General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHillary Clinton is the Kevin Bacon of Wall Street.
She is an author of the antidemocratic TPP, a cozy war profiteering buddy of Kissinger, and the Kevin Bacon of Wall Street, with close connections to virtually every corporate predator in the .1 percent.
Creepy interactive graphic of Hillary Clinton's connections
to the Forbes top 400
http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinehoward/2013/10/30/one-degree-of-hillary-how-clinton-is-connected-to-the-worlds-most-powerful/
(Load the link twice if necessary.)
This nation cannot endure four more years of predatory corporatism and warmongering.
merrily
(45,251 posts)Some people seem more than okay with this. I have no idea why, though.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Thank you for the important correction.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Ask Bill and Phil about Buy-Partisanship. They both now specialize in all kinds of Wealth Management, like.
http://financialservicesinc.ubs.com/revitalizingamerica/SenatorPhilGramm.html
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)Slick Willie, Dubya, Carville, Gramm
Octafish
(55,745 posts)We should ask them, and their cronies, to put it back.
Divernan
(15,480 posts)I'm lookin' at you Slick Willie. One of my kids worked for the DNC and then on Clinton's first inaugural committee, so I got to attend the inauguration weekend activities in the VIP section. Prime seats for the parade surrounded by southern California big donors; stood next to Faye Dunaway at the fantastic outdoor concert at the Lincoln Memorial. "Aretha Franklin stands with Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and Diana Ross in front of the Lincoln Memorial during a pre-inauguration event for Bill Clinton in Washington, D.C., on January 17th, 1993."
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/pictures/aretha-franklin-through-the-years-20120323/clinton-inauguration-1993-0707356
Sat next to actor Rob Lowe (Dr. Joel Fleischman/Northern Exposure) at a party and shared a taxi with Tennessee Democratic Congressman Tanner & his wife.
Everyone was so excited and jubilant - but over the years, Bill threw it all away - in his personal life and in his pro-corporate policies.
project_bluebook
(411 posts)Even though politically things didn't turn out like we would have wished and rarely ever does. Standing next to Faye Dunaway would have been the highlight of the activities for me. The only actor I ever got that close to was Cary Grant back in 77, I drove him from the airport to our shareholders meeting.
Divernan
(15,480 posts)Actually, I brought my 70 year old, lifelong-Dem Mom down from Baltimore to watch the inaugural parade & it was a highlight of her life. We were both really excited.
merrily
(45,251 posts)Morrow (older here than he was on Northern Exposure)
Lowe
Photos above are from wikipedia commons.
Divernan
(15,480 posts)VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)sort of calls into question your little "anecdote"
Joel Fleischman (Rob Morrow) is the central character, a young, somewhat uptight, Jewish doctor from Manhattan (New York City) who is contractually bound to practice in the remote Alaskan town of Cicely for four years to repay a student loan from the government. The comedy centres originally on the clash between Fleischman's neurotic, almost Woody Allen-like, urban mindset and the easy-going, community-minded people around him. Morrow left the series in the middle of the sixth (and final) season.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)When do we stop calling them representatives and call them what they really are?
Legalized, brazen corruption. The moral sewer of corporate government.
zentrum
(9,865 posts)Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)snappyturtle
(14,656 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)The difference between traditional Democrats and New Democrats was never in more stark relief.
Traditional Democrat FDR passed Glass Steagall as part of recovery from an economic crash.
New Democrat Clinton passed repeal of Glass Steagall, paving the way for an economic crash.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)In the best rip-off, the mark never knows that he or she was set up for fleecing.
In the case of the great financial meltdown of 2008, the victim is the U.S. taxpayer.
Going by the lack of analysis in Corporate McPravda, We the People are in for a royal fleecing.
Dont just take my word about the current situation between giant criminality and the politically connected.
[font color="green"][font size="5"]You see, there is evidence of conspiracy. An honest FBI agent warned us in 2004 about the coming financial meltdown and the powers-that-be stiffed him, too.[/font size][/font color]
The storys below. And its not fiction. It is true to life.
The Set-Up
You dont have to be a fan of Paul Newman or Robert Redford to smell a BFEE rat. The oily critters name is Gramm. Phil Gramm. He helped Ronald Reagan push through his trickle-down fiscal policy and later helped de-regulate the nation's once-healthy Saving & Loan industry. We all know how well that worked out: Know your BFEE: They Looted Your Nations S&Ls for Power and Profit.
In 1999, then-super conservative Texas U.S. Senator Gramm helped pass the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act. This law allowed banks to act like investment houses. Using federally-guaranteed savings accounts, banks now could make risky commercial and real-estate loans.
The law shouldve been called the Gramm-Lansky Act. To those who gave a damn, it was obviously a potential disaster. During the bills debate, the specter of a taxpayer bail-out was raised by Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, warning about what had happened to the deregulated S&Ls.
Gramm wasnt alone on the deregulation bandwagon. The law passed, IIRC, like 89-9. More than a few of my own Democratic faves went along with this deregulation, get-government-off-the-back-of-business law.
