2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumWalmart, for Victory!
WHY CLINTON AND (JEBTHRO) BUSH ARE NOW IN THE POCKETS OF WALMART, CHEVRON AND GOLDMAN SACHS
FRI, 7/17/2015 - BY PAUL LEWIS AND WILL TUCKER
THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED ON THE GUARDIAN (Link below)
EXCERPT...
Disclosures to the Federal Election Commission reveal how lobbyists for Walmart, Chevron, Facebook and Goldman Sachs have been acting as fundraising captains for Clinton and Bush, bundling donations to channel to the two frontrunners.
CONTINUED...
Clinton and Bush campaign war chests filled with help of corporate lobbyists
Analysis of FEC documents reveal scale of donations from lobbyists including Walmart and Goldman Sachs, which could pay dividends after the election
FTNTTC: Walmart is where Big Money is. Its example precisely shows the concentration of capital over the past 36 years. While Walmart isn't the only corporation in the article and links, its example tells the story of government since Reagan and Trickle Down Voodoo Economics, where policies in Washington benefit the rich over everyone else, including the capital created by the labor of the many flooding into the pockets of the few at the top. They use small fractions of pennies on the dollar to buy the influence needed to keep it that way.
chillfactor
(7,566 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)What I hope you'd take away:
Maru Kitteh
(28,303 posts)It would be a shame to see your hate destroy you.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)What is the only business named in the entire Constitution?
laserhaas
(7,805 posts)Do tell
Octafish
(55,745 posts)laserhaas
(7,805 posts)I wonder
Thanks for the response
Octafish
(55,745 posts)...Ben Franklin and Tom Paine used it to spread the words about liberty and stuff.
Artists and scholars, at least it seems until recently, were wont to appreciate Guttenberg.
In my grandparents' time, the Press included the radio and television broadcasting that made mass media possible.
In my time, it has expanded through satellite communication to encompass new media like the Internet.
The essential idea behind them all, from our Founders' day to this moment: What is essential to Democracy, to the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, our Republic, and to our future is learning, knowing and sharing the truth.
It's how we shape what matters in the present day to form the future.
insta8er
(960 posts)cold hard truth. But hey...at least they can call her Madam President!!!
MrMickeysMom
(20,453 posts)Kicking your post, insta8er...
Any time expression of what is going on contrary to the coronation and rigged vote counting is met with the asinine, "one more day" response, or "get over it".
Just what do they think people in the United States should get used to here, again?
The personality parade here has revealed itself so well.
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)can get foodstamps & welfare and medicalcare, legal government benefits.
Congress can raise the minimum wage anytime they want.
Silver_Witch
(1,820 posts)Seriously - you don't think paying workers a living wage is a moral duty of every company? You don't think WalMart should have respect for their employee...or do you think Corporate Welfare is okay - but free college is just a bunch of TAKERS wanting free stuff.
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)yeoman6987
(14,449 posts)Perhaps it's time for other corporations to follow suit.
panader0
(25,816 posts)laserhaas
(7,805 posts)closeupready
(29,503 posts)Scuba
(53,475 posts)bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)laserhaas
(7,805 posts)840high
(17,196 posts)dflprincess
(28,057 posts)zonkers
(5,865 posts)7wo7rees
(5,128 posts)One more day and no more truth, is that it? No more posts from Octafish will be allowed?
This op would get locked? I sure as hell hope not or I imagine there will be a much larger exodus than you may be hoping for "chill"!
laserhaas
(7,805 posts)snooper2
(30,151 posts)RufusTFirefly
(8,812 posts)After all, it's just Walmart workers. I'll bet they don't even belong to the Club!
jwirr
(39,215 posts)much money the employees of Walmart have given to various charities. I have also seen that these donations may no be voluntarily.
So are the Walmart workers forced to donate to the Walmart politicians?
Octafish
(55,745 posts)You know who was on the Board? Hillary Clinton!
Clinton Remained Silent As Wal-Mart Fought Unions
By BRIAN ROSS MADDY SAUER
RHONDA SCHWARTZ
ABC News, Jan. 31, 2008
In six years as a member of the Wal-Mart board of directors, between 1986 and 1992, Hillary Clinton remained silent as the world's largest retailer waged a major campaign against labor unions seeking to represent store workers.
Clinton has been endorsed for president by more than a dozen unions, according to her campaign Web site, which omits any reference to her role at Wal-Mart in its detailed biography of her.
Wal-Mart's anti-union efforts were headed by one of Clinton's fellow board members, John Tate, a Wal-Mart executive vice president who also served on the board with Clinton for four of her six years.
Tate was fond of repeating, as he did at a managers meeting in 2004 after his retirement, what he said was his favorite phrase, "Labor unions are nothing but blood-sucking parasites living off the productive labor of people who work for a living."
