Hillary Clinton is for … Hillary Clinton

At the outset I must write that Hillary Clinton as president will most likely replicate the presidency of her husband, Bill Clinton. The latest polls indicate that she will be president if the GOP nominee is Donald Trump.

Working class Americans should be concerned about how Mrs. Clinton will act towards them. We need only to look at Bill Clinton’s presidency to learn what to expect.

Bill Clinton signed a law that ended the Glass-Steagall Act. That law passed in 1933 prohibited commercial banks from engaging in the investment business. The consequence was the 2008 Great recession that brought about the collapse of many of America’s largest financial institutions. Some of those institutions were saved by The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. On September 19, 2008 President Bush announced his financial bailout plan, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 to confront the financial crisis. This plan was initially rejected by the U.S House of Representatives on September 29. After a great deal of public lobbying, on October 1, the U.S. Senate passed an amended version of the bill, which was subsequently accepted by the House two days later. This legislation created the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP).

NAFTA is the North American Free Trade Agreement. It was envisioned at least 30 years ago to reduce trading costs, increase business investment, and help North America be more competitive in the global marketplace. The impetus for NAFTA actually began with President Ronald Reagan, who campaigned on a North American common market. Prior to NAFTA, Mexican tariffs on U.S. imports were 250% higher than U.S. tariffs on Mexican imports. In 1991, Canada requested a trilateral agreement, which then led to NAFTA. NAFTA was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on December 8, 1993 and entered force January 1, 1994. Although it was signed by President Bush, it was a priority of President Clinton’s, and its passage is considered one of his first successes.

The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which ensured that over-the-counter, or OTC, financial derivatives would remain almost entirely unregulated and which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in December 2000, just before he left the White House. Thanks to the 2000 act, according to 2010 Congressional testimony by Michael Greenberger of the University of Maryland law school, the “multi-trillion-dollar OTC derivatives market was removed from almost all pertinent federal and state enforcement to which trading markets had been subject since the New Deal….In effect, almost no law applied to this market.”

As reported in the New York Times on February 9, 2016 Mrs. Clinton’s top donors:

-George Soros, Billionaire philanthropist and investor. $7.0 million

-Cheryl Saban, Philanthropist and wife of Haim Saban, an entertainment mogul.
$2.5 million

-Haim Saban, California media investor, major Democratic donor and husband of Cheryl Saban, philanthropist.
$2.5 million

-Herbert M. Sandler, Founder, with his wife, Marion, of Golden West Financial, the giant California savings and loan bought by the Wachovia Corporation in 2006.
$2.5 million

-S. Donald Sussman, Founder and chairman of Paloma Partners LLC.
$2.5 million

-Laure Woods, Bay Area philanthropist. $2.3 million

-Barbara Lee, Philanthropist in Cambridge, Mass.; founder of the Barbara Lee Family Foundation and the Barbara Lee Political Office. $1.7 million

-Patricia A. Stryker, Heir to a fortune from a medical supplies company. Owner of the Stryker Sonoma winery. $1.3 million

-Jeffrey Katzenberg, Chief executive of DreamWorks Animation. $1.0 million

-Stephen M. Silberstein, Co-founder of Innovative Interfaces, a company that develops automated systems for libraries, in 1978 and served as its first president. $1.0 million

-Steven Spielberg, Filmmaker and chairman of Amblin Partners. $1.0 million

-Bernard L. Schwartz, Chairman and chief executive of BLS Investments.
$1.0 million

-S. Daniel Abraham, Billionaire philanthropist and former chairman of the company that created Slim Fast diet products. $1.0 million

As Donald Trump pointed out the big donors are not giving those millions of dollars for nothing. They expect to be remembered. Their interests will come before the American people. You can expect the TPP and the TAP to be signed into law if Hillary Clinton is elected president.

My conclusion is there really is no one running for president to protect the American people.

Bill Clinton Defends His Wife Hillary

Appearing on Erin Burnett’s “Out Front” on CNN former president Bill Clinton did a good job of defending his wife Hillary on her performance as Secretary of State.

“When we look at the job that Hillary did as secretary of state, she goes down as perhaps the worst secretary of state in history,” Trump said then.

Bill Clinton pointed to his wife’s efforts to impose sanctions — getting Russia and China on board — that precipitated negotiations over the Iran nuclear deal. He said that while that deal has proven controversial, the sanctions were roundly considered a success.

“Even the Republicans admit that the sanctions on Iran were well done,” he said.

“And that was a major achievement, to get Russia and China to agree to sign off on these sanctions and enforce them,” he said. “She did that. That’s what made the talks possible, so even the people who don’t like the Iran deal, like the sanctions.”

He also highlighted her work on the new START treaty with Russia, saying that “having these two sides still committed to reducing the number of nuclear warheads and missiles, I think, is a good thing.”

He said Hillary Clinton’s efforts to expand the number of beneficiaries from the George W. Bush-era anti-AIDS program known as the “President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief,” or PEPFAR, from 1.7 million people to 5.1 million by using more generic medicines. The expanded program did not cost on additional cent.

“These are all facts, so they’re not common to the diatribe here,” Bill Clinton said.

Of course there was no discussion about Libya, Benghazi, and e-mail records.

Ethical Behavior

This is all about politicians. The issue revolves around the words “Everything I have done is within the law.” Former President Bill Clinton asked for a definition of the word “is.” Going back in time former president Richard Nixon said that by definition everything he did was within the law simply because he was president. Clinton was impeached but not found guilty. Nixon didn’t wait to be impeached and simply resigned.

Most recently the questions surrounding Benghazi have continued to haunt Hillary Rodham Clinton. Her refusal to explain what she knew and when she knew it pertaining to the attack on the U.S. consular facility there, continues to be a source of doubt that will only grow more pronounced if she announces her candidacy for president. Why can’t she simply explain her knowledge of the facts? Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server only adds to questions about her honesty.

Robert “Bob” Menendez is the senior United States Senator from New Jersey. He is a member of the Democratic Party. The Justice Department is preparing to bring criminal corruption charges against the senator. Menendez told reporters last Friday night he has “always conducted myself appropriately and in accordance with the law.”

Events in Ferguson, Missouri have resulted in a federal report alleging racially biased policing but the mayor, James Knowles III said that the resignations or firings of six city officials implicated in the scandal have given the troubled city the clean slate it needs to begin the reforming itself. Some in the community have demanded a recall election. He refuses to resign.

Relatives on campaign payrolls? Now, a bill recently introduced by US Representative Jackie Speier, a California Democrat, would prohibit members of Congress from hiring family members through their campaign committees or political action committees and set strict disclosure requirements, as well as other reforms. My guess is that even if passed into law our representatives will find a way to evade such a regulation and claim they are “within the law.”

Will this evasion of the law and a lack of ethical behavior end any time soon? Anyone reading this will not see a change in their life time.