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Post by unlawflcombatnt on May 4, 2016 16:56:59 GMT -6
A word on "unpledged" delegates (i.e., "Super Delegates")
The states (and D.C.) are also assigned a number of "Unpledged" delegates:
"Unpledged PLEOs" consisting of the following: •Democratic National Committee members. •Democratic Members of Congress (U.S. Senators, Representatives, and Delegates). •Democratic Governors, except those who are already members of the Democratic National Committee and, therefore, are delegates re: a.) above. •Distinguished Party Leaders (current and former U.S. Presidents and Vice-Presidents, former Democratic Leaders of the U.S. Senate and U.S, House- including former Democratic Speakers of the House and former chairmen of the Democratic National Committee.
These "Unpledged" delegates go to the Convention officially "Unpledged" (that is, not committed- ahead of time- to vote for any particular presidential contender), though it is well known that many- if not most- of these may very well be privately supporting a presidential contender. The number of these "Unpledged" delegates to the Democratic National Convention is subject to change up to the first meeting of the Convention due to deaths, resignations from office (for those PLEOs who hold an elective office) or accession- by a Democrat- to an elective office through an intervening election or special election. In addition, any Unpledged PLEO who shall subsequently become a Pledged PLEO may further alter the number of Unpledged National Convention delegates within a given delegation."
The breakdown of the delegate votes is as follows: •3,560 Base delegate votes (2,650 district delegate votes and 910 at-large delegate votes) •491 Pledged PLEOs (meaning a total of 4,051 delegate votes to be determined by either a primary or a caucus/convention system in each state or other jurisdiction) •714 Unpledged delegate votes. •TOTAL: 4,765 delegate votes.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on May 4, 2016 16:49:43 GMT -6
Here's another link to the total Democratic National Convention Delegates from the state of Washington's site. www.thegreenpapers.com/P16/DThe so-called "soft" pledged delegates are as follows: Clinton, Hillary 1,704 Sanders, Bernie..1,414 So, despite media propaganda, Sanders trails Clinton by only 290 pledged delegates. As such, if Sanders gets just 300 delegates of the 900+ remaining delegates from the remaining primaries (all of which are open), he prevents Clinton from winning the primary before the convention. And it's damn near guaranteed Sanders will get at least half of those remaining 900+ delegates--or 450+--thus preventing Clinton from winning before the Convention. Clinton absolutely does NOT have the nomination "clinched", nor is she even close.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on May 3, 2016 23:37:43 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on May 1, 2016 23:52:48 GMT -6
www.yahoo.com/news/bernie-sanders-campaign-launch-anniversary-200031589.htmlBernie Sanders begins making case to Hillary Clinton’s superdelegates May 1, 2016 by Dylan Stableford Bernie Sanders held a press conference in Washington, D.C., on Sunday to mark one year since launching his presidential bid, vowing to take his fight for the Democratic nomination to the superdelegates currently supporting frontrunner Hillary Clinton. “It’s a tough road to climb,” Sanders told reporters at the National Press Club, but “not an impossible” one. In a scene reminiscent of the sparsely attended, April 30, 2015, press conference on Capitol Hill where he formally announced his run, the Vermont senator said that those superdelegates supporting the former secretary of state ought to rethink their pledge — particularly in states where he won handily. “I would ask the superdelegates to respect the wishes of the people of those states,” Sanders said. Overall, Clinton has the support of 520 superdelegates, while Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist, has “all of 39” — despite winning 17 primaries and caucuses “in every part of the country.” Sanders pointed out that although he won Washington state’s Democratic caucuses by 46 points (73 percent to 27 percent) and 25 of the state’s 36 pledged delegates, Clinton has the support of 10 of Washington’s Democratic unpledged superdelegates. “We have zero,” he said. “Obviously, we are taking on the entire Democratic establishment.” Clinton’s lead over Sanders in pledged delegates is 1,645 to 1,318. “Let’s be clear,” Sanders said. “It is virtually impossible for Secretary Clinton to reach the majority of convention delegates by June 14 — the end of the primary season — with pledged delegates alone. She will need superdelegates to take her over the top at the convention in Philadelphia. In other words, it will be a contested convention.” He urged the superdelegates to consider which Democratic candidate would have the best chance of winning in November. And “based on virtually every national and state poll over the last several months,” Sanders said, that would be him. “I would be the stronger candidate,” he said, noting that it “would be a disaster if Donald Trump or some other rightwing Republican were to become president of the United States.” Sanders also said superdelegates should consider the youthful enthusiasm he’s injected into the Democratic Party, drawing a total of more than 1.1 million people to his rallies and a record 7.4 million individual campaign contributions — statistics that Sanders says prove his nomination would not only secure the White House but also help Democrats win down-ballot races in the fall. “The energy and excitement in this campaign is with the work we have done,” Sanders said. “This is an important reality that superdelegates cannot ignore.”
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Apr 30, 2016 22:53:06 GMT -6
Below is a link and an excerpts from an LA Times article on how the delegate system works. It gives totals needed, especially regarding the Democratic Primary. However, it was clearly written by a Clinton supporter, who simply refuses to cite only the pledged delegate total, which is all that really counts until the Democratic Convention is over. The salient parts of the article are that there are some 4,765 total Democratic Party primary delegates available. The winner needs to get a bare majority of those delegates--2,383. There are 712 superdelegates available. Those are NOT officially counted prior to the convention, despite what all the dishonest pro-Clinton groupies ("reporters") are trying to make us believe. That that means is that only 4,053 (4,765 - 712) pledged delegates are available. That means that Sanders needs on 1,670 delegates before the convention to prevent Clinton from winning on pledged delegates alone--and BEFORE the convention. Sanders already has 1374 delegates. He only needs o win 299 more delegates of the approximately 1,200 remaining delegates to prevent Clinton from winning on pledged delegates (i.e., before the convention). Assuming Sanders doesn't drop out before the convention, it's virtually guaranteed that he'll get more than 299 delegates, or greater than 25% of remaining delegates. As such, it's virtually guaranteed Clinton will not win the nomination on pledged delegates from the Primaries........................... from the LA Times www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-delegate-process-explainer-20160422-snap-htmlstory.htmlThe delegate chase: How the presidential nomination process really worksApril 27, 2016 By Melanie Mason "As the presidential primary race slogs on for both major parties, one thing has become increasingly clear: It’s not (just) about the voters. Of course, candidates are chasing wins in the popular vote tallied in primary elections and caucuses. Just as crucially, though, they are seeking to rack up delegates to their party conventions, a related task that will actually determine who becomes the presidential nominees. Understanding the delegate chase requires both vocabulary and math lessons. Delegates are the party stalwarts, elected officials and grass-roots activists who represent their respective states at the national conventions this summer and vote for a nominee. Though the Republican race has garnered more attention, the Democrats’ process is a more straightforward place to start. Democratic delegate selection When Democrats convene in Philadelphia in July, 4,765 delegates will be present. The threshold for a majority is 2,383 delegates.... Clinton and rival Bernie Sanders are vying for 2 types of delegates: pledged and superdelegates. Pledged delegates cast their vote according to how their state voted. Superdelegates — a collection of 712 party leaders, elected officials and other high-profile Democrats — are allowed to vote for whomever they choose."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Apr 29, 2016 23:24:06 GMT -6
www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/04/jane-sanders-bernie-comeback-222568Jane Sanders predicts epic Bernie comeback By Nick Gass | 04/28/16 08:12 AM EDT Bernie Sanders may be down, but he is certainly not out of the race, Jane Sanders said Thursday, as she predicted that her husband would win a slew of victories going forward into May and beyond that will keep him competitive leading up to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. "You remember in mid-March after a string of losses, the media wrote his political obituary and we came back to win eight in a row," she said in an interview with MSNBC's "Morning Joe" from Burlington, Vermont, adding, "So we're expecting to do the same here." The comments come a day after the Sanders campaign began laying off hundreds of campaign workers in states that voted Tuesday rather than having them stay on for future contests. Sanders' campaign dismissed the notion that the layoffs represent a posture of weakness with campaign spokesman Michael Briggs telling POLITICO on Wednesday that it comes "from a posture of reality." "It was a difficult time," Jane Sanders said of the recent electoral defeats. "We knew that New York had 3 million independents that couldn't vote in the closed primary and they would have had to change their party registration back in October last year." "Four out of the five contests that were just done last Tuesday were closed primaries again," she continued. "The open primary, Rhode Island, we won. Connecticut, we came very, very close, and if it had been an open primary, we have no doubt we would have won. Pennsylvania, we would have come close or won." The campaign, she said, is "feeling good." "And most of the primaries going forward are open, which I think is much more democratic," she said. "It's also a smarter move for the Democratic Party because if you close the primary and you only have people that have been in the Democratic Party for years, what you are doing is effectively shutting the door on the millions of people that Bernie has brought into the political process during this election. So we're going to go forward." Sanders said it was "disappointing" that her husband hadn't been able to attract more minority voters, but said the campaign was going to aggressively make the case on issues "that affect them." "His general bold vision for the future actually affects them disproportionately," she argued, "because, as you say, a lot of them have lower incomes, they are concerned about the cost of higher education, and a number of the issues that Bernie puts out there." Read more: www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/04/jane-sanders-bernie-comeback-222568#ixzz47HhKJJGw Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Apr 28, 2016 0:01:58 GMT -6
The race is not close to being over.
