I guess it depends on who's doing the polling. If the folks doing it are
supporting Bernie, they'll ask the questions one way. If it's the media or
the Democratic Party establishment, they'll ask the questions differently.
And we just hear the results that each side wants us to hear.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of joe harcz Comcast
Sent: Monday, March 07, 2016 8:32 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Hillary's Economic Agenda Sure Looks Like
Payback for Wall St Giving Her Huge Piles of Campaign Cash
The polls I'm seeing are about 17 percent.
Hilliary has really muddied the waters with the auto bailout B.S. and
frankly, Bernie was a bit weak in his response.
That and the fact Hilliary, while clearly panderring has played the Flint
water crisis especially with establishment Democrats here and with much of
the black community like a fiddle.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, March 07, 2016 6:56 PM
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Hillary's Economic Agenda Sure Looks Like
Payback for Wall St Giving Her Huge Piles of Campaign Cash
Sanders' campaign sent out an email today. In the Michigan polls,
Clinton has 51 to Sanders 47. But the email says this is positive
because her lead as been tremendously reduced.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of joe harcz ;
Comcast
Sent: Monday, March 07, 2016 6:16 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Hillary's Economic Agenda Sure Looks
Like Payback for Wall St Giving Her Huge Piles of Campaign Cash
Great stuff and goes in part to why Flint is the way it is.
I feel like Forrest Gump, but former Senator Don Reigle who I knew way
back when and even rented a house from in Flint with Black Panters
mind you!!!
was just on CNN.
He is a sanders supporter today and he went in to the deception of
Hilliary around the claim that Sanders was against the auto bailout.
Oh and Reigle is no saint and he got caught up in the Keating Five
scandel in the 80's and the early de-regulation of savings and loans
which led to the s and l bust of the 80's.
Oh, and why didn't Sanders want the TARP: Because it was a free cash
bailout of the bandits that screwed the economy in the first place.
Back to the S and L thing. And what we should have done in 2008 is we
should have put these banks through basically a form of bancruptcy
just like we did the S and Ls with the Resolution Trust Corp. But we
couldn't the Wall Street banks exclaimed! They were too big to fail
because Clinton and others allowed them to be so with the repeal of
Glass-Steagle!
Something again Reigle pointed out today.
And back to the car company bailout. The reason most Democrats
supported the entire TARP bill was that it was linked to the auto
bailout. Sanders tried valiently to separate the two. But folks like
Clinton in the backdoor way to aid Wall Street wouldn't let the baby
get cut in two.
Oh my, I'm on overload over this stuff.
But, think about all those Clintonian programs that led us to where
Flint and Detroit is today?
And shit even Ross Perot knew that NAFTA would de-industrialize the U.s.
and
places like Flint. Remember that "giant sucking sound"?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, March 07, 2016 5:01 PM
Subject: [blind-democracy] Hillary's Economic Agenda Sure Looks Like
Payback
for Wall St Giving Her Huge Piles of Campaign Cash
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/hillarys-economic-agenda-sure-lo
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org) Home > Hillary's
Economic Agenda Sure Looks Like Payback for Wall St Giving Her Huge
Piles of Campaign Cash ________________________________________
Hillary's Economic Agenda Sure Looks Like Payback for Wall St Giving
Her Huge Piles of Campaign Cash By Les Leopold [1] / AlterNet [2]
March 6, 2016 Billed as a major populist economic address, Hillary
Clinton recently put forth her jobs program in Michigan.
Wall Street is smiling.
Her program fits perfectly within the neoliberal framework as she
focuses on how to use public funds and policies to promote private
sector gain.
There
are tax incentives to urge large and small corporations to create
more jobs in the U.S. There are tax breaks to encourage corporations
to provide more training and profit sharing plans. And there are tax
breaks to promote long term investment instead of short-term gains.
To balance this equation, she also calls for exit taxes if companies
take tax breaks and then move out of the country. Her mantra is
clear: if you do right to the American people, we'll do right by you.
Along the way, she waxes euphoric about the buoyancy of the private
sector:
"New businesses are opening. Families are moving in. The streetlights
are on again. The buses and running again. There is a palpable
feeling of pride and community and we have to spread economic
revitalization to all of Detroit's neighborhoods." (See here [3] for
full speech.) Not a word is mentioned about public goods or public
sector jobs.
Clearly,
the only real job is a private sector job.
Hillary Sends a Signal to Wall Street At the same time, she uses a
dog whistle to let Wall Street know that she won't be coming down
hard on them: "I'm not interested in condemning whole categories of
businesses or the entire private sector" [4] Furthermore, she dances
around the perils of free-trade deals by putting the entire blame on
China, and therefore not on the Clinton and Obama administrations who
were/are gung-ho free traders..
