RiverLover
RiverLover's JournalThis is why people don’t trust Hillary
by Conor Lynch
This is why people don’t trust Hillary: How a convenient reversal on gun control highlights her opportunism
For many Americans on the political left, it has been hard to take anything Hillary Clinton has said during the 2016 Democratic primaries at face value. With Senator Bernie Sanders running well to her left, the former Secretary of State has attempted to rebrand herself as a pragmatic progressive (“a progressive who likes to get things done”) who, by and large, agrees with the principles of Sanders, but would be much better at affecting real change in Washington.
On numerous issues, Clinton has flip-flopped to the left — or, if you choose to be non-cynical, she has “evolved.” And this evolution has been something to behold. (Of course, by using the term evolution, one must assume that she will not “devolve” on certain positions once elected.) Indeed, one cannot discuss the issues for very long without finding major changes in Clinton’s policy positions — some of which may be genuine, others that are undoubtedly motivated by political self-interest, and still others that may be both sincere and self-serving.
.......snip........
Even the one issue where Clinton is genuinely more progressive than Sanders is tarnished by her chameleon-like maneuvering. By now, everyone knows that Clinton is to Sanders’ left on gun control — which does not mean that Sanders is regressive, as the Clinton campaign has frequently tried to portray him. The Senator has a D-minus rating from the NRA, and supports most gun control measures — including a ban on assault weapons. Last week, this issue became a source of heated discussion after Sanders gave an interview with the New York Daily News.
In the interview, Sanders was asked whether victims of gun violence should be able to sue gun manufacturers for damages, as family members of the Sandy Hook massacre are currently trying to do. At first, Sanders simply replied no, but then expanded on his answer after appearing to realize that it would be twisted to paint him as an NRA-stooge by his opponent.
“If you’re a gun dealer and you sell me a gun and I go out and I kill [someone],” said Sanders, “Do I think that that gun dealer should be sued for selling me a legal product that he misused? [Shakes head no.] But I do believe that gun manufacturers and gun dealers should be able to be sued when they should know that guns are going into the hands of wrong people.
Sure enough, the Clinton campaign quickly used the Sandy Hook tragedy against him, Tweeting that he “prioritized gun manufacturers’ rights over the parents of the children killed at Sandy Hook.”
.....snip.....
For a campaign trying to paint its opponent as a heartless dog-whistling lackey for the NRA, you would expect its own candidate to have a pretty consistent background on the issue. But of course, we’re talking about Hillary Clinton.
During her 2008 campaign, Clinton’s tune on guns was quite different, especially after her then opponent Barack Obama opined that some Americans “cling to guns or religion.” Clinton called his comments “elitist” and “out of touch,” and even bragged about learning how to shoot a gun as a child. She also made an argument that was very similar to the allegedly racist argument that Sanders made in 2015:
“What might work in New York City is certainly not going to work in Montana,” said Clinton. “So, for the federal government to be having any kind of, you know, blanket rules that they’re going to try to impose, I think doesn’t make sense.”
.......snip.........
http://www.salon.com/2016/04/11/this_is_why_people_dont_trust_hillary_how_a_convenient_reversal_on_gun_control_highlights_her_opportunism/
ETA,
Hillary 2008 vs Hillary 2016~
Can Bernie Sanders Upset Hillary Clinton in New York?
The New YorkerBY John Cassidy
4/10/2016
On the face of it, Hillary Clinton shouldn’t have much trouble winning the New York Democratic primary on April 19th. In the 2008 version of this contest, when she was running as a two-term, home-state U.S. senator, she got more than fifty-seven per cent of the vote and defeated Barack Obama by about seventeen percentage points. This time around, Clinton again has a big lead in the polls. A Fox News survey that was released on Sunday showed her getting fifty-three per cent of the vote, and Sanders getting just thirty-seven per cent.
Clinton has Governor Andrew Cuomo campaigning for her, as well as Mayor Bill de Blasio and virtually ever other Democratic leader in New York. She also has the backing of some of the biggest labor unions in the state, including the service-workers’ union and the teachers’ unions. And it will be a surprise if any of New York’s major newspapers don’t endorse her.
....snip....