Today we have their love child, MOABfor the Mother Of All Bailouts.
The Mark
In a sting, someone has to supply the money to be ripped off. Crooks call that person the mark or target or mope. In the present case, thats the U.S. taxpayer.
Todays financial crisis seems like a re-run of what happened to the Savings & Loans industry in the late 1980s. Well it is a lot like what happened to the S&Ls. Then, as now, its the U.S. taxpayer who gets to pick up the tab for someone elses party.
Dont worry, U.S. taxpayer. Youre getting something (among several things) for your $700 billion. Youre getting all the bad mortgage-based paper on almost all of Wall Street. Id rather have penny stocks, because if there ever was something of negative value its the complicated notes and derivatives based on this mortgage debt.
When it comes to Bush economic policy, left holding the bag are We the People, er, Mopes. Dont worry, it cant get worse. As St. Ronnie would say, Well. Yes. You see, what the bag U.S. taxpayers hold is less than empty. Its filled with bad debt.
The Mastermind
Chief economist amongst these merry band of thieves and traitors was one Phil Gramm (once a conservative Democrat and then an ultraconservative Republican-Taxus). An economist by training and reputation, Gramm was one of the guiding lights of Reaganomics, the cut taxes, domestic spending, and regulations while raising defense-spending to new heights. In sum, it was a fiscal policy to enrich friends especially the kind connected to the BFEE.
Foreclosure Phil
Years before Phil Gramm was a McCain campaign adviser and a lobbyist for a Swiss bank at the center of the housing credit crisis, he pulled a sly maneuver in the Senate that helped create today's subprime meltdown.
David Corn
MotherJones.com
May 28, 2008
Who's to blame for the biggest financial catastrophe of our time? There are plenty of culprits, but one candidate for lead perp is former Sen. Phil Gramm. Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown. Yet has Gramm been banished from the corridors of power? Reviled as the villain who bankrupted Middle America? Hardly. Now a well-paid executive at a Swiss bank, Gramm cochairs Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign and advises the Republican candidate on economic matters. He's been mentioned as a possible Treasury secretary should McCain win. That's right: A guy who helped screw up the global financial system could end up in charge of US economic policy. Talk about a market failure.
Gramm's long been a handmaiden to Big Finance. In the 1990s, as chairman of the Senate banking committee, he routinely turned down Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Arthur Levitt's requests for more money to police Wall Street; during this period, the sec's workload shot up 80 percent, but its staff grew only 20 percent. Gramm also opposed an sec rule that would have prohibited accounting firms from getting too close to the companies they auditedat one point, according to Levitt's memoir, he warned the sec chairman that if the commission adopted the rule, its funding would be cut. And in 1999, Gramm pushed through a historic banking deregulation bill that decimated Depression-era firewalls between commercial banks, investment banks, insurance companies, and securities firmssetting off a wave of merger mania.
But Gramm's most cunning coup on behalf of his friends in the financial services industryfriends who gave him millions over his 24-year congressional careercame on December 15, 2000. It was an especially tense time in Washington. Only two days earlier, the Supreme Court had issued its decision on Bush v. Gore. President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress were locked in a budget showdown. It was the perfect moment for a wily senator to game the system. As Congress and the White House were hurriedly hammering out a $384-billion omnibus spending bill, Gramm slipped in a 262-page measure called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Written with the help of financial industry lobbyists and cosponsored by Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the agriculture committee, the measure had been considered deadeven by Gramm. Few lawmakers had either the opportunity or inclination to read the version of the bill Gramm inserted. "Nobody in either chamber had any knowledge of what was going on or what was in it," says a congressional aide familiar with the bill's history.
It's not exactly like Gramm hid his handiworkfar from it. The balding and bespectacled Texan strode onto the Senate floor to hail the act's inclusion into the must-pass budget package. But only an expert, or a lobbyist, could have followed what Gramm was saying. The act, he declared, would ensure that neither the sec nor the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (cftc) got into the business of regulating newfangled financial products called swapsand would thus "protect financial institutions from overregulation" and "position our financial services industries to be world leaders into the new century."
Subprime 1-2-3
Don't understand credit default swaps? Don't worryneither does Congress. Herewith, a step-by-step outline of the subprime risk betting game. Casey Miner
CONTINUED
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/07/foreclo...
A fine mind for modern Bushonomics. Kill the middle class. Then, rob from the poor to give to the rich.
The Mentor
Anyone whos ever heard him talk knows that Gramm mustve learned all this stuff from somebody. He could never think it all up on his own. He had to have help. Thats where Meyer Lansky, the man who brought modern finance to the Mafia, comes in.
Money Laundering
Answers.com
EXCERPT...
