and wondered why this went under the radar during the
election between Bush and Dukakis.



the Savings and Loan scandal



There are several ways in which the Bush family plays into the Savings and Loan scandal, which involves not only many members of the Bush family but also many other politicians that are still in office and still part of the Bush Jr. administration today. Jeb Bush, George Bush Sr., and his son Neil Bush have all been implicated in the Savings and Loan Scandal, which cost American tax payers over $1.4 TRILLION dollars (note that this is about one quarter of our national debt).

Between 1981 and 1989, when George Bush finally announced that there was a Savings and Loan Crisis to the world, the Reagan/Bush administration worked to cover up Savings and Loan problems by reducing the number and depth of examinations required of S&Ls as well as attacking political opponents who were sounding early alarms about the S&L industry. Industry insiders were aware of significant S&L problems as early 1986 that they felt would require a bailout. This information was kept from the media until after Bush had won the 1988 elections.

Jeb Bush defaulted on a $4.56 million loan from Broward Federal Savings in Sunrise, Florida. After federal regulators closed the S&L, the office building that Jeb used the $4.56 million to finance was reappraised by the regulators at $500,000, which Bush and his partners paid. The taxpayers had to pay back the remaining 4 million plus dollars.

Neil Bush was the most widely targeted member of the Bush family by the press in the S&L scandal. Neil became director of Silverado Savings and Loan at the age of 30 in 1985. Three years later the institution was belly up at a cost of $1.6 billion to tax payers to bail out.

The basic actions of Neil Bush in the S&L scandal are as follows:

Neil received a $100,000 "loan" from Ken Good, of Good International, with no obligation to pay any of the money back.

Good was a large shareholder in JNB Explorations, Neil Bush's oil-exploration company.

Neil failed to disclose this conflict-of-interest when loans were given to Good from Silverado, because the money was to be used in joint venture with his own JNB. This was in essence giving himself a loan from Silverado through a third party.

Neil then helped Silverado S&L approve Good International for a $900,000 line of credit.

Good defaulted on a total $32 million in loans from Silverado.

During this time Neil Bush did not disclose that $3 million of the $32 million that Good was defaulting on was actually for investment in JNB, his own company.

Good subsequently raised Bush's JNB salary from $75,000 to $125,000 and granted him a $22,500 bonus.

Neil Bush maintained that he did not see how this constituted a conflict of interest.

Neil approved $106 million in Silverado loans to another JNB investor, Bill Walters.

Neil also never formally disclosed his relationship with Walters and Walters also defaulted on his loans, all $106 million of them.

Neil Bush was charged with criminal wrongdoing in the case and ended up paying $50,000 to settle out of court. The chief of Silverado S&L was sentenced to 3.5 years in jail for pleading guilty to $8.7 million in theft. (Keep in mind that you can get more jail time for holding up a gas station for $50.)

Today Neil Bush is working on closing a deal in Florida, where his brother Jeb is governor, to sell a software package to schools with his startup company Ignite.

Update 11/28/2003: Some of Neil Bush's business deals have been exposed in his recent divorce case. For more on this see:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/112703A.shtml

http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/01/26/neil_bush/index.html

It should also be noted that shortly after news of Neil Bush’s involvement in the S&L scandal hit the press his father, George Bush Sr., announced the Desert Storm campaign in Iraq, which subsequently had the result of making Neil’s name quickly fade from the headlines. In addition, while Neil Bush's divorce proceeding were exposing more backroom Bush dealings, America was once again bombarded with war propaganda for Operation Iraq Freedom.


http://rationalrevolution.net/war/bush_family_and_the_s.htm

Dukakis Faults G.O.P. for Savings Crisis


In a statement released today, the Democratic nominee said the Reagan Administration had unleashed the savings industry into a deregulated environment without providing adequate supervision to avoid excessive speculation and risk taking. The statement said nearly 1,000 savings institutions are either insolvent or close to insolvency and losing almost $1 billiion a month.

''The Reagan-Bush Administration allowed thrifts to set aside the business of financing affordable homes and plunge head first into risky speculation,'' Mr. Dukakis's statement said. ''And then they relaxed all the oversight designed to protect depositors at savings and loans.''

