Barney Frank, Overseeing Dem Convention Platform, ADMITS WALL ST DONATIONS BUY INFLUENCE

[AzDar]

Not Only Is The Wall St Bank Of Which Frank Sits On The Board Under Investigation For FRAUD, He Accidentally Tells The Truth About Wall St 'Donations' :


Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has run an unexpectedly tough campaign against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, wrote a letter Friday to the Democratic National Committee urging it to play fair when choosing the standing committees that will determine the rules and platform for the party. Sanders said in the letter that two appointees who had already been named are “aggressive attack surrogates on the campaign trail” for Clinton, including former Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank — who sits on the board of directors of a major bank that was recently named in a lawsuit about an alleged Ponzi scheme. Frank has also publicly boasted about the money he has raked in from Wall Street, both as a lawmaker and now as a top Democratic Party power broker.

Frank's appointment could prove to be a hurdle for Sanders, who says he should be able to influence the Democrats' platform since he piled up a significant number of votes and won many states during the nominating season. One of the issues he is almost certain to push is Wall Street banking reform, which has been a cornerstone of his campaign message.
Frank sits on the board of Signature Bank, a 15-year-old bank that boasts $33 billion in assets and turned a record profit last year of $373 million. Of the $18,000 the bank donated to congressional candidates during Frank’s last election cycle, the Massachusetts lawmaker received $2,400, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Investors filed suit against Signature this year after the company lost $66 million of investor cash in a scheme run by William Landberg, a money manager, who pleaded guilty to the crime in 2011. Investors allege that Signature helped Landberg by ordering him to shift money around dozens of accounts to cover up long-term overdrafts, according to the New York Times

-snip-

In 2012, Frank told NPR that such donations inevitably influence those in position to wield political power.

"People say, 'Oh, it doesn't have any effect on me,'" he said at the time. "Well, if that were the case, we'd be the only human beings in the history of the world who on a regular basis took significant amounts of money from perfect strangers and made sure that it had no effect on our behavior."

DISGUSTED AND OUTRAGED, YET?


Full, Nausea-Inducing Story @ Link:

http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/wall-street-money-barney-frank-oversee-democratic-platform-while-running-big-bank

[Thinkingabout]

1. Oh, we know about influence buying, Sanders has provided a really good

Example of influence buying. NRA donated $18,000 to help defeat his opponent when he was elected onto congress and Sanders rewarded them with five no votes against the Brady Bill. I am also wondering what the $10,000 Hillary arranged for his first run in the Senate, wonder what the reward is going to be.

[amborin]

4. HRC sold unprecedented amounts of weapons to human rights violating nations:

Hillary Hypocrisy on Gun Control: Sold 1000s Deadly Weapons to Abusive Regimes That Killed Millions



Why Hillary Clinton’s “Strongest Issue” Is Actually Her Biggest Farce

Hillary Clinton just might be the top salesperson for the military-industrial complex in US history, yet she is claiming to be the undisputed champion of gun control in the 2016 race.

The fact that Clinton has sold more weapons that George W. Bush in his second term isn’t mentioned much by the major cable news networks, who have allowed her to get away with the narrative that she wants to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of killers. But much of the unrest in the Middle East can be traced back to US-supplied weapons during Clinton’s years as Secretary of State, particularly to countries with deplorable human rights records.

snip

Clinton’s State Department sold $165 billion in weapons to 20 different countries between October 2010 and September 2012 that also donated to her family foundation.

snip

But Clinton also assisted in selling $151 billion worth of weapons through Pentagon-brokered deals to 16 different countries that had donated to the Clinton Foundation.

In April 2011, the US Department of State issued a blistering report outlining the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s horrific record in dealing with government reformers, prisoners, and women:

The following significant human rights problems were reported: no right to change the government peacefully; torture and physical abuse; poor prison and detention center conditions; arbitrary arrest and incommunicado detention; denial of fair and public trials and lack of due process in the judicial system; political prisoners; restrictions on civil liberties such as freedoms of speech (including the Internet), assembly, association, movement, and severe restrictions on religious freedom; and corruption and lack of government transparency. Violence against women and a lack of equal rights for women, violations of the rights of children, trafficking in persons, and discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, sect, and ethnicity were common.



When compared with all of the other countries that received weapons, the 2011 arms deal with Saudi Arabia could perhaps be interpreted as an oversight by the most forgiving Clinton supporter. But as the International Business Times reported, Saudi Arabia getting their new weapons was one of Hillary Clinton’s biggest goals:

At press conferences in Washington to announce the department’s approval, an Assistant Secretary of State, Andrew Shapiro, declared that the deal had been “a top priority” for Clinton personally. Shapiro, a longtime aide to Clinton since her Senate days, added that the “U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army have excellent relationships in Saudi Arabia.”

snip

Other recipients of Clinton-approved weapons sales include regimes with negative human rights reports from the State Department, like Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, and Kuwait. Qatar, for example, was described to be a haven for human trafficking in a 2015 State Department report:

Approximately 94 percent of the country’s workforce is comprised of men and women from South and Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East who voluntarily come to work as low- and semi-skilled workers, primarily in construction, oil and gas, service, transportation, and domestic work, but some subsequently face forced labor. Female domestic workers are particularly vulnerable to trafficking due to their isolation in private residences and lack of protection under Qatari labor laws. Qatar is also a destination country for women who migrate for employment purposes and become involved in prostitution; some of these women may be runaway domestic workers forced into prostitution by traffickers who exploit their illegal status.

Clinton has a peculiar friendliness for volatile dictators. As The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald reported, Clinton also openly expressed warm feelings for Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, who was deposed in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring protests, saying Mubarak and his wife were “friends of my family.” Clinton even referred to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad as a “reformer” in an interview, favorably comparing Assad to Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi. Her fondness for Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, who has overseen the massacre of thousands of Palestinians, is well-documented. And the violent US-backed coup in Honduras in 2009 was supported by the US State Department, not long after Clinton was confirmed as Secretary of State.

