Clintonism SCREWED the Democrats: How Bill, Hillary & DLC Gutted Progressivism

[Octafish]

Clintonism screwed the Democrats: How Bill, Hillary and the Democratic Leadership Council gutted progressivism

Imagine there's no Clintons. It's easy if you try!

Without pernicious DLC, liberalism is a stronger movement today

PAUL ROSENBERG
Salon, April 30, 2016

EXCERPT...

But Clinton is a skilled politician, so she’s artfully re-aligned herself to blur their differences, with overwhelming support from the elite punditocracy. When the dark side of the Clinton record from 1990s is raised—NAFTA, Defense Of Marriage Act, “welfare reform,” mass incarceration, Wall Street deregulation, etc.—two defenses come readily to mind: “Hillary didn’t do it!/Bill was president” and “times change/you’re forgetting what it was like.”

These are both effective narratives in the establishment echo chamber, which is designed and intended for horse-race politics at the expense of political understanding (as well as factual accuracy). But Hillary Clinton wouldn’t be here today if she hadn’t been aligned with those policies—and with helping to create the environment in which they came to pass. Even before entering the White House with her husband, who had promised voters “two for the price of one” during the 1992 campaign, the pair had cast their lot in with those who moved the party to the right, most notably when Bill Clinton became head of the DLC—the Democratic Leadership Council, or as Jesse Jackson called it, “Democrats for the Leisure Class.”

The DLC was crucial to the Clinton’s rise to power, so it’s absolutely essential to understand it, if one wants to understand their politics—and that of the party they’ve so profoundly reshaped—all the way up through Hillary Clinton’s most recent rearticulation of the day.

An excellent starting point for understanding this comes via the much broader focus of Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers’s book, Right Turn: The Decline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics. While the book makes references going back to the Carter era, it opens with a meeting of twenty top Democratic Party fund-raisers three weeks after Walter Mondale’s landslide loss in the 1984 election, where they discussed “1988 and how they could have more policy influence in that campaign, how they might use their fund-raising skills to move the party toward their business oriented, centrist viewpoints,” as the Washington Post reported the next day.

It goes on to describe how, two days later, a closely-related group, the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, sponsored a similarly-themed public forum that drew national press attention, dominated by speeches given by Arizona governor Bruce Babbitt and Virginia governor Charles Robb, who, in turn, were also prominent founding members of the Democratic Leadership Council in the following spring, along with Missouri Representative Richard Gephardt and Georgia Senator Sam Nunn:

“The moderate and conservative Democrats didn’t make it past the first round in its primaries in 1984 and we want to change that,” said Nunn, a major Democratic proponent of increased military spending who had backed John Glenn in the 1984 race.

CONTINUED w/links...

http://www.salon.com/2016/04/30/clintonism_screwed_the_democrats_how_bill_hillary_and_the_democratic_leadership_council_gutted_progressivism/

Money to gain Power. Power to protect Money. Rinse. Lather. Repeat ad nauseum.

[Buzz Clik]

1. And the countdown to your departure continues....

It will be like Christmas.

[SidDithers]

2. hehe...

Sid

[Octafish]

7. SidDithers of DU. LOL.

When are you going to stand up for Don Siegelman?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022073759

[pmorlan1]

3. Why are you so rude?

This person just posted an article, why are you so rude?

[FlatBaroque]

11. Because that one and those with whom it associates

absolutely detest people who bring factual analysis to the debate. In a different time, they would be wearing brown shoirts and reporting neighbors to the Secret Police. They cannot drop fast enough to lick an authority boot. These are our true enemies. Not regular Republicans, with whom we have 90% in common, but these enablers, bullies and enforcers.

[NewImproved Deal]

28. Very true.

The Clinton Trolls have much in common with their pompous, paranoid Princess...

[Octafish]

12. For some reason, things that don't fit in with his belief system really bother Buzz Clik.

One example, the assassination of President Kennedy: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2911523

For some reason, bringing up the assassination of President Kennedy really bothers him, especially when I point out that George Herbert Walker Bush was in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

[disillusioned73]

96. Interesting..

Truth does seem to bring out your detractors.. keep up the great work, I appreciate it

[senz]

77. Because the OP offends their gods.

[Octafish]

4. You get hurt feelings from the truth?

Too bad. So sad.

[Buzz Clik]

14. pffft. You're projecting.

[Octafish]

17. When ad hominem is all you have, you don't have anything.

Seeing how you can't show where the article is wrong or show where I'm wrong, who has the problem, Buzz Clik?

[Buzz Clik]

18. Look up the definition of ad hominem and try again.

I didn't read the article, ace. Nor will I.

What's today's date?

[Octafish]

23. The definition of closed minded.

You know what they say about people with closed minds.

[PufPuf23]

52. Then Buzz Clik is the definition of a DU disrupter

but as we now know some disruptors are more equal than others.

[kaleckim]

54. Respond to the article like an adult

have an adult conversation about this. Are there any Clinton supporters that can have adult conversations about this? You acting in this way looks like none of you can respond to these critiques, because you can't.

[JEB]

20. You could go fly a kite for all you bring to the discussion.

[Buzz Clik]

21. interesting irony...

[JEB]

26. I guess you don't like what you see

when I mirror you.

[Buzz Clik]

27. pretty weak, dude.

[JEB]

32. I am blown away by your substantive, insightful posts.

There has always been snide annoying snippets here on DU. It's just not why I come here. Do you like the direction the Party has drifted? Or do you just have some grudge with the original poster?

[Buzz Clik]

33. Actually,

[frylock]

22. ..

[Octafish]

55. SNARF!

STASI: Beating. Kicking. Bugging. Spying. Imprisoning. Sounds exactly right.

The goal of wholesale surveillance, as Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” is not, in the end, to discover crimes, “but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population.” And because Americans’ emails, phone conversations, Web searches and geographical movements are recorded and stored in perpetuity in government databases, there will be more than enough “evidence” to seize us should the state deem it necessary. This information waits like a deadly virus inside government vaults to be turned against us. It does not matter how trivial or innocent that information is. In totalitarian states, justice, like truth, is irrelevant.

-- Chris Hedges http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_last_gasp_of_american_democracy_20140105

It's still odd to read how someone seems proud to write that they can't be bothered to learn anything new.

[kaleckim]

53. The fact

that you Democrats don't think you have to respond to these critiques, and don't think it is a problem, is telling. I don't see much of a difference between yourselves and the Republicans anymore, at least on economic issues and issues of institutional power.

[dchill]

76. Your contributions are all counterfeit.

You must be so proud!

[amborin]

5. K&R thanks for posting this, Octafish!

[Octafish]

13. The Democratic Weaselship Council

An Oldie but Goodie:

The Democratic Weaselship Council

If Democratic centrists want to repeat Bill Clinton's success, they should stop attacking fellow Democrats as "far left" and concentrate on uniting the party against Bush.

JOAN WALSH
Salon, July 29, 2003

EXCERPT...

Now all that can save California Republicans, of course, is strongman Arnold Schwarzenegger jumping into the freak-show election to recall Gov. Gray Davis (which is looking less likely by the hour). Likewise, the DLC needs its own miracle to win back the White House — the second coming of Bill Clinton — and that’s not going to happen. Clinton, like Schwarzenegger, did the politically impossible: He took the DLC’s shelves of policy-wonk manifestoes and dark warnings about special-interest politics, and turned it into an agenda for winning elections and governing, with his own charm and his own brand of compromise and conciliation, not DLC founder Al From’s. The DLC thinks it made Bill Clinton, but in fact Clinton made the DLC. Without his charisma and political smarts, its earnest, castor-oil approach to politics and policy would never have won a national election.

Let me be fair and admit that the DLC did several crucial things for the Democrats. The DLC critique forced the party to face up to the terrible failure that went along with being a whiny collection of special interests — labor, blacks, gays, women, assorted malcontents — a dysfunctional amalgam that was weaker, not stronger, than the sum of its parts. The DLC compelled the party to acknowledge that more government spending on welfare, on schools, on public services, hadn’t wiped out poverty or improved public education, and that innovation, accountability and results had to be what Democrats demanded, not merely new programs and funding.

And the DLC may ultimately be right that the candidates on the party’s left, most notably Internet darling Howard Dean, are ultimately unelectable in a national race. John Judis is one of the smartest political thinkers in the country, so when he says the numbers don’t add up for a Dean candidacy, I take that very seriously. But as Garance Franke-Ruta argues, the numbers aren’t adding up for DLC darlings Joe Lieberman and John Edwards, either. I think Lieberman has about as much chance of getting elected president as Dennis Kucinich does, frankly. Neither of them can pull together a large enough coalition of Democrats to win the nomination, let alone the election.

I voted for John Kerry in the MoveOn.org primary, because I currently think Kerry’s the most electable Democrat in the race, and I wanted to ensure he got enough votes from the left that he won’t be able to afford to write it off. I don’t know why the DLC doesn’t pursue a comparable strategy with Dean — maintain a respectful relationship and mobilize its own constituency to show there’s victory in a coalition that includes centrists. The problem is, the DLC doesn’t have its own constituency, outside of Beltway think tanks and the Op-Ed pages. The DLC does ideas, it doesn’t do retail politics. So it has little to offer Dean besides a good scolding.

I don’t know what combination of left, right and center will be necessary to beat Bush in 2004. All I know is that branding the Democrats’ opposition to Bush’s tax cuts and Iraq debacle “far left” does Karl Rove’s work for him. For a bunch of guys whose appeal is supposed to be their smarts, that’s awfully dumb politics.

CONTINUED...

http://www.salon.com/2003/07/29/dlc/

PS: You are most welcome, amborin!

[amborin]

35. Joan Walsh said, "a whiny collection of special interests — labor." JW was anti-labor, then, too.

[Octafish]

37. ''Unwashed.'' ''Unintelligent.'' ''Unmonied.''

I'm in Detroit. More than many of my friends and neighbors are members of unions. You would not believe the disappointment they hold.

Thanks for the kind reminder about Joan Walsh, amborin.

[democrank]

6. Anyone with 5 minutes to spare

can locate a multitude of quotes from many Democratic Party leaders and former DLCers, stating exactly what they really think of Liberals and Progressives. It`s quite an eyeopener, starting with Al From.