Her silence about NAFTA, however, is deafening. And that's very good
news to corporate and financial elites because NAFTA is the trade
deal that has facilitated the financial strip-mining of the American
worker. It has placed U.S. workers into direct daily competition with
much less expensive labor south of the border.
In fact, Hillary argues all such debates are now ancient history.
It's unproductive, she claims, to be "re-fighting battles from 20
years ago...."
But those battles are not over for Michigan workers who feel the
incessant pressure from NAFTA on job security and the downward
pressure on incomes and benefits. Hillary can't rebuild the
middle-class, even on her own free-market terms, without undoing
large parts of NAFTA.
Fearing to take on Financial Strip-mining Throughout her glowing
tribute to the private sector, she also duly notes that corporations
and financiers care too much about short-term stock prices instead of
the long-term health of the company. She is correct to say that they
are spending 80 to 90 percent of all corporate revenues on stock
buybacks and dividends: "That's money they're not using to train
their workers or give them a raise,"
And then there are the usual tropes about the "casino culture on Wall
Street" and the ever faithful applause line: "We need to make sure
Wall Street never wrecks Main Street again."
Amen to all that.
But the whip she hopes to crack is more like a wet noodle. She wants
to reward corporations and investors with tax incentives to encourage
long-term investment, worker training and profit sharing with
employees.
But, she remains silent on two real power moves that could actually
change elite Wall Street and corporate behavior. She does not talk
about outlawing stock buybacks. And she does not mention the
financial speculation tax.
It is relatively easy for a president to stop stock buybacks. All it
takes is a rule change at the SEC. Until 1982, it was considered
stock manipulation for a company to boost its price by buying back
its own shares en mass. Reagan's SEC appointee then legalized it.
But making stock buybacks illegal again would be fiercely opposed by
the very Wall Street executives and CEOs who are filling her campaign
coffers.
In fact, the system of runaway inequality is built upon those
buybacks Today, the goal of virtually every large corporation is to
use all of its cash-flow to buy back its own shares to enrich its
CEOs and largest Wall Street investors.
The corruption of Stock Buybacks at GM While noting that the "auto
industry just had its best year ever,"
Hillary
ignores the outrageous case of financial strip-mining at GM. She
couldn't mention it because it would also show the revolving door
between the Obama administration and Wall Street.
Harry Wilson, the Obama administrator who helped to negotiate the GM
bailout, then left for a hedge fund job. The 43 year-old Wilson and
his investors proceeded buy up 34 million GM shares. Why not? By then
he was a GM expert, trained at taxpayer expense.
He then demanded that GM use its cash reserves to buy back its own
shares to make he and his investors tens of millions of
dollars....for doing nothing at all.
The American people bailed out GM to save hundreds of thousands of
jobs throughout the Midwest. Many of us hoped that once GM returned
to financial health, it would use its reserves to build the most
environmentally sound cars in the world, thereby helping retain U.S.
jobs and help our planet survive.
Instead, Wilson pressures GM to use its precious cash reserves to
buyback its own shares in order to put money into his deep pockets
and the pockets of his investors. Increase GM wages? Increase
training? Increase R&D. No way.
His wish was GM's command. On January 13, GM announced a $9 billion
stock buyback plan.
But Hillary couldn't talk about any of this. Because if she did, she
would be forced to admit that her fairytale version of capitalism
will never work as long as Wall Street dominates the economy.
Carefully Ignoring Public Sector Jobs Team Hillary's populist
sounding plan is in harmony with the most pernicious neo-liberal
principle -- that the private sector, by definition, is more valuable
than the public sector -- that all must be done to "encourage"
private sector jobs while limiting public sector jobs.
Hillary makes no mention at all at the decades-old attack on public
sector jobs and benefits. Not a word about the privatization that is
wrecking Michigan's public sector. Not a word about the need for
increases in public sector jobs to bring safe water to the people of
Flint. Instead she just blames the Republicans.
When she discusses how to revitalize communities of color left
behind, her only way of doing so is through private sector
investment. But the public sector is the best path towards the middle
class incomes for low-income Americans especially African Americans.
She can't bring decent jobs and incomes to low-income communities
without an expansion of the public sector.
But why the knock on public sector jobs?
Because Wall Street and the super-rich would have to pay for those jobs.
To
have a robust public sector that would get the lead out of inner-city
pipes, fix up dilapidated schools, increase the number of teachers,
and provide free higher education for all requires the expansion of
the public sector.
