MESSAGE
| DATE | 2016-11-01 |
| FROM | Rick Moen
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [Hangout-NYLXS] clinton is just not qualified ... and this is
|
Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben-at-mrbrklyn.com):
> On 10/28/2016 07:58 AM, Ruben Safir wrote:
You sure talk to yourself a lot. Have you considered having that looked
at? ;->
> "Third -- what happened to that six billion dollars that went missing
> while you were Secretary of State?”
CLAIM: $6 billion went missing from the U.S. State Department while
Hillary Clinton was in charge.
MOSTLY FALSE
WHAT'S TRUE: An inspector general's report criticized Hillary Clinton's
State Department for improper record keeping on $6 billion in government
contracts.
WHAT'S FALSE: The $6 billion was never "lost," "missing," or
"misplaced."
[...]
ORIGIN:As the U.S. presidential campaign entered its home stretch on 1
October 2016, the New York Times released [link] a partial income tax
return for GOP candidate Donald Trump — the only tax information for
Trump made public so far — showing that he deducted business losses in
1995 totaling $916 million.
The amount was so substantial, the Times' tax experts concluded, that
it could have allowed Trump to "legally avoid paying any federal income
taxes for up to 18 years," a scenario not unlike one posited by
Democratic contender Hillary Clinton during the first presidential
debate [link] days earlier:
So you've gotta ask yourself: Why won't he release his tax returns?
And I think there may be a couple of reasons. First, maybe he's not
as rich as he says he is. Second, maybe he's not as charitable as he
claims to be. Third, we don't know all of his business dealings, but we
have been told through investigative reporting that he owes about $650
million to Wall Street and foreign banks. Or maybe he doesn't want the
American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he's paid
nothing in federal taxes.
The Trump tax revelations spurred Clinton to take up the cudgel yet
again. "What kind of genius loses a billion dollars in a single year?"
she said in a 3 October speech [link]. "This is Trump to a tee. He's
taken corporate excess and made a business model out of it."
To which Trump supporters responded by questioning the $6 billion in
government funds Clinton reportedly "lost" when she was in charge of the
U.S. State Department:
[snip tweet screenshot]
We're not going to argue that the comparison isn't valid — it is, in a
sense — but it is our job to point out that the above wording
misrepresents the facts. When Hillary Clinton's State Department
received an inspector general's alert [link] in 2014 charging that the
paperwork on $6 billion in government contracts hadn't been properly
accounted for, it didn't mean, despite some loosey-goosey media
reporting at the time, that the money itself was "lost" or "missing."
State Department inspector general Steve Linick clarified [link]
what happened thusly:
The April 3 news article “State Department’s IG issues rare alert”
[link] reported on the management alert issued recently by my
office. In the alert, we identified State Department contracts with
a total value of more than $6 billion in which contract files were
incomplete or could not be located. The Post stated, “The State
Department’s inspector general has warned the department that $6
billion in contracting money over the past six years cannot be
properly accounted for . . . . ”
_Some have concluded based on this that $6 billion is missing.
The alert, however, did not draw that conclusion._
Instead, it found that the failure to adequately maintain contract
files — documents necessary to ensure the full accounting of U.S.
tax dollars — “creates significant financial risk and demonstrates
a lack of internal control over the Department’s contract actions.”
Steve Linick, Washington
So, if the point of comparing Trump's and Clinton's "losses" is to
imply that Clinton literally misplaced $6 billion in taxpayer
monies, it fails. If the point, however, is that Clinton ought to
be held responsible for mismanagement of the department's record
keeping practices such that $6 billion in government spending was
inadequately accounted for, it's well taken.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 05 October 2016
http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-lost-6-billion-at-state-dept/
Ruben, if you cannot even bother to Web-search whoppers like that one
and see if they're on _snopes.com_ as urban legends, then you're at
risk of believing anything at all.
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