[Octafish]

16. So who is Al From?

Most people who consider themselves good Democrats don’t know the name Al From, though political insiders certainly do. He was never a cabinet member. He worked in the White House, but in the 1970s, for as a junior staffer for Jimmy Carter’s flailing campaign to stop inflation. He’s never written a famous tell-all book. He hasn’t ever held an elected office, his most high-profile role was as a manager of the domestic policy transition for the White House in 1992, which took just a few months. He doesn’t even have a graduate degree. From fits into that awkward space in American politics, of doer, organizer, activist, convener, a P.T. Barnum of wonks and hacks. Such are the vagaries of American political power, that those who are famous are not always those are the actual architects of power. Because From, a nice, genial, and idealistic business-friendly man, is the structural engineer behind today’s Democratic Party.

SOURCE: https://medium.com/@matthewstoller/its-al-froms-democratic-party-we-just-live-here-5d0de7f89c3e#.wtygz3327

PS: ETA You are most welcome, democrank!

[FlatBaroque]

8. KNR

[Octafish]

19. How the DLC Does It

How the DLC Does It

ROBERT DREYFUSS
The American Prospect, DECEMBER 19, 2001

EXCERPT...

A Business-Led Party

SNIP...

Once, the Reverend Jesse Jackson disparaged the DLC as "Democrats for the Leisure Class." But no one should underestimate the DLC's role in remaking the Democratic Party. Disciplined and single-minded, working tirelessly to forge alliances between individual Democratic elected officials and business groups, zealously promoting the political fortunes of their stars, and publishing a dizzying array of white papers and policy proposals, the DLC has given strategic coherence to what otherwise would have remained an inchoate tendency within the party. It has become a forum within which like-minded pro-business Democrats can share ideas, endorse one another, and commiserate about the persistence of the Old Guard.

SNIP...

One by one, Fortune 500 corporate backers saw the DLC as a good investment. By 1990 major firms like AT&T and Philip Morris were important donors. Indeed, according to Reinventing Democrats, Kenneth S. Baer's history of the DLC, Al From used the organization's fundraising prowess as blandishment to attract an ambitious young Arkansas governor to replace Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia as DLC chairman. Drawing heavily on internal memos written by From, Bruce Reed, and other DLCers, Baer says that the DLC offered Clinton not only a national platform for his presidential aspirations but "entree into the Washington and New York fundraising communities." Early in the 1992 primaries, writes Baer, "financially, Clinton's key Wall Street support was almost exclusively DLC-based," especially at firms like New York's Goldman, Sachs.

The DLC's investment in Clinton paid off, of course, after the 1992 election. Not only did the DLC bask in its status as idea factory and influence broker for the White House, but it also reaped immediate financial rewards. One month after the election, Clinton headlined a fundraising dinner for the DLC that drew 2,200 to Washington's Union Station, where tables went for $15,000 apiece. Corporate officials and lobbyists were lined up to meet the new White House occupant, including 139 trade associations, law firms, and companies who kicked in more than $2 million, for a total of $3.3 million raised in a single evening. The DLC-PPI's revenues climbed steadily upward, reaching $5 million in 1996 and, according to its most recent available tax returns, $6.3 million for 1999. "Our revenues for 2000 will probably end up around $7.2 million," says Chuck Alston, the DLC's executive director.

While the DLC will not formally disclose its sources of contributions and dues, the full array of its corporate supporters is contained in the program from its annual fall dinner last October, a gala salute to Lieberman that was held at the National Building Museum in Washington. Five tiers of donors are evident: the Board of Advisers, the Policy Roundtable, the Executive Council, the Board of Trustees, and an ad hoc group called the Event Committee--and companies are placed in each tier depending on the size of their check. For $5,000, 180 companies, lobbying firms, and individuals found themselves on the DLC's board of advisers, including British Petroleum, Boeing, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Coca-Cola, Dell, Eli Lilly, Federal Express, Glaxo Wellcome, Intel, Motorola, U.S. Tobacco, Union Carbide, and Xerox, along with trade associations ranging from the American Association of Health Plans to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. For $10,000, another 85 corporations signed on as the DLC's policy roundtable, including AOL, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Citigroup, Dow, GE, IBM, Oracle, UBS PacifiCare, PaineWebber, Pfizer, Pharmacia and Upjohn, and TRW.

And for $25,000, 28 giant companies found their way onto the DLC's executive council, including Aetna, AT&T, American Airlines, AIG, BellSouth, Chevron, DuPont, Enron, IBM, Merck and Company, Microsoft, Philip Morris, Texaco, and Verizon Communications. Few, if any, of these corporations would be seen as leaning Democratic, of course, but here and there are some real surprises. One member of the DLC's executive council is none other than Koch Industries, the privately held, Kansas-based oil company whose namesake family members are avatars of the far right, having helped to found archconservative institutions like the Cato Institute and Citizens for a Sound Economy. Not only that, but two Koch executives, Richard Fink and Robert P. Hall III, are listed as members of the board of trustees and the event committee, respectively--meaning that they gave significantly more than $25,000.

CONTINUED...

http://prospect.org/article/how-dlc-does-it

Open minded Democrats today must ask: Why did Clinton Foundation grab the DLC's files after the organization disbanded?

[bvar22]

68. Koch Brothers Money helped get Bill Clinton elected:

Koch Industries gave funding to the DLC and served on its Executive Council

<snip>
" One member of the DLC’s executive council is none other than Koch Industries, the privately held, Kansas-based oil company whose namesake family members are avatars of the far right, having helped to found archconservative institutions like the Cato Institute and Citizens for a Sound Economy. Not only that, but two Koch executives, Richard Fink and Robert P. Hall III, are listed as members of the board of trustees and the event committee, respectively–meaning that they gave significantly more than $25,000."

http://americablog.com/2010/08/koch-industries-gave-funding-to-the-dlc-and-served-on-its-executive-council.html

[senz]

79. And now Charles Koch likes Hillary for president.

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/04/24/charles-koch-says-he-could-possibly-support-hillary-clinton/

[yourpaljoey]

9. She plans to complete the gutting if 'elected' President

[Octafish]

24. Like privatizing Social Security?

The author was a Chicago Boy helping implement the privatization scam for Pinochet, ITT, Dita Bears and the CIA-Globalist crowd:

President Clinton and the Chilean Model.

By José Piñera

Midnight at the House of Good and Evil

"It is 12:30 at night, and Bill Clinton asks me and Dottie: 'What do you know about the Chilean social-security system?'” recounted Richard Lamm, the three-term former governor of Colorado. It was March 1995, and Lamm and his wife were staying that weekend in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House.

I read about this surprising midnight conversation in an article by Jonathan Alter (Newsweek, May 13, 1996), as I was waiting at Dulles International Airport for a flight to Europe. The article also said that early the next morning, before he left to go jogging, President Bill Clinton arranged for a special report about the Chilean reform produced by his staff to be slipped under Lamm's door.

That news piqued my interest, so as soon as I came back to the United States, I went to visit Richard Lamm. I wanted to know the exact circumstances in which the president of the world’s superpower engages a fellow former governor in a Saturday night exchange about the system I had implemented 15 years earlier.

Lamn and I shared a coffee on the terrace of his house in Denver. He not only was the most genial host to this curious Chilean, but he also proved to be deeply motivated by the issues surrounding aging and the future of America. So we had an engaging conversation. At the conclusion, I ventured to ask him for a copy of the report that Clinton had given him. He agreed to give it to me on the condition that I do not make it public while Clinton was president. He also gave me a copy of the handwritten note on White House stationery, dated 3-21-95, which accompanied the report slipped under his door. It read:

Dick,
Sorry I missed you this morning.
It was great to have you and Dottie here.
Here's the stuff on Chile I mentioned.
Best,
Bill.

Three months before that Clinton-Lamm conversation about the Chilean system, I had a long lunch in Santiago with journalist Joe Klein of Newsweek magazine. A few weeks afterwards, he wrote a compelling article entitled,[font color="green"] "If Chile can do it...couldn´t North America privatize its social-security system?" [/font color]He concluded by stating that "the Chilean system is perhaps the first significant social-policy idea to emanate from the Southern Hemisphere." (Newsweek, December 12, 1994).

I have reasons to think that probably this piece got Clinton’s attention and, given his passion for policy issues, he became a quasi expert on Chile’s Social Security reform. Clinton was familiar with Klein, as the journalist covered the 1992 presidential race and went on anonymously to write the bestseller Primary Colors, a thinly-veiled account of Clinton’s campaign.

“The mother of all reforms”

While studying for a Masters and a Ph.D. in economics at Harvard University, I became enamored with America’s unique experiment in liberty and limited government. In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville wrote the first volume of Democracy in America hoping that many of the salutary aspects of American society might be exported to his native France. I dreamed with exporting them to my native Chile.

So, upon finishing my Ph.D. in 1974 and while fully enjoying my position as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University and a professor at Boston University, I took on the most difficult decision in my life: to go back to help my country rebuild its destroyed economy and democracy along the lines of the principles and institutions created in America by the Founding Fathers. Soon after I became Secretary of Labor and Social Security, and in 1980 I was able to create a fully funded system of personal retirement accounts. Historian Niall Ferguson has stated that this reform was “the most profound challenge to the welfare state in a generation. Thatcher and Reagan came later. The backlash against welfare started in Chile.”

But while de Tocqueville’s 1835 treatment contained largely effusive praise of American government, the second volume of Democracy in America, published five years later, strikes a more cautionary tone. He warned that “the American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.” In fact at some point during the 20th century, the culture of self reliance and individual responsibility that had made America a great and free nation was diluted by the creation of [font color="green"] “an Entitlement State,”[/font color] reminiscent of the increasingly failed European welfare state. What America needed was a return to basics, to the founding tenets of limited government and personal responsibility.

[font color="green"]In a way, the principles America helped export so successfully to Chile through a group of free market economists needed to be reaffirmed through an emblematic reform. I felt that the Chilean solution to the impending Social Security crisis could be applied in the USA.[/font color]

CONTINUED...

http://www.josepinera.org/articles/articles_clinton_chilean_model.htm

Democratic solutions work because they are Democratic, not capitalist.

[yourpaljoey]

34. wow

[vintx]

10. K&R

[Octafish]

31. The New Democrats: The Coalition Pharma and Wall Street Love

by Sebastian Jones and Marcus Stern
ProPublica, Oct. 25, 2010

EXCERPT...

