Northam’s Virginia budget: Democrat gives a pittance to workers, lion’s share to wealthy
Virginia Democratic Governor Ralph Northam revealed his proposed budget plan for the years 2020-2021 last month. The $135 billion budget, touted by the governor as “the most progressive in Virginia’s history,” would consist of minor improvements in spending on education and healthcare, largely funded through taxes on poor and working-class people while ensuring a business-friendly environment for major corporations.
Last November, the Democratic Party gained control of Virginia’s legislative bodies, solidifying the party’s control of the state government from the governor’s office to the state Senate and House of Delegates. The Democrats’ trouncing of the Republicans was both an expression of popular hostility to the fascistic politics of the Trump administration, as well as an expression of a significant shift of support in the state’s wealthy suburbs from the Republican Party toward the Democrats.
In comments to the Washington Post, Northam declared the budget would provide for “jobs that [voters] can support themselves and their families with. They said they wanted their children to have access to a world-class education. They want access to affordable and quality healthcare. They want us to move toward renewable energy. They want safe communities. And that’s what this budget addresses.”
After Northam’s administration was nearly toppled in early 2019, when yearbook photos from the 1980s revealed what appeared to be the college-aged Northam posing in blackface, the Democratic governor has sought to recast himself as a “racially sensitive” politician. In the current budget, this takes the form of several minor programs, such as a $22 million initiative toward combating mortality rates among minority women, and an even tighter adherence to the principles of “fiscal responsibility.”
Numerous Democratic and Republican commentators have praised the plan for working to “protect the state’s prized triple-A bond rating,” in the words of the Post. “It’s the most progressive budget that Virginia’s ever seen, but it preserves basic financial integrity … Governor Northam has figured out a way to do both at the same time,” claims Northam’s spokesperson Grant Neely in the same article.
Northam promises a doubling of cigarette taxes from 30 to 60 cents per pack and a 20 percent tax increase on all other tobacco products in order to pay for subsidizing rates that health insurance companies offer patients with more costly needs. In addition, it calls for a yearly increase in gasoline tax by 4 cents per gallon for the next three years.
Also included in the plan are the cancellation of a Republican-planned $110 rebate to taxpayers, halving the state vehicle registration fee, and removing the requirement for annual vehicle safety inspections. Further transportation fee revamping is also planned in order to find ways to tax alternative fuel vehicles.
Commenting on plans for funding of transportation, an editorial in the Washington Post states, “Under [Northam’s] plan, the burden of building and maintaining the state’s transportation network would shift to the drivers who use highways the most, including those from out of state” rather than seeking to raise revenue through “the minefields of income or sales tax increases.”
Northam promises nearly $1.2 billion in spending on education, including a $145 million contribution from the state to award state teachers a meager 3 percent wage increase in 2021. Over $800 million of this earmarked money would be used for routine expenses included in every state budget while an additional $400 million in funding would be a mere drop in the bucket compared to the total amount that has been stripped from schools since the 2008-2009 financial crisis. According to a 2018 report released by Rutgers University, while Virginia is the 12th wealthiest state in the United States, it ranks in 49th place, or almost dead last, in terms of wage competitiveness for teachers.
Likewise, state spending per student from kindergarten to high school is down by 9 percent since the 2008-2009 school year, while staff positions have fallen by over 1,200 even as the state’s total enrollment has grown, according to the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis.
Tellingly, $145 million of Northam’s new budget would be earmarked toward providing “free” tuition to low-income community college students, on the condition they also perform community service several hours a week. In effect, community college students will be deployed as low-wage forced labor, in some cases replacing regular employees who would be laid off.
While teachers, the poor and other sections of the working class will receive a pittance from Northam’s supposedly “progressive” budget, business interests will continue to reap windfall profits in the Commonwealth of Virginia. “According to the top rating agencies, the Greater Richmond counties are in the top 1% for bond assurances in the United States. Chesterfield, Hanover and Henrico are triple AAA rated, meaning they have received the highest credit rating from each of the major rating agencies in the U.S.,” states the website of the Greater Richmond Partnership, an economic development organization partnering with the state to direct investment into the region.
