Hillary Clinton is the Bomb!

Hillary Clinton is the Bomb!

I responded by saying that I thought that “defeating fascism and communism is a pretty big deal.” In other words, that the U.S., on balance, has done a good job of advancing the cause of freedom.

Clinton responded to this idea with great enthusiasm: “That’s how I feel! Maybe this is old-fashioned.” And then she seemed to signal that, yes, indeed, she’s planning to run for president. “Okay, I feel that this might be an old-fashioned idea, but I’m about to find out, in more ways than one.”

Hillary Clinton: 'Failure' to Help Syrian Rebels Led to the Rise of ISIS, The Atlantic - Jeffrey Goldberg - Aug 10, 2014

“History merely repeats itself.  It has all been done before.  Nothing under the sun is truly new.”  Ecclesiastes I, Chapter One, Verse Nine.

By J.M. Hamilton 8-23-14

No, Mrs. Clinton, bombing oil rich countries to do U.S. multinationals, and the MICs, bidding isn’t “old-fashioned,” it is a timeless distraction from domestic politics and real U.S. problems (i.e. Ferguson/income inequality/tax avoidance/political reform).  And it is a practice that has failed the U.S. and indigenous peoples throughout the world, repeatedly.  Foreign misadventure has left the U.S. martially winded, fiscally bankrupt, and led to blowback with unintended consequences for the U.S. and the world, time and time again. 

Among the political elite, nation building, despite the fact that the FED is printing money to keep our nation afloat, apparently, never goes out of style.  Particularly to enforce arbitrary nation state lines established by two colonial powers, post WWI.  Nation building is an expensive and repeatedly failed concept (e.g. Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq). 

Bombing nations is old-fashioned, particularly when we can often utilize sanctions and international banking to achieve the same geo-political outcomes.  Witness, Mr. Putin’s stalled empire-building efforts in the Ukraine. 

But where’s the “fire-works” in sanctions and international banking?  America needs a show of force and a bogeyman to justify all that extravagant military spending.

In an economically interconnected world, the MIC doesn’t want to hear that it is obsolete.  The fable surrounding the most recent U.S. bombings in Iraq, that the cavalry had come to save Yazidi, is nothing new (read Ecclesiastes I); arguably, the latest Iraqi bombings are nothing more than an excuse to protect U.S. multinational, oligarch, and sovereign foreign interests operating in resource rich Iraq. 

Our puppet, P.M. al-Maliki, blew it, and now we have to clean up the Cheney administration’s mess, yet again.  Senator Clinton, of course, voted to support Cheney’s war in Iraq, and so maybe she’s looking for justification and vindication for that hawkish vote.  That the U.S. set current events in the Middle East in motion with the 2003 Iraq invasion, is conveniently, rarely discussed.

Neo-conmen and unintended consequences?  You bet.  You’re looking at them right now on CNN.

Our corporate owned and run U.S. news media has embedded ISIS, chronically, into the 24-hour news cycle.  Concern over a rag-tag group of mercenaries and “jihadis” has reached a fever pitch.  “This is an organization(ISIS) that has an apocalyptic end-of-days strategic vision that will eventually have to be defeated,” said the chairman, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, as reported in the NY Times.  Clearly, something must be done, even though the U.S. is energy independent, and the U.S. has already burned at least two trillion dollars in an Iraqi money-pit.  (That’s two-trillion that could have gone to disadvantaged youth, the poor, to pay down student loans, or to rebuild America’s infrastructure.  Hell, we could have given $2 trillion to the Wall Street cartel to check again, and learn one more time that “trickle-down” economics really is a dead-end ideology.)

Haven’t we heard this fever dream before, from the Joint Chiefs?  Gulf of Tonkin, weapons of mass destruction, yellow-cake…. Oh yes, we’ve heard it all before.  Conveniently, omitted from the dialogue is that the GOP's hero, Ronald Reagan, defeated the Soviet Union without starting up a hot war. Conveniently, omitted from today’s scare-mongering from the military brass is the former Soviet Union was once declared the “evil-empire.”  It’s like each enemy we encounter is larger, more evil and malevolent than the prior.  The American public has grown so inured/jaded to the Joint Chiefs chronic cries for war, that the generals have to top themselves with each new call.  Really, ISIS is more scary than the former Soviet Union?  Yet, ISIS has no air force, no nukes, and is supported by captured U.S. military surplus, left behind in Iraq.  

