Keeping Wall Street Speeches Secret Speaks Volumes About Hillary Clinton

[Rebkeh]

Keeping Wall Street Speeches Secret Speaks Volumes About Hillary Clinton

May 1, 2016
Bill Blum
TruthDig

It’s been roughly three months since Hillary Clinton promised, during her Feb. 4 debate with Bernie Sanders on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, to “look into” releasing the transcripts of her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street investment houses.

If you’re a stickler for details and would like to know precisely how long Clinton has delayed on fulfilling her pledge or exactly how much cash she has raked in for her speaking gigs and from whom, you don’t have to spend hours scouring the Internet. You can simply log onto two sites created by a 40-year-old Sanders supporter and web developer named Jed McChesney of Olathe, Kan.

The first site— iwilllookintoit.com—is a computerized digital clock that ticks off the elapsed time in bold red print, listing the number of days, hours and seconds. The other offers a searchable chart, published at citizenuprising.com, of 91 paid, private talks given by the Democratic front-runner from April 2013 to March 2015.

All told, according to McChesney’s meticulous research, Clinton pulled in a whopping $21.7 million in speaking fees for the two-year period. Of this amount, $3,260,000 came from 14 speeches delivered directly to financial-sector interests, including Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, and, above all, Goldman, which remitted a tidy $675,000 for no less than three chin-wags.

“I was watching the debate … when she said she would look into [releasing the speeches],” McChesney told me in an interview I conducted with him last week via email, as his phone was down as a result of a north Kansas thunderstorm. “I just knew it was a complete blow-off answer.

“I find it to be completely disqualifying,” he continued, regarding Clinton’s presidential bid. “It says a lot about our system when such brazen bribery is wholly accepted. So about … an hour or so after the debate, it just hit me to start a clock to hold her accountable.”

In terms of web traffic, the venture was an immediate success. On Feb. 19, after the Sanders campaign got wind of McChesney’s clock and tweeted out the URL to some 1.5 million followers, the website was featured on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show. Within 20 minutes, the site drew 160,000 visitors, causing it to crash and forcing McChesney to switch to a larger server. Since then, he estimates, the page views have numbered in the millions.

snip

Even if there is no smoking quid-pro-quo gun in Hillary’s history, there is plenty to suggest Lessig’s economy of influence. From her lackluster record in the Senate as an advocate of the poor and middle class to her intervention in 2009 as secretary of state to stave off criminal prosecution of the Swiss banking giant UBS, the fundraising shenanigans of her family foundation that has netted $2 billion in donations from American corporations and foreign governments, and the millions raised by her super PACs in the current election cycle, Clinton has fostered the widespread perception that she’s become part of the oligarchy that is destroying American democracy.

Producing the transcripts of her Wall Street speeches could transform that perception into certainty. It’s easy to understand, therefore, why Clinton is stalling on her look-into-it promise.

Still, the longer Clinton waits, the greater the risk she incurs of permanently alienating a critical mass of Sanders voters, including McChesney, whose backing she will sorely need as November approaches. As McChesney put it in our interview, “If she can’t show her real constituents simply what she said … she will never get my vote. Ever.”

(bold emphases mine)

Furthermore, refusal to produce the transcripts does transform the perception into certainty, even if she does release them after the primary.

More:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/keeping_wall_street_speeches_secret_speaks_volumes_20160501

[Betty Karlson]

1. K&R for the uncomfortable truth.

[Trust Buster]

2. A total non-issue now that Sanders has denied the traditional release of his tax returns.

[Rebkeh]

3. Sanders integrity, and loyalty to the oligarchy is not under scrutiny nt

[Trust Buster]

6. We don't know that. There must be something in his financial dealings that he doesn't want

us to see. Even hedge fund-Mitt released his tax returns.

[leftofcool]

8. His integrity is most certainly under suspicion.

His unwillingness to release tax returns, his FEC problems, his using campaign money to finance a trip to Rome and there is more.

[scscholar]

12. But two wrongs don't make a right.

Still wondering why his networth is so low.

[Hoyt]

4. Yeah, she's smart enough to know Sanders' rabid supporters will take things

out of context, say she went off script, claim she said bad stuff before and after the big event where she was keynote speaker to promote the event, flat out misinterpret anything that does not call for a public lynching of investors including Democrats, and worse.

[Land of Enchantment]

5. Thanks-will check it out. Her cavalier attitude about it bothers me

but then she takes that attitude toward the server/emails and Foundation issues too...ho-hum...I'll look into it....

[WhiteTara]

7. Hiding tax returns speaks louder volumes. nt

[Mike__M]

9. Give her a break

There are 47% of people who have no need to know what she said, and it's not her job to care about them.
Goes for the white noise thingy too.

[Tarc]

10. Emailgate or Trascriptgate, the last 2 cards left for the Sanders camp to play

and they're both Jokers.

[Rebkeh]

13. No play, just demonstrating why she has a trust problem nt

[ViseGrip]

11. I will not be voting for her, ever.