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To all those that support Hillary and the Democratic Establishment

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by Roxfreak724, Apr 20, 2016.

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  1. Roxfreak724

    Roxfreak724 Member

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    This is politician Bill Curry speaking about the Clintons, their role in the rise of Neoliberalism, and how people who believe that they're corrupt are both right and wrong:

    https://soundcloud.com/radioopensource/bill-curry-they-built-this-system-and-the-systems-killing-us

    I'd especially like to hear from any outright Clinton supporters as to their opinions about the statements made here and their overall opinion on whether or not the current Democratic establishment has the best interests of the middle class at heart.
     
  2. rocketsjudoka

    rocketsjudoka Contributing Member
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    I guess I'm the closest thing that there is to an outright Clinton supporter here (I donated to her campaign) so will respond. Before I do so I would also like to thank you for not just posting another rant about how the Democratic rules are unfair. I think what you raise here is an important issue but it isn't one that I can address simply.

    I listened to the piece and won't disagree with many of the problems that the piece cites with Neo-Liberalism but like with many things it is short on solutions. I also won't disagree that the Clintons are inextricably tied up with Neo-Liberalism. In many ways they are both agents and also products of it. Many things that the Clintons did (1993 budget, NAFTA, Crime Bill, attempt at Hillary Care) did help to create the neo-liberal world but these trends were already happening prior to 1992. The Liberalism that had dominated US politics from the Depression to the 1960's was already well in decline before the Clinton's took office. The defeats of McGovern and Mondale showed that the American electorate had already rejected the old New Deal Liberalism. For that matter the defeat of Labour and the rise of Thatcher, the market reforms of Deng Xiaoping showed that the move away from a strong state role in the economy wasn't just an American trend but a change that was happening across the world. I think the Clintons hadn't existed if there still would've been a US President like Bill Clinton at the time.

    Leaving aside that existential question if we have to look at Bill Clinton's time and office and what it might be able to tell us about what a Hillary Clinton's presidency. Both globally and locally there was a lot of change happening very rapidly. The fall of Soviet Union completely changed global politics and in many ways made it worse. At home there was social up heavel with things like the gay rights movement starting to really come into it's own, a whole new view of the relationship between the government and people thanks to the Reagan revolution and the beginnings of the fragmentation of media. Perhaps the biggest change of all though was the rise of the Globalism through the information age. That is what has profoundly changed our lives and we as a human civilization are different now than we were in the 1980's. Just 30 years ago. Clinton as president faced a time when many many things could've gone wrong yet by almost all accounts though did a very good job. While I wouldn't say he was responsible for prosperity or the peace that the US experienced during his term he didn't do anything to hurt those things. Clinton's third way as a pragmatic centrist managed to both address the anti-government and reactionary feelings driven by the Reagan Revolution while also continuing to keep the country moving forward socially. Economically while the old manufacturing economy was being destroyed he still managed to have the US reach unprecedented prosperity through encouraging the development of information technology and trade, all while also addressing another big issue of the 1990's reducing the deficit. As I stated above my own feeling is that the trends would've produced a president like Bill Clinton but that shouldn't take away that Clinton deftly managed at a time of great change and uncertainty.

    Neo-Liberalism is certainly has a costs. Things like free trade have devastated many parts of the US economy. There is very much a downside to information technology in both how it's costs many jobs and also in terms of a society where privacy is greatly diminished both voluntarily and through surveillance. The problem is though is these things have happened and like many great changes I don't think we can go back. While many look fondly back to the post war times of the prosperity of the 1950's and 60's when manufacturing still paid well, there were pensions and people had lifetime employment that was at a time though when the US was largely alone economically in the world. For a country as large as the US it would be difficult to maintain that economic superiority once other countries also began to develop. Particularly in regard to manufacturing jobs that do not require much skill or knowledge it was inevitable that developing countries would seek to maximize their advantage on labor cost to fuel their own development. Once technology allowed for a far greater movement of capital, labor and goods the well paying but unskilled manufacturing jobs of Detroit were doomed as much as large scale hand crafting done by guilds was doomed once factories were invented.

