About a decade ago, there was a popular book called “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” that talked about how working class and Middle-Class Republicans vote against their self-interest. The observations in that brilliant book can very well be applied to liberals who are now voting for Hillary Clinton – a Neoliberal corporatist and a warmonger. Perhaps there will soon be a book called “What’s the Matter with California?”
For a long time, country club Republicans knew how to manipulate ordinary conservative voters using emotional wedge issues such as “God, Guns and Gays.” Using meaningless trigger words such as freedom, liberty, smaller government and bigger tax cuts, clever politicians got people to vote for them. But people actually ended up with freedom infringed, liberty crippled, money stolen and government bloated.
The same thing is happening to progressives in America. Corporate Democrats are funded by the same banks, corporations and the oligarchs as the Republicans. The politicians just had to choose different trigger words to appeal to the various groups on the left. Democrats have a little more work to do since they have to tailor the messages for different demographics – women, blacks, Latinos, LGBT etc.
Let’s start with what Hillary Clinton stands for. She is pro-Wall Street, pro-Big Pharma, pro-Monsanto, pro-Fracking, pro-Big Media, pro-globalism, pro-TPP (yes, she is) and pro-military industrial complex. She is funded by the 0.1% and will rule for the 0.1%.
She can say whatever and read whatever speeches her staff writes for her, but as she said in one of her speeches behind closed doors, politicians “need a private and a public opinion on policies.” In other words, it’s okay to lie to get votes.
She and her husband made $150 million in “speeches” from global corporations, banks and governments since they left the White House. Hillary Clinton will also have spent close to $1 billion of other people’s money in this election cycle by Nov 8. None of this charity. This is an investment by the Establishment. They would want at least 10,000% return on their investment.
Economy
In her paid speeches, Hillary was gushing with love and friendship for Wall Street (“I Had Great Relations [with Wall Street] And Worked So Close Together After 9/11 To Rebuild Downtown; I Have A Lot Of Respect For The Work You Do And The People Who Do It.”) She made fun of Wall Street reforms such as Frank-Dodd and said that best people to regulate Wall Street are … the people from Wall Street! Clinton even sympathized with them by saying “there is a bias against successful people with complicated lives.” See, making billions of dollars by manipulating the stock market is a bit complicated!
When it comes to environment and climate change, Hillary was a different person while talking to oil companies. She made it clear she was very pro-Fracking and said the environmentalists should “get a life.” Really! As for fossil fuel, while Keystone Pipeline was being debated her State Department, banks representing it gave Bill Clinton $1 million for “speeches.” This is not a progressive.
In other private speeches to donors, she supported cutting social security benefits and raising the retirement age (“Simpson Bowles” proposal) and said she is “far removed from the struggles of Middle Class.” You can read a summary of her “problematic” words from her speeches in this WikiLeaks page (put together by her staff earlier this year).
In those same speeches, Hillary said her dream is “a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.” However people spin it, this means equalization of wages across the Americas. Under this plan, economics and the ideology of “one world” dictate that more American jobs will flee and wages will shrink for most people. This is, of course, a wonderful scenario for corporations and banks which can buy up all their counterparts in Latin America.
In that Clintonian world, everyone in North and South America has their money in Citibank, shops at Walmart, eats Monsanto/Bayer GMO food, depends on Rx drugs from Merck, watches the same TV and gets the same curated search results from Google that says it’s all wonderful. Of course, WikiLeaks will be blocked and NSA will be monitoring everyone from Canada to Chile. And if people get restless, there will always be wars with China and Russia to suppress any dissent.
Foreign Policy
Clinton recently tweeted, “Tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who are.” We can see that she walks with all the big banks and global corporations. She also walks with Neocons and the architects of Iraq war such as Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan and Paul Wolfowitz who are openly supporting her.
Under Secretary Hillary Clinton, US arms sales to other countries exploded. In just two years (Oct 2010 thru Sept 2012), she approved weapons sales of more than $165 billion, much too controversial and authoritarian regimes. She even approved chemical weapons to Bahrain which ruthlessly puts down democratic uprisings.
She talks in public about defeating ISIS, but in her private emails, she admits that Saudi Arabia and Qatar fund ISIS. These are the same countries that have given tens of millions of dollars to Clinton Foundation. This is beyond ridiculous.
Hillary Clinton as a President will definitely mean war with Russia and/or China. Without most Americans realizing, America has been at a proxy war with Syria for the last five years. Now it has escalated to a very serious level. Hillary Clinton played a major role in the destruction of Libya and then laughed about it. Now, a once wealthy and stable nation is in ruins, ruled by jihadists and ISIS. (You can read about the details of war in Syria and the rise of ISIS in my previous articles – Part I and Part II).
In one of her secret speeches, Hillary said she could rename Pacific Ocean as American Sea which will extend from California to the Philippines, thus openly advocating arrogant imperialism. In the same speech, she said – bizarrely – that the U.S. discovered Japan!
