The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    As we were coming

    By Flavius on Wed, 06/07/2017 - 8:34am |

    back from the library ,across the icy Ft. Dix parade ground , I asked J why he wasn´t going to officer candidate school. I was.And he seemed to me  far more qualified. I´d had a good enough education at a college no one had ever heard of then or since..He´d been a star at Oberlin.  And by any standards he was a commanding  personality. I mostly sat on the floor by my bunk reading. At that point  ¨The God that failed¨ which J had in fact loaned me.

    He answered. ¨I don´t know whether I can handle combat and if I fail I don´t want to be responsible for anyone other than me.¨

    We resumed the conversation  20  years later.

    I´d read about him . With amusement . He was known for raising money, lots of it , for the Democratic Party. On Wall St.

    In connection with my job  I was invited down to J´s firm   and  the very junior young man showing me around pointed down  to the trading floor where J was in charge and said , in awed tones, ¨and  that´s J , ¨" .

    ¨Yeah¨ I said.¨I know¨

    ¨Oh, how come¨ ?

    ¨From the Army¨.

    ¨Oh let´s go down¨ said my host. I demurred but ultimately  we did..

    My host did the introductions. J´s station was a raised desk , next to which there was a notice board with the   peace dove tacked to it. In fact several  .He was alone , leaning back in a swivel chair, feet on desk, at the head of long room with 50 or more guys staring intently at video  screens. From time to time one or another of them would stand and signal  to J  requesting approval of a trade.  Which J would provide-or not- by a hand signal.

    I said ¨J the last time we talked you said you weren´t going to  OCS because you didn´t know how you would   handle combat. How did that work out?¨

    He laughed and said ¨the second time I had to take a company commander back to the chaplain  I decided I could stop worrying about that¨. And went back to work.

    When I read the occasional  Dagblog statements that progressives´ next campaign should  feature attacking Wall Street I think of J. .  And of my daughter and son in law , both on the Street.  Who drove to Pennsylvania in 2008 to go door to door for Obama- (not in 2012 because ¨Occupy¨ caused them to think their presence  wouldn´t be welcome.)

    Life is too complicated for it to be sensible to indulge  in across- the- board condemnations of those employed in any section of society..

    Were financial toys developed on Wall St. responsible for 2008. ?You bet. Although that could and should have been prevented -or at least ameliorated -by Greenspan´s do nothing Fed.

    Does that mean everyone in the financial community is our enemy?

    I can hear J chuckling.

     

    Comments

    I don't know of anyone who thinks that. I know some lovely people who work for Koch Industries and also for Phillip Morris. I think they've made bad career choices and tell them that. But they aren't the enemy. Hell, a friend even worked selling double glazing over the phone to gullible old ladies. I don't judge them, I might try to encourage them to do something more rewarding in life, but that is about it. 

    I don't want to speak for others, but my standpoint is more that I think the Democratic party would be healthier if its donor networks and candidate vetting networks weren't so dominated by Wall Street, big Pharma, etc. It skews priorities away from what the majority of people care about, and gets you candidates without the courage of their convictions given the donor v grass roots divide. 


    by Obey on Wed, 06/07/2017 - 9:32am

    Re: I don't know of anyone who thinks that.

    I suspect Flavius is thinking about this recent interchange about "corporatists" with HSG


    by artappraiser on Wed, 06/07/2017 - 10:58am

    I don't know much about HSG, but if they think that anyone who happens to work for a big corporation is "the enemy", that is a pretty wild worldview to me.

    I'm trying to think back to the Café days if any of the more interesting characters thought that. Maybe some of the commenters over at the more hardcore firedoglake but even there I really doubt it. 


    by Obey on Wed, 06/07/2017 - 11:17am

    Two very old phrases: advertising works ,you can´t beat something with nothing.

    o  I admired almost everything about Obama . Except his marketing non-smarts. Obamacare was a  BFD.  Did you know it saved  18,793  lives? Neither did I. Because he  never told us what that number is  (i.e. never  had someone -the CBO? hell, I would have done it - have a go at making that calculation )  .