Blowback? Talk about your unintended consequences. Oops.

The economic and political elite in this country have been given a freehand on foreign affairs for so long, to such deleterious effect upon the U.S. and its citizens, and our federal budget, that the alleged “isolationist,” Senator Rand Paul, is now one of the leading GOP contenders for this nation’s highest office.  And if he was running against Hillary today, he’d have my vote without question, based upon their respective positions on foreign policy alone.

We have yet to learn the true consequences of the latest wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Right out of the playbook, true to character, the Federal Reserve is busy printing money to inflate away U.S. war debt.

If the U.S. military is so damn effective, why are we having to go back into Iraq yet again?  If dropping bombs and playing army is the end all be all of foreign policy, why is a similar Afghanistan fiasco almost guaranteed?

Where are our so-called European allies in this matter… you know, the folks who actually are not energy independent, and do rely on Middle East oil?  Nowhere to be seen…  it’s August and the Europeans are all vacationing on the French Rivera (along with the legal community in this country).  And the Arab-League…. ?  Forget about it.

Meanwhile, back in the Sudan, Christians have been persecuted, run over, and massacred by Muslims for years…. But Khartoum isn’t oil or resource rich, Sudanese Christians are not white, and there are no U.S. multinationals operating in the region. 

Where’s the U.S. cavalry in the Sudan?  Why aren’t we bombing the Muslims in the Sudan, who are slaughtering and butchering Christian women and children, by the hundreds of thousands? 

That our “altruistic” U.S. foreign policy is based upon a foundation of hypocrisy (and is detrimental to ordinary Americans, who can’t escape paying taxes, and must pay for these foreign adventures – in some cases with their very lives), is on full display for all the world to see.  That U.S. multinational corporations, who enjoy U.S. military support globally to protect world markets, are now fleeing off shore to dodge paying taxes for their own military protection is outrageous.

And to think, we are about to put this relic from a by-gone era in the White House.  Four words:  Complete freaking horror show.  I’m all for putting a woman in the White House, but lets put the right woman in the White House.  Like, I don’t know, a person who’s ready to break with the last five decades of incredibly bad foreign policy; a person who might campaign on reinstating the draft, so that the war burden is shared by all U.S. citizens and not just the poor; a future President, who will actually make multinationals pay for their fair share of the U.S. war machine.

Has it ever occurred to our “foreign policy experts” that the reason there is so much turmoil in the Middle East is because the U.S. and Western democracies keep: propping up thug dictators who terrorize their citizens; that there is no or limited economic opportunity in these countries, and no rule of law (Middle East unemployment is the highest in the world); and so joining jihad and Allah in paradise is perhaps their only and best option?   

If you keep people poor, under-educated, and w/out the basic necessities of life, or a shred humanity, than there is bound to be war, fundamentalist religion, and rebellion (not necessarily in that order)… which keeps the MIC and the war machine humming. 

See, it works out for everybody.

It’s so much easier, and less expensive, to do a drive by, I mean fly by, and a bombing in Iraq, than to address the root causes of the problem.  Right? 

President Clinton III will show the world.  A fiscally bankrupt U.S. will be knee-deep in global blood in no time.  When one examines Mrs. Clinton’s advocacy of a jingoist and bellicose foreign policy (a rehash of Bush/Cheney), President Obama’s foreign policy of not doing “stupid stuff,” sounds exceptionally brilliant.  (Then again, with Hillary enjoying a near lock on the Democratic nomination for 2016, perhaps she’s just pandering to the political right and the foreign policy hawks, in the hopes of obtaining their vote?)

No greater authority than General Stanley McChrystal said that when you kill an enemy combatant in the Middle East, you are likely creating ten terrorists.  At the rate we are going, the U.S. actually might have something to fear.

P.S.

Do you think China would be rattling their saber in the South China Sea, and Putin would be pulling his stunt in the Ukraine, if the U.S. wasn’t hyper-ventilating and grossly overextended, by attempting to play the world’s beat cop?