According to the partnership, “Only 47 counties nationwide are triple AAA rated, and 10 of them are in Virginia. This is the highest amount of triple AAA counties in any state, followed by Maryland with eight and North Carolina with five.” While the state capital Richmond is in the top 1 percent for highest bond ratings in the US, according to the Census Bureau, the city’s population suffers from a 21.9 percent poverty rate as of 2018, much higher than the national average of 13.1 percent.
Recently, Northam was applauded by state legislators when he was able to secure the deal for web commerce giant Amazon’s second corporate headquarters, dubbed “HQ2,” to be built in suburban Northern Virginia. As part of the deal, the state of Virginia promised the company $750 million in tax rebates and subsidies for locating the headquarters in the commonwealth, which in addition to raising the region’s already high cost of living, would serve to align the internet giant even more closely with the US military and intelligence agencies.
Last January, thousands of teachers descended on the capital city of Richmond to demand better funding for education and living conditions, part of an international upsurge in the working class, led by educators, which began in 2018 in opposition to austerity which has only accelerated since then. Another protest is set for January 27, with so many teachers taking sick leave for that date that Richmond Public Schools will be closed.
In many of these struggles, workers were forced to take action independently of and in opposition to the trade union apparatus, who sought to tie workers’ initiatives to the bankrupt perspective of appeals to the Democratic Party and to “remember in November” to vote in supposed “progressive” legislators. Teachers were told this would address workers’ needs.
As with the Democratic Party in Virginia’s latest budget proposal, workers were in no way able to find their needs addressed through the ballot box and the election of Democratic Party candidates. Instead, workers are coming face to face with the reality that only a mobilization of workers and youth, in opposition to the pro-corporate Democratic Party and its trade union supporters, armed with the perspective of revolutionary socialism and internationalism, can their social demands be met.
THE DEMOCRAT PARTY’S BILLIONAIRES’ GLOBALIST EMPIRE requires someone as ruthlessly dishonest as Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama to be puppet dictators.
http://hillaryclinton-whitecollarcriminal.blogspot.com/2018/09/google-rigged-it-so-illegals-would-vote.html
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders debate in the 2016 election in Flint, Michigan [Credit: AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File]
obstruction of justice.
Secretary Hillary Clinton and the Deep State: A RICO Criminal Conspiracy
Government
A police security guard patrols on the roof of a hotel ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland (AP Photo - Markus Schreiber)
HILLARY CLINTON... still on the lam!
Is it a signal that she's back in the game because she's selling her president-ability to the world's global billionaire crowd and laying the groundwork for more funds? There are all kinds of ways for foreign billionaires to get money to the U.S. without consequences, after all. What's more, it's pretty much the biggest base of support she has, which is at least one reason why she lost the 2016 election.
"In an extraordinary interview published Tuesday, the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, denounced Sanders and refused to commit herself to support Sanders if he wins the Democratic presidential nomination this year."
If the truth were laid bare, it would expose the Obama Administration, Hillary Clinton, the Senate and House, and many executive departments for these abuses of power, corruption, bribery, frauds, and thefts of public funds.
THE DEMOCRAT PARTY’S BILLIONAIRES’ GLOBALIST EMPIRE requires someone as ruthlessly dishonest as Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama to be puppet dictators.
http://hillaryclinton-whitecollarcriminal.blogspot.com/2018/09/google-rigged-it-so-illegals-would-vote.html
1. Globalism: Google VP Kent Walker insists that despite its repeated rejection by electorates around the world, “globalization” is an “incredible force for good.”
2. Hillary Clinton’s Democratic party: An executive nearly broke down crying because of the candidate’s loss. Not a single executive expressed anything but dismay at her defeat.
