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Et Tu, Bernie?
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/et_tu_bernie_20160712/
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Posted on Jul 12, 2016
By Robert Scheer
Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton for president at a rally in
Portsmouth, N.H. (Andrew Harnik /
AP(http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Campaign-2016-Clinton-Sanders/4a9f
dddef3ab4acb83b8b0eca1256838/6/0) )
What an embarrassment for Bernie Sanders and those, myself included, who
thought he would not descend so cravenly into the swamp of political
sellout.
It is one thing to hold one's nose and vote for Hillary Clinton as the
lesser evil. It is quite another to suddenly absolve the Clintons and other
top Democrats who have, as Sanders repeatedly pointed out during his
campaign, contributed so much to the national crisis.
At one point in his otherwise uniformly obsequious endorsement speech, he
sounded like the old populist Sanders, warning of the excesses of
unregulated finance: "As a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal
behavior on Wall Street, our economy was in the worst economic downturn
since the Great Depression."
As Sanders repeatedly pointed out during his campaign, it was former
President Bill Clinton's radical deregulation of Wall Street that legalized
the new, gilded age of Wall Street theft. But now we have the new Sanders,
reinvented as a Democratic Party hack, insisting that this unfettered greed
was exclusively enabled by the Republican leadership of the economy under
George W. Bush.
Sanders' speech made no reference to breaking up the too-big-to-fail banks
that packaged and marketed fraudulent collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)
in the trillions of dollars to an unsuspecting world. It was Bill Clinton's
signature on the Commodity Futures Modernization
Act(https://www.congress.gov/bill/106th-congress/house-bill/5660/text) that
prevented the regulation of any of those suspect CDOs and the phony credit
default swaps that pretended to insure them.
It was that legislation that initiated the Great Recession, as Sanders
pointed out convincingly in his campaign debates with Hillary Clinton. But
suddenly, the very sentences that he formerly used to attack her now are the
basis of his endorsement: "This election is about the grotesque level of
income and wealth inequality that currently exists, the worst it has been
since 1928. Hillary Clinton knows that something is very wrong when the very
rich become richer, while many others are working longer hours for lower
wages. She knows that it is absurd that middle-class Americans are paying an
effective tax rate higher than hedge fund millionaires, and that there are
corporations in this country making billions in profit while they pay no
federal income tax in a given year because of loopholes their lobbyists
created."
Really, Bernie, is that something you whispered in her ear during the hug?
Or did she glean that wisdom from John
Podesta(http://time.com/4308369/hillary-clinton-john-podesta/) , her
campaign manager, who was once one of those lobbyists, or her son-in-law,
Marc
Mezvinsky(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/business/dealbook/clinton-son-in
-laws-firm-is-said-to-close-greece-hedge-fund.html) , who was set up in the
hedge fund business by Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd
Blankfein(https://theintercept.com/2016/02/08/why-goldman-ceo-lloyd-blankfei
n-called-sanders-dangerous/) , who also paid Hillary so handsomely for her
speeches?
Did Bernie suddenly forget all of that Wall Street money that funded
Hillary's campaign? Or is the prospect of Donald Trump as president so
staggering that all restraints of fact and logic need now be abandoned?
READ: Jill Stein's Green New Deal Deserves to Be Heard by Widest Audience
Possible(http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/jill_steins_green_new_deal_dese
rves_to_be_heard_by_wide_audience_20160706)
Do the bipartisan policies of financial deregulation, lousy trade agreements
and tax loopholes that defined the Clinton presidency have nothing to do
with the massive resentment in this country over a rigged economy that has
fueled both the Sanders and Trump campaigns? Or was the electoral revolt
against the establishment of both political parties merely the achievement
of particularly effective populists of the right and left?
That would now seem to be the Sanders message. The progressive protest he
led was not much of a political revolution if he believes the Democratic
leadership that has held power for two-thirds of the past 24 years could now
so easily accommodate it. What he has bought into is that the revolt on the
Republican side is so irrationally hardcore that Hillary Clinton is now our
only bulwark against an imminent variant of American fascist rule.
That is the argument that now captivates the mass media, along with the rest
of the establishment, and because Trump plays the devil part so well, many
voters will feel they have no choice but to heed Bernie's siren song.
However, if it is the problems that create the demagogues, as historical
example would strongly suggest, then it ill behooves Sanders to uncritically
fall in line behind the lesser evil. Four more years of unchecked Wall
Street greed will leave us with an even more alienated populace, on which
scapegoating buzzards like Trump can feast.
Critical thinking in this new political season will have to come from
alternative candidates, such as the Green Party's Jill Stein and Libertarian
Gary Johnson.
EXPERIENCE: She's No Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump-Behind the Scenes With
Jill Stein
(Multimedia)(http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/behind_the_scenes_with_jil
l_stein_multimedia_20160701)
"I have known Hillary Clinton for 25 years," the new Bernie gushes. "I
remember her as a great first lady who broke precedent in terms of the role
that a first lady was supposed to play, as she helped lead the fight for
universal health care. I served with her in the United States Senate and
know her as a fierce advocate for the rights of children."
A regular Eleanor Roosevelt, except that as first lady, Hillary Clinton
turned health care over to the insurance companies and supported her
husband's so-called "welfare reform" that gutted the federal Aid to Families
with Dependent
Children(http://www.socialwelfarehistory.com/public-welfare/aid-to-dependent
-children-the-legal-history/) program.
Bernie, stop with the fawning. It's not becoming.
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