''It's a crisis that George Bush could have headed off,'' he said. Return to 'Traditional Role'

The Massachusetts Governor added that in a Dukakis administration, ''We will see to it that savings and loans return to their traditional role of financing affordable homes for American families, instead of speculating in unsafe investments.'' But the Bush campaign rejected the Democrat's claims. ''He is trying to very hard to obscure where the blame really lies,'' said Mark Goodin, a Bush campaign spokesman. ''It lies with his own party. For 18 months they dragged their heals.'' He added that when the legislation passed, ''it was at a funding level substantially under what the Administration had recommended and attached a plethora of pet projects and new regulations, making it far more difficult for the Government to deal with the problem.''

Although many savings industry experts had anticipated that the crisis would eventually become part of partisan bickering, some of them had predicted that both sides would be hesitant to raise the issue. Many analysts trace ill-advised policies and legislation to both Republicans and Democrats, and few have come up with solutions other than a politically costly taxpayer bailout.

With 500 savings institutions insolvent and another 400 to 500 institutions close to insolvency, experts agree it is an issue that will have to be addressed by Congress and the new President. Dukakis First to Attack


http://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/30/us/dukakis-faults-gop-for-savings-crisis.html

There was no internet so stories like this were more easily controlled by the media elite.

you had to know something was rotten.

It's almost an ENIGMA, what the rich and powerful say. It's to hide what they do.



Case in point: One Neil Mallon Pierce Bush, son of then-president George Herbert Walker Bush and caught with his hand in a billion-dollar S&L cookie jar called Silverado Savings & Loan. Here's what Poppy did for his Number 3 Son:

When it comes to money and power, it really is a small world. We'd hear it more often, if only we were privy to the conversation.

I saw "The Imitation Game" at the cineplexbox. It's a bio-pic of Alan Turing and how he led the team that cracked the ENIGMA code used by the NAZIs. First-rate film, in every way, great story, acting, history, back stories, yada the whole yada. Turing had a hard time when confronted with lies. And that's the only way the spymasters could stay ahead of the codebreaker.

The public discovering the kinds of treason and corruptions these characters are perpetrating frightens the crooks like nothing else. Thanks for grokking, Ichingcarpenter: That's what I recommend for us and all DU -- just the Truth about Who's Who and What's What.

Etymology[edit]

Robert A. Heinlein originally coined the term grok in his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land as a Martian word that could not be defined in Earthling terms, but can be associated with various literal meanings such as "water", "to drink", "life", or "to live", and had a much more profound figurative meaning that is hard for terrestrial culture to understand because of its assumption of a singular reality.


According to the book, drinking water is a central focus on Mars, where it is scarce. Martians use the merging of their bodies with water as a simple example or symbol of how two entities can combine to create a new reality greater than the sum of its parts. The water becomes part of the drinker, and the drinker part of the water. Both grok each other.


Things that once had separate realities become entangled in the same experiences, goals, history, and purpose. Within the book, the statement of divine immanence verbalized between the main characters, "Thou Art God", is logically derived from the concept inherent in the term grok.

really, when you read that letter. He was clearly very worried, not so much that his son had done wrong, but that he had been caught.

The corruption is so deep it will take decades and some very strong people to end it and then start the prosecutions. That is the only way they will be stopped, with severe consequences.

- by Stephen Pizzo
Mother Jones | March/April 1994

If Robert Fiske finds that Bill and Hillary have committed crimes in the so-called Whitewater-gate matter, they should pay the price. But according to our Special Prosecute-o-Meter (to come), it would seem that the Clintons' behavior is being measured differently from alleged banking misdeeds by the Bush family--Neil (Silverado Savings), $1 billion; Jeb (Broward Savings), $221.8 million; and George (BNL-Iraqgate), $5 billion. All proved a good deal more costly than the up-to-$50 million involved in the Madison Savings-Whitewater mess.

But while the national media--and specifically the New York Times--has focused its high-caliber lens on the Clintons, they apparently have forgiven and forgotten the Bushes' banking practices.