History
Modern development
The act of "money laundering" was not invented during the Prohibition era in the United States, but many techniques were developed and refined then. Many methods were devised to disguise the origins of money generated by the sale of then-illegal alcoholic beverages. Following Al Capone's 1931 conviction for tax evasion, mobster Meyer Lansky transferred funds from Florida "carpet joints" (small casinos) to accounts overseas. After the 1934 Swiss Banking Act, which created the principle of bank secrecy, Meyer Lansky bought a Swiss bank to which he would transfer his illegal funds through a complex system of shell companies, holding companies, and offshore accounts.(1)
The term "money laundering" does not derive, as is often said, from Al Capone having used laundromats to hide ill-gotten gains. It was Meyer Lansky who perfected money laundering's older brother, "capital flight," transferring his funds to Switzerland and other offshore places. The first reference to the term "money laundering" itself actually appears during the Watergate scandal. US President Richard Nixon's "Committee to Re-elect the President" moved illegal campaign contributions to Mexico, then brought the money back through a company in Miami. It was Britain's Guardian newspaper that coined the term, referring to the process as "laundering." 3)
Process
Money laundering is often described as occurring in three stages: placement, layering, and integration.(3)
Placement: refers to the initial point of entry for funds derived from criminal activities.
Layering: refers to the creation of complex networks of transactions which attempt to obscure the link between the initial entry point, and the end of the laundering cycle.
Integration: refers to the return of funds to the legitimate economy for later extraction.
However, The Anti Money Laundering Network recommends the terms
Hide: to reflect the fact that cash is often introduced to the economy via commercial concerns which may knowingly or not knowingly be part of the laundering scheme, and it is these which ultimately prove to be the interface between the criminal and the financial sector
Move: clearly explains that the money launderer uses transfers, sales and purchase of assets, and changes the shape and size of the lump of money so as to obfuscate the trail between money and crime or money and criminal.
Invest: the criminal spends the money: he/she may invest it in assets, or in his/her lifestyle.
CONTINUED...
http://www.answers.com/topic/money-laundering
The great journalist Lucy Komisar has shone a big light on the subject:
Offshore Banking
The U.S.A.s Secret Threat
Lucy Komisar
The Blacklisted Journalist
June 1, 2003
EXCERPT
In 1932, mobster Meyer Lansky took money from New Orleans slot machines and shifted it to accounts overseas. The Swiss secrecy law two years later assured him of G-man-proof banking. Later, he bought a Swiss bank and for years deposited his Havana casino take in Miami accounts, then wired the funds to Switzerland via a network of shell and holding companies and offshore accounts, some of them in banks whose officials knew very well they were working for criminals. By the 1950s, Lansky was using the system for cash from the heroin trade.
Today, offshore is where most of the world's drug money is laundered, estimated at up to $500 billion a year, more than the total income of the world's poorest 20 percent. Add the proceeds of tax evasion and the figure skyrockets to $1 trillion. Another few hundred billion come from fraud and corruption.
Lansky laundered money so he could pay taxes and legitimate his spoils. About half the users of offshore have opposite goals. As hotel owner and tax cheat Leona Helmsley said---according to her former housekeeper during Helmsley's trial for tax evasion---"Only the little people pay taxes." Rich individuals and corporations avoid taxes through complex, accountant-aided schemes that routinely use offshore accounts and companies to hide income and manufacture deductions.
The impact is massive. The IRS estimates that taxpayers fail to pay in excess of $100 billion in taxes annually due on income from legal sources. The General Accounting Office says that American wage-earners report 97 percent of their wages, while self-employed persons report just 11 percent of theirs. Each year between 1989 and 1995, a majority of corporations, both foreign- and U.S.-controlled, paid no U.S. income tax. European governments are fighting the same problem. The situation is even worse in developing countries.
The issue surfaces in the press when an accounting scam is so outrageous that it strains credulity. Take the case of Stanley Works, which announced a "move" of its headquarters-on paper-from New Britain, Connecticut, to Bermuda and of its imaginary management to Barbados. Though its building and staff would actually stay put, manufacturing hammers and wrenches, Stanley Works would no longer pay taxes on profits from international trade. The Securities and Exchange Commission, run by Harvey Pitt---an attorney who for more than twenty years represented the top accounting and Wall Street firms he was regulating---accepted the pretense as legal.
"The whole business is a sham," fumed New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who more than any other U.S. law enforcer has attacked the offshore system. "The headquarters will be in a country where that company is not permitted to do business. They're saying a company is managed in Barbados when there's one meeting there a year. In the prospectus, they say legally controlled and managed in Barbados. If they took out the word legally, it would be a fraud. But Barbadian law says it's legal, so it's legal." The conceit apparently also persuaded the Securities and Exchange Commission.
CONTINUED
http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj/column92e.html
Socialize the risk for Wall Street. Privatize the loss to Uncle Sams nieces and nephews. Congratulations, Dear Reader! Now you know as much as Phil Gramm.
The Diversion
Still, a global financial meltdown sounds like something bad. Making things worse, were hearing that Uncle Sam is broke! Flat busted. Tapped out.
Thats odd, though. We the People see the Treasury being emptied with tax breaks for the wealthy and checks to the companies they own that make money off of war. Want to know how to make a buck these days? Invest in the likes of Halliburton and Northrup Grumman. Anything in the warmongering business connected to Bush and his cronies will weather the downturn or depression.
