http://reverbpress.com/politics/voting-hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders/
1. The Trans-pacific
Partnership.
Though the passage of the
Trans-Pacific Partnership is by no means assured, since the Congressional
debate will be occurring in the shadow of national elections, if it does pass,
it will be perhaps President Barack Obama’s most shameful legacy. The fact that
he was able to ram the fast track Trade Promotional Authority, a necessary
prerequisite to the passage of TPP, through Congress only by allying himself
with Congressional Republicans should give you a bit of a clue that the deal
may not be the most awesome thing ever. It is likely to result in lost jobs and
lower wages. It does fuck all to protect the environment. And its redefinition
of intellectual property is going to increase drug costs in developing nations,
which will, quite literally, kill people. Supporting TPP is unforgivable.
But wait, you say. Clinton is
against TPP. Surely I can’t hold TPP, of all things, against her. Well, yes and
no.
True, back in October, Clinton
came out against TPP, and everyone made it out to be a huge deal. At the time,
I confess I was skeptical. It struck me as a way to coopt the position of
Sanders on the left, and to distinguish her candidacy from the then possibility
of a Joe Biden run.
The famous list of 45 times
that Clinton spoke in favor of TPP before she abruptly changed her mind
certainly makes her opposition seem more political than principled. And there
is the simple fact that Clinton’s State Department was heavily involved in the
initial negotiations on TPP to take into consideration.
All of those facts are
telling, but one thing that truly troubles me about Clinton and the TPP is her
troubling silence on the issue since last October. Great. She opposes the deal.
But has she used the platform of her campaign to speak out against it?
No. If Clinton truly opposes
TPP, her presidential run is the perfect venue from which to argue against it,
to bring its numerous flaws to the attention of her followers, to perhaps
change a few votes in Congress. She has done none of that. Her inaction on this
issue is unforgivable.
That does not bode well,
especially given that a similar trade pact, the Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership, will be hammered out under the next administration.
2. Glass-Steagall.
The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933
created a firewall between commercial and investment banking. It was enacted at
least partially in reaction the disastrous stock market crash of 1929 and the
excesses that preceded it. It stood for 66 years, until then-President Bill
Clinton signed the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, which effectively gutted it.
And the end result of that was
the financial catastrophe of 2008: “It was Glass-Steagall that prevented the
banks from using insured depositories to underwrite private securities and dump
them on their own customers. This ability along with financing provided to all
the other players was what kept the bubble-machine going for so long.”
Given that we are, arguably,
still in recovery from the disaster of 2008, it would seem that reinstating
Glass-Steagall would be a no-brainer. But Hillary Clinton has consistently
stated that this is not an action she will pursue.
Instead of re-imposing the
firewall between commercial and investment banking, Clinton favors a gentler
approach: “To start, I will propose a new fee on risk that would discourage the
type of excessive leverage and short-term borrowing that could spark another
crisis. We should also strengthen and enforce the Volcker Rule so banks can’t
make risky and speculative trading bets with taxpayer-backed money. And if a
bank suffers losses that threaten its overall financial health, senior managers
should lose some or all of their bonus compensation. That will ensure that
financial executives have skin in the game and a real incentive to avoid
reckless risk-taking.”
And yes, to be sure, that is
something. But it is not enough. New fees on risk can be easily absorbed by the
bloated behemoths of our banking system. Financial disincentives have far less
bite to them than actual regulations.
It’s nice that Clinton is
proposing something, but given the magnitude of the risk involved, her
proposals are far too mild and far too unlikely to prevent a repeat of 2008.
3. Iraq, and the lessons not
learned. And here’s the big one: Iraq.
In 2002, Hillary Clinton voted
to authorize President George W. Bush to use force in Iraq. She has repeatedly
said that voting to invade Iraq was a mistake (something that, I should
mention, was thumpingly obvious to many of us who were paying attention in the
run up to the war). Good for her.
It was a huge mistake, and it
is to Clinton’s credit that she acknowledges it. The problem is, it doesn’t
seem that she has learned from this mistake.
The Iraq War was an
unmitigated failure, not because of the conduct of the war, but because of its
aftermath. The United States was entirely unprepared to deal with the task of
reconstructing a country in which disparate factions had been held together by
the rule of a bloodthirsty dictator. Saddam Hussein was, objectively, a
terrible person. But the removal of his rule of strength and terror created a
power vacuum that is, to this day, the scene of a bloody conflict.
Hillary Clinton’s support for
George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, and the plain fact that she has learned nothing
from the consequences of that vote, is the main reason why I’m not voting for
her. The harsh reality is that one simply cannot remove a nation’s dictator and
expect democracy to bloom like a thousand flowers. There are some cases in
which a totalitarian regime has, without undue bloodshed, transitioned to
something like a democracy.
Many nations of Eastern
Europe, in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall, provide fine examples of
this. But the nations where the transition to democracy was relatively painless
were characterized by one thing: relative homogeneity. In Yugoslavia, where
disparate ethnic groups were held together by sheer force of will, the removal
of that force resulted in warfare and genocide. As in Yugoslavia, so in Iraq.
And, despite the lessons of
Iraq, so in Libya. The overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi, another, terrible person,
happened as a direct result of policies pushed by Clinton’s State Department.
And, just as in Iraq, the removal of a dictator resulted in chaos.
And now there is Syria, a
seething stew of factions and atrocities. Hillary Clinton has called for a
no-fly zone over the region, an act that goes against not only the regime of
Bashir al-Assad (yes, another terrible person), but also his Russian allies.
Once again, Clinton has chosen
a policy intended to remove a strongman without thought for the aftermath. I’m
very glad that Clinton now regrets her vote on the Iraq War. But the plain fact
that she has learned nothing from the consequences of this vote is the
strongest, and final, reason why I cannot support her.
[…]
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