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swag Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Apr-18-08 04:00 PM
Original message
Former Clinton labor secretary Reich backs Obama
Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Robert Reich, a former labor secretary during President Bill Clinton's administration, endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Friday.

"My conscience won't let me be silent any longer," Reich wrote on his blog in announcing the endorsement for Obama, who is in a hard-fought Democratic presidential battle with former first lady Hillary Clinton.

Reich said he had delayed a formal endorsement because of "the pull of old friendships" but he believed Obama offered the best chance of creating a new kind of politics and transcending old divisions.


Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1817629420080418
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Richardo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Apr-18-08 04:04 PM
Response to Original message
1. Robert Reich is one of my favorite people
Yay.
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swag Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Apr-18-08 04:18 PM
Response to Reply #1
3. I miss his radio commentary, but I now very much enjoy his blog.
I even got to see him speak once at a finance conference in Washington, DC. He was certainly better than the following year's speaker, Henry Kissinger, who seemed to have trouble staying awake.
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juajen Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Apr-18-08 04:17 PM
Response to Original message
2. Double Dupe!
Not only has this already been posted, Reich's endorsement of Obama is old news. I heard about his preference a couple of months ago. Why is this being announced now? Desperation.
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swag Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Apr-18-08 04:20 PM
Response to Reply #2
5. I disagree that this has been posted, but you are welcome to hit alert
and let mod sort it out.

Thanks for the smile!
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TexasBushwhacker Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Apr-18-08 05:18 PM
Response to Reply #5
7. Brand spankin' new on AP too
Former Clinton cabinet member, 2 ex-senators endorse Obama

"Reich, who served as Labor secretary under Bill Clinton, said in a blog post that "although Hillary Clinton has offered solid and sensible policy proposals, Obama's strike me as even more so."

Reich also said Obama's plans for reforming Social Security and health care have a better chance of succeeding, and his approach to the nation's housing crisis and financial market failures are sounder than the New York senator's."

Although I will vote for the Democrat in November, be they Obama or Clinton, I have a great deal of respect for Reich and his opinion.

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yardwork Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Apr-18-08 04:19 PM
Response to Original message
4. Face! for the Clintons.
Cuts like a knife.
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Omaha Steve Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Apr-18-08 04:40 PM
Response to Original message
6. AFSCME shoots this down


Funny thing is we didn't hear about this when Bill was in Office and Gerry was a close friend? I'm an AFSCME member. It is time for AFSCME to cut it loss (over $6 million so far spent on Senator Clinton) and support Obama.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-mcentee/robert-reichs-endorsement_b_97450.html


Apparently, some people think it's big news that Robert Reich has decided to publicly endorse Barack Obama. We shouldn't be surprised. For months now, Reich has been criticizing Hillary Clinton on his blog and elsewhere, distorting her policies and her positions. He's criticized Senator Clinton's solutions on the foreclosure crisis, on health care and trade. He's been in the Obama camp for some time.

Despite his reputation as a liberal and a friend of working men and women, Reich knows how to walk both sides of the street. I recall that he rarely, if ever, mentioned unions during his four years as Secretary of Labor. He has no problem backing proposals that cheer business more than labor, like ending the corporate income tax. If you read his recent book, Supercapitalism, you would think Steve Forbes was the writer. But no, it's the former Secretary of Labor calling for eliminating a tax that helps keep down the tax burden on working men and women across this nation. Does Senator Obama support that Reich idea? Is eliminating the corporate income tax going to be part of the "change we can believe in"?

Reich says that corporate responsibility is counterproductive. He thinks it's a distraction. That's beautiful. Here we have a former Secretary of Labor, someone who should know better, taking the GOP line that corporations need to focus on making money and forget about everything else. The movement for social responsibility has promoted ethical decision-making in business, community development programs, day-care centers, HIV-AIDS training, family-friendly workplaces, and more. To suggest that those developments are a distraction from the responsibility of corporations to amass profits for shareholders, as Secretary Reich does in his book, is shameful.

So is his support for NAFTA. Reich says unfair trade pacts bear no responsibility for the decline in manufacturing jobs in the U.S. Two months ago, Reich wrote that "it's a shame the Democratic candidates for president feel they have to make trade - specifically NAFTA - the enemy of blue-collar workers and the putative cause of their difficulties. NAFTA is not to blame." He's wrong on NAFTA, just as Obama's chief economic advisor Professor Goolsbee was wrong on NAFTA.

Now the question is: Does Senator Obama support fair trade when his friends Goolsbee and Reich say "No."


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defendandprotect Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Apr-18-08 06:43 PM
Response to Original message
8. Former Clinton administration/friend bailing out --- bad sign for HRC . . .
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