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2014

UNICAMERAL

UNICAMERAL

“Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.”  - FDR

“Sadly, the arrogance of the imperial executive has too often been reinforced by the cowardice of the Congress.”  - Katrina vanden Heuvel

“Our nation is facing a crisis of liberty if we do not control campaign expenditures. We must prove that elective office is not for sale. We must convince the public that elected officials are what James Madison intended us to be, agents of the sovereign people, not the hired hands of rich givers….”  - Senator Barry Goldwater

By J.M. Hamilton  9-21-2014

Bellevue, Nebraska - Circa 1970s.  Time flies.  Spending some of my formative years in Bellevue, just south of Omaha, was instructional to say the least.  Four key things I learned my fourth grade year, were:  1) Don’t mess with Mrs. Struckman, my fourth grade teacher.  I once saw Mrs. Struckman wrap half a roll of masking tape around the class cut-up’s head, just to get the kid to shut up in class.  The class clown had shoulder length hair, as was the norm in the seventies.  Remember this was Pre-Ritalin/Pre-Aderall.  Mrs. Struckman, ever the humanitarian, left the tape off Jerome’s nostrils so that he could still breath.  Two hours later when Mrs. Struckman asked the class a question, Jerome timidly raised his hand.  Mrs. Struckman moved in closer to hear his muffled response, through about a quarter inch of tape.   “I can still hear you,” she said, and proceeded to finish off the rest of the roll of tape, wrapping it around Jerome’s head.  So never, and I mean never, mess with the fiery red head, The Struckman.  2) Nebraska winters, and summers, are incredibly harsh.  Blizzards with eight foot snowdrifts… been there, seen that.  Summer days blending into weeks, with extreme humidity and temps running into the century mark.  Not uncommon.  3) Bellevue was home to the Strategic Air Command, where a general was said to be flying  overhead at all times with his finger on The Button, in case command and control failed on the ground, and the Ruskies attacked.  The general in the sky was just playing his part in the MAD doctrine (or Mutual Assured Destruction).  The cold war was very much in play.  4) Nebraska was the only state in the country that had a unicameral government, that is one legislative house (instead of two houses). 

Some of the benefits of a unicameral government are obvious:  fewer gangsters running for higher office; less government expense for the taxpayer to shoulder; greater productivity, less gridlock, and less internecine conflict; and Nebraska’s legislature is said to be “non-partisan.”

Now compare the “pros” of a unicameral legislative body to the mess we currently have presiding in Washington, with a House and a Senate.  Congress’ approval rating is in the single digits.  For the first time, polls show that not only are the American people upset with Congress, but a majority of Americans feel that their own Congress-person is a part of the problem (usually Americans think everyone elses Congress-person is the problem).  And it’s not hard to figure out why. 

These jerks campaign 24/7, thanks to SCOTUS’ Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions, and obviously, they care only about themselves and their careers.  All too often, it takes a complete narcissist, and an opportunist, to run for higher office at the Federal and State level; but as the American people have come to realize, the attributes that make a great candidate for public office, often make for terrible leaders and worse public servants.  Many members simply use Congress as a steppingstone, or a rung on the ladder, to far more lucrative careers in the private sector (the revolving door in action).  To be sure, there are a very small minority of Reps and Senators who do a great job, but they are all too few.  Through gross mismanagement, lack of imagination and intelligence, fiscal and monetary incompetence, and negligence and apathy, these malefactors have run this country into the ground.  But don’t take my word for it.  Let’s examine the facts:

1)  Government spending as a percent of GDP is at or near 35 to 40% per annum…. So much for the land of capitalism;

2)  Our national debt to GDP ratio, has penetrated the century mark.  And the scary part, this figure doesn’t even begin to cover the underfunded future liabilities, from Medicare and social security, and the hangover from two decade long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

3)  Since the 1960s, U.S. citizens have been scared into three major wars – with dubious information and lies  - that metastasized into nation building exercises, costing the American taxpayer trillions.  And just this week, the degenerates passed approval for yet another war in Iraq/Syria, that is guaranteed once again to be lengthy, prolonged, and produce a questionable outcome (that’s right, no clear cut goals or mission, no exit strategy, just endless war).  Moreover, this latest war effort will manufacture – almost assuredly – hundreds of thousands of future terrorists and jihadists.  One of the key reasons the U.S. is going back to Iraq, besides defending Big Oil’s interests: The U.S. will likely spend billions blowing up billions of dollars of U.S. military equipment to keep it out of the hands of ISIS.  Blowback on top of blowback!  And the true problems in the Middle-East, the oil rich monarchies, who spread fundamentalist religion and finance terror, get a free pass.

4)  Meanwhile, America’s infrastructure is crumbling, and one in four U.S. children are born into poverty.  Seemingly the U.S. has money to protect Big Oil and multinational interests in Iraq; but when it come to our own citizens, Congress continually sells this country short.