The Wall Street Journal -- a paper owned and operated by Fox News head, Rupert Murdoch was very quick to promote the crisis, as DUer JustPlainKathy observed. The paper was even faster to pounce on a solution: Whats needed is a safety net for banks. And quick as a wink, they found the answer!
Only the U.S. taxpayer has the wherewithal to prevent the collapse of the global financial system -- a global economic meltdown that would freeze up credit and investment and expansion and prosperity and a return to the Great Depression. Who can be against that?
Oh. Kay. Sounds about right Rupert the Alien agreeing with what Leona Helmsley said: Only the little people pay taxes.
Gramm and McCain also are in favor of privatization. How nice is that?
The Getaway
George Walker Bush and his right-wing pals feel they can get away with this, their latest rip-off the American taxpayers. Who can blame them? When compared to their clear record of incompetence, lies, fraud, theft, mass-murder, warmongering and treason, whats a few trillion dollar rip-off?
Still, it's weird how they act.
They must really think theyll be welcomed with open arms in Paraguay and Dubai and Switzerland.
Going by the welcome the world gave the Shah of Iran, theyre in for a big surprise.
The FBI Guy
Dont say we werent warned. An intrepid FBI agent with something sorely lacking in the rest of the Bush administration, integrity, blew the whistle on the bank thing
FBI saw threat of mortgage crisis
A top official warned of widening loan fraud in 2004, but the agency focused its resources elsewhere.
By Richard B. Schmitt
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 25, 2008
WASHINGTON Long before the mortgage crisis began rocking Main Street and Wall Street, a top FBI official made a chilling, if little-noticed, prediction: The booming mortgage business, fueled by low interest rates and soaring home values, was starting to attract shady operators and billions in losses were possible.
"It has the potential to be an epidemic," Chris Swecker, the FBI official in charge of criminal investigations, told reporters in September 2004. But, he added reassuringly, the FBI was on the case. "We think we can prevent a problem that could have as much impact as the S&L crisis," he said.
Today, the damage from the global mortgage meltdown has more than matched that of the savings-and-loan bailouts of the 1980s and early 1990s. By some estimates, it has made that costly debacle look like chump change. But it's also clear that the FBI failed to avert a problem it had accurately forecast.
Banks and brokerages have written down more than $300 billion of mortgage-backed securities and other risky investments in the last year or so as homeowner defaults leaped and weakness in the real estate market spread.
SNIP
Most observers have declared the mess a gross failure of regulation. To be sure, in the run-up to the crisis, market-oriented federal regulators bragged about their hands-off treatment of banks and other savings institutions and their executives. But it wasn't just regulators who were looking the other way. The FBI and its parent agency, the Justice Department, are supposed to act as the cops on the beat for potentially illegal activities by bankers and others. But they were focused on national security and other priorities, and paid scant attention to white-collar crimes that may have contributed to the lending and securities debacle.
Now that the problems are out in the open, the government's response strikes some veteran regulators as too little, too late.
Swecker, who retired from the FBI in 2006, declined to comment for this article.
But sources familiar with the FBI budget process, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the growing fraud problem, say that he and other FBI criminal investigators sought additional assistance to take on the mortgage scoundrels.
They ended up with fewer resources, rather than more.
CONTINUED
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mortgagefraud25-2008aug25,0,6946937.story
We were warned and nothing happened.
Repeat: And nothing happened.
They must think We the People are really stupid. Are we supposed to believe that all that $700 billion in bad debt just happened? Where did all that money go? Who got all the money?
Meyer Lansky moved the Mafias money from the Cuban casinos to Switzerland. He did so by buying a bank in Miami. Phil Gramm seems to have done the same thing as vice-chairman of UBS, except the amounts are in the billions.
Who cares? Hes almost gone? Nope. That money still exists somewhere. I have a pretty good idea of where it might be. And George Bush and his cronies are poised to get away with a whole lot of loot.
Who Should Pay for the Bailout
If you are fortunate enough to be one, good luck American taxpayer! Youre in for a royal fleecing. Once the interest is figured into the bailout, were looking at a couple of trill.
[font color="purple"]The people who should pay for the bailout arent the American people. That distinction should go to the crooks who stole it -- friends of Gramm like John McCain and George Bush and the rest of the Raygunomix crowd of snake-oil salesmen. For them, the Bush administration -- and a good chunk of time since Ronald Reagan -- has not been a disaster. Its been a cash cow.[/font color]
The above was posted on DU on Sept. 21, 2008. (Check out the responses, lots of info from DUers.) What's changed since then? Nothing near what I'd hoped for, certainly: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4055207
merrily
(45,251 posts)Contrary to DU memes, a sitting Dem President, in effect, whipping Dem votes does indeed influence Dem votes in the House and Senate.
People who attempt to let Bubba off the hook because the bill allegedly had a veto proof majority have it backwards. The reason the bill had a veto proof majority in the first place was that Bubba put his weight behind it.