    What do you think Trump would have done? And he´d have been right.

    o And it would have taken money. Lots. And in particular lots more than in the dear departed pre before Citizens United days.. If you whisper in Grant´s tomb , chances are you´ll be heard. In Yankee Stadium, fuggedabout it.

    I completely agree with you that it would be great if we didn´t have to share control of  our party with the big bucks brigade. But that hand´s been played and we lost.  We play by the new rules or we sit on the side lines.  

      

     

     

     


    by Flavius on Wed, 06/07/2017 - 12:38pm

    Remember that Hillary spent 30 years building up her corporate big donor network and Bernie almost matched her in funds, not despite eschewing corporate money but because he eschewed corporate money.

    Also think of Corbyn, outgunned two to one in terms of financing but able to (almost? ) close a 24% gap in the polls. Again because he sounds credible on economic issues given his distance from Labour's usual corporate backers. 

    Of course the evidence is not settled yet. We'll see how Berniac challengers fare in primaries for '18 for instance. But all of this strikes me as secondary. The Democrats' main problem isn't money. It's that they are vastly out organized on a grass-roots level compared to the GOP. That may slowly be changing. But it will take much more than one election cycle, and it will require more interest in local and state issues than this pretty silly hand-wringing about how mean Democratic candidates can or should be to Wall Street and co. 


    by Obey on Wed, 06/07/2017 - 1:36pm

    Right, Bernie had 300,000 anonymous bundled <$27 donations resulting in a $10 million untraceable money bomb, as 1 month's highlight, and then when it was all over just decided not to file a final report after all despite months of delays.

    Maybe it was on the up-and-up, but I'm not assuming nuttin. We already know Karl Rove & other Republican PACs were spending well to boost Bernie. What if Putin had an extra $50 million sitting around for $27 on-line donations over the course of the primaries? All under-the-wire, no accounting or names for anything less than $50 (and hell, with all that hacking, they could have put together a roster of people who are unlikely to check the donation listings to find out they mysteriously gave when they didn't). Quite the convenient strategy, that $27 bit. What a bizarre campaign season.

    [If that's not enough paranoia for you, read the background on Tad Devine [scroll down], the Manafort partner from the Ukraine/Yanukovych days who convinced Bernie to run and reportedly pocketed a cool $15 million for the privilege. Slate has more on Bernie's campaign spending.]


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 06/07/2017 - 6:10pm

    Yes, it's likely that if there were adequate campaign funding disclosure laws Sanders wouldn't look as pure as he claims. But even if we take his claims at face value it doesn't make the case for all democrats to refuse all large and corporate donations.


    by ocean-kat on Wed, 06/07/2017 - 7:13pm

    Yes, I've backed your summation before, and Bernie's success relied on both an enthusiastic crowd and an opponent they could hate. This kind of dynamic is not present in most races. Often candidates are rather dull, but you yake what you can get.


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 06/07/2017 - 7:22pm

    And I tend to like the dull candidates. I tune in when they get into the nitty gritty details when many others tune out. I deliberately tamp down any emotions I might feel from inspiring rhetoric by a politician because I don't want my reasoned choice to be compromised by emotion.


    by ocean-kat on Wed, 06/07/2017 - 7:55pm

    Funny Slate piece. The scandal was that Bernie bought ads? And that the GOP tried to smear him? Political ad buyers have complex corporate structures. Give me a break. 


    by Obey on Thu, 06/08/2017 - 4:12am

    Slate piece was more an irony than scandal- that the change guy is stuck with traditional marketing channels to get his message out, that there wasn't enough time/etc. to do anything unique so had to resort to established campaign practice.