    Many have suffered from this but at the same time I would argue that we have also benefited greatly from it. Trade is a two way street and as much as maybe we've lost jobs in manufacturing the information economy has created and enhanced many jobs. Also while wages have been depressed in many areas costs have also been kept down. While we might consider the costs of outsourcing, trade and immigration that also needs to be balanced with the economic benefit that lower cost goods and services from those things have provided. Further even though many have maligned the global banking system including Sanders. The movement of capital though has fueled great development both globally and in the US. My own business architecture is very dependent and sensitive to changes in credit markets. As we saw with the recession of 2008-2011 one of the biggest problems was the ability of clients to get credit.

    Another thing though about the rise of the global economy is that while many in the US focus on the downside of it to the US we have to consider the other side. I used to be very against free trade and for protectionism like tariffs. What changed my mind was in college traveling through Asia. Prior to the 1960's countries like Singapore, Malaysia,Taiwan and South Korea were poor. Those countries that most embraced the global economy including reshaping their own populations to compete in it have benefited the most. Without globalization they would've never been able to develop. Singapore wouldn't be a model of prosperity education and social service unless they could first exploit cheap labor to entice manufacturers to invest there. Instead it might've remained nothing more than the exotic and seedy port city/state that it had been.

    To get back on subject though the World has changed and to me many of the calls by liberals to return to economics of the 1950's are similar to calls by conservatives to return to the social mores of the 1950's. The World has changed including the economics.

    I've got much more to say regarding this but in the interest of my own personal economy will try to get back to it.
     
    1 person likes this.
  3. larsv8

    larsv8 Contributing Member

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    Clinton is not blowing anybody's panties off, but I don't think she would be a bad president. She stinks majorly of some of the core issues that have corrupted our government, but she still has the largest redeeming quality, in that she doesn't have an "R" next to her name.

    Anybody in the whitehouse other than a Conservative is a win for the people.
     
  4. Deckard

    Deckard Blade Runner
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    A great read, Judo. Good stuff about the Clinton's and the Clinton presidency, and the impact of technological change over time on both the US economy and the economies of the rest of the world. As someone who witnessed much of the change that's occurred from the '50's and early-mid-'60's through the impact of the '80's and the '90's, which so informs how things are now, your post caused me to think of a "what if?" that plagues me still after all these years. (Sorry for going off the reservation.) I can't help but wonder how the US and the world might be today had Robert Kennedy become President in 1968, instead of Richard Nixon. Kennedy was sure to win the nomination and the general election at the time of his murder. With a well oiled political organization already in place, two terms of RFK would have been assured, in my opinion. The series of weak Democratic candidates for President, including Carter, that led directly to Reagan would have been very unlikely, also in my humble opinion. One can imagine (at least I can) how different the world might be in so many ways.
     
  5. Pizza_Da_Hut

    Pizza_Da_Hut I put on pants for this?

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    Sorry, but Steph Curry has ruined all Curry's for me. I don't trust any of them.
     
  6. MoonDogg

    MoonDogg Member

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    [​IMG]
     
  7. rocketsjudoka

    rocketsjudoka Contributing Member
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    I eat curry for breakfast.
    [​IMG]
     
  8. dragician

    dragician Member

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    one of my faves from that Malaysian restaurant in Belaire.
     
  9. DonnyMost

    DonnyMost not wrong
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    [​IMG]
     
  10. okierock

    okierock Contributing Member

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    More taxes more spending and more government = win for the people.... ok.
     
  11. larsv8

    larsv8 Contributing Member

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    Why don't you do a quick analysis of the last 8 years vs the eight years before that, on what was good for the people. I'll wait.
     
  12. okierock

    okierock Contributing Member

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    Would you like to talk race relations?
    Median Household income?
    National Debt?
    Number of people on food stamps?
    Percentage of people below the poverty level?
    CEO Salaries?
     
  13. Invisible Fan

    Invisible Fan Contributing Member

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    I don't view Bubba's era as halcyon days of the Democratic establishment. It's more like a pivot away from safeguards that didn't necessarily need abandoning.

    Hillary is presenting herself as more of the same from the Obama admin, whom had hired Clinton mainstays Summers, proteges of Robert Rubin for his treasury/cabinet. Obama also kept on Bernanke similarly to Bubba keeping Greenspan, all noted fiscal conservatives.