3. Immigration: Maintaining liberal immigration in the U.S is the policy that Google’s executives discussed the most.
HILLARY CLINTON’S GLOBALIST VISION:
Even though it has gone virtually unreported by corporate media, Breitbart News has extensively documented the Clintons’
THE OBAMA – CLINTON RUSSIA CONNECTION
WITH THESE TRAITORS, JUST FOLLOW THE MONEY!
How President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton aided Russia’s quest for global nuclear dominance.
THE SHADY POLITICS OF HILLARY CLINTON and her PAY-TO-PLAY MAFIA
Had Hillary been elected, the Clinton Foundation would be raking in even more millions than it did before. She would be happily selling access, favors and our remaining freedoms out from under us. PATRICIA McCARTHY
GEORGE SOROS AND THE CLINTON GLOBALIST AGENDA FOR BANKSTERS AND WIDE OPEN BORDERS
“There is no controlling Bill Clinton. He does whatever he wants and runs up incredible expenses with foundation funds,” states a separate interview memo attached to the submission.
“Bill Clinton mixes and matches his personal business with that of the foundation. Many people within the foundation have tried to caution him about this but he does not listen, and there really is no talking to him,” the memo added.
HILLARY CLINTON: Serving the super-rich and filling her bottomless pockets as she does!
Is it a signal that she's back in the game because she's selling her president-ability to the world's global billionaire crowd and laying the groundwork for more funds? There are all kinds of ways for foreign billionaires to get money to the U.S. without consequences, after all. What's more, it's pretty much the biggest base of support she has, which is at least one reason why she lost the 2016 election.
Democratic Party establishment wages war on Sanders
22 January 2020
Top Democratic officials and Democratic-aligned media outlets are engaged in a coordinated offensive against the campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
In an extraordinary interview published Tuesday, the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, denounced Sanders and refused to commit herself to support Sanders if he wins the Democratic presidential nomination this year.
Clinton was being interviewed about a forthcoming documentary set to premiere at the Sundance Festival and air on Hulu beginning March 6. “He was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him,” Clinton says. “Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.”
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders debate in the 2016 election in Flint, Michigan [Credit: AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File]
Asked if this characterization still held good, Clinton told the Hollywood Reporter that it did . Asked if she would support Sanders if he won the Democratic nomination this year, Clinton declined to say, adding, “I’m not going to go there yet. We’re still in a very vigorous primary season.”
She went on to denounce Sanders and his core advisers—who include his wife Jane, former Ohio state Senator Nina Turner and other women—as incorrigibly sexist. “It’s his leadership team. It’s his prominent supporters. It’s his online Bernie Bros and their relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women,” she said, adding that Sanders “seems to really be very much supporting it.”
With this vicious personal smear, Clinton
reminds the public why she was so hated in
2016. As the embodiment of the corrupt
Democratic Party establishment, she
managed to lose the presidential election to
Donald Trump.
Her refusal to say that she would support Sanders is remarkable. In effect, Clinton is suggesting that she might side with Trump against the nominee of her own party.
Clinton’s statement is the culmination of a week of political provocations and personal attacks. The offensive was set off by the political stink bomb launched with the help of CNN by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who claimed that at a private meeting in 2018—attended only by the two senators, without aides—Sanders told her that a woman could not win the presidency in 2020.
Sanders has repeatedly denied this claim and pointed out its absurdity, since Hillary Clinton actually won the popular vote in 2016. Leading up to that campaign, he met with Warren and offered to support her in a challenge to Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Sanders ran himself only when Warren told him she would not.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, a long-time media mouthpiece for the Democratic establishment, provided his own contribution Tuesday by denouncing the Sanders campaign for allegedly lying about former Vice President Biden’s support for cuts in Social Security.
Krugman takes a minor campaign incident—a Sanders aide posted an out-of-context video snippet of Biden—as though it was a political crime, describing it as “bad… almost Trumpian.” He adds, “The last thing we need is another president who demonizes and lies about anyone who disagrees with him, and can’t admit ever being wrong.” In fact, Biden did at one time speak of cutting Social Security cost-of-living increases.
