The big battle in the Democratic Party right now seems to stem from how much Hillary took from Wall Street for her speeches, how much she got in a Pac from financial sources and her responsibility for the 1994 Crime Bill.
Of the latter, the big deal seems to have to do with negative results in the black community and it certainly has had that effect, but let’s not forget the reasons for the bill, and the positive results from it. The nation was mired in a debilitating crime wave. Most major cities were awash in blood. Murder rates were escalating off the charts and the justice nabobs were going out of their minds over the tsunami of drugs that was sweeping the nation.
So, as has happened in innumerable past instances we went overboard. The Crime bill looked like a good thing when it passed and in fact it did work in helping to bring safety to our homes and neighborhoods. Murder rates went into a nosedive all across the nation especially in black communities.
In that aspect, the bill worked, but unfortunately, in an all too human world, there are those who will subvert the best -laid intentions of any issue in order to create their own gains. Like so many other situations the 1994 Crime Bill went overboard. As so often happens, a good idea became poisoned by bad actors that got involved in the process.
It is a historical fact; as soon as you involve the military, the intelligence establishment, the bureaucracy or the police in any process; they will automatically and unfailingly overstep their bounds. Just look at the way they treated their ability to listen in on our private phone conversations
So what happened? Law and order fanatics in every corner of the nation saw a chance to gain an edge. Big business involved in the prison industry saw a chance to make a killing. Bigots and misogynists all over the nation saw a chance to further their ends and the basic intent of the bill got lost in all the misuses of it and all the slime that tried to make out, by using it for goals for which it was never intended.
So what do you do? Like anything else, you keep the parts of the bill that work, the parts that have reduced crime. Then you take all the other parts of the bill and you either dump them or redesign them so that they too can become effective barriers to the criminal element without stomping on the rights of the general public. Unfortunately, many in this country have never learned that this kind of process is what makes legislation successful. You don’t just dump problems; you fix them!
On the other hand, the problem about where Clinton gets her money is really kind of silly, except to Bernie and his fan-atics
The current wisdom says that if you get money from people, you’ll listen to them. It has certainly worked that way with the GOP. This, however, has yet to be proven about Clinton. She has continually spoken out about controlling the banks, Wall Street and big corporations. She has continually backed the Dodd Frank bill, which, for some reason Bernie voted against and keeps trying to push away.
Bernie stated in the debate that we don’t need Dodd-Frank. Why not? Dodd-Frank is exactly the law that we do need to get this job done. The problem with Dodd-Frank is that no one in the Obama administration seems willing to enforce it.
ernie never says how he would do this job. What he does say, that makes sense, is that it is appropriate for the banks to decide what they want to sell off instead of The Treasury Department making that decision.
What Hillary states is something that most thinking people will agree with; not only should banks be held accountable for their sins but so should the executives that made the criminal decisions. Those executives should be held accountable for their acts. The current excuse for this not happening is, it would extend prosecution of cases for years because the executives wouldn’t want to cough up their own money or do time. That’s true but the government doesn’t have to try every thief that runs a bank. All it has to do is jam up one or two of these crooks and you’d see how fast this illegal activity stops.
Poor men steal to feed their kids and they will do it as often as those kids are hungry, regardless of the odds. Rich men steal because they are greedy pigs and once the odds of doing time enter into the equation and walking free is no longer an out bet, the decision making will undergo a monumental change.
Tell some fat cat that it will cost him money if his shot at circumventing the law goes south and he smiles and says go for it. Tell him he might end up as Big Bobo’s bitch for ten years and the decision does a 180.
The question was asked of Bernie if he could point to one instance where Hillary’s taking of money from the corporate coffers has resulted in her making a decision that favored them. Bernie slithered around the question but couldn’t come up with one instance. She actually called the banks out on their behavior and pushed for the Dodd-Frank bill, which he didn’t.
The same is true about the money she took for speeches to the Wall Street and corporate money people. It is certainly true that a quarter of a million bucks is a hell of a lot of money to be getting paid for a one hour speech, but what is just as true is that nobody in their right mind would turn it down. Bernie makes it sound like he would, but in reality no one has asked him. There is no evidence that in exchange for that egregious amount of money, Hillary gave away any of the IRS’s secrets. There is no evidence that she gave any of her audiences the secret code for how to get richer or how to steal more from the poor. The big complaint from Bernie’s camp is that she won’t release the transcripts. Why should she? Anyone with any sense understands that such a request is just a political ploy to make her look bad.
If you think there are no recordings of those speeches anywhere but in Hillary’s files, you are dumber than you look or want others to believe. If there were anything in those speeches that could be used by Bernie or even the GOP it would have been revealed long ago. Remember Mitt Romney and his 47% line? That kind of stuff just finds its way to the surface. This attack has been Bernie’s Benghazi or email nonsense and it is just as false and just as futile as those phony GOP ploys.
It looks very much like both races are over. It’s time for the Democrats to join forces and kick the crap out of Trump. And even more important take back the Senate and reduce the GOP lead in the House. Those are the ways to make real and necessary changes in a country that is exemplary but still could a whole lot get better.