Feinstein: A Democrat who LOVES the status quo. Can you guess why?

[Skwmom]

AND the following is just the tip of the iceberg.

California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein is back in the news as the giant real estate investment firm run by her husband, Rich Blum, is possibly poised to earn as much as $1 billion in commissions from selling U.S. Postal Service buildings across the country.

Several years ago, Feinstein said that she exerted no influence in the process that led to Blum’s company, CBRE Group, then the world’s largest commercial real estate services firm, obtaining an exclusive contract to market USPS facilities—as part of a larger federal effort to reduce the deficit.

Feinstein dismissed the conflict of interest allegations at the time, which were followed by numerous investigative reports criticizing the deal. The USPS Inspector General issued a report saying the contract was not how it previously sold properties and was unlikely to reduce USPS costs. California-based investigative reporters found that CBRE was selling properties below market value to clients, which means those buyers could likely profit if they resold them.


http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/dianne-feinsteins-husbands-real-estate-firm-poised-make-1-billion-selling-post

[NWCorona]

1. Feinstein on Hillary's accomplishments

"As someone who worked with Hillary Clinton for nearly a decade in the Senate, what in your view was her signature accomplishment as a senator?


Feinstein, who arrived at the meeting with five aides toting thick briefing books outlining her new water policy proposal, paused for a few seconds to ponder the career of Clinton, whom she has endorsed.

“Golly, I forget what bills she’s been part of or authored. I didn’t really come prepared to discuss this,” Feinstein said during a wide-ranging discussion with The Chronicle’s editorial board, and several news reporters and editors. “But she’s been a good senator. There are things outside of bills that you can do, and I know that she’s done them for her state.”

“I should have a list,” the famously well-prepared Feinstein said. Turning to an aide, she said with a smile, “Get on Google.”

[Vinca]

4. Essentially, it's the moneyed protecting the moneyed.

[onecaliberal]

2. Corporate boot licking war profiteer. She's sickening and pathetic.

[Bayard]

3. Feinstein vs Boxer

When I was losing my farm in CA, I wrote to both senators. Boxer's office was either on the phone or sending me emails nearly every day trying to help. I think thousands of stories like mine is what snared Wells Fargo and other banks.

I received a canned letter from Feinstein, saying, you're on your own. So sorry.

[OnDoutside]

5. Or maybe she believes a life long socialist will lose the General ?

[TheBlackAdder]

6. Gotta love the that RW "socialist" meme, Rove.

[TwilightZone]

7. You might want to talk to your candidate.

"Do they think I’m afraid of the word? I’m not afraid of the word," he said in an interview with The Nation published in July. "When I ran for the Senate the first time, I ran against the wealthiest guy in the state of Vermont. He spent a lot on advertising — very ugly stuff. He kept attacking me as a liberal. He didn’t use the word ‘socialist’ at all, because everybody in the state knows that I am that."

Everyone who knows anything about Sanders knows that he's been identifying as a socialist for decades. Why is it that so many supposed Sanders fans seem to have no clue?

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/aug/26/bernie-sanders-socialist-or-democratic-socialist/

[OnDoutside]

9. For the same reason those on the right support Trump. They're looking for a Messiah who tells them

what they want to hear. Reason is set aside.

[TheBlackAdder]

11. Yeah, fuck it! Pragmatism is the way to go. No wonder the America spirit is stuck in a morass.

.


No, tell me what I don't want to hear, each and every time. Be the Debbie Downer who rains on parades.


I'm an uncommitted Democratic Poli-Sci guy and you guys are completely failing your college psych and poli-sci courses, if you had ever taken them and remember anything from them.


Pragmatism never created or evolved a political institution. Never.

.

[OnDoutside]

16. All credit to you for being idealistic however

you speak of pragmatism never evolves a political institution. I think there is an appetite amongst most Democrats that the DP does evolve, and indeed compared to where it was in the 50s, it has moved hugely. Yes it could do more, and will, because of Sanders campaign. There is credit due to him on that.

The problem that is not being recognised is that for all the advances Sanders and his followers want to achieve, there would be a monumental setback if Trump wins in November. All those incremental "pragmatic" wins by Democratic administrations over the years, stand to be unravelled, if there isn't quick unity on the Dem side, to give Clinton the best chance.

Clinton will win the nomination on June 7, even if he wins California. Good for him if he does, but there's 7 weeks after that to the Convention, where he is demanding super delegate support of Democratic Party members that he has castigated. Good luck getting those votes ... It's bizarre.

