The Green Party presidential candidate questioned the lack of ‘disclosure on the conflict of interest posed by Chelsea Clinton’s position as a director of the corporate owner of the Daily Beast, IAC’ after The Daily Beast published an article criticizing Stein’s investments.
Follow @KitOConnell | Originally posted October 31, 2016
AUSTIN, Texas — Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein accused The Daily Beast, a popular news and opinion website, of hiding its ties to the Clintons after publishing an attack on Stein’s investment portfolio on Wednesday.
“Jill Stein’s Ideology Says One Thing—Her Investment Portfolio Says Another” declared the headline for an analysis of Stein’s investments and finances by Yashar Ali. The article suggests that Stein has millions of dollars invested in mutual funds which support industries she opposes on the campaign trail, including fossil fuels and the military-industrial complex.
“If Mr. Ali is truly interested in conflicts of interest of political candidates and their families, where is his disclosure on the conflict of interest posed by Chelsea Clinton’s position as a director of the corporate owner of the Daily Beast, IAC?” Stein fired back in a detailed response sent to the Daily Beast prior to publication and published to her campaign website in full on Wednesday.
Read how @TheDailyBeast tried to smear me while it takes orders from @ChelseaClinton!
jill2016.com/beastresponse (or see the Appendix)
Ali’s analysis was based on Stein’s financial disclosure filing with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, a requirement for all presidential candidates, which the office published in March. Ali also used Stein’s 2015 tax return, which the candidate released voluntarily earlier this year.
Ali reported that Stein and her husband, Richard Rohrer, “have investments (with the exception of real estate) valued at anywhere from $3,832,050 to $8,505,000,” then criticized the candidate for her investment in a series of index funds or mutual funds which offer investors relatively safe and consistent returns on their money. However, in exchange for reliable earnings, investors also give up control over where their money is used.
“Like many Americans who hold retirement accounts, pension funds, or who invest in the American economy, my finances are largely held in index funds or mutual funds over which I have no control in management or decision-making,” Stein wrote in her response.
She added: “Over the years I have taken steps to divest from the worst of these holdings — transferring my checking and savings accounts from Bank of America largely to a credit union, and divesting from GE, Dupont and Merck stocks I had been given decades ago.”
While “green” mutual funds exist, Stein noted that many of these funds actually invest in fracking and biofuels, making them “not much better than the non-green funds.” She continued:
“I have not yet found the mutual funds that represent my goals of advancing the cause of people, planet and peace. Admittedly I have not spent a lot of time researching elusive ethical investments. I prefer using my time fighting for social, economic and ecological transformation, and recycling capitalist money into the fight to do so.”
She also wrote that she inherited “over a half-million dollars” from her parents, and that she’s used her investments and capital to “help build the social and political movements needed for transformative change.“
Ali’s article was designed to distract voters from larger issues of corruption within the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party, she suggested. She elaborated;
“He has created an imagined conflict of interest, perhaps to distract from the very real, harmful conflicts of interest in the Clintons’ pay-to-play schemes, back-room fundraising, and quarter-million dollar speeches for the predatory banks, health insurance industry, and fossil fuel tycoons, who have directly benefited from Hillary Clinton’s policy record as Senator and Secretary of State, as well as from Bill Clinton’s actions as President.”
In October, Forbes staff writer Dan Alexander estimated that Bill and Hillary Clinton were worth about $45 million, though he noted that their tax returns and financial disclosure filings left millions in earnings unaccounted for. In February, CNN reported that the Clintons earned $153 million in speaking fees between 2001 and the spring 2015 launch of Hillary Clinton’s latest presidential campaign.
Under Stein’s “Green New Deal” platform, the United States would transition away from foreign wars and fossil fuels by investing heavily in renewable energy.
In addition to its ties to Chelsea Clinton, The Daily Beast’s editor, Michael Weiss, has been criticized for supporting neoconservative U.S. foreign policy, including military intervention and empire building. In August, Richard Silverstein, writing for alternative media analysis site The Unz Review, noted that Weiss is frequently tapped to advocate for war on TV news programs. He wrote:
“Weiss, age 36, has been an itinerant freelance journalist and military interventionist gun-for-hire, plying his trade from Washington DC, to London, to the outlying lands of former Russian empire, to the ruins of Syria.
With his role as CNN commentator and senior editor at the Daily Beast, he is a leading light among a new young generation of neoconservative intellectuals.”
In April 2015, Stein told MintPress News that the media deliberately marginalizes third-party voices in order to keep voters from being fully informed about all their choices.
She told Carmen Russell-Sluchansky:
“It illustrates what they are terrified of. If people learn that they have an option that reflects what they want, they will vote for it. Half the population doesn’t vote because they don’t like what they see as their options.”
Watch “Dr. Jill Stein On Her First 100 Days In Office As POTUS” from MintPress News:
Dr. Jill Stein On Her First 100 Days In Office As POTUS
APPENDIX
Jill Stein Responds to Daily Beast Smear Attack By Calling for Disclosure of Chelsea Clinton’s Role as Director of Beast’s Parent Corporation
In response to an article from Daily Beast reporter Yashar Ali published on October 26, Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein challenged “the willful misinformation and manipulative framing” of the Daily Beast article as “a blatant smear attack and hypocritical attempt to suggest conflicts of interest in my environmental and economic justice-focused campaign.”