Wal-Mart says Tate's comments "were his own and do not reflect Wal-Mart's views."
But Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and other company officials often recounted how they relied on Tate to lead the company's successful anti-union efforts.
CONTINUED...
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/clinton-remained-silent-wal-mart-fought-unions/story?id=4218509
I visited opensecrets.org, but had a bit of trouble finding anything specific on 2016. Nice overview, of sorts, but needs some TLC. One article linked back to The Guardian piece in the OP.
MineralMan
(146,190 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)You don't like what I post, don't read what I post.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)laserhaas
(7,805 posts)And the entire main stream..DNC and every other powers that be have united to keep him from having a fair chance
Tarc
(10,472 posts)It is time to accept that and move on, rather than screaming "foul!" to explain why more people picked another candidate rather than your favorite one.
laserhaas
(7,805 posts)Is oppression
Tarc
(10,472 posts)Voters voted.
A candidate won.
A candidate lost.
It isn't more complicated than that.
laserhaas
(7,805 posts)System rigged
No matter how much you gloat in the outcome
It is tainted
Oppressively
Tarc
(10,472 posts)Except in Arizona, where the Republicans closed down many polling places...which hurt Hillary more than Bernie...there has been no election fraud. The Sanders campaign has filed no challenges to any state's results, which shows that that the pro-Sanders bloggerverse really has no substance to their outlandish complaints.
laserhaas
(7,805 posts)Because they like the outcome
If the situations were reversed..you'd be calling for Bernie's head..on a platter
bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)laserhaas
(7,805 posts)Baaahhh
dflprincess
(28,057 posts)that's about to begin here.
Apparently anyone who pulls their head out of the sand and comments on what they see won't last long - no matter how valid their points may be.
Tarc
(10,472 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Here's more Old News:
Billionaire Bonanza: The Forbes 400 and the Rest of Us
Wealthiest 20 people own more wealth than half the American population
BY CHUCK COLLINS AND JOSH HOXIE
Institute for Policy Studies-IPS, DECEMBER 1, 2015.
This report exposes the extreme wealth concentrated within the fortunes of the 400 wealthiest Americans and compares this wealth to the much more meager assets of several different segments of American society.
The report proposes several solutions to close the growing gap between the ultra wealthy and the rest of the country. These policies include closing offshore tax havens and billionaire loopholes in the tax code that the wealthy exploit to hide their wealth.
The report also proposes a direct tax on wealth to break up the concentration of wealth and generate trillions of dollars in new revenue to invest in wealth building opportunities for working families.
SNIP...
KEY FINDINGS:
* Americas 20 wealthiest people a group that could fit comfortably in one single Gulfstream G650 luxury jet now own more wealth than the bottom half of the American population combined, a total of 152 million people in 57 million households.
* The Forbes 400 now own about as much wealth as the nations entire African-American population plus more than a third of the Latino population combined.
* The wealthiest 100 households now own about as much wealth as the entire African American population in the United States. Among the Forbes 400, just 2 individuals are African American Oprah Winfrey and Robert Smith.
* The wealthiest 186 members of the Forbes 400 own as much wealth as the entire Latino population. Just five members of the Forbes 400 are Latino including Jorge Perez, Arturo Moreno, and three members of the Santo Domingo family.
* With a combined worth of $2.34 trillion, the Forbes 400 own more wealth than the bottom 61 percent of the country combined, a staggering 194 million people.
* The median American family has a net worth of $81,000. The Forbes 400 own more wealth than 36 million of these typical American families. Thats as many households in the United States that own cats.
We believe that these statistics actually underestimate our current national levels of wealth concentration. The growing use of offshore tax havens and legal trusts has made the concealing of assets much more widespread than ever before.
CONTINUED...
http://www.ips-dc.org/billionaire-bonanza/
Honestly, how many people know the Waltons were enriched by the policies of the first Bush, the first Clinton, the second Bush and now the Obama administrations? Not many, from what I can tell.
Tarc
(10,472 posts)It didn't work so well.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Let's ask Phil Gramm and his employees Bill Clinton and George W Bush over at UBS.
After his exit from the US Senate, Phil Gramm immediately found a job at Swiss bank UBS as its Vice Chairman. Gramm today works in the Wealth Management department, where he brought on, among others, former President Bill Clinton, former pretzeldent George W Bush and one James Carville. They work in Wealth Management:
See for you'self.
President William J. Clinton
President George W. Bush Heh heh heh.