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 06/08/2017 - 5:25am

    There was a glimmer of something interesting, with the charges by some black advocacy rep complaining about a lack of investment in outreach. But the article just dropped that thread. Connects with what Rmrd has been saying. 


    by Obey on Thu, 06/08/2017 - 5:39am

    Connects also with other complaints I've seen that Bernie was great at mobilizing but terrible at organizing. Our Revolution looks like a bit of a dud. Bernie activist acquaintances of mine have dropped it and moved towards more independent local networks. The money issue is secondary to me. I'm more interested in where and how organizing efforts start picking up. 


    by Obey on Thu, 06/08/2017 - 5:45am

    More independent local networks sounds fine. I mistrust the national movement coming out of nowhere. 


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 06/08/2017 - 10:18am

    Let us once again get into what Sanders proved about campaign finance and what he didn't. Sanders showed that one candidate in a democratic primary can get sufficient money from small individual donors to be competitive. He didn't show that two, or four, or six candidates could get enough money to be competitive. If only one could get enough money from small donors is that what we want? One candidate catches the zeitgeist and the others are at a severe disadvantage due to lack of funds?

    The amount spent in a primary is a fraction of what is spent in the general. To match republican spending Sanders, or similar candidates who take no corporate money, would have to raise several times as much as he raised in the primary. Sanders did not prove that he or any other candidate could raise sufficient funds for the general, especially after raising the large amount in the primary.

    Most people simply have no idea how much money is spent each election cycle. Total spending for all presidential candidates in both the 2016 primary and general was about 1.5 billion. Spending for all house candidates was over 1 billion. Senate candidates spent a total of nearly 700 million. Divide that 3.2 billion in half and you get a rough idea of how much money small donors would have to donate if democrats refused corporate and PAC money. And that doesn't include any of the undisclosed dark money from PAC's "unaffiliated" with the campaigns the majority of which is spent on republicans.

    Yes, Sanders did an amazing and admirable thing when he proved that one candidate can catch the zeitgeist and get enough money from small donors to compete in the democratic primary. But that's all he proved and I doubt that even he could have raised enough to compete in the general or that there is enough money among small donors to finance all democrats from president to state houses if democrats agree to refuse all large or corporate donations. One can certainly argue that the system spends way too much money but republicans will easily get that much money and won't spend less out of a sense of fairness if democrats opt out of what Citizen United decided was legal campaign funding.

     


    by ocean-kat on Wed, 06/07/2017 - 6:57pm

     One candidate catches the zeitgeist and the others are at a severe disadvantage due to lack of funds?

    That starving of down-ballot races applies more to Hillary than Bernie.

    Anyway, this is a boring rehashed debate. Corbyn manages to compete outgunned 2 to 1, Bernie raises 220 million without the benefit of 30 years of network building, in a primary against a popular (among dems) establishment candidate. He could easily raise 4 or 5 times that in a general election. 


    by Obey on Thu, 06/08/2017 - 4:21am

     One candidate catches the zeitgeist and the others are at a severe disadvantage due to lack of funds?

    That starving of down-ballot races applies more to Hillary than Bernie.

    The sentence from my comment you decided to quote had nothing to do with down ballot races but presidential candidates in a democratic primary. I could be wrong but I don't think your reading comprehension is so poor that you misunderstood. I can only conclude you deliberately twisted the meaning to make an attack on Hillary. The games people play to avoid actually having a real conversation on the issues.

    Anyway, this is a boring rehashed debate.

    A point  I made when I began my comment with, " Let us once again." Which makes me wonder why you and the other keep bringing up and constantly swooning at Sanders feet about the 220 million he raised in the primary. As if it proves every democrat from primary to general could do the same when it doesn't prove squat.

    Boring and rehashed or not the democrats are not going to stop taking corporate money. Democrats would love to stop fund raising from corporations and the rich but those actually running for office know that there's not enough small donations to enable them to compete with republicans. The debate among us on the outside is effectively moot.

     


    by ocean-kat on Thu, 06/08/2017 - 2:49pm

    Money isn't everything~ What can money buy?