These denunciations coincide with the heavily publicized joint endorsement of Senator Warren and Senator Amy Klobuchar by the editorial board of the New York Times, in a statement published in its Monday print edition.
While the editorial was not headlined, “Anybody but Sanders,” that is the essential thrust of it. The Times’ effort to boost Warren against Sanders is deemed particularly urgent by the party establishment, given Sanders’ rise in the polls in both Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states where voting will take place in early February. With greater enthusiasm, the newspaper also promotes Klobuchar, rather than former Vice President Joe Biden or former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg, as the candidate of what the Times terms the “realist” wing of the Democratic presidential field.
The joint endorsement of two female candidates, one for each “lane” of the nomination contest (“radical” and “realist” in the editorial’s phrasing) serves the Times’ relentless campaign to inject race and, in this case, gender, into American politics, while downplaying class and economic inequality. Thus the editorial concludes with the injunction, “May the best woman win.”
What do Clinton, Krugman and the Times editors fear? The Democratic Party has two principal constituencies: finance capital and the CIA. Both of these constituencies are opposed to a Sanders nomination. They do not want to run an election that makes an appeal to opposition to social inequality or war. Sanders has returned to the latter theme in the wake of Trump’s assassination of Iranian General Suleimani.
The vicious tone of Clinton’s declaration is revealing. If Sanders were to become the frontrunner for the nomination, the party establishment and the media would seek to wreck his campaign. If Sanders won the nomination, they would try to defeat him, either openly supporting Trump or running a third-party “independent” candidate such as billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who has already entered the Democratic contest for the purpose of blocking Sanders. If, despite such efforts, Sanders were to win the general election, they would seek to sabotage his administration and block any attempt to pass Sanders-backed legislation through Congress.
What this shows is the bankrupt and essentially reactionary role of Sanders himself.
In 2016, when the campaign of the self-styled “socialist” attracted the support of millions, staggering the political establishment and the senator himself, Sanders dutifully wound up his bid for the nomination despite brazen cheating by the Democratic National Committee, which was brought to light through documents published by WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. The senator, who won wide support decrying the influence of the “billionaire class,” turned on a dime and endorsed and campaigned for the chosen candidate of Wall Street, Hillary Clinton.
This year, while Clinton will not pledge to support Sanders, Sanders has already committed to supporting whichever candidate wins the Democratic nomination. This is under conditions where millions of workers and youth have already demonstrated through strike action and protests in the street that they are prepared to go far beyond the political limits prescribed by the Democrats, the second oldest capitalist party in the world.
Sanders portrays the Democratic Party, a ruthless defender of Wall Street and American imperialism, as a potential political vehicle for “revolution” against the corporate elite. In this exercise in mass deception, he has the assistance of an array of pseudo-lefts, from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Democratic Socialists of America to Jacobin magazine and Socialist Alternative. They all seek to make sure that the mounting social anger in America does not escape the death-grip of the Democratic Party.
Sanders is not the spokesman of the political radicalization of workers and youth and the growing opposition to capitalism. Rather, his role has always been to contain this opposition within the framework of capitalist politics. His “political revolution” has boiled down to an effort to convince his supporters to support the Democratic Party.
For these services, Sanders is kicked in the teeth, which only demonstrates the futility of what he claims is possible.
To defend jobs, living standards and democratic rights and oppose the growing threat of imperialist war, workers and young people must break out of the straitjacket of the Democratic Party. Not a single step forward can be taken in the struggle against capitalism and imperialism without establishing the political independence of the working class from all the corporate controlled parties.
The list of predicate crimes is extensive
and includes bribery, embezzlement,
fraud, theft, money laundering, and
obstruction of justice.
