Drums of Reform

Hear the voice of the people now moving to a different beat. “Reform, damnit! Reform or else!” Bernie Sanders is the man with the cause and Donald Trump is the man with the mood. The exploited natives are restless, and the establishment ignores them at its peril. Here is a shout out to Isaiah J. Poole for his ourfuture.org article, “Whistleblowers Challenge Candidates To Stand Against Wall Street Fraud.” Although he does not put it this way, Mr. Poole draws our attention to what could become a major headache for Hillary Clinton:

“Four people who have been at the center of some of the nation’s biggest Wall Street scandals have come together to send a message to the 2016 presidential candidates: Pledge to stand against Wall Street fraud and corruption – not just with words, but with the kind of actions that Americans have long expected but have yet to see.

The four veterans of battles with banksters – Gary J. Aguirre, William K. Black, Richard M. Bowen III and Michael Winston – on Thursday called on the candidates to not take contributions from financial companies or officers that have been charged with fraud, particularly related to the 2008 financial meltdown. They have also outlined a set of actions that they say will “restore the rule of law” on Wall Street. They have formed a new organization, Bank Whistleblowers United, to move that agenda forward.”

In the announcement of Whistleblowers Group's Initial Proposals Mr. William Black said:

“We [ Gary J. Aguirre, William K. Black, Richard M. Bowen III and Michael Winston] are all from the general field of finance and we are all whistleblowers who are unemployable in finance and financial regulation because we spoke truth to power and committed the one unforgivable sin in finance and in Washington, D.C. – being repeatedly proved correct when the powerful are repeatedly proved wrong.”

The price each of those gentlemen paid for reporting fraud and abuse adds a sense of urgency to their discussion of the fraud and abuse they found, their challenge to Presidential candidates, and their proposed remedies. The truth must not be buried and the abuses and frauds most not go unpunished. As the Whistleblowers point out:

“Not a single one of those elite bankers who led the fraud epidemics has been prosecuted and only one, a woman who was only moderately senior, has been held personally accountable in any meaningful way through a civil suit (made possible by a whistleblower). This is the greatest strategic failure of the DOJ in recent history.
• The SEC has also proven ineffective in holding the elite Wall Street bankers who led these fraud epidemics personally accountable. As with DOJ, one of the fundamental problems that has gotten worse is the “revolving door.” We propose a practical means of reducing that problem.
• Dodd-Frank has not fixed the gaping problems endemic to finance that will cause future epidemics of elite financial fraud and resultant global crises.
• We know how to identify developing fraud epidemics before they hyper-inflate financial bubbles, how to prevent or at least greatly reduce such epidemics, and how to prosecute effectively the elite banksters. Our group includes former regulators who demonstrated each of these abilities. What we need is the political will to make the vital changes in the face of fierce opposition from the elite banksters. That will is sapped by the revolving door.”
  
  
What makes the Whistleblowers announcement so valuable are the remedies the group proposes in its 60 day plan. I urge you to click on Whistleblowers to see the plan, and to join the whistleblowers in asking:


“...each presidential candidate – which portions of the Whistleblowers’ 60-Day plan will you pledge to implement? We hope the candidates will commit to breaking Wall Street’s power over our economy and democracy. The Whistleblowers’ 60-Day plan provides any candidate with the practical steps necessary to make real the twin goals of restoring the rule of law to Wall Street and ending crony capitalism.”


As Mr. Poole points out Bernie Sanders has already refused contributions from Wall Street, whereas Hillary Clinton is still accepting contributions from Wall Street. Being challenged to endorse or reject the recommendations of the Whistleblowers is bound to increase Hillary's headaches, but she is either with us or with the system that permits the fraud and abuse. She cannot have it both ways. I am also urging Bernie to reply to the Whistleblowers! His endorsement of many of those recommendations and the Whistleblowers recommendation of him would be good.

Do not even bother with the Republicans; their candidates are hopeless, including that bloviating bundle of inflated ego called Trump!  Trump will give the world the finger for you, but he will not lend you a hand; well maybe he will if you agree to usurious interest fees.

Supreme Idiocy

The Republican Party is a ship of demagogic fools who have been so successful at selling fear and loathing that the suckers who bought it now fear and loath those very demagogues! The suckers have turned to a new champion, the ultimate huckster, Donald Trump who is selling views of the greatest middle finger the world has ever seen, and his display of that finger is going to make everything all right again. How's Your Lula! You do not even have to pray for it! The Donald has you covered; he has a special affection for that bible gathering dust on a shelf next to the little crackers. He will tell you all of the answers are in that bible. He knows because he has absorbed all of the answers through the same sort of great man osmoses that allows him to ignore those answers whenever he absorbs more convenient truths. He is absolutely fearless. He never worries about being wrong. He can always declare intellectual bankruptcy and foist the consequences of his folly off on some poor, dumb bastards. He will tell you not to worry about that, but do check the retroactive marital status of your parents. It is just business if you get stuck with the consequences of his folly, and it is your own damn fault for not being as good at business as he is. He is the Great Profit, don't you know? Just look at what he owns.

