1. I asked you in 2013 if you would support a Hillary Clinton run for the White House and you said, “Yes.” Now that she has officially declared, is she your candidate? Are you backing her over Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley and Lincoln Chafee?

RR: I've known Hillary Clinton since she was 19, and have a great deal of confidence in her. At the same time, I agree with Bernie Sanders on much of what he says. But as chairman of Common Cause, a nonpartisan national citizen's group dedicated to getting big money out of politics, I don't feel free to endorse either one of them.

2. Bernie Sanders said he would consider you for treasury secretary during an interview with George Stephanopoulos on “This Week.” Would you serve in his administration if he got elected and asked you?

RR: Sure.

3. You’ve talked a great deal about inequality in this country and were the star of the film “Inequality for All.” In terms of the presidential campaign so far and the issue of inequality, is the messaging of one candidate in particular resonating with you?

RR: I haven't heard anything at all credible from any Republican candidate or likely candidate on how to reverse the nation's widening inequalities of income and wealth. Bernie Sanders has called for busting up the big banks and making higher education free, both important steps. Hillary Clinton has spoken out about inequality, but without many specifics as yet. I hope she takes on Wall Street, whose biggest banks are far larger than they were when they almost destroyed the economy in 2008, and took away the jobs, savings, and homes of millions. And I hope she calls for raising taxes on the wealthy in order to pay for better schools, early-childhood education, and access to higher education.

4. The number of people, according to a new ABC News-Washington Post poll, who see Hillary Clinton as trustworthy has dropped in recent months. Why do you think this is?

RR: She hasn't yet given a convincing explanation for why she used a private email account when she was secretary of state, and why she and her husband have made so many speeches for hundreds of thousands of dollars a pop from special interests that presumably want something in return. In other words, she needs to be more open and transparent about everything.

5. OK, prediction time. Who do you think will be the presidential nominees for both the Republicans and Democrats?

RR: At this point, I'd bet on Jeb Bush or Scott Walker for the Republican nomination, and Hillary Clinton for the Democrats. But, remember, we're still more than a year away from the nominating conventions. Anything can happen.


http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/robert-reich-sees-convincing-explanation-hillary-clinton-email/story?id=31550795

So you most likely know about President Obama's push to fast-track a secret trade deal. There has been word from elected officials and WikiLeaks that it is going to harm American jobs, give corporations the right to sue governments for cutting into corporate profits via worker protections or environmental regulations, effect intellectual property laws, food safety regulations, and the right of Congress to negotiate future trade deals.

But have you heard of Trade Adjustment Assistance? TAA is how the government says sorry for shipping American jobs overseas. It sets up funding to provide assistance and training for those workers.


Guess where the TPP pulls that money from. MEDICARE funds. And as Congressman Ellison (D-MN) pointed out that's not just a senior issue, that is an everyone issue. The mega-corporations that are crafting this horrible trade deal are making children who live in poverty, the disabled and the elderly pay to retrain the men and women whose jobs they will ship to countries that enslave workers and/or pay them deplorable wages.


Thank you to the elected officials that were in attendance fighting for the American people. Obama wants this passed in secrecy and as Congresswoman Donna Edwards (D-MD) mentioned, this isn't about not loving the president, not loving trade, or not loving America. It's about loving Americans and doing her job, which is to look out for their best interest. Obama should be happy to share this trade deal with the public, transparently, so Congress can do its job. Click here to email your representative.


Oh, and Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL), thanks not only for the work you have done to fight this trade deal, but also for rocking those amazing shoes.




cont'

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/04/1390552/-2-million-signatures-against-the