August 3, 2016 at 1:25 p.m.
Hillary between the hedges
Hillary between the hedges
As it turns out, the Wall Street Journal was guilty of some sloppy reporting. Trump has taken in a lot more from hedge funds than $19,000 - millions more, in fact, as Forbes pointed out - and a lot more than he is willing to acknowledge.
But the fundamental point of the WSJ report remains intact: The big-money candidate in this election is Hillary Clinton, and it goes a lot further than just hedge funds.
Her overall Wall Street connections are broad and deep. She long ago surpassed her husband's record in collecting money from the 1 percent. According to The Washington Post, Clinton has brought in more money from the financial sector during her four federal campaigns than her husband did during his quarter-century political career.
Then there's those speeches. Everybody is still waiting for the transcripts of those words of wisdom she has doled out to Wall Street audiences, where her promises are treated like gold - in just three speeches to Goldman Sachs, for instance, she was paid $625,000.
A CNN analysis shows that Clinton gave 92 speeches between 2013 and 2015, collecting $21.6 million dollars in just under two years. She made eight speeches to big banks, CNN reported, netting $1.8 million.
Then there's her connections to the oil and gas industry. As Greenpeace points out, as of April, the fossil fuel industry had given her campaign $6.9 million. Greenpeace seems a little rattled by it all.
Of course, none of this even includes the Clinton Foundation and its web of donations from foreign nations. According to one report, more than 40 percent of the top donors to the Clinton Foundation are based in foreign countries, including nations where women and gays are oppressed.
One might counter that Clinton is running against a billionaire - a fair observation if you're talking about big money - but, the truth is, when you look where the billionaire money is, it's overwhelmingly behind Clinton.
From George Soros to Warren Buffett to Mark Cuban to Michael Bloomberg, the rich guys, well, they're with Hillary. Trump has himself.
Bernie Sanders' supporters and progressive organizations such as Greenpeace think this a problem, and they're right. After all, how do you take on the 1 percent if you are the candidate of the 1 percent? This should disturb true progressives.
Yes, yes, her rhetoric against the fossil fuel industry and the financial sector is good, but it makes you really wonder what she said in those speeches she won't release. In truth, when it comes to the public interest, the release of Hillary's speech transcripts are way more important than the release of Trump's tax returns.
And, yes, yes, she stands for a higher minimum wage, but that would only help American workers if the gusher of low-wage immigrants is sealed. Otherwise, businesses will continue to seek out illegal immigrants to avoid higher wages, and that is exactly what the Clinton camp wants - a political minimum wage hike that avoids an actual wage hike.
Here's what it all boils down to: Donald Trump, the candidate whom progressives despise, poses the biggest threat to the 1 percent ever nominated by a major political party, with the possible exception of John F. Kennedy.
Trump would raise the minimum wage and cut off low-wage immigrant labor, which horrifies the 1 percent. More important, he would slam the door on rigged trade deals that keep deep currents of cash flowing to the elite, which horrifies the 1 percent even more.
Trump would take on the international climate-change cartel, another critical revenue stream for the globalists. And he would clamp down on the nation's war industry, also anathema to elites who make money by building expensive but useless weapons.
To sum it up, Trump would challenge the very structure of the current world order and its ongoing mission to redistribute wealth and power to the developing world and political sovereignty from national governments to international organizations and corporations.
How ironic that the Left in its current incarnation would come to support a candidate so committed to joblessness and low wages in the United States, so committed to enriching the 1 percent, so committed to supporting Islamic governments that want to enslave women and murder homosexuals, so committed to the nation's military-industrial complex, and so committed to obliterating the idea of national self-determination.
But that is what has happened. The Left is supporting the candidate of the very multinational corporations they oppose.
And there's no doubt she's their candidate. As a wise person once said, you have to follow the money, and the big money is behind Hillary Clinton.
That's why middle-class prosperity to Hillary Clinton is a welfare check, as it is to Barack Obama; she judges the nation's fiscal health by checking the Clinton Foundation bank account, by the ability of the elite to entitle her with a Hillary handout.
The Clintons live and work and breathe between the hedges of the 1 percent, and the progressive movement has slithered in there with them. Donald Trump sees it, and Bernie Sanders once did, though he has now surrendered to the money machine.
There are only two choices, then, on Election Day: Either Trump wins, or the 1 percent does. It's America's call, and, either way, the nation will deserve what it gets.
Comments:
You must login to comment.