Secretary Hillary Clinton and the Deep State: A RICO Criminal Conspiracy
We who elected President Trump understood our elected officials and the Deep State were sandbagging Trump and self-dealing public funds. It was no secret that President Trump is no angel, unpresidential, blunt, and crude, and a disruptor. Trump was hired to drain the swamp.
I watched this kabuki theater unfold over the last several years. Through my eyes as a shopworn gumshoe, I will explain what is happening. My investigative curiosity was first piqued by the ATF Fast and Furious scandal and continues through the recent House impeachment show trial. There is a common element running through all of these cons — the actions of an organized crime conspiracy. A group of people either acting alone or in concert with others committed crimes with a common purpose - a criminal enterprise as described in "CRIMINAL RICO: 18 USC. §§1961-1968 A Manual For Federal Prosecutors."
The players acted together – in the usurpation of power, the abuse of power by public officials, bribery, thefts by fraud including federal funds, money laundering, perjury and the obstruction of justice, the violations of fundamental of civil rights, aided and abetted in the commission of these crimes and or to conceal these crimes. Criminals will lie and can't keep their lies straight. Their methods and behaviors are the same, whether engaging in street crimes or elaborate white-collar financial schemes. The only difference is when more money is involved, the perps are more adept in concealing, covering up their sins, and hiding where the money went. Many of these scandals are well known to the American Thinker readers. I will focus my comments on Hillary's home brew sever and the Clinton Foundation as an example of how RICO can be used to prosecute the players.
FBI Director James Comey indicted Hillary Clinton for her home brew server at his press conference. Comey then egregiously concluded that there was no evidence of criminal intent purportedly “required” to prosecute. Comey bastardized the Federal Espionage Act in absolving Hillary Clinton. FBI's investigation of Clinton's emails was low-balled. There was never a real search for the truth. The outcome was preordained. My jaw dropped wide open. I knew the fix was in. FBI Director Comey lied to the people with a straight face. Why?
The chance meeting of Bill Clinton and AG Loretta Lynch on the airport tarmac was no mere coincidence. This chat was not about the grandkids. Bill Clinton was there to convey a specific message to Lynch that there would be no indictment of Hillary. Hillary Clinton's email case must tank. This would have constituted bribery, if AG Lynch was assured she would continue as AG in Clinton Administration. This meeting took place only weeks before Comey's press conference dumping Hillary Clinton's email case.
The Deep State needed Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 presidential election, or the dike holding back the truth would burst. Trump, the disruptor, was an immediate threat to both the Republicans, Democrats, and the Deep State. If the truth were laid bare, it would expose the Obama Administration, Hillary Clinton, the Senate and House, and many executive departments for these abuses of power, corruption, bribery, frauds, and thefts of public funds.
High-level government officials and the Deep State committed many serious felonies either in furtherance of or to conceal the crimes committed in the pay to play scam. In exchange for favorable consideration by Secretary Clinton, those who benefited would donate to the Clinton Foundation. The FBI started and stopped investigations into the Clinton Foundation at least twice as reported by the Washington Post. Peter Schweizer's book, Clinton Cash, is the most damning. Dinesh D'Souza slammed the Foundation in the National Review, as did The Federalist.
The status of the investigation of the Foundation by US Attorney John Huber's is unknown. Rudy Giuliani said there was enough to pursue "Clinton Inc" as racketeering under RICO. The Foundation and its affiliated nonprofits require a real investigation with an in-depth forensic audit to determine where the money went. In financial crimes investigation, the prime rule is "follow the money, honey." Illicit nonprofits have many ways to divert funds by inflating salaries, expenses, and money laundering.
Illegal nonprofit schemes are difficult to prosecute without hard evidence and the testimony of insiders. The motive of Hillary Clinton's use of the home brew server was to conceal emails from FOIA requests that would provide the hard evidence. Hillary Clinton destroyed the data on her server and cell phones with the knowledge of the FBI. It took years for Judicial Watch and others to pry and recover some of these damning emails from the foot-dragging executive departments that were complicit and knew what was going on.