5)  Due to Congress’s failure to take responsibility for revenue and expenditures, The Federal Reserve is the only thing keeping this house of cards afloat.  The Fed has printed several trillion dollars, since the financial crisis, to keep the banks from failing, and the mirage of limitless government entitlements and unsustainable national debt perpetuated.

6)  The biggest welfare class, of course, are the Wall Street banks, the plutocracy, cartels, monopolies, the MIC, and multinational interests.  Whether it’s government contracts handed out with little or no competition, a bloated MIC ever ready to defend corporate interests overseas, or tax breaks and a tax code that resembles Swiss cheese, the biggest winners are those who least need welfare, the uber wealthy; the biggest losers are the poor and the little that remains of the middle class.

7)  Of course, the Congress has their hands out, and takes in seemingly limitless sums of money and perks from any member of the plutocracy, foreign governments, and multinationals willing to pay or play.  That many U.S. based multinationals and foreign governments, who pay off our Congress, work at cross-purposes with the interests of the American people is not in dispute.  Take Exxon, by way of example.  Many Americans will tell you that Exxon is a great American company.  But Exxon’s own executive, when asked why not build more refineries in America to keep the price of fuel lower – hence stimulating our economy - will confirm the opposite.  Exxon Mobil chairman Lee Raymond replied to the request of more refineries with, “Why would I do that? I’m not a U.S. company, and I don’t make decisions based on what’s good for the U.S.”  And recently, Exxon has become so big that like any nation state, it now has its own foreign policy.  Exxon provides technological prowess and services to Russian dictator Putin, despite orders from the U.S. government to cease and desist.  It’s not even a remote stretch to make the case that Exxon has aided and abetted Russia’s criminal moves in the Ukraine and Crimea. 

8)  Simultaneously, many in Congress pander to the voters by decrying the amount of money in politics but then promptly vote against campaign finance reform, a measure that would undue Citizens United and McCutcheon.  While others in Congress are so bold as to suggest that corporations, even those with sociopathic and anti-social tendencies, are people too, are above the law, and should be allowed to spend unlimited sums of money buying off the Congress.  Which goes to show money isn’t the root of all evil, Congress is.

9)  Congress in the last several decades has presided over the near elimination of the middle-class, the off shoring of labor, record leveraged buyout and M&A activity - metastasized into cartels and monopolies, and now corporate inversions, where corporations – who exploit the tax code, often paying little or no taxes – relocate offshore (in effect, renouncing American citizenship).  Meanwhile, the national debt climbs ever higher, America crumbles, and the rich grow ever richer, while the poor and the middle-class are eviscerated.  And the Congress…. Well calling these individuals prostitutes, would be an insult to the world’s oldest profession.  Congress ducks, hides, plays politics, obstructs, and generally, can be counted on to make matters continually, worse.

And it’s not just in America…. Throughout Europe and wherever Western democracy is “practiced,” nationalist movements are on the march, politics is becoming more polarized, fascism and communism have returned, and the distribution of wealth and income has become more bipolar.  It seems that when the Soviet Union collapsed, Western democracies lost all source of competition, as did capitalism.   So democracy, capitalism and our elites, like all unchallenged monopolies, grew complacent, entitled, and privileged.  Who dares question democracy and capitalism?  Right?

Apparently, millions of citizens around the globe aren’t questioning democracy and capitalism so much, as their worst bastard progeny: crony capitalism, crony democracy sold to the highest bidder, and monopolies, cartels, and multinational institutions.  

As we witnessed in Merry Ol’ England this week, the elite are growing increasingly nervous (look no further than the global spy network, the NSA).  Promising Scotland greater autonomy and greater self-government, if they’ll only stay in the U.K.  Cowed by the fear card, all too often exploited by the political elite, the majority of Scots decided to stay.  Scotland however, very well may be a wake up call to crony democracy and the U.S. political elite.  Clean up your act Congress, or your likely see calls for secession in these United States.  Certainly some U.S. corporations are voting with their feet, and fleeing offshore.

There is, of course, a less dramatic and drastic way to take care of the Gordian Knot Congress represents, called political reform (because simply throwing the bums out, just means they’ll be replaced by more bums).  Ideally, a political reform wish list might look like the following:

1)  Term limits for all public servants (State and Federal), especially judges, capped at eight years of service, period;

2)  Stop the revolving door…  if you serve on the House Financial Services committee, than you’ve precluded yourself from joining a financial firm for a decade;

3)  Congress must adhere to all the laws that they pass;

4)  A cap on political spending per campaign of a million dollars, with any money taken on in excess of that figure given to legitimate charities, immediately.