As has become SOP for him, he, of course, blames bad advice. The smartest man I've ever heard speak apparently had no mind of his own. Just a helpless pawn in the hands of people he chose.
Divernan
(15,480 posts)The brilliant, charming, powerful philanderer and his enabling wife - how many decades can you blame the women?
We're supposed to believe they were sexual predators and their victim was the most powerful man in his state/governor or the most powerful man in the country/president.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_misconduct_allegations_against_Bill_Clinton#cite_note-comgrawc-18
Paula Jones - an Arkansas state employee
Gennifer Flowers - a porn actress
Monica Lewinsky - a White House intern
Kathleen Willey - a White House volunteer aide
Juanita Broaddrick - an Arkansas nursing home administrator
Elizabeth Ward Gracen - struggling Arkansas actress & former Miss America
http://web.archive.org/web/20080614143559/http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/04/25/clinton.gracen/
So who had the power in those relationships? If the Clintons decided to have an open marriage, that's their choice - but no way was the governor of a state or the president of a country a helpless pawn.
merrily
(45,251 posts)He was attempting to Slick Willy us. In the Paula Jones case, both sides had agreed to a definition of the term "sexual relations" that (inexplicably, from Jones's POV) did not include blow jobs. The agreed upon definition, of course, had no application outside the case. However, I think Slick was building into his denial an "out" for himself, if he got caught.
Not a big point, but I don't know if Genifer when, according to her, the affair between her and Bubba began. In 1992, when he was running for POTUS, she said it had been a 12 year affair. So, that puts the start at 1980 or earlier. He said it was a one time thing in 1977. Either way, her wiki gives her first screen credit as 1987.
I find any agreement by Hillary to an open marriage hard to reconcile with the events as the Monica Lewinsky thing began surfacing. Hillary, who had some ambitions of her own, even while her husband was POTUS, went on the Today Show and put her own credibility on the line.
Matt Lauer asked her about the buzz, as both Bubba and Hillary had to have known he would. When Lauer did ask her the inevitable question, she claimed to Matt Lauer that Bill had said to her, "You'll never believe what they are saying now." And she followed that up with her now infamous statement about the vast right wing conspiracy that had been after Bill since he took office. Thing is, her statement was true, enough. They had hounded him, hoping to find something. But, because she made the statement in the context of the Lewinsky thing, she became the object of derision.
If Billary had agreed to an open marriage, why would Bubba have allowed her to go on the Today Show without confessing the truth to her first? Why would he have let her sandbag herself?
Later, after the truth did come out, Hillary did not look as though she knew it all along. Right now, the amount of googling that I was willing to do yielded only this photo of the First Family's August 13, 1998 departure from the WH to a Martha's Vineyard vacation.
However, at the time the only photo I saw was the front view of those three (plus the dog), with Hillary looking pretty damned mad.
http://www.trbimg.com/img-517d7a78/turbine/chi-souzab00520090105133045/500/500x281
But, you know what? Being beyond tired of reviewing all of this is just one more reason I don't want DLC/Third Way Hillary to be the Democratic nominee for POTUS in 2016, or ever.
Divernan
(15,480 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)(I'm guessing, God not having confided in me. Though Hillary supposedly sought solace from The Family. But, IMO, God doesn't have much to do with that bizarre cult, either. I'm more than a little wary of a group of politicians believing that the laws of God and man don't apply to them because they are just that special.)
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)So many of your responses need to be OP's.
JEB
(4,748 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)More true today than ever.
F4lconF16
(3,747 posts)I can't seem to get this link to load still, even after clicking on it twice. I think I mentioned it to you once before (not that you could change anything).
Still, even without the interactivity, you can recognize a whole lot of powerful faces on there. Powerful, hawkish, predatory faces.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)You click on the top right of the page that initially loads to get to the graphic.
It's dark gray?
F4lconF16
(3,747 posts)I can see the infographic, but it's not interactive. I've clicked on it, clicked on the text underneath that says "INTERACTIVE: Click Here To See All Of Hillary's Connection", clicked on other parts of the page, switched browsers, turned off add-ons, tried it on different computers, and still nothing
Edit: Yeah, and the graphic is loading as a simple image file.
WillyT
(72,631 posts)hifiguy
(33,688 posts)No more Turd Way corporatist bullshit. Period.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)TheKentuckian
(25,029 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Thanks a bunch.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Deeply.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)Chelsea Clinton's Husband Suffers Massive Hedge Fund Loss On Greek Investment
Despite having Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein as an investor and being Bill and Hillary Clinton's son-in-law, Marc Mezvinsky (and two former colleagues from Goldman Sachs who manage Eaglevale Partners hedge fund) told investors in a letter sent last week they had been "incorrect" on Greece, helping produce losses for the firms main fund during two of the past three years. By 'incorrect' Chelsea Clinton's husband means the Eaglevale fund focused on Greece lost a stunning 48% last year and, as The Wall Street Journal reports, is impacting the overall returns of the roughly $400 million fund which has spent 27 of its 34 months in operation below its "high-water mark."