RICO initially was used to target mob families. RICO is also a useful tool to fight white collar conspiracies. They both have the same hierarchy of low-level crooks led by the top players, linked together with a common purpose. RICO has tools to squeeze the low-level operatives to gather evidence to prosecute, jail, and seize assets of the conspirators. The critical element required is a pattern of criminal or racketeering activity. This pattern is proved by showing two predicate crimes were committed within ten years. The list of predicate crimes is extensive and includes bribery, embezzlement, fraud, theft, money laundering, and obstruction of justice. The typical five-year statute of limitations for most federal felonies is extended to ten years from the last criminal act or acts committed to conceal the conspiracy, i.e., lying under oath and similar actions to obstruct justice. The prison sentences are steep. The effect is to cut off the head of the organization and not just the low-level players.
The criminal activity extends back to the ATF's Fast and Furious program through the House impeachment show trial to cover up the illegal acts of the Obama Administration, Hillary Clinton, the Department of State, the DOJ, the FBI, and the CIA. A telltale sign that the DOJ under US Attorney General Barr is willing to play hardball and may use RICO, came when he spoke to the Federalist Society: "Barr accuses liberal 'resistance' of trying to 'sabotage' Trump." AG Barr said this, "shows FBI launched Trump campaign investigation on the 'thinnest of suspicions." AG Barr is the new sheriff in town, he wears a badge, has guns and will travel, can impanel grand juries, indict and arrest people, and is not limited in his jurisdiction, like DOJ IG Horowitz.
The collective actions of the Deep State are and were a silent coup to delegitimize a Presidential candidate. Once elected to impede and resist the duly elected President. The President's law enforcement and intel agencies were corrupted at the highest level and went rogue.
Organized crime can't exist without corrupt law enforcement. As I wrote in a letter to President Trump earlier this year:
. . . I believe you understand the gravity of the situation and of its importance to the very survival of our Country as we know it. If the people involved are not held accountable for their actions, we will be no different than some Third World Banana Republic.
Failure to act will destroy our founding principle of the Rule of Law as stated by President John Adams, "We Are a Nation of Laws, Not of Men" and we cannot allow a two-tiered justice system to prevail.
Ron Wright is a retired detective from Riverside PD, CA. BA in political science CSUF, M. Adm. University of Cal, Riverside. Facebook at Ron T. Cop.
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat
and Republican alike, has become a
kleptocracy approaching par with third-world
hell-holes. This is the way a great country is
raided by its elite.” ---- Karen
McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER.com
Peter Schweizer, author of “Secret Empires:
We Don't Want Globalist
Government
And when I say "we," I don't just mean conservatives or even Americans.
I mean most people around the world.
It's arguable that much of the conflict we see across the planet is attributable to the efforts of a handful of people to foist their worldview on everyone else, and the "everyone elses" starting to push back.
Hong Kong's citizens are resisting efforts by the Chinese Communist government to take away the rights and freedoms they enjoyed while Hong Kong was a British possession. (Interestingly, the Google search "Hong Kong protests violent" produces article after article criticizing the violence of the protesters -- not the police -- shaming Hong Kong's citizens for not using peaceful demonstrations, and reporting "splits" and disagreements among the protestors about the best ways to achieve their aims. The articles read like Chinese communist propaganda.)
The fractures in Europe are just as serious.
In France, for more than a year the "gilet jaunes" have been violently protesting increases on fuel and heating taxes imposed by the Macron government allegedly in pursuit of global environmental objectives.
In Spain, the Catalan independence movement has produced violent protests, which The Nation magazine describes as also motivated by "growing restrictions on the right to protest and freedom of expression, as well as the judicialization of politics and the politicization of the judiciary."
Other European countries, including Germany, Austria, Sweden, Greece and Belgium have been rocked by protests against the "open borders" migration policy pushed by the European Union. In many cases, those protests have resulted in dramatic shifts in the control of parliamentary governments (Hungary, France, Italy, Austria) -- and portend changes in representation at the EU as well.
