results on Monday night, the results in at least one precinct were unilaterally changed by the party as it attempted to deal with the culmination of a rushed and imperfect process overseeing the first-in-the-nation nominating contest. In Grinnell Ward 1, the precinct where elite liberal arts college Grinnell College is located, 19 delegates were awarded to Bernie Sanders and seven were awarded to Hillary Clinton on caucus night. However, the Iowa Democratic party decided to shift one delegate from Sanders to Clinton on the night and did not notify precinct secretary J Pablo Silva that they had done so. Silva only discovered that this happened the next day, when checking the precinct results in other parts of the county.
The shift of one delegate at a county convention level would not have significantly affected the ultimate outcome of the caucus, but rather, it raises questions about the Iowa Democratic party’s management of caucus night.
Read more (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/05/iowa-democratic-party-altered-precinct-caucus-results-clinton-sanders)





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[mick silver]

Big Campaign Cash for Clinton From Monsanto Lobbyist Saturday, 06 February 2016 00:00 By Carey Gillam (http://www.truth-out.org/author/itemlist/user/51811), U.S. Right to Know (http://usrtk.org/gmo/big-campaign-cash-for-clinton-from-monsanto-lobbyist/) | Report



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Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton during a campaign event at the Boys & Girls Club in Derry, New Hampshire, February 3, 2016. A Monsanto Co. lobbyist bundled $151,727 for Clinton's campaign over the quarter ending in December 31. (Photo: Richard Perry / The New York Times)
A Monsanto Co. lobbyist, who is seen as Hillary Clinton's "main man (https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/hillary-clintons-iowa-horse-whisperer-jerry-crawford-aims-for-caucus-kentucky-derby/2015/03/02/9c93b638-be23-11e4-bdfa-b8e8f594e6ee_story.html)" in Iowa, was among the top financial bundlers of contributions to benefit Hillary Clinton's run for the White House in the most recent quarter, new Federal Election Commission reports (http://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/848/201601319005281848/201601319005281848.pdf) show.
Jerry Crawford of the Crawford & Mauro Law Firm in Des Moines, Iowa (http://www.crawfordlawfirm.com/attorneys/view.cfm?id=20), bundled $151,727 for the campaign over the quarter ending Dec. 31, FEC documents show. Crawford is senior adviser to Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign (http://www.c-span.org/video/?403438-3/washington-journal-jerry-crawford-hillary-clintons-campaign) and was the Midwest Co-Chair of the Hillary Clinton for President Campaign in 2007-08. His firm listed Monsanto as a client (http://soprweb.senate.gov/index.cfm?event=getFilingDetails&filingID=6f61ba46-90f9-4a34-9c76-0ecc3afd6ba6&filingTypeID=78) in the most recent quarter, reporting $60,000 in lobbying income from Monsanto. Monsanto is known as one of the nation's most powerful corporations, and is currently engaged in a range of public policy debates over regulation of its genetically modified crops and top herbicide product, Roundup.
Another Monsanto lobbyist (http://soprweb.senate.gov/index.cfm?event=getFilingDetails&filingID=345f0ecf-e5e0-406b-b44a-cc2421475c5c&filingTypeID=1), Steve Elmendorf, bundled $20,295 in contributions for the Hillary for America organization during the quarter, FEC documents show. Elmendorf also does work for the Grocery Manufacturers Association (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gail-sullivan/steve-elmendorf-monsanto_b_7724814.html), which has been battling against mandatory labeling laws for foods made with GMOs.
The total of all bundlers for Clinton campaign over the quarter was $716,981, according to the FEC documents.
Clinton is widely seen as a friend to genetically engineered crop technology and agrichemical interests, while her chief competitor for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, has been a supporter of mandatory GMO labeling. (http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/senate-votes-on-food-labeling-amendment)

This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.

Carey Gillam (http://www.truth-out.org/author/itemlist/user/51811)Carey Gillam has been recognized as one of the top food and agriculture journalists in the United States, winning several awards for her coverage of the industry, and appearing as an expert commentator on radio and television broadcasts. After a 17-year career at Reuters, one of the world's largest news organizations, Gillam joined US Right to Know as Research Director.