Dr. Stein noted: “If Mr. Ali is truly interested in conflicts of interest of political candidates and their families, where is his disclosure on the conflict of interest posed by Chelsea Clinton’s position as a director of the corporate owner of the Daily Beast, IAC? He has created an imagined conflict of interest, perhaps to distract from the very real, harmful conflicts of interest in the Clintons’ pay-to-play schemes, back-room fundraising, and quarter-million dollar speeches for the predatory banks, health insurance industry, and fossil fuel tycoons, who have directly benefited from Hillary Clinton’s policy record as Senator and Secretary of State, as well as from Bill Clinton’s actions as President.”
Mr. Ali has failed to show a conflict of interest in Dr. Stein’s investments, as her policy positions have consistently opposed the interests of the companies that form a portion of most index and mutual fund profiles. By his logic, he insinuates that the 50 million plus Americans who have retirement accounts invested in mutual and index funds – including school teachers, public workers, and employees of any company that provides such funds to workers as a benefit – can never speak out or organize against corporate abuses. This disingenuous shaming exercise is an effort to silence dissent, and a blunt attempt to bully people into refraining from exercising their democratic rights to free speech and political action.
Below is Dr. Stein’s full rebuttal to the Daily Beast, which updates her original comment sent prior to publication:
Like many Americans who hold retirement accounts, pension funds, or who invest in the American economy, my finances are largely held in index funds or mutual funds over which I have no control in management or decision-making. Sadly, most of these broad investments are as compromised as the American economy – massively degraded as it is by the fossil fuel, defense and finance industries. Over the years I have taken steps to divest from the worst of these holdings – transferring my checking and savings accounts from Bank of America largely to a credit union, and divesting from GE, Dupont and Merck stocks I had been given decades ago.
While I have explored “green” mutual funds, I found their investments in fracking and large scale biofuels not much better than the non-green funds. I have not yet found the mutual funds that represent my goals of advancing the cause of people, planet and peace. Admittedly I have not spent a lot of time researching elusive ethical investments. I prefer using my time fighting for social, economic and ecological transformation, and recycling capitalist money into the fight to do so.
I was fortunate to have inherited over a half-million dollars from my parents. I have used this resource to help build the social and political movements needed for transformative change. I used this money to jump start my presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2012, statewide campaigns before that, and to help build the Green Party — because, unfortunately, the most green, just investments won’t count for squat if the corporations and the super rich funding the Democrats and Republicans are still calling the shots. I also used this money to support my work with radical non profits, including the Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities, and the Global Climate Convergence.
Of note, my husband and I hold separate investments that reflect somewhat different approaches to money management. These separate holdings are reported as such in my FEC filing.
Participating in the American economy by holding investments in mutual funds, retirement accounts, and index funds is a far cry from the Clintons’ back room fundraising and quarter-million dollar speeches for the predatory banks, health insurance industry, and fossil fuel tycoons. It’s also a world apart from the predatory economics, taxpayer bailouts, and tax-dodging of Donald Trump. To the contrary, these investments are what tens of millions of working Americans must do to secure crucial resources for retirement.
To suggest an equivalence betrays either mind-boggling cluelessness, or more likely, the attack-dog mentality of the Clinton-protection press, hitting on true proponents of social change in order to defend the precarious empire of the political elite.
The Daily Beast is suggesting that participating in the American economy is incompatible with working to change it. This is comparable to the position taken by anti-climate change press (like at Fox news) who say that riding in a car or airplane means you cannot criticize fossil fuels. Unfortunately, to change public policy, one must participate in the economy enough to generate the resources to create change, ideally in a way that minimizes damage and maximizes change.
We need real options for ethical investing, including investments in the cooperative economy. Retirement security should be a human right, guaranteed through expanded Social Security, not privatized through these types of investment accounts where financial managers make unsavory decisions for us. And above all, we must build political power that is independent of multinational corporations and the political elite that serve them. This is essential if we are to restore the elusive promise of American democracy and avert the imminent threats of climate catastrophe, endless war, and nuclear confrontation — and build the just and sustainable future that is within our reach.
Kit O'Connell—A gonzo journalist from Austin, Texas and Staff Writer for MintPress News, Kit O'Connell's writing has also appeared at Truthout, the Texas Observer, and The Establishment.
Note to Commenters
Due to severe hacking attacks in the recent past that brought our site down for up to 11 days with considerable loss of circulation, we exercise extreme caution in the comments we publish, as the comment box has been one of the main arteries to inject malicious code. Because of that comments may not appear immediately, but rest assured that if you are a legitimate commenter your opinion will be published within 24 hours. If your comment fails to appear, and you wish to reach us directly, send us a mail at: editor@greanvillepost.com
We apologize for this inconvenience.
What will it take to bring America to live according to its own propaganda?
=SUBSCRIBE TODAY! NOTHING TO LOSE, EVERYTHING TO GAIN.=
free • safe • invaluable