7 weeks where the likes of President Obama, VP Biden and many other Nationally known faces will still have to take a back seat and wait until the formality is gone through, before rowing in behind Clinton. It can only help Trump.

If Sanders pushes this all the way to the convention and the Dems lose in November, the blame will be thrown at his feet and rather than accepting his reforms, I could see a major rejection of him and his militant wing.

[GRhodes]

15. ...

He has critiqued the horrible free trade deals, and has pointed to the actual data. How is that devoid of reason? His critiques of corruption (her's in particular)? Her center-right economic record overall, her horrible foreign policy decisions and hawkish foreign policy? How is all of that devoid of reason? He is liked so much because he is the only one bringing them up and focusing on these issues. You saying what you said is a pure case of projection.

[OnDoutside]

17. He didn't critique them, he opposed them. However

the free trade deals in themselves are good, the problem is that there was no political will to tackle the glaring effect of globalisation in the US, removal of vast amounts of the manufacturing base to cheaper overseas countries, without a plan to retrain/upskill the workforce. They were largely left to rot. Germany and Belgium are textbook economic cases where, when the coal mines closed, government money was put in to retrain/upskill those workers. Blaming and wanting to re-negotiate those deals is an admission of ineptitude.

There is so much America could do to lead the world in technology, and take advantage of those same trade deals. It's available to all, once they get off their butt.

[GRhodes]

21. Hell no they haven't been good. The deals

resulted in not only in the loss of good paying jobs, but do not allow the very policies that have led to economic development. There is very little that governments can do to actually stimulate demand directly, they certainly cannot support local producers. Look at the recent case at the WTO between the US and India over solar panels. They place corporations on the same level as nation states, privatize and outsource key judicial powers, are highly protectionist in regards to intellectual property (which, in the case of things like drugs, is not only illogical given how much the US government pays for in regards to R and D, but also comes at the expense of the public good and public health). They aren't good on any damn level. They are investor rights agreements, not free trade agreements, and they have been huge contributors to the increased inequality in the US as well as increasing the power differential between capital and labor.

I also find it fascinating that the economists that came up with the ideas behind free trade (in particular Adam Smith and David Ricardo) assumed things about the economy that are the exact opposite of the reality today. Adam Smith mentioned the "invisible hand" once in the Wealth of Nations, and it was actually an argument against what is now called free trade. He said that capitalists could ship their factories to other countries, but he assumed they wouldn't because of nationalism and their home country preference. That was the invisible hand. Ricardo assumed the exact same thing, he said so explicitly, when creating his argument about comparative advantage. They said that factories would stay put, the goods they produced and labor would be free to go across borders. Is that the reality of today? What are the implications?

I also don't see how, when we are facing what we are with global warming, how it makes sense to have a trade model that is based on shipping goods thousands of miles away, to be bought by the developed countries increasingly on credit, since real wages haven't grown in the US in decades.

Those trade deals have been an all around disaster. Too bad the developing countries failed in their attempt at the New International Economic Order. We'd be in a better, more humane and equitable world today if they succeeded.

[OnDoutside]

22. What you are describing is not the fault of free trade but rather a failure of the US

Policy makers, over the last 40 odd years, to identify the challenges of globalisation and opportunities that would be on offer as well. Case in point was the recent attempted Pfizer Inversion was shot down by the Treasury coming down hard. The blame lies at the feet of Republicans AND Democrats, for not acting when Corporations deciding it was easier to move to Asia (or wherever) rather than rebuild, re-tool and re-skill at their legacy US plants, where protectionism had only encouraged inefficiency. Politicians knew this was going to happen 40 years ago but descending into a blame game rather than actually do something about it. There was an excellent interview with the late Sir James Goldsmith (in a series of youtube videos) where he lays out exactly the downsides.

This bitter divide and drift to the far Left & Right is killing the capacity of the US to respond. Moderate bi-partisan Republicans are heading the way of the Dodo, and with the Socialist advances into the Democratic Party by Sanders, further polarization is inevitable, as one side tries to block the other. The losers are the American people.

At a time where the amount of people on the planet (with disposable income) grows, excluding yourself from these markets is extremely short sighted.