And then there's Brexit -- Great Britain's exit from the European Union -- which still hasn't happened and continues to roil British and European politics.
People want to be free to live their lives, and -- for the most part -- to be left alone to care for their families, educate their children, perform their job responsibilities and go about the business of their daily lives. They don't want to be cogs in a globalist wheel, told what to do by some distant faceless government bureaucrat enforcing regulations enacted to achieve policy goals grounded in questionable "facts."
That viewpoint is anathema to the globalists among us.
Globalists think that the answer to every human problem lies in government -- and the bigger the government, the better. Why stop at federal legislation and federal courts when you can push for international legislation and international courts? Not only does this remove the Average Joe's control over his own life but also it creates the potential for so much delicious power.
Here in our own country, Hillary Clinton is Exhibit A.
Take for example, the Clinton Foundation, and the millions of dollars Clinton and her husband collected from foreign nations while she was secretary of state. But further evidence is that Clinton cannot let go of 2016. She cannot bear the loss, not only because of her immense ego but because She. Had. Big. Plans. Far bigger plans than her relatively easygoing husband ever did. Clinton is a globalist to the marrow of her bones. People were distressed that Clinton had a stranglehold on the Democratic National Committee in 2016? That was penny ante poker, folks. President Hillary Clinton would be the best friend of the U.N. and the EU and the International Court of Justice. In Clinton's worldview, only a handful of people are brilliant enough to rule the world -- she's one of them. If the "little people" dare to want to run their own lives, they're "deplorables." And as the Tulsi Gabbard kerfuffle demonstrates, anyone who poses a threat to Hillary's hegemony will incur her wrath.
Across the Twitterverse, some conservatives are aghast that Tulsi Gabbard has garnered so much support from the right, warning that it's part of a larger conspiracy to shoehorn Hillary Clinton into the Democratic nomination again in 2020. That strikes me as unlikely. Whether Gabbard intended it or not, her vicious (and deserved) criticism of Clinton sounded like something that could have been said not by Vladimir Putin or Bashar Assad, but by President Donald Trump and the 63 million people who voted for him.
In one of her recent videos, Gabbard says: "If they can falsely portray me as a traitor, then they can do it to anyone -- and in fact, that's exactly the message they want to get across to you. If you stand up to Hillary and the party power brokers -- if you stand up to the rich and powerful elite and the war machine, they will destroy you and discredit your message. But here is the truth: They will not intimidate us. They will not silence us."
When you're a little-known candidate whose chances for the Democratic nomination are viewed as somewhere between slim and none, all you get are slanderous smears by Hillary Clinton, which the press is willing to repeat and even try to justify.
But when you're the president of the United States whose chances for the Republican nomination -- much less the election -- were viewed as somewhere between slim and none -- and you beat the odds, you get slanderous smears dutifully disseminated by the press PLUS the full force of your predecessor's FBI, CIA, Justice Department and the rest of the "deep state" actors intending to take you down.
Trump isn't interested in having America run by the United Nations or the European Union.
For the globalists here and abroad, that is a declaration of war.
The oligarchs assemble at Davos
21 January 2020
Hundreds of bankers, corporate executives, celebrities, heads of state and cabinet members have arrived in Davos, Switzerland to take part in the 50th annual World Economic Forum (WEF), which begins Tuesday.
With the wealth of the world’s billionaires up by 25 percent in the last year alone, the Davos attendees have much to celebrate. But looking over the snow-capped mountains of Switzerland, the oligarchs see themselves beset by a tide of social opposition and resentment.
A police security guard patrols on the roof of a hotel ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland (AP Photo - Markus Schreiber)
WEF founder Klaus Schwab warned in a statement ahead of the meeting that the world is at a “critical crossroads,” noting that, “People are revolting against the economic ‘elites’ they believe have betrayed them.”