5)  All public officials are subject to annual audit by the IRS without exception, a complete financial exam of proctological proportions.

6)  Regardless of office, limits on the time spent campaigning and raising money, capped at three months.

7)  Abolish the gerrymandered House of Representatives and go to a unicameral Senate body, with the 150 Senators being apportioned by U.S. population, and subject to state wide or regional elections (this means some states maybe too small to have a Senator, and some Senators may end up representing more than one state, while more populated states might have more than two Senators.)  A unicameral legislative body would be a favorite for fiscal conservatives and libertarians, who favor government cost controls and limited government; and liberals should like unicameral government, since it eliminates the House of Representatives that in its present incarnation, exists via rigged districts.

8)  Adopt a flat tax that is adjustable according to federal and state expenditures.  As for business, if you sell in America (whether your address is domestic or foreign), you pay taxes in America, as a percentage of gross receipts, period.

9)  End the spoils system of government.  A non-partisan group, should award all government contracts and apolitical government positions, based upon merit, ability, and with a nod to some cultural and socio-economic factors.

10)               Send F-16s and drones in to strafe K-Street, all lobbying effectively ended.

11)                 No wars - unless the sacrifice is shared by all citizens, through an immediate tax increase (wars should not be financed), and with a national draft.  That’ll put a stop to the nonsense and foreign adventures, posthaste.

Ah, and last but not least…. where’s Mrs. Struckman when you need her, to apply to tape to the mouths of the rabble that make up our current Congress?

Don't count on any reforms, or Amendments to the Constitution happening any time soon.  Congress and the plutocracy know they have a good thing going, and it will take something very serious in this country for Congress to change its course and embrace reform.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2014

Political Risk Management

Political Risk Management

“Caligula was serious, and he had no use for journalists.”

- Hunter S. Thompson: Better than Sex, Confessions of a Political Junkie 

By J.M. Hamilton 4-14-2016

Presumably Mr. Caligula had no use for whistle-blowers either, but that’s beside the point.  If you get a chance, I recommend that you read Mr. Thompson’s highly illuminating book about the ’92 Presidential campaign,  a campaign that ushered in the Clinton era.  Admittedly, Mr. Thompson was past his prime in ‘92, but his insights and wisdom were often spot on.   Hunter pegged Mr. Clinton right from the get-go as a hustler, and in the political arena, purely out for himself; but when it comes to politicians is that really such a hard guess or news?  Take a close look at Madame Hillary Clinton and you’ll find yourself staring into the eyes of a stone cold superpredator and a political opportunist, rivaled by none.  The handful of politicians that actually give a damn about the people are few and far between, and usually get run over in the passing lane (witness the pounding Mr. McGovern took at the hands of then President Richard Milhous Nixon, Circa 1972).  And surely that defeat was on Hunter’s mind as he wrote this book.

 H.S.T. and Candidate, Mr. McGovern, via the Washington Post.

It must have also been of Mr. Clinton’s (aka Slick William’s) mind, as well.  Mr. Clinton was no fool, and despite all the ‘90s GOP bashing about Bill being a “liberal,” he ushered in an entirely new era for the Democratic Party.  Clinton personified Mr. Thompson’s famous maxim, from the aforementioned book: “Politics is the art of controlling your environment.”  You better believe it, Bubba.  Many have died trying to do that very thing, the majority of course, have crashed and burned.  The Lords of Karma have a way of totally ripping up the script, the best laid plans of both mice and men, and the graveyards are filled with indispensable men.  Fate has a really nasty way of humbling the greatest among us…. So always keep a careful watch over both shoulders, at all times.  There is no such thing as paranoia, and as any citizen who has run in a U.S. Presidential election will attest to… they really are coming to get you.

That’s why only true adrenaline junkies run for the White House.

But enough about all that because I have been writing about politics way too much, when J.M.H., as my readers are aware, likes to go deep on finance on occasion.  With that intro, today’s topic is risk management.  Yeah, please bear with me as we Tee this up.  Risk management is actually an old school business, some might say insurance, term, whereby a manager is constantly analyzing the various risks the enterprise they are managing may come across.  Moreover, how should those risks be managed, priced for, mitigated, and/or eliminated.  The term, risk management, really took off after the 2008 financial crash.  You remember, the 2008 crash when bankers and financial types under-priced debt securitization (such as CDOs and MBS), derivatives and swaps, and many other financial products in general.