Clinton leads Sanders by less than 300 delegates when
Clinton: 1,661 pledged delegates won Sanders: 1,374 pledged delegates won
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Apr 20, 2016 23:13:01 GMT -6
from money.CNN money.cnn.com/2016/04/20/news/economy/hillary-clinton-goldman-sachs/index.html) The truth about Hillary Clinton's Wall Street speeches Apr 20, 2016 by Drew Griffin, David Fitzpatrick and Curt Devine "Just 2 months after leaving the State Department, Hillary Clinton began a short but very lucrative speaking career to banks, securities firms, trade associations, and three times, Goldman Sachs. In October 2013, Hillary Clinton was paid $225,000 to speak at Goldman Sachs "Builders and Innovators" conference, held at the Ritz Carlton Dove Mountain Resort in Marana, Arizona. It was structured as a conversation between Clinton and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, according to two attendees. The audience was filled with tech entrepreneurs and investors. One of the attendees CNN spoke to said that Clinton was friendly with Blankfein, but not overly so. "There was definitely a familiarity with Lloyd," the source told CNN. Clinton was "certainly was not critical of banks. There was nothing that made the audience uncomfortable, and there were many people from Goldman in the audience. It was one smart person talking to another smart person about global macroeconomics.".... The speech in 2013 was 1 of 3 Clinton made on behalf of Goldman Sachs. According to public records, Clinton gave 92 speeches between 2013 and 2015. Her standard fee is $225,000, and she collected $21.6 million dollars in just under 2 years. Clinton made 8 speeches to big banks, netting $1.8 million, according to a CNN analysis... The standard fee and her demands are outlined in a memo from the Harry Walker Agency in New York. According to the memo, Clinton requires travel by private jet, and even specifies that she prefers a Gulfstream 450 or larger. Her staff requires first class and business class tickets. And two members of her staff require up to three days on site to prepare, with all local transportation and meals included. The memo states Clinton should be booked into a presidential suite with up to three separaterooms attached. Clinton also requires a flat fee of $1,000 to pay for an onsite stenographer to record everythingshe says. However, Clinton is not required to provide the host with a copy, according to the memo. Costs associated with her demands are on top of her speaking fee. The speeches have been shrouded in privacy. Her staff has limited photographs and at times even confiscated cell phones. Attendees of some Clinton speeches complained vocally on social media that they were told to turn their phones off -- no photos, no live tweeting.
In the summer of 2013, Clinton spoke before a major convention of human resources executives. The group had previously hosted speeches of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, both former Secretaries of State. John Hollon, an editor for an online trade journal attended both, and tried to attend Clinton's speech. He says he was kicked out due to Clinton's request for no media."This is the only time in 10 or 11 years of going to to the annual event, which is the biggest human resource event of the year, the only time they have banned press from any speaker," said Hollon. There was no reason given, he says. The Society for Human Resource Management, the host of the event, told CNN: "All keynote speakers come with some requirements." Clinton's speaking engagements have become center stage in her primary battle for the Democratic presidential nomination with Bernie Sanders. Sanders has challenged Clinton's coziness with Wall Street, especially taking in millions in campaign donations from bankers and Wall Street investors."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Apr 19, 2016 23:41:48 GMT -6
This is NOT the sign of an economy that is in "recovery."
It's a sign of an economy where the banks have recovered, and everyone else has paid for their recovery.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Apr 19, 2016 23:30:37 GMT -6
According to reports, thousands of potential Sanders supporters, already registered Democrats, were fraudulently purged from Democratic voter lists. As many as 120K voters were reportedly were blocked from voting, according to some reports. gothamist.com/2016/04/18/voter_registration_lawsuit.phpNew York Voters Sue The State, Claiming Mass Voter Roll PurgesApr 18, 2016 by Nathan Tempey "Dozens of New York voters are suing the state, saying that their voter registration changed without their input, costing them the ability to vote in Tuesday's primary. The lawsuit, filed this afternoon in Long Island federal court by the group Election Justice USA, argues that the voters' alleged registration changes deny them equal protection under the constitution, and demands a blanket order allowing "tens of thousands" of potential plaintiffs to vote in tomorrow's presidential primary. "Plaintiffs are in imminent harm of losing their right to vote," the suit reads. "They have beseeched the various Boards of Elections without result. Nothing can save their right to vote save an order from this Court." New York's primaries are closed, meaning only members of a given party can vote in that party's primary, and the deadline to change parties is more than six months before Primary Day, the earliest in the country. Those who signed onto the lawsuit say that their paperwork was in order, and in many cases they had voted repeatedly in Democratic primaries from the same address, but that recent checks of their voter registrations revealed that their party had been changed or could not be found at all. The accounts echo online reports of other spurned would-be voters. "We were seeing an alarming number of voter affiliations changed without people's knowledge or consent, people who were registered listed as not registered," said Shyla Nelson, a spokeswoman for Election Justice USA. As the primary neared and the group solicited accounts of irregularities, reports poured in, she said: "What started as a trickle is now a river." More than 200 voters signed onto the lawsuit, Nelson said on Friday (she was still tallying late additions this afternoon as lawyers pushed up against the close-of-court deadline). One plaintiff, a 24-year-old from Suffolk County, says that he registered as a Democrat in 2009, and that a change of affiliation form the BOE showed him, supposedly proving he left the party, bears a signature that is an "identical, pixel-by-pixel" copy of the signature on his driver's license. Another plaintiff, a 58-year-old from upstate Onondaga County, had been registered as a Democrat since 1989, but on April 11th found that her registration was "purged." An employee of the county told her that the change was a clerical error, but that she would not be able to vote on Tuesday, according to the suit. Others named in the lawsuit registered for the first time within days of the new voter deadline in March, or the party-change deadline last October. Nelson, a Vermont performance artist, described Election Justice as nonpartisan, though she and several other core members identified on its website are vocal supporters of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Most of the complaints we've seen publicized online center around spurned voters seeking to cast a ballot for Sanders in tomorrow's Democratic primary. In recent days, the state Board of Elections has chalked up concerns such as these to voter ignorance of New York's restrictive rules, and of the occasional data entry error. Election Justice USA formed recently after Republican officials in Arizona's Maricopa County drastically reduced the number of polling places for the state's March primary, leading to lines as much as five hours long, with the worst impacts in majority-Latino districts. "We wanted to develop a response to voter suppression, issues at polling—the widespread problem at polls this election cycle," Nelson said. In New York, voters certain that they should be registered Democrat have in many cases been unable to affirmatively prove their status. In one such case, Long Island resident Jonathan Carrillo, a DJ, said that he registered as a Democrat for the first time in March, but that he was listed in Board of Elections records as a Republican. Consultation with Nassau County election officials brought up a 2013 DMV form that shows he registered as a Republican when getting a license, which he says he never would have done. In this situation, Carrillo's only remaining option is to go to the county Board of Elections office on Primary Day and explain his case to a judge, in hopes of getting a court order to allow him to vote. This is unfair, Election Justice argues. "The Board of Elections, not voters, holds the voting records and should be responsible to prove a voter’s ineligibility, rather than putting this burden on the voter. As it is currently structured, the statute places an onerous and excessive burden on the voter to prove their eligibility," said Blaire Fellows, one of the New York attorneys filing the suit. "It requires securing a court