FDR ; Hillary talking to US about how her husband followed in his footsteps

[RiverLover]

and FDR's Four Freedoms...

Such an affront. I'm beyond disgusted.

Here's the fact of the matter...

...The chief aim of what I have termed the Republican Counterrevolution has always been to roll back the New Deal. Anti-government rhetoric hides this as surely as states' rights hid racist segregation. Of all the New Deal legislation the GOP has sought to overturn, one that has always been at or near the top of the list is the Glass-Steagall Act.

Ironically, a Democratic president repealed this for them.

Glass-Steagall

An unreconstructed Southerner from Virginia, Carter Glass shepherded the creation of the Federal Reserve System through Congress, which has caused some to call him the "founding father of the Federal Reserve System." Later Glass would serve as Wilson's Treasury Secretary, recommending aid to Europe after World War I. Just before leaving Treasury to become senator, Glass warned about banks getting involved in stocks.

...When Franklin Roosevelt took office, both the President and Congress knew the banking crisis demanded immediate action. The result was one of the crown jewels of the New Deal: the Glass-Steagall Act, officially known as the Banking Act of 1933. Glass made sure the bill forbid banks from getting into the investment business. In addition, the bill established the Federal Deposit Insurance Company, which protects our bank deposits.

Bill Clinton and the Wall of Me

Billionaire Sanford I. Weill, who according to Louis Uchitelle made "Citigroup into the most powerful financial institution since the House of Morgan a century ago," has what I call the Wall of Me leading to his office, which he has decorated with tributes to him, including a dozen framed magazine covers. A major trophy is the pen Bill Clinton used to sign the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, a move which allowed Weill to create Citigroup. Fittingly, Citigroup is a major contributor to guess which current Democratic Presidential candidate?

A Frontline report on the repeal of Glass-Steagall shows how those with money end up with pens from the President of the United States on their walls.


Sandy Weill calls President Clinton in the evening to try to break the deadlock after Senator Phil Gramm, chairman of the Banking Committee, warned Citigroup lobbyist Roger Levy that Weill has to get White House moving on the bill or he would shut down the House-Senate conference. Serious negotiations resume, and a deal is announced at 2:45 a.m. on Oct. 22. Whether Weill made any difference in precipitating a deal is unclear.

Just days after the administration (including the Treasury Department) agrees to support the repeal, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, the former co-chairman of a major Wall Street investment bank, Goldman Sachs, raises eyebrows by accepting a top job at Citigroup as Weill's chief lieutenant. The previous year, Weill had called Secretary Rubin to give him advance notice of the upcoming merger announcement. When Weill told Rubin he had some important news, the secretary reportedly quipped, "You're buying the government?"

When Bill Clinton gave that pen to Sanford Weill, it symbolized the ending of the twentieth century Democratic Party that had created the New Deal. Although the 1999 law did not repeal all of the banking Act of 1933, retaining the FDIC, it did once again allow banks to enter the securities business, becoming what some term "whole banks."

The repeal of one of the most important pieces of legislation in this nation's history came about as a result of another Clinton "triangulation," the wobbling attempt to find the middle of the road that has somehow managed to pass for a philosophy with many Democrats for over two decades. As former Clinton former campaign Richard Morris once described it, you move a little to the left, a little to the right. I'd love to hear Clinton give that explanation to a foreclosed home owner today.

With the stroke of a pen, Bill Clinton ended an era that stretched back to William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson and reached fruition with FDR and Harry Truman. As he signed his name, in the whorls and dots of his pen strokes William Jefferson Clinton was also symbolically signing the death warrant of Liberal America and its core belief in the level playing field that had guided the Democratic Party. But it was the gift of the pen to Sanford Weill and its assuming an honored place on the Wall of Me that rubbed salt in the wound.

In his famous First Inaugural Roosevelt asserted:


Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

Clinton not only repealed the act Roosevelt had put in place to curb those practices, but presented one of the pens used to sign it to one of those "money changers."

http://www.progressivehistorians.com/2007/11/bill-clintons-role-in-mortgage-crisis.html

The irony. The gullibility required to buy into this.....

The sadness that what has actually happened, & who did it, can be painted over with a pretty speech & a triangulated narrative.

And as a woman, I'm so ashamed this is what has become of my party.

Most of all, I just want to say I wasn't alive during FDR's time, but God, how I miss him. We could sure use him today, but instead we just get people who use his name.

[gopiscrap]

1. Really?

[demwing]

41. No, it was all a jedi mind trick

Clinton did not repeal Glass-Steagall, and this is not the thread you were looking for...

[RiverLover]

53. I wish Clinton hadn't repealed Glass-Steagall~

How FDR Saved Capitalism And How Bill Clinton Destroyed It

...From the 1940′s till the 1980′s financial bubbles were rare occurrences because of the well-designed regulatory framework put into place by Franklin Roosevelt during The New Deal. The dismantling of that carefully-constructed framework took more than the limited capabilities of a blind ideologue like Ronald Reagan, or a simpleton like George W. Bush; it needed the political savvy of a brilliant but misguided man like Bill Clinton.

The two critical financial deregulation measures enacted under the Clinton administration were the Reigle Neale Interstate Banking and Branching Act of 1994 and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999), the bill that repealed Glass-Steagall. Reigle-Neale accelerated the concentration of financial assets and the creation of "too big to fail" firms by allowing interstate mergers between "adequately capitalized and managed banks". Five years later the Financial Services Modernization Act allowed for banking, securities, and insurance companies to act as one entity while also enabling banks to continue to be active participants in the derivatives business for all credit and equity swaps.

Before those two laws were enacted, the six largest U.S. banks had assets equal to 17 percent of our GDP. Today the six largest U.S. banks have assets equal to more than 60 percent of our GDP.

In addition to the consolidation of the financial marketplace, those two laws aided the creation of a 600 trillion dollar derivatives market (a figure 10 times the size of the entire global economy), where a mistake of microscopic percentage points can lead to a global economic meltdown.

All of this was accomplished by Wall Street executives and their lobbyists in the name of massive short-term profits at the expense of long-term sustainability. But why did Wall Street succeed in these victories under a Democrat like Clinton after they failed under Republicans like Reagan?

Well as Scheer so eloquently puts it:

Clinton, being a smart person and an astute politician, did not use old ideological arguments to do away with New Deal restrictions on the banking system, which had been in place ever since the Great Depression threatened the survival of capitalism. His were the words of technocrats, arguing that modern technology, globalization, and the increased sophistication of traders meant the old concerns and restrictions were outdated. By "modernizing" the economy, so the promise went, we would free powerful creative energies and create new wealth for a broad spectrum of Americans — not to mention boosting the Democratic Party enormously, both politically and financially.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/09/15/902259/-How-FDR-Saved-Capitalism-And-How-Bill-Clinton-Destroyed-It

[jtuck004]

67. The repeal was a pre-cursor that enabled our bank$ter/terrorists to attack the American people.n/t

[Enthusiast]

97. If only the attack was over. It ain't over!

[jtuck004]

100. Yup. And we keep handing them their ammo, that we worked for. $$$. n/t

[Aerows]

92. I burst out laughing at that

I was about to take a sip of tea, and thankfully the glass wasn't all the way to my mouth when I saw this. As it was, some of it landed in my lap LOL

[Enthusiast]

98. Nose beer, and it burns. Bubbles.

[L0oniX]

125. LMFAOROTFLOL

[sendero]

2. She forgot the anti.

.... Bill (and her) undid the most important regulation ever placed upon the banks, Glass-Stegall. The crash of 2008 could not have happened without that little bit of work. The entire housing bubble could not have happened.

Bill was the anti-FDR.

[RiverLover]

6. Exactly!

I'm so angry right now. Bill Clinton destroyed so much that FDR had done for us & set in motion not only events that would harm our country & still do, but he made our party republican! Except the social issues of course. And Hillary has only come around to equal rights for gays sometime after her last failed presidential run...

[roguevalley]

78. I will never ever forgive NAFTA. EVER.

[Enthusiast]

99. Me too.

That was the start of the rapid decline of this nation.

[Octafish]

3. What you said.

It's no game. Politics is warfare.

Thanks for standing up, RiverLover. The Good Fight -- for Justice, Liberty and Democracy -- requires NOT going along to get along.

[Cleita]

9. I have been banned from the HC group because I said her speech was disappointing.

I hadn't meant to post in that group and deleted the post, but I don't think I was really over the top. Oh, well. Let the games begin.

[Octafish]

18. Democracy, like ''Prosperity can’t be just for CEOs and hedge fund managers.''

Here's the speech:

Thank you! Oh, thank you all! Thank you so very, very much.

It is wonderful to be here with all of you.

To be in New York (cheers) with my family, with so many friends, including many New Yorkers who gave me the honor of serving them in the Senate for eight years.

To be right across the water from the headquarters of the United Nations, where I represented our country many times.

To be here in this beautiful park dedicated to Franklin Roosevelt’s enduring vision of America, the nation we want to be.

And in a place… with absolutely no ceilings.

You know, President Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms are a testament to our nation’s unmatched aspirations and a reminder of our unfinished work at home and abroad. His legacy lifted up a nation and inspired presidents who followed. One is the man I served as Secretary of State, Barack Obama, and another is my husband, Bill Clinton.

Two Democrats guided by the -- (cheering) Oh, that will make him so happy. They were and are two Democrats guided by the fundamental American belief that real and lasting prosperity must be built by all and shared by all.

President Roosevelt called on every American to do his or her part, and every American answered. He said there’s no mystery about what it takes to build a strong and prosperous America: “Equality of opportunity… Jobs for those who can work… Security for those who need it… The ending of special privilege for the few… The preservation of civil liberties for all… a wider and constantly rising standard of living.”