http://www.wsj.com/articles/hedge-fund-co-founded-by-chelsea-clintons-husband-suffers-losses-tied-to-greece-1423000325
Scuba
(53,475 posts)Katashi_itto
(10,175 posts)pampango
(24,692 posts)Rated 100% by NARAL, indicating a pro-choice voting record. (Dec 2003)
Rated 0% by the NRLC, indicating a pro-choice stance. (Dec 2006)
Rated 60% by the ACLU, indicating a mixed civil rights voting record. (Dec 2002)
Rated 89% by the HRC, indicating a pro-gay-rights stance. (Dec 2006)
Rated 96% by the NAACP, indicating a pro-affirmative-action stance. (Dec 2006)
Rated 35% by the US COC, indicating a mixed business voting record. (Dec 2003)
Rated 82% by the NEA, indicating pro-public education votes. (Dec 2003)
Rated 89% by the LCV, indicating pro-environment votes. (Dec 2003)
Rated 100% by the CAF, indicating support for energy independence. (Dec 2006)
Rated 0% by the Christian Coalition: an anti-family voting record. (Dec 2003)
Rated 17% by CATO, indicating a pro-fair trade voting record. (Dec 2002)
Rated 100% by APHA, indicating a pro-public health record. (Dec 2003)
Rated 100% by SANE, indicating a pro-peace voting record. (Dec 2003)
Rated 8% by USBC, indicating an open-border stance. (Dec 2006)
Rated 85% by the AFL-CIO, indicating a pro-union voting record. (Dec 2003)
Rated 100% by the ARA, indicating a pro-senior voting record. (Dec 2003)
Rated 21% by NTU, indicating a "Big Spender" on tax votes. (Dec 2003)
Rated 80% by the CTJ, indicating support of progressive taxation. (Dec 2006)
Voted NO on implementing CAFTA for Central America free-trade. (Jul 2005)
Voted NO on extending free trade to Andean nations. (May 2002)
http://www.ontheissues.org/senate/hillary_clinton.htm
Scuba
(53,475 posts)pampango
(24,692 posts)Rated 17% by CATO, indicating a pro-fair trade voting record. (Dec 2002)
Rated 100% by SANE, indicating a pro-peace voting record. (Dec 2003)
Rated 85% by the AFL-CIO, indicating a pro-union voting record. (Dec 2003)
Rated 100% by the ARA, indicating a pro-senior voting record. (Dec 2003)
Rated 21% by NTU, indicating a "Big Spender" on tax votes. (Dec 2003)
Rated 80% by the CTJ, indicating support of progressive taxation. (Dec 2006)
Voted NO on implementing CAFTA for Central America free-trade. (Jul 2005)
Voted NO on extending free trade to Andean nations. (May 2002)
Scuba
(53,475 posts)pampango
(24,692 posts)Scuba
(53,475 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)for it.
merrily
(45,251 posts)No one is claiming she is a GOP conservative, ffs.
pampango
(24,692 posts)Rated 35% by the US COC, indicating a mixed business voting record. (Dec 2003)
Rated 82% by the NEA, indicating pro-public education votes. (Dec 2003)
Rated 89% by the LCV, indicating pro-environment votes. (Dec 2003)
Rated 17% by CATO, indicating a pro-fair trade voting record. (Dec 2002)
Rated 100% by APHA, indicating a pro-public health record. (Dec 2003) )
Rated 85% by the AFL-CIO, indicating a pro-union voting record. (Dec 2003)
Rated 100% by the ARA, indicating a pro-senior voting record. (Dec 2003)
Rated 21% by NTU, indicating a "Big Spender" on tax votes. (Dec 2003)
Rated 80% by the CTJ, indicating support of progressive taxation. (Dec 2006)
Voted NO on implementing CAFTA for Central America free-trade. (Jul 2005)
Voted NO on extending free trade to Andean nations. (May 2002)
I understand that you are not claiming that. I'm not so sure than no one is, however - the infamous 'there is no difference between the parties or between Hillary and whichever republican alternative one wants to compare her to'.
merrily
(45,251 posts)Divernan
(15,480 posts)When there's a vote on an issue which will be very unpopular with a legislator's constituents, he or she can be given a pass by leadership, which painstakingly counts the votes it will need so the bare minimum of legislators have to bite the bullet and vote for a bill which might hurt them in their next election.
Congresspersons with their 2 year terms are equally vulnerable, but Senators, with their six year terms, count on the fact that an unpopular vote one or two years into their terms will be long forgotten by the general public by the time they're up for re-election. Similarly, Senators or Congresspersons who will not be running for re-election can bite lots of bullets when it comes to legislation. And since Citizens United, that last term is when they can collect big time from lobbyists (did you know politicians can keep unused campaign war chests? There are limitations on what those moneys can be spent for, but just tack some de minimis political interest on and they can travel the world.) That's also the time they can exchange votes for promises of post-political-office speaking engagements, book contracts, lucrative board appointments, etc.
merrily
(45,251 posts)And, on top of that, the US Senate is a conservative body to begin with.
