Economy
Related: About this forumHillary’s Hardest Choice (and the Democrat’s Dilemma) by Robert Reich
Sunday, June 29, 2014Whats the reason for the tempest in the teapot of Hillary and Bill Clintons personal finances?
It cant be about how much money they have. Great wealth has never disqualified someone from high office. In fact, some of the nations greatest presidents, who came to office with vast fortunes JFK, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and his fifth cousin, Teddy notably improved the lives of ordinary Americans.
The tempest cant be about Hillary Clintons veracity. It may have been a stretch for her to say she and her husband were dead broke when they left the White House, as she told ABCs Diane Sawyer. But they did have large legal bills to pay off.
And its probably true that, unlike many of the truly well off, as she termed them in an interview with the Guardian newspaper, the Clintons pay their full income taxes and work hard.
http://robertreich.org/post/90301409750
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
Purveyor
(29,876 posts)The story behind story is that America is in an era of sharply rising inequality, with a few at the top doing fabulously well but most Americans on a downward economic escalator.
Thats why Diane Sawyer asked Hillary about the huge speaking fees, and why the Guardian asked whether she could be credible on the issue of inequality.
elleng
(131,141 posts)Highly recommended.
elleng
(131,141 posts)is that America is in an era of sharply rising inequality, with a few at the top doing fabulously well but most Americans on a downward economic escalator.
Thats why Diane Sawyer asked Hillary about the huge speaking fees, and why the Guardian asked whether she could be credible on the issue of inequality.
And its why Hillarys answers that the couple needed money when they left the White House, and have paid their taxes and worked hard for it seemed oddly beside the point.
The questions had nothing to do with whether the former first couple deserved the money. They were really about whether all that income from big corporations and Wall Street put them on the side of the privileged and powerful rather than on the side of ordinary Americans.
These days, voters want to know which side candidates are on because they believe the game is rigged against them. . .
But the Republican establishment doesnt think it has to choose sides. It assumes it can continue to represent the interests of big business and Wall Street, yet still lure much of the white working class though thinly-veiled racism, anti-immigrant posturing, and steadfast opposition to abortion and gay marriage.
The Democratic Party, including Hillary Clinton, doesnt have that option.
Which means that, as the ranks of the anxious middle class grow, the winning formula used by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama may no longer be able to deliver.'
Demeter
(85,373 posts)and THAT'S the problem in a nutshell: the tin ear, the exceptionalism, the total lack of empathy and perspective.....and no personal experience or observation about how the other 99% lives. Plus complete deafness.