How Bad Is It?

Hillary Clinton is not so bad by the standards we have come to expect; it is the standards we have come to expect that are so bad. “Everyone does it” is her excuse for accepting the huge speaking fees paid to her by Wall Street as well as the large contributions to her campaign and to the super paks supporting her, not to mention the donations large financial institutions made to the Clinton Global initiative. When my mother taught me that “everyone does it” is not an acceptable rationale for bad acts I guess she forgot to add “unless you are a politician.” It took the Roberts Court to add that caveat, and the court did it in a manner that encouraged the corporations to shout it with money – lots and lots of money!

If you want to see why donations or contributions paid to or for the benefit of politicians matter I strongly recommend "Wall Street Fraud Of The Month Club" by Richard Eskow. As Mr. Eskow points out there was “[a] $5.1 billion fraud settlement from Goldman Sachs, a $1.2 billion fraud agreement with Wells Fargo – and that’s just from the past week. Over the last several years banks have paid an estimated $200 billion in fraud fines and settlements.”

Mr. Eskow asks a question we should all be asking: “How many settlements, how many billions, will it take to convince some fact-resistant pundits and politicians that there is an epidemic of fraud on Wall Street?”

“A lot of people must have colluded in the frauds,” Mr. Eskow said, “but no executives have been indicted at Goldman Sachs. Nor have its leaders exhibited any shame. They have participated in charity events (including the Clinton Global Initiative), and Goldman has a strong presence in the presidential race. One candidate was paid six-figure sums to give speeches at Goldman Sachs. Another received a Goldman Sachs loan for his Senate campaign and is married to one of its executives.”

I might add that Bernie Sanders is not one of the candidates alluded to in the above paragraph. In fact Bernie Sanders is insisting that the executives of companies committing frauds must be held criminally responsible for those frauds, and that we must break up too big to fail companies and banks in order to do that! Bernie can afford to advance those reforms because he is not accepting any contributions directly or indirectly from Wall Street, the mega-banks, or other giant corporations! The only other candidate making that claim is Donald Trump who is a billionaire that will continue to look after his business interests if elected. So unless you believe dogs do bite the people that feed them, I think you will find it easy to understand why we feel the Bern!