Hillary Clinton, clandestine plutocrat?

Maybe clandestine isn't the right word? However, it connotes a sense that a common perception among Democrats whose hearts are set on installing a woman president in 2017, is a product of subterfuge. But there's no stretch being made when defining Hillary Clinton as a "plutocrat." Plutocracy is defined:

1. Government by the wealthy.
2. A wealthy class that controls a government.
3. A government or state in which the wealthy rule.

Is it a stretch to connect these dots?

• Hillary and Bill have had (personal) income well in excess of $100 million since leaving the White House in 2001
• The Clinton Foundation has received massive donations from foreign governments and corporate plutocrats in exchange for favors from Mrs. Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State and/or prospectively from a possible future US President.
• As of February 2015, "Nearly half of the major donors who are backing Ready for Hillary, a group promoting her 2016 presidential bid, as well as nearly half of the bundlers from her 2008 campaign, have given at least $10,000 to the foundation, either on their own or through foundations or companies they run," according to the Washington Post.
• Peter Schweizer's 2015 book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, according to the NYTimes, "asserts that foreign entities who made payments to the Clinton Foundation and to Mr. Clinton through high speaking fees received favors from Mrs. Clinton’s State Department in return."

How and why this has not been raised as problematic for the candidate and DNC demands serious contemplation.

The NYTimes review goes on,

“We will see a pattern of financial transactions involving the Clintons that occurred contemporaneous with favorable U.S. policy decisions benefiting those providing the funds,” Mr. Schweizer writes.

His examples include a free-trade agreement in Colombia that benefited a major foundation donor’s natural resource investments in the South American nation, development projects in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake in 2010, and more than $1 million in payments to Mr. Clinton by a Canadian bank and major shareholder in the Keystone XL oil pipeline around the time the project was being debated in the State Department.

Then it provides clues as to why this is not the firestorm it should be among Democrats nationwide.

In the long lead up to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign announcement, aides proved adept in swatting down critical books as conservative propaganda, including Edward Klein’s “Blood Feud,” about tensions between the Clintons and the Obamas, and Daniel Halper’s “Clinton Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine.”

But “Clinton Cash” is potentially more unsettling, both because of its focused reporting and because major news organizations including The Times, The Washington Post and Fox News have exclusive agreements with the author to pursue the story lines found in the book. 

First clue: Clinton aides have proven adept at swatting down criticism. That's ongoing. Among the tactics, longtime Clinton sycophant David Brock purchased Blue Nation Review last fall so that they could have their own (at least) semi-credible campaign organ masquerading as legitimate news. The March 9, 2016 post at BNR goes heavy on claiming that any and all criticism of the candidate is sexist and therefore should be immediately and totally disregarded.

That seems to be working, at least among older Americans. Millennials are the ones facing massive higher education debt and lack of jobs that provide a living wage and therefore not so easily falling for the subterfuge.

Second clue: NYTimes, Washington Post and Fox News don't seem to have been making the story lines in the book stand out as salient for older voters. The other major tactic employed by the "establishment," aka the plutocracy is to attack the credibility of the author. Bernie uses the term "oligarchy" which is similar but hasn't seemed to stir the same sense of ominous exploitation.

Causes and consequences of plutocracy, a response to an excerpt from Freeland's book,

Today’s plutocracy, as described by Chrystia Freeland, can make for an ugly spectacle. It is an increasingly stateless and distant class. The very rich may sometimes dress scruffily or express an affection for common tastes, but their wealth naturally separates them from the rest of the public. It isolates them physically, as they flit from palace to palace in private jets. And it isolates them psychically, as they grow comfortable with the view that their wealth is not merely the fruit of talent and work but the mark of superiority.

Their wealth and isolation often contributes to a shortfall in empathy (or exacerbates a pre-existing condition, which may have helped raise them to plutocratic status in the first place). They are more likely to feel deserving of rewards, well-earned or ill-gotten. And they are less likely to feel a twinge of hesitation or regret when inflicting hardship on business partners or employees in the name of efficiency and profit.

Ask yourself honestly, setting aside her campaign rhetoric, has she at all demonstrated a sense of empathy with anyone during the campaign? Is this empathy? Did Hillary show even a twinge of hesitation in dismissing the concerns of this brave young woman?



Also from the NYTimes story,

Conservative “super PACs” plan to seize on “Clinton Cash,” and a pro-Democrat super PAC has already assembled a dossier on Mr. Schweizer, a speechwriting consultant to former President George W. Bush and a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution who has contributed to the conservative website Breitbart.com, to make the case that he has a bias against Mrs. Clinton. [He also appeared on 60 Minutes to discuss campaign finance and how it is abused by politicians of both parties. - Ed.]

And the newly assembled Clinton campaign team is planning a full-court press to diminish the book as yet another conservative hit job.

My hunch is that our country/society's long, deep and dark history of discrimination of many types, including sexism (it was more than a century into US history before women successfully claimed the constitutional right to vote) provides a backdrop on which the Clinton campaign and political operatives like Brock attach those claims.

Combine information overload with massive personal stress that pervades working families and it becomes practically impossible for people -- unless they have the time and curiosity to investigate for themselves -- to discern otherwise blatantly obvious facts, truth and reality.

Besides Clinton Cash, another investigation that would assist voters in overcoming the blocks to proper understanding of the ramifications of this presidential race is Chrystia Freeland's 2013 book, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else.

The tragedy will be when, hypothetically, Hillary becomes president and takes the country into its next military adventure. Nothing could be done to stop her short of a Republican Congress successfully impeaching her. Congress, in my opinion, would be inclined to impeach almost immediately as a result of the private email server scandal if not for the (manufactured) need to "protect our national interests" abroad. Remember, impeachment is a political process that does NOT require judicial determination of criminal violations.

For sure, that's only a hypothetical scenario. But it's plausible.

Beyond plausible, Clinton is known to be hawkish (a neocon).

Young adults are decreasingly programmed solely by corporate media.

Millennials mostly encounter news through social media, but surprisingly the range of topics they consume is wide-ranging. Millennials consume varied content types with diverse opinions and sources. On average, Millennials regularly follow about 10 different news topics. About half of those topics fit into the “hard news” category, including politics and civil rights issues. Millennials are also exposed to a variety of opinions about those topics. 70 percent of Millennials report that their social media feeds have a good mix of opinions, and 63 percent choose to search for more information about the news they encounter. 

This likely is one significant factor (besides their goals being different) to account for the disparity between voting patterns as compared to older voters.

The bottom line for me is that corporate media doesn't want you to understand the ramifications of plutocracy in general or that, in the Democratic presidential primary, the choice has never been more starkly between granting more power to the plutocracy or reclaiming it for the People.

Hillary supporters might want to do some soul searching. If I were them, I'd want to figure out how throwing such a guilt trip, typically by suggesting that ...

... many in the Bernie camp would rather burn down the country rather than vote for Hillary... 

... in November could possibly be convincing.

Besides the arrogant supposition that Hillary is STILL inevitable, wouldn't it be more prudent to explore WHY large numbers of Bernie supporters are taking the stand against Hillary?




Wouldn't you really want to know what is motivating the people who adamantly demand taking the federal government back from the plutocrats?