ELECTIONS
AND LESSER EVILS
Elizabeth
Warren: Hillary Clinton Sold Out To Wall Street
Warren
said she…
explained how the proposed bankruptcy bill (eventually called The Bankruptcy
Reform Act of 2000) would hurt poor people, particularly poor women raising a
family who were attempting to get child support and alimony from their
ex-husbands: those women would have to compete with Wall Street banks that were
trying to keep their ex-husbands out of the bankruptcy process so they could
force him to pay credit card debts. According to Warren, Clinton completely
understood the argument Warren made and agreed the bill had to be stopped. Upon
returning to Washington, Clinton reportedly worked behind the scenes to defeat
the bankruptcy bill, which was pocket vetoed by President Bill Clinton in December of 2000.
But then, as Warren noted, Clinton was elected to Congress for New York in 2000
and, in one of her first acts in office, voted for the very same bankruptcy bill she had once opposed and
her husband vetoed.
When
asked by Bill Moyers for an explanation for the complete reversal, Warren
suggested that then-Senator Clinton had succumbed to pressure from Wall Street
as both her constituents and largest campaign donors.
More
Top
Hillary Clinton Advisers and Fundraisers Lobbied Against
Obamacare
Hillary
Clinton is campaigning as a guardian of President Barack Obama’s progressive policy
accomplishments. In recent weeks, she has called the Affordable Care Act “one of the greatest
accomplishments of President Obama, of the Democratic Party, and of our
country,” and promised that she is “going to defend Dodd-Frank” and “defend
President Obama for taking on Wall Street.” Meanwhile, however, Clinton’s
campaign has been relying on a team of strategists and fundraisers, many of whom
spent much of the last seven years as consultants or lobbyists for business
interests working to obstruct Obama’s agenda in those two areas.
More
FDR in
1936:
Wall
Street and the Bankers “are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome
their hatred.”
BERNIE
in 2016:
Me
too!
CLINTON
in 2016:
They
are unanimous in their hate for me--- and I welcome their campaign
contributions. . .
Hear FDR for
Yourself
We have
highlighted before Franklin Roosevelt’s stirring 1936 Madison Square Garden
speech, which you can read in full here. A live recording is also available via a link at
the same site or here. Bernie Sanders shares much of FDR’s politics, but
unfortunately not always his great rhetorical skills.
When FDR
pronounced the famous lines
We had to struggle with the old
enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking,
class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the
Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. . .
“Never before in all our history
have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They
are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their
hatred.”
(You can hear the crowd cheering
wildly at these words.)
We need
to confront ‘malefactors of great wealth’!
So
why can’t a Democratic president talk about the “Malefactors of Great Wealth”
who are responsible for the economic disasters we face today? Could it have
something to do with the fact that wealthy individuals and corporations fund the
expensive electoral campaigns of both political parties, and so ensure that the
solutions supported by the majority of people – raising taxes on the wealthy and
the corporations, putting people to work, ending the wars, protecting Social
Security and Medicare – are practically off the “mainstream” agenda? Fake
Republican populism (the “Tea Party,” [or Donald Trump]) is allowed in our
system since it is easily deflected (by racism, among other means) away from the
real perpetrators. Democratic populism is unacceptable because it might be taken
seriously.
Sanders
should challenge the foreign policy status quo
Democrats
have a genuine opportunity to offer a sorely needed new, real security agenda.