order, which takes time that many New Yorkers simply don’t have, as it means loss of income over and above what they lose by simply taking time off to vote." The other procedure available to voters with irregular registration records is to vote at a polling site using a provisional ballot, wherein one explains the nature of the irregularity, for commissioners to consider when they're counting votes. This process, the lawsuit says, is the product of "one of the nation's most opaque and oppressive voter laws." The suit asks for the state to preserve all provisional ballots and create a hearing process where voters can explain irregularities, adding a layer of due process, where currently, lawyers argue, the ballots are "discarded by the Board of Elections in a closed room." What the lawsuit calls "purges," its authors argue, disproportionately affect Hispanic, African-American, and Hispanic voters, as have previous electoral manipulations in the state's history. The legal filing, which shows signs of being assembled in extreme haste, also cites the just-reported decline of registered Democrats in Brooklyn by 63,500, voters it also calls "purged." One Brooklyn resident recounts registering as a new voter last month and, upon being unable to find her registration, calling the Brooklyn BOE only to be told it was probably lost in the mail. Photojournalist Natalie Keyssar said she registered by mail within 48 hours of the March 25th deadline for forms to be postmarked, and that when she returned from an assignment in Mexico on Friday, she looked online to see where to vote, but found she is not registered. Repeated calls to the county board didn't go through, and after an hour of trying again today, she said she reached a Ms. Jackson who told her that she "shouldn't have left it till so close to the deadline," that the office was receiving some 2,000 forms a day towards the end, and that her record can't be found, likely because it hasn't been processed yet. "How can the U.S. actually tell its citizens their right to vote has been lost in the mail?" she wrote in a Facebook post. She said she found it even more "shocking" when several friends reached out to say that they were having similar problems. "That’s just 8 of my random friends who just happen to be looking at Facebook, so this problem must be very widespread," she said. A call to the state BOE left her unsatisfied. "What I’m waiting to hear is someone to take responsibility, to say that I did everything correctly and I’m still not a registered voter," she said. "I have a U.S. passport, a driver’s license, a Global Entry photo ID, and an NYPD press pass—I am who I say I am. I just want to vote." Sanders bemoaned the closed primary setup in a recent speech. "We have a system here in New York where independents can't get involved in the Democratic primary, where young people who have not previously registered and want to register today just can't do it," Sanders said during his recent 27,000-strong rally in Washington Square Park. Republican candidate Donald Trump has also bumped up against New York's tight limits, as his children Eric and Ivanka just straight-up missed the deadline to register, and thus can't vote for him. A state BOE spokesman has said that Trump supporters are also among those who have inundated his office with complaints. An open primary would mostly eliminate the need to prove party affiliation in the first place, as Republicans would be able to vote in Democratic primaries and vice versa (and of course, Conservative, Green, and Working Families party members could vote outside their respective sandboxes). In the 1970s, a group of New Yorkers sued to have the state's early party-change deadline declared unconstitutional, but after two courts agreed with them, the Supreme Court overturned the decisions in a five to four ruling. In 2003, New York City's independent/Republican mayor Michael Bloomberg pushed a ballot proposal to create nonpartisan primaries for city positions, in which the top two vote recipients would go on to the general election. Voters rejected this idea. A bill currently before the Assembly would open up the presidential primary to those who are not members of a party. It is laid over in the election law committee, and if past efforts to expand voter access in New York are a guide, it may never see the light of day. A state Board of Elections spokesman declined to comment, saying his office has not yet been served. A hearing on the suit is set for 9 a.m. Tuesday."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Apr 17, 2016 22:49:06 GMT -6
I wrote this from work, so I couldn't sign in to this site do to the insane amount of security concerns at my work.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Apr 17, 2016 22:43:16 GMT -6
from Yahoo News www.yahoo.com/news/george-clooney-bernie-sanders-is-right-obscene-133006115.htmlGeorge Clooney: Sanders is ‘absolutely right — it is an obscene amount of money’by Dylan Stableford "Actor George Clooney says Bernie Sanders is “absolutely right” to criticize the big-money fundraisers he co-hosted for Hillary Clinton over the weekend. “I think it’s an obscene amount of money,” Clooney said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview that aired Sunday. “The Sanders campaign when they talk about it is absolutely right. It’s ridiculous that we should have this kind of money in politics. I agree completely.” On Saturday, Clooney and his wife hosted a $33,400-per-person fundraiser for the Democratic frontrunner at the couple’s Los Angeles home. On Friday at a fundraiser in San Francisco — where Clinton had asked donors for $353,400 for two seats at the head table with herself, Clooney and his wife, Amal — a group of about 100 protesters demonstrated outside the event, which was held at the home of venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar. The 54-year-old Academy Award winner said he agreed with them too. “They’re right to protest,” Clooney said. “They’re absolutely right. It is an obscene amount of money.” Both events were benefits for the Hillary Victory Fund, a joint fundraising effort for the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Sanders had called Clinton’s use of people like Clooney “the problem with American politics.” “It is obscene that Secretary Clinton keeps going to big-money people to fund her campaign,” the Vermont senator said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” last month. “I have a lot of respect for George Clooney. He’s a great actor. I like him. But this is the problem with American politics … Big money is dominating our political system. And [my supporters and I] are trying to move as far away from that as we can.” Sanders, whose campaign has been largely funded by small donations, says his events usually cost “$15 or $50” to get into. “So it’s not a criticism of Clooney,” he said. “It’s a criticism of a corrupt campaign finance system, where big money interests — and it’s not Clooney, it’s the people coming to this event — have undue influence on the political process.” "
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Apr 10, 2016 10:43:05 GMT -6
The GreenPapers.com site provides the most comprehensive Presidential Primary/Caucus information available. It lists the available delegates in each state, and how they are awarded. There's a lot of state-by-state confusion on how delegates are awarded, and even what the true count is AFTER the primary/caucus is finished. Washington State is a perfect example. www.thegreenpapers.com/P16/WA-DAccording to the site, Washington had a total of 101 available delegates, (and an overall total of 118 delegates, including 17 "uncommitted" delegates). Though Sanders hammered Clinton 75-27 in the caucus, his reported delegate pickup was only 35. Apparently the total is not even counted until a later date. California has 475 uncommitted delegates, and 73 "uncommitted" for a total of 548. www.thegreenpapers.com/P16/CA-D#0607Every state has an individual link on the site.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Apr 10, 2016 10:15:41 GMT -6
Sanders thumped Clinton again in Wyoming on Sat Apr-9, winning 56-44. But to hear the Corporate-controlled media, you'd think he lost. No headlines mention his 12-point margin of victory. What they DO mention, however, is that "he hasn't made up any ground", that "he's still way behind", that "he broke even in delegates", etc. (The latter soundbite is actually true, for uncertain reasons.) To their credit, the press does begrudgingly acknowledge he's won 8 of the last 9 contests with Clinton. www.whio.com/news/news/national/saturday-primary-caucus-results-what-know/nq3NX/What they don't mention is how much he's closed the gap in New York--to within 10 points, and that some of the latest polls have him trailing in California by single digits.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Apr 9, 2016 13:13:32 GMT -6