SNIP...

Had Dowd done her background work she would have found no shortage of decidedly unwacky Bush stories. Among others: a 1987 front-page article in the Wall Street Journal chronicling how Jeb helped a Cuban con man bilk Medicare out of millions of dollars; MoJo's Sept./Oct. 1992 cover story ("My Three Sons&quot on the Bush sons' long list of dubious business transactions (including George Jr.'s alleged violation of security laws governing insider stock sales when he sold his shares of Harken Oil on the eve of the Gulf War); and a recent New Yorker article detailing sleazy activities by Neil and number-four son Marvin Bush. The Times even ran an April 1992 story listing some of the Bushes' questionable deals (perhaps all motivated by the "Bush creed of competition" that Dowd notes approvingly).

When contacted by MoJo, Dowd wouldn't defend her story, saying, "Look, I'm not an investigative reporter, and clearly I wish now that I'd written a different piece. The Bush family never really liked me anyway." They may like her better now.

Short memories are also evident in Washington, D.C., where Bob Dole is complaining that House Banking Chairman Henry Gonzalez, D-Tex., is dragging his feet on Whitewater, but "held weeks of hearings" when Neil Bush got swept up in the failure of Silverado, even though he "had no direct involvement."

Actually, Neil sat on Silverado's board of directors until the thrift was declared functionally insolvent. That's about as "involved" as you can get.

Republicans are also upset over a Small Business Administration loan of $300,000,

CONTINUED...

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1994/03/whitewashing-bush-boys

Pizzo was one of the True Greats. Mother Jones, too.

revealing the naked emperors that have no clothes.
This wasn't possible at this level before the internet.

We now have citizen journalist that seek the truth vs being spoon fed their news that want us to consume to maintain their power.

people are becoming more conscious
and are waking up.

Didn't anticipate how effective a tool for the people it would be? I think that probably is true. They couldn't imagine how it would work against them, or work to do anything more than play computer games.

Look at Pete Peterson, the presidents' fiend...er, "friend."

Friends. How many of us have them?

By William K. Black

I knew Charles Keating, the head of Lincoln Savings, in my capacity as a financial regulator and as the subject of his wrath. His fraud schemes and the manner in which they targeted our system’s vulnerabilities in an era before Citizens United made the corruption of politicians by fraudulent CEOs child’s play remain the play book for the world’s most destructive financial frauds. Our failure to learn the ten lessons has caused immense suffering. Keating’s life, and the great harm he caused, will not have been in vain if we step back and use the occasion of his death to reflect on the changes we need to make.

I want to make clear up front that I have personal reasons to feel upset about Keating. He sued me in my individual capacity for $400 million, he hired private investigators to investigate me on at least two occasions that became public, he tried very hard, in league with Speaker of the House James Wright, Jr. to get me fired, he successfully extorted the pusillanimous heads of our regulatory agency to take the unprecedented, and disastrous step of removing the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco’s (FHLBSF) jurisdiction over Lincoln Savings, and he secretly issued this infamous written command to his chief political fixer.

“HIGHEST PRIORITY – GET BLACK

… KILL HIM DEAD

Yes, that is how the original reads – Keating was an “all caps” plus “underlining” kind of guy.

Keating was also a lawyer, so one of the typical, hilarious minor steps he took was withholding the memorandum that I just quoted from production in response to discovery commands on the grounds that it was an “attorney-client” communication. (His chief political fixer/leg breaker was a lawyer.)

Keating always claimed we (the FHLBSF) had a “vendetta” against him and that I was a leader of this vendetta. He thought our lives were focused on destroying him. The reality is that we were overwhelmed countering the epidemic of accounting control fraud that was driving the second, far more destructive, phase of the S&L debacle. Keating was one of roughly 300 fraudulent S&L heads from our perspective. Collectively, this very non-Spartan “300” and their political allies were vastly more powerful than we were. We also never dwelt on the personalities and did not classify fraudulent CEOs as “evil.” Keating was obsessed with us in ways we were never obsessed with him. So, let me begin by offering my condolences to his family and friends.