That still sounds good to me.

It’s America’s basic bargain. If you do your part you ought to be able to get ahead. And when everybody does their part, America gets ahead too.

That bargain inspired generations of families, including my own.

It’s what kept my grandfather going to work in the same Scranton lace mill every day for 50 years.

It’s what led my father to believe that if he scrimped and saved, his small business printing drapery fabric in Chicago could provide us with a middle-class life. And it did.

When President Clinton honored the bargain, we had the longest peacetime expansion in history, a balanced budget, and the first time in decades we all grew together, with the bottom 20 percent of workers increasing their incomes by the same percentage as the top 5 percent.

When President Obama honored the bargain, we pulled back from the brink of Depression, saved the auto industry, provided health care to 16 million working people, and replaced the jobs we lost faster than after a financial crash.

But, it’s not 1941, or 1993, or even 2009. We face new challenges in our economy and our democracy.

We’re still working our way back from a crisis that happened because time-tested values were replaced by false promises.

Instead of an economy built by every American, for every American, we were told that if we let those at the top pay lower taxes and bend the rules, their success would trickle down to everyone else. (Jeers, booing.)

What happened?

Well, instead of a balanced budget with surpluses that could have eventually paid off our national debt, the Republicans twice cut taxes for the wealthiest, borrowed money from other countries to pay for two wars, and family incomes dropped. You know where we ended up.

Except it wasn’t the end.

As we have since our founding, Americans made a new beginning.

You worked extra shifts, took second jobs, postponed home repairs... you figured out how to make it work. And now people are beginning to think about their future again – going to college, starting a business, buying a house, finally being able to put away something for retirement.

So we’re standing again. But, we all know we’re not yet running the way America should.

You see corporations making record profits, with CEOs making record pay, but your paychecks have barely budged.

While many of you are working multiple jobs to make ends meet, you see the top 25 hedge fund managers making more than all of America’s kindergarten teachers combined. And, often paying a lower tax rate.

So, you have to wonder: “When does my hard work pay off? When does my family get ahead?”

“When?”

I say now.

Prosperity can’t be just for CEOs and hedge fund managers.

Democracy can’t be just for billionaires and corporations.

Prosperity and democracy are part of your basic bargain too.

You brought our country back.

Now it’s time -- your time to secure the gains and move ahead.

And, you know what?

America can’t succeed unless you succeed.

That is why I am running for President of the United States.

Here, on Roosevelt Island, I believe we have a continuing rendezvous with destiny. Each American and the country we cherish.

I’m running to make our economy work for you and for every American.

For the successful and the struggling.

For the innovators and inventors.

For those breaking barriers in technology and discovering cures for diseases.

For the factory workers and food servers who stand on their feet all day.

For the nurses who work the night shift.

For the truckers who drive for hours and the farmers who feed us.

For the veterans who served our country.

For the small business owners who took a risk.

For everyone who’s ever been knocked down, but refused to be knocked out.

I’m not running for some Americans, but for all Americans.

Our country’s challenges didn’t begin with the Great Recession and they won’t end with the recovery.

For decades, Americans have been buffeted by powerful currents.

Advances in technology and the rise of global trade have created whole new areas of economic activity and opened new markets for our exports, but they have also displaced jobs and undercut wages for millions of Americans.

The financial industry and many multi-national corporations have created huge wealth for a few by focusing too much on short-term profit and too little on long-term value… too much on complex trading schemes and stock buybacks, too little on investments in new businesses, jobs, and fair compensation.

Our political system is so paralyzed by gridlock and dysfunction that most Americans have lost confidence that anything can actually get done. And they’ve lost trust in the ability of both government and Big Business to change course.

Now, we can blame historic forces beyond our control for some of this, but the choices we’ve made as a nation, leaders and citizens alike, have also played a big role.

Our next President must work with Congress and every other willing partner across our entire country. And I will do just that -- to turn the tide so these currents start working for us more than against us.

At our best, that’s what Americans do. We’re problem solvers, not deniers. We don’t hide from change, we harness it.

But we can’t do that if we go back to the top-down economic policies that failed us before.

Americans have come too far to see our progress ripped away.

Now, there may be some new voices in the presidential Republican choir, (laughter) but they’re all singing the same old song...

A song called “Yesterday.” (Laughter, cheers, applause.)

You know the one -- all our troubles look as though they’re here to stay (laughter)… and we need a place to hide away… They believe in yesterday.

And you’re lucky I didn’t try singing that, too, I'll tell you! (Laughter, cheers, applause.)

These Republicans trip over themselves promising lower taxes for the wealthy and fewer rules for the biggest corporations without regard for how that will make income inequality even worse.

We’ve heard this tune before. And we know how it turns out.

Ask many of these candidates about climate change, one of the defining threats of our time, and they’ll say: “I’m not a scientist.” (Laughter.) Well, then, why don’t they start listening to those who are?

They pledge to wipe out tough rules on Wall Street, rather than rein in the banks that are still too risky, courting future failures. In a case that can only be considered mass amnesia.

They want to take away health insurance from more than 16 million Americans without offering any credible alternative. (Booing.)

They shame and blame women, rather than respect our right to make our own reproductive health decisions.

They want to put immigrants, who work hard and pay taxes, at risk of deportation. (Booing.)

And they turn their backs on gay people who love each other.

Fundamentally, they reject what it takes to build an inclusive economy. It takes an inclusive society. What I once called “a village” (cheers) that has a place for everyone.

Now, my values and a lifetime of experiences have given me a different vision for America.

I believe that success isn’t measured by how much the wealthiest Americans have, but by how many children climb out of poverty...

How many start-ups and small businesses open and thrive…

How many young people go to college without drowning in debt…

How many people find a good job…

How many families get ahead and stay ahead.

I didn’t learn this from politics. I learned it from my own family.

My mother taught me that everybody needs a chance and a champion. She knew what it was like not to have either one.

Her own parents abandoned her, and by 14 she was out on her own, working as a housemaid. Years later, when I was old enough to understand, I asked what kept her going.

You know what her answer was? Something very simple: Kindness from someone who believed she mattered.

The 1st grade teacher who saw she had nothing to eat at lunch and, without embarrassing her, brought extra food to share.

The woman whose house she cleaned letting her go to high school so long as her work got done. That was a bargain she leapt to accept.

And, because some people believed in her, she believed in me.

That's why I believe with all my heart in America and in the potential of every American.

To meet every challenge.

To be resilient… no matter what the world throws at you.

To solve the toughest problems.

I believe we can do all these things because I’ve seen it happen.

As a young girl, I signed up at my Methodist Church to babysit the children of Mexican farmworkers, while their parents worked in the fields on the weekends. And later, as a law student, I advocated for Congress to require better working and living conditions for farm workers whose children deserved better opportunities.

My first job out of law school was for the Children’s Defense Fund. I walked door-to-door to find out how many children with disabilities couldn’t go to school, and to help build the case for a law guaranteeing them access to education.

As a leader of the Legal Services Corporation, I defended the right of poor people to have a lawyer. And saw lives changed because an abusive marriage ended or an illegal eviction stopped.

In Arkansas, I supervised law students who represented clients in courts and prisons, organized scholarships for single parents going to college, led efforts for better schools and health care, and personally knew the people whose lives were improved.

As Senator, I had the honor of representing brave firefighters, police officers, EMTs, construction workers, and volunteers who ran toward danger on 9/11 and stayed there, becoming sick themselves.

It took years of effort, but Congress finally approved the health care they needed. (Applause.)

There are so many faces and stories that I carry with me of people who gave their best and then needed help themselves.

Just weeks ago, I met another person like that, a single mom juggling a job and classes at community college, while raising three kids.

She doesn’t expect anything to come easy. But she did ask me: What more can be done so it isn’t quite so hard for families like hers?

I want to be her champion and your champion.

If you’ll give me the chance, I’ll wage and win Four Fights for you.

The first is to make the economy work for everyday Americans, not just those at the top.

To make the middle class mean something again, with rising incomes and broader horizons. And to give the poor a chance to work their way into it.

The middle class needs more growth and more fairness. Growth and fairness go together. For lasting prosperity, you can’t have one without the other.

Is this possible in today’s world? (Crowd responds.)

I believe it is or I wouldn’t be standing here.

Do I think it will be easy? Of course not.

But, here’s the good news: There are allies for change everywhere who know we can’t stand by while inequality increases, wages stagnate, and the promise of America dims. We should welcome the support of all Americans who want to go forward together with us.

There are public officials who know Americans need a better deal.

Business leaders who want higher pay for employees, equal pay for women and no discrimination against the LGBT community either.

There are leaders of finance who want less short-term trading and more long-term investing.

There are union leaders who are investing their own pension funds in putting people to work to build tomorrow’s economy. We need everyone to come to the table and work with us.

In the coming weeks, I’ll propose specific policies to:

Reward businesses who invest in long term value rather than the quick buck – because that leads to higher growth for the economy, higher wages for workers, and yes, bigger profits, everybody will have a better time.

I will rewrite the tax code so it rewards hard work and investments here at home, not quick trades or stashing profits overseas.

I will give new incentives to companies that give their employees a fair share of the profits their hard work earns.

We will unleash a new generation of entrepreneurs and small business owners by providing tax relief, cutting red tape, and making it easier to get a small business loan.

We will restore America to the cutting edge of innovation, science, and research by increasing both public and private investments.

And we will make America the clean energy superpower of the 21st century.

Developing renewable power – wind, solar, advanced biofuels…

Building cleaner power plants, smarter electric grids, greener buildings…

Using additional fees and royalties from fossil fuel extraction to protect the environment…

And ease the transition for distressed communities to a more diverse and sustainable economic future from coal country to Indian country, from small towns in the Mississippi Delta to the Rio Grande Valley to our inner cities, we have to help our fellow Americans.