All of this flies in the face of the anti-gun image the Clinton campaign has created for the former First Lady and Secretary of State. But at the end of the day, Clinton was front-and-center for a bulk of the weapons sales made during the Obama administration, which was the highest period of arms proliferation in US history since World War II.

Clinton has made her gun control position a central issue of her 2016 campaign, even lobbing false attacks at primary opponent Bernie Sanders in order to win liberals who prioritize gun control when casting their vote. But ultimately, gun control is about preventing dangerous weapons from finding their way into the hands of killers. Since Hillary Clinton’s most recent government job has been overseeing tremendous amounts of weapons transferring from the US to repressive dictatorships, when will the media start questioning her ownership of the gun control issue?

http://usuncut.com/politics/clinton-arms-deals-gun-control/

[Thinkingabout]

11. On average 80 people die daily in the US, count them up over the years,

The final Brady Bill left the Charleston loophole, nine people in a church died at the hands of a person who slipped through the loophole, no, Sanders responded to the NRA, a gun lobbyists group. BTW, totally on the right with his votes on gun issues, it is past time to return to the left on gun issues.

[thesquanderer]

13. No one has a perfect record. How many people did the Iraq war kill?

I don't lay all the Iraq war deaths at Hillary's feet, nor do I think it's fair to lay all the gun deaths at Bernie's "merely" D- NRA voting record.

On gun control, really, Hillary and Bernie are much more similar than different.

[Thinkingabout]

16. That's a fair shot, the Brady Bill passed in the nineties, count the number of Americans who have

died as a result of gun violence. BTW, Hillary did not invade Iraq so what ever number died in Iraq has nothing to do with Hillary's actions or lack of actions. Sanders also voted against funding to the CDC to study gun violence, what is the problem with studying by the CDC on gun violence?

[thesquanderer]

18. ok, HRC didn't invade Iraq so whatever # died in Iraq has nothing to do with her action or inactions

and like I said, I wasn't laying those at her feet anyway. But similarly, the Brady bill DID pass, so whatever # died from the lack of the bill's passage can't be laid at Bernie's feet either (and since it passed, the number happens to be zero).

[loyalsister]

19. Gun deaths only bother her when the victims are USAers

Hillary has been reliably willing to champion opening the door for massive amounts of killing which inevitably involves gun deaths.
Like the most bloodthirsty war hawks, the condition is that they not be Israelis, or USAers.

[thesquanderer]

12. Maybe the reward was not going after her on the emails. ;-)

More seriously, I'd say that contributions don't literally buy votes... but they do buy something. It could be access, it could be just more of a willingness to see an issue from a certain perspective on a call that could go either way.

But the bottom line is that, at a minimum, companies are likely to support (with their contributions) those candidates who are going to be inclined to see things their way in the first place. Those are the people they want to see in office. Looked at that way--which is really about as benign a way as you could possibly look at it--you'd still have to ask yourself whether you want the candidate who is well supported by particular companies/industries or not.

[Thinkingabout]

17. Hum, maybe going after Campaign funding fraud would be easier and going after Bank Fraud on

Jane would produce indictments.

[msongs]

2. good ole berniemaking insulting remarks about people then demanding they give in to him lol nt

[CentralMass]

3. Wow Barney Frank is the perfect ring master for this circus.

I'll be sure to miss the convention,

[AzDar]

5. Yep. The Clown sitting on a bank board is in charge of the Dem Convention Platform; hates Bernie

Seems legit...

#OccupyPhilly

[Art_from_Ark]

6. I envision him more as the carnival barker

"Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and see the most fantastic, the most wonderful, the absolute greatest candidate who ever walked the face of the Earth! One-percenters get complimentary VIP seats! Step right up!"

[Dragonfli]

7. There are reasons the Party now applauds this truth....

Our party since it is is going through a right wing realignment And has successfully been doing so since the founding of the DLC

The entire goal of the neoliberal, "new" Democrat movement, under Al From and the Clintons (and all the other "new Democrats" AKA "Third Way" Democrats) has been since at least the 80's, to court and bring into the fold moderate Republicans, replacing the working class voters with them.

They refer to the RW takeover of the party as an "intellectual leveraged buyout" And history shows they DID take over the party.

More

[Go Vols]

15. "Obama says he'd be seen as moderate Republican in 1980s"

Hillary touts herself as Obama 3.0

Didn't care for moderate R's then either.

[Bohunk68]

8. I have had an ambivalent feelings towards Frank.

On the one hand, being gay, I felt that connection. What soured it, was that he refused to come out of the closet for years when it would have really been meaningful. He finally did, when it was easy. He had accumulated wealth by that time, and married his partner. His Dodd-Frank bill was widely regarded on DU as really bad legislation. Subsequent events have shown that to be true. His support for Establishment candidates have only shown where his true colors lie. I did not know about the board position. Thanks for posting. All is showing now. He wants to be SecTreas.

[jwirr]

14. To be fair I do not think this has anything to do with his sexual

orientation. What I am surprised about is that he always seemed much more progressive and that is in no way true today.

[Betty Karlson]

9. Barney, please stop disappointing me.

[bjo59]

10. Old Barney Frank went on a late night talk show after he retired

and explained Senators and Congresspeople taking money from banks, corporations, etc. with a question: "Didn't your mother tell you to be nice to people who are nice to you?" He said it at least three times in quick succession and each time looked into the camera (out into "TV land&quot and opened his eyes really wide and innocent-like. Came through strong and clear to me what he thinks of the suckers they all sort of pretend to represent. (It was quite clear he wasn't being sardonic.)