from TheIntercept.com theintercept.com/2016/01/08/hillary-clinton-earned-more-from-12-speeches-to-big-banks-than-most-americans-earn-in-their-lifetime/Below is an article that lists Hillary Clinton's payment from Banks for her speeches. "Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders this week assailed rival Hillary Clinton for taking large speaking fees from the financial industry since leaving the State Department. According to public disclosures, by giving just 12 speeches to Wall Street banks, private equity firms, and other financial corporations, Clinton made $2,935,000 from 2013 to 2015: theintercept.com/2016/01/08/hillary-clinton-earned-more-from-12-speeches-to-big-banks-than-most-americans-earn-in-their-lifetime/Clinton’s most lucrative year was 2013, right after stepping down as secretary of state. That year, she made $2.3 million for 3 speeches to Goldman Sachs and individual speeches to Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Fidelity Investments, Apollo Management Holdings, UBS, Bank of America, and Golden Tree Asset Managers. The following year, she picked up $485,000 for a speech to Deutsche Bank and an address to Ameriprise. Last year, she made $150,000 from a lecture before the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. To put these numbers into perspective, compare them to lifetime earnings of the median American worker. In 2011, the Census Bureau estimated that, across all majors, a “bachelor’s degree holder can expect to earn about $2.4 million over his or her work life.” A Pew Research analysis published the same year estimated that a “typical high school graduate” can expect to make just $770,000 over the course of his or her lifetime. This means that in one year — 2013 — Hillary Clinton earned almost as much from 10 lectures to financial firms as most bachelor’s degree-holding Americans earn in their lifetimes — and nearly four times what someone who holds only a high school diploma could expect to make. Hillary Clinton’s haul from Wall Street speeches pales in comparison to her husband’s, which also had to be disclosed because the two share a bank account. “I never made any money until I left the White House,” said Bill Clinton during a 2009 address to a student group. “I had the lowest net worth, adjusted for inflation, of any president elected in the last 100 years, including President Obama. I was one poor rascal when I took office. But after I got out, I made a lot of money.” The Associated Press notes that during Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state, Bill Clinton earned $17 million in talks to banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, real estate businesses, and other financial firms. Altogether, the couple are estimated to have made over $139 million from paid speeches."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Apr 9, 2016 12:45:43 GMT -6
According to an April 7th national poll by Atlantic, Sanders has caught up with Clinton regarding rank-and-file Democrats. (The poll actually shows him ahead by 1%) www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/a-sanders-surge-in-polling-if-not-delegates/477198/by Russell Berman "Hillary Clinton may have amassed a nearly insurmountable lead in delegates, but rank-and-file Democrats are now virtually split between her and Bernie Sanders over which candidate should be their party’s presidential nominee, according to a new PRRI / The Atlantic poll. Sanders had the support of 47 percent of Democratic or Democratic-leaning voters while Clinton had 46 percent—a narrow gap that fell within the poll’s 2.5 percent margin of error. The national survey was conducted in the days before the Vermont senator handily defeated the former secretary of state in the Wisconsin primary, and it tracks other polls in the last week that found Sanders erasing Clinton’s edge across the country. In a poll that PRRI conducted in January, Clinton had a 20-point lead..."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Apr 6, 2016 23:33:42 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Apr 5, 2016 22:36:42 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Apr 5, 2016 22:27:11 GMT -6
Are you "feeling the Bern" yet?
Sanders clobbered Clinton in Wisconsin by 11%.
With 86 delegates at stake, in theory this should narrow the pledged delegate margin by 8 or 9 delegates.
Washington state, which still hasn't fully allocated all of its 101 delegates, could narrow that gap by another 40-50 delegates.
Sanders is very much in the race.
The small states remaining, especially the caucus states like Wyoming, will likely go overwhelmingly to Sanders.
New York & Pennsylvania may go either way by a small margin, possibly narrowing Clinton's lead slightly to moderately.
And then there's California.
California, with at least 475 delegates at stake, could very easily become Sanders' game-winning, walk-off home run.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Apr 3, 2016 0:21:49 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Mar 31, 2016 23:26:40 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Mar 31, 2016 5:37:38 GMT -6
Bernie Sanders DOES have at least some Wall Street/Financial Industry support. Some bankers DO believe reform is necessary, even if it seemingly affects their own industry adversely. mic.com/articles/127461/bernie-sanders-is-charming-the-most-unlikely-group-of-supporters-imaginable#.IedthjwLtBernie Sanders Is Charming the Most Unlikely Group of Supporters Imaginable Oct 27, 2015 By Zeeshan Aleem "If there's any group of people in America who can claim the title of Bernie Sanders' foremost enemy, it's bankers. "Let us wage a moral and political war against the billionaires and corporate leaders, on Wall Street and elsewhere," the Vermont senator has raged time and time again over the course of his career. When asked at the first presidential debate which enemy he was most proud of, Sanders cited the financial sector, "I would lump Wall Street and the pharmaceutical industry at the top of my life of people who do not like me." But it turns out at least some of them want to be his friend. Odd bedfellows: For a piece in Politico Magazine, Ben Schreckinger dove into Sanders' campaign finance reports to see if he had any supporters in the financial sector. He found that over 100 people in the industry have donated money to the self-described democratic socialist's "political revolution" so far. Most of them work at local branches or smaller firms, but there are about "two dozen who work in high finance in Manhattan," Schreckinger wrote. Schreckinger interviewed a number of experienced Wall Street bankers whose experience in the industry has left them disenchanted. They support Sanders' proposed reforms of Wall Street — which include breaking up big banks into smaller ones, reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act that once mandated the separation of commercial and investment banking and limiting taxpayer bailouts — given the financial industry's history of recklessness. The article is laden with colorful quotes that serve as a reminder that no community — not even bankers! — is monolithic or incapable of adopting values beyond their material self-interest. Paul Ryan, an investment banker who was "horrified" by the no-holds-barred greed of pre-2007 Wall Street, said that he hoped Sanders can make up for President Barack Obama's modest financial regulation reforms: "If you've actually had a front row seat to this you can see what's going on, and it's not a good trend. Money gets made in the dark, and you can't figure out what's going until there's a massive fuck-up." Jon Finkel, head trader at the quantitative hedge fund Landscape Capital Management, said there's nothing inconsistent about his commitment to Sanders. "[Finkel] says he sees no conflict between his day job and his politics. 'There's this idea that somehow there's a disconnect between being in a profession where you're going to be in a high tax bracket, like finance, and social justice ... that's sort of a fallacy.'" One thing worth noting is that none of these positions — neither those of Sanders nor the bankers — actually constitutes "socialism," which, under the strict definition of theory, would mean nationalizing the banking industry. The reforms being discussed here are about establishing rules that guard against systemic risk and restructuring the financial sector so that even when it fails, it doesn't have the capacity to take the entire economy down with it. There's nothing anti-capitalist, per se, about that. But compared to his rival Hillary Clinton, Sanders' proposal is indeed radical. Clinton has called for enhancing some regulation of Wall Street, but she has offered little to deal with the reality that there are now even more banking assets concentrated in major Wall Street banks than before the crash. That means they have even more power than before, and can reasonably bank on taxpayers to pick up the pieces again should they induce another economic crisis. Addressing that structural problem will require some people who are willing to truly buck the status quo — and having some bankers as part of that coalition could help make it more likely to become a reality."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Mar 27, 2016 12:20:56 GMT -6
