The Associated Press and lobbyists elect Clinton …
Don’t bother voting … we’ve made up your mind…
Can the news announce what hasn’t happened yet?
In their classic song, the Mamas and Papas warned us about Monday: “Monday, Monday, can’t trust that day … Oh Monday mornin’ you gave me no warnin’ of what was to be …”
Indeed, Monday of last week, with no warnin’, struck us a sucker punch. The Associated Press published a story asserting that Hillary Clinton had enough delegates to “clinch” the Democratic presidential nomination. The entire mainstream media immediately parroted the AP.
The AP article, which came out the day before six states voted in their respective Primaries, in essence said to millions of Democrats and hundreds of thousands (or more) of Independents: Don’t bother voting tomorrow—we’ve made up your mind for you.
Basic math: 1,812 plus zero equals 1,812…
Monday was a sorry day for democracy, a shameful day for journalism. For, what the AP reported was an outright lie.
AP counted superdelgate votes that haven’t been cast yet to predict Hillary’s victory.
Here’s what’s true: 2,383 delegates are needed for the Democratic nomination. As of Monday, June 6, 2016, when the AP ran its article, Clinton had 1,812 pledged delegates. The term “pledged delegates” is important. It reflects actual people who have actually voted in their state’s primary election and/or caucus. Yet, defying logic and mathematical principles, the AP somehow converted 1,812 to 2,383. Here’s how:
It claimed to have conducted a “secret” poll of Democratic “superdelegates.” But the “superdelegates” have not yet voted and cannot and will not vote until July 25. Therefore, on June 6, 2012, there were no “superdelegate” votes available for the AP to count.
“Superdelegates” are actually Lobbyists …
The popular belief is that the “superdelegates” are elected officials (members of Congress, etc.), and some are. But as many of them are big-money donors to the Democratic Party and/or to the Clinton campaign or special-interest lobbyists working against the interests of working-class people. Some examples of Clinton “superdelegates” who are actually lobbyists and on whose behalf they lobby:
Howard Dean : Health care industry and pharmaceuticals (Pfizer, Merck) … Emily Giske: Pfizer, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America … Tonio Burgos: Pfizer, Verizon … Joanne Dowdell: NewsCorps (parent company of Fox News) … Bill Shaheen: PainCare Centers (a major prescriber of opioids),
Howard Dean is one of many superdelegates whose lobbying links raise questions.
Life Insurance industry … Jeff Berman: Geo Group (private for-profit prisons), Keystone XL … Jennifer Cunningham: for-profit colleges, food industry (lobbied to undermine Michelle Obama’s nutrition guidelines for foods marketed to children) … Jill Alper, Minyon Moore, Maria Cardona: Health Insurance industry, Enron, Citigroup … Dick Gephardt: Peabody Coal (exploiter of Native Americans).
The matter didn’t end with the fake AP story. Giving the appearance of a concerted campaign, the AP story brought about a slew of “unity” emails and Facebook posts from Clintonites demanding that we start acting like the sheep the Democratic Party establishment believes us to be and treats us as and support Clinton. That arrogant demand brought to mind the following:
Let’s all hold hands with Wal-Mart, Wall Street, and the other vultures …
The Payday Lenders subsidized by Wall Street prey on working-class people.
A major reason people support Bernie Sanders is because we detest the control that Wall Street and lobbyists have over the political system and specifically the Democratic Party. We know that the Wall Street and other vultures the lobbyists represent and who own the Democratic Party do great damage to real people, viz.:
The Payday Lenders subsidized by Wall Street prey on working-class people, particularly people of color. The banks whose illegal and greedy behavior caused the financial crisis of 2007-2008 left millions of people homeless. The for-profit prisons make huge profits from the incarceration of black and Latino youth and undocumented Mexicans. Wal-Mart, Verizon and other anti-union corporations exploit their workers. Greedy pharmaceuticals price their products so high that poor people, especially the elderly, often must choose between buying food or their medicine.
But in the name of “unity” we’re supposed to hold hands with the exploiters of our community?
Trump’s outlandish bombast should be compared with statements by Hillary Clinton.
