Economic Danger and Courruption
The Bill Clinton administration is by now famous passing the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and trashing Glass-Steagall, the firewall between our banking industry and speculators. Both parties, allegedly until Trump came along -- though it is difficult to believe any policy proposal he presents -- have been strong advocates of so-called "Free Trade." The Obama administration has pushed quite hard for its passage of the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership, which grants financial rights and capabilities to corporations in a truly frightening way. Along with further gutting the manufacturing base, the "Investor-State Dispute Settlement" (ISDS), which -- also included in trade bills like NAFTA but extended in the TPP -- is
"a mechanism that provides neutral international arbitration to ensure that Americans doing business abroad receive the same kinds of protection -- such as protection from discrimination and expropriation without compensation -- that are available to companies doing business in the United States under US Law."
By "Americans," of course, they mean leviathan corporations. ISDS grants corporations the right to sue governments or other people or entities for impediment to their profit. Furthermore, in the TPP ISDS is extended, in its truly washed over language, to "allo[w] panels [my emphasis] to review and dismiss certain unmeritorious claims on an expedited basis," and, further down: "TPP countries can agree on authoritative interpretations of ISDS provisions that 'shall be binding on a tribunal.'" These tribunals, however unbiased they claim to be, are not courts and are created by the corporations themselves to protect the rights of the corporations, as many important figures point out, including Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Former presidential candidate Ralph Nader. They are basically corporate courts. So-called "trade" deals are only actually trade deals, and only provide rights, to super-rich corporations.
The way the Obama administration talks about wealth inequality and economic corruption is quite telling, in comparison to the policies enacted on the subject. Ben Norton notes in Salon Magazine that Obama said in his final State of the Union Address, "Food stamp recipients didn't cause the financial crisis; recklessness on Wall Street did," even though the Obama administration bailed out Wall Street, let them turn their game back to the beginning, and subsequently "signed a bill that would cut food stamps by 8.7 billion dollars" -- a bill "estimated to cause 850,000 households to lose an average of $90 per month, while poverty and hunger are on the rise." Under the Obama administration, nothing has been done to regulate Wall Street, as any reforms passed have served to make the situation look better on the surface to the American people, while internally the fraudulent banks have grown larger. Nothing has been done to deal with the student debt crisis. Nothing has been done to deal with the auto bubble. Nothing is being done by the Democratic Party to halt the potential of another oncoming crash, which this time could have a more global impact; in fact, the opposite is being done by all major players on the American political and economic spectrum, with few exceptions.
Just to touch a little further on the financial corruption in the Democratic Party, largely as the result of a super-rich psychology in a system of super-capitalist economics -- in which a small clique of oligarchs can feed off of an economically and politically helpless population -- here are some symbolic examples which have come up in the heat of the 2016 presidential elections: among the revelations in the Wikileaks email dump before the Democratic National Convention is the party's intention to "reward top donors and insiders with appointments to federal boards and commissions in coordination with the White House." There is also the dubious relationship between the Clinton Foundation and the Saudi Arabian regime. David Sirota and Andrew Perez report at the International Business Times ,
"In the years before Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia contributed at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation, the philanthropic enterprise she has overseen with her husband, former president Bill Clinton. Just two months before the deal was finalized, Boeing -- the defense contractor that manufactures one of the fighter jets the Saudis were especially keen to acquire, the F-15 -- contributed $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation, according to a company press release."
Saudi Arabia proceeded to purchase more weapons from us than ever before while Clinton was Secretary of State. Finally, a favorite example of wealthy economic corruption among Democrats -- also discussed around the election season -- and an example that should explain the continuity between the two parties quite well: Rupert Neale reports at The Guardian :
"the candidates [Trump and Clinton] for president share an affinity for the same nondescript two-story office building in Wilmington [Delaware]. A building that has become famous for helping tens of thousands of companies avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes through the so-called 'Delaware loophole,'"
and further down Neale continues:
"Clinton, who has repeatedly promised that as president she will crack down on 'outrageous tax havens and loopholes that super-rich people across the world are exploiting in Panama and elsewhere,' collected more than $16m in public speaking fees and book royalties in 2014 through the doors of 1209 [the address for the office building], according to the Clintons' tax return."
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