Yet we’ve seen little evidence of it. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has made a
stirring argument about our rigged economy and our corrupted politics,
electrifying young voters and unsettling the party establishment’s favorite,
former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. But Sanders has said little about
foreign policy, apparently viewing it as a distraction from his core economic
message… Driving a new debate in foreign policy isn’t easy. But this country
desperately needs a challenge to the mainstream thinking that has given us a
foreign policy that grows ever more divorced from the interests and security
concerns of the vast majority of Americans. Sanders has challenged our rigged
economy and corrupted politics. Now it is time for him to challenge the limits
of our cribbed foreign policy debate. More
A Real
‘Political Revolution’ to End the Wars
But
the fact is, the lives of millions of people in the Middle East ride on this
election just as much as ours do — and perhaps more immediately. If there’s
anything left of the Sanders who voted against this war in 2002 — and who
preaches against perpetual war now — he’ll recognize that their fate is tied up
inextricably with our own. “As a caring nation,” Sanders said back then, “we
should do everything we can to prevent the horrible suffering that a war will
cause.” And here let’s add a recent statement by Canadian Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau, who just announced plans to end Canada’s involvement in the ISIS
air war: “The people terrorized by ISIS every day don’t need our vengeance. They
need our help.” It would be nice to hear some similar words from Sanders today
— followed by a real plan to end the war he so presciently opposed. Because a
real political revolution doesn’t just mean taking our economic policy back from
the billionaires. It means taking our foreign policy back from the carpet
bombers. http://fpif.org/real-political-revolution-end-war-iraq/More
Who
would have thought this would be one of the great moments from last night’s
debate? If you missed it – or if you want to relive the moment, you can watch
the exchange here
HENRY KISSINGER,
HILLARY CLINTON’S TUTOR
Let’s consider
some of Kissinger’s achievements during his tenure as Richard Nixon’s top
foreign policy–maker. He (1) prolonged the Vietnam War for five pointless years;
(2) illegally bombed Cambodia and Laos; (3) goaded Nixon to wiretap staffers and
journalists; (4) bore responsibility for three genocides in Cambodia, East
Timor, and Bangladesh; (5) urged Nixon to go after Daniel Ellsberg for having
released the Pentagon Papers, which set off a chain of events that brought down
the Nixon White House; (6) pumped up Pakistan’s ISI, and encouraged it to use
political Islam to destabilize Afghanistan; (7) began the US’s
arms-for-petrodollars dependency with Saudi Arabia and pre-revolutionary Iran;
(8) accelerated needless civil wars in southern Africa that, in the name of
supporting white supremacy, left millions dead; (9) supported coups and death
squads throughout Latin America; and (10) ingratiated himself with the
first-generation neocons, such as Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, who would take
American militarism to its next calamitous level… A full tally hasn’t been done,
but a back-of-the-envelope count would attribute 3, maybe 4 million deaths to
Kissinger’s actions, but that number probably undercounts his victims in
southern Africa. More
From a website
generally supportive of Clinton:
Bernie Sanders is
right: Hillary Clinton praising Henry Kissinger is outrageous
Clinton's
decision to embrace Kissinger, like her highly paid speeches to Goldman Sachs,
make her look like someone who's too ensconced in the American elite to be truly
committed to progressive values. It's everything that many progressives
dislike about her. Which is why it's such a successful line of attack for
Sanders. He, unlike Clinton, isn't really part of polite Washington society. His
career in Congress hasn't really required him to buddy up with people like
Kissinger. He can give voice to progressive concerns about Kissinger and thus
about the establishment. More
The
Clintons’ War on Drugs: When Black Lives Didn’t Matter
A
true paradox lies at the heart of the Clinton legacy. Both Hillary and Bill
continue to enjoy enormous popularity among African Americans despite the
devastating legacy of a presidency that resulted in the impoverishment and
incarceration of hundreds of thousands of poor and working-class black people.
Most shockingly, the total numbers of state and federal inmates grew more
rapidly under Bill Clinton than under any other president, including the
notorious Republican drug warriors Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H.
W. Bush… Although they are rarely mentioned in the same breath, the escalation
of America’s drug war in the 1990s and the rise of the Democratic Leadership
Council (DLC) and its benighted son Bill Clinton are all intimately linked.