Today, however, many of the same techniques and tactics that formed the basis of the K Street Project are still in use, this time by Democrats. While Democratic House leaders haven't tried to place operatives in key positions at K Street firms or court business interests as openly as their predecessors, various coalitions within the party have stepped forward to fill the K Street Project vacuum. The Blue Dog Coalition, composed of 54 lawmakers from primarily rural areas, is the best known. But the New Democrat Coalition is larger and arguably as successful in courting the business community. Even if Republicans win big at the polls next month, the group is likely to retain its power, because both GOP leaders and the Obama administration will seek their votes in order to pass or block legislation.

Much has been written about the New Democrats in recent years, but the focus has mostly been on individual members or specific issues or events. Through dozens of interviews with congressional staffers, lobbyists, and political operatives and an extensive review of campaign-finance data and lobbying disclosures, ProPublica has pieced together the story of how the New Democrats rose to power and how, despite numerous attempts at reform, the work of lawmakers and lobbyists remains as intertwined as ever.

At first blush, the New Democrats seem unlikely heirs to the K Street Project. None of them chairs a committee or holds a prominent position in the House leadership. Most aren't known outside their own districts and tend to vote with their party caucus. Their power, instead, comes from their ability to tip the balance of close votes on the House floor, their numerous seats on key committees where major bills are shaped before the big votes are taken, and their business-friendly policies.

Over the past two years, their members have helped biotech companies win lucrative patent extensions during healthcare reform, fought to ensure that banks receiving TARP money didn't have to trim executive bonuses, and helped block a proposal to allow bankruptcy judges to adjust home mortgages—a step many experts believe would have reduced foreclosures. As they gathered for their May retreat, the New Democrats were working on what would become their biggest victory yet: weakening key components of financial-services reform legislation.

At a Saturday session at the retreat, Rep. Kind acknowledged what had brought the lobbyists and lawmakers together. In these busy legislative times, he said, the New Democrats had become a "powerful voice in policy making," and the business interests in the room were playing a crucial role in informing that voice.

[font color="green"]"We're working hard with you to get the policy right," Kind told lobbyists for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and others.[/font color]

CONTINUED...

https://www.propublica.org/article/new-democrat-coalition

[vintx]

42. That things like this don't seem to matter to them just kills me.

Over the past two years, their members have helped biotech companies win lucrative patent extensions during healthcare reform, fought to ensure that banks receiving TARP money didn't have to trim executive bonuses, and helped block a proposal to allow bankruptcy judges to adjust home mortgages—a step many experts believe would have reduced foreclosures. As they gathered for their May retreat, the New Democrats were working on what would become their biggest victory yet: weakening key components of financial-services reform legislation

[Octafish]

47. UBS Wealth Management is Buy Partisan

After his exit from the US Senate, where he led the rush to repeal Glass-Steagall and deregulate the banks, Phil Gramm immediately found a job at Swiss bank UBS as its Vice Chairman. Gramm today works in the Wealth Management department, where he has brought on, among others, former President Bill Clinton, the same president who signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the deregulation of banks into law.

It's a Buy-Partisan Who's Who:

President William J. Clinton
President George W. Bush Heh heh heh.
Robert J. McCann
James Carville
John V. Miller
Paula D. Polito
Anthony Roth
Mike Ryan
John Savercool

SOURCE: http://financialservicesinc.ubs.com/revitalizingamerica/SenatorPhilGramm.html

Who would have thought President Clinton and Sen. Gramm -- the two key figures in repealing Glass-Steagall -- would work together in Wealth Management at a Swiss bank?

Since the New Deal, Glass-Steagall had protected the US taxpayer from the Wall Street casino by law. After its repeal, the US taxpayer got put on the hook for, among other things, the most recent $16 trillion Wall Street bailout.

In September 2008 on DU2 I described the situation: Know your BFEE: Phil Gramm, the Meyer Lansky of the War Party, Set-Up the Biggest Bank Heist Ever.

If you don't like the way I write about it, you may enjoy what Robert Scheer thinks about Phil Gramm.



https://panamapapers.icij.org/20160403-panama-papers-global-overview.html

Until Sunday and the Panama Papers, this information wasn't much interest to the USA's "news media." They don't like to disturb their owners and operators any more than they have to.

"Wealth Management at UBS" seems like a euphemism for "Offshoring." Rather than the touchy term "cahoots," saying it's a "coincidence" makes it sound more like a small world, after all.

[senz]

80. BC has so many unsavory cohorts.

They're riding high.

[tularetom]

15. Excellent article, except for the first phrase of the excerpt

"But Clinton is a skilled politician...". No, she isn't, she's a surprisingly inept politician, who has been given a free pass for her "misstatements", flip flops and outright lies by the establishment press.

Bill Clinton was a master bullshitter (although he appears to have lost his touch lately), but Hillary just doesn't have the ability to lie convincingly.

[Octafish]

36. History to fill gaps in the fossil record...

...for those interested in learning how DLC got so close to Wall Street and went on to help repeal Glass-Steagall, become empathetic with those in natural gas and fracking and other mineral extraction industries, and spread contentment with irregular international banking practices a la BCCI; please check out this article from the great journalist Barbara Demick, once of The Philadelphia Inquirer, which ran three days before the inauguration of President Clinton in 1993:

Clinton's Wealth Of Support

An Arkansas Family Has Been A Backer,
And A Source Of Controversy.

By Barbara Demick
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER STAFF WRITER, January 17, 1993

EXCERPT...

Early in the game, the Stephenses raised $100,000 in Arkansas to get Clinton's candidacy up and running. Then last spring, when Clinton was trailing both George Bush and Ross Perot, Worthen Bank supplied the cash- starved campaign with a $3.5 million line of credit.

SNIP...

The centerpiece of the family's $1 billion empire is Stephens Inc., one of the largest investment banking firms off Wall Street. In addition to its 38 percent interest in Worthen Bank, the family owns stakes in oil and natural gas, utilities, nursing homes, waste management, diamond mining and hog farming.

SNIP...

The Stephens businesses are often represented by the Rose law firm, where Hillary Clinton has been a partner. Until the mid-1980s, they owned Arkla Inc., the Shreveport, La., natural-gas utility from which Clinton tapped chairman Thomas F. "Mack" McLarty as his White House chief of staff. Their investment firm serves as business manager to Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and Harry Thomason, the Hollywood couple who helped choreograph Clinton's public image.

SNIP...

In 1978, federal securities regulators alleged that Stephens, along with Lance, helped Middle Eastern investors linked to BCCI secretly buy up shares in a Washington bank. Stephens and the others settled the civil lawsuit by signing a consent decree in which they neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing.

SNIP...

The Stephenses have extensive holdings in natural gas, a resource strongly supported by Clinton. They, along with Bradbury, have been vocal proponents of easing banking regulations - in particular the limits on interstate banking and the Glass-Steagal Act, which separates banks from brokerage firms.

CONTINUED...

http://articles.philly.com/1993-01-17/news/25959645_1_worthen-bank-stephens-family-bill-clinton

The whole article is worth downloading and spreading for those who want to share where Ms. Clinton is coming from -- and where she will lead.

[apnu]

25. Gutted? This presumes they and Democrats were progressives to begin with.

1992 was the first election I could vote in. Then, nobody thought the Clintons were progressives in anyway at all then. The Clintons have been, at best "liberal" and even then moderately liberal on the best of days.

And, yes, Ross Perot splitting the conservative vote was a huge help to them. Not so much in 1996, Bob Dole was so bad, Perot's return then was nothing of importance.

People need to drop this fiction that the Democratic party is the bastion of liberalism and progressiveness, its not. The party has a spotty history, at best, with those things. Liberals and Progressives are here because there is nowhere else to go and have a reasonable change at governing this country.

Forget Civil War era politics, which this party has a history with, and look at 1900's history. LBJ, gave us the Civil Rights act but also gave us Vietnam in its full horror. FDR was half a capitalist and half a socialist, he wore whatever hat suited him best on any given day.

Jimmy Carter is probably the only true progressive the Democratic Party has put in the White House.

[Octafish]

40. JFK battled Wall Street and Big Business

"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich"
-- Inaugural Address of John F. Kennedy, Friday, January 20, 1961



So, in the short time he had, President Kennedy did what he could to balance the interests of concentrated wealth with the interests of the average American -- necessary for the good of the country.

Professor Donald Gibson detailed the issues in his 1994 book, Battling Wall Street: The Kennedy Presidency.

From the book:

"What (J.F.K. tried) to do with everything from global investment patterns to tax breaks for individuals was to re-shape laws and policies so that the power of property and the search for profit would not end up destroying rather than creating economic prosperity for the country."

-- Donald Gibson, Battling Wall Street. The Kennedy Presidency

More on the book, by two great Americans:

"Gibson captures what I believe to be the most essential and enduring aspect of the Kennedy presidency. He not only sets the historical record straight, but his work speaks volumes against today's burgeoning cynicism and in support of the vision, ideal, and practical reality embodied in the presidency of John F. Kennedy - that every one of us can make a difference." -- Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez, Chair, House Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs

"Professor Gibson has written a unique and important book. It is undoubtedly the most complete and profound analysis of the economic policies of President Kennedy. From here on in, anyone who states that Kennedy was timid or status quo or traditional in that field will immediately reveal himself ignorant of Battling Wall Street. It is that convincing." -- James DiEugenio, author, Destiny Betrayed. JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Were Corporate Owned News and our history classes top notch, these are things we'd ALL know.

Something I think: Had he lived to serve a second term, I'd bet on JFK and Labor over The Fed and Goldman Sach's Too Big To Fail chums.

[apnu]

41. Like I said, the Democratic Party has a spotty history.

Which means sometimes they'll get it right, sometimes they won't.

It because liberalism and progressivness is not in full control of the party.

Pulling one example from one guy isn't indicative of much.

JFK also got is involved in war and saber rattled with the Russians in the Cold War.

[Octafish]

44. Not exactly. JFK is one of many Democrats who believe in Democracy.

JFK respected other nations -- including the former colonies of European nations in Africa and Asia -- and peoples. How many today think he'd lie America into war to steal other people' oil?

In his landmark work, JFK and Vietnam, the then US Army major and West Point professor Newman found that the Pentagon and CIA gave LBJ, as veep, a more accurate picture of what was happening in Vietnam than they provided JFK, as president.

Why? JFK said he would not get into a land war in Southeast Asia and he certainly was not going to place US draftees in the middle of Vietnam's civil war; Johnson would and did after the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Vietnam Withdrawal Plans

The 1990s saw the gaps in the declassified record on Vietnam filled in—with spring 1963 plans for the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces. An initial 1000 man pullout (of the approximately 17,000 stationed in Vietnam at that time) was initiated in October 1963, though it was diluted and rendered meaningless in the aftermath of Kennedy's death. The longer-range plans called for complete withdrawal of U. S. forces and a "Vietnamization" of the war, scheduled to happen largely after the 1964 elections.