Below is a link to an article describing the multiple ways the DNC is trying to ensure Corporatist Hillary Clinton wins the nomination over Bernie Sanders Within the actual article itself, are additional links to various actions the DNC has taken to slant the primaries in favor of Clinton. from the Observer.com observer.com/2016/03/the-countless-failings-of-the-dnc/The Countless Failings of the DNCSun, March 27, 2016 By Michael Sainato The Democratic Establishment is shamelessly breaking their own rules and regulations to get Clinton into office "The Democratic National Committee rigged the Democratic primaries to ensure Hillary Clinton would win the presidential nomination. Evidence suggesting this claim is overwhelming and, as the primaries progress, the DNC’s collusion with the Clinton campaign has become more apparent. Hillary Clinton has known for years she would be running for president in 2016. Fundraisers were held on her behalf as early as 2014, before she announced her campaign, as it was well known throughout the Democratic establishment that she would run for president. Unlike Jeb Bush, also an establishment-backed Republican candidate with very wealthy donors, no Democrats in office dared to run against Ms. Clinton. The DNC did not suspect an Independent and three virtually unknown former politicians would contend for the nomination. Aside from clearing out her competition in the primaries, the co-chair to Ms. Clinton’s failed 2008 campaign—Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who is currently the DNC Chair—scheduled only six debates compared to the eight scheduled for Republican candidates, and enacted a new rule effectively banning Democratic presidential candidates from participating in any unsanctioned debates. In addition to a limited debate schedule strategically presented at times when viewership would be low, super delegates overwhelmingly came out to support Ms. Clinton—many before the primary elections even began. The DNC helped the Clinton campaign lure super delegate support through the Hillary Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee that received thousands of dollars in donations from wealthy and corporate interests. With the maximum allowable donation of $2,700 going to the Clinton campaign, after the DNC took their cut the Clinton campaign could choose which state Democratic Parties received which funding. In New Hampshire, for example, Senator Bernie Sanders won over 60 percent of the popular vote in the primary—yet Ms. Clinton received the support of all six of the state’s super delegates after the New Hampshire Democratic Party accepted over $100,000 in donations from the Hillary Victory Fund. The fund has allowed Ms. Clinton to significantly outraise Mr. Sanders, despite Mr. Sanders having nearly double the amount of campaign donors. ‘She and the political machine are not going to invest the time or money to beat the drums for voter registration because they know full well those are primarily votes she won’t receive.’ Most recently, the Sanders campaign filed a lawsuit against the DNC with regards to the DNC banning their access to voter database files in retaliation to a firewall breach caused by the ineptitude of a vendor they hired. DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz quickly rescinded the punishment—but not until the last bits of the DNC’s integrity had evaporated as she defended the action in mainstream media outlets, desperately attempting to salvage her waning public image. A mainstream media blackout has also benefitted Ms. Clinton at the expense of Mr. Sanders’ campaign, and although the DNC is not directly responsible to this alleged bias, their influence certainly has some pull. Some of the largest news corporations in the country could have made efforts to ensure both Democratic candidates received adequate coverage. The New York Times was recently exposed for its overwhelming favoritism for Ms. Clinton, after the company made egregious changes to an article which lauded some of Mr. Sanders’ accomplishments in Congress. The Washington Post was called out by progressive publications for publishing 16 anti-Bernie articles in the span of 16 hours. An analysis conducted by the Tyndall Report on the first 11 months of 2015 found Ms. Clinton received 113 minutes of coverage on CBS, ABC and NBC nightly news broadcasts, with an additional 88 minutes dedicated to controversies surrounding her involvement in Benghazi and Emailgate, which fueled her Democratic support base. In contrast, Mr. Sanders received only ten minutes of coverage. In nearly every state where the race between Ms. Clinton and Mr. Sanders could be close, the horrendous mismanagement of the primaries by the Democratic National Committee and their local affiliates has benefited Ms. Clinton. In Arizona, the Mayor of Phoenix requested a federal investigation after a severe shortage of polling precincts forced voters to wait hours, deterring thousands of people from casting a ballot. A petition to do something about the voter suppression was sent to the White House with over 100,000 signatures, stemming from the decision of Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell to downsize the number of voting precincts to 60. Ms. Purcell initially blamed voters for long lines before retracting her statements and accepting the blame—although she refuses to resign over the scandal. In Massachusetts, Bill Clinton broke election laws by entering precincts but inoculated himself from repercussions by attending with the Mayor of Boston. After his visits sparked backlash in Massachusetts, Mr. Clinton reserved himself to campaigning just outside of the polls in Illinois—where thousands of people were turned away six counties thanks to a shortage of ballots. The same thing happened in Michigan, despite Mr. Sanders’ victory in the state. In Nevada, where voter turnout was poor, Senator Harry Reid phoned in favors to ensure casino employees were sent to caucuses for Ms. Clinton. And when voter turnout has been high, either Mr. Sanders won or voters were turned away and Ms. Clinton was victorious. At the same time, Republicans have seen record voter turnouts in their primaries. “Party leaders (again, that’s code for Hillary supporters) have seemingly hosted fewer voter registration drives. Doing so, would, in essence, be drives for Bernie Sanders. In some cases, party leaders are just skipping them altogether in many states and at college campuses,” wrote Shaun King for The New York Daily News. “Hillary must know that low voter turnout actually favors her campaign to get the nomination. She and the political machine are not going to invest the time or money to beat the drums for voter registration because they know full well those are primarily votes she won’t receive.” The efforts of the DNC to suppress the vote in order to ensure Ms. Clinton wins more delegates may help her win the Democratic nomination, but it will backfire in the general election in November. The DNC has bent their own rules and regulations to assist Ms. Clinton. In December 2015, Vice News broke a story that the DNC was allowing Ms. Clinton’s campaign to share offices with the Carson City Democratic Party in Nevada—a key early primary state. In the summer of 2015, a top DNC official, Henry R. Munoz III broke DNC rules by organizing a fundraiser for Ms. Clinton in Texas. When news broke of the infraction, Ms. Wasserman Schultz ignored it. Aside from an overt favoritism for Ms. Clinton—because Ms. Wasserman Schultz’s career depends on Ms. Clinton winning—under her leadership the DNC suffered significant losses in the House and Senate in 2014 and the party was virtually bankrupt heading into this year, as they have been significantly out funded by the Republican National Committee. “The Democratic Party—we haven’t left them, they left us,” said actress Rosario Dawson while introducing Mr. Sanders to a crowd in San Diego, California. “We are playing chicken here, and they are going to have to turn. That candidate (Clinton) is the Ralph Nader, not Bernie Sanders.” Ms. Dawson expressed sentiments felt by many of Mr. Sanders’ supporters, who have been disenfranchised by the DNC. If Hillary Clinton makes it through to the general election in November, the repercussions of the Democratic Party’s corruption and poor leadership will reverberate into the future."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Mar 8, 2016 23:00:51 GMT -6
from the Washington Post Sanders edges out Clinton in Michigan in surprisingly tight raceBy David A. Fahrenthold March 8 at 11:46 PM " Sen. Bernie Sanders has been projected as the winner of the Democratic presidential primary in Michigan – an upset victory over former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, a state race in which Sanders vastly improved his performance among African American Democrats. Pre-election polling had shown Clinton with a significant lead in Michigan. But Sanders took the lead as early returns came in, and he never gave it back: the Associated Press projected Sanders as the winner at 11:33 p.m., when he was leading by 50% to 48%, with 91% of the precincts reporting...."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Mar 5, 2016 15:23:06 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Mar 1, 2016 22:55:40 GMT -6
from Yahoo.com Though Bernie Sanders was not the overall winner on Super Tuesday, he's still very much alive as a candidate.
