Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Hillary Would Be Better Off Without These Two Advisers
________________________________________
Hillary Would Be Better Off Without These Two Advisers
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship [1] / BillMoyers.com [2]
March 23, 2016
There are two Democrats whose resignation from office right now would do
their party and country a service.
Their disappearance might also help Hillary Clinton convince skeptical
Democrats that her nomination, if it happens, is about the future, and not
about resurrecting and ratifying the worst aspects of the first Clinton
reign when she and her husband rarely met a donor to whom they wouldn't try
to auction a sleepover in the Lincoln Bedroom.
In fact, while we're at it, and if Secretary Clinton really wants us to
believe she's no creature of the corporate and Wall Street money
machine-despite more than $44 million in contributions from the financial
industry since 2000 [3] and her $675,000 in speaking fees from Goldman
Sachs, not to mention several million more paid by other business interests
for an hour or two of her time-she should pick up the gauntlet herself and
publicly call for the departure of these two, although they are among her
nearest and dearest. And we don't mean Bill and Chelsea.
No, she should come right out and ask for the resignations of Chicago Mayor
Rahm Emanuel and Democratic National Committee Chair-and Florida
congresswoman-Debbie Wasserman Schultz. In one masterstroke, she could
separate herself from two of the most prominent of all corporate Democratic
elitists.
Each is a Clinton disciple and devotee, each has profited mightily from the
association and each represents all that is wrong with a Democratic Party
that in the pursuit of money from rich donors and powerful corporations has
abandoned those it once so proudly represented-working men and women.
Rahm Emanuel first came to prominence as head of the finance committee for
Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign, browbeating ever-increasing
amounts of money out of fat cat donors, and following Clinton into the White
House as a senior adviser attuned to the wishes and profits of organized
wealth. Few pushed harder for NAFTA, a treaty that would cost a million or
more working people their livelihood, or for the
"three-strikes-and-you're-out" crime bill which Clinton later admitted was a
mistake. After alienating most of Washington with his arrogance and bluster
Emanuel left in 1998 and went into investment banking in Chicago [4], making
more than $16 million in less than three years.
He came back to Washington as a three-term Illinois congressman, chaired the
fundraising Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (calling on his Wall
Street sources to get in on the gravy by electing so-called New Democrats
over New Deal Democrats), and soon was back in the White House as Barack
Obama's chief of staff. There, he infamously told a strategy meeting of
liberal groups and administration types that the liberals were "retarded"
for planning to run attack ads against conservative Democrats resisting
Obamacare. Classy. Writer Jane Hamsher described him [5] as tough guy
wannabe but really "a brown nose for power ready to rumble on behalf of the
status quo."
And now he's mayor of Chicago, reelected last April for a second term, but,
as historian Rick Pearlstein wrote in The New Yorker a couple of months ago
[6], "Chicagoans-and Democrats nationally-are suffering buyer's remorse."
Remember that shocking dashcam video of a black 17-year-old named Laquan
McDonald [7] being shot 16 times by a Chicago policeman while he was walking
away? Of course you do; who can forget it? Remember, too, that for 400 days
the police kept the existence of the video secret and did nothing about the
shooting. Meanwhile, the City of Chicago paid five million dollars to
McDonald's family, who at that point had not filed a lawsuit. But despite
the large sum of money coughed up by his own administration, Emanuel claims
he never saw the video. If that's true, he was guilty of dreadful
mismanagement; if he did know, he's guilty of far worse.
Only after his re-election was the cover-up of the murder revealed. In
Pearlstein's words, "Given that he surely would not have been reelected had
any of this come out before the balloting, a recent poll [8] showed that
only 17 percent of Chicagoans believe him. And a majority of Chicagoans [8]
now think he should resign."
The Laquan McDonald murder is just one of the scandals on Emanuel's watch:
crime and abuse by police run rampant, the city's public schools are a
disaster, the transit system's a mess. Yet while Emanuel has devoted little
of his schedule to meeting with community leaders, Pearlstein reminds us
that he did, however, "spend enormous blocks of time with the rich
businessmen, including Republicans, who had showered him with cash." Now
many of them have deserted him, including one of his richest Republican-yes,
Republican-contributors, multimillionaire Bruce Rauner, who became governor
of Illinois.
Emanuel should go-and Hillary Clinton should say so. But while Senator
Bernie Sanders, campaigning during the Illinois primary, said he would not
seek and would not accept the mayor's endorsement, with Secretary Clinton
it's business as usual. Emanuel has held fundraisers for her campaign since
2014 so chances are she'll stay mum, take the money and run.
As for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, she embodies the tactics that have
eroded the ability of Democrats to once again be the party of the working
class. As Democratic National Committee chair she has opened the floodgates
for Big Money, brought lobbyists into the inner circle and oiled all the
moving parts of the revolving door that twirls between government service
and cushy jobs in the world of corporate influence.