Overview

[font color="green"]The Savings and Loan debacle was the test bed for the epidemics of accounting control fraud that drove our subsequent financial crises. [/font color] The debacle was the only one that was “successfully” contained before it could cause a financial crisis. The debacle was widely described at the time as the “worst financial scandal is U.S. history,” so the phrase “successfully contained” is obviously one that could spark disbelief. The critical modifier is “before it could cause a financial crisis.” The S&L debacle did not lead to even a mild national recession. It did hyper-inflate regional real estate bubbles that pushed parts of the Southwest region into a serious economic decline. The Enron-era frauds substantially contributed (in conjunction with the related collapse of the dot com bubble) to a $7 trillion fall in market capitalization and the fraud epidemics hyper-inflated the largest bubble in history and drove a Great Recession that is projected to cost over $20 trillion in lost production. The S&L debacle, therefore, allows us to understand not only went wrong, but also how to prevent things from going wrong.

Keating was the poster child of the S&L debacle. One of the telling aspects of the current crisis is that it has no poster child. The elite CEOs that led the frauds that drove the crisis became wealthy through frauds that they led with total impunity because we forgot the lessons we learned at such a high price during the debacle.

CONTINUED...

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/04/ten-lessons-must-learn-charles-keating.html

and you ain't in it".

-George

From "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater," by Kurt Vonnegut:

I think it's terrible the way people don't share things in this country. The least a government could do, it seems to me, is to divide things up fairly among the babies. There's plenty for everybody in this country, if we'd only share more.

"And just what do you think that would do to incentive?"

You mean fright about not getting enough to eat, about not being able to pay the doctor, about not being able to give your family nice clothes, a safe, cheerful, comfortable place to live, a decent education, and a few good times? You mean shame about not knowing where the Money River is?

"The what?"

The Money River, where the wealth of the nation flows. We were born on the banks of it. We can slurp from that mighty river to our hearts' content. And we even take slurping lessons, so we can slurp more efficiently.

"Slurping lessons?"

From lawyers! From tax consultants! We're born close enough to the river to drown ourselves and the next ten generations in wealth, simply using dippers and buckets. But we still hire the experts to teach us the use of aqueducts, dams, reservoirs, siphons, bucket brigades, and the Archimedes' screw. And our teachers in turn become rich, and their children become buyers of lessons in slurping.

"It's still possible for an American to make a fortune on his own."

Sure—provided somebody tells him when he's young enough that there is a Money River, that there's nothing fair about it, that he had damn well better forget about hard work and the merit system and honesty and all that crap, and get to where the river is. 'Go where the rich and powerful are,' I'd tell him, 'and learn their ways. They can be flattered and they can be scared. Please them enormously or scare them enormously, and one moonless night they will put their fingers to their lips, warning you not to make a sound. And they will lead you through the dark to the widest, deepest river of wealth ever known to man. You'll be shown your place on the riverbank, and handed a bucket all your own. Slurp as much as you want, but try to keep the racket of your slurping down. A poor man might hear.'

SOURCE: http://akkartik.name/post/money-river

PS: Thank you for remembering George Carlin, FlatBaroque. The guy understood and he did not abide.

I look forward to reading the entire work. And thank you for the thread.

Bush/Clinton tag team.

Subject: Parry vs Hillary



If Obama wins, I give you my money-backed, 100% Nancy Grace Guarantee that he
[font color="red"][font size="5"]WILL NOT[/font size][/font color] go after Bush crimes - and I'll bet my winnings that he'll be excused for doing that because everyone will then agree that it's a "new day" in America and all that crapola.

My biggest worry about Obama is he won't join the fight in the present,
so why should we expect him to look for past battles to re-visit?

If he wins, he's going to do exactly what Bill did - look forward - and get praised for it.

From the BARTCOP Collection: http://www.bartcop.com/2093.htm

Mine would expand and update the New Deal to better reflect the 21st Century.

Cradle to grave education and healthcare across the board.
A change in the concept of work versus leisure. Leisure, the arts, the human portion of our lives, should be as important as the work portion of our lives.
Education should be the secular version of sacrosanct.
All politics and money influences should be completely removed from scientific research.
Environmental protections.
The "Fourth Estate" would have to work to maintain its position in the world of reporting.