The debate over whether withdrawal plans were underway in 1963 is now settled. What remains contentious is the "what if" scenario. What would Kennedy have done if he lived, given the worsening situation in Vietnam after the coup which resulted in the assassination of Vietnamese President Diem?

At the core of the debate is this question: Did President Kennedy really believe the rosy picture of the war effort being conveyed by his military advisors. Or was he onto the game, and instead couching his withdrawal plans in the language of optimism being fed to the White House?

The landmark book JFK and Vietnam asserted the latter, that Kennedy knew he was being deceived and played a deception game of his own, using the military's own rosy analysis as a justification for withdrawal. Newman's analysis, with its dark implications regarding JFK's murder, has been attacked from both mainstream sources and even those on the left. No less than Noam Chomsky devoted an entire book to disputing the thesis.

But declassifications since Newman's 1992 book have only served to buttress the thesis that the Vietnam withdrawal, kept under wraps to avoid a pre-election attack from the right, was Kennedy's plan regardless of the war's success. New releases have also brought into focus the chilling visions of the militarists of that era—four Presidents were advised to use nuclear weapons in Indochina. A recent book by David Kaiser, American Tragedy, shows a military hell bent on war in Asia.

CONTINUED with very important IMFO links:

http://www.history-matters.com/vietnam1963.htm

Recently, The Nation magazine wanted to know "Why don't Americans know what really happened in Vietnam?" Interesting read, it brings up how much USA uses the volunteer military and observes the corporate owned news media don't want to bring that up so that people continue to thank the troops for their service without wondering why they're tasked with missions in 133 countries around the world. What the article missed and people need to know:

JFK ordered withdrawal from Vietnam. LBJ reversed it four days after Dallas.

In National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263 JFK orders everybody out...

The 1,000 advisors were the beginning. All US military personnel were to be out of the country by the end of 1965, reported James K. Galbraith.

Then in NSAM 273, four days after the assassination in Dallas, LBJ changes the policy to stay and support South Vietnam in its "contest against the externally directed and supported Communist conspiracy."

That important part of JFK history does not get mentioned on television or Corporate Owned News or much on DU.

[apnu]

48. OK you like JFK, I get it. I like him too

But he's one man, in one time of a political party who's history stretches back 240+ years.

None of which denies my "spotty history" statement. My point is, a bright spot does not make the party a bastion of anything. We'd earn that if we were constantly a bright spot. Our history suggests otherwise, as do our party members today.

[Octafish]

50. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. addressed Wayne State University in 2007...

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. called George W Bush "that sonofabitch" and said the guy was a crook, turning over the government to the lobbyists and gangsters who've emptied our Treasury, polluted our water, land, air and children, and used humanity as cannon fodder and slave labor. I swear he smiled when he hear me yell, "Yeaaaaaaa!" from the second row.

He also pegged ABCNNBCBSFoxNoiseNutwork for what they are, quislings. Among other things, he called Antonin Scalia the son of a Nazi and explained exactly why. He also said that almost all the current GOP on the political stage are corrupt. He also said about 2/3 of Democrats are corrupt. At the time, I thought he was about right. Today, things have gotten toward the 7/8.

RFK Jr. was asked who he was supporting, Obama or Hillary, in the 2008 race. He said his family was divided, but like both candidates. He also was asked about Ahnolt said they were not sure about Schwarzenegger and added his cousin was the one to ask about him.

I would've taken notes, but I wanted to hear everything the guy said. My point is that most of our party certainly acts corrupt, when the party is supposed to stand for equality for ALL.

Here's what I told a fellow DUer, just the other day:

Why I'm a Democrat.

It's the Party where each vote counts the same. All are equal under law. That's how Democratic politics also are supposed to be.

Where I have a problem with some people is when they think wealthy individuals deserve to have a bigger voice in politics. They believe their taxes and contributions afford them extra rights and access. They feel it's their birthright to enjoy one set of rules for the Little People and another for the privileged.

Those assholes who think like that already have a party. They're called Republicans.

[apnu]

57. Sweet! Glad you're around. (nt)

[dana_b]

29. K&R!

"Imagine there's no Clintons. It's easy if you try! " - I do, everyday.

The most horrible thing is that so many obviously agreed with them and welcomed their plans/schemes to turn the Democratic party into Republican lite. And since then progressives have been leaving in droves. We know when we're not wanted.

[Octafish]

43. That's why we gotta stay and FIGHT!

It's like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise has been taken over by Klingons and all we got is sweaty Sulu without a shirt and one sword, Spock without a brain, and Scottie focused on making the box to control Spock run right. Where's Kirk? He's stuck floating in and out of reality due to some transporter accident and no one believes McCoy when he reports seeing his image floating through the officers' mess.

Did I tell you about PNAC?

Victoria Nuland is channeling Cheney.

Neocons and Liberals Together, Again

The neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC) has signaled its intention to continue shaping the government's national security...

Tom Barry, last updated: February 02, 2005

The neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC) has signaled its intention to continue shaping the government's national security strategy with a new public letter stating that the "U.S. military is too small for the responsibilities we are asking it to assume." Rather than reining in the imperial scope of U.S. national security strategy as set forth by the first Bush administration, PNAC and the letter's signatories call for increasing the size of America's global fighting machine.

SNIP...

Liberal Hawks Fly with the Neocons

The recent PNAC letter to Congress was not the first time that PNAC or its associated front groups, such as the Coalition for the Liberation of Iraq, have included hawkish Democrats.

Two PNAC letters in March 2003 played to those Democrats who believed that the invasion was justified at least as much by humanitarian concerns as it was by the purported presence of weapons of mass destruction. PNAC and the neocon camp had managed to translate their military agenda of preemptive and preventive strikes into national security policy. With the invasion underway, they sought to preempt those hardliners and military officials who opted for a quick exit strategy in Iraq. In their March 19th letter, PNAC stated that Washington should plan to stay in Iraq for the long haul: "Everyone-those who have joined the coalition, those who have stood aside, those who opposed military action, and, most of all, the Iraqi people and their neighbors-must understand that we are committed to the rebuilding of Iraq and will provide the necessary resources and will remain for as long as it takes."

Along with such neocon stalwarts as Robert Kagan, Bruce Jackson, Joshua Muravchik, James Woolsey, and Eliot Cohen, a half-dozen Democrats were among the 23 individuals who signed PNAC's first letter on post-war Iraq. Among the Democrats were Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution and a member of Clinton's National Security Council staff; Martin Indyk, Clinton's ambassador to Israel; Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute and Democratic Leadership Council; Dennis Ross, Clinton's top adviser on the Israel-Palestinian negotiations; and James Steinberg, Clinton's deputy national security adviser and head of foreign policy studies at Brookings. A second post-Iraq war letter by PNAC on March 28 called for broader international support for reconstruction, including the involvement of NATO, and brought together the same Democrats with the prominent addition of another Brookings' foreign policy scholar, Michael O'Hanlon.

CONTINUED...

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/articles/display/Neocons_and_Liberals_Together_Again

FTR: Victoria Nuland, our woman in Ukraine, is married to PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan, whose brother is Frederick Kagan. Frederick Kagan's spouse is Kimberly Kagan. Brilliant people, big ideas, and a lot of PNAC, which spells out the neocon/neolib approach to international relations means more wars without end for profits without cease, among other things detrimental to peace, justice, and democracy.

PS: Thanks for putting up with me, dana_b. Some days I want to throw the freaking monitor through the cell bars.

[dana_b]

46. putting up with you?

You're one of the reasons that I haven't left - yet.

Love the Star Trek similes and terrified of Nuland (and especially how close Clinton seems to be to her). I know that I probably should have stayed and "fought" but I am still doing my part just as an indy. I haven't been a Dem for a while now.

[tonyt53]

30. Salon has turned into an irrelevant rag

Salon keeps trying to be relevant but is failing miserably. To bash the accomplishments of Bill Clinton by taking a few of his actions and trying to make more of them that what they were is scraping the bottom of the barrel. The fact is, more people in this country thrived while he was President. All races thrived. It is easy to stand back after almost 20 years and complain, but to ignore the positives amounts to pettiness.

[Octafish]

38. Like Don't Ask Don't Tell?

You know, compromise?

[Dragonfli]

39. K&R

[Octafish]

61. GE CEO: I Will Not Release State Department Emails From Hillary Clinton

by Patrick Howley
Daily Caller, April 22, 2015

General Electric (GE) CEO Jeffrey Immelt said Wednesday that he will not release the emails that GE exchanged with Hillary Clinton’s State Department during the period in which GE was donating to the Clinton Foundation.

“Again, I think that’s not something we would do. Right?” Immelt said at GE’s shareholder meeting in Oklahoma City, OK in response to a question from Justin Danhof of the National Center For Public Policy Research, who pressed the CEO to release written communications with the State Department.

Secretary of State Clinton lobbied the Algerian president in 2012 to pick GE as a contractor for Algerian power plants. GE got the Algeria deal and quickly thereafter donated to the Clinton Foundation. Clinton also lobbied on behalf of Clinton Foundation donors including Boeing and Chevron.

“I think for a global company it’s very normal business where the State Department and or other officials actually help us around the world” Immelt said in the exchange, audio of which was reviewed by TheDC. “And we do that today. We did that in the past. I hope we do that always.”

SOURCE: http://dailycaller.com/2015/04/22/ge-ceo-i-will-not-release-hillary-clinton-state-department-emails/

Gee. Who'd ever think Tucker Carlson was capable of journalism?

[Dragonfli]

62. I think I know where Immelt is going with this and where he stands politically

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”
― Benito Mussolini

[polly7]

45. Another fantastic thread, Octafish! So much information. K&R. nt.

[Octafish]

60. What Hillary tells the BIG WIGs

Pete Peterson is the presidents' (plural) friend.

Hillary Clinton Speaks from Peter G. Peterson Institute on Foreign Aid

C-SPAN aired Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's remarks at the Peter G. Peterson Institute. Pete Peterson made billions as a private equity underwriter (PEU). He used $1 billion to establish his institute, focused on getting America's financial house of cards in order (without asking corporations or the rich to step up in any major way.)

[font color="green"]America believes government cannot do anything competently, thus the private sector is the answer. That goes for international development.[/font color]

SNIP...