She has played games with the party's voter database [9], been accused of
restricting the number of Democratic candidate debates and scheduling them
at odd days and times to favor Hillary Clinton, and recently told CNN's Jake
Tapper [10] that super delegates-strongly establishment and pro-Clinton-are
necessary at the party's convention so deserving incumbent officials and
party leaders don't have to run for delegate slots "against grassroots
activists." Let that sink in, but hold your nose against the aroma of
entitlement.
But here's just about the worst of it. Rep. Wasserman Schultz-the people's
representative, right?-has aligned herself with corporate interests out to
weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's effort to create national
standards for the payday-lending industry, a business that in particular
targets the poor. Payday loans, as Yuka Hayashi writes at [11] the Wall
Street Journal, "are quick credits of a few hundred dollars, with effective
annual interest rates ranging between 300% and 500%. Loans are due in a lump
sum on the borrower's next payday, a structure that often sends people into
cycles of debt by forcing them to take out new loans to repay the old ones."
Debbie Wasserman Schultz speaks to reporters in the spin room after watching
the January 17 Democratic presidential debate in Charleston, South Carolina.
(Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
According to the nonpartisan Americans for Financial Reform, this
tail-chasing cycle of "turned" loans to pay off previous loans makes up
about 76 percent of the payday loan business. The Pew Charitable Trust found
that in Wasserman Schultz's home state, the average payday loan customer
takes out nine such loans a year, which usually has them mired in debt for
about half a year.
No wonder radio host and financial guru Dave Ramsey describes the payday
loan business, which loans $38.5 billion a year [12], as "scum-sucking,
bottom-feeding predatory people who have no moral restraint. [13]" The very
people, it must be acknowledged, who now have an ally in the chair of the
Democratic National Committee, who has so engineered the rules of the
current Democratic primary process so as to virtually assure her unlimited
access to a Clinton White House where she can walk in freely to press the
case for her, ahem, "scum-sucking, bottom-feeding predatory" donors and
pals.
So imagine now the Democratic National Convention this July. Presiding over
it will be, yes, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, tribune for a party of
incumbency, money and crony capitalism. Follow her as she makes the rounds
of private parties where zillionaire donors, lobbyists and consultants
transact the real business of politics. Watch as she and Hizzoner Rahm
Emanuel of Chicago greet and embrace. Then imagine those thousands of young
people outside the convention hall who have arrived from long months of
campaigning earnestly for reform of the party they see as an instrument of
their future, as well as members of Black Lives Matter and other people of
color for whom Rahm Emanuel is the incarnation of deceit and oppression.
This is why Emanuel and Wasserman Schultz must go. To millions, they are
enablers of the one percent, perpetuators of the Washington mentality that
the rest of the country has grown to hate. What a message such servants of
plutocracy send: Democrats-a bridge to the past.
Bill Moyers is the managing editor of Moyers & Company and BillMoyers.com.
Michael Winship is the Emmy Award-winning senior writer of Moyers & Company
and BillMoyers.com, and a former senior writing fellow at the policy and
advocacy group Demos. Follow him on Twitter at@MichaelWinship [14].
Share on Facebook Share
Share on Twitter Tweet
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [15]
[16]
________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/hillary-would-be-better-without-these-
two-advisers
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/bill-moyers-and-michael-winship
[2] http://billmoyers.com/
[3]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-blasts-wall-street-but-still
-draws-millions-in-contributions/2016/02/04/05e1be00-c9c2-11e5-ae11-57b6aeab
993f_story.html
[4]
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2009-04-09/news/0904080851_1_clinton-whit
e-house-investment-private-sector
[5]
https://shadowproof.com/2010/01/26/rahm-emanuel-liberals-are-f-king-retarded
/
[6]
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-sudden-but-well-deserved-fal
l-of-rahm-emanuel
[7]
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/the-laquan-mcdonald-case-a-timel
ine-of-the-past-year/
[8] http://www.scribd.com/doc/292630702/Emanuel-Poll
[9]
http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-nn-sanders-data-debate-topic-20
151219-story.html
[10]
http://www.salon.com/2016/02/13/un_democratic_party_dnc_chair_says_superdele
gates_ensure_elites_dont_have_to_run_against_grassroots_activists/
[11]
http://www.wsj.com/articles/payday-lending-some-states-think-they-have-answe
r-1458120604
[12]
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-payday-lender-settlement-20140711-stor
y.html
[13]
http://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2013/may/07/payday-loans-indu
stry-washington-regulation
[14] http://www.twitter.com/michaelwinship
[15] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Hillary Would Be Better
Off Without These Two Advisers
[16] http://www.alternet.org/
[17] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Hillary Would Be Better Off Without These Two Advisers
Hillary Would Be Better Off Without These Two Advisers
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship [1] / BillMoyers.com [2]
March 23, 2016
There are two Democrats whose resignation from office right now would do
their party and country a service.