How do we know the bankers and said financial types under-priced these products?  Because they had to be freaking bailed out - that’s how we know.  Wall Street had become Too Big to Fail, and the taxpayer and the Federal Reserve came calling, after the financial Hiroshima hit.   The key takeaway here, is that in a sense Wall Street had been practicing a form of risk management all along.  That is to say, the Street/Banks took the profits of the under-priced and under-collateralized financial products they sold, and the taxpayer assumed the risk and the bailout of said under-priced financial products.  In short, all went according to plan, as The Street essentially owns both political parties.

An alternative risk management play, one our hapless Congress and their owners – The Wall Street banks – halfheartedly attempted to put into place, post-Crash, was where The Street actually would price their products at an appropriate level for the risk assumed; true risk management, also, attempted to set up a cash buffer or equity position (aka collateral), so that the risk was incurred by the banks & their ownership – instead of the taxpayer – should it hit the fan, again.  But where’s the fun in that?  Where indeed?

Do you think for one nanosecond Wall Street banks are going to forego one fraction of a cent in profits (actually practice real risk management), by actually appropriately pricing and setting up collateral, or an equity buffer, for the financial fraud they sell daily?  Why would they do that when they own the Congress of the United States?  The banks like the way 2008 played out…. The banks are practicing risk management:  They pocket the profits, and you, dear taxpayer, get to bend over and assume the risk.  It’s called socializing the costs of Wall Street fraud, while profits are privatized; and it happens 24/7/365.

In short, Wall Street’s risk management, indeed the wealthy’s risk management plan, is best summed up in Mr. Thompson’s famous maxim: Once again…. Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? … Politics/Finance is the art of controlling your environment.   And the environment Wall Street controls is the political environment: The U.S. Congress, the Executive Branch, and increasingly the courts, themselves.

That said, the GOP has always been owned by Wall Street, but the Democratic Party, with its liberals and progressives, was an entirely different animal, particularly in the late 60s, 70s and very early 80s.  It wasn’t until President Reagan pointed the country hard right, less than a decade after Mr. McGovern took his savage beating, and Mr. Carter’s dreams were limited to one term, that the Democratic Party turned, as well, hard right.

Enter President William Jefferson Clinton.

Sly Willy traded in the progressivism of the New Deal and Great Society for “Triangulation,” which is fancy way of saying Mr. Clinton adopted/co-opted GOP policy.   Suddenly gone were the days when Dems looked out for ordinary Americans, the poor, and the disenfranchised.   In the 90s, the new Dems were looking out for themselves and the wealthy.  Besides, who were blacks, minorities, and lower rung whites going to turn to, if the Dems started adopting polices that were antithetical to middle class interests?  The Republicans?

Just as it took Nixon, a right- wing anticommunist, to embrace Red-China – pulling off perhaps the biggest foreign policy coup of the 20^th Century, it took an allegedly, Liberal-Dem to gut welfare, at the very same time the Clintons were pushing NAFTA and free trade. 

That is the greatest irony of President Clinton’s two terms: many of Clinton’s economic, social, and fiscal policies were conservative in nature, despite continuous vilification from the Republican Party.

Caught in the middle – with no one to champion their cause – were the poor and minorities.  Jobs being shipped offshore, via Free Trade, heh – no problem, let’s gut the social safety net.  President Reagan and the CIA looked the other way, as crack cocaine was sold to minorities in Southern California to finance Reagan’s proxy wars in Latin America…..    What a great time for President Clinton – in the midst of a crack cocaine epidemic – to clamp down on crime, ramp up the war on drugs, help establish the criminal justice industrial complex, and embrace mass incarceration.  Besides, the country had to house the unemployed somewhere after all the jobs were shipped offshore – via free trade – so why not institutionalize broad swaths of the minority community (w/in privatized prisons)?  Particularly, African-American men.  It’s no coincidence that just as Mr. Clinton had words with #BlackLivesMatter protestors this week, in the 90s, Mr. Clinton also had a Sister Souljah moment.  And it’s good to remember that Mr. Clinton attacked candidate Obama in 2008, as unelectable.  In short, our so-called “first black president (aka Mr. Clinton)” isn’t above playing the race card to obtain the white vote.