That requires partners. Giants of philanthropy gathered in New York in 2009. This list included Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Pete Peterson, George Soros, David Rockefeller, and Oprah Winfrey.

SNIP...

Clinton stated in her talk:

[font color="green"][font size="5"]Aid chases need, investment chases opportunity.[/font size][/font color]

[font color="green"]She mentioned the Clinton Foundation as a partner. President Bill Clinton privatized government functions during his two terms, benefiting multiple private equity underwriters.[/font color]

CONTINUED...

http://stateofthedivision.blogspot.com/2010/01/hillary-clinton-speaks-from-peter-g.html

And money trumps peace.

[Betty Karlson]

49. Very true. K&R

[Octafish]

84. $5 BILLION IN POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS BOUGHT WALL STREET FREEDOM FROM REGULATION, RESTRAINT

I'm not shouting, but I should be. Thank you, Betty Karlson! I've been looking for the following article since Iowa.

$5 BILLION IN POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS BOUGHT WALL STREET FREEDOM FROM REGULATION, RESTRAINT, REPORT FINDS

Steps to Financial Cataclysm Paved with Industry Dollars

March 4 - The financial sector invested more than $5 billion in political influence purchasing in Washington over the past decade, with as many as 3,000 lobbyists winning deregulation and other policy decisions that led directly to the current financial collapse, according to a 231-page report issued today by Essential Information and the Consumer Education Foundation.

The report, "Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America," shows that, from 1998-2008, Wall Street investment firms, commercial banks, hedge funds, real estate companies and insurance conglomerates made $1.725 billion in political contributions and spent another $3.4 billion on lobbyists, a financial juggernaut aimed at undercutting federal regulation. Nearly 3,000 officially registered federal lobbyists worked for the industry in 2007 alone. The report documents a dozen distinct deregulatory moves that, together, led to the financial meltdown. These include prohibitions on regulating financial derivatives; the repeal of regulatory barriers between commercial banks and investment banks; a voluntary regulation scheme for big investment banks; and federal refusal to act to stop predatory subprime lending.

"The report details, step-by-step, how Washington systematically sold out to Wall Street," says Harvey Rosenfield, president of the Consumer Education Foundation, a California-based non-profit organization. "Depression-era programs that would have prevented the financial meltdown that began last year were dismantled, and the warnings of those who foresaw disaster were drowned in an ocean of political money. Americans were betrayed, and we are paying a high price -- trillions of dollars -- for that betrayal."

"Congress and the Executive Branch," says Robert Weissman of Essential Information and the lead author of the report, "responded to the legal bribes from the financial sector, rolling back common-sense standards, barring honest regulators from issuing rules to address emerging problems and trashing enforcement efforts. The progressive erosion of regulatory restraining walls led to a flood of bad loans, and a tsunami of bad bets based on those bad loans. Now, there is wreckage across the financial landscape."

12 Key Policy Decisions Led to Cataclysm

Financial deregulation led directly to the current economic meltdown. For the last three decades, government regulators, Congress and the executive branch, on a bipartisan basis, steadily eroded the regulatory system that restrained the financial sector from acting on its own worst tendencies. "Sold Out" details a dozen key steps to financial meltdown, revealing how industry pressure led to these deregulatory moves and their consequences:

1. In 1999, Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which had prohibited the merger of commercial banking and investment banking.

2. Regulatory rules permitted off-balance sheet accounting -- tricks that enabled banks to hide their liabilities.

3. The Clinton administration blocked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from regulating financial derivatives -- which became the basis for massive speculation.

4. Congress in 2000 prohibited regulation of financial derivatives when it passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.

5. The Securities and Exchange Commission in 2004 adopted a voluntary regulation scheme for investment banks that enabled them to incur much higher levels of debt.

6. Rules adopted by global regulators at the behest of the financial industry would enable commercial banks to determine their own capital reserve requirements, based on their internal "risk-assessment models."

7. Federal regulators refused to block widespread predatory lending practices earlier in this decade, failing to either issue appropriate regulations or even enforce existing ones.

8. Federal bank regulators claimed the power to supersede state consumer protection laws that could have diminished predatory lending and other abusive practices.

9. Federal rules prevent victims of abusive loans from suing firms that bought their loans from the banks that issued the original loan.

10. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac expanded beyond their traditional scope of business and entered the subprime market, ultimately costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.

11. The abandonment of antitrust and related regulatory principles enabled the creation of too-big-to-fail megabanks, which engaged in much riskier practices than smaller banks.

12. Beset by conflicts of interest, private credit rating companies incorrectly assessed the quality of mortgage-backed securities; a 2006 law handcuffed the SEC from properly regulating the firms.

Financial Sector Political Money and 3000 Lobbyists Dictated Washington Policy

During the period 1998-2008:

* Commercial banks spent more than $154 million on campaign contributions, while investing $363 million in officially registered lobbying:

* Accounting firms spent $68 million on campaign contributions and $115 million on lobbying;

* Insurance companies donated more than $218 million and spent more than $1.1 billion on lobbying;

* Securities firms invested more than $504 million in campaign contributions, and an additional $576 million in lobbying. Included in this total: private equity firms contributed $56 million to federal candidates and spent $33 million on lobbying; and hedge funds spent $32 million on campaign contributions (about half in the 2008 election cycle).

The betrayal was bipartisan: about 55 percent of the political donations went to Republicans and 45 percent to Democrats, primarily reflecting the balance of power over the decade. Democrats took just more than half of the financial sector's 2008 election cycle contributions.

The financial sector buttressed its political strength by placing Wall Street expatriates in top regulatory positions, including the post of Treasury Secretary held by two former Goldman Sachs chairs, Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson.

Financial firms employed a legion of lobbyists, maintaining nearly 3,000 separate lobbyists in 2007 alone.

These companies drew heavily from government in choosing their lobbyists. Surveying 20 leading financial firms, "Sold Out" finds 142 of the lobbyists they employed from 1998-2008 were previously high-ranking officials or employees in the Executive Branch or Congress.

* * *
Essential Information is a Washington, D.C. nonprofit that seeks to curb excessive corporate power. The Consumer Education Foundation is a California-based nonprofit that supports measures to prevent losses to consumers.

SOURCE: http://www.wallstreetwatch.org/soldoutreport.htm

The repeal of Glass-Steagall allowed any institution with money to act like a Ponzi scheme. Now we talk about "too big to fail, too big to jail." Instead, we should be talking about hiring some forensic economists to get the crooks to put the money back.

[Betty Karlson]

91. This information has already had its own OP, I hope?

I remember reading some of it. It certainly should have its own OP. So if this is a recent compilation, please consider an OP. I'd be happy to K&R that too.

[Uncle Joe]

51. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Octafish.

[Octafish]

113. The New Deal created the Middle Class...

...which is why the GOP hates Keynesian economics and another reason why I vote Democratic.

http://www.laprogressive.com/guess-what-the-new-deal-worked/

JFK knew it. He continued the New Deal and adapted it to the Space Age. That's why he wanted the civilian space program to succeed: in addition to advancing technology, it created a new economy with great jobs and an unlimited future.

Nixon and the Big Money GOP hated the civilian space program. You can imagine my surprise to discover there were Democrats who sided with management over labor, with Wall Street over Main Street, with the millionaires and billionairs over working people and poor people.

PS: Thank you for grokking and fighting, Uncle Joe.

[immoderate]

56. Kickin'

--imm

[Octafish]

115. LESSON: Instead of acting like cowardly Republicans, we need to act like brave Democrats.

EXAMPLE: The New Deal and the New Frontier

The peaceful exploration of space was the best thing to happen to jobs in history. At its peak, 400,000 Americans were employed in the Apollo Project.



Imagine if President Kennedy had lived, where the nation would be today? I believe, if we could figure out how to the moon and back, we could face any problem on earth and solve it -- from ending hunger, poverty and ignorance to creating a lasting peace.

Problems today's GOP considers intractable (see Poppy Bush inaugural "More will than Wallet&quot such as joblessness, poverty, crime, would be tackled, instead of ignored, like they've done with public education. And the treasures accumulated since would be used to make life better for everybody on earth instead of sitting in a secret Swiss bank account.

But, no. The conservatives killed the New Deal after LBJ and the Great Society. For the space program, it started with Nixon. Instead, they gave the store away to War Inc, who sank the national treasure into the "Money trumps peace" crowd.

Thank you for grokking and fighting, immoderate! Remember Elbert Hubbard: "A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run."

[immoderate]

116. Happy to fight against the *proliferation of Reaganite presidents,*

from which, it appears, we are about to get no relief.

Appreciate your posts.

--imm

[JEB]

58. K&R for the original post and subsequent informative posts and links.

Thank you for all your hard work and for sharing with us.

[Octafish]

114. Maybe the DLC didn't NEED to turn to the RIGHT. They just, em, WANTED to.

From the just because the television says it's so doesn't make it so department:

The Myth of America's Turn to the Right

An argument, based on polling data, that the conservative shift in public policy during the Reagan years has not been matched by a shift in public opinion.

by Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers
The Atlantic, May 1986

If the Democrats have drawn one lesson from the disaster of the 1984 election, it is that their party must move to the right. Evidence for this assertion can be found in the strong support that House and Senate Democrats gave to the Gramm-Rudman amendment, which would eliminate the budget deficit by severely cutting domestic programs bequeathed by the New Deal and the Great Society. And it can be found as well in post-election calls for a right turn from influential Democrats such as Robert Strauss, the former Democratic Party chairman, and such rising party stars as Charles Robb, the former governor of Virginia, and Bruce Babbitt, the governor of Arizona. A chorus of analyses, editorials, and op-ed pieces by prominent journalists and academics echo these revisionist Democrats. American voters, it is said again and again, have become more conservative and have finally killed off the New Deal. To avoid further decline the party must also move to the right, "where the voters are."

SNIP...

Together, the policy initiatives of the Reagan Administration announce the end of the New Deal era in American politics. Because the Democratic Party originated that era, and set the agenda for national politics during it, these initiatives also announce the decline of the Democratic Party as the dominant force in American public life. What might be termed the New Deal party system, within which the Democrats held the upper hand, has finally collapsed.

But what is at stake in the current policy changes in American politics is of concern to more than Democratic loyalists. The very structure of American politics has changed, with the center of gravity of the American party system--including both Democrats and Republicans--shifting to the right. Because the stakes are so high, it is important to consider closely the basic assumptions of political debate now shared by the two major parties. Above all, it is vital to know if the central claim made by revisionist Democrats and Republicans alike--that a majority of the public has reached a stable, well-informed consensus on the desirability of right, or center-right, policies--is true.