    An automobile,

    so you won't get wet;

    etc. 

     

     


    by Flavius on Wed, 06/07/2017 - 10:05pm

    The fact that there are good decent people in the financial services industry does not mean that the financial services industry is a positive force in our society. There are good decent people who work for Exxon Mobil. Does this mean we shouldn't promote a clean green economy because it would cost Exxon Mobil trillions of dollars. Ultimately, the economic interests of analysts, brokers, and money managers conflict in many ways with those of every day Americans. Although there are many more of the latter, the former tend to get their way more frequently even when it comes to Democratic policies because they finance many Democratic candidates. The result has been a disaster for the party and our nation. For these reasons, I think the party should stop taking contributions from corporations, corporate-funded PACs, and bundlers.


    by HSG on Thu, 06/08/2017 - 5:56pm

    the economic interests of analysts, brokers, and money managers conflict in many ways with those of every day Americans.

    I don't agree that this is a black and white case. For just one example, many middle class I.R.A.'s are invested in mutual funds, so their retirement rides on "the markets". (If they don't have an I.R.A., very often the retirement rides on their home's value, see further below on that.)

    .But then I don't agree that this country is amenable to socialism in general. In specific cases of the public good, sure (i.e., national defense, crime and punishment, natural disaster, medical). But concerning income, I believe there is still a large majority that is quite pro-capitalist; If they can't afford to do the capitalism thing, they wish they could and admire it. It's probably the second thing that has always drawn people to this country after the initial pull of freedom of religion (and in some cases, like the Dutch of New York Colony, didn't even care about freedom of religion, it was: give me the freedom to make me some money.) And now it might be the primary thing that draws immigrants.

    Edit to add: also comes to mind the home mortgage deduction is almost as severe a "third rail" issue as Social Security and Medicare. The latter mostly because people feel they have paid for it their entire lives, but the former is because it's "an investment." Capitalism, pure and simple: ownership of real property. "Income property" to create wealth from "sweat equity" in one's spare time is an enormously popular.dream, with TV shows galore still running on topic even after the 2009 crash. The home mortgage deduction puts non home owners at a severe disadvantage, but you hardly hear anyone complaining about it, because they'd rather be homeowners some day too.

     


    by artappraiser on Thu, 06/08/2017 - 6:54pm

    Mortgage deduction is an interesting case, but doesn't really say much that is peculiar to the US. in social democratic countries it's pretty much untouchable too. And as long as a solid majority of people end up using it (i.e. as long as home ownership stays above 50%) it will remain untouchable. I don't think many people want to go Melenchon with a cap on income, but a truly progressive tax system where Warren Buffet pays a higher percentage of his hincome in tax than his secretary, that is probably quite popular. 


    by Obey on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 7:19am

    I believe Bill Clinton's tax rate was well tested for the sweet spot on upper earned income where people didn't start to try to evade by shifting money away from earned income (or from the country itself) but were just willing to pay it. It decimated the massive deficit in short order. And complaints that the rich weren't paying their share dropped to very low levels.

    Some lefty economists who are ideological on much higher top tax rates than 39% commonly  attribute Clinton success with the deficit to the dot com boom and but when they do that it's always been pretty clear to me that they are trying to discredit Clintonomics more than trying to to find the truth. I think Clintonomics worked. But to effect it well, you have to have a wonk President watching a lot of factors like a hawk and then lobbying all parties involved hard to make sure things don't off the rails. I also think if he had been able to get health insurance reform the boom would have been bigger and more long lasting.