    With the cluster**** happening in the Republican primaries, picking Hillary represents a lost opportunity. People are so quick to dismiss and forget populist frustration and anger over the last 8 years, where teabag anger on the right led to the largest Republican Congressional gains in its history and shifted many state governments to Republican controlled legislatures and governorships.

    On the left, the Occupy movement is dismissed and marginalized as hippies, free riders, homeless, and drug addicts to this day by both parties and the 4th estate. Will the Clinton family pick up the spirit of their grievances after enriching themselves post presidency from Wall Street money and elevating two or three times their previous economic strata in the last two decades?

    I can't blame them, but I can't respect the words coming out of their mouths either.

    While the media wants to present all populism as isolationist, regressionist and a chaotic mob of frustration and rage, there are alternatives to rein in our financial system and implement meaningful reforms outside the cemented bipartisan neo-liberal orthodoxy, an orthodoxy that has not only survived but flourished from the aftermath of a financial global crisis of its own making.

    It'll be interesting to see how Hillary straddles the line between outright Wall Street knob slobbering like Bill did during his terms and championing herself as the people's person, our next progressive president.

    Among the four, big money is putting their bets on Hillary because she represents the least risk in terms of governing.

    I personally don't want more of the same given the three options (Sanders, Clinton, Rep), but I'm spoiled by the fact that I don't have to pick Hillary in a Bush v. Clinton election.
     
    #13 Invisible Fan, Apr 22, 2016
    Last edited: Apr 22, 2016
  14. okierock

    okierock Contributing Member

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    I find it surprising that a liberal would acknowledge they support the candidate of the big money interests.
     
  15. AroundTheWorld

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    Weirdly, I like Bill Clinton, but cannot stand her.
     
  16. Northside Storm

    Northside Storm Contributing Member

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    nah bro, # of Americans in body bags and # of Great Recessions suffice
     
  17. Invisible Fan

    Invisible Fan Contributing Member

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    Both parties inevitably follow big money interests. Not sure why that surprises you.

    Despite his teabag creds, Cruz is connected to Wall Street but comes off unstable, untrustworthy and overzealous. Trump worries companies and foreign leaders, then turns around and backtracks to prompt more worries.

    Sanders, whom I'd also support, is in the running because he hasn't taken big money and his ideas terrify them. Frankly, some of his economic ideas don't make practical sense either but whatever he can pass over negotiations could shift the status quo of a diminishing middle class sooner than what the center right is proposing.
     
  18. Sweet Lou 4 2

    Sweet Lou 4 2 Contributing Member
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    I think Clinton went too far to the right with trade and the financial system. His error was much like Republicans - that somehow free trade and markets would benefit the majority of Americans. It has not - what it has done is benefited the very top top people but squeezed the wages of everyone who isn't a senior executive.

    Free trade agreements should have been packaged with ways to adjust for all the jobs that was going to be lost.
     
  19. GladiatoRowdy

    GladiatoRowdy Contributing Member

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    Much better than the Republican "strategy" of higher spending combined with lower taxes, resulting in exploding deficits and debt.
     
  20. GladiatoRowdy

    GladiatoRowdy Contributing Member

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    Sure, why do you think the racists came out of the woodwork when a black man was elected president?

    Do you want to talk about how it has been stagnant since the 1970s or are you prepared to blame it all on Obama?

    [​IMG]

    Are you prepared to honestly debate this topic using ratios (debt/GDP, for example) rather than nominal dollars so we can have apples-to-apples comparisons or are you prepared to blame it all on Obama?

    In the wake of the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, it certainly makes a lot of sense that this number has risen. When combined with GOP obstruction with regards to minimum wage increases, this elevated number makes even more sense.

    If people earn more money, fewer will need food stamps.

    Again, in the wake of the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, it certainly makes a lot of sense that this number has risen. However, when you look at the poverty rate rather than purely the number of people living in poverty, you find that it is at a level we have seen twice in the last 40 years. In other words, while this metric certainly doesn't paint a rosy picture, it also doesn't point to doom and gloom.

    [​IMG]

    Did you want to talk about the overall trend of increasing CEO salaries since the 1980s...

    [​IMG]

    ... the explosion since 1994 ...

    [​IMG]

    ... or are you prepared to blame it all on Obama?
     
    #20 GladiatoRowdy, Apr 25, 2016
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2016

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