Ten days ago, Sanders held an outdoor rally at a park in the hardscrabble Mott Haven section of the South Bronx. About eighteen thousand people showed up. The crowd was so large that it couldn’t entirely fit into the allotted space. Now Sanders is campaigning full-time in New York, seeking to eat into Clinton’s lead, and drawing on a small army of volunteers.
“Normally when you run a campaign, you have a lot of people working for you—you have to drag them places, and you have to pay people to do things,” Bill Lipton, the New York director of the progressive Working Families Party, which is supporting Sanders, told me. “This is a different type of campaign. There is a movement out there for Bernie Sanders. He has the type of energy we’ve rarely seen in New York politics, where thousands of people come out for a rally in response to an e-mail. Many of them leave with sheets of paper telling them how to get involved, and the next day they are knocking on doors.”
The mobilization isn’t restricted to New York City, Lipton said. He cited support for Sanders among environmental activists in the Hudson Valley, and said that an organizational meeting in Buffalo—where Sanders is scheduled to speak on Monday—that was called at short notice still attracted hundreds of volunteers. State officials have reported an unprecedented surge in last-minute registrations by new voters, which may also owe to the Sanders effect. “I think turnout will be high,” Kenneth Sherrill, an emeritus professor of political science at the City College of New York, whose memories of state politics go back to the nineteen-sixties, told me. “A lot of people who haven’t voted in primaries before are going to be voting, and that introduces a random factor.”....
....big huge snip....
There are still nine days until the vote. Given Clinton’s local ties, her strength among women and minorities, and the level of institutional support behind her, the odds heavily favor her winning. (According to PredictIt, an online prediction site, the probability of Clinton finishing ahead of Sanders is eighty-nine per cent.) But Sanders’s supporters believe that they have momentum on their side. “Who would you want to be: the establishment candidate or the candidate of youth and change?” Lipton said. “Anything can happen here.”
Read in full~
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/can-bernie-sanders-upset-hillary-clinton-in-new-york
GO Bernie!!
Yup.
We need to do that.
I see that happening. Many of us do.
Here's Robert Reich, a very cool look into a possible future~
MONDAY, MARCH 21, 2016
Third parties have rarely posed much of a threat to the dominant two parties in America. So how did the People’s Party win the U.S. presidency and a majority of both houses of Congress in 2020?
It started four years before, with the election of 2016.
As you remember, Donald Trump didn’t have enough delegates to become the Republican candidate, so the GOP convention that summer was “brokered” – which meant the Party establishment took control, and nominated the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan.
Trump tried to incite riots but his “I deserve to be president because I’m the best person in the world!” speech incited universal scorn instead, and he slunk off the national stage (his last words, shouted as he got into his stretch limousine, were “Fu*ck you, America!”)
On the Democratic side, despite a large surge of votes for Bernie Sanders in the final months of the primaries, Hillary Clinton’s stable of wealthy donors and superdelegates put her over the top.
Both Republican and Democratic political establishments breathed palpable sighs of relief, and congratulated themselves on remaining in control of the nation’s politics.
They attributed Trump’s rise to his fanning of bigotry and xenophobia, and Sanders’s popularity to his fueling of left-wing extremism.
They conveniently ignored the deeper anger in both camps about the arbitrariness and unfairness of the economy, and about a political system rigged in favor of the rich and privileged.
And they shut their eyes to the anti-establishment fury that had welled up among independents, young people, poor and middle-class Democrats, and white working-class Republicans.
So they went back to doing what they had been doing before. Establishment Republicans reverted to their old blather about the virtues of the “free market,” and establishment Democrats returned to their perennial call for “incremental reform.”
And Wall Street, big corporations, and a handful of billionaires resumed pulling the strings of both parties to make sure regulatory agencies didn’t have enough staff to enforce rules, and to pass the Trans Pacific Partnership.
Establishment politicians also arranged to reduce taxes on big corporations and simultaneously increase federal subsidies to them, expand tax loopholes for the wealthy, and cut Social Security and Medicare to pay for it all. (“Sadly, we have no choice,” said the new President, who had staffed the White House and Treasury with Wall Streeters and corporate lobbyists, and filled boards and commissions with corporate executives).