    At the start of his presidency it should be remembered that most big business leaders were screaming how health care costs on employers were killing the economy. Now those health care costs are baked in the mix, and are a major part of stagnating pay. Money that would go to employees paycheck now goes to their health insurance benefits. Who gets their pay raise now is the health care industry jacking up the costs all the time.People don't realize that when they demand that fancy expensive brand name drug over generics that means increased health insurance premiums with money going to drug companies. That the employer is in effect giving them a raise to pay for it.


    by artappraiser on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 9:47am

    P.S. Before Clinton was elected, this is how it seemed to me, a middle boomer: my whole life economists said we would NEVER get out of running a huge deficit economy, that a huge deficit was always going to be with us. And that we would ALWAYS have either high inflation or high unemployment, that it was no longer possible to have a balance. What he did with the economy was simply: amazing, awesome, incredible. Far beyond anything I was taught to believe would happen. The results are still with us: no cycles of extremely high inflation or extremely high unemployment.

    Edit to add: I know Flavius has posted blogs and comments here years ago that he supports a much higher top tax rate like 70%. And I always strongly disagreed with him on that, precisely because I believe so strongly that Clintonomics works, and that a top tax rate over 40% or so stifles growth as well as causing much more tax evasion. You get very little punch from going that high, with lots of downside effects. The rich just evade it and divert the money into places that are not helpful for the common good.


    by artappraiser on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 9:57am

    Hal,

    Pick up your old copy of ¨¨Religion and the Rise of Capitalism¨  .Life without a finance industry was nasty, brutish and short. Only made endurable by the Jews outside the city gates not bound by the heavy hand of the Church´s concept of a just price,

    I believe in the financial services industry.  And regulating the hell out of it.

    By itself it´s a tool.Like a hatchet ,  which can be used to replenish the fireplace or give Lizzie´s mother 40 whacks.

    And the Supremes drew a  =  under the concept of crowd fund-raising with Citizen´s United.Unilateral disarmament never did work.

     


    by Flavius on Thu, 06/08/2017 - 11:58pm

    Because the Democratic party is beholden to Wall Street, its leaders quite frequently act in ways that are contrary to our best interests. I have frequently enumerated those ways. The party is also disappearing as a force in much of the country. Although the current model is a failure, it still serves the interests of party leaders. Cf. the net worth of the Clintons and Obamas. I am more optimistic than you are that people will vote for pro-worker, pro-poor, pro-peace, pro-middle class candidates if given the opportunity. But even if they won't and Democrats keep losing, despite rejecting corporate cash, we wouldn't be any worse off than we are now. I note also that since Bill Clinton even when Democrats win, the poor, working-class, and middle-class don't. They just don't lose as badly.


    by HSG on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 8:55am

    What are you talking about? Our economy has a large dependency on Wall Street. It would be stupid to ignore Wall Street, just as it's stupid to let Wall Street drive too much. We're also beholden to high tech industry, to minority interests, to unions, to new energy, to the health industry (especially innovative parts), to Hollywood, to academia, et al - constituencies, people who drive industry & bring in revenues, and other stakeholders. Who are you to continually pretend to itemize "our best interests"? You don't speak for me, and you never will, and you don't speak for the majority of the Democratic Party, obviously. You don't even know Bill Clinton's history, how the poor, working-class and middle-class did very well in the 90's. Yes, it wasn't 100% great, so you like Death will focus on the mistakes and bad parts. But a lot of people moved up then. Whatever alternative you're comparing his performance with is probably some la-la land fiction that never existed, or maybe it was stories from the Depression when the Republicans were completely discredited, so more drastic actions were allowed to sail through - until they regrouped enough to start blocking legislation and appointments after '36. I can go into details like I've done countless before, but then you pretend to forget and act like I never explained a word and then say, "well start over, Grandpa - tell me it all from the beginning...."

    PS - both Elizabeth Warren and Alan Grayson are Democrats, and both have conducted themselves very well in opposing excesses of Wall Street. 

     


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 9:23am

    On PS - both Elizabeth Warren and Alan Grayson are Democrats, and both have conducted themselves very well in opposing excesses of Wall Street.