Robert J. McCann
James Carville
John V. Miller
Paula D. Polito
Anthony Roth
Mike Ryan
John Savercool
SOURCE: http://financialservicesinc.ubs.com/revitalizingamerica/SenatorPhilGramm.html
Who would have thought President Clinton and Sen. Gramm -- the two key figures in repealing Glass-Steagall -- would work together in Wealth Management at a Swiss bank?
Since the New Deal, Glass-Steagall had protected the US taxpayer from the Wall Street casino by law. After its repeal, the US taxpayer got put on the hook for, among other things, the most recent $16 trillion Wall Street bailout.
In September 2008 on DU2 I described the situation: Know your BFEE: Phil Gramm, the Meyer Lansky of the War Party, Set-Up the Biggest Bank Heist Ever.
Those interested may also enjoy what Robert Scheer thinks about Phil Gramm.
https://panamapapers.icij.org/20160403-panama-papers-global-overview.html
Until the Panama Papers, this information wasn't much interest to the USA's "news media." They don't like to disturb their owners and operators any more than they have to.
Tarc
(10,472 posts)The majority of voters do not buy your arguments. We had an election; you lost.
Time to move on. The Hillary-bashing will be coming to a close on the DU in a very short while.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)As a US Senator, Phil Gramm led the charge to repeal Glass Steagall.
As President Bill Clinton signed the repeal of Glass Steagall into law.
After leaving office, Phil Gramm took the job as vice chair of UBS, a Swiss bank notorious for all manner of crime.
After the banks went belly up on derivatives in 2008, the US taxpayer was on the hook.
UBS in the bailout got billions, courtesy of the US taxpayer.
Today, Phil Gramm, Bill Clinton and George W Bush work in Wealth Management at UBS.
Maybe you got yours, Tarc, I don't know, but I don't like it when people cash in on their government service, especially when me and my fellow US taxpayers are on the hook for their looted trillions.
laserhaas
(7,805 posts)snooper2
(30,151 posts)because working 9 hour shifts 6 days a week in his shitty factories sucked ass...
Silver_Witch
(1,820 posts)Until UNIONs forced employers to treat people like humans?
Demsrule86
(68,347 posts)Old useless article...you want to get rid of money in politics...elect Democrats and fix the Supremes...until all parties have to raise money...course Bernie needs no money since he lost the primary and is going exactly nowhere...what is your motivation...this only helps Trump.
laserhaas
(7,805 posts)the implosion...has begun
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)Sid
MyNameGoesHere
(7,638 posts)There is a day and some change left.
pdsimdars
(6,007 posts)WalMart store. That's in lost taxes and also all the government assistance WalMart employees get because they aren't paid enough to live on.
Agony
(2,605 posts)Asking "[w]Who really rules?" researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page argues that over the past few decades America's political system has slowly transformed from a democracy into an oligarchy, where wealthy elites wield most power.
Using data drawn from over 1,800 different policy initiatives from 1981 to 2002, the two conclude that rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene now steer the direction of the country, regardless of or even against the will of the majority of voters.
Thomas Frank lays it out WRT to the Democratic Party in "Listen, Liberal What ever happened to the party of the people?"
Nonetheless, even with his condemnation of the direction of his Party and Clintonism in particular, he feels trapped into voting for Hillary...
http://listenliberal.com
Hillary needs to address the phenomenon Gilens and Page describe directly and forthrightly if she is to get the support of Sanders Democrats. Given how thoroughly Frank ties her to this problem she has a lot of work to do so that we don't end up with Trump.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The Republic, Justice and Democracy depend on Truth. Something you should know about the effects of money thereupon:
Steps to Financial Cataclysm Paved with Industry Dollars
March 4 - The financial sector invested more than $5 billion in political influence purchasing in Washington over the past decade, with as many as 3,000 lobbyists winning deregulation and other policy decisions that led directly to the current financial collapse, according to a 231-page report issued today by Essential Information and the Consumer Education Foundation.
The report, "Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America," shows that, from 1998-2008, Wall Street investment firms, commercial banks, hedge funds, real estate companies and insurance conglomerates made $1.725 billion in political contributions and spent another $3.4 billion on lobbyists, a financial juggernaut aimed at undercutting federal regulation. Nearly 3,000 officially registered federal lobbyists worked for the industry in 2007 alone. The report documents a dozen distinct deregulatory moves that, together, led to the financial meltdown. These include prohibitions on regulating financial derivatives; the repeal of regulatory barriers between commercial banks and investment banks; a voluntary regulation scheme for big investment banks; and federal refusal to act to stop predatory subprime lending.
"The report details, step-by-step, how Washington systematically sold out to Wall Street," says Harvey Rosenfield, president of the Consumer Education Foundation, a California-based non-profit organization. "Depression-era programs that would have prevented the financial meltdown that began last year were dismantled, and the warnings of those who foresaw disaster were drowned in an ocean of political money. Americans were betrayed, and we are paying a high price -- trillions of dollars -- for that betrayal."
