The Progressive Mind @Libertea2012

RT: Why the f are lobbyists superdelegates? System is rigged.

#WhatTheyDontWantUsToKnow… #BernieStrong

Lee Fang @lhfang

creepy that Hillary compared Al From -strategist behind welfare reform, NAFTA, etc- to 9/11 first responder -- for rescuing the Dem Party

~snip~

Lee Fang: In this 2002 speech Hillary called for "more welfare reform," says cuts to police are "unilateral disarmament"

https://web.archive.org/web/20050504101842/http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=106&subid=122&contentid=250750 …


I would also like to thank Al From for inviting me here today, and especially for bringing the 2002 National Conversation to New York. I hope the Democratic Party will once again follow the DLC lead and bring the Democratic Convention to New York as well in 2004. If I'm ever invited to the Republican leadership Council, if there is such a thing, I'll ask them to bring the Republican convention here as well.

My friend Al From is a "first responder" of another kind -- he was a first responder to the needs of the Democratic Party and what ailed us back in the 1980's. I still remember his trip to Arkansas, his meeting with my husband, his passionate advocacy that ideas really mattered and we had to get back to the idea business and we had to stand for something larger than just trying to win elections and it was that philosophy and that passionate advocacy that brings this huge crowd from all over the country here today. It was a simple idea when you strip it all away. Good ideas, rooted in good values makes for good politics. But it took some convincing for us to drive that home.

PRESS RELEASE


Independent Investigation Confirms Sanders Campaign Told the Truth



APRIL 29, 2016



BURLINGTON, Vt. – Four months ago, in an impulsive overreaction and at a critical point in the campaign just weeks before the closest Iowa caucus results in history, the DNC shut down the Sanders campaign’s access to its own voter file data, only restoring access after the campaign filed a lawsuit in Federal court.

Now, four months later, an independent investigation of the firewall failures in the DNC’s shared voter file database has definitively confirmed that the original claims by the DNC and the Clinton campaign were wholly inaccurate – the Sanders campaign never “stole” any voter file data; the Sanders campaign never “exported” any unauthorized voter file data; and the Sanders campaign certainly never had access to the Clinton campaign’s “strategic road map.”

In fact, the independent investigation has confirmed what the Sanders campaign said from the start:

* The DNC’s security failures allowed four Sanders campaign staffers – three junior-level staffers led by a manager who had been hired at the recommendation of the DNC and who was immediately terminated after the incident – to have extremely short-lived access for one hour to Hillary for America’s scoring models, but not to any of Hillary for America’s proprietary voter data.

* No one else in the Sanders campaign, outside these four staffers, accessed the Hillary for America’s scoring models or had knowledge that the activity was taking place until well after the incident was over.

* With one exception, all unauthorized access took place within the DNC’s own system. While there is evidence that the terminated staffer may have exported a summary data table, the independent investigation of Sanders campaign computers could not locate that file and no one in the Sanders campaign has ever seen that file.

With the investigation behind us, the campaign has withdrawn its lawsuit against the DNC today but continues to implore the DNC to address the systemic instability that remains in its voter file system. It is imperative that the DNC make it a top priority to prevent future data security failures in the voter file system, failures that only serve as unnecessary distractions to the democratic process.

Bernie Sanders Campaign Manager Jeff Weaver said “We are gratified by the results of this independent investigation.”




https://berniesanders.com/press-release/independent-investigation-confirms-sanders-campaign-told-truth/

~snip~

She was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1976. At age 2, she moved with her parents, Pakistani and Indian Muslim academics, to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and only returned to the U.S. at 18 to study at George Washington University. Two years later, she got a White House internship, entering Hillaryland in 1996, around the time President Clinton was first locking eyes with intern Monica Lewinsky. In 1998, when that sex scandal detonated, Abedin was the gofer in the girls’ club forming a leak-proof shield around the humiliated first lady.

“She was a very, very religious person—she didn’t smoke, drink or swear, always very polite,” recalls one Clinton friend, who, like most people who spoke to Newsweek, asked not to be named. “A lot of times, Hillary would snap her fingers and go, ‘Gum.’ And Huma would fetch it.” Abedin took her duties so seriously, the source recalled, that when she learned that Clinton had once carried her own bag up a flight of stairs in her aide’s absence, Abedin nearly burst into tears.



cont'

http://www.newsweek.com/2016/05/06/huma-abedin-hillary-clinton-anthony-weiner-453204.html

~snip~

This clip is a reminder of the ideology that got us into our current mess: rising inequality and debt levels, a global meltdown that led to the greatest looting of the public purse in history, followed by stagnation and deflation that is too widely blamed on the march of technology and not on poor policies and overt corruption. And this thinking is very much alive.