To maintain a decent society requires an increase in public goods and
the hiring of more pubic workers.
But doing so, leads us directly to a financial speculation tax on
Wall Street as well as the end of off-shore tax havens for the
super-rich, neither of which are mentioned in her economic plan.
Instead Team Hillary wants to sound tough on corporate bad actors,
while providing tax breaks to most of the private sector. She wants
to rein in Wall Street's risky behavior, without damaging its
financial strip-mining operation. And she wants to let market
miraculously create better paying jobs for people of color, while
remaining silent on the public sector and 20-year old trade deals.
Les Leopold is the director of the Labor Institute in New York. His
latest book is Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic
Justice [5] (Chelsea Green, 2015). For bulk orders contact him at
LesLeopold@xxxxxxx [6].
Share on Facebook Share
Share on Twitter Tweet
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [7]
[8]
________________________________________
Source URL:
oks-pa
yback-wall-st-giving-her-huge-piles-campaignhttp://www.c-span.org/video/?405998-1/hillary-clinton-remarks-detroit-
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/les-leopold
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
michig
anhttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/05/us/politics/hillary-clinton-offers-e
[4]
conomi
c-plan-focused-on-jobs.htmlsector"http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/05/us/politics/hillary-clinton-o
[5] http://runawayinequality.org/
[6] mailto:LesLeopold@xxxxxxx
[7] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Hillary's ;
Economic Agenda Sure Looks Like Payback for Wall St Giving Her Huge
Piles of Campaign Cash [8] http://www.alternet.org/ [9] ;
http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org) Home > Hillary's
Economic Agenda Sure Looks Like Payback for Wall St Giving Her Huge
Piles of Campaign Cash
Hillary's Economic Agenda Sure Looks Like Payback for Wall St Giving
Her Huge Piles of Campaign Cash By Les Leopold [1] / AlterNet [2]
March 6, 2016 Billed as a major populist economic address, Hillary
Clinton recently put forth her jobs program in Michigan.
Wall Street is smiling.
Her program fits perfectly within the neoliberal framework as she
focuses on how to use public funds and policies to promote private
sector gain.
There
are tax incentives to urge large and small corporations to create
more jobs in the U.S. There are tax breaks to encourage corporations
to provide more training and profit sharing plans. And there are tax
breaks to promote long term investment instead of short-term gains.
To balance this equation, she also calls for exit taxes if companies
take tax breaks and then move out of the country. Her mantra is
clear: if you do right to the American people, we'll do right by you.
Along the way, she waxes euphoric about the buoyancy of the private
sector:
"New businesses are opening. Families are moving in. The streetlights
are on again. The buses and running again. There is a palpable
feeling of pride and community and we have to spread economic
revitalization to all of Detroit's neighborhoods." (See here [3] for
full speech.) Not a word is mentioned about public goods or public
sector jobs.
Clearly,
the only real job is a private sector job.
Hillary Sends a Signal to Wall Street At the same time, she uses a
dog whistle to let Wall Street know that she won't be coming down
hard on them: "I'm not interested in condemning whole categories of
businesses or the entire private
ffers-
economic-plan-focused-on-jobs.html [4] Furthermore, she dances aroundhttp://www.alternet.org/election-2016/hillarys-economic-agenda-sure-lo
the perils of free-trade deals by putting the entire blame on China,
and therefore not on the Clinton and Obama administrations who
were/are gung-ho free traders..
Her silence about NAFTA, however, is deafening. And that's very good
news to corporate and financial elites because NAFTA is the trade
deal that has facilitated the financial strip-mining of the American
worker. It has placed U.S. workers into direct daily competition with
much less expensive labor south of the border.
In fact, Hillary argues all such debates are now ancient history.
It's unproductive, she claims, to be "re-fighting battles from 20
years ago...."
But those battles are not over for Michigan workers who feel the
incessant pressure from NAFTA on job security and the downward
pressure on incomes and benefits. Hillary can't rebuild the
middle-class, even on her own free-market terms, without undoing
large parts of NAFTA.
Fearing to take on Financial Strip-mining Throughout her glowing
tribute to the private sector, she also duly notes that corporations
and financiers care too much about short-term stock prices instead of
the long-term health of the company. She is correct to say that they
are spending 80 to 90 percent of all corporate revenues on stock
buybacks and dividends: "That's money they're not using to train
their workers or give them a raise,"
And then there are the usual tropes about the "casino culture on Wall
Street" and the ever faithful applause line: "We need to make sure
Wall Street never wrecks Main Street again."
Amen to all that.
But the whip she hopes to crack is more like a wet noodle. She wants
to reward corporations and investors with tax incentives to encourage
long-term investment, worker training and profit sharing with
employees.