"Congress and the Executive Branch," says Robert Weissman of Essential Information and the lead author of the report, "responded to the legal bribes from the financial sector, rolling back common-sense standards, barring honest regulators from issuing rules to address emerging problems and trashing enforcement efforts. The progressive erosion of regulatory restraining walls led to a flood of bad loans, and a tsunami of bad bets based on those bad loans. Now, there is wreckage across the financial landscape."
12 Key Policy Decisions Led to Cataclysm
Financial deregulation led directly to the current economic meltdown. For the last three decades, government regulators, Congress and the executive branch, on a bipartisan basis, steadily eroded the regulatory system that restrained the financial sector from acting on its own worst tendencies. "Sold Out" details a dozen key steps to financial meltdown, revealing how industry pressure led to these deregulatory moves and their consequences:
1. In 1999, Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which had prohibited the merger of commercial banking and investment banking.
2. Regulatory rules permitted off-balance sheet accounting -- tricks that enabled banks to hide their liabilities.
3. The Clinton administration blocked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from regulating financial derivatives -- which became the basis for massive speculation.
4. Congress in 2000 prohibited regulation of financial derivatives when it passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.
5. The Securities and Exchange Commission in 2004 adopted a voluntary regulation scheme for investment banks that enabled them to incur much higher levels of debt.
6. Rules adopted by global regulators at the behest of the financial industry would enable commercial banks to determine their own capital reserve requirements, based on their internal "risk-assessment models."
7. Federal regulators refused to block widespread predatory lending practices earlier in this decade, failing to either issue appropriate regulations or even enforce existing ones.
8. Federal bank regulators claimed the power to supersede state consumer protection laws that could have diminished predatory lending and other abusive practices.
9. Federal rules prevent victims of abusive loans from suing firms that bought their loans from the banks that issued the original loan.
10. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac expanded beyond their traditional scope of business and entered the subprime market, ultimately costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.
11. The abandonment of antitrust and related regulatory principles enabled the creation of too-big-to-fail megabanks, which engaged in much riskier practices than smaller banks.
12. Beset by conflicts of interest, private credit rating companies incorrectly assessed the quality of mortgage-backed securities; a 2006 law handcuffed the SEC from properly regulating the firms.
Financial Sector Political Money and 3000 Lobbyists Dictated Washington Policy
During the period 1998-2008:
* Commercial banks spent more than $154 million on campaign contributions, while investing $363 million in officially registered lobbying:
* Accounting firms spent $68 million on campaign contributions and $115 million on lobbying;
* Insurance companies donated more than $218 million and spent more than $1.1 billion on lobbying;
* Securities firms invested more than $504 million in campaign contributions, and an additional $576 million in lobbying. Included in this total: private equity firms contributed $56 million to federal candidates and spent $33 million on lobbying; and hedge funds spent $32 million on campaign contributions (about half in the 2008 election cycle).
The betrayal was bipartisan: about 55 percent of the political donations went to Republicans and 45 percent to Democrats, primarily reflecting the balance of power over the decade. Democrats took just more than half of the financial sector's 2008 election cycle contributions.
The financial sector buttressed its political strength by placing Wall Street expatriates in top regulatory positions, including the post of Treasury Secretary held by two former Goldman Sachs chairs, Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson.
Financial firms employed a legion of lobbyists, maintaining nearly 3,000 separate lobbyists in 2007 alone.
These companies drew heavily from government in choosing their lobbyists. Surveying 20 leading financial firms, "Sold Out" finds 142 of the lobbyists they employed from 1998-2008 were previously high-ranking officials or employees in the Executive Branch or Congress.
* * *
Essential Information is a Washington, D.C. nonprofit that seeks to curb excessive corporate power. The Consumer Education Foundation is a California-based nonprofit that supports measures to prevent losses to consumers.
SOURCE: http://www.wallstreetwatch.org/soldoutreport.htm
Rather than paying their corrupt arses billions in bonuses, We the People should put them behind bars. Bill Black knows who and how.
PS: Thomas Frank is a sage. Thank you for also bringing up Gilens and Page in PDF, Agony. For some reason, the talking heads either miss or ignore that report. DU stands among the few places around that bring up information essential to Democracy.
Agony
(2,605 posts)Hey! I know a great idea! Lets let the banksters voluntarily regulate themselves!
if that seems a bit laissez-faire we can let the banksters write the regulations
right...
bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)"Populist rhetoric, many say, is good politics-but doesn't portend an assault on the rich" (Politico April 15, 2015)
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/hillary-clintons-wall-street-backers-we-get-it-117017