There should not be one pocket of poverty in the entire US or its "holdings" and the populations of its "holdings" should be full US citizens with all the rights and responsibilities we all enjoy and occasionally, loathe.

There's probably a lot more I've missed since I'm listening to a video in another tab and somewhat distracted.

These are a good start, though. In my opinion.

Please note that the above are stipulated as Basic Human RIGHTS to be protected by our government,
and NOT as COMMODITIES to be SOLD to Americans by For Profit Corporations.

My vote and support WILL go to whoever BEST embodies these values.
I am too old and tired to again support the Least of the Worst.
Let the chips fall where they may.

I want to see Dimon in CHAINS.

The Sting

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.



Don’t 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 story’s below. And it’s not fiction. It is true to life.



The Set-Up

You don’t have to be a fan of Paul Newman or Robert Redford to smell a BFEE rat. The oily critter’s 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 Nation’s 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 should’ve been called the Gramm-Lansky Act. To those who gave a damn, it was obviously a potential disaster. During the bill’s 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 wasn’t 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, MOAB—for 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, that’s the U.S. taxpayer.

Today’s 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, it’s the U.S. taxpayer who gets to pick up the tab for someone else’s party.

Don’t worry, U.S. taxpayer. You’re getting something (among several things) for your $700 billion. You’re getting all the bad mortgage-based paper on almost all of Wall Street. I’d rather have penny stocks, because if there ever was something of negative value it’s 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. Don’t worry, it can’t get worse. As St. Ronnie would say, “Well. Yes.” You see, what the bag U.S. taxpayers hold is less than empty. It’s 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.





A fine mind for modern Bushonomics. Kill the middle class. Then, rob from the poor to give to the rich.

The Mentor



Anyone who’s ever heard him talk knows that Gramm must’ve learned all this stuff from somebody. He could never think it all up on his own. He had to have help. That’s where Meyer Lansky, the man who brought modern finance to the Mafia, comes in.



The great journalist Lucy Komisar has shone a big light on the subject:



Socialize the risk for Wall Street. Privatize the loss to Uncle Sam’s 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, we’re hearing that Uncle Sam is broke! Flat busted. Tapped out.

That’s 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: What’s 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, what’s a few trillion dollar rip-off?



Still, it's weird how they act.
They must really think they’ll be welcomed with open arms in Paraguay and Dubai and Switzerland.
Going by the welcome the world gave the Shah of Iran, they’re in for a big surprise.

The FBI Guy

Don’t say we weren’t warned. An intrepid FBI agent with something sorely lacking in the rest of the Bush administration, integrity, blew the whistle on the bank thing…



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 Mafia’s 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? He’s 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! You’re in for a royal fleecing. Once the interest is figured into the bailout, we’re looking at a couple of trill.

The people who should pay for the bailout aren’t 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. It’s been a cash cow.

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

It took the Democratic Congress less than a week to deliver nearly a $TRILLION DOLLARS to Wall Street (in a brown paper bag?),
No Strings Attached after receiving the Extortion Note from Paulson.

[font color=white]........................[/font][font size=3]Paulson with Co-Conspirators[/font]

[font color=white]......................[/font][font size=3]Now THIS is bi-partisanship!
[font color=white]......................[/font][font size=3]Hahahahahahahahaha!
[/font][/font]

while Holder managed traffic for the car to speed away

Super informative and damned scary!

Thanks for putting the information out for all to see. Many have not been paying attention over the last 40 years. They need to wake the fuck up NOW!

K&R

First New Deal (1933–1934)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal

Fiscal policy - Economy Act
Banking reform - Emergency Banking Act, Glass–Steagall Act, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
Monetary reform - Suspended the Gold Standard
Securities regulation - Securities Act of 1933, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Public works - Public Works Administration
Farm and rural programs - Resettlement Administration, Rural Electrification Administration, National Youth Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, Tennessee Valley Authority, Agricultural Adjustment Administration
Housing Sector - Home Owners' Loan Corporation, Federal Housing Administration
Trade liberalization - Reciprocal Tariff Act

I'm running out of words to describe the power elite in this country(and all over the world). Repugnant?? I never did care much for Clinton. In 1992, the Dems were running only second tier candidates, because at the time Bush was looking too strong. Once Clinton got the nomination, the economy tanked. That's the biggest reason he won. He has always been about power and the money that goes with it.