Understanding why tough on crime policies and welfare reform became so
foundational to the vision of the New Democrats requires a look at the
sensibilities that undergirded their strategy for regaining the White House and
national power. More
MICHELLE
ALEXANDER: Why Hillary Clinton Doesn't Deserve the Black Vote
Black
voters have been remarkably loyal to the Clintons for more than 25 years. It’s
true that we eventually lined up behind Barack Obama 
in
2008, but it’s a measure of the Clinton allure that Hillary led Obama among
black voters until he started winning caucuses and primaries… What have the
Clintons done to earn such devotion? Did they take extreme political risks to
defend the rights of African Americans? Did they courageously stand up to
right-wing demagoguery about black communities? Did they help usher in a new era
of hope and prosperity for neighborhoods devastated by deindustrialization,
globalization, and the disappearance of work? No. Quite the opposite… On the
campaign trail, Bill Clinton made the economy his top priority and argued
persuasively that conservatives were using race to divide the nation and divert
attention from the failed economy. In practice, however, he capitulated entirely
to the right-wing backlash against the civil-rights movement and embraced former
president Ronald Reagan’s agenda on race, crime, welfare, and taxes—ultimately
doing more harm to black communities than Reagan ever did. More
Who
Endorsed Hillary Clinton? The Congr. Black Caucus or Its PAC Filled with
Lobbyists?
This
week’s endorsement of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for president by
the Congressional Black Caucus political action committee prompted some
confusion due to a lack of familiarity with the PAC… “They’ve said that the CBC,
the Congressional Black Caucus, endorsed, but it is the Congressional Black
Caucus’s PAC. And one of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus,
Congressmember Keith Ellison, said— tweeted the "Cong’l Black Caucus (CBC) has NOT endorsed in
presidential. Separate CBCPAC endorsed withOUT input from CBC membership,
including me." And then he had a follow-up tweet saying, "The point [is] that endorsements should be the
product of a fair open process. Didn’t happen," More
Black
Caucus PAC Endorsement Approved by Board Awash in Lobbyists
Members
of the CBC PAC board include Daron Watts, a lobbyist for Purdue Pharma, the maker of the highly addictive
opioid OxyContin; Mike Mckay and Chaka Burgess, both lobbyists for Navient, the student loan giant that was spun
off of Sallie Mae; former Rep. Albert Wynn, D-Md., a lobbyist who represents a range of clients, including work last year on
behalf of Lorillard Tobacco, the maker of Newport cigarettes; and William A.
Kirk, who lobbies for a cigar industry trade group on a range of tobacco
regulations. And a significant percentage of the $7,000 raised this cycle by the CBC PAC from individuals was
donated by white lobbyists, including Vic Fazio, who represents Philip Morris and served for years as a lobbyist to
Corrections Corporation of America, and David
Adams, a former Clinton aide who now lobbies for
Wal-Mart, the largest gun distributor in America… Not all CBC members have
embraced the Clinton endorsement. Speaking this morning on Democracy Now, Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., a CBC
member, said she has not endorsed either candidate in the Democratic primary,
and reminded viewers that the CBC “has nothing to do with the” CBC PAC, which is
a legally distinct entity. NBC Capitol Hill producer Frank Thorp tweeted that Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., was one of two
abstentions on the CBC PAC board. More
Islamophobia
and the Election: It’s not just Trump
While
the media focuses on the demagoguery of Donald Trump, the war-mongering of Ted
Cruz and the sheer-unhinged nature of Ben Carson – the reality is that even
“moderate” candidates, such as Marco Rubio are riding a wave of anti-Muslim
sentiment, in order to seem tough on national security. Global Islamophobia
continues to reach its crescendo, with anti-refugee and thereby anti-Muslim
sentiment spreading like wildfire across Europe. This rhetoric has also
continued to grow in the U.S. – with record numbers of Islamophobic incidents
reported in 2015 against mosques. For American Muslims, it is now almost 15
years post-9/11 – yet the question remains on whether the continual scapegoating
and marginalization of this community within the political sphere will ever
end. More
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