[GRhodes]

25. "where protectionism had only encouraged inefficiency"

I'm not sure it is possible to be more wrong. The US developed behind the highest industrial tariffs in the world for a century and a half (from the War of 1812 roughly to about WWII). This is a fact. We could never have competed with British manufactures (and the British themselves developed behind massive amounts of protectionism) if we put in place free trade, the American capitalists at the time knew this and they pushed for the Republicans to protect them from British imports, which they increasingly did. The South wanted free trade because they preferred British goods, and they lost the argument. The US even after had massive amounts of protectionism, even under Reagan, and still has the most highly protectionist agricultural system in the world. In fact, I challenge you to find a single country in modern times that has developed behind free trade. Hasn't happened. Some countries, like China, have partially liberated their economies (Only partially. The recent Fortune 500 listed 84 Chinese corporations, 78 were state owned enterprises. Most of finance, heavy industry, telecommunications and energy is in state hands. All land, lakes and rivers are still publicly owned and they have massive amounts of protectionism throughout the economy. I lived there, know the country and the data). Ha Joon Chang has written extensively about this and has data to back it up. Read "Kicking Away the Ladder" by Chang. You also might want to read "The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public Vs. Private Sector Myths" by Mariana Mazzucato.

"The blame lies at the feet of Republicans AND Democrats, for not acting when Corporations deciding it was easier to move to Asia (or wherever) rather than rebuild, re-tool and re-skill at their legacy US plants, where protectionism had only encouraged inefficiency."

By doing what exactly? What can be done when factories can be shipped to other countries (which violated what Adam Smith and David Ricardo both assumed), when wages are a fraction of what they are here, when protection and support of domestic manufactures (which are placed at a disadvantage relative to those that can ship production to lower wage countries and places with lower environmental costs) is impossible, when environmental costs are much lower and environmental regulations are weak or don't exist at all? Costas Lapavitsas has shown, in his book "Profiting Without Producing", that Germany has been able to dominate the EU (which is structured in a way to benefit a few core countries at the expense of the periphery to begin with) by driving down wages. Read his book, he has the data right there. We could bring back industry, given the policies Clinton and Obama support, by driving down wages, destroying unions, gutting environmental regulations and allowing capital to come in and out at will. That's the reality. You're not describing anything that has ever led to economic development. In fact, it is the very thing we used to do to poor countries to allow our corporations to take them over. Since corporations are now on the same level as nation states, we are now in that position.

You also didn't address the investor state disputes, the highly protectionist intellectual property rights regime (like TRIPS at the WTO), or even get into the fact that the "free trade" deals make privatizations all but irreversible, among other things.

Honestly, think what you want. I'm guessing you're a lucky soul that has benefited from this stuff, so lucky you.

[TheBlackAdder]

10. Context is everything, and you know that. Each time"socialism" is denigrated, makes Dem bills harder

.


While political itiots and morons like to throw that word around, out of proper context, it just makes it harder later on to pass Democratic party bills, because the word becomes associated with a negativism. You know that, yet you somehow are OK with it.


.

[OnDoutside]

24. Trying to change the American people's ingrained "fear" of socialism is a futile exercise and it

probably accounts for why we are now hearing the word "Progressive" instead.

[OnDoutside]

8. And they would play it wall to wall until November. He'd be the son of Stalin by GE day.

[QC]

14. I smell brockoli. n/t

[Ferd Berfel]

18. HAven't seen a poll yet where Bernie looses of even ties with Drumpf

How about the Anointed One?

[OnDoutside]

20. And yet back on Planet Earth, he's lost on votes, pledged delegates and super delegates. Maybe he

should demand a convention change to disregard all those trifling criteria, and only accept polling companies answers to hypothetical questions ?

[Uncle Joe]

12. Who decided to reduce the price of stamps .2?

Thanks for the thread, Skwmom.

[Fawke Em]

13. She's beloved by the MIC.

[Warren DeMontague]

19. She is working with the honorable Chuck Grassley to save us from dangerous reefers!

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-04-05/oldest-us-senators-accused-of-holding-biased-marijuana-hearing

[B Calm]

23. Best government money can buy! Bernie has been pointing to this kind

of corruption for a long time.

[MariaThinks]

26. funny, how she hero to all of us on the left - until she started supporting Hillary

[Mnpaul]

28. You obviously haven't been here long

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3666652
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5030392
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002310431
http://www.democraticunderground.com/112778423
http://www.democraticunderground.com/11781937
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023744946

she has been disliked here so some time now

[dmosh42]

27. A 'real' Hilary type progressive!