He won at least 4 more states, and has out-raised Clinton in campaign contributions-- receiving over $40 million in contributions during the last month-- coming from over 1 million individual campaign donors. www.yahoo.com/politics/after-super-tuesday-bernie-sanders-says-hes-031241686.html"Bernie Sanders may be facing tough delegate math against his rival Hillary Clinton, but the progressive candidate told a crowd of his strongest supporters that he would fight for the nomination in every state. “At the end of tonight, 15 states will have voted. 35 states remain,” Sanders told a Vermont crowd of thousands. “Let me assure you that we are going to take our fight for economic justice, for social justice, for environmental sanity, for a world of peace to every one of those states.” The Vermont senator assured his supporters that he will still pick up delegates in states he loses on Super Tuesday. “This is not a general election, it’s not winner-take-all. If you get 52 percent or 48 percent, you end up with roughly the same amount of delegates,” he said. The senator is right that he is picking up delegates even in states he loses...he did better than some expected–winning his home state of Vermont, plus Oklahoma, Colorado and Minnesota–Sanders was falling short of making up for Clinton’s very strong showing in the South. She won 6 Super Tuesday states and was holding a slim lead in Massachusetts. (Superdelegates, who are chosen by the party and not allocated based on the popular vote, also overwhelmingly support Clinton.)... But this pessimism has not reached Vermont, the campaign or the more than 1 million Sanders supporters who contributed $42 million to his campaign last month, outdoing Clinton’s fundraising machine. The hometown crowd gave Sanders a rockstar’s reception, cheering for a full minute when he arrived on stage with his wife, Jane. Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and other campaign surrogates introduced Sanders as the “next president of the United States” to the cheering crowd. "Sanders appears to have the money and the will to go all the way. And he doesn’t have to worry about big-time donors deciding it’s time for him to pull the plug if he can’t catch up with Clinton. “We think we’re going to have the resources to go all the way,” Sanders’ senior adviser, Tad Devine, said. “In the past, campaigns ended because the bundlers said, ‘We aren’t going to bundle anymore.’ We don’t have any bundlers. The people who are investing in this campaign are doing so not because it’s a smart money calculation, but because they believe in Bernie Sanders.” Devine said the campaign is looking forward to upcoming races in Kansas, Nebraska, Maine, Louisiana and Michigan. “We’re going to compete and win in as many states as possible,” he said. Devine dismissed the possibility that Sanders supporters will lose some of their enthusiasm as they see their candidate’s chances dim. “You know, I think our supporters are enthusiastic about Bernie and his message, not enthusiastic about his delegate totals,” he said. Sanders has from the beginning been a candidate of ideas, when he entered the race nearly a year ago with almost zero name recognition to take on a candidate most Democrats saw as inevitable. His surprising popularity pushed Clinton to the left on many issues, from the Keystone Pipeline to economic inequality, and has changed the race forever. The money that keeps pouring into this campaign means he can continue to deliver this message, even if he doesn’t have a shot at the nomination. “What I have said is that this campaign is not just about electing a president, it is about making a political revolution,” Sanders said at his victory rally. One thing the campaign says won’t happen, no matter the outcome? Sharper attacks on Clinton. “I’ve worked with Bernie for 20 years. We’ve never run a negative ad, and I predict we never will,” Devine said. "
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Feb 24, 2016 0:22:58 GMT -6
from Wall Street on Parade wallstreetonparade.com/2016/02/57-percent-of-our-banks-have-disappeared-you-can-thank-bill-clinton/57% of Our Banks Have Disappeared: You Can Thank Bill ClintonFeb 23, 2016 By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: "Thanks to the Presidential debates, most Americans have heard of the Glass-Steagall Act which kept the country’s banking system safe for 66 years until it was repealed by President Bill Clinton in 1999, allowing the risky activities of Wall Street trading firms to merge with insured-deposit banks, setting the stage for the Wall Street collapse in 2008. But few Americans have ever heard of the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994, which Bill Clinton signed into law less than two years after taking office. The Riegle-Neal legislation allowed bank holding companies to acquire banks anywhere in the nation and invalidated the laws of 36 states which had allowed interstate banking only on a reciprocal or regional basis. Put these two pieces of legislation together with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, also signed into law by Bill Clinton, which allowed trillions of dollars of OTC derivatives on Wall Street to escape regulation, and you have just defined America’s current banking system from hell. In 1934, there were 14,146 commercial banks with FDIC insurance in the United States. By 1985, that number had barely budged – we had a total of 14,417. But as of this month, we have 6,172 FDIC-insured commercial banks, a decline of 57%, with the annual declines accelerating after the passage of Riegle-Neal in 1994. Making the banking system decidedly grim in terms of both competition and the potential for more taxpayer bailouts, of the current 6,172 banks holding a total of $15.9 trillion in assets, just 4 banks (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citibank, a unit of Citigroup, hold 41% of those assets – rendering them too-big-to-fail and an albatross around the neck of the country’s economic prospects and the taxpayers’ pocketbook. (All four of the banks took billions of dollars under the Troubled Assets Relief Program during the 2008-2010 financial crisis and Citigroup received the largest bank bailout in U.S. history: $45 billion in equity infusions, over $300 billion in asset guarantees, and more than $2 trillion in cumulative, below-market rate loans from the Federal Reserve — loans that were initially kept secret from the taxpayer.) By allowing these mega banks to gobble up banks all over the country and stick their logo on thousands of insured-deposit branches across America, Bill Clinton effectively created too-big-to-fail. And because these same handful of banks are dangerously interconnected as counter-parties to trillions of dollars in opaque derivative gambles, when the stock market sinks their share prices sink in tandem, raising ongoing worries of another banking contagion similar to 2008. According to a report from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), just 5 Wall Street banks hold 93% of $247 trillion in notional derivatives at all U.S. banks. Those banks are: Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. All of these banks have paid big fines for ripping off investors and/or consumers. Bill Clinton ran for president on a platform of being out to help the little guy. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign web site says she “wants to be a champion for everyday Americans.” But the wrecking ball that Bill Clinton took to investor protection banking legislation during his two terms as President, the millions of dollars that have flowed from Wall Street into both Hillary Clinton’s campaign coffers and her personal bank account from speaking fees, should tell voters all they need to know. It is highly likely that the U.S. will face another banking crisis in the not too distant future. How that crisis will be handled will determine the economic future of America for our children and future generations. With all that’s at stake, isn’t it time to judge candidates for high office on their actions and not their hollow promises?"
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Feb 20, 2016 0:21:14 GMT -6
from Information Clearing House www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44233.htmThe Glorification of Antonin ScaliaFeb 16, 2016 By Tom Carter "February 16, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - "WSWS" - The sickening tributes across the official US political and media spectrum to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died suddenly on Saturday at the age of 79, are a barometer of the putrefaction of American democracy. The universal deference towards Scalia from what passes for the “liberal” faction of the establishment is particularly repulsive. The statements of the Democratic presidential candidates, the supposed “socialist” Bernie Sanders no less than Hillary Clinton—echoing similarly sycophantic drivel from the likes of the New York Times—are monuments to political cowardice. One would say these people lack the courage of their convictions if they had any convictions to lack! They have sprung into action to join their Republican counterparts in hailing Scalia as a towering figure in American jurisprudence. Virtually every description of the deceased justice includes the words “brilliant” and “intellectual.” One is reminded of the programmed acclamation of Sergeant Raymond Shaw recited by his brainwashed fellow soldiers in the film The Manchurian Candidate: “Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.” Sanders took time off from his hollow calls for a “political revolution” to demonstrate his political obeisance to the ruling class, declaring, “While I differed with Justice Scalia’s views and jurisprudence, he was a brilliant, colorful and outspoken member of the Supreme Court.” Clinton praised Scalia as “a dedicated public servant who brought energy and passion to the bench.” President Obama called Scalia a “towering legal figure.” The New York Times’ Ross Douthat hailed Scalia for “putting originalist principle above a partisan conservatism,” and for his “combination of brilliance, eloquence, and good timing.” No one dares say what needs to be said. The object of their veneration was a black-robed thug and sadist who used his position on the bench to attack the basic civil liberties laid down in the US Constitution and Bill of Rights—separation of church and state; due process; protection from arbitrary arrest, search and seizure; the right to trial by jury; protection from cruel and unusual punishment; the right to vote. His supposed juridical brilliance boiled down to starting with the political outcome he desired (invariably reactionary) and then cobbling together pseudo-legal arguments to justify his ruling—often with flagrant disregard for legal precedent and the unambiguous language of statutes and constitutional provisions. In one case last year, Scalia argued that a police officer did not use “deadly force” when he climbed onto an overpass and used an assault rifle to kill an unarmed man fleeing in a car. According to Scalia’s reasoning, it