Meanwhile, most Americans continued to lose ground.
Even before the recession of 2018, most families were earning less than they’d earned in 2000, adjusted for inflation. Businesses continued to shift most employees off their payrolls and into “on demand” contracts so workers had no idea what they’d be earning from week to week. And the ranks of the working poor continued to swell.
At the same time, CEO pay packages grew even larger, Wall Street bonus pools got fatter, and a record number of billionaires were becoming multi-billionaires.
Then, of course, came the recession, along with bank losses requiring another round of bailouts. The Treasury Secretary, a former managing director of Morgan Stanley, expressed shock and outrage, explaining the nation had no choice and vowing to “get tough” on the banks once the crisis was over.
Politics abhors a vacuum. In 2019, the People’s Party filled it.
Its platform called for getting big money out of politics, ending “crony capitalism,” abolishing corporate welfare, stopping the revolving door between government and the private sector, and busting up the big Wall Street banks and corporate monopolies.
The People’s Party also pledged to revoke the Trans Pacific Partnership, hike taxes on the rich to pay for a wage subsidy (a vastly expanded Earned Income Tax Credit) for everyone earning below the median, and raise taxes on corporations that outsource jobs abroad or pay their executives more than 100 times the pay of typical Americans.
Americans rallied to the cause. Millions who called themselves conservatives and Tea Partiers joined with millions who called themselves liberals and progressives against a political establishment that had shown itself incapable of hearing what they had been demanding for years.
The rest, as they say, is history.
http://robertreich.org/
Rigged race means Hillary takes more delegates in Bernie’s Wyoming win
April 9, 2016 | 4:44pm | Updated
Rigged race means Hillary takes more delegates in Bernie’s Wyoming win
Bernie Sanders won again Saturday — and still lost.
The Vermont senator took Wyoming by an impressive 12 percentage-point margin in statewide caucuses, beating Clinton 56-44 percent. But under the Democratic party’s oddball delegate system, Sanders’ winning streak — he has won seven out of the past eight contests — counts for little.
In fact, despite his win, he splits the Wyoming’s 14 pledged delegates 7 to 7 under the caucus calculus.
Clinton, meanwhile, also gets the state’s four superdelegates — who already pledged their allegiance to her in January. So despite “losing,” she triumphs 11-7 in the delegate tally.
Of the 500 superdelegates who have announced whom they’re supporting, 469 say they’re for Clinton.
That makes Sanders’ win in the Cowboy State and in caucuses and primaries across the country little more than a morale boost — and maybe a cruel joke to his ardent young supporters.
Meanwhile, both candidates turned their attentions to New York’s April 19 primary, and its trove of 291 delegates.
In city appearances, Clinton shied away from a slice of Junior’s cheesecake and Brooklyn-born Sanders touted his borough bona fides.
“I hope that New York state will help lead this country into the political revolution,” the Vermont senator told a cheering crowd of 700 mostly Hispanic and black voters at the United Palace of Cultural Arts in Washington Heights.
The crowd booed when Sanders said that New York is “Secretary Clinton’s adopted home state.”
“That’s not a crime,” Sanders joked in response.
“So if we can win here, it opens the door to victory to the White House,” he said, saying that a high voter turnout on April 19, when New York’s 291 delegates will be allocated, could vault him past the front-runner. Current polling averages have Clinton in the lead in New York by 13 points.
........snip..........
http://nypost.com/2016/04/09/bernie-sanders-wins-democratic-caucuses-in-wyoming/
It IS rigged, like our economy, like our financial industry, like our foreign policy, like our privatizing public services, like our monopolized industries killing entrepreneurship, like our unfair "free trade" deals, like our media. (Thus the crappy link.)
Its a "cruel joke" to more of US than just the young supporters.
This is HILARIOUS - Pundits are just STUMPED SILLY that some things are more imp
than politics.
I WISH I could embed this video. If someone can, please do!
Jeff Weaver on Bernie Sanders’ Vatican Trip: Some Things Are More Important Than Politics
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/videos/2016-04-08/jeff-weaver-bernie-sanders-won-t-cancel-vatican-trip
Jeff Weaver just tells it like it is, "Some things are more important than politics." Their jaded view of the world just can't believe it.