Now, this will create millions of jobs and countless new businesses, and enable America to lead the global fight against climate change.

We will also connect workers to their jobs and businesses. Customers will have a better chance to actually get where they need and get what they desire with roads, railways, bridges, airports, ports, and broadband brought up to global standards for the 21st century.

We will establish an infrastructure bank and sell bonds to pay for some of these improvements.
Now, building an economy for tomorrow also requires investing in our most important asset, our people, beginning with our youngest.

That’s why I will propose that we make preschool and quality childcare available to every child in America.

And I want you to remember this, because to me, this is absolutely the most-compelling argument why we should do this. Research tells us how much early learning in the first five years of life can impact lifelong success. In fact, 80 percent of the brain is developed by age three.

One thing I’ve learned is that talent is universal – you can find it anywhere – but opportunity is not. Too many of our kids never have the chance to learn and thrive as they should and as we need them to.

Our country won’t be competitive or fair if we don’t help more families give their kids the best possible start in life.

So let’s staff our primary and secondary schools with teachers who are second to none in the world, and receive the respect they deserve for sparking the love of learning in every child.

Let’s make college affordable and available to all …and lift the crushing burden of student debt.

Let’s provide lifelong learning for workers to gain or improve skills the economy requires, setting up many more Americans for success.

Now, the second fight is to strengthen America’s families, because when our families are strong, America is strong.

And today’s families face new and unique pressures. Parents need more support and flexibility to do their job at work and at home. (Cheers.)

I believe you should have the right to earn paid sick days.

I believe you should receive your work schedule with enough notice to arrange childcare or take college courses to get ahead.

I believe you should look forward to retirement with confidence, not anxiety.

That you should have the peace of mind that your health care will be there when you need it, without breaking the bank.

I believe we should offer paid family leave so no one has to choose between keeping a paycheck and caring for a new baby or a sick relative.

And it is way past time to end the outrage of so many women still earning less than men on the job -- and women of color often making even less.

This isn’t a women’s issue. It’s a family issue. Just like raising the minimum wage is a family issue. Expanding childcare is a family issue. Declining marriage rates is a family issue. The unequal rates of incarceration is a family issue. Helping more people with an addiction or a mental health problem get help is a family issue.

In America, every family should feel like they belong.

So we should offer hard-working, law-abiding immigrant families a path to citizenship. Not second-class status.

And, we should ban discrimination against LGBT Americans and their families so they can live, learn, marry, and work just like everybody else.

You know, America’s diversity, our openness, our devotion to human rights and freedom is what’s drawn so many to our shores. What’s inspired people all over the world. I know. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

And these are also qualities that prepare us well for the demands of a world that is more interconnected than ever before.

So we have a third fight: to harness all of America’s power, smarts, and values to maintain our leadership for peace, security, and prosperity.

No other country on Earth is better positioned to thrive in the 21st century. No other country is better equipped to meet traditional threats from countries like Russia, North Korea, and Iran – and to deal with the rise of new powers like China.

No other country is better prepared to meet emerging threats from cyber attacks, transnational terror networks like ISIS, and diseases that spread across oceans and continents.

As your President, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep Americans safe.

And if you look over my left shoulder you can see the new World Trade Center soaring skyward.

As a Senator from New York, I dedicated myself to getting our city and state the help we needed to recover. And as a member of the Armed Services Committee, I worked to maintain the best-trained, best-equipped, strongest military, ready for today’s threats and tomorrow’s.

And when our brave men and women come home from war or finish their service, I’ll see to it that they get not just the thanks of a grateful nation, but the care and benefits they’ve earned.

I’ve stood up to adversaries like Putin and reinforced allies like Israel. I was in the Situation Room on the day we got bin Laden.

But, I know -- I know we have to be smart as well as strong.

Meeting today’s global challenges requires every element of America's power, including skillful diplomacy, economic influence, and building partnerships to improve lives around the world with people, not just their governments.

There are a lot of trouble spots in the world, but there’s a lot of good news out there too.

I believe the future holds far more opportunities than threats if we exercise creative and confident leadership that enables us to shape global events rather than be shaped by them.

And we all know that in order to be strong in the world, though, we first have to be strong at home. That’s why we have to win the fourth fight – reforming our government and revitalizing our democracy so that it works for everyday Americans.

We have to stop the endless flow of secret, unaccountable money that is distorting our elections, corrupting our political process, and drowning out the voices of our people.

We need Justices on the Supreme Court who will protect every citizen’s right to vote, rather than every corporation’s right to buy elections.

If necessary, I will support a constitutional amendment to undo the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United.

I want to make it easier for every citizen to vote. That's why I've proposed universal, automatic registration and expanded early voting.

I’ll fight back against Republican efforts to disempower and disenfranchise young people, poor people, people with disabilities, and people of color.

What part of democracy are they afraid of?

No matter how easy we make it to vote, we still have to give Americans something worth voting for.

Government is never going to have all the answers – but it has to be smarter, simpler, more efficient, and a better partner.

That means access to advanced technology so government agencies can more effectively serve their customers, the American people.

We need expertise and innovation from the private sector to help cut waste and streamline services.

There’s so much that works in America. For every problem we face, someone somewhere in America is solving it. Silicon Valley cracked the code on sharing and scaling a while ago. Many states are pioneering new ways to deliver services. I want to help Washington catch up.

To do that, we need a political system that produces results by solving problems that hold us back, not one overwhelmed by extreme partisanship and inflexibility.

Now, I’ll always seek common ground with friend and opponent alike. But I’ll also stand my ground when I must.

That’s something I did as Senator and Secretary of State -- whether it was working with Republicans to expand health care for children and for our National Guard, or improve our foster care and adoption system, or pass a treaty to reduce the number of Russian nuclear warheads that could threaten our cities -- and it’s something I will always do as your President.

We Americans may differ, bicker, stumble, and fall; but we are at our best when we pick each other up, when we have each other’s back.

Like any family, our American family is strongest when we cherish what we have in common, and fight back against those who would drive us apart.

People all over the world have asked me: “How could you and President Obama work together after you fought so hard against each other in that long campaign?”

Now, that is an understandable question considering that in many places, if you lose an election you could get imprisoned or exiled – even killed – not hired as Secretary of State.

But President Obama asked me to serve, and I accepted because we both love our country. That’s how we do it in America.
With that same spirit, together, we can win these four fights.

We can build an economy where hard work is rewarded.

We can strengthen our families.

We can defend our country and increase our opportunities all over the world.

And we can renew the promise of our democracy.

If we all do our part. In our families, in our businesses, unions, houses of worship, schools, and, yes, in the voting booth.

I want you to join me in this effort. Help me build this campaign and make it your own.

Talk to your friends, your family, your neighbors.

Text “JOIN” J-O-I-N to 4-7-2-4-6.

Go to hillaryclinton.com and sign up to make calls and knock on doors.

It’s no secret that we’re going up against some pretty powerful forces that will do and spend whatever it takes to advance a very different vision for America. But I’ve spent my life fighting for children, families, and our country. And I’m not stopping now.

You know, I know how hard this job is. I’ve seen it up close and personal. (Laughter.)

All our Presidents come into office looking so vigorous. (Laughter.) And then we watch their hair grow grayer and grayer.
Well, I may not be the youngest candidate in this race. But I will be the youngest woman President in the history of the United States!

And the first grandmother as well.

And one additional advantage: You’re won’t see my hair turn white in the White House. I’ve been coloring it for years!

So I’m looking forward to a great debate among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. I’m not running to be a President only for those Americans who already agree with me. I want to be a President for all Americans.

And along the way, I'll just let you in on this little secret. (Laughter.) I won’t get everything right. Lord knows I’ve made my share of mistakes. Well, there’s no shortage of people pointing them out! (Laughter.)

And I certainly haven’t won every battle I’ve fought. But leadership means perseverance and hard choices. You have to push through the setbacks and disappointments and keep at it.

I think you know by now that I’ve been called many things by many people (laughter) -- “quitter” is not one of them.

Like so much else in my life, I got this from my mother.

When I was a girl, she never let me back down from any bully or barrier. In her later years, Mom lived with us, and she was still teaching me the same lessons. I’d come home from a hard day at the Senate or the State Department, sit down with her at the small table in our breakfast nook, and just let everything pour out. And she would remind me why we keep fighting, even when the odds are long and the opposition is fierce.

I can still hear her saying: “Life’s not about what happens to you, it’s about what you do with what happens to you – so get back out there.”

She lived to be 92 years old, and I often think about all the battles she witnessed over the course of the last century -- all the progress that was won because Americans refused to give up or back down.

She was born on June 4, 1919 -- before women in America had the right to vote. But on that very day, after years of struggle, Congress passed the Constitutional Amendment that would change that forever.

The story of America is a story of hard-fought, hard-won progress. And it continues today. New chapters are being written by men and women who believe that all of us – not just some, but all – should have the chance to live up to our God-given potential.

Not only because we’re a tolerant country, or a generous country, or a compassionate country, but because we’re a better, stronger, more prosperous country when we harness the talent, hard work, and ingenuity of every single American.

I wish my mother could have been with us longer. I wish she could have seen Chelsea become a mother herself. I wish she could have met Charlotte.

I wish she could have seen the America we’re going to build together.

An America, where if you do your part, you reap the rewards.

Where we don’t leave anyone out, or anyone behind.

An America where a father can tell his daughter: yes, you can be anything you want to be. Even President of the United States.

Thank you all. God bless you. And may God bless America.

SOURCE: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3122756/Millionaire-Hillary-launch-campaign-slightly-arrogant-Woodstock-rally-New-York-City-island-promises-look-ordinary-Americans-pocketbooks.html

Democracy, at least what I understand, requires ALL citizens' participation.