    Though this may hurt your argument a little,I just got to throw in that It always amazes me that Liz Warren has gotten the reputation of a fighting lefty. Back before her political days she had a consumer-advocate blog on Talking Points Memo which she ran with her students. Her economics-related comments were always as centrist as centrist could be. Clearly, she just felt that the whole economic system wasn't working fairly because there was one group that didn't have any lobby representing them (as opposed to banks, Wall Street, labor unions, etc.): the individual consumer. Not the worker, the consumer.  She just seemed to really believe that if the individual consumer was empowered to be a bigger player, they would make the right decisions and a consumer economy would work well. The whole "play by the rules" thing. In the end, a strong belief in capitalism.


    by artappraiser on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 10:48am

    She is not anti-Wall Street as even I have posted once or thrice - almost added that a 4th time but couldn't remember what comes after thrice (fice? frice?). But "she has conducted herself very well in opposing excesses of Wall Street." and still this makes her anathema to the left - she wasn't completely anti-Wall Street, and gasp, she didn't denounce Hillary.


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 11:51am

    Hate to disagree, but I think the left quite like her, and so do centrists. It's that rare art that Obama also had, of being able to be all things to all people, or at least enough of them, and at least until you are in a position to make serious decisions which are going to piss off one or another group. Like Obama, her speeches ring all the right bells for leftists. That said, some things indicate the way she tries to stretch her values across the breadth of the political landscape. You can tell she feels obliged to support single-payer for instance, but to me her heart isn't quite in it (YES! We must absolutely ... consider that! ha!) A nice hedge coming at the end when she is being drowned out by the cheering. Of course on foreign policy she is very much aligned with Hillary and the other hawks. Not sure where you get her dovish attitude to Wall Street - she seems very much in favor of splitting up the banks, in a way that horrified Clinton. Then again, I'm not sure what you consider "anti-Wall Street". If you think that means people who want to nationalize the means of production and abolish usury, sure. She is not anti-wall street. 


    by Obey on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 12:20pm

    Warren is somewhat disappointing in the ways you describe Obey.  Do you believe that the Sanders wing can take back the Democratic Party from the corporatists and turn it into a true pro-people party or is that a pipe dream and must progressives form a new party to have any hope of governing?


    by HSG on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 12:47pm

    I don't have any solid thoughts on this. To me the corporate dependency of the party is a symptom of its organizational weakness, it's a crutch that becomes necessary because there is little grass-roots organizing to speak of. There is a lot of progressive mobilization under different candidates - Obama in '08 and Sanders in '16 but both candidates really just dropped the ball on transforming that mobilized mass into a lasting and effective structure. OFA got rolled up into the DNC and just withered on the vine. I know a lot of people who are already disappointed with Our Revolution and have turned to more local organizing.

    And maybe that isn't a bad thing. Just trying a cheap quick take-over of the party is a lazy and superficial way of thinking about the problem the party has.  If the local grassroots (both geographically and issue-wise) can be strengthened, creating organs through which the voice of the people can be effectively channeled, and then that diversity of organs can be made to coordinate and collaborate on issues on a more national scale, then the whole struggle over the soul of the Democratic party is moot. Investing in political infrastructure is not very glamorous, and doesn't get you results in the short term, but it seems like the only solution. That's all I've got now. 


    by Obey on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 1:18pm

    When Warren didn't break with Hillary, the Left abandoned her as tainted. Sanders then became the "the real deal"(tm) though many also lost taste for him when he didnt abandin Hillary at the cinvention.


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 3:40pm

    That's not the impression I get when I see the positive reception she gets from Berniac audiences. 


    by Obey on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 3:42pm

    How to split those nums. I stopped hearing left support for Warren some time ago, as a fellow traveller. What %? Canr tell you.


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 4:03pm

    "Our best interests" lie, I believe, in an economically and socially just democratic America.  The Clinton years, in my view, moved us farther from that ideal.

    Of course I recognize that all of us have discrete interests that conflict in some ways with those of the nation as a whole. You personally may well have benefited, as many did, from Clintonian triangulation and the policies and programs that led to, among other things, NAFTA, accelerating media consolidation, private prisons, the war on drugs, welfare reform, and the repeal of Glass Steagall.  