"This is inexplicable to me"
While they absolutely positively cannot understand how Bernie could leave for a couple of days before the NY Primary, Bernie manages to schedule THREE rallies on ONE day in NY.
That day is TODAY!
Bernie Sanders Plans Rallies In Manhattan, Bronx And Queens For Saturday, 4/9
http://gothamist.com/2016/04/08/bernie_sanders_plans_rallies_in_man.php
He's just amazing.
I hope he gets to meet the Pope. It would be so incredible for him.
Bernie Sanders Nearly Catches Up With Hillary In California
Less than a year ago, Clinton led Sanders in the Field Poll 66 percent to nine percent.
Three months ago, Sanders had whittled her lead down to 11 points.
Now Clinton leads 47 percent to 41 percent, a margin of just six points.
“Hillary Clinton is ahead, but not by much,” Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo told KCBS.
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/04/08/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-democratic-primary-field-poll/
By early June, I'm guessing even more people will be Feeling the Bern in Sunny CA!!
http://feelthebern.org/
Sanders and his supporters understand something critical...
Excerpt from~
The Problem With Hillary Clinton Isn’t Just Her Corporate Cash. It’s Her Corporate Worldview.
The Nation
By Naomi KleinTwitterYESTERDAY 4:47 PM
....Very Large Snip....
Hillary Clinton and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2014. (Reuters / Shannon Stapleton)
......To understand this worldview, one need look no further than the foundation at which Hillary Clinton works and which bears her family name. The mission of the Clinton Foundation can be distilled as follows: There is so much private wealth sloshing around our planet (thanks in very large part to the deregulation and privatization frenzy that Bill Clinton unleashed on the world while president), that every single problem on earth, no matter how large, can be solved by convincing the ultra-rich to do the right things with their loose change. Naturally, the people to convince them to do these fine things are the Clintons, the ultimate relationship brokers and dealmakers, with the help of an entourage of A-list celebrities.
.......Another Very Large Snip......
Sanders and his supporters understand something critical: It won’t all be win-win. For any of this to happen, fossil-fuel companies, which have made obscene profits for many decades, will have to start losing. And losing more than just the tax breaks and subsidies that Clinton is promising to cut. They will also have to lose the new drilling and mining leases they want; they’ll have to be denied permits for the pipelines and export terminals they very much want to build. They will have to leave trillions of dollars’ worth of proven fossil-fuel reserves in the ground.
Meanwhile, if solar panels proliferate on rooftops, big power utilities will lose a significant portion of their profits, since their former customers will be in the energy-generation business. This would create opportunities for a more level economy and, ultimately, for lower utility bills—but once again, some powerful interests will have to lose (which is why Warren Buffett’s coal-fired utility in Nevada has gone to war against solar).
A president willing to inflict these losses on fossil-fuel companies and their allies needs to be more than just not actively corrupt. That president needs to be up for the fight of the century—and absolutely clear about which side must win. Looking at the Democratic primary, there can be no doubt about who is best suited to rise to this historic moment.
The good news? He just won Wisconsin. And he isn’t following anyone’s guidelines for good behavior.
Please read in full here~
http://www.thenation.com/article/the-problem-with-hillary-clinton-isnt-just-her-corporate-cash-its-her-corporate-worldview/
Top Hillary Clinton Campaign Fundraiser Lobbies for Offshore Drilling in Israel
April 7, 2016
Top Hillary Clinton Campaign Fundraiser Lobbies for Offshore Drilling in Israel
Jackson Dunn, a lobbyist employed by FTI Consulting subsidiary FTI Government Affairs and a top-level campaign finance bundler for Hillary Clinton's presidential run, lobbied throughout 2014 and 2015 for offshore drilling off the coast of Israel on behalf of Noble Energy.
The finding by DeSmog comes days after an irritated Clinton told an activist for Greenpeace USA, that she was “so sick of the Sanders campaign lying about me” with regards to her coziness to lobbyists and fossil fuel campaign cash.
Dunn, according to his FTI biography, formerly worked for the Bill Clinton White House as the point man for the “business community’s support of President Clinton’s economic and trade agenda.”