When only some can participate in the discussion, it isn't Democracy.

[nichomachus]

89. Well written

By her crew of speech writers. I'm sure it was run by numerous focus groups. And then rewritten and rewritten. And I hear she read it very well. Kudos.

[Enthusiast]

102. Far fucking out!

You have probably watched this. Excellent. http://watchdocumentary.org/watch/lifting-the-veil-obama-and-the-failure-of-capitalist-democracy-video_47b0db8d1.html

[JDPriestly]

112. This speech reflects some of the values that Bernie Sanders has expressed and lived so well.

It encourages me to know that both Hillary and Bernie agree on some of the basic values and changes that we need to make real.

I like this part of Hillary's speech when she talks about her mother's advice.

"I can still hear her saying: “Life’s not about what happens to you, it’s about what you do with what happens to you – so get back out there.”

That may be an attitude common among Methodists, a religion that was founded on preaching to the poor and lifting up the poor.

My mother said it this way: "It isn't what you have that matters but what you do with what you have."

As Hillary said, she needs to flesh out her program. Bernie is explicit and quick to explain precisely how he would find funds to realize the programs he believes are important. Hillary needs to be explicit and provide those details in her turn.

One difference I notice between Hillary's and Bernie's approaches is this.

Hillary says:

"Our next President must work with Congress and every other willing partner across our entire country. And I will do just that -- to turn the tide so these currents start working for us more than against us."

She calls on people to volunteer for her campaign.

In contrast, Bernie is pointing out that what is needed is not just a president who works with Congress but a huuuge movement of Americans demanding that Congress support the changes that Bernie (and to some extent Hillary) are advocating for. I like Bernie's approach on this better. Hillary needs to be more clear on this. I do not think that a president alone, and especially not someone like Hillary who is such an insider with so many friends in top positions in business as well as government, can confront our corrupt Congress and represent the American people forcefully enough on her or his own. I agree with Bernie. It isn't just going to take a village or even a well organized election campaign. It is going to take a well organized ongoing movement, a mass of awakened citizens to push the D.C. establishment to change government and our social and economic structure to meet the needs of Americans in the 21st century.

I note that Hillary says nothing about single payer healthcare insurance. She did not mention a public option. It will be interesting to know what she says about that and how she proposes (if she does) to lower the costs of health care. (Cutting some of the profits of our health insurance companies and of pharmaceutical company investors would be a good starting place.)

Hillary is weak on the Citizens United issues. She hedges and avoids calling outright for the kinds of strong changes we need in campaign finance. I don't trust her on that issue after reading her cautious language on it in this speech. It is easy to call for change. We need very definite prohibitions on certain kinds of campaign financing. And above all, we need to change corporation law in this country. We have sort of accepted Delaware's very pro-corporate rules on this, and we need to change some of our definitions and laws in that area.

I don't recall that she said anything about Glass-Steagall or about the Telecommunications Act or the welfare reform bills that her husband signed and that have harmed our society.

Also, Hillary's comments about funding college are vague. What is her plan on that?

But there is time for her to clarify her stances on these issues.

I support Bernie, but I want to be fair to Hillary.

I'm glad she didn't sing for her audience. I know voices. She has a bit of a problem there. Your voice is all in your breathing and then in the mechanics of producing sound. But your voice reflects who you are and how integrated your outer persona and your inner feelings are. Hillary's voice is a bit harsh. And her stances on military issues also seem a bit hard. That's rather personal criticism, but let it be understood by those who can hear and know about voice production. It isn't a mean or snide remark. It is my ears working. I'm not so good at commenting on how people look. But I do hear personalities in voices.
It's how I relate to the world. Bernie's New York accent tells a lot about him too.

This is going to be an interesting campaign. I will be interested in hearing and watching how Hillary fleshes out her proposals and moves from this list of goals, very general as it is, to proposals for means to achieving her ends.

Most important. Where does she propose to obtain the money for the programs she proposes? Who is going to be called upon to pay and how much will they be required to pay? Bernie is very clear on each proposal as to just how he plans to fund it.

[jtuck004]

65. Ha. Don't feel bad. I'm a Bernie supporter and got banned from in there because I dared

ask a question in a holy place where one may not ask questions, apparently.

I hadn't meant to post in some protected sandbox either. Not like it will make a big difference, but it was interesting to watch the tantrum. And I suspect any Hillary supporter is full on behind any disruption to Bernie's effort. (The so-called Bernie supporters that banned me might be Hillary supporters anyway).

[Enthusiast]

101. Me too.

I didn't even know I was posting in the Hillary group. I said the wrong thing and BAM! I'm out of there. Geez, I didn't even know I was there.

[joshcryer]

111. Appeal it.

They will unban if you did delete and didn't intend it. I had a similar situation with the BOG.

[Cleita]

120. Doesn't matter.

I just thought it was odd I wasn't asked to remove it before I was banned. I did remove it by my own offer. I have always tried to make point of not posting in that forum anyway when I was aware of an OP being there, so it's no skin off my back.

[SidDithers]

5. +1...nt

Sid

[Bobbie Jo]

33. In the virtual flesh. nt

[zappaman]

85. Jury results

AUTOMATED MESSAGE: Results of your Jury Service

On Sat Jun 13, 2015, 11:35 PM an alert was sent on the following post:

+1...nt
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6829177

REASON FOR ALERT

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.

ALERTER'S COMMENTS

Once again, piling on to a personal attack. That happens a lot, and the constant dogpiles makes this place suck.

You served on a randomly-selected Jury of DU members which reviewed this post. The review was completed at Sat Jun 13, 2015, 11:46 PM, and the Jury voted 2-5 to LEAVE IT.

Juror #1 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Well I'm confused. I haven't a clue as to why Did's post was alerted, or for that matter why the post he was responding to was hidden. Don't know what's I'm missing, but I see nothing here to hide
Juror #2 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Huh?
Juror #3 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!! You want me to hide a post that says "plus one"?Hey alerter, when I get the results, I will be forwarding to the admins. It's obvious you are trying to get Sid another timeout. More than one DUer has noticed he has been targeted. So congrats! The admins will have your handle. Now, run along and try to hide someone else.
Juror #4 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Alerter needs a vacation.
Juror #5 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #6 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: WTF kind of alert is this?
Juror #7 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: No explanation given

Thank you very much for participating in our Jury system, and we hope you will be able to participate again in the future.

[BumRushDaShow]

87. I was in that jury

and don't understand why someone would want to alert on Skinne....err Sid!

[joshcryer]

110. Incredible hide...

...props to the alerter for convincing a jury to hide that. They are amazing.

Would love the results. Would be shocked by anything other than a 4-3.

[RiverLover]

7. Fine with me!!

I Believe It!

[Bobbie Jo]

32. I would certainly think so.

Last edited Sat Jun 13, 2015, 09:48 PM - Edit history (1)

Duh.


that's okay... enough will be enough eventually.

[Cleita]

8. I was alive during FDR's time and Clinton was no FDR.

My grandmother adored him because he pulled her out of dire poverty during the Great Depression. She was raising her grandson, my oldest cousin, and they often went hungry. Although my dad tried to help them with money, it often wasn't enough. When he instituted Social Security, they finally had a steady income. My cousin was able to finish high school and then he joined the CCC, which Roosevelt also founded and was able to help our grandma out until WWII when he went into the army. Because of the GI benefits, he was able to aspire to a middle class life and my grandmother didn't die in a ditch somewhere without care.

Instead, Clinton instituted welfare to work to cut benefits to the poor and the disastrous trade deal called NAFTA, which pretty much destroyed the union bolstered work force that had resulted from FDR's reforms.

[jwirr]

11. ^^^ THIS ^^^ I to lived through that. What we need now is someone who believes in the FDR

ideals.

[Enthusiast]

104. +1

[RiverLover]

14. Thank you, so much, for this bit of living history.

And how FDR helped your family. So interesting. And inspiring...

And so in contrast to the Clinton presidency. This illustrates exactly why HRC being at the Four Freedoms Park & talking about how her husband followed in FDR's footsteps is so appalling. Utterly disgraceful that she should invoke FDR when her husband was the first Dem to begin wrecking his policies...& FDR was the man to start international trade, but I'm quite certain NAFTA & the end of unions was not what he had in mind. He never wanted to encourage our factories to be closed down & workers to be left behind. Just the opposite....

[LittleBlue]

17. +1 million

[MissDeeds]

35. The truth will always come out

Thanks for your insightful post.

[pangaia]

46. I was also alive when FDR was president,

at least for a couple of years. My mother was a 'stewardess' for American Airlines and several times had Eleanor Roosevelt on her flight. Mrs Roosevelt taught my mother to knit. I have a photo of them. How cool is that !

The Clintons have no right to use the name of FDR. It pisses me off big time.

[RiverLover]

49. Oh wow! That is VERY cool!

Thanks so much for sharing.

[pangaia]

51. I also have a photo of her with Will Rogers on the steps of a DC-2

the year before he was killed in a crash with Wiley Post in Alaska, possibly because they had the wrong pontoons on the aircraft. The pontoons that WERE built especially for the aircraft were owned by the father of my machinist and somehow never got installed.

Anything else you would like to know?



Cheers..

[Cleita]

60. How lucky was your mom to have known her in person. eom

[pangaia]

66. Yes, she was. If you like, see my other reply, just above yours...

[RiverLover]

75. You're beautiful.

[pangaia]

77. Me? Beautiful? uhh....

Well, I am a kinda handsome dude.


But you certainly are...