Their disappearance might also help Hillary Clinton convince skeptical
Democrats that her nomination, if it happens, is about the future, and not
about resurrecting and ratifying the worst aspects of the first Clinton
reign when she and her husband rarely met a donor to whom they wouldn't try
to auction a sleepover in the Lincoln Bedroom.
In fact, while we're at it, and if Secretary Clinton really wants us to
believe she's no creature of the corporate and Wall Street money
machine-despite more than $44 million in contributions from the financial
industry since 2000 [3] and her $675,000 in speaking fees from Goldman
Sachs, not to mention several million more paid by other business interests
for an hour or two of her time-she should pick up the gauntlet herself and
publicly call for the departure of these two, although they are among her
nearest and dearest. And we don't mean Bill and Chelsea.
No, she should come right out and ask for the resignations of Chicago Mayor
Rahm Emanuel and Democratic National Committee Chair-and Florida
congresswoman-Debbie Wasserman Schultz. In one masterstroke, she could
separate herself from two of the most prominent of all corporate Democratic
elitists.
Each is a Clinton disciple and devotee, each has profited mightily from the
association and each represents all that is wrong with a Democratic Party
that in the pursuit of money from rich donors and powerful corporations has
abandoned those it once so proudly represented-working men and women.
Rahm Emanuel first came to prominence as head of the finance committee for
Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign, browbeating ever-increasing
amounts of money out of fat cat donors, and following Clinton into the White
House as a senior adviser attuned to the wishes and profits of organized
wealth. Few pushed harder for NAFTA, a treaty that would cost a million or
more working people their livelihood, or for the
"three-strikes-and-you're-out" crime bill which Clinton later admitted was a
mistake. After alienating most of Washington with his arrogance and bluster
Emanuel left in 1998 and went into investment banking in Chicago [4], making
more than $16 million in less than three years.
He came back to Washington as a three-term Illinois congressman, chaired the
fundraising Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (calling on his Wall
Street sources to get in on the gravy by electing so-called New Democrats
over New Deal Democrats), and soon was back in the White House as Barack
Obama's chief of staff. There, he infamously told a strategy meeting of
liberal groups and administration types that the liberals were "retarded"
for planning to run attack ads against conservative Democrats resisting
Obamacare. Classy. Writer Jane Hamsher described him [5] as tough guy
wannabe but really "a brown nose for power ready to rumble on behalf of the
status quo."
And now he's mayor of Chicago, reelected last April for a second term, but,
as historian Rick Pearlstein wrote in The New Yorker a couple of months ago
[6], "Chicagoans-and Democrats nationally-are suffering buyer's remorse."
Remember that shocking dashcam video of a black 17-year-old named Laquan
McDonald [7] being shot 16 times by a Chicago policeman while he was walking
away? Of course you do; who can forget it? Remember, too, that for 400 days
the police kept the existence of the video secret and did nothing about the
shooting. Meanwhile, the City of Chicago paid five million dollars to
McDonald's family, who at that point had not filed a lawsuit. But despite
the large sum of money coughed up by his own administration, Emanuel claims
he never saw the video. If that's true, he was guilty of dreadful
mismanagement; if he did know, he's guilty of far worse.
Only after his re-election was the cover-up of the murder revealed. In
Pearlstein's words, "Given that he surely would not have been reelected had
any of this come out before the balloting, a recent poll [8] showed that
only 17 percent of Chicagoans believe him. And a majority of Chicagoans [8]
now think he should resign."
The Laquan McDonald murder is just one of the scandals on Emanuel's watch:
crime and abuse by police run rampant, the city's public schools are a
disaster, the transit system's a mess. Yet while Emanuel has devoted little
of his schedule to meeting with community leaders, Pearlstein reminds us
that he did, however, "spend enormous blocks of time with the rich
businessmen, including Republicans, who had showered him with cash." Now
many of them have deserted him, including one of his richest Republican-yes,
Republican-contributors, multimillionaire Bruce Rauner, who became governor
of Illinois.
Emanuel should go-and Hillary Clinton should say so. But while Senator
Bernie Sanders, campaigning during the Illinois primary, said he would not
seek and would not accept the mayor's endorsement, with Secretary Clinton
it's business as usual. Emanuel has held fundraisers for her campaign since
2014 so chances are she'll stay mum, take the money and run.