How quintessentially, GOP!

If it all sounds very Republican, that’s because it was.  Riding shot gun with President Clinton was the Speaker of the House, the beady-eyed, Newt Gingrich.  And President Clinton would score three, coveted, annual balanced budgets, an event that has not been achieved since.  Meanwhile, much of the Reagan and Bush tax cuts for the wealthy remained in place for President Clinton’s two terms.  To his credit, and true to the Keynesian model, Mr. Clinton did raise taxes ever so slightly.  The Clinton tax increase, coupled w/ the unprecedented Dot.com boom, helped in no small way to balance the federal budget. 

President Clinton blazed a trail, and the economic and political elite couldn’t have been happier.  Now, the wealthy had two political parties working for them.  The Plutocracy owned both political establishments, and hence, the government itself.  It is also no coincidence that the 2008 financial crisis struck under President Bush’s (W) watch, but President Obama – beholden to Wall Street – and the current incarnation of Clintonian politics – continued with the Wall Street bank bailouts set in motion by a Republican administration.   And the beneficiaries of the Bush/Obama bailouts?  Well, that’s obvious…  thanks to the bailouts and the Federal Reserve, wage and wealth inequality have reached proportions last seen during the Gilded Age.  The Wall Street banks are more concentrated and powerful than ever before.  The banks, private equity, and shadow banking own everything, including the souls of politicians.

As with all things extreme, and in line with Newton’s third law, there was eventually blowback.  Blowback in the form of an anti-establishment backlash seen during this 2016 Presidential campaign season, where outsider candidates, Sanders and Trump, are leading insurgencies that the American public has largely embraced.  Both Sanders and Trump stomping all over formerly sacrosanct free trade agreements; both Sanders and Trump calling for America to pull back from its many - go it alone - wars, and a Pax Americana foreign policy.  And the American public – much to the frustration and fear of the establishment – is eating it up.  Hillary, stuck in the 90s, cannot believe her eyes.  Volumes could be written about how the “mainstream” GOP candidate is now the Molotov Cocktail devotee, U.S. Senator from Texas, Ted Cruz.

In the parlance of our times, WTF(reak)!

Which brings us to my final point.  Mr. Thompson was 100% correct, politics is the art of controlling one’s environment, and good political risk management – in the year of our Lord 2016 -  calls for dramatic action.  That’s why President Obama, a cold hearted pragmatist, must throw Madame Hillary Clinton under the wheels of the populist bus, running at preternatural speed towards destiny. 

Grandma Clinton has reversed herself on so many of her 90s Establishment policies that she is literally morphing into Senator Sanders before our very eyes.  Why the sudden change within the Clintonian heart?  In short, the public has woken to realize the political interests of the plutocracy are absolutely crushing the middle class.  Sorry to say, no one, and I mean no one, believes Madame Clinton is going to “get ‘er done,” with a Republican held House of Representatives (unless “getting ‘er done” means bringing back Slick Willy’s Pro- Plutocracy agenda).   Moreover, Hillary attracts voters, who will likely be dead w/in the next generation (then again, the Clintons aren't above digging up the dead to increase voter turnout).  I know that’s cold, but the calculus of political reality is colder still.  Besides POTUS Obama's legacy is at stake.  Meanwhile, Senator Sanders is the future… not only does he attract the youth vote by both exceptional and extraordinary margins, but women (particularly single-women), and increasingly minority voters, too.   

Does President Obama want to saddle his legacy with the GOP loving Clinton?  Or does he go with the future, POTUS Sanders?  Cool, analytical risk management, and poll after poll, demonstrates the obvious choice.  As events have overtaken the GOP Establishment in real time, the Democratic Party’s civil-war is already underway and being waged.  And it’s long overdue… call it blowback for neglecting and screwing over the nation, to further profits for the few.  What Mr. Romney, I believe, referred to as the "takers."  The only "takers" I know – the true socialist – are the 1%, caught w/ their hand in the government till, time and time again.

Sorry Bill and Hillary, but you are a political liability, a liability that should be subject to prudent political risk management.  The Establishment’s time, to run this country into the ground, has reached its inevitable conclusion, and a political revolution is overtaking both political parties.  That leaves us with the question of the moment, one of great import:  Does Obama possess the courage to pull the indictment trigger?  

Many would say count the indictment out, but this campaign season - and the great chess game that is presidential politics - has been turned on its head.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2016