[Enthusiast]

105. Stop it!

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[pangaia]

119. OK.

[davidpdx]

93. Those were rough, but interesting times

I have read about it, but that is no substitute for having been alive during that era. Currently I'm reading The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns-Goodwin (which is a long read) about Teddy Roosevelt and Theodore Taft at the beginning of the 20th century (I read No Ordinary Time a few years ago and Team of Rivals before that). There is just so much to learn about those eras.

[Cleita]

95. If you want a historical read about the turn of the century up to the roaring twenties.

Read Upton Sinclair's novel, "Oil". It's a fictionalized version of the oil barons and how they took over the California oil interests particularly about the Doheny family of oil multi-millionares. He fictionalizes places but it's easy to figure out where he's referring to, like Los Angeles, Long Beach and Signal Hill, the ties to the movie industry, Hearst Castle etc. and how the rich lived back then pretty much on the backs of the poor and bribing politicians. It also chronicles how the oil barons tried to destroy the unions and especially the communist party that supported the labor unions in that era. Since much of it takes place in where I'm living now, I'm particularly interested and dismayed as to how little things have changed socially. We are of course having our ongoing problems with oil interests, the Santa Barbara spill being the most recent occurance.

[Enthusiast]

103. I am so with you, Cleita.

[fadedrose]

10. I was very little when I heard his radio addresses

to the nation.

In my house one would think the government was imposing a serious fine if you spoke while he was on....and I got a really dirty look from my dad even if I just opened my mouth to start to say something...

He was loved, and the love was contagious. Anyone whose parents were alive feels this reverence still...

Eleanor was great too, but not a me-too, both were originals and the molds are broken no matter who claims a resemblance...

[Cleita]

12. Eleanor was a big influence on me because I used to read all her news articles when I was

growing up. She was very criticized for being an uppity woman but I really liked what she had to say and that she didn't mind saying it in the face of the customs of the times. The best thing is she was sincere and she stood up to very harsh criticism and a lot of misogynism. I find Elizabeth Warren's "in your face" clarity of speech and common sense very similar.

[fadedrose]

13. Never thought about that

but I think you're right.

Feisty....and they both don't back down if they think they're right.

[RiverLover]

15. Warren is feisty. And has goodness & common sense FDR principles to her core.

Its just truly tragic that she will not be our president.

[wyldwolf]

28. Like what?

[RiverLover]

63. Her proposed "21st Century Glass-Steagall"

Congress passed the Glass Steagall Act in 1933 to separate risky investment banking from ordinary commercial banking. And for half a century, the banking system was stable and our middle class grew stronger.

But in the 1980s, the federal regulators started reinterpreting the laws to break down the divide between regular banking and Wall Street risk-taking, and in 1999, Congress repealed Glass Steagall altogether. Wall Street had spent 66 years and millions of dollars lobbying for repeal, and, eventually, the big banks won.

I've joined forces with Senators John McCain, Maria Cantwell, and Angus King to introduce the 21st Century Glass Steagall Act of 2013 to reinstate and modernize core banking protections.

Our new 21st Century Glass Steagall Act once again separates traditional banks from riskier financial services. And since banking has become much more complicated since the first bill was written in 1933, we’ve updated the law to include new activities and leave no room for regulatory interpretations that water down the rules.

The bill will give a five year transition period for financial institutions to split their business practices into distinct entities – shrinking their size, taking an important step toward ending “Too Big to Fail” once and for all, and minimizing the risk of future bailouts.

http://my.elizabethwarren.com/page/s/glass-steagall

[wyldwolf]

68. Even though she admits that was just to get attention

When I called Ms. Warren and pressed her about whether she thought the financial crisis or JPMorgan’s losses could have been avoided if Glass-Steagall were in place, she conceded: “The answer is probably ‘No’ to both.”...

... In my conversation with Ms. Warren she told me that one of the reasons she’s been pushing reinstating Glass-Steagall — even if it wouldn’t have prevented the financial crisis — is that it is an easy issue for the public to understand and “you can build public attention behind.”

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/reinstating-an-old-rule-is-not-a-cure-for-crisis/?_r=0

[L0oniX]

16. Bwahahahahah ...what a pant load.

[AtomicKitten]

29. Isn't it though? Yikes.

[wyldwolf]

19. Explain Glass-Steagall to those who may be unfamiliar with it.

[TBF]

20. Yes, let's talk about Glass-Steagall

The previously restricted papers reveal two separate attempts, in 1995 and 1997, to hurry Clinton into supporting a repeal of the Depression-era Glass Steagall Act and allow investment banks, insurers and retail banks to merge.

A Financial Services Modernization Act was passed by Congress in 1999, giving retrospective clearance to the 1998 merger of Citigroup and Travelers Group and unleashing a wave of Wall Street consolidation that was later blamed for forcing taxpayers to spend billions bailing out the enlarged banks after the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

The White House papers show only limited discussion of the risks of such deregulation, but include a private note which reveals that details of a deal with Citigroup to clear its merger in advance of the legislation were deleted from official documents, for fear of it leaking out.

“Please eat this paper after you have read this,” jokes the hand-written 1998 note addressed to Gene Sperling, then director of Clinton's National Economic Council ...

Much more here: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/19/wall-street-deregulation-clinton-advisers-obama

[wyldwolf]

21. The purpose of Glass-Steagall was to prevent investment banks, insurers and retail banks...

... from merging?

[arcane1]

56. It was to prevent them from using your federally insured savings account to gamble with n/t

[wyldwolf]

61. Interesting, though, the banks that caused the financial meltdown wouldn't have been subject to it.

Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would not have come under Glass-Steagall’s restrictions. President Obama acknowledged that “there is not evidence that having Glass-Steagall in place would somehow change the dynamic.”

Even Elizabeth Warren said as much: When the NY Times pressed her about whether she thought the financial crisis could have been avoided if Glass-Steagall were in place, she conceded: “The answer is probably ‘No.’"

[arcane1]

64. Yep. It affected commercial banks like BofA, Wells Fargo, Citibank etc n/t

[RiverLover]

70. Yes, that's a nice regurgitation of Geithner's buddies' positions, and its patently false.

First, in Elizabeth's words~

Then, here is the correct rebuttal to the utter BS line that Glass-Steagall wouldn't have protected us from 2008~

Yet another big bank spokesman says that nonbanks such as Lehman and Bear Stearns were more to blame for the crisis. This ignores the fact that nonbanks get their funding from banks in the form of mortgages, repurchase agreements, and lines of credit. Without the big banks providing easy credit on bad collateral like structured products, the nonbanks would not have been able to leverage themselves.

[See a slide show of 5 bright spots in the U.S. economy.]

It is true that the financial crisis has enough blame to go around. Borrowers were reckless, brokers were greedy, rating agencies were negligent, customers were naïve, and government encouraged the fiasco with unrealistic housing goals and unlimited lines of credit at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Yet, the fact that there were so many parties to blame should not be used to deflect blame from the most responsible parties of all—the big banks. Without the banks providing financing to the mortgage brokers and Wall Street while underwriting their own issues of toxic securities, the entire pyramid scheme would never have got off the ground.

[See a slide show of 6 ways to fix the housing market.]

It was Glass-Steagall that prevented the banks from using insured depositories to underwrite private securities and dump them on their own customers. This ability along with financing provided to all the other players was what kept the bubble-machine going for so long....

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2012/08/27/repeal-of-glass-steagall-caused-the-financial-crisis

[wyldwolf]

71. Warren never said what I posted? And Warren never corrected the record?

[Mnpaul]

121. Freddie/Fannie had little to do with the crisis

Their exposure was mostly due to investment in mislabeled fraudulent mortgage securities. They returned to the black when we made them take their fraudulent securities back. Goldman still wants to dump them into FDIC protected accounts.

If the big banks weren't involved with these toxic mortgages, why did we need to bail them out?

[wyldwolf]

123. No one has said or implied what you're claiming

Last edited Sun Jun 14, 2015, 06:16 PM - Edit history (1)

[Snotcicles]

43. We should ask Brooksley Born what her take is on all of this. nt

[TBF]

80. Brooksley is a very smart lady -

I know who she is from my time in DC (even worked in the same large firm for awhile - did not know her personally). She warned them all and she ended up resigning.

[Snotcicles]

82. After the fact, but very telling

SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt stated "I've come to know her as one of the most capable, dedicated, intelligent and committed public servants that I have ever come to know", adding that "I could have done much better. I could have made a difference" in response to her warnings.

[Octafish]

23. GS kept the Banksters from playing at the Wall Street casino with taxpayer-backed deposits.

When the law was no more, the Banksters used the deposits on all sorts of risky investments that crapped out. Then, the taxpayers got to make the Banks whole and even gave the Banksters a bonus.

The repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999 spelled disaster in the 2008 Bankster Bailout. The Democratic president who signed it into law was working in a spirit of bi-partisanship with his Republican Senate colleague to encourage new areas of banking by deregulating the financial industry cough gutting the New Deal protections of the Wall Street casino from using taxpayer-backed bank deposits.

See if you can spot some familiar names on this list:



They now work together at UBS -- which received uncounted billions in bailout money -- to specialize in some kind of "Weath Management."

PS: Forensic economist and former Fed regulator William K. Black wrote it reminds him of what happened during the Savings and Loans Crisis of the late 80s and early 90s. At the time, that was the greatest bank heist in history.

[wyldwolf]

25. yes, that was part of it. Was it repealed?

[Octafish]

30. Yes. It was repealed by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, signed into law by Pres. Clinton in 1999.

Evidence of an American Plutocracy: The Larry Summers Story

By Matthew Skomarovsky
LilSis.org
Jan 10, 2011 at 19:31 EST

EXCERPT...