You’ll see Phil Gramm, at the outset, praise “free markets” even though that is an intellectually incoherent notion and depict the New Deal reforms as the result of Depression-bottom lack of faith. At around 12:00, Larry Summers tells the audience how great it is that the Federal government has been running a surplus. In fact, the Federal government acting as a fiscal drag meant some other sector had to dissave, as in borrow and spend, to make up for that to keep the economy from contracting. Since businesses had already gotten in the habit of being overly short-termist, it was consumers who were increasingly taking up the slack. And as we know now, high levels of consumer debt are a negative for growth. Yet that was the driver of the Clinton “prosperity”.

Summers also gives a pean to the fact that big bad government was no longer such a big presence in the financial markets (Treasury bonds outstanding were going down) meant that financial players were out there, doing a marvelous job of allocating. This was two years after Greenspan had already voiced doubts about the dot-com bubble with his “irrational exuberance” remark.

At 14:00, Bill Clinton takes the stage, and at around 16:00, he turns his pitch on how great the economy is. He cites productivity gains that were later called into question (I recall a Barrons article in 1999 or 2000 that identified that all of the productivity gains for the previous period (a quarter? a year?) were entirely due to increases in computer manufacturing, and that in turn was due to hedonic price adjustments. In other words, the Barrons article raised big red flags about the extent of the New Economy productivity miracle.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/04/watch-bill-clinton-larry-summers-and-phil-gramm-have-a-love-fest-over-repeal-of-glass-steagall.html

One commentor at Daily Bail pointed out how Clinton later attempted to deny his enthusiasm for shredding Glass Steagall. From Bill Clinton on deregulation: ‘The Republicans made me do it!’ at the Columbia Journalism Review in 2013: The ex-president seriously mischaracterizes his record

Bill Clinton sat down with Fareed Zakaria last week ….Clinton’s comment about his record on regulation is an actual newsmaker, because it’s a giant whopper:

What happened? The American people gave the Congress to a group of very conservative Republicans. When they passed bills with the veto proof majority with a lot of Democrats voting for it, that I couldn’t stop, all of a sudden we turn out to be maniacal deregulators. I mean, come on. I know Senator Warren said the other day, admitted when she introduced a bill to reinstate the division between commercial and investment banks, she admitted that the repeal of Glass-Steagall did not cause one single solitary financial institution to fail.

This is, to be kind, bullshit….Clinton installed Robert Rubin and Larry Summers in the Treasury, which resulted in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which officially did in Glass-Steagall and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which left the derivatives market a laissez-faire Wild West (not to mention a disastrous strong dollar policy that was a critical and underrated factor in the bubble). He also reappointed Ayn Rand-acolyte Alan Greenspan, who has as much responsibility as anyone for creating the crisis, as Fed chairman—twice….his administration actively encouraged the big deregulatory legislation, and squashed its own dissenters, like Brooksley Born, who saw disaster ahead.

There’s even more detail in the CJR story, in case you’d ever need to cite it to Clintonistas.

cont'

http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/bill_clinton_the_republicans_m.php

~snip~

And there you have the dilemma facing Clinton the now-candidate for president: She has refused calls to release speech transcripts because, she has said, other candidates haven't done so — although it appears there is no other candidate who has pocketed financiers' money for palaver as aggressively as she has. Yes, if she discloses what she's said to bankers, her detractors — led by Bernie Sanders — may find reasons to lambaste her for cozying up to special financial interests. But if she won't release the transcripts, the public will fill in the gap with nasty presumptions. As Clinton edges closer to knocking off Sanders for the Democratic nomination, the focus may shift to other issues, but it shouldn't. Voters have a legitimate interest in exploring what she has said to rooms full of bankers and investors in the context of evaluating her perspective on financial regulations and economic growth.


Does what she says now in public jibe with what she said then to small, select gatherings of the rich and powerful? If not, what's changed? Clinton was in the speechmaking business for about two years. Business was good, as it has been for her husband, former President Bill Clinton. He has earned more than $100 million on the lecture circuit since leaving office, The Washington Post reported in 2014. Hillary Clinton earned $21.7 million from about 100 speaking engagements after her tenure as secretary of state, according to The Wall Street Journal. She spoke to many business groups. Of all the paid gigs, one trio garners most of the attention: three appearances she made at Goldman Sachs client conferences, for which the firm paid her a reported $675,000. What did Clinton tell Goldman Sachs? Well, let's assume the firm didn't pay $225,000 per session to get a dressing-down. Politico quoted one attendee saying Clinton praised the firm for its role in the economy: "It's so far from what she sounds like as a candidate now. It was like a rah-rah speech. She sounded more like a Goldman Sachs managing director." Clinton has been dogged by Sanders over the Wall Street connection because of the theme central to his campaign: that he's for the little guy and gal, while she stands with the big money boys and girls who nearly destroyed the economy.