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[mick silver]

Hillary’s Corporate Democrats Taking Down Bernie SandersPosted January 29, 2016 (https://blog.nader.org/2016/01/29/hillarys-corporate-democrats-taking-down-bernie-sanders/)



By Ralph Nader
January 29, 2016
Before announcing for President in the Democratic Primaries, Bernie Sanders told the people he would not run as an Independent and be like Nader—invoking the politically-bigoted words “being a spoiler.” Well, the spoiled corporate Democrats in Congress and their consultants are mounting a “stop Bernie campaign.” They believe he’ll “spoil” their election prospects.
Sorry Bernie, because anybody who challenges the positions of the corporatist, militaristic, Wall Street-funded Democrats, led by Hillary Clinton, in the House and Senate—is by their twisted definition, a “spoiler.” It doesn’t matter how many of Bernie’s positions are representative of what a majority of the American people want for their country.
What comes around goes around. Despite running a clean campaign, funded by small donors averaging $27, with no scandals in his past and with consistency throughout his decades of standing up for the working and unemployed people of this country, Sanders is about to be Hillaried. Her Capitol Hill cronies have dispatched Congressional teams to Iowa.
The shunning of Bernie Sanders is underway. Did you see him standing alone during the crowded State of the Union gathering?
Many of the large unions, that Bernie has championed for decades, have endorsed Hillary, known for her job-destroying support for NAFTA and the World Trade Organization and her very late involvement in working toward a minimum wage increase.
National Nurses United, one of the few unions endorsing Bernie, is not fooled by Hillary’s sudden anti-Wall Street rhetoric in Iowa. They view Hillary Clinton, the Wall Street servant (and speechifier at $5000 a minute) with disgust.
Candidate Clinton’s latest preposterous pledge is to “crack down” on the
“greed” of corporations and declare that Wall Street bosses are opposing her because they realize she will “come right after them.”
Because Sanders is not prone to self-congratulation, few people know that he receives the highest Senatorial approval rating and the lowest disapproval rating from his Vermonters than any Senator receives from his or her constituents. This peak support for a self-avowed “democratic socialist,” comes from a state once known for its rock-ribbed conservative Republican traditions.
Minority House Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi has unleashed her supine followers to start wounding and depreciating Sanders. Pelosi acolyte Adam Schiff (D. California) tells the media he doubts Sanders’s electability and he could have “very significant downstream consequences in House and Senate races.”
Mr. Schiff somehow ignores that the House and Senate Democratic leadership repeatedly could not defend the country from the worst Republican Party in history, whose dozens of anti-human, pro-big business votes should have toppled many GOP candidates. Instead, Nancy Pelosi has led the House Democrats to three straight calamitous losses (2010, 2012, 2014) to the Republicans, for whom public cruelties toward the powerless is a matter of principle (https://blog.nader.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/GOP-Outrageous-Votes-10-2012v3.pdf).
Pelosi threw her own poisoned darts at Sanders, debunking his far more life-saving, efficient, and comprehensive, full Medicare-for-all plan with free choice of doctor and hospital with the knowingly misleading comment “We’re not running on any platform of raising taxes.” Presumably that includes continuing the Democratic Party’s practice of letting Wall Street, the global companies and the super-wealthy continue to get away with their profitable tax escapes.
Pelosi doesn’t expect the Democrats to make gains in the House of Representatives in 2016. But she has managed to hold on to her post long enough to help elect Hillary Clinton—no matter what Clinton’s record as a committed corporatist toady and a disastrous militarist (e.g., Iraq and the War on Libya) has been over the years.
For Pelosi it’s bring on the ‘old girls club,’ it’s our turn. The plutocracy and the oligarchy running this country into the ground have no worries. The genders of the actors are different, but the monied interests maintain their corporate state and hand out their campaign cash—business as usual.
Bernie Sanders, however, does present a moral risk for the corrupt Democratic Party and the Democratic National Committee, which are already turning on one of their own leading candidates. His years in politics so cleanly contrasts with the sordid, scandalized, cashing-in behavior of the Clintons.
Pick up a copy of Peter Schweizer’s Clinton Cash, previewed early in 2015 by the New York Times. Again and again Schweizer documents the conflicted interest maneuvering of donors to the Clinton Foundation, shady deals involving global corporations and dictators, and huge speaking fees, with the Clinton Foundation and the State department as inventories to benefit the Clintons. The Clintons embody what is sleazy and harmful about corporate political intrigues.
If and when Bernie Sanders is brought down by the very party he is championing, the millions of Bernie supporters, especially young voters, will have to consider breaking off into a new political party that will make American history. That means dissolving the dictatorial two-party duopoly and its ruinous, unpatriotic, democracy-destroying corporate paymasters.
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