Another new business model Rubin and Summers made possible was Enron. Rubin had known Enron well through Goldman Sachs’s financing of the company, and recused himself from matters relating to Enron in his first year on the Clinton team. He and Summers went on to craft policies at Treasury that were essential to Enron’s lucrative energy trading business, and they were in touch with Enron executives and lobbyists all the while. Enron meanwhile won $2.4 billion in foreign development deals from Clinton’s Export-Import Bank, then run by Kenneth Brody, a former protege of Rubin’s at Goldman Sachs.

Soon after Rubin joined Citigroup, its investment banking division picked up Enron as a client, and Citigroup went on to become Enron’s largest creditor, loaning almost $1 billion to the company. As revelations of massive accounting fraud and market manipulation emerged over the next years and threatened to bring down the energy company, Rubin and Summers intervened. While Enron’s rigged electricity prices in California were causing unprecedented blackouts, Summers urged Governor Gray Davis to avoid criticizing Enron and recommended further deregulatory measures. Rubin was an official advisor to Gov. Davis on energy market issues at the time, while Citigroup was heavily invested in Enron’s fraudulent California business, and he too likely put pressure on the Governor to lay off Enron. Rubin also pulled strings at Bush’s Treasury Department in late 2001, calling a former employee to see if Treasury could ask the major rating agencies not to downgrade Enron, and Rubin also lobbied the rating agencies directly. (In all likelihood he made similar attempts in behalf of Citigroup during the recent financial crisis.) Their efforts ultimately failed, Enron went bust, thousands of jobs and pensions were destroyed, and its top executives went to jail. It’s hard to believe, but there was some white-collar justice back then.

SNIP...

Summers also starting showing up around the Hamilton Project, which Rubin had just founded with hedge fund manager Roger Altman. Altman was another Clinton official who had come from Wall Street, following billionaire Peter Peterson from Lehman Brothers to Blackstone Group, and he left Washington to found a major hedge fund in 1996. The Hamilton Project is housed in the Brookings Institution, a prestigious corporate-funded policy discussion center that serves as a sort of staging ground for Democratic elites in transition between government, academic, and business positions. The Hamilton Project would go on to host, more specifically, past and future Democratic Party officials friendly to the financial industry, and to produce a stream of similarly minded policy papers. Then-Senator Obama was the featured political speaker at Hamilton’s inaugural event in April 2006.

Summers joined major banking and political elites on Hamilton’s Advisory Council and appeared at many Hamilton events. During a discussion of the financial crisis in 2008, Summers was asked about his role in repealing Glass-Stegall, the law that forbade commercial and investment banking mergers like Citigroup. “I think it was the right thing to do,” he responded, noting that the repeal of Glass-Stegall made possible a wave of similar mergers during the recent financial crisis, such as Bank of America’s takeover of Merrill Lynch. He was arguing, in effect, that financial deregulation did not cause the financial crisis, it actually solved it. “We need a regulatory system as modern as the markets,” said Summers — quoting Rubin, who was in the room. “We need a hen house as modern as the food chain,” said the fox.

CONTINUED...

http://blog.littlesis.org/2011/01/10/evidence-of-an-american-plutocracy-the-larry-summers-story/

[wyldwolf]

31. The Gramm-Leach-Biley Act only repealed part of the Glass-Steagal but I bet..

Glass-Stegal was entirely entact before then and The Gramm-Leach-Biley Act was opposed by the majority of Democrats in Congress, especially liberals in congress. Would that be accurate?

[Rex]

44. No, not accurate at all.

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/106-1999/h570

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/106-1999/s354

[wyldwolf]

47. Ted Kennedy voted for The Gramm-Leach-Biley Act??

[Rex]

54. That does seem strange.

I take it back you were right about the liberals not voting for it.

[wyldwolf]

58. In fact, it looks like it passed quite easily with Democrats. But what about the courts?

[Rex]

79. Looking at state surpreme court rulings

the states usually favored the banks. Maybe that is where a lot of the legalize for bank contracts agreements with clients came from. I bet the fine print in most agreements states that banks cannot be held negligent by customers under the act. Didn't find anything from the SCOTUS.

I've read over the years that we need to have a new version of the G-S act, one updated to reflect modern times.

I am surprised there is not a Dem co-signer on the bill.

[wyldwolf]

81. From Wiki

In the 1960s, JFK appointed James Saxon to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which interpreted Glass-Steagall to permit national banks to engage in certain securities activities. Although most of these interpretations were overturned by court decisions, bank regulators in the 70s began issuing Glass-Steagall interpretations that were upheld by courts and that permitted banks and their affiliates to engage in an increasing variety and amount of securities activities. Starting in the 1960s banks and non-banks developed financial products that blurred the distinction between banking and securities products, as they increasingly competed with each other.

Interestingly In the 1930s Senator Glass himself attempted to repeal the Glass–Steagall prohibition on commercial banks underwriting corporate securities. Glass stated Glass–Steagall had unduly damaged securities markets by prohibiting commercial bank underwriting of corporate securities.

[Rex]

83. So this has (banks and courts) been going on for a very long time, thanks I did not know that.

Underwriting is a great revenue maker, I can see why banks balked at the prohibition.

[RiverLover]

50. Great info Octafish. We'll see if mainstream media remembers our history, Bill's history.

But I doubt it. They'll play along with the Clintonian version of history. Forgetting actual history.

[Octafish]

126. The Bottom Line is Money for the Connected Cronies.

UBS hired former Sen. Phil Gramm and later former President Bill Clinton. Since the repeal of Glass-Steagal, they've specialized in all kinds of Wealth Management. Phil's the Brains of the Outfit.

The Sting

In the best rip-off, the mark never knows that he or she was set up for fleecing.
In the case of the great financial meltdown of 2008, the victim is the U.S. taxpayer.
Going by the lack of analysis in Corporate McPravda, We the People are in for a royal fleecing.



Don’t just take my word about the current situation between giant criminality and the politically connected.

[font color="green"][font size="5"]You see, there is evidence of conspiracy. An honest FBI agent warned us in 2004 about the coming financial meltdown and the powers-that-be stiffed him, too.[/font size][/font color]

The story’s below. And it’s not fiction. It is true to life.



The Set-Up

You don’t have to be a fan of Paul Newman or Robert Redford to smell a BFEE rat. The oily critter’s name is Gramm. Phil Gramm. He helped Ronald Reagan push through his trickle-down fiscal policy and later helped de-regulate the nation's once-healthy Saving & Loan industry. We all know how well that worked out: Know your BFEE: They Looted Your Nation’s S&Ls for Power and Profit.

In 1999, then-super conservative Texas U.S. Senator Gramm helped pass the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act. This law allowed banks to act like investment houses. Using federally-guaranteed savings accounts, banks now could make risky commercial and real-estate loans.

The law should’ve been called the Gramm-Lansky Act. To those who gave a damn, it was obviously a potential disaster. During the bill’s debate, the specter of a “taxpayer bail-out” was raised by Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, warning about what had happened to the deregulated S&Ls.

Gramm wasn’t alone on the deregulation bandwagon. The law passed, IIRC, like 89-9. More than a few of my own Democratic faves went along with this deregulation, “get-government-off-the-back-of-business” law.

Today we have their love child, MOAB—for the Mother Of All Bailouts.


The Mark

In a sting, someone has to supply the money to be ripped off. Crooks call that person the mark or target or mope. In the present case, that’s the U.S. taxpayer.

Today’s financial crisis seems like a re-run of what happened to the Savings & Loans industry in the late 1980s. Well it is a lot like what happened to the S&Ls. Then, as now, it’s the U.S. taxpayer who gets to pick up the tab for someone else’s party.

Don’t worry, U.S. taxpayer. You’re getting something (among several things) for your $700 billion. You’re getting all the bad mortgage-based paper on almost all of Wall Street. I’d rather have penny stocks, because if there ever was something of negative value it’s the complicated notes and derivatives based on this mortgage debt.



When it comes to Bush economic policy, left holding the bag are We the People, er, Mopes. Don’t worry, it can’t get worse. As St. Ronnie would say, “Well. Yes.” You see, what the bag U.S. taxpayers hold is less than empty. It’s filled with bad debt.


The Mastermind

Chief economist amongst these merry band of thieves and traitors was one Phil Gramm (once a conservative Democrat and then an ultraconservative Republican-Taxus). An economist by training and reputation, Gramm was one of the guiding lights of Reaganomics, the cut taxes, domestic spending, and regulations while raising defense-spending to new heights. In sum, it was a fiscal policy to enrich friends – especially the kind connected to the BFEE.

Foreclosure Phil

Years before Phil Gramm was a McCain campaign adviser and a lobbyist for a Swiss bank at the center of the housing credit crisis, he pulled a sly maneuver in the Senate that helped create today's subprime meltdown.

David Corn
MotherJones.com
May 28, 2008

Who's to blame for the biggest financial catastrophe of our time? There are plenty of culprits, but one candidate for lead perp is former Sen. Phil Gramm. Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown. Yet has Gramm been banished from the corridors of power? Reviled as the villain who bankrupted Middle America? Hardly. Now a well-paid executive at a Swiss bank, Gramm cochairs Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign and advises the Republican candidate on economic matters. He's been mentioned as a possible Treasury secretary should McCain win. That's right: A guy who helped screw up the global financial system could end up in charge of US economic policy. Talk about a market failure.

Gramm's long been a handmaiden to Big Finance. In the 1990s, as chairman of the Senate banking committee, he routinely turned down Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Arthur Levitt's requests for more money to police Wall Street; during this period, the sec's workload shot up 80 percent, but its staff grew only 20 percent. Gramm also opposed an sec rule that would have prohibited accounting firms from getting too close to the companies they audited—at one point, according to Levitt's memoir, he warned the sec chairman that if the commission adopted the rule, its funding would be cut. And in 1999, Gramm pushed through a historic banking deregulation bill that decimated Depression-era firewalls between commercial banks, investment banks, insurance companies, and securities firms—setting off a wave of merger mania.

