A Cautionary Tale In The Age Of Bernie Sanders -ELECTIONS AND LESSER EVILS

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.)

 

 

A few years ago, I wrote this article for the Dorchester Reporter

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

 

BERNIE: “I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend.”

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?

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/2/12/who_endorsed_hillary_clinton_the_congressional

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