The ol’ boogeyman Trump…
The “unity” appeals rely almost exclusively on the scare tactic of how bad Donald Trump is. But, an objective and principled analysis reveals that regarding many important issues, Clinton and Trump have striking similarities and sometimes the same exact position, viz.:
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Trump’s disgusting comments about Mexicans being rapists are well known. But in 1995, to gain favor with the Republican right wing, Bill Clinton, with Hillary Clinton’s active support, pushed through welfare-reform legislation that piggybacked on the racist stereotype of black “welfare queens.” In pushing the legislation, Hillary Clinton referred to black and Latina women receiving welfare as “deadbeats” and to their children as “super predators” and suggested the Clinton policies would “bring them to heel,” a term used when talking about dogs. Recently (May, 2016), Clinton told a CNN reporter, “I have a lot of experience dealing with men who sometimes get off the reservation in the way they behave and how they speak,” implying that Native Americans are uncivilized.
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Trump opposes a $15 minimum wage. Clinton opposes a $15 minimum wage. Besides being anti-worker, Clinton’s and Trump’s position is anti-women: The vast majority of minimum wage workers are women. About three-quarters of female minimum wage workers are on their own and taking care of children. A $15 minimum wage helps these women. Opposing a $15 minimum wage hurts them.
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Workers at Trump’s Las Vegas casino accuse Trump of being a union buster. Clinton is in fact a union buster. As a (well-paid) member of the Wal-Mart Board of Directors, Hillary Clinton made and enforced Wal-Mart’s anti-union policies—e.g., firing employees who even utter the word “union” or speak to a union representative. As a direct result of the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) promoted by Bill and Hillary Clinton, close to a million U.S. jobs, most of which were high-wage union jobs, were lost.
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Trump refuses to release his tax returns, for which Clinton called Trump “evasive and secret.” Clinton refuses to release the transcripts of her secret—and well paid: $675,000!—speeches to the Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs.
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Hillary Clinton, when asked what we should do about Central American children said, “Send them back.
In 2014, when Central American children fleeing violence and starvation arrived at our border, armed members of KKK-affiliated groups and their allies protested, shouting “Send them back!” Hillary Clinton, when asked what we should do about these children, categorically said, “Send them back.” That was also Donald Trump’s position.
Clinton’s position is cruelly cynical:
In 2009 a military coup ousted the democratically elected President of Honduras. The United Nations, the Organization of American States, and the European Union condemned the coup. The U.S., at the urging of then-Secretary of State Clinton, supported the coup and provided hundreds of millions of dollars to a regime that used death squads to attack indigenous peoples, political opponents, LGBT people and others.
Indigenous activist and outspoken coup critic Berta Cáceres was assassinated. Before her murder, Cáceres called out Hillary Clinton for siding with the military that was murdering Hondurans. Children fleeing this violence are the ones Clinton and Trump said should be “sent back.”
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Hillary Clinton called Monica Lewinsky a “narcissistic looney tune.”
Clinton criticizes Trump for the disrespectful and degrading manner with which he talks about and treats women. But Hillary Clinton directed the shaming campaign against women who accused Bill Clinton of sexually assaulting them (they were referred to as the “Bimbo eruptions”), and Hillary Clinton demonized Bill Clinton’s youngest victim, 21-year-old Monica Lewinsky, calling her a “narcissistic looney tune.”
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Clinton and her supporters bash Trump as a liar. But Clinton routinely lies. In 2008, Clinton asserted that she opposed the Columbian Free Trade Agreement and would do everything she could to stop it. But Clinton emails released in 2016 show that Clinton secretly lobbied Democratic Senators and Representatives to VOTE FOR the Columbian Free Trade Agreement.
Also in 2008, Clinton lied about being caught in sniper fire in Bosnia. CBS News video footage clearly showed there was no sniper (or any other kind of) fire and that there was a greeting ceremony (Clinton emphatically said the ceremony was not held due to “sniper fire”).
Both Clinton and Trump are liars, which explains why recent polls (May, 2016) show that 64% of registered voters believe that both Trump and Clinton are not “honest and trustworthy.”
So, there really is no difference between Trump and Clinton on the above and other substantive issues—e.g., Trump wants to build a wall on the Mexican border to keep Mexicans out of the U.S. … Clinton voted to build 700 miles of double layered fencing with barbed-wire on top on the Mexican border to keep Mexicans out of the U.S.
The author will vote for a woman for President—Jill Stein.
Are our principles so compromised that we should actually accept the noxious notion that Democratic racism (sexism, anti-unionism, anti-refugee-ism, lying, etc.) is qualitatively better than Republican racism (sexism, anti-unionism, anti-refugee-ism, lying, etc.) simply because the Democratic versions have a “D” beside their ugly head rather than an “R?”
But I agree—we need to support a strong woman…
But still and all, I agree that the time to elect a strong woman to the highest office in the land is long past due. And I’m going to do my part in that respect—I will vote for the Green Party’s Jill Stein. c/s
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