was not deadly force because the officer claimed to have been aiming at the car, not the person in the car. Perhaps the most infamous example of this method—absurdly described in the media as “constitutional originalism”—was the 2000 Supreme Court decision Scalia engineered to halt the counting of votes in Florida and hand the White House to the loser of the election, Republican candidate George W. Bush. The 5-4 decision to steal the election all but acknowledged its own speciousness when it declared that the justifications it advanced could not be applied to any future cases. In his separate concurring opinion, Scalia declared that the Constitution did not give the people the right to elect the president. At the time of the theft of the 2000 elections, the World Socialist Web Site wrote that the Supreme Court’s decision to stop the counting of votes, and the acceptance of that ruling by the Democrats and the entire political establishment, demonstrated that there was no longer any significant constituency for democratic rights within the American ruling class. The reaction to Scalia’s death is a measure of the further erosion of democratic sentiment in the ruling elite. Scalia personified the decay of bourgeois democracy in the United States over a protracted period of time. Appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan, he flourished and exerted increasing influence in the decades of political reaction, militarism and Wall Street criminality that ensued, continuing without a hitch under Obama. Not only in the anti-democratic substance of his rulings, but also in his methods and bearing, he embodied the promotion by the ruling elite of backwardness, prejudice and outright cruelty. He was corrupt and made no bones about his corruption, proudly voting to remove limits on corporate bribes in elections and flaunting his private outings with Vice President Dick Cheney while the latter was a party in a case before the court. He was a bully, making a practice of baiting and harassing lawyers who came before him. Throughout his career, Scalia consistently advocated positions that can only be described as barbarous and fascistic. Fittingly, his last judicial act was to deny a stay of execution. He was a figure who relished the power and trappings of the state, openly defending torture and internment camps. Scalia worked tirelessly to break down constitutional and democratic limits on state power, infiltrating fascistic doctrines into Supreme Court jurisprudence. His theory of executive power, according to which the American president has unlimited and unreviewable powers for the duration of the “war on terror,” resurrects Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt’s “state of exception” doctrine in all but name. Scalia’s mere presence on the court testified to the advanced decay of American democracy. That decay is linked, on the one hand, to the extreme growth of social inequality, accompanied by the rampant parasitism and criminality of the ruling class, and on the other hand to unending war, which has its domestic reflection in the build up of the repressive state apparatus that Scalia championed. The bitterness of the disputes over his replacement is a reflection of the importance of his role in American politics over three decades during which the political establishment shifted violently to the right. The deference shown to such a figure from all quarters of the political establishment should be taken as a warning by the working class. The ruling elite fears above all the growth of social opposition and class struggle. It exalts the legacy of Scalia because it is preparing police state methods to defend its power and property against an insurgent working class." - See more at: www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44233.htm#sthash.gLDSoKWB.dpuf
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Feb 16, 2016 23:45:56 GMT -6
from PaulCraigRoberts.org www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/02/16/the-supreme-court-has-murdered-the-us-constitution-guest-column-by-john-whitehead/The People vs. the Police State: The Struggle for Justice in the Supreme CourtFeb 16, 2016 by John Whitehead "The untimely death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has predictably created a political firestorm. Republicans and Democrats, eager to take advantage of an opening on the Supreme Court, have been quick to advance their ideas about Scalia’s replacement. This is just the beginning of the furor over who gets to appoint the next U.S. Supreme Court justice (President Obama or his successor), when (as soon as Obama chooses or as long as Congress can delay), how (whether by way of a recess appointment or while Congress is in session), and where any judicial nominee will stand on the hot-button political issues of our day (same-sex marriage, Obamacare, immigration, the environment, and abortion). This is yet another spectacle, not unlike the carnival-like antics of the presidential candidates, to create division, dissension and discord and distract the populace from the nation’s steady march towards totalitarianism. Not to worry. This is a done deal. There are no surprises awaiting us. We may not know the gender, the orientation, the politics, or the ethnicity of Justice Scalia’s replacement, but those things are relatively unimportant in the larger scheme of things. The powers-that-be have already rigged the system. They—the corporations, the military industrial complex, the surveillance state, the monied elite, etc.—will not allow anyone to be appointed to the Supreme Court who will dial back the police state. They will not tolerate anyone who will undermine their policies, threaten their profit margins, or overturn their apple cart. Scalia’s replacement will be safe (i.e., palatable enough to withstand Congress’ partisan wrangling), reliable and most important of all, an extension of the American police state. With the old order dying off or advancing into old age rapidly, we’ve arrived at a pivotal point in the makeup of the Supreme Court. With every vacant seat on the Court and in key judgeships around the country, we are witnessing a transformation of the courts into pallid, legalistic bureaucracies governed by a new breed of judges who have been careful to refrain from saying, doing or writing anything that might compromise their future ambitions. Today, the judges most likely to get appointed today are well-heeled, well-educated (all of them attended either Yale or Harvard law schools) blank slates who have traveled a well-worn path from an elite law school to a prestigious judicial clerkship and then a pivotal federal judgeship. Long gone are the days when lawyers without judicial experience such as Earl Warren, William Rehnquist, Felix Frankfurter, and Louis Brandeis could be appointed to the Supreme Court. As Supreme Court correspondent Dahlia Lithwick points out, “a selection process that discourages political or advocacy experience and reduces the path to the Supreme Court to a funnel” results in “perfect judicial thoroughbreds who have spent their entire adulthoods on the same lofty, narrow trajectory.” In other words, it really doesn’t matter whether a Republican or Democratic president appoints the next Supreme Court justice, because they will all look alike (in terms of their educational and professional background) and sound alike (they are primarily advocates for the government). Given the turbulence of our age, with its police overreach, military training drills on American soil, domestic surveillance, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, wrongful convictions, and corporate corruption, the need for a guardian of the people’s rights has never been greater. Unfortunately, as I document in Battlefield America: The War on the American People, what we have been saddled with instead are government courts dominated by technicians and statists who march in lockstep with the American police state. This is true at all levels of the judiciary. Thus, while what the nation needs is a constitutionalist, what we will get is a technician. It’s an important distinction. A legal constitutionalist believes that the authority of government derives from and is limited by a body of fundamental law (the Constitution) and strives to hold the government accountable to abiding by the Constitution. A judge of this order will uphold the rights of the citizenry in the face of government abuses. Justice William O. Douglas, who served on the Supreme Court for 36 years, was such a constitutionalist. He believed that the “Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of the people.” Considered the most “committed civil libertarian ever to sit on the court,” Douglas was frequently controversial and far from perfect (he was part of a 6-3 majority in Korematsu vs. United States that supported the government’s internment of American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II). Even so, his warnings against a domineering, suspicious, totalitarian, police-driven surveillance state resonate still today. A legal technician, on the other hand, is an arbitrator of the government’s plethora of laws whose priority is maintaining order and preserving government power. As such, these judicial technicians are deferential to authority, whether government or business, and focused on reconciling the massive number of laws handed down by the government. John Roberts who joined the Supreme Court in 2005 as Chief Justice is a prime example of a legal technician. His view that the “role of the judge is limited…to decide the cases before them” speaks to a mindset that places the judge in the position of a referee. As USA Today observes, “Roberts’ tenure has been marked by an incremental approach to decision-making — issuing narrow rather than bold rulings that have the inevitable effect of bringing the same issues back to the high court again and again.” Roberts’ approach to matters of law and justice can best be understood by a case dating back to his years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The case involved a 12-year-old black girl who was handcuffed, searched and arrested by police—all for eating a single French fry in violation of a ban on food in the D.C. metro station. Despite Roberts’ ability to recognize the harshness of the treatment meted out to Ansche Hedgepeth for such a minor violation—the little girl was transported in the windowless rear compartment of a police vehicle to a juvenile processing center, where she was booked, fingerprinted, and detained for three hours, and was “frightened, embarrassed, and crying throughout the ordeal”—Roberts ruled that the girl’s constitutional rights had not been violated in any way. This is not justice meted out by a constitutionalist. This is how a technician rules, according to the inflexible letter of the law. Circuit Judge Sri Srinivasan of the DC Court of Appeals, who is rumored to be a favorite pick for Scalia’s spot on the court, is another such technician. When asked to strike down a 60-year-old ban on expressive activities in front of the Supreme Court Plaza, Srinivasan turned a blind eye to the First Amendment. (Ironically, the Supreme Court must now decide whether to declare its own free speech ban unconstitutional.) By ruling in favor of the ban, Srinivasan also affirmed that police were correct to arrest an African-American protester who was standing silently in front of the Supreme Court wearing a sign protesting the police state on a snowy day when no one was on the plaza except him. Srinivasan’s rationale? “Allowing demonstrations directed at the Court, on the Court’s own front terrace, would tend to yield the opposite impression: that of a Court engaged with — and potentially vulnerable to — outside entreaties by the public.” This view of the Supreme Court as an entity that must be sheltered from select outside influences—for example, the views of the citizenry—is shared by the members of the Court itself to a certain extent. As Lithwick points out: “The Court has become worryingly cloistered, even for a famously cloistered institution… today’s justices filter out anything that might challenge their perspectives. Antonin Scalia won’t read newspapers that conflict with his views and claims to often get very little from amicus briefs. John Roberts has said that he doesn’t believe that most law-review articles—where legal scholars advance new thinking on contemporary problems—are relevant to the justices’ work. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Scalia’s opera-going buddy, increasingly seems to revel in, rather than downplay, her status as a liberal icon. Kennedy spends recesses guest-teaching law school courses in Salzburg.” Are you getting the picture yet? The members of the Supreme Court are part of a ruling aristocracy composed of men and women who primarily come from privileged backgrounds and who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. These justices, all of whom are millionaires in their own rights, circulate among an elite, privileged class of individuals, attending exclusive events at private resorts orchestrated by billionaire oil barons, traveling on the private jets of billionaires, and delivering paid speeches in far-flung locales such as Berlin, London and Zurich. When you’re cocooned within the rarefied, elitist circles in which most of the judiciary operate, it can be difficult to see the humanity behind the facts of a case, let alone identify with the terror and uncertainty that most people feel when heavily armed government agents invade their homes, or subject them to a virtual strip search, or taser them into submission. If you’ve never had to worry about police erroneously crashing through your door in the dead of night, then it might not be a hardship to rule as the Court did in Kentucky v. King that police should have greater leeway to break into homes or apartments without a warrant. If you have no fear of ever being strip searched yourself, it would be easy to suggest as the Court did in Florence v. Burlington that it’s more important to make life easier for overworked jail officials than protect Americans from debasing strip searches. And if you have never had to submit to anyone else’s authority—especially a militarized police officer with no knowledge of the Constitution’s prohibitions against excessive force, warrantless searches and illegal seizures, then you would understandably give police the benefit of the doubt as the Court did in Brooks v. City of Seattle, when they let stand a ruling that police officers who had clearly used excessive force when they repeatedly tasered a pregnant woman during a routine traffic stop were granted immunity from prosecution. Likewise, if you’re not able to understand what it’s like to be one of the “little guys,” afraid to lose your home because some local government wants to commandeer it and sell it to a larger developer for profit, it would be relatively easy to rule, as the Supreme Court did in Kelo v. New London, that the government is within its right to do so. Now do you understand why the Supreme Court’s decisions in recent years, which have run the gamut from suppressing free speech activities and justifying suspicionless strip searches to warrantless home invasions and conferring constitutional rights on corporations, while denying them to citizens, have been characterized most often by an abject deference to government authority, military and corporate interests? They no longer work for us. They no longer represent us. They can no longer relate to our suffering. In the same way that the Legislative Branch, having been co-opted by lobbyists, special interests, and the corporate elite, has ceased to function as a vital check on abuses by the other two branches of government, the Judicial Branch has also become part of the same self-serving bureaucracy. Sound judgment, compassion and justice have taken a back seat to legalism, statism and elitism. Preserving the rights of the people has been deprioritized and made to play second fiddle to both governmental and corporate interests. In the case of the People vs. the Police State, the ruling is 9-0 against us. So where does that leave us? The Supreme Court of old is gone, if not for good then at least for now. It will be a long time before we have another court such as the Warren Court (1953-1969), when Earl Warren served alongside such luminaries as William J. Brennan, Jr., William O. Douglas, Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter and Thurgood Marshall. The Warren Court handed down rulings that were instrumental in shoring up critical legal safeguards against government abuse and discrimination. Without the Warren Court, there would be no Miranda warnings, no desegregation of the schools and no civil rights protections for indigents. Yet more than any single ruling, what Warren and his colleagues did best was embody what the Supreme Court should always be—an institution established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. That is no longer the case. We can no longer depend on the federal courts to protect us against the government. They are the government. Yet as is the case with most things, the solution is far simpler and at the same time more complicated than space allows, but it starts with local action—local change—and local justice. If you want a revolution, start small, in your own backyard, and the impact will trickle up. If you don’t like the way justice is being meted out in America, then start demanding justice in your own hometown, before your local judges. Serve on juries, nullify laws that are egregious, picket in front of the courthouse, vote out judges (and prosecutors) who aren’t practicing what the Constitution preaches, encourage your local newspapers to report on cases happening in your town, educate yourself about your rights, and make sure your local judges understand that they work for you and are not to be extensions of the police, prosecutors and politicians. This is the only way we will ever have any hope of pushing back against the police state. Originally published here: www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_people_vs._the_police_state_the_struggle_for_justice_in_the_suprem [1]"
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Feb 14, 2016 8:28:34 GMT -6
Hillary is also the darling of Defense Contractors. After facilitating multi-million dollar arms deals for major defense contractors, she has received mega-$$ contributions from the benefiting contractors. from Mother Jones www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/05/hillary-clinton-foundation-state-arms-dealsHillary Clinton Oversaw US Arms Deals to Clinton Foundation DonorsAn investigation finds that countries that gave to the foundation saw an increase in State Department-approved arms sales. May 28, 2015 by Bryan Schatz "In 2011, the State Department cleared an enormous arms deal: Led by Boeing, a consortium of American defense contractors would deliver $29 billion worth of advanced fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, despite concerns over the kingdom's troublesome human rights record. In the years before Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, Saudi Arabia had contributed $10 million to the Clinton Foundation, and just two months before the jet deal was finalized, Boeing donated $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation, according to an International Business Times investigation released Tuesday. The Saudi transaction is just one example of nations and companies that had donated to the Clinton Foundation seeing an increase in arms deals while Hillary Clinton oversaw the State Department. IBT found that between October 2010 and September 2012, State approved $165 billion in commercial arms sales to 20 nations that had donated to the foundation, plus another $151 billion worth of Pentagon-brokered arms deals to 16 of those countries—a 143 percent increase over the same time frame under the Bush Administration. The sales boosted the military power of authoritarian regimes such as Qatar, Algeria, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman, which, like Saudi Arabia, had been criticized by the department for human rights abuses. From the IBT investigation: As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton also accused some of these countries of failing to marshal a serious and sustained campaign to confront terrorism. In a December 2009 State Department cable published by Wikileaks, Clinton complained of "an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority." She declared that "Qatar's overall level of CT cooperation with the U.S. is considered the worst in the region." She said the Kuwaiti government was "less inclined to take action against Kuwait-based financiers and facilitators plotting attacks." She noted that "UAE-based donors have provided financial support to a variety of terrorist groups." All of these countries donated to the Clinton Foundation and received increased weapons export authorizations from the Clinton-run State Department... In all, governments and corporations involved in the arms deals approved by Clinton’s State Department have delivered between $54 million and $141 million to the Clinton Foundation as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to the Clinton family, according to foundation and State Department records. The following tables created by the International Business Times show the flow of money and arms deals involving 20 nations, the Clinton Foundation, and the State Department: Defense Contractors Donated To The Clinton Foundation The Clinton Foundation accepted donations from 6 companies benefiting from U.S. State Department arms export approvals. Defense Contractor......................... Donation Min. ($)Boeing ..............................................$5,000,000 General Electric...................................$1,000,000 Goldman Sachs (Hawker Beechcraft)........500,000 Honeywell................................................50,000 Lockheed Martin.....................................250,000 United Technologies.................................50,000"..... "
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