I hope you read yesterday's post, The Pervasive, Sickening Impact Of Wall Street On Politics, which made the case-- strictly based on cold, hard facts-- for why Hillary should drop out immediately and endorse Bernie for president-- for the sale of the country. She won't ,of course; she is a breathtakingly corrupt careerist. No one even defends her except people on her payroll, people who want to get a job in her administration or those who, tragically, refuse to look at her horrifying public record of deceit and corruption. A few minutes ago one of her morons on Twitter repeated that "None of Bernie's ideas are feasible!," exactly what conservatives said about...
• The American Revolution• The Bill of Rights and the forging of a democracy• Universal white male suffrage• Public education• The emancipation of the slaves• The national park system• Food safety• The breakup of monopolies• The Homestead Act• Land grant universities• Rural electrification• Women’s suffrage• The abolition of child labor• The eight hour workday• The minimum wage• Social Security• Civil rights for minorities and women• Voting rights for minorities and the poor• Cleaning up our air, our water, and toxic dump sites• Consumer product safety• Medicare and Medicaid
Hillary is just a year older than I am-- let's say we're the same age. When far right extremist nut Barry Goldwater was running for president, I was smart enough to back LBJ, while she was campaigning for Goldwater. A couple of years later I was at a state university and president of the Young Democrats and she was at a 7 Sisters school and president of the Young Republicans. Many years later I was offered a position on the Board of Directors of McDonald's. It would have been very financially advantageous but it just took me 30 seconds to turn it down. She served on the Board of Directors of Walmart. I know her type... I know her type real well, and the times I've met her in person, one-on-one, I've been aware I was in the presence of a not very nice person.Iowa's corrupt Democratic Party chair grudgingly releases new results, although still unverifiedA few days ago Conor Friedersdorf, writing for The Atlantic went beyond just commenting on the absurd moment in the Democratic debate "when one of America’s most powerful insiders took umbrage at an accurate characterization of who she represents" and denied she is part of "the establishment." He points out that she's very much like a garden variety GOP insider in this regard.
Of course, “the establishment” has no agreed-upon meaning. By Wikipedia’s definition, “a dominant group or elite that holds power or authority in a nation or organization,” Bernie Sanders qualifies. He has spent 26 years in Congress, 10 as a senator. As he points out repeatedly, he sat on the committee that wrote Obamacare. And he was chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. On the other hand, he’s the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress and cast lonely votes against establishment endeavors as popular as the Persian Gulf War and the Patriot Act. He disliked Alan Greenspan long before the financial crisis. He’s fiercely critical of America’s existing economic power structure. And he once recorded an album of folk music titled “We Shall Overcome.”Establishment or not?Here’s what Sanders said Thursday after Hillary Clinton touted the long list of prominent Democratic Party officials who have endorsed her bid for the presidency:I will absolutely admit that Secretary Clinton has the support of far more governors, mayors, members of the House. She has the entire establishment or almost the entire establishment behind her. That's a fact.I don't deny it. But I am pretty proud that we have over a million people who have contributed to our campaign averaging 27 bucks apiece. That we have had meetings where 25,000-30,000 people have come out. That our campaign is a campaign of the people, by the people, and for the people.So, Rachel, yes, Secretary Clinton does represent the establishment. I represent, I hope, ordinary Americans, and by the way, who are not all that enamored with the establishment, but I am very proud to have people like Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva in the House, the co-chairmen of the House Progressive Caucus.Notice that Sanders didn’t say he isn’t a member of the establishment. He said he doesn’t “represent the establishment.” That strikes me as a perfectly defensible claim.Hillary Clinton didn’t dispute it. But she did take umbrage at how Sanders characterized her. “Honestly, Senator Sanders is the only person who I think would characterize me, a woman running to be the first woman president, as exemplifying the establishment,” she said. “And that it is really quite amusing to me.”Did you notice how she changed his words?Sanders said that she “represents the establishment,” not that she “exemplifies the establishment.” But even the stronger claim strikes me as true. There may not be one true definition of “the establishment,” but Hillary Clinton is a member by any reasonable definition....[When] became New York’s junior senator after the September 11 terrorist attacks she voted with the establishment for the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, the Patriot Act, and the Iraq War. She joined the Senate Prayer Breakfast. When the Democratic establishment opposed gay marriage, she did, too. She didn’t flip until 2013, when equality was an establishment position. In the interim, she was a cabinet secretary.Throughout her tenure, she believed that America’s governing elite was justified in running a secret program of mass surveillance and waging secret drone warfare.“A few weeks after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, she was summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpart to discuss an urgent matter. The Internal Revenue Service was suing UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret accounts,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “If the case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank would face an impossible choice: Violate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court. Within months, Mrs. Clinton announced a tentative legal settlement-- an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat. UBS ultimately turned over information on 4,450 accounts, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS.”Later UBS paid her husband seven figures in speaking fees.After leaving Foggy Bottom, she joined one of the nation’s most powerful philanthropic organizations, underwritten by ultra-rich donors, including foreign governments.Its name: the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.In addition, she was paid lavishly to give speeches to some of the most powerful corporations on the planet. She earned more on three Goldman Sachs speeches than many Americans earn in their lives. Forbes estimated her individual worth at $30 million.Given all that, one of the most absurd statements in any debate this cycle has got to be, “Senator Sanders is the only person who I think would characterize me, a woman running to be the first woman president, as exemplifying the establishment.” And again, that wasn’t even Sanders claim. But it is nevertheless accurate.I don’t think Hillary Clinton is unaware that she’s a part of the establishment. Rather, I think that she was willing to feign offense to deflect from a charge that she knows to be true. “She has the entire establishment or almost the entire establishment behind her,” Sanders declared, and she “does represent the establishment.”That is absolutely correct. See for yourself.
It's a useful list (at the link just above). That's where I do my research on posts like the one about the handful of disgustingly corrupt conservative Democrats-- all on her leadership team of course-- like Patrick Murphy ("ex"-Republican, New Dem-FL), Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog, future Republican-AZ), John Delaney (New Dem-MD), Brad Ashford ("ex"-Republican, Blue Dog-NE) and Ron Kind (head of the New Dems-WI) who voted with the Republicans this past week to allow Wall Street to rip off customers and share holders.