Indeed, the meeting is being held amid a global upsurge of social protest over the past year from Chile and Puerto Rico to Sudan and Algeria, Iraq and Lebanon, Hong Kong and India and the United States and Mexico.
Across the world, protests fueled by growing social and economic inequality are continuing and are expected to grow in 2020, including in France, where the year began with mass strikes against President Emmanuel Macron’s proposed pension cuts.
Ahead of its meeting, the WEF published a global risks report noting that members ranked “domestic political polarization” in a virtual tie as their number one concern, up from ninth last year.
The annual Edleman Trust Barometer survey found that a majority of people around the world think that capitalism is doing more harm than good. The survey noted a global discrediting of all institutions, with governments, the media, business and NGOs seen by masses of people as unethical and incompetent.
Ahead of the event, the British charity Oxfam released its annual report on social inequality, which it declared to be “out of control.”
According to Oxfam, the world’s billionaire population alone, just 2,153 people—the number of people who would fit comfortably on a modern cruise ship—control more wealth than the 4.6 billion poorest people in the world.
Meanwhile, the top 1 percent collectively has twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people, nearly the entire world’s population.
Placing the mind-boggling gap between the rich and poor in perspective, Oxfam notes: “If everyone were to sit on their wealth piled up in $100 bills, most of humanity would be sitting on the floor. A middle-class person in a rich country would be sitting at the height of a chair. The world’s two richest men would be sitting in outer space.”
The conclave in Davos is an opportunity for the capitalist elite to posture as enlightened reformers while cutting backroom deals aimed at funneling ever more wealth from the bottom to the top, in the privacy of the exclusive Alpine resort town and under the close guard of Swiss police snipers and their own personal security retinues.
The theme for this year’s meeting is “Stakeholders for a cohesive and sustainable world,” with a focus on the issue of climate change. Events headlined by teenage activist Greta Thunberg are being given top billing and Britain’s Prince Charles is expected to deliver a talk on “how to save the planet.”
The billionaires and millionaires in attendance will be able to show their commitment to combatting global warming by refueling their private jets with “greener” sustainable aviation fuel available at Zurich Airport’s private terminal. Attendees are being encouraged to walk on foot from venue to venue in order to reduce their personal carbon footprint.
American President Donald Trump, who set off for Davos yesterday, is set to deliver a “special address” today, in his second trip to the World Economic Forum.
The red carpet treatment for Trump, a war criminal who has torn thousands of immigrant children from their families, and who just weeks ago brought the planet to the cusp of World War III with the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Suleimani, explodes the event’s humanitarian pretenses.
New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin commented, “With the stock market at record highs… there is an increasing sense” that Trump “will be accepted, if not embraced (although some attendees may roll their eyes behind his back) when he arrives on Tuesday.”
Sorkin concluded, “Mr. Trump may be the new Davos Man.”
The attendees’ warm reception for Trump expresses the embrace of dictatorship and fascistic forces by the financial oligarchy. Feeling themselves surrounded by social opposition, the oligarchs are turning ever more directly to dictatorial forms of rule.
As the attendees give moralizing sermons about “sustainability” and praise each other’s philanthropic efforts, in their minds will be the fact that most of the world knows that they—the oligarchs—are the cause of the world’s problems.
It is they who benefit from wars, it is they who promote the rise of fascism and wage a frontal attack on democratic rights. And it is they who are responsible for the poverty and social misery afflicting the world’s working population.
The entry into struggle by millions of people all over the world is a recognition of this fact, combined with a determination to oppose it. However, any solution to the crises confronting the overwhelming majority of the world’s people requires the expropriation of the financial parasites gathered this week in Switzerland.
The seizure of the wealth of little more than 2,000 people and its placement under the democratic control of the international working class would lay the basis for providing billions of people with the food, water, education, health care, culture, internet access and housing that are their fundamental social rights. The social necessity of expropriating their ill-gotten wealth is inseparable from the overthrow of the capitalist system and the socialist transformation of society.
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