I remember losing my job,
car blowing up,
eviction notice on my door,
cards maxed.


....Bill comes on TV and with a sad face says, "I feel your pain.".

I damn near exploded.

The New Deal systematically excluded blacks and working women in many ways. Even as wages and benefits generally went up in that era for the working class, there was still a lot of legalized discrimination against women and blacks and other persons of color. LGBT rights were essentially non-existent.

Furthermore, it really depended on region, industry, and whether you were part of a union or not. Even at their peak, unions represented only about a third of the American working class. Much more than today, of course; but still a minority. Unionized workers, of course, had higher wages and benefits than non-union ones, and they were more likely to be dominated by white male workers; in that latter respect (diversity-wise), labor unions have changed for the better. The problem is that they're a lot weaker and fewer now, particularly in the private sector, where hostility to unions is visceral from corporate management (which has an enormous amount of influence over the lives and ideologies of workers these days), and it's not helped by the fact that many workers are hostile to unions as well.

That's nothing like what you said, YoungDemCA.

comes from the CATO Institute.

http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-did-fdrs-new-deal-harm-blacks

The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank founded by Charles G. Koch and funded by the Koch brothers. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C. The Institute states that it favors policies "that are consistent with the traditional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, and peace."[1] Cato scholars conduct policy research on a broad range of public policy issues and produce books, studies, op-eds, and blog posts. They are also frequent guests in the media.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Cato_Institute

Cato Institute is one of the think tanks that came into being post Powell Memorandum. Some people's concern just shows right through. One Dude really liked "Conscious Capitalism," which sounded nice for the lucky working stiffs, but really was nice for the Ownership Class.

Cato. A real laugh riot. Thank you for the heads-up, peecoolyour. A hearty welcome to DU!

but nope.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026057449#post162

and to fly some of the hottest fighters of the era.
Along with the Officer Rank went the mandatory salute (form white enlisted men)
and the use of "Sir" when addressing them or face charges of insubordination.

Officers and men from all over the country. From a biography of former Detroit Mayor Coleman Young:

The Freeman Field mutiny. Thank you for the heads-up, bvar22!

Most of the soldiers overseas followed their orders, or spent time in the brig.
For the Black Fliers (Heroes all) it was a difficult returning home.
But I believe this move by FDR authorizing Officer Rank was the beginning of the Freedom Movement.

Two years later, in his State of the Union Address, FDR stated (in NO uncertain terms)

Please note that the above are stipulated as Basic Human RIGHTS to be protected by our government,
and NOT as COMMODITIES to be SOLD to Americans by For Profit Corporations.

Those were some BIG steps for the 40s.

FORMER DEM SENATOR CHRIS DODD ADVISED EXECS TO GIVE TO GOP: “FUNDRAISING DOES HAVE AN IMPACT”

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/17/chris-dodd-former-dem-presidential-aspirant-advises-clients-give-gop-fundraising-impact/

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/17/chris-dodd-former-dem-presidential-aspirant-advises-clients-give-gop-fundraising-impact/

I'm sure people here will suggest you are demanding a purity test by supporting new deal Democrats. However, if you look at the record of opportunistic third way types like Gramm and Dodd who have run the party for the last 25 years you can see why the party is standing on the brink of ruin.

I had not thought of a lot of these events in quite a while. It's amazing and scary how all of this weaves into one very plausible, coherent narrative. Much on this thread to ponder. Thanks to you and the other contributors to the thread! Bookmarking.

Highly informative and helpful for understanding what has been happening. Your presentation of the facts is nothing less than brilliant.

Thanks for doing this.


K and R

And as always, thank you for everything you do here Octafish.

Outstanding thread.

Posts and discussions like this is what keeps me coming back to DU. Important stuff.