Describing anyone's Senate voting record as "liberal" is a misnomer, at best. It's akin to asserting someone is "pretty tall" because he or she was among the tallest residents of Munchkin Land (bearing in mind Judy Garland, even as an adult, was herself petite).
But yes, I agree with your analysis. And, I suspect that sometimes, DC kabuki entails the Republican and Democratic leaders counting votes together before each sorts out how individual members of his caucus will vote. I can't prove it, but I suspected that was the case with, for example, Amash Conyers.
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2013-09-28/html/CREC-2013-09-28-pt1-PgH6008.htm
Romulox
(25,960 posts)when you yourself are a single issue "free trade" advocate.
SamKnause
(13,110 posts)I watched the video.
I think I recognized the right winger who has been trying to take down the Venezuelan government for years.
Why does this not surprise me in the least ?
Could someone please list the people in the interactive link ?
Nuclear Unicorn
(19,497 posts)is deluding themselves (or us). It was Wall St. bribing by proxy.
merrily
(45,251 posts)benz380
(534 posts)joshcryer
(62,276 posts)Fairly specious connections.
http://www.forbes.com/special-report/2013/powerful-people/hillarys-universe.html
BootinUp
(47,179 posts)Go ahead, hide me you woosies!
tritsofme
(17,398 posts)I was#1
On Wed Feb 4, 2015, 06:34 PM an alert was sent on the following post:
woo me with science is the Rand Paul of DU, lol.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6181063
REASON FOR ALERT
This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.
ALERTER'S COMMENTS
Calling a member Rand Paul and then daring for someone to alert/hide the post.
You served on a randomly-selected Jury of DU members which reviewed this post. The review was completed at Wed Feb 4, 2015, 06:47 PM, and the Jury voted 3-4 to LEAVE IT.
Juror #1 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: If you want to post nonsense OPs like this, grow some thicker skin
Juror #2 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Ask for a hide and you are likely to get your wish granted.
Juror #3 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #4 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #5 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Adds nothing to the discussion. Inappropriate name calling.
Juror #6 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #7 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: I don't get it. Calling someone Rand Paul is lame but certainly not hide worthy. Don't care about the rest of it
BootinUp
(47,179 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Also very sad for you that this is what constitutes a thrill in your life (!), but truly honored that you find my posts so important that you are driven to make a project out of them.
For the record, I would have voted to leave the post, too. It's silly in a junior high sort of way, but hardly rises to the level of hiding. It's not as though you cussed me out, although I can understand that the Third Way hoped that the post would be taken that way.
I've always been fascinated by the Third Way's obsession with publicly demonizing Libertarians, a fringe party that has never gotten anywhere near the White House. Then I realized that it was because Libertarians expose those Democrats' betrayal of voters on core issues that they should own but that they have cravenly abandoned because of corporate, monied corruption. Let's be honest: The only reason Libertarians get any political attention at all these days is because they say some of the right things re: reining in warmongering, curbing the drug wars, and stopping the outrageous surveillance and police state. But people still DETEST and rightfully fear their willingness to scrap social programs, privatize the hell out of everything, and gut Social Security.
All Democrats would have to do, both to reinvigorate the party *and* to let go of this bizarre obsession with Libertarians, would be to re-embrace the policies they were *supposed* to stand for all along. Stop the outrageous corporate war on marijuana and marijuana users. Stop pandering to the corporate One Percent with private prisons and draconian drug policies and a fascistic surveillance state. Be the party that not only ends the spying and the warmongering and the outrageous drug wars for profit, but also reins in Wall Street, restores our Constitution, reduces inequality, and STRENGTHENS social safety nets.
In fact, ending the monied corruption that drives the abandonment of those policies is the medicine a good many principled liberals are trying push for the Democratic Party right now - people like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and, yes, a whole bunch of posters at DU like me, that you try to heckle with silly attacks like the one that went to jury.
Those who whine about Libertarians while excusing the corporate sellout of our own party are part of the problem. Third Way Democrats would not have to worry about Libertarians at all if they would crawl out of their corporate Masters' pockets for long enough to own the issues they SHOULD own.
BootinUp
(47,179 posts)say what I think of Libertarians and their ideas.
1. They are void of actual application in a successful government in and advanced country.
2. They are generally more popular with folks with little real world experience (the young crowd or those with little understanding of how things work).
3. I could go on, but I think that's enough.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)but sometimes it's useful. I think this was one of those times. I think it's important for people to understand the reasons behind the Third Way desperation to smear traditional liberal Democrats as "Libertarians."
It's very threatening and embarrassing to the corporate-corrupted faction of the Democratic Party to have anyone loudly calling out and condemning their shameful capitulation to corporate money and corporate interests in important economic, war, and police state policies.
Thus the defensive smear tactic of trying to associate traditional Democratic positions on these issues with Libertarianism in order to discredit them.
It doesn't work....but I am happy you got your "thrill" anyway.
You have a nice day.