We do not believe that it is. While there is overwhelming evidence of a policy realignment, there is little direct evidence that mass public sentiment has turned against the domestic programs of the New Deal, or even the most important components of the Great Society, and little evidence of a stable shift to the right in public attitudes on military and foreign policy. On the contrary, poll after poll demonstrates that the basic structure of public opinion in the United States has remained relatively stable in recent years. To the extent that there have been changes in public opinion on particular issues, most have tended to run against the direction of public policy. Moreover, despite major Republican victories in 1980 and 1984, recent voting behavior and trends in partisan identification provide little evidence of an electoral realignment.

SNIP...

The stability of such attitudes aside, it is commonly argued that the public moved sharply to the right during the late 1970s on most domestic issues, and that a groundswell of popular opposition to domestic-spending programs and government regulation of business was an important reason for Ronald Reagan's election in 1980. In fact no such groundswell occurred. To the contrary, public skepticism toward business, and support for government regulation of it, actually increased on several dimensions during the 1970s. From 1969 to 1979, for example, the share of the public thinking that there was "too much power concentrated in the hands of a few large companies for the good of the nation" increased from 61 to 79 percent; those thinking that business as a whole was making "too much profit" grew from 38 to 51 percent. Over the period 1971 to 1979 the percentage thinking that "government should put a limit on the profits companies can make" nearly doubled, rising from 33 to 60 percent.

Nor was there any evidence of an upsurge in support for domestic-spending cuts. The National Opinion Research Center found in 1980 that only 21 percent of Americans (the average across the different spending areas) thought that "too much" was being spent on environmental health, education, welfare, and urban-aid programs--the same percentage holding that belief in 1976, 1977, and 1978. The percentage of Americans who thought that "too little" was spent on those programs was also remarkably stable over the 1976-1980 period, dropping only from 44 to 42 percent, while the combined percentage of those who thought the amount spent was "too little" or "about right" was never lower than 72 percent.

As the rollback in regulation and cutbacks in domestic spending became evident during Reagan's first term, the public increased its support for regulatory and social programs. A *Los Angeles Times* poll in 1982, for example, asked respondents if they would favor "keeping" or "easing" regulations that President Reagan "[said] are holding back American free enterprise." Even given this language, the percentage favoring "keeping" outweighed that favoring "easing" regulations regarding the environment (49-28), industrial safety (66-18), the teenage minimum wage (58-29), auto emission and safety standards (59-29), federal lands (43-27), and offshore oil drilling (46-29). In 1983 the *Los Angeles Times* again asked about regulatory policy and found that only five percent of Americans considered regulations "too strict," while 42 percent thought they were "not strong enough." A CBS News/*New York Times* poll, meanwhile, found that support for the relatively extreme proposition that "protecting the environment is so important that requirements and standards cannot be too high, and continuing environmental improvements must be made regardless of cost" increased from 45 percent in 1981 to 58 percent in 1983.

CONTINUED...

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/95dec/conbook/fergrt.htm

Thank you for grokking and fighting, JEB! Despite what the shitheads say, it's the Good Fight.

[felix_numinous]

59. Kick!

[anigbrowl]

63. Another beautiful loser thread

On the whole I prefer winning elections to not winning them, notwithstanding that there are downsides to the actual outcome as well as upsides. I'm not a progressive and while I'm to the left of most Americans I'm also practical enough to recognize that progressives are long on aspiration and short on know-how and strategy.

[farleftlib]

64. Here's to being "practical"

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.... H. L. Mencken

Trump! SCOTUS! Republicans! -- Help!! Run!! Vote for a DINO!!

[anigbrowl]

67. Well I'm going to put my own interests first

The leading Republican candidate proposes to split up my family so while you might be able to spend a Trump presidency swearing at the TV screen from the comfort of your couch I am more concerned with xenophobic cops kicking in my door. Forgive me for not joining you in your ideological pity party.

[Octafish]

65. So we must settle for whomever.

That's a real winner of an idea not.

[anigbrowl]

66. That's how things go in elections

You compete but you may or may not get a win and then you have to live with the outcome until the next election. It doesn't look like you're going to win this cycle, although it's still possible in theory.

[Octafish]

69. True. Do you think as President she'll work on campaign finance reform?

You know, make things more Democratic? In other words, will President Hillary Clinton work toward elections that are more open, just and progressive?

[anigbrowl]

71. You should start a new thread if you want to talk about something different

I don't care for your tactic of constantly trying to change the subject whenever you get an answer you dislike. This is an issue I'd be happy to discuss with you some other time but right now you're just trying to switch the focus away from the fact that you're losing this cycle, even though Bernie raised and spent plenty of money.

I think the DLC/Third Way movement has enjoyed success because they correctly recognized that old-style ideological progressivism was not yielding success at the voting booth and the proponents of a new left politics correctly recognized that progressives were both in a minority and poor at increasing their share of the vote. I think the reason for this is that msot progressives I've met have their heart in the right place but are very hazy on how to achieve their goals and don't have a good understanding of legal or economic topics. Every election cycle they tell themselves that things would have been better with a more progressive candidate, just like every election cycle some Republicans tell themselves they'd have done much better if they'd run more ideologically conservative candidates.

One day may or may not figure out that the majority of the people in the USA appear to be moderate and pragmatic rather than being ideological purists, and that no single ideology provides consistently reliable answers to complex human problems.

[Octafish]

72. It is my thread.

I don't recall you actually talking about the OP, either:

Clintonism SCREWED the Democrats: How Bill, Hillary & DLC Gutted Progressivism

You can start a thread on whatever you want to. Don't worry, I won't bother you by changing the subject.

[anigbrowl]

73. I guess you've lost the ability to look at the thread history

Since I replied directly to your OP earlier in this very conversation.

[Octafish]

74. ''Another beautiful loser thread.''

Really not much in the way of wisdom there, anigbrowl.

[anigbrowl]

78. I didn't promise you'd like it

But results trump ideology every time for me.

[Octafish]

81. Like money trumps peace?

"Money trumps peace. Uh. Sometimes." Pretzeldent George W Bush spoke those words on Feb. 14, 2007 at a press conference. Then he laughs and not even one member of the nation's callow, cowed press corpse saw fit to ask the giggling mass murderer a follow-up.

I remember Cindy Sheehan tried to bring it to our nation's attention.

The Bush family is a multi-generational example of those who make a living, or "killing" going by the guaranteed profit margins, from the sale of war materiel.

Know your BFEE: Merchants of Death

The nation needs leaders who are more interested in peace and prosperity for all, not worrying about keeping war criminals and banksters out of prison.



Hillary Is the Candidate of the War Machine

[anigbrowl]

82. Yawn, typical that you would respond with copypasta nt

[Octafish]

85. Why waste what's worth knowing?

As opposed to what you post.

[anigbrowl]

86. Apparently I know a lot more about winning elections

But keep banging your drum.

[Octafish]

88. Not apparently. It would show.

Searching what you've written in this thread, there must be a reason your wisdom is not visible.

[anigbrowl]

89. Only to those with eyes to see

I can't help you as long as you're fixated on your own belly fluff.

[Octafish]

99. For you, that's profound.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/~anigbrowl

[Cobalt Violet]

94. The loss of 910 state legislature seats, 12 governors, 69 house seats, 13 Senate seats is a success?

Heck of job DCL/Thirdway, Heck of job! But okay you can call that success just as Hillary calls herself a progressive but it doesn't make it real. Enjoy your fantasyland! You're in for disappointment in November.

[Cobalt Violet]

93. It doesn't look like you are going to win the general.

Supporting someone with her negatives is nuts. Good luck tho.

[CrispyQ]

101. You're so mired in the rigged system you don't see that

progressives are not short on know-how & strategy. Our ideas work. When we shared the wealth, had a progressive tax structure, a social safety net, an educated populace, we had a better economy for all. Now that we've made strides with rights for minorities, they too could reap the benefits of a just economy, but we aren't getting that back, not without a fight. A huge fight. TPTB have corrupted every damned institution in the country with their filthy money & they've stolen control of the electoral process.

The system isn't broken; the system is fixed.

[anigbrowl]

109. You know I'm from Europe, right?

I am well to the left of most Americans and know much more first hand about how democratic socialism works on the everyday economic level as well as being intimately familiar with the historical contexts. Progressives in the US are extremely short on know-how and strategy, which is why they live at the political margins instead of at the center as they do in many other countries. The only progressive outfit I have serious respect for is the Working Families Party.

You know what the #1 problem of US progressives is (it's a general human problem, but one I see concentrated in this community)? Assuming that people who disagree with you must be ignorant, because if people knew what you knew they would necessarily come to the same conclusions that you do. This is a fundamentally conservative (philosophically, not politically) position because it is predicted on the assumption that there is only one possible 'correct' point of view. As far as I can see this is a dysfunctional holdover from Marxism, which some progressives cling to in much the same way that social conservatives cling to the Book of Genesis.

[tabasco]

70. Clintons have played a key role in the dismantling of the Democratic party.

So much so that I do not believe H. Clinton will win the general election. The DNC/Clinton rightward shift has left long-time Democrats like myself wondering, "where's my party?"

[Octafish]

75. They act as if there's no one to turn to. And they are right: apart from Bernie...

...the bench is empty on the left. The money's gone to fund those who think the "right" way. The righter they think, the more funding goes their way, too.

THAT is the power of money. I remember when Democrats used the powers of government to create better economic conditions for ALL Americans. Today, the race is Buy Partisan to protect the few with the most, even if it means letting traitors, warmongers and banksters walk free.

[senz]

83. K&R - thanks, Octafish

Informative thread, worth bookmarking.

[Octafish]

110. Hillary Clinton's Ghosts: A Legacy of Pushing the Democratic Party to the Right

By Michael Corcoran
Truthout, 02 December 2015

EXCERPT...

But the party's latest generation of "New Democrats" - self-described "moderates" who are funded by Wall Street and are aggressively trying to steer the party to the right - have noticed this trend and are now fighting back. Third Way, a "centrist" think tank that serves as the hub for contemporary New Democrats, has recently published a sizable policy paper, "Ready for the New Economy," urging the Democratic Party to avoid focusing on economic inequality. Former Obama chief of staff Bill Daley, a Third Way trustee, recently argued that Sanders' influence on the primary "is a recipe for disaster" for Democrats.