In a recent campaign speech, Hillary threatened Russia that any cyber attack will be treated as a full-fledged military attack. This is a mad statement for two reasons: one, it’s easy to spoof the origin of a cyber attack; two, the U.S./NSA has hacked into (and still does) emails and cell phones of many foreign leaders including Germany and Brazil. Spying is a part of geopolitical reality. In fact, more than any other country, Israel spies on and steals information from the U.S.
Email Scandal
Switching from policies, Hillary Clinton’s character and judgment have to be questioned. Her story about emails is so outrageous that one has to be a hardcore party loyalist to believe it. She deleted 30,000 emails and said they were “personal.” In 4 years, that comes to 7,500 personal emails per year or about 4 personal emails every work-hour. This is unacceptable for any employee at any job. But that false claim is moot, since the FBI has already recovered about 5,600 emails which were all work-related. Fortunately for her, those won’t be released until after the election.
She got the subpoena for her emails on March 4, 2015. The emails were deleted about three weeks later (the famous “oh sh*t” moment described by her IT staff). Any normal person will be charged with destruction of evidence for such an action. New WikiLeaks emails also show that she had deleted all her emails to/from Obama but never told the public or the FBI about it. Her emails to Sidney Blumenthal about Benghazi were also conveniently considered “personal” and deleted.
Hillary also lied about using only one device at a time while she had used Blackberries and iPads at the same time. Her blatant disregard to security protocols is shocking. Her email was simply available on the web by going to “clintonmail.com”! Anyone who could hack the password had full access to all her emails. Don’t be surprised if those deleted emails come out in the next couple of weeks! There are numerous other questions any reasonable person could ask about her emails.
The bottom line is that those deleted emails will land her in trouble, whether they are about Benghazi or the Clinton Foundation donors seeking/acknowledging favors.
Clinton Foundation
The talking points in much of mainstream media are about how great Clinton Foundation is. Even assuming that it’s a good charity, one cannot deny the conflict of interest and the conspicuous pay-for-play scheme involved with Clinton Foundation and the multitude of associated organizations (Clinton Global Initiative, Clinton Health Access Initiative and dozen others).
In case after case, when some country had a case pending with Hillary’s State Department, this is what happened:
Step 1: The country gives a large donation to Clinton Foundation or pays hefty fees to Bill Clinton for speeches
Step 2: Favorable rulings come from the State Department
There is no solid proof for quid pro quo, but anyone with a basic understanding of politics and real life can see through these shenanigans.
Some quick examples of pay for play:
- Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and other authoritarian regimes gave money after which arms deals were approved.
- Qatar gave Bill Clinton $1 million as a “birthday gift”
- South Sudan got increased military aid and their use of child soldiers was ignored after hefty donations.
- Morocco gave $12 million to CGI and $10 million to Clinton Foundation. In return, Hillary forgave Morocco’s human rights violations, helped Morocco get $92 million in loans from U.S. Import-Export bank, approved massive arms deals, and then held the CGI convention in Morocco
- Hillary refused to label Boko Haram as a terrorist group after Nigeria’s billionaire took care of Bill Clinton with $1.4 million for two speeches.
- UBS (Swiss Bank) had tens of thousands of illegal accounts that IRS wanted to investigate. UBS gave Bill Clinton $1.5 million for speeches and then Hillary flew to Switzerland and met with IRS investigators and rescued UBS.
- Canadian billionaire Frank Giustra has done numerous deals leveraging the Clintons, including the infamous acquisition of rights to U.S. Uranium by Russian corporations. Just Google “Frank Giustra Clinton Foundation” and you will find enough stories to read over a weekend.
Clinton Foundation spends money like no other charity. For example, in 2014, it spent $20 million on “travel and conferences.” This was more than 1/5th of its total spending that year. This is one example of how the Clintons created their loyal network in the media and the government. These meetings were great opportunities for super-rich people to schmooze and special interests to lobby Hillary’s State Department. The donors also took up more than half of Secretary Hillary’s calendar for phone calls and private meetings. Pay for play.
But didn’t the Clinton Foundation do great charity work? One of the Foundation’s most touted work is giving drugs to AIDS patients. However, that money really comes from the U.N. as well as airlines that levy a special tax on passengers. Never mind this program is also a boost in sales and profits for the drug companies.
Conclusion
The Clintons are right out of “House of Cards” – the Netflix series. The corporate media is in cahoots with her for obvious reasons – she represents corporatocracy, warmongering and globalism. WikiLeaks clearly shows how the DNC rigged the primaries to defeat Bernie Sanders. Another undercover video shows NYC Election Commissioner talking about people being put in buses and taken to multiple poll sites to vote repeatedly. The only reason that liberals could vote for Hillary Clinton is fear of Donald Trump. However, this is the kind of logic that prevents any true progressive leader from ever winning. The only way to get a true progressive and a moral representative of the 99% … is to not vote for Hillary Clinton. Vote for Jill Stein or write in Bernie Sanders. This is the year to send a clear message that a corrupt puppet backed by $1 billion of special interests’ money cannot buy this election. This is the year to prevent major global wars that are guaranteed to happen under Madam President Hillary Clinton.
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