BootinUp
(47,179 posts)Lets get something straight. As soon as you can point to one f'ing President in the last 50 years that you would support wholeheartedly today, I will agree to continue this conversation. Otherwise, take a hike jack and take your creations you.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)BootinUp
(47,179 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)I have heard of that reaction to public embarrassment, but I'd never actually seen it before.
Just kidding, of course. The is the sad, vapid end to which the vast majority of Third Way attempts to argue policy devolve.
Thanks for a spectacular attempt at fireworks, with a sad, sputtering end. This was truly one of the best, and I mean that sincerely.
(You can go ahead and put the other on now....I won't try to take the last word, I promise.)
BootinUp
(47,179 posts)TheKentuckian
(25,029 posts)Best I could do is LBJ who barely makes the cut and that Vietnam policy leaves a lot to be desired to say the least.
Hell, far as I'm concerned you can go all the way back and not a one deserves "wholehearted support" some did a lot more good than bad but there is almost always some serious bad that can't be supported wholeheartedly.
Hell, taking away Obama and FDR who would you "wholeheartedly support" in living memory?
BootinUp
(47,179 posts)of the Democratic Presidents of the last 50 years. I think I made my point.
DisgustipatedinCA
(12,530 posts)How did you get it in your head that this could be otherwise?
TheKentuckian
(25,029 posts)I might be in the "support any" group if support means like did you vote for them.
Wholeheartedly says completely and without reservation.
What point is that you think you are making?
BootinUp
(47,179 posts)Your choices would be extremely limited, and if you plan to participate you must make one. I think you are trying to split hairs and I don't find it that interesting really.
TheKentuckian
(25,029 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)are not the same thing at all. But you knew that.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)It was an absurd question, obviously. The poster him or herself can't even answer with a name. The purpose, of course, was diversion.
I don't blame him or her. If I'd behaved that way, I'd be looking for an escape, too.
BootinUp
(47,179 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)since you are working so hard to change the subject now.
1. BootinUp thought it would be just *hilarious* to come onto this thread and, instead of responding to the OP topic of Hillary Clinton's extensive connections with Wall Street, to call me Ron Paul!
2. Get it? That's Third Way codespeak for calling me a dirty Libertarian. In fact, he or she was *so* proud of this idea, and the possibility that a jury could be involved, that it brought a "thrill"!
3. I found that behavior fascinating. Why would an adult act in this way? Well, that was pretty immediately clear to anyone who has spent time here observing the defensive tactics of the corporate posting contingent. But still worth explicating for any newbies who might drop by. Here was my response (condensed):
It's very threatening and embarrassing to the corporate-corrupted faction of the Democratic Party to have anyone loudly calling out and condemning their shameful capitulation to corporate money and the corporate agenda in important economic, war, and police state policies.
Thus the defensive smear tactic of trying to associate traditional Democratic positions on these issues with Libertarianism in order to discredit them.
The easier solution to the problem would be for Democrats to re-embrace the policies they were *supposed* to stand for all along. To commit to representing the people again, rather than Wall Street. Stop pandering to the corporate One Percent with private prisons and draconian drug policies and a fascistic surveillance state. Be the party that not only ends the spying and the warmongering and the outrageous drug wars for profit, but also reins in Wall Street, restores our Constitution, reduces inequality, and STRENGTHENS social safety nets.
Unfortunately, money-corrupted corporate Democrats continue to resist this easy-as-pie solution with all the might of their Wall Street-tethered wallets. Instead, they pour our money into ugly online propaganda campaigns to smear and encourage the smearing of anyone who dares to call out the ugly influence of corporate money on the soul and direction of the party.
Ugly, ugly rhetorical tactics, over and over again, always from the same group. And in combination with the real-life devastation Third Way policies are causing for Americans, I think this ugly approach is starting to backfire. I hope we are building momentum to clean up our government, because we all deserve better than this.
.
.
Now you may carry on, BootinUp. I meant it about being finished this time.
.
BootinUp
(47,179 posts)you are a Democrat. Hence. My original response looks better all the time.
Divernan
(15,480 posts)The distracters do make it easy. Having at it debate-wise with Third Wayers is like shooting fish in a barrel, or re-enacting the Monty Python Black Knight sketch - except the Black Knight puts up a better fight.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)What an unnecessary and illustrative train wreck. What a sad commentary on what our parties have become.
benz380
(534 posts)BootinUp
(47,179 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)The mark of an asshole is not posts like the OP.
Not getting when you've been totally owned and have no face saving course other than sitting down and shutting up might be, though.
Divernan
(15,480 posts)Woo is the Buzz Lightyear of DU when it comes to owning debate opponents.
merrily
(45,251 posts)a certain kind of poster.
When all you start with is your great desire to elect Hillary for your own unstated reasons and you are not shy about wasting bandwidth; you just might get owned easily by a poster like woome.
Not to take anything away from woome, but her opponents usually make it easy to be owned, unless you think personal insults = "winning."
merrily
(45,251 posts)That REALLY discredits the content of the OP.
BootinUp
(47,179 posts)Romulox
(25,960 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)(One puerile post deserves another.)