As for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, she embodies the tactics that have
eroded the ability of Democrats to once again be the party of the working
class. As Democratic National Committee chair she has opened the floodgates
for Big Money, brought lobbyists into the inner circle and oiled all the
moving parts of the revolving door that twirls between government service
and cushy jobs in the world of corporate influence.
She has played games with the party's voter database [9], been accused of
restricting the number of Democratic candidate debates and scheduling them
at odd days and times to favor Hillary Clinton, and recently told CNN's Jake
Tapper [10] that super delegates-strongly establishment and pro-Clinton-are
necessary at the party's convention so deserving incumbent officials and
party leaders don't have to run for delegate slots "against grassroots
activists." Let that sink in, but hold your nose against the aroma of
entitlement.
But here's just about the worst of it. Rep. Wasserman Schultz-the people's
representative, right?-has aligned herself with corporate interests out to
weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's effort to create national
standards for the payday-lending industry, a business that in particular
targets the poor. Payday loans, as Yuka Hayashi writes at [11] the Wall
Street Journal, "are quick credits of a few hundred dollars, with effective
annual interest rates ranging between 300% and 500%. Loans are due in a lump
sum on the borrower's next payday, a structure that often sends people into
cycles of debt by forcing them to take out new loans to repay the old ones."
Debbie Wasserman Schultz speaks to reporters in the spin room after watching
the January 17 Democratic presidential debate in Charleston, South Carolina.
(Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
According to the nonpartisan Americans for Financial Reform, this
tail-chasing cycle of "turned" loans to pay off previous loans makes up
about 76 percent of the payday loan business. The Pew Charitable Trust found
that in Wasserman Schultz's home state, the average payday loan customer
takes out nine such loans a year, which usually has them mired in debt for
about half a year.
No wonder radio host and financial guru Dave Ramsey describes the payday
loan business, which loans $38.5 billion a year [12], as "scum-sucking,
bottom-feeding predatory people who have no moral restraint. [13]" The very
people, it must be acknowledged, who now have an ally in the chair of the
Democratic National Committee, who has so engineered the rules of the
current Democratic primary process so as to virtually assure her unlimited
access to a Clinton White House where she can walk in freely to press the
case for her, ahem, "scum-sucking, bottom-feeding predatory" donors and
pals.
So imagine now the Democratic National Convention this July. Presiding over
it will be, yes, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, tribune for a party of
incumbency, money and crony capitalism. Follow her as she makes the rounds
of private parties where zillionaire donors, lobbyists and consultants
transact the real business of politics. Watch as she and Hizzoner Rahm
Emanuel of Chicago greet and embrace. Then imagine those thousands of young
people outside the convention hall who have arrived from long months of
campaigning earnestly for reform of the party they see as an instrument of
their future, as well as members of Black Lives Matter and other people of
color for whom Rahm Emanuel is the incarnation of deceit and oppression.
This is why Emanuel and Wasserman Schultz must go. To millions, they are
enablers of the one percent, perpetuators of the Washington mentality that
the rest of the country has grown to hate. What a message such servants of
plutocracy send: Democrats-a bridge to the past.
Bill Moyers is the managing editor of Moyers & Company and BillMoyers.com.
Michael Winship is the Emmy Award-winning senior writer of Moyers & Company
and BillMoyers.com, and a former senior writing fellow at the policy and
advocacy group Demos. Follow him on Twitter at@MichaelWinship [14].
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [15]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[16]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/hillary-would-be-better-without-these-
two-advisers
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/bill-moyers-and-michael-winship
[2] http://billmoyers.com/
[3]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-blasts-wall-street-but-still
-draws-millions-in-contributions/2016/02/04/05e1be00-c9c2-11e5-ae11-57b6aeab
993f_story.html
[4]
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2009-04-09/news/0904080851_1_clinton-whit
e-house-investment-private-sector
[5]
https://shadowproof.com/2010/01/26/rahm-emanuel-liberals-are-f-king-retarded
/
[6]
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-sudden-but-well-deserved-fal
l-of-rahm-emanuel
[7]
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/the-laquan-mcdonald-case-a-timel
ine-of-the-past-year/
[8] http://www.scribd.com/doc/292630702/Emanuel-Poll
[9]
http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-nn-sanders-data-debate-topic-20
151219-story.html
[10]
http://www.salon.com/2016/02/13/un_democratic_party_dnc_chair_says_superdele
gates_ensure_elites_dont_have_to_run_against_grassroots_activists/
[11]
http://www.wsj.com/articles/payday-lending-some-states-think-they-have-answe
r-1458120604
[12]
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-payday-lender-settlement-20140711-stor
y.html
[13]
http://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2013/may/07/payday-loans-indu
stry-washington-regulation
[14] http://www.twitter.com/michaelwinship
[15] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Hillary Would Be Better
Off Without These Two Advisers
[16] http://www.alternet.org/
[17] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