But, she remains silent on two real power moves that could actually
change elite Wall Street and corporate behavior. She does not talk
about outlawing stock buybacks. And she does not mention the
financial speculation tax.
It is relatively easy for a president to stop stock buybacks. All it
takes is a rule change at the SEC. Until 1982, it was considered
stock manipulation for a company to boost its price by buying back
its own shares en mass. Reagan's SEC appointee then legalized it.
But making stock buybacks illegal again would be fiercely opposed by
the very Wall Street executives and CEOs who are filling her campaign
coffers.
In fact, the system of runaway inequality is built upon those
buybacks Today, the goal of virtually every large corporation is to
use all of its cash-flow to buy back its own shares to enrich its
CEOs and largest Wall Street investors.
The corruption of Stock Buybacks at GM While noting that the "auto
industry just had its best year ever,"
Hillary
ignores the outrageous case of financial strip-mining at GM. She
couldn't mention it because it would also show the revolving door
between the Obama administration and Wall Street.
Harry Wilson, the Obama administrator who helped to negotiate the GM
bailout, then left for a hedge fund job. The 43 year-old Wilson and
his investors proceeded buy up 34 million GM shares. Why not? By then
he was a GM expert, trained at taxpayer expense.
He then demanded that GM use its cash reserves to buy back its own
shares to make he and his investors tens of millions of
dollars....for doing nothing at all.
The American people bailed out GM to save hundreds of thousands of
jobs throughout the Midwest. Many of us hoped that once GM returned
to financial health, it would use its reserves to build the most
environmentally sound cars in the world, thereby helping retain U.S.
jobs and help our planet survive.
Instead, Wilson pressures GM to use its precious cash reserves to
buyback its own shares in order to put money into his deep pockets
and the pockets of his investors. Increase GM wages? Increase
training? Increase R&D. No way.
His wish was GM's command. On January 13, GM announced a $9 billion
stock buyback plan.
But Hillary couldn't talk about any of this. Because if she did, she
would be forced to admit that her fairytale version of capitalism
will never work as long as Wall Street dominates the economy.
Carefully Ignoring Public Sector Jobs Team Hillary's populist
sounding plan is in harmony with the most pernicious neo-liberal
principle -- that the private sector, by definition, is more valuable
than the public sector -- that all must be done to "encourage"
private sector jobs while limiting public sector jobs.
Hillary makes no mention at all at the decades-old attack on public
sector jobs and benefits. Not a word about the privatization that is
wrecking Michigan's public sector. Not a word about the need for
increases in public sector jobs to bring safe water to the people of
Flint. Instead she just blames the Republicans.
When she discusses how to revitalize communities of color left
behind, her only way of doing so is through private sector
investment. But the public sector is the best path towards the middle
class incomes for low-income Americans especially African Americans.
She can't bring decent jobs and incomes to low-income communities
without an expansion of the public sector.
But why the knock on public sector jobs?
Because Wall Street and the super-rich would have to pay for those jobs.
To
have a robust public sector that would get the lead out of inner-city
pipes, fix up dilapidated schools, increase the number of teachers,
and provide free higher education for all requires the expansion of
the public sector.
To maintain a decent society requires an increase in public goods and
the hiring of more pubic workers.
But doing so, leads us directly to a financial speculation tax on
Wall Street as well as the end of off-shore tax havens for the
super-rich, neither of which are mentioned in her economic plan.
Instead Team Hillary wants to sound tough on corporate bad actors,
while providing tax breaks to most of the private sector. She wants
to rein in Wall Street's risky behavior, without damaging its
financial strip-mining operation. And she wants to let market
miraculously create better paying jobs for people of color, while
remaining silent on the public sector and 20-year old trade deals.
Les Leopold is the director of the Labor Institute in New York. His
latest book is Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic
Justice [5] (Chelsea Green, 2015). For bulk orders contact him at
LesLeopold@xxxxxxx [6].
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [7]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[8]
Source URL:
oks-pa
yback-wall-st-giving-her-huge-piles-campaignhttp://www.c-span.org/video/?405998-1/hillary-clinton-remarks-detroit-
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/les-leopold
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
michig
anhttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/05/us/politics/hillary-clinton-offers-e
[4]
conomi
c-plan-focused-on-jobs.html
[5] http://runawayinequality.org/
[6] mailto:LesLeopold@xxxxxxx
[7] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Hillary's ;
Economic Agenda Sure Looks Like Payback for Wall St Giving Her Huge
Piles of Campaign Cash [8] http://www.alternet.org/ [9] ;
http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