But Gramm's most cunning coup on behalf of his friends in the financial services industry—friends who gave him millions over his 24-year congressional career—came on December 15, 2000. It was an especially tense time in Washington. Only two days earlier, the Supreme Court had issued its decision on Bush v. Gore. President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress were locked in a budget showdown. It was the perfect moment for a wily senator to game the system. As Congress and the White House were hurriedly hammering out a $384-billion omnibus spending bill, Gramm slipped in a 262-page measure called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Written with the help of financial industry lobbyists and cosponsored by Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the agriculture committee, the measure had been considered dead—even by Gramm. Few lawmakers had either the opportunity or inclination to read the version of the bill Gramm inserted. "Nobody in either chamber had any knowledge of what was going on or what was in it," says a congressional aide familiar with the bill's history.

It's not exactly like Gramm hid his handiwork—far from it. The balding and bespectacled Texan strode onto the Senate floor to hail the act's inclusion into the must-pass budget package. But only an expert, or a lobbyist, could have followed what Gramm was saying. The act, he declared, would ensure that neither the sec nor the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (cftc) got into the business of regulating newfangled financial products called swaps—and would thus "protect financial institutions from overregulation" and "position our financial services industries to be world leaders into the new century."

Subprime 1-2-3

Don't understand credit default swaps? Don't worry—neither does Congress. Herewith, a step-by-step outline of the subprime risk betting game. —Casey Miner

CONTINUED…

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/07/foreclo...

A fine mind for modern Bushonomics. Kill the middle class. Then, rob from the poor to give to the rich.

The Mentor



Anyone who’s ever heard him talk knows that Gramm must’ve learned all this stuff from somebody. He could never think it all up on his own. He had to have help. That’s where Meyer Lansky, the man who brought modern finance to the Mafia, comes in.

Money Laundering

Answers.com

EXCERPT...

History

Modern development

The act of "money laundering" was not invented during the Prohibition era in the United States, but many techniques were developed and refined then. Many methods were devised to disguise the origins of money generated by the sale of then-illegal alcoholic beverages. Following Al Capone's 1931 conviction for tax evasion, mobster Meyer Lansky transferred funds from Florida "carpet joints" (small casinos) to accounts overseas. After the 1934 Swiss Banking Act, which created the principle of bank secrecy, Meyer Lansky bought a Swiss bank to which he would transfer his illegal funds through a complex system of shell companies, holding companies, and offshore accounts.(1)

The term "money laundering" does not derive, as is often said, from Al Capone having used laundromats to hide ill-gotten gains. It was Meyer Lansky who perfected money laundering's older brother, "capital flight," transferring his funds to Switzerland and other offshore places. The first reference to the term "money laundering" itself actually appears during the Watergate scandal. US President Richard Nixon's "Committee to Re-elect the President" moved illegal campaign contributions to Mexico, then brought the money back through a company in Miami. It was Britain's Guardian newspaper that coined the term, referring to the process as "laundering.&quot 3)


Process

Money laundering is often described as occurring in three stages: placement, layering, and integration.(3)

Placement: refers to the initial point of entry for funds derived from criminal activities.

Layering: refers to the creation of complex networks of transactions which attempt to obscure the link between the initial entry point, and the end of the laundering cycle.

Integration: refers to the return of funds to the legitimate economy for later extraction.

However, The Anti Money Laundering Network recommends the terms

Hide: to reflect the fact that cash is often introduced to the economy via commercial concerns which may knowingly or not knowingly be part of the laundering scheme, and it is these which ultimately prove to be the interface between the criminal and the financial sector

Move: clearly explains that the money launderer uses transfers, sales and purchase of assets, and changes the shape and size of the lump of money so as to obfuscate the trail between money and crime or money and criminal.

Invest: the criminal spends the money: he/she may invest it in assets, or in his/her lifestyle.

CONTINUED...

http://www.answers.com/topic/money-laundering

The great journalist Lucy Komisar has shone a big light on the subject:

Offshore Banking

The U.S.A.’s Secret Threat

Lucy Komisar
The Blacklisted Journalist
June 1, 2003

EXCERPT…

In 1932, mobster Meyer Lansky took money from New Orleans slot machines and shifted it to accounts overseas. The Swiss secrecy law two years later assured him of G-man-proof banking. Later, he bought a Swiss bank and for years deposited his Havana casino take in Miami accounts, then wired the funds to Switzerland via a network of shell and holding companies and offshore accounts, some of them in banks whose officials knew very well they were working for criminals. By the 1950s, Lansky was using the system for cash from the heroin trade.

Today, offshore is where most of the world's drug money is laundered, estimated at up to $500 billion a year, more than the total income of the world's poorest 20 percent. Add the proceeds of tax evasion and the figure skyrockets to $1 trillion. Another few hundred billion come from fraud and corruption.

Lansky laundered money so he could pay taxes and legitimate his spoils. About half the users of offshore have opposite goals. As hotel owner and tax cheat Leona Helmsley said---according to her former housekeeper during Helmsley's trial for tax evasion---"Only the little people pay taxes." Rich individuals and corporations avoid taxes through complex, accountant-aided schemes that routinely use offshore accounts and companies to hide income and manufacture deductions.

The impact is massive. The IRS estimates that taxpayers fail to pay in excess of $100 billion in taxes annually due on income from legal sources. The General Accounting Office says that American wage-earners report 97 percent of their wages, while self-employed persons report just 11 percent of theirs. Each year between 1989 and 1995, a majority of corporations, both foreign- and U.S.-controlled, paid no U.S. income tax. European governments are fighting the same problem. The situation is even worse in developing countries.

The issue surfaces in the press when an accounting scam is so outrageous that it strains credulity. Take the case of Stanley Works, which announced a "move" of its headquarters-on paper-from New Britain, Connecticut, to Bermuda and of its imaginary management to Barbados. Though its building and staff would actually stay put, manufacturing hammers and wrenches, Stanley Works would no longer pay taxes on profits from international trade. The Securities and Exchange Commission, run by Harvey Pitt---an attorney who for more than twenty years represented the top accounting and Wall Street firms he was regulating---accepted the pretense as legal.

"The whole business is a sham," fumed New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who more than any other U.S. law enforcer has attacked the offshore system. "The headquarters will be in a country where that company is not permitted to do business. They're saying a company is managed in Barbados when there's one meeting there a year. In the prospectus, they say legally controlled and managed in Barbados. If they took out the word legally, it would be a fraud. But Barbadian law says it's legal, so it's legal." The conceit apparently also persuaded the Securities and Exchange Commission.

CONTINUED…

http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj/column92e.html

Socialize the risk for Wall Street. Privatize the loss to Uncle Sam’s nieces and nephews. Congratulations, Dear Reader! Now you know as much as Phil Gramm.

The Diversion

Still, a global financial meltdown sounds like something bad. Making things worse, we’re hearing that Uncle Sam is broke! Flat busted. Tapped out.

That’s odd, though. We the People see the Treasury being emptied with tax breaks for the wealthy and checks to the companies they own that make money off of war. Want to know how to make a buck these days? Invest in the likes of Halliburton and Northrup Grumman. Anything in the warmongering business connected to Bush and his cronies will weather the downturn or depression.

The Wall Street Journal -- a paper owned and operated by Fox News’ head, Rupert Murdoch – was very quick to promote the crisis, as DUer JustPlainKathy observed. The paper was even faster to pounce on a solution: What’s needed is a safety net for banks. And quick as a wink, they found the answer!
Only the U.S. taxpayer has the wherewithal to prevent the collapse of the global financial system -- a global economic meltdown that would freeze up credit and investment and expansion and prosperity and a return to the Great Depression. Who can be against that?

Oh. Kay. Sounds about right – Rupert the Alien agreeing with what Leona Helmsley said: “Only the little people pay taxes.”



Gramm and McCain also are in favor of privatization. How nice is that?

The Getaway

George Walker Bush and his right-wing pals feel they can get away with this, their latest rip-off the American taxpayers. Who can blame them? When compared to their clear record of incompetence, lies, fraud, theft, mass-murder, warmongering and treason, what’s a few trillion dollar rip-off?



Still, it's weird how they act.
They must really think they’ll be welcomed with open arms in Paraguay and Dubai and Switzerland.
Going by the welcome the world gave the Shah of Iran, they’re in for a big surprise.

The FBI Guy

Don’t say we weren’t warned. An intrepid FBI agent with something sorely lacking in the rest of the Bush administration, integrity, blew the whistle on the bank thing…

FBI saw threat of mortgage crisis

A top official warned of widening loan fraud in 2004, but the agency focused its resources elsewhere.
By Richard B. Schmitt
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

August 25, 2008

WASHINGTON — Long before the mortgage crisis began rocking Main Street and Wall Street, a top FBI official made a chilling, if little-noticed, prediction: The booming mortgage business, fueled by low interest rates and soaring home values, was starting to attract shady operators and billions in losses were possible.

"It has the potential to be an epidemic," Chris Swecker, the FBI official in charge of criminal investigations, told reporters in September 2004. But, he added reassuringly, the FBI was on the case. "We think we can prevent a problem that could have as much impact as the S&L crisis," he said.

Today, the damage from the global mortgage meltdown has more than matched that of the savings-and-loan bailouts of the 1980s and early 1990s. By some estimates, it has made that costly debacle look like chump change. But it's also clear that the FBI failed to avert a problem it had accurately forecast.

Banks and brokerages have written down more than $300 billion of mortgage-backed securities and other risky investments in the last year or so as homeowner defaults leaped and weakness in the real estate market spread.