I would like to say “meanwhile back on planet earth.” But unfortunately Trump and the suckers supporting his candidacy are on planet earth, at least physically, and the base Republicans have made it impossible for our earth bound government to function. That is what happens when you sell the absurd notion that government is the source of all the problems. It becomes a self fulfilling prophesy, and once the fools have bought that notion “except for me” ain't going to cut it. Like it or not, anyone who gets elected to a public office is a part of the government even when that person refuses to govern. It is little wonder that the Republican power brokers are now uttering a collective and heart felt, “Oh, Shit!” Even they who have been so blinded by greed eventually realize it is a mistake to give the keys to your house to the vandals you have been encouraging to destroy things. That realization usually comes after the vandals have smashed almost everything in your house that worked. One of the things smashed by the base Republican vandals is anything that creates even an appearance of cooperation with President Obama on anything. And those nihilistic lunatics do not care how much harm that obstruction does to the country or to their own party because they are not bright enough to think about it.

The evidence is already beginning to indicate that the refusal of Republican Senators to even hold hearings to vet anyone President Obama nominates to replace Scalia on the Supreme Court is going to bite the Republicans in the ass! In her article in Daily Kos “Endangered Republican Senators Face Added Danger From Supreme Court Obstruction” Laura Clawson indicates that Kelly Ayotte, R. New Hampshire, and Ron Johnson, R. Wisconsin, have good reason to fear what the Republican obstruction is doing to their chances for re-election. Ms. Clawson points to a New Poll showing that:

“-Strong majorities of voters in both states think that the vacant seat on the Supreme Court should be filled this year. It’s a 62/35 spread in favor of doing so in Wisconsin, and 59/36 in New Hampshire. One thing that really stands out in both states is what a strong mandate there is from independents for filling the seat- it’s 67/30 in Wisconsin and 60/33 in New Hampshire. Those are the voters who will end up determining whether Johnson and Ayotte get reelected this fall, and they disagree with them on this issue. [...]”

All Republican Senators from purple states are going to be facing the same problem that Senators Ayotte and Johnson are facing, and the Democrats have not even started hitting them with it yet. But wait! It gets even better! Another gem posted on Daily Kos is “The Scotus Time Bomb That The GOP Are Freaked Out About,” by Nailbender:

“It’s been under the radar for the most part, but an upcoming docudrama on HBO is going to blow the lid off the Capitol Dome this coming Spring, unintentionally timed, as it is for release in mid April, just as the Senate will be forced to confront what was only a few weeks ago unthinkable: another Obama Supreme Court nomination as the current, already-off-the-charts election season is fully underway.

The film is “Confirmation,” a dramatic retelling of the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee chaired by then-Senator Joe Biden.”

More specifically the subject of the film is Anita Hill's testimony about the sexual harassment she suffered at the hands of Clarence Thomas, and his appointment to the Supreme Court in spite of her testimony. Add this scandal to the numerous breaches of judicial ethics by Injustice Thomas and his role in so many outrageous and unpopular Supreme Court decisions and what you have is a giant shit bomb about to explode in the face of the demented elephant! This is exacerbated by the fact the Justice Scalia was also guilty of breaches of judicial ethics and played a major role in the worst decisions by the worst Supreme Court since the Civil War! This Documentary will make the Robert's Court as well as the Republican Party's effort to prevent filling the vacancy on that court serious issues in the upcoming general elections! If the voters display an IQ of one hundred or above during the general elections future historians will undoubtedly call the current Republican strategy “supreme idiocy!”

The Jurist Matters

Why do Justices interpret the laws differently? Why will two judges reading the same law and the same precedents come up with different conclusions and interpretations?

Politicians write laws while baring even the most ill-conceived ideologies for all to see. Appellate court jurists, and particularly the Supreme Court Justices, are now openly flaunting their ideologies (one might even say their biases) regardless of the fact that it has traditionally been considered gauche for a jurist to air out his or her brain laundry in public. It seems as though we have dropped all pretenses of rational objectivity. If you do not agree with the right wing you are a liberal “judicial activists” and if you do agree with the right wing you are a “Judicial reactionary.”