~snip~

The issue here is that Clinton, now a would-be president, earned an extraordinary living giving speeches and making appearances. All transcripts from those activities should be available for public scrutiny, just as all presidential candidates' previous professional work should be open to examination. For example, if Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination, expect to read a lot more details about his decades in business. And rightly so. Voters deserve to know, and understand, how he made his money. Why are those particular speeches and conversations important for assessing Clinton's candidacy? Because how she presented herself to influential people in a private setting reflected her judgment. Voters are reasonable to ask: How did she handle the situation? Better than Mitt Romney? In 2012 he did himself in by talking disparagingly about low-income people in private to wealthy donors.


We're guessing Clinton made nice with Wall Street and feels uncomfortable about it now. Maybe she said something to damage her credibility among some potential supporters. So be it. Clinton could have avoided scrutiny by finding different work. Instead, she earned big speaking fees based on her experience as a public servant. If she likes that role and wants to be president, she has an obligation to share what she said.


cont'

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-hillary-clinton-speeches-goldman-sachs-edit-0429-jm-20160428-story.html

PRESS RELEASE


Sanders to Democratic Party: Whose Side are We On?



APRIL 28TH, 2016






SPRINGFIELD, Ore. – Saying that “our job is to revitalize American democracy,” U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday challenged the Democratic Party establishment to decide if it will fight for working families or do the bidding of Wall Street, big oil, the pharmaceutical industry and other special interests.

“Are we on the side of working people or big-money interests? Do we stand with the elderly, the sick and the poor or do we stand with Wall Street speculators and the insurance companies?” the Democratic Party presidential candidate asked 8,300 supporters at an outdoor rally at Island Park.

He said a key reason why 63 percent of voters did not go to the polls in the last election and nearly 80 percent of young and low-income people stayed home is that “the Democratic Party, up until now, has not been clear on which side they are on on the major issues facing this country.”

Do we stand with the elderly, the sick and the poor or do we stand with Wall Street speculators and the insurance companies?

Senator Sanders, Springfield, Oregon

On issue after issue, Sanders challenged the Democratic Party to pick sides. “You can’t be for Wall Street and the working people of this country. You cannot be for the drug companies and senior citizens and veterans,” he said. “You cannot be on the side of workers and support those corporations that have thrown millions on the street.”

The failure of Democratic leadership to send a clear message on where the party stands is why Republicans have grabbed control Congress and Statehouses. “The problem in my view is not that the Republicans are winning elections. It’s that Democrats are losing elections,” he said.





Sanders also faulted Democrats for not pushing election reforms that would increase voter turnout and help Democrats win elections. For example, he said, Democrats should get behind legislation he introduced in the Senate to register everyone to vote when they turn 18 years old. “The Democratic Party has got to be very clear. We need automatic voter registration.” In 2015, Oregon became the first state in the nation to require state agencies to automatically register voters when they get a new driver’s license or identification card.

He also called on Democrats in states where access to the voting booth is restricted in primary contests to open the process and let millions of independents participate, “Republican governors want to make it harder to vote. Our job is to bring more people into the system. We need open primaries.”

Sanders also spelled out differences with Hillary Clinton. On trade policy, he opposed and she backed most of the job-killing trade deals. On climate change, he challenged Clinton to support a carbon tax to discourage burning the fossil fuels that are warming the planet. He pressed her to support a nationwide ban on fracking that imperils safety of drinking water and encourages fossil fuel. He asked Clinton to join him in supporting a Medicare-for-all health care system and to crack down on pharmaceutical companies that charge Americans the highest prices for prescription medicine anywhere in the world.

“Secretary Clinton may not believe the American people have the ability to take on the insurance companies and take on the drug companies. I disagree.”

Sanders also cited his big leads over Republican White House hopefuls Donald Trump, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Sanders beats Trump by twice as big a margin as Clinton. He also holds leads over Cruz and Kasich. She holds a narrow edge over the Texas senator and loses in many polls to the Ohio governor.

“I hope delegates to the Democratic National Convention take heed of this,” Sanders said at the rally.

Sanders, who launched his campaign one year ago as an underdog, has so far won 17 primaries and caucuses and amassed 1,350 delegates to this summer’s Democratic National Convention. He has set fundraising records with 7.3 million donations. And he is drawing the biggest crowds for any presidential candidate.

“I think Secretary Clinton and I agree that we must not have a Republican in the White House but I think the evidence is overwhelming that you are looking at the strongest Democratic candidate,” Sanders said. “And the reason for that is that our campaign is able to reach beyond the Democratic base and win the support of millions of independents.

“This is the campaign that is generating excitement and enthusiasm and a large voter turnout.”

Oregon is among 14 states, territories and the District of Columbia which have yet to vote in the contest between Sanders and Hillary Clinton. He thanked U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon for being the only member of the United States Senate “to have the guts” to back Sanders.








https://berniesanders.com/sanders-democratic-party-whose-side/