This "ideological gulf" inside the party, as The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus describes it, is not a new phenomenon. Before there was Third Way, there was the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). And before there was Bill Daley, there was Hillary Clinton - a key member of the DLC's leadership team during her entire tenure in the US Senate (2000-2008). As Clinton seeks progressive support, it is important to consider her role in the influential movement to, as The American Prospect describes it, "reinvent the [Democratic] party as one pledged to fiscal restraint, less government, and a pro-business, pro-free market outlook." This fairly recent history is an important part of Clinton's record, and she owes it to primary voters to answer for it.

The Reign of the DLC

A lot has happened since the last time the Democrats had a contested primary. The 2008 economic crisis, the growth of the Occupy movement, the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement and the consequent increase in public attention to the ongoing killings of Black people by police, and the Bernie Sanders campaign have all played major roles in shaping the political consensus of primary voters. None of these existed when Barack Obama won the nomination over Clinton in June 2008.

But before all of these events shaped public opinion, the party was largely guided by the ideas of the Democratic Leadership Council. Founded by Southern Democrats in 1985, the group sought to transform the party by pushing it to embrace more conservative positions and win support from big business.

The DLC's goal was to advance "a message that was less tilted toward minorities and welfare, less radical on social issues like abortion and gays, more pro-defense, and more conservative on economic issues," wrote Robert Dreyfuss in a 2001 article in The American Prospect. "The DLC thundered against the 'liberal fundamentalism' of the party's base - unionists, blacks, feminists, Greens, and cause groups generally."

CONTINUED...

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/33869-hillary-clinton-s-ghosts-a-legacy-of-pushing-the-democratic-party-to-the-right

[DJ13]

87. “The moderate and conservative Democrats didn’t make it past the first round in its primaries.....

......in 1984 and we want to change that,” said Nunn, a major Democratic proponent of increased military spending who had backed John Glenn in the 1984 race.


These idiots are missing the big picture, which is theres a reason the moderate and conservative Democrats werent popular back then...................... its because they werent Democrats, they were lying Republicans.

[AzDar]

90. K & R

[Enthusiast]

92. K&R! This post deserves hundreds of recommendations.

[Demsrule86]

95. These sort of posts

demonstrate why Bernie needs to go. This is not helpful in a general election effort. Before Clinton, we had not won the presidency in 12 years and the country had moved right: viewing Reagan as the second coming of Jesus. I have always felt Clinton was the only person who could have beaten George Bush with his new Democrat schtick. But of course, you guys could have elected Bernie rin 92 I am sure or someone like . where were Dukakis and McGovern when you needed them?

[Octafish]

97. If Hillary Clinton can't stand up to the facts, what chance does she really have?

As CounterPunch’s Mike Whitney wisely pointed out, Trump did America an enormous favor in that ten-second stretch of epic truth-telling at the Fox debate–when he breezily admitted that Hillary Clinton “had” to attend his wedding, not because she cares about him, but because he buys, sells, and trades the Hillary Clintons of the world like a twelve-year-old playing Fantasy Football. In a sane America, Trump’s forbidden truth would have upended the whole political dialogue–but CNN and MSNBC studiously ignored it and spent five whole days chasing updates on the Megan Kelly “bleeding” remark instead.

If Trump had real guts and vision–and if he was serious about winning–he would make that Forbidden Truth the core of his campaign, and keep expanding it: “Everyone’s angry that America is run by the 1%–well, I’m not just the 1%, I’m the 1% of the 1%, and I’m the only one who not only knows the tricks of the trade, but who’ll let you in on all our dirty little secrets, and change all the rules…The Tea Party and the leftists are both right: the whole game is rigged, and we’re going to blow it up and start fresh.”

-- John Eskow http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/14/trumps-self-hatred-will-destroy-his-campaign/

Either they're good friends or she answers when called.

[disillusioned73]

98. K&R..

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic."

John F. Kennedy

[CrispyQ]

100. And then there's this:

If Clinton Wins, She Plans To Put Bill To Work on Trade: “He’s Gotta Be In Charge Of This”
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511892566

[polly7]

103. I had to read the comments for that, I thought it must have been satire.

For months, even implying she wasn't going to handle things all on her own got people here called sexist, misogynists and 'Berniebro' haters.

His trade policies greatly harmed the lives for millions, I can't believe she doesn't know that people are aware of this.

[CrispyQ]

105. You can see a lot of us thought it was satire.

Yes I remember the claims that this will be her own administration & that she will govern left of Bill.

[polly7]

102. I just read this, Octafish .. I'm positive everyone here knows of all of it

- using it to kick up your great thread, anyway.

The Clintonian era which began under Bill Clinton in the 1990s was marked by the Democratic Party’s open advocacy and implementation of neoliberalism, as a continuation of the “trickle down” ideas of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. The Clinton administration passed devastating policies like NAFTA, with its brutal effects on workers and the environment; the 1994 crime bill with its dramatic expansion of incarceration; and the destruction of welfare with its inhuman effects on the poor and particularly single mothers. Such laws were part of an overall agenda of attacks on social services and on the interests of the working class and people of color. Bill and Hillary Clinton were political partners in that process, as they are political partners in Hillary’s election campaign today.

As a U.S. Senator, Clinton voted for the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, the Patriot Act re-authorization, for new “free trade” deals (including the 2008 Panama agreement which helped perfect it as a tax haven), for bank deregulation, the Wall Street bailouts (TARP), the 2006 border fence legislation, and the list goes on. As Secretary of State she was perhaps the administration’s most aggressive proponent for interventions in Libya and Syria that fueled the humanitarian crisis in the region. She acted as a global spokesperson for fracking, and in spite of considerable pressure from Sanders has not backed down from this environmentally devastating practice.

Hillary won the admiration of Bloomberg Businessweek for her corporate advocacy as Secretary, noting that “Clinton turned the State Department into a machine for promoting U.S. business,” and sought “to install herself as the government’s highest-ranking business lobbyist.”

How can anyone seriously argue that we can continue our political revolution by supporting one of the highest profile opponents of that revolution, who has essentially vowed that the things we’re fighting for will “never ever happen”? Hillary Clinton’s actual policies will not be rooted in whatever platform is passed at the convention, but will be based instead on her own neoliberal politics and on the influence of Wall Street and the billionaire class that have funded her campaign. In fact, the Clinton camp has already responded to Sanders, rejecting attempts to push Hillary to the left.

https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/its-not-about-bernie-why-we-cant-let-our-revolution-die-in-philadelphia/

[Octafish]

107. Our suffering translates to their power.

Consider these are the wealthiest times in human history -- by far. Per David Stockman, 7/8th of all wealth ever created has been created since 1981.

Pruneface's budget guru must've added up all the GDP and estimated the stuff from the middle ages. Whatever his methodology, his point is that most of THAT has ended up in the pockets of today's greedhead plutocrats and oligarchs.

In 1985, the top five percent of the households – the wealthiest five percent – had net worth of $8 trillion – which is a lot. Today, after serial bubble after serial bubble, the top five per cent have net worth of $40 trillion. The top five per cent have gained more wealth than the whole human race had created prior to 1980.” -- David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's budget director

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7009217n&tag=related;photovideo

SOURCE: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/10/28/60minutes/main6999906_page4.shtml

And to think there are kids in America who would go to bed hungry every night if they had one.

So. Why are we living in austerity? Why are TPP and the rest being rolled out to bring about a New Feudalism. Do they really want another Dark Age, post-Fukushima style?

[One of the 99]

104. Except this article overlooks why the DLC rose.

It was due to the Dems losing 3 Presidential elections in a row.

Plus the DLC disbanded several years ago. Those still railing about it now remind me of FAUX news hosts who are still complaining about ACORN.

[Octafish]

106. October Surprise + Safari Club = CIA Old Boys in Power For Ever and Ever

As part of the October Surprise, Poppy Bush and Bill Casey worked their Old School ties at CIA and Wall Street to do in the career of President Jimmy Carter.

From...

The State, the Deep State, and the Wall Street Overworld

By Prof Peter Dale Scott
Global Research, March 10, 2014
The Asia-Pacific Journal, Volume 12, Issue 10, No. 5

EXCERPT...

The Safari Club Milieu: George H.W. Bush, Theodore Shackley, and BCCI

The usual account of this super-agency’s origin is that it was

the brainchild of Count Alexandre de Marenches, the debonair and mustachioed chief of France’s CIA. The SDECE (Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage)…. Worried by Soviet and Cuban advances in postcolonial Africa, and by America’s post-Watergate paralysis in the field of undercover activity, the swashbuckling Marenches had come to Turki’s father, King Faisal, with a proposition…. [By 1979] Somali president Siad Barre had been bribed out of Soviet embrace by $75 million worth of Egyptian arms (paid for… by Saudi Arabia)….95

Joseph Trento adds that “The Safari Club needed a network of banks to finance its intelligence operations,… With the official blessing of George Bush as the head of the CIA, Adham transformed… the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a worldwide money-laundering machine.”.96

Trento claims also that the Safari Club then was able to work with some of the controversial CIA operators who were then forced out of the CIA by Turner, and that this was coordinated by perhaps the most controversial of them all: Theodore Shackley.

Shackley, who still had ambitions to become DCI, believed that without his many sources and operatives like [Edwin] Wilson, the Safari Club—operating with [former DCI Richard] Helms in charge in Tehran—would be ineffective. … Unless Shackley took direct action to complete the privatization of intelligence operations soon, the Safari Club would not have a conduit to [CIA] resources. The solution: create a totally private intelligence network using CIA assets until President Carter could be replaced.97

Kevin Phillips has suggested that Bush on leaving the CIA had dealings with the bank most closely allied with Safari Club operations: the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). In Phillips’ words,

[font color="green"]After leaving the CIA in January 1977, Bush became chairman of the executive committee of First International Bancshares and its British subsidiary, where, according to journalists Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin in their 1992 book ‘False Profits’ [p. 345], Bush ‘traveled on the bank’s behalf and sometimes marketed to international banks in London, including several Middle Eastern institutions.[/font color]

Joseph Trento adds that through the London branch of this bank, which Bush chaired, “Adham’s petrodollars and BCCI money flowed for a variety of intelligence operations”99

It is clear moreover that BCCI operations, like Khashoggi’s before them, were marked by the ability to deal behind the scenes with both the Arab countries and also Israel.100

[font color="green"]It is clear that for years the American deep state in Washington was both involved with and protected BCCI. Acting CIA director Richard Kerr acknowledged to a Senate Committee “that the CIA had also used BCCI for certain intelligence-gathering operations.”101[/font color]

[font color="red"]Later, a congressional inquiry showed that for more than ten years preceding the BCCI collapse in the summer of 1991, the FBI, the DEA, the CIA, the Customs Service, and the Department of Justice all failed to act on hundreds of tips about the illegalities of BCCI’s international activities.102[/font color]

Far less clear is the attitude taken by Wall Street banks towards the miscreant BCCI. The Senate report on BCCI charged however that the Bank of England “had withheld information about BCCI’s frauds from public knowledge for 15 months before closing the bank.”103

CONTINUED...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-state-the-deep-state-and-the-wall-street-overworld/5372843

From there, Ronnie was set for the role of a lifetime, what was supposed to be a bit part extended.