    Some nuggets from Alternet's June 22, 2015, 15 Ways Bill Clinton's White House Failed America and the World:

    Tag-teaming with ex-President Ronald Reagan, Clinton is the president most responsible for the mass incarceration of Americans on an epic scale.

    -------

    The consequences of Bill Clinton’s welfare reform bill have been devastating for millions of American families.

    --------

    “The bottom line is: Bill Clinton was responsible for more damaging financial deregulation—and thus, for the [2008] financial crisis—than any other president.” 

    -------

    Bill Clinton helped gut America’s manufacturing base by promoting and passing the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, in 1993, when Democrats controlled Congress.

     


    by HSG on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 11:46am

    Clinton didn't "tag-team with Reagan" - he tag-teamed with black leaders at the time. It was a joint community approach. You got problems with it? Go talk to the black leaders - he didn't force anything down their throats, and admitted where he feels mistakes were made. You, on the other hand, can't seem to realize that a drug and murder and automatic weapons epidemic needed an actual response, not some theoretical appeal to a benign deity.

    Clinton's welfare reform bill didn't have significant negative repercussions during his presidency, and if leftists hadn't helped elect a moron in 2000 by claiming Gore was the same as Bush, just as they helped elect a criminal in 2016 by claiming Clinton was worse than Trump, any negatives to that welfare law would have been improved on.

    Similarly, it's way beyond absurd to make Clinton responsible for a meltdown 9 years after he signed a bill that passed both houses with overwhelming support when implacable leftists won't take responsibility  for helpinig elect a president who refused to enforce *ANY* financial regulations and did his best to help cover up major widespread illegal practices such as selling bundled toxic assets. If a cop won't arrest someone for murder, it doesn't matter what law's on the books.

    Re: NAFTA, has been relatively balanced, and you persist in ignoring the much larger China outsourcing effect while trying to pin the tail on the Donkey, and the only thing you can point to are effects 6-7 years later when the *new* idiot president ran the economy into a recession, refused to apply any jobs stimulus, and instead relied on a cheap currency strategy that ran our strong exports into the gutter. And yes, yet again, if unconsolable leftists had elected Gore, he would have worked on fixing any problems, rather than appointing people who distinctly didn't care about workers'rights or the environment or any other liberal value, only cash.

    And you will repeat this same nostrum for the next 50 years, I'm sure. Me, I'm back to ignoring mode.


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 12:04pm

    In defending the Clinton Presidency you make a number of claims which are quoted below and rebutted:

    A) Alternet uses the term "tag-teaming with Reagan" to denote that Clinton and Reagan were the two worst Presidents when it comes to mass incarceration of African-Americans.  Yes crime rates were very high in the early-90s but there were many other options besides locking people up for non-violent drug offenses and throwing away the key.  Here's what three Ivy League scholars said in the NYT about your and Clinton's "even blacks wanted this" defense:

    When confronted about her husband’s pivotal support for the bill, Hillary Clinton argued, even as she admitted the legislation’s shortcomings, that the bill was a response to “great demand, not just from America writ large, but from the black community, to get tougher on crime.”

    Yet the historical record reveals a different story. Instead of being the unintended consequence of the democratic process at work, punitive crime policy is a result of a process of selectively hearing black voices on the question of crime.

    B) You contend that "Clinton's welfare bill didn't have have significant negative repercussions during his presidency."  Does that make it okay that the worst effects came afterwards?  The Washington Post notes that "extreme poverty" rates were rising before Clinton left office.  Anti-poverty activists Peter Edelman and Mary Jo Bane were so appalled by Clinton's Welfare Reform bill that they quit working for the administration.

