In last week’s column,”At the Clinton Foundation, Access Equals Corruption,” I wrote that the charity rating agency Charity Navigator did not rate the Clinton Foundation due to its poor performance. While that was true in the past, and I relied on that previous information while researching my piece, at present the Clinton Foundation actually receives a fairly respectable rating from Charity Navigator.
Correction to Last Week’s Column
Ted Rall
http://rall.comTed Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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4 Comments.
Ted,
I believe Charity Navigator corrected their error only after you acted in reliance on their misinformation on the day of your post.
Please forgive my off topic transgression here:
If a vote for Stein is somehow determined by Democrats to be stealing a vote from Hillary, the assumption must be that there is a common ground between Stein and Hillary that would result in a split vote.
A vote for Hillary in a state where she is sure to lose is a wasted vote since it has no effect on the outcome of the election. Electoral college votes are winner take all; Hillary gets no electoral college votes at all from a state whether she loses by one vote or by a million votes.
So if Hillary would campaign for Stein in states where Hillary is sure to lose and Stein would campaign for Hillary in swing states to ensure a Hillary win over Trump, then both would stand to win something from the participation of each other in a joint move to the left.
A CBC broadcast claimed that this worked in Canada where two liberal parties, where instead of splitting the liberal vote to the advantage of the major conservative party, the liberal parties coordinated to defeat the major conservative party.
If Hillary did coordinate with Stein to ensure a more certain defeat of Trump, she would demonstrate that she considers a candidate to the left, and a move to the left, is a lesser evil than a possible Trump win.
If Hillary did not cooperate with Stein she would demonstrate that her real interest is in consolidating the power of Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans to defeat Trump in a move to the right.
In other words, Hillary will be in a position to choose a rightward move to defeat Trump with the support of anti-Trump Republican votes or a leftward move to defeat Trump with the support of Green Party votes.
In a close election Hillary must decide from her perspective whether Trump or Stein is the lesser evil.
If Sanders could still become the Green Party candidate and coordinate with Hillary in the way proposed here, Sanders would not go down, as he fears, as the “Ralph Nader of 2016”, but as making the decisive move in the defeat of Trump.
Sanders has already subordinated himself to Hillary so this would not be a stretch, and would also empower the movement of his supporters.
Since neither party of the duopoly will campaign in any state except where the polls are so even that they present as swing states, all votes for a sure loser in those states are wasted votes. It doesn’t matter if Hillary loses by one vote or by a million votes, she will receive absolutely zero Electoral College votes from that state.
For example, if a state is given up as a lost battle for Hillary with Trump at 60% and Hillary at 40%, then all votes for Hillary are wasted votes because they have absolutely no impact on the number of Electoral College votes Hillary receives because Electoral College votes are allocated by winner-take-all rules.
If millions of votes that would otherwise be wasted in voting for Hillary were instead given to the Green Party, the Green Party would become viable by exceeding the 5% vote total to be recognized as a national party in all states.
Bernie Sanders could campaign for Hillary Clinton in swing states as he has pledged to do from the very beginning and still campaign for the Green Party in states where votes for Hillary would otherwise count for absolutely nothing.
This would further strengthen the electoral power of the very voters that supported Sanders in the primary without splitting the vote and ensuring a Trump win.
Strangely, Breitbart claims that a vote for Stein (or Johnson) is a vote for Hillary!
http://www.breitbart.com/california/2016/08/11/nevertrump-youre-not-voting-trump-youre-voting-hillary/