The lobbying disclosure forms confirm that Dunn lobbied the White House and State Department on developments in the Eastern Mediterranean, which is where Noble's top energy assets offshore in Israel sit.
Noble recently faced a major setback in Israel with the Supreme Court ruling that the contractual agreement the company landed with the Israeli government was illegal and akin to a monopoly. The court gave the company and Israel up to a year to negotiate a new deal.
http://littlesis.org/maps/1238-fti-consulting-and-hillary-clinton/embedded
....snip...
Read in full~
http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/04/07/hillary-clinton-campaign-fundraiser-offshore-drilling-israel
Also~
Clinton’s top bundler by far was Jackson Dunn of FTI Consulting, who raised $231,544. Dunn lobbies on behalf of Dow Chemical, MasterCard, Noble Energy and PepsiCo, according to lobbying records.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2015/07/16/lobbyists-bundle-2-million-for-hillary-clinton/
And her recent statement about China...more bs...
FTI’s man in Washington, Jackson Dunn, served as an aide to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as to former Sen. John Kerry, who succeeded Hillary at State. Teneo’s “intelligence CEO” is James Shinn, a former Pentagon official focused on China.
http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/hillary-huma-abedin-teneo-conflicts-of-interest/
But then, Mr Dunn loves China, like his buddy Bill~
http://www.fticonsulting.com/our-people/jackson-dunn
Scared Of President Trump? Then You Should Really Feel The Bern
Scared Of President Trump? Then You Should Really Feel The Bern
...snip....
........Candidate favourability ratings are also indicative. On average Clinton has a net favourability rating of -14. Unless the general election suddenly deploys golf scoring, this seems like bad news for Clinton 2016. Sanders’s score is +6.
.... The piece discusses the main reasons why Clinton is the worst possible opponent to Trump, and why Sanders would fare so much better. The key point is while Trump struggles on policy, he specializes in personal attack politics. Clinton’s background is Trump’s wet dream:
“She gives him an endless amount to work with. The emails, Benghazi, Whitewater, Iraq, the Lewinsky scandal, Chinagate, Travelgate, the missing law firm records, Jeffrey Epstein, Kissinger, Marc Rich, Haiti, Clinton Foundation tax errors, Clinton Foundation conflicts of interest, “We were broke when we left the White House,” Goldman Sachs…
There is enough material in Hillary Clinton’s background for Donald Trump to run with six times over.”
In contrast, by all accounts Sanders is the cleanest politician in American politics.
Trump would have little dirt to work with and be forced into humiliating policy debates with Sanders, who will play “world’s greatest statesman” to Trump’s “world’s greatest prank”.
Add to this the fact we are living in increasingly anti-establishment times and Trump, bewilderingly for a man with immense inherited wealth, plays this card very well. His populist attacks against Clinton as the establishment candidate would hurt her, but do nothing against our man Bernie.
I should also mention the FBI criminal investigation into the mishandling of classified materials on Clinton’s private email server, which could derail her campaign at any moment. ...
....snip....Setting aside this pretty realistic nightmare scenario, the mainstream media and your Clintonite friends will quote electability and pragmatism at you ad nauseam, mainly because the moral case for Bernie over Hillary is undeniable. Clearly even on the pragmatic front they are clutching at establishment straws.
...snip...
With Democratic control of both houses, Bernie would actually get loads done. As a tease, please enjoy this list of Sanders’ progressive policies that could well become reality. They range from tackling income inequality, to free college education, universal healthcare, attacking political corruption, seeking racial justice, empowering First Nations peoples, pivoting away from militarism to diplomacy and seriously addressing climate change.
You may hope for greater equality on a peaceful, liveable planet.
You may just fear seeing the White House renamed Trump Tower 8.
Either way the pragmatic course of action is to Feel the God Damn Bern.
https://newmatilda.com/2016/04/07/scared-of-president-trump-then-you-should-really-feel-the-bern/
Thom agrees & makes some good points about the exchange.
If you actually read it and not the spin from the HRC camp, its clear how sane & decent Bernie is & what a GREAT president he'd be for US.
Written transcript
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