Through a Glass Darkly

Alexander Cockburn
Lies Of Our Times (p. 12-13)
November 1991

What was surprising to me was Reagan’s condition. He was exhausted to the point of incoherence throughout much ofthe interview and could not remember the substance of any subject that had been discussed apart from Mitterrand’s expression of anticommunism. I had not seen Reagan at such close rangesince the assassination attempt nearly four months earlier, and was shocked at his condition.... Reagan simply was unable to recall the contents of the talks in which he had just participated.... The interview concluded at a signal from Deaver,who did not seem to find the president’s condition unusual.”

Thus ran Lou Cannon’s recollections of an interview with the Commander-in-Chief in 1981, as set forth in his book President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Simon & Schuster,1991), published earlier this year. But how did Cannon describe Reagan’s condition to the readers of the Washington Post when he wrote up his interview? In the July 23, 1981, Washington Post,Cannon’s story appeared under the headline “Reagan Describes Summit Meeting as ‘Worth Its Weight in Gold.’ ” Cannon’s report gives the impression of a lucid chief executive returning home after a fruitful colloquy with other western leaders at the economic summit held in Ottawa in mid-July. Cannon did mention in the tenth paragraph that “Reagan appeared tired to the point of near-exhaustion,” but this observation was quickly qualified by the opinion of “aides” that the president had been doing a lot of prep for the conference and was also worried about the Middle East.

Cannon shared his brief session with Reagan aboard Air Force One with Hedrick Smith of the New York Times, who similarly gave his readers the impression of a president in touch with things rather than the incoherent old man they had actually encountered. As did Cannon, Smith wove the few quotable remarks from Reagan into a tapestry of attributed presidential dicta passed on — and no doubt confected— by Meese, Deaver,and Speakes. It is clear from Cannon’s account of the conference itself that Reagan was fogged up throughout the actual conference, occasionally interjecting trivial observations or homely jokes into the proceedings and then relapsing into bemused silence. Cannon’s memoir is one more indication of the cover-up that took place in the wake of Hinckley’s assassination bid on March 30, 1981. At the time of the shooting, the press was full of phrases like “bouncing back,” “iron constitution,” and other terms indicating that Reagan had emerged from the ordeal in good shape. In fact Reagan very nearly died on the operating table and was a dotard afterwards. He never fully recovered.

Conclusion: Unless a president is actually dead, the WhiteHouse press corps can be relied upon to present him as both sentient and sapient, no matter how decrepit his physical and mental condition.

SOURCE in PDF form:

http://liesofourtimes.org/public_html/1991/Nov1991%20V2%20N10/Nov1991%20V2%20N10.pdf

Somewhere in Detroit, 1980 GOP Convention:



After the election, the relationship really, ah, evolved:

George Bush Takes Charge

The Uses of "Counter-Terrorism"

By Christopher Simpson
Covert Action Quarterly 58

A paper trail of declassified documents from the Reagan‑Bush era yields valuable information on how counter‑terrorism provided a powerful mechanism for solidifying Bush's power base and launching a broad range of national security initiatives.

During the Reagan years, George Bush used "crisis management" and "counter‑terrorism" as vehicles for running key parts of the clandestine side of the US government.

Bush proved especially adept at plausible denial. Some measure of his skill in avoiding responsibility can be taken from the fact that even after the Iran‑Contra affair blew the Reagan administration apart, Bush went on to become the "foreign policy president," while CIA Director William Casey, by then conveniently dead, took most of the blame for a number of covert foreign policy debacles that Bush had set in motion.

The trail of National Security Decision Directives (NSDDS) left by the Reagan administration begins to tell the story. True, much remains classified, and still more was never committed to paper in the first place. Even so, the main picture is clear: As vice president, George Bush was at the center of secret wars, political murders, and America's convoluted oil politics in the Middle East.

SNIP...

Reagan and the NSC also used NSDDs to settle conflicts among security agencies over bureaucratic turf and lines of command. It is through that prism that we see the first glimmers of Vice President Bush's role in clandestine operations during the 1980s.

CONTINUED...

More details from the good professor:

EXCERPT...

NSDD 159. MANAGEMENT OF U.S. COVERT OPERATIONS, (TOP SECRET/VEIL‑SENSITIVE), JAN. 18,1985

The Reagan administration's commitment to significantly expand covert operations had been clear since before the 1980 election. How such operations were actually to be managed from day to day, however, was considerably less certain. The management problem became particularly knotty owing to legal requirements to notify congressional intelligence oversight committees of covert operations, on the one hand, and the tacitly accepted presidential mandate to deceive those same committees concerning sensitive operations such as the Contra war in Nicaragua, on the other.

The solution attempted in NSDD 159 was to establish a small coordinating committee headed by Vice President George Bush through which all information concerning US covert operations was to be funneled. The order also established a category of top secret information known as Veil, to be used exclusively for managing records pertaining to covert operations.

[font color="red"]The system was designed to keep circulation of written records to an absolute minimum while at the same time ensuring that the vice president retained the ability to coordinate US covert operations with the administration's overt diplomacy and propaganda.

Only eight copies of NSDD 159 were created. The existence of the vice president's committee was itself highly classified.[/font color] The directive became public as a result of the criminal prosecutions of Oliver North, John Poindexter, and others involved in the Iran‑Contra affair, hence the designation "Exhibit A" running up the left side of the document.

CONTINUED...

CovertAction Quarterly no 58 Fall 1996 pp31-40.

This all matters because there's a steady bloody red line from 1981 to the present day few write about. More would, were the nation's news media honest and lived up to their constitutional mandate. Today they may have hijacked for their own use the NSA -- what Sen. Frank Church warned us about in 1975.

Behind the Curtain: Booz Allen Hamilton and its Owner, The Carlyle Group

Written by Bob Adelmann
The New American; June 13, 2013

According to writers Thomas Heath and Marjorie Censer at the Washington Post, The Carlyle Group and its errant child, Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), have a public relations problem, thanks to NSA leaker and former BAH employee Edward Snowden. By the time top management at BAH learned that one of their top level agents had gone rogue, and terminated his employment, it was too late.

For years Carlyle had, according to the Post, “nurtured a reputation as a financially sophisticated asset manager that buys and sells everything from railroads to oil refineries”; but now the light from the Snowden revelations has revealed nothing more than two companies, parent and child, “bound by the thread of turning government secrets into profits.”

And have they ever. When The Carlyle Group bought BAH back in 2008, it was totally dependent upon government contracts in the fields of information technology (IT) and systems engineering for its bread and butter. But there wasn't much butter: After two years the company’s gross revenues were $5.1 billion but net profits were a minuscule $25 million, close to a rounding error on the company’s financial statement. In 2012, however, BAH grossed $5.8 billion and showed earnings of $219 million, nearly a nine-fold increase in net revenues and a nice gain in value for Carlyle.

Unwittingly, the Post authors exposed the real reason for the jump in profitability: close ties and interconnected relationships between top people at Carlyle and BAH, and the agencies with which they are working. The authors quoted George Price, an equity analyst at BB&T Capital: "[Booz Allen has] got a great brand, they've focused over time on hiring top people, including bringing on people who have a lot of senior government experience."

CONTINUED w Links n Privatized INTEL...

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/15696-behind-the-curtain-booz-allen-hamilton-and-its-owner-the-carlyle-group

Wouldn't it be great to live in a democracy, a republic built on equal justice for all, though? Traitors, warmongers and banksters would be in jail instead of printing money.

Instead, we've lived ''Money trumps peace'' since the Ayatollah gave Reagan a major for the Hostages and Jimmy Carter got the boot as a failed, miserable human being. Did you know he was one of the bravest men to ever serve as President?

One would not know it, reading the newspapers or watching the tee vee, even PBS.

[bobthedrummer]

108. K&R#121 n/t

[Octafish]

118. Phil GRAMM is why I wouldn't have voted for Bankster Bail Out Bill.

After his exit from the US Senate, Phil Gramm found a job at Swiss bank UBS as vice chairman. He later brought in former President Bill Clinton to the Wealth Management team. What a coincidence, they are the two key figures in repealing Glass-Steagal. Since the New Deal it was the financial regulation that protected the US taxpayer from the Wall Street casino. Oh well, what are a few hundred million in speaking fees compared to a $16 trillion bailout among friends?



It's a Buy-Partisan Who's Who:

President William J. Clinton
President George W. Bush Heh heh heh.
Robert J. McCann
James Carville
John V. Miller
Paula D. Polito
Anthony Roth
Mike Ryan
John Savercool

SOURCE: http://financialservicesinc.ubs.com/revitalizingamerica/SenatorPhilGramm.html

So brazen, they don't even hide it, they are past caring.

Some of why DUers and ALL voters should care about Phil Gramm.

The fact the nation's "news media" don't bring this up AT ALL should be of great concern to all who care about Democracy.

[antigop]

111. K&R nt

[Time for change]

112. And let's not forget the Telecommunications Act of 1996

which helped make our national "News" media into the ridiculous right wing monopoly that it is today -- and which was signed into law by Bill.

[2banon]

117. Roughly a couple of hours spent reading through all this material...

as always, well worth the time.

haven't "refreshed" or reloaded this thread yet, only see one or two Hillary supporters, or defenders of the Third Way Neo Liberal policies here, I would thank them for their input, but really wished they'd address the specifics on any of these sub-topics connected to the history behind the policies behind the actors involved, all of whom contributed significantly to the nightmare that is before us each and every election, save the fact that a genuine progressive reformer is in play for the first time since FDR.

I would include JFK as well, but the story is mixed for me as regards Neo-Liberal policies in South America. but that's another subject for another day.

As usual, Octafish another outstanding, informative thread.

Thank you!