    C) You write it's "beyond absurd" to blame Clinton for the financial crisis that came 7 1/2 years after he left the White House and 8 1/2 years after deregulation.  It's not absurd in the least.  Bubbles can form at any time and sometimes take years to burst.  The real estate bubble that felled the markets in 2008 had been building for some time and was as devastating as it was because there were too big to fail financial institutions as a direct result of Graham-Rudman-Bliley which Clinton signed. 

    D) With respect to trade, you write: "Re: NAFTA, has been relatively balanced, and you persist in ignoring the much larger China outsourcing effect." The Clintons, of course, are also to a large degree responsible for the lopsided losses that have resulted from our trading "partnership" with China.   From the U.S. Diplomatic Mission to Germany's website:

    In the 1990s, the U.S. trade deficit with China grew to exceed even the American trade gap with Japan.  From the American perspective, China represents an enormous potential export market but one that is particularly difficult to penetrate. In November 1999, the two countries took what American officials believed was a major step toward closer trade relations when they reached a trade agreement that would bring China formally into the WTO."

    Moreover, your premise that NAFTA's impact was "relatively balanced," is false.  Public Citizen estimates that NAFTA cost us 1 million American jobs and increased income inequality.  Public Citizen also notes that "U.S. trade deficit growth with Mexico and Canada has been 45 percent higher than with countries not party to a U.S. Free Trade Agreement, and . . . U.S. manufacturing exports to Canada and Mexico have grown at less than half the pre-NAFTA rate."


    by HSG on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 1:37pm

    As Elizabeth Hinton notes in the NYT article, 26 of 38 voting members of the CBC voted for the crime bill. Bernie Sanders voted for the crime bill. We have had this discussion many times before. Incarceration. Michelle Alexander also argues that the Clinton's were responsible for mass incarceration. The 1994 crime bill focused on federal crime. The huge increase in incarceration was at the state and local level.

    https://www.vox.com/2016/2/11/10961362/clinton-1994-crime-law

    ​We have had this discussion multiple times and you persist in presenting only one side of the argument.

    Edit to add:

    Getting tough on crime had the support of several black politicians.

    http://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/analysis-black-leaders-supported-clin...


    by rmrd0000 on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 2:06pm

    Trump is taking up the fight against Wall Street and the corrupt corporate controlled Democratic Party that you have so rightly attacked for years. Join with him.

    He has assembled  a distinguished cabinet of respected corporate influence free experts with no agenda but saving America from the disastrous years of Democratic malfeasance going  back 20 years of which you so eloquently related here, again and again.

    Trump is the progressive populist redeemer of economic justice and savior of the silent majority, embrace him. 

    There is a third way, Trump is it.

    His voters know he is fighting against the plutocrats, millionaires and billionaires who comprise the Democratic Party.....he fights against big business, big corporations and big money, for the little forgotten ones, and the sick and the poor.


    by NCD on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 1:26pm

    Is it your view that because Trump and the Republicans are really bad, the Democrats must be good?


    by HSG on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 1:40pm

    I wouldn't hold that view but there is at least  a relative difference, a difference in degree. Here's the problem I have with your analysis. You claim the people are so upset with democratic connections to Wall Street that they are losing seats because of it. But they're losing seats to republicans who don't just have connections but are totally the party of Wall Street.


    by ocean-kat on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 2:40pm

    You've had 500 polemical posts on the corrupt Wall Street shills called the Democratic Party.

    None on the hero and hope of the forgotten, economically downtrodden, Donald Trump, or the GOP. They are the dominant winning force in American politics.

    Perhaps among them you will discover a more fruitful ground for your message of change and justice?

    Trump's freshness and appeal easily surpasses Bernie or anyone corrupted by connection with the failed Wall Street dependent Democratic administrations, and policies, of Obama or your "15 point" monster Bill Clinton.

    Thanks to your resolute and scathing analysis, I now believe Trump is a stronger candidate and spokesman for real change.


    by NCD on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 4:20pm

    You so funny, I love it when you role play, you're good at it.


    by artappraiser on Fri, 06/09/2017 - 4:12pm