SNIP…

Most observers have declared the mess a gross failure of regulation. To be sure, in the run-up to the crisis, market-oriented federal regulators bragged about their hands-off treatment of banks and other savings institutions and their executives. But it wasn't just regulators who were looking the other way. The FBI and its parent agency, the Justice Department, are supposed to act as the cops on the beat for potentially illegal activities by bankers and others. But they were focused on national security and other priorities, and paid scant attention to white-collar crimes that may have contributed to the lending and securities debacle.

Now that the problems are out in the open, the government's response strikes some veteran regulators as too little, too late.

Swecker, who retired from the FBI in 2006, declined to comment for this article.

But sources familiar with the FBI budget process, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the growing fraud problem, say that he and other FBI criminal investigators sought additional assistance to take on the mortgage scoundrels.

They ended up with fewer resources, rather than more.

CONTINUED…

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mortgagefraud25-2008aug25,0,6946937.story

We were warned and nothing happened.

Repeat: And nothing happened.

They must think We the People are really stupid. Are we supposed to believe that all that $700 billion in bad debt just happened? Where did all that money go? Who got all the money?

Meyer Lansky moved the Mafia’s money from the Cuban casinos to Switzerland. He did so by buying a bank in Miami. Phil Gramm seems to have done the same thing as vice-chairman of UBS, except the amounts are in the billions.

Who cares? He’s almost gone? Nope. That money still exists somewhere. I have a pretty good idea of where it might be. And George Bush and his cronies are poised to get away with a whole lot of loot.


Who Should Pay for the Bailout

If you are fortunate enough to be one, good luck American taxpayer! You’re in for a royal fleecing. Once the interest is figured into the bailout, we’re looking at a couple of trill.

[font color="purple"]The people who should pay for the bailout aren’t the American people. That distinction should go to the crooks who stole it -- friends of Gramm like John McCain and George Bush and the rest of the Raygunomix crowd of snake-oil salesmen. For them, the Bush administration -- and a good chunk of time since Ronald Reagan -- has not been a disaster. It’s been a cash cow.[/font color]

The above was posted on DU on Sept. 21, 2008. (Check out the responses, lots of info from DUers.) What's changed since then? Nothing near what I'd hoped for, certainly: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4055207

[Maedhros]

22. Oh, yes indeed!

Bill's Welfare Reform was exactly like the New Deal.

[99Forever]

24. Honestly, both Clinton's are the mirror opposite of FDR.

But being the self-promoting egotists they are, they think they can float this nonsense and no one will notice.

[MissDeeds]

36. +1000000

Nailed it. It's appalling they are calling up the ghosts of the Roosevelts to promote their self serving agenda, but not at all surprising.

[TBF]

117. Sadly that is the truth -

and even sadder is that absent Bernie they will likely get away with it and she is STILL a better choice than the neandrathals on the right.

So, we MUST push Bernie to the nomination.

[onecaliberal]

26. Really? FDR jailed 1/4 of the AA population by over policing them?!?

[Cleita]

34. Don't know what you mean.

But this is what FDR did for civil rights.

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/world-war-ii-and-post-war.html

[onecaliberal]

37. Clinton admitted his policy has led to the unintended

Consequence of jailing 1/4 of the AA population. I well aware of FDR's contributions. I wasn't any slight against him. In other words, Clinton is no FDR.

[Cleita]

38. Okay. Your post wasn't clear to me.

Thanks for clarifying.

[arcane1]

57. And the "unintended consequence" of huge profits for the prison industry.

How could they have known?

[onecaliberal]

62. I don't know if they realized the extent

It would go to, but it beyond the pale and everyone knows it. Who is proposing any solution.

[jwirr]

118. Now go look at what Eleanor did.

[hrmjustin]

27. Your concern is noted.

[EvolveOrConvolve]

55. Do you have anything of substance to add to the conversation?

Or is it just sarcasm and a willful blindness to your candidate's obvious and glaring weaknesses?

[DrBulldog]

39. Hillary, you really want to know who's has been continually emulating the next FDR? Bernie Sanders!!

Is that not obvious?

[SoapBox]

59. Ditto.

[appalachiablue]

84. +1

[azurnoir]

40. Let's not forget his welfare deform

which was really about 2 things winning an election and providing low level employers- wally world, mac and don's ect with a nearly endless supply of near slave labor - for those who don;t remember in 1996 those kind of companies were having a hard time hiring people and started to have give employees things like paid holidays and actual breaks during work time along with higher wages-most of which disappeared afterwards

[Snotcicles]

45. Or The Telecommunications Act of 1996. nt

[Hoppy]

42. From F.D.R. to Hillary? What a fuckin' joke.

BERNIE !!!

[MissDeeds]

48. Yeah, that's a bit of a stretch.

[ibewlu606]

52. Rec'd

For HRC to compare herself to FDR is disgusting and an affront to FDR's legacy. He was no saint, but at least he didn't prostitute himself to Wall St.

[moondust]

69. FDR in the DLC?

[Cleita]

72. That would be distant cousin Theodore Roosevelt, not Franklin.

Although I think Teddy is to the left of most DLCers.

[bvar22]

74. I agree.

Teddy R. would NEVER tolerate a Bank that claimed to be "Too Big to Fail".
The Trust Buster would have shown them the door OUT.

[Doctor_J]

73. This whole campaign is going to be vomit-inducing

DUers bashing FDR while HRC takes his name in vain. Every election cycle brings new depths of pandering.

[whatchamacallit]

107. +1 n/t

[raouldukelives]

116. My mom always said you can't get something really clean until it gets really dirty.

I keep waiting for peak dirty. Something tells me we may be getting close.

[bvar22]

76. Hillary,

I Lived and Worked in the USA given to us by FDR.

YOU and your husband are NO FDR.
You are the antithesis of FDR.

[appalachiablue]

88. Sandy Weill of Travellers Insurance and Citi was absolutely at the head of the pack to

repeal Glass Steagall to turn Citi-Group into a giant, one stop shopping entity for financial products and insurance. Phil Gramm had interests clearly, including his wife Wendy who was on the Board of Enron that began getting into commodities trading.

-The Four Freedoms:
Freedom of Speech
Freedom of Worship
Freedom from Want
Freedom from Fear

-The Five Travesties:
NAFTA
Telcom Act of 1996, deregulation of the Media
Welfare as we know it ended
Gramm-Leach-Bliley, bank deregulation, repeal of Glass Steagall
PIC, Prison Industrial Complex expanded

[nichomachus]

90. Did she really say "footsteps?"

Are you freaking kidding me? Footsteps? Does she know nothing about FDR. OMG -- talk about clueless and tone deaf.

[RiverLover]

91. Her actual words were

Last edited Sun Jun 14, 2015, 06:24 AM - Edit history (1)

You know, President Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms are a testament to our nation’s unmatched aspirations and a reminder of our unfinished work at home and abroad. His legacy lifted up a nation and inspired presidents who followed. One is the man I served as Secretary of State, Barack Obama, and another is my husband, Bill Clinton.

Two Democrats guided by the -- (cheering) Oh, that will make him so happy. They were and are two Democrats guided by the fundamental American belief that real and lasting prosperity must be built by all and shared by all.

President Roosevelt called on every American to do his or her part, and every American answered. He said there’s no mystery about what it takes to build a strong and prosperous America: “Equality of opportunity… Jobs for those who can work… Security for those who need it… The ending of special privilege for the few… The preservation of civil liberties for all… a wider and constantly rising standard of living.”

That still sounds good to me....

She knows very well her husband repealed FDR's Glass-Steagall and I doubt for a minute she believed NAFTA or the TPP she was drafting & selling as SoS would do this for American workers~



And we all know The Clintons don't subscribe to this belief, but they do exemplify its meaning~



Imo, her words aren't clueless, but they are manipulative & misleading. When I heard them, I thought the same thing, "Are you freaking kidding me?!"

[Enthusiast]

106. +1 an entire shit load.

[davidpdx]

94. She should be very careful about praising her husband's administration given some of the

things he advocated. I hear people on DU scream "Hillary is not Bill". Ok, true. But once she starts comparing him to FDR that really opens to the door to legitimate criticism. It also raises questions of which issues she supported during his administration.

[Enthusiast]

96. This is what I object to the most.

Well, there are many others.

[JDPriestly]

108. Excellent post. Excellent article.

So true.

Shame on Hillary and Bill for claiming the FDR legacy. They ruined it. They should not claim it.

[RiverLover]

114. Exactly.

And for me, if/when Hillary becomes the "Democratic" nominee for president, I will for the first time in my life cross over to being "an independent". Another Clinton in the WH to continue with the wrecking ball to FDR's work, while publicly claiming to want what FDR wanted for America is too much. Its bad enough my party has endorsed the obvious corruption in her pay-to-play scheme with a private email server while serving as our SoS.

I helped elect Bill Clinton, he was my first vote, and I'm not proud. I don't want to be complicit again in another Clinton damaging our country with republican policies while claiming to be a Democrat.

[DonCoquixote]

109. The Clintons offering this speech at the FDR Memorial

is like the GOP offering flowers at the MLK Memorial. We know that FDR would NOT support the way Bill Clinton undid parts of the new Deal, and we know that Hillary's speeches, for all their talk of "fighting" are a long long cry from "I WELCOME THEIR HATRED!" We know the GOP would gladly undo everything MLK stood for, and the Clintons have already gone a long way towards undoing what FDR stood for.

[RiverLover]

115. Well said.

She welcomes their money.

[Scuba]

113. Her hypocrisy is an affront to any thinking Democrat.

[daredtowork]

122. Like how he triangulated at the expense of people on welfare? Fail. nt

[L0oniX]

124. FDR would have signed off on the repeal of GS too?

The stinking pant load is huge on this one.