The “original intent” judges worship an intent they imagine to be true because they want it to be true, and they piously twist all evidence of the intent of our founding fathers to suit their own purposes in much the same manner as a cult leader twists scripture. Liberal judges are far more open about their pragmatism than reactionary judges are about their use of dogma. Liberal judges talk about fairness and equity; whereas reactionary judges want you to believe that the law is carved in stone. For all their hypocritical twisting and turning, however, the one intent of our founding fathers that is immutable to the reactionaries is that all power should be vested in property owning white males (more specifically they believe that the men of means should rule). This is why it is so important for a Democrat to appoint the justice to replace Scalia. It is high time to change the corporate court into the people's court!

The No Party

All history is out of the reach of Republicans, even recent history. So let me remind them that they have not won a national election in eight years. The man in the white house is not their man. Obama is the President, get over it!

One of the things made very apparent by the Republican buffoons at the last debate is that the Republican Party is going to go too far in their intransigent opposition to President Obama. All of the people on the stage said President Obama should not nominate a successor to Justice Scalia, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell went so far as to say that the Senate would not consider anyone Obama did nominate. President Obama will be the President until January 23, 2017, and Article 2 of the constitution states in relevant part that:

“He [the President] shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law...”

The Republicans obviously want to ignore the Constitution. So much for original intent! If I were President Obama I would nominate a new justice as quickly as possible and demand that the Republicans expeditiously start the hearings and other traditional senatorial procedures for confirming or denying a nominee. If the Republican's refuse, I would file a suit against the Senate and ask the Supreme Court to resolve the constitutional dispute between the branches of our government. The worst that can happen is that the Supreme Court will refuse to hear it or the court will be incapable of reaching a decision. If the court is incapable of rendering a decision the need for the appointment of another justice to replace Scalia becomes magnified. And that is a good thing! If the Republicans in the Senate decide to hold sham hearings or to simply dismiss Obama's nominee(s), it will give Democratic Senatorial candidates a great issue to run on. The nominee(s) at the hearings should mention Citizens United at every possible opportunity. Can you imagine Democrats running for the Senate accusing the incumbent Republican Senators of refusing to confirm any nominee that opposes Citizens United and/or the other unpopular court decisions! I have already heard Hillary making hay of this issue!

By the way, the definition of precedent is: “any act, decision, or case that serves as a guide or justification for subsequent situations.” What the Republicans do today can and will be used against a Republican President if and when the people are foolish enough to elect another Republican and an appropriate situation arises. I have to say that because Republicans are as blind to the future as they are to the past.

Hillary's Categorical Politics

1. Gender.
Hillary Clinton is a woman ergo women should vote for her if she is not acting like Michele Bachmann, right? That is what Hillary thinks. She has gone out of her way to talk about anti-choice Republicans, pay inequality etc. It is a good thing to discuss those issues, but gender is not determinative if your male opponent is also on the right side of those issues. Younger women in particular were offended by Madeleine Abright's comment that there is a special place in hell for women who do not support other women. They thought Ms. Albright's comment was condescending. I agree with them. I also agree with them when they say the ground breaking precedent we would set by electing Hillary as the first women President should not be determinative. Younger women refuse to base their vote on gender because there are too many other issues they care about. Older women who still bear the scars from their battles for gender equality feel differently. Those older women consider the precedent of electing a female President important enough to make it the deciding factor in regard to who they vote for.

I think the issue of gender, and I am not taking about what many people call gender issues, is a mixed bag for Hillary. While her gender will undoubtedly sway many older women in Hillary's favor, there will also be a backlash. I have to agree with women who say the backlash will come mainly from men frequently called “male chauvinist pigs” that tend to be Republicans anyhow, but we cannot rule out a backlash from independent male chauvinist pigs that are predominately blue collar workers. And, although I do not think we should pander in any way to male chauvinist pigs, I have to point out that blue collar workers in general are a group the Democratic Party is trying to woo. So in a general election, and probably in the primaries as well, some of the advantages Hillary might derive from her gender will be negated by an adverse reaction to her using gender as a political issue. I might add here that Republican women also detest Hillary Clinton. I don't know why, but it will hurt her in the general election if that election is close.

2. Race. 
The next categorical issue is race. Hillary and Bill Clinton have always been popular with African Americans and Hillary is playing that for all it is worth. The problem for her is that Bernie Sanders has a stellar civil rights record, and he is as committed as Hillary is to ending institutional racism. Many African Americans (particularly younger ones) are likely to swing over to Bernie's side as they get to know him better. Hillary is trying to counter that with the Obama card. Hillary Clinton has tied herself so closely to Barack Obama that one would think she took his mantle and had it form fitted to her. She has obviously appointed herself the militant guardian of his legacy, and she will use sharp barbs and hyperboles to defend his record from what she perceives to be the grave threat posed by any and all criticism. Indeed, she accused Bernie Sanders of trying to undo President Obama's accomplishments and thereby destroy his legacy. In this regard she is treating Obama's legacy with all the fervor of an orthodox fanatic!

The election of President Barack Obama set a very important precedent, and he has been one of our better presidents. I do not blame African Americans for taking pride in his accomplishments, but I am sure many of them agree that we should not canonize him. Many people, I am among them, were frustrated by the slow pace of the changes he was able to bring about, and there is still a lot of work that remains to be done. I do not claim to speak for African Americans but I am sure that many of them will see Hillary's idolatry of Obama as politically inspired pandering and therefore condescending.

3. Establishment. 
The last category is one Hillary has seized upon while trying to run away form it. It is “establishment,” and she is like the monkey who will not let go of the shiny object even though she cannot remove her hand from the bottle unless she does let of that object. The shiny object in the bottle is the package of things the establishment bestows on its chosen one. Some of the things in that package are endorsements from prominent citizens, Super Delegate Votes, and Money - lots and lots of money with which to buy an election. The money comes from Wall Street and Plutocrats who are hoping to buy what they want from Hillary. And thanks to the Democratic National Committee Wall Street and the Plutocrats can now spend a lot more money on getting Hillary Clinton elected. As the Washington Post reported:

 “The Democratic National Committee has rolled back restrictions introduced by presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008 that banned donations from federal lobbyists and political action committees...

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Reformers complain that the new rules have already changed Washington ethics. They provide opportunities for “influence-buying by Washington lobbyists with six-figure contributions to the Hillary Victory Fund,” said Wertheimer...”

Okay so it is easy to see why Hillary Clinton wants to discard the establishment label while hanging on to the establishment. The problem is that Citizens United, the corrupting influence of money and a Political Establishment that depends on that money are some of the things Bernie Sanders is running against! In that regard, Hillary cannot deny being a part of the establishment while she has that clearly labeled bottle with all of its goodies on her hand! Observant voters deeply recent the unfair advantage the establishment is trying to provide to Hillary. All reformers know our economic system is rigged to our disadvantage and so is our political system. Is it any wonder that we think it will take a political revolution to get this country moving in the right direction again?

Republicans Bare The Worst

I seriously question the sanity or mental capacity of people who watched the Republican debates last night and still call themselves Republicans! What the debaters displayed was xenophobia, and ignorance wrapped up in obvious hyperboles. What Christie and most of the Republicans are advocating in regard to ISIS are the same things that are already being done, only the Republicans promise to super-size it! Here is an example: they talked about what they considered to be the paltry number of our air strikes on ISIS targets, completely ignoring the air strikes conducted by our allies. They advocated massive bombing, even carpet bombing while ignoring how many civilians would be killed and the propaganda coup that would give to ISIS. They talked about strengthening our military when we already spend more than what the next eight nations combined spend on their militaries.

The main reason the Republican candidates are trying to whip up the fear of terrorists and are lying about the strength (they say weakness) of our military is because Republican economic policies have failed dismally and fear and loathing is all they have to sell. Of course I would not rule out rewarding the military industrial complex with huge, lucrative contracts as a motive. As I have said before, the only winners of Bush's war in Iraq were Halliburton, Black Water and the other contractors so favored by the Bush administration that those contractors did not even have to submit competitive bids.

The great political windsock who funnels false hyperboles in any direction the lunatic right wingers are leaning is Marco Rubio. He prerecords his inane comments so as to be ready when anyone pulls his chatty catie string. Chris Christie was pulling that string for all he was worth and seemed amused by the results. Rubio's answer to almost everything was that President Obama knows exactly what he is doing. “He is trying to turn us into Europe!” Rubio railed. Other than stirring up the xenophobic ignoramuses who have no idea what Rubio really meant or how well the programs, such as socialized medicine, work in Europe, I cannot see how that response has anything to do with selecting a Republican Presidential nominee. Yet Rubio just kept repeating this absurdity, at least five times, as if it answered a question about him!

Of course Christie demonstrated his own ignorant demagoguery! Like you, “Obama was also a first term senator,” Christie said to Rubio, “and we don't want to repeat the mistake we made eight years ago.” Hey idiot! It was George W. Bush not President Obama who got us into an ill advised war with Iraq and crashed our economy, and like you, George W. Bush was a governor. Obviously the connection between Christie's brain and reality is a very congested bridge too far! By the way, how are the ongoing court cases and investigations about the Fort Lee bridge closure working out for Christie? Can you still hear the dripping?

As for the other candidates, they are not worth mentioning. Trump demonstrated that he is still a bloviating ignoramus, Bush is still a Bush, Carson is still professing his belief in the economic equivalent to the humors theory that had doctors purging and bleeding their patients, and the most reasonable of the candidates, Kasich, still has to lie about his record and President Obama's record because the facts do not favor Republican economics.   

Business As Usual

The voters have had it. They know that business as usual means they get reamed. The Republicans' answer to this is to privatize everything so that we can get reamed harder and deeper. In doing this the Republicans are following the philosophy of Calvin Coolidge who famously said, “The business of America is business.” The Republicans have even inflicted on us a corporate Supreme Court, a horrible Supreme Court, an unethical Supreme Court that is intent on granting the oligopoly all of the powers of an oligarchy (click on the Supreme Court label). With Injustices Thomas and Scalia sitting on that court it seems as though even the highest court in the land is worshiping the power of money! In Republican land the people blame this apparent political and judicial corruption on the power of government rather than the power of money, which is why the more educated you are the less likely you are to be a Republican! Rather than delving any deeper into the Republican silly sop, I will concentrate on the Democratic reaction to the rule of money.

This whole argument between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders about who is part of the establishment, or who is more progressive is not an argument about experience or qualifications; rather it is an argument about who is more inclined to break the business as usual pattern and bring about needed reforms. Hillary Clinton is now wining about Bernie Sanders bringing up her super pack, and the speaking fees and campaign contributions she has received from Wall Street and major corporations. She says that bringing up her speaking fees and contributions to her campaign and/or super pack is smearing her. Okay, so here are my questions to her:

Do you, Hillary Clinton, favor overturning Citizens United, and if so, why?

There is no way she can talk about the need to overturn Citizens United without talking about the corrupting influence of the money unleashed by that horrible decision. That being the case, I think she will also have to concede that it is fair to question whether she is receiving money from the people and corporations the government regulates. Rather than playing the victim and replying with righteous indignation to those questions, Hillary should just fess up. She should say that the fact that she, who really wants to get the money out of politics, feels that she has to take such contributions in order to be competitive shows how much we need to reform the system. She should then invite us to hold her accountable for how well she is able to accomplish that.

Iowhat?

Iowa caucuses always seems to surprise us. Since 1972 they have only picked the eventual Republican nominee fifty percent of the time, and the results of the caucuses are frequently disputed. Here we go again with disputed counts and coin tosses in the Democratic Caucuses. I think I will hold my comments on that until we see how it shakes out. I am already catching some flack for what I have written thus far. When I wrote on Daily Kos that Iowa appeared to be a virtual tie between Bernie and Hillary, and that we had a long way to go in the nominating process before the fat lady sings, I got a rather snippy reply from a Hillary supporter. This person said the fat lady will sing as soon as there is a primary in a state where the demographics more closely resemble the demographics of the rest of the nation, and that she hopes Bernie supporters will be more gracious in defeat. Bite it! I will be polite to the extent that I will vote to keep any Republican out of the white house. But I will become unbelievably rude if Hillary Clinton is elected and she goes back on her stated opposition to TPP or returns to the Clinton triangulation strategy! This is not a game. The establishment has ignored the Democratic base for far too long. We demand reform and we demand it now!

In regard to the Republicans: The Canadian Texas turd won the caucuses regardless of the fact that the birther dullards in his party would have to exclude him on the grounds that he is not a natural born citizen. And that question to the extent that we can say it is settled law, would disqualify Ted Cruz as a candidate on the grounds that he is not a natural born citizen! Frankly I would like to see the Republicans nominate him. I simply cannot conceive of the people of this nation electing such a destructive and reprehensible Senator who is so universally disliked by his colleagues.

The Donald slipped from winner to weaner, and Marco Rubio is riding his rear bumper. Speaking of Rubio, it looks like his performance in Iowa is going to make him the clear choice of the establishment (read the plutocrats). My nephew, who does not pay much attention to politics and leans Republican, happened to see Rubio's spin on coming in third in Iowa. “I don't like him,” my nephew said. “I think he's another Mit Romney! That was really an astute comment coming from someone who does not pay much attention. Like candidate Romney candidate Rubio is a bloviating wind sock. There simply is no there there. But he does have a talent for spewing untrue hyperboles and Alec taking points!

Now we will have to see how candidates such as Bush, Kasich, and Fiorina are going to react to leaving such unattractive skid marks in the toilet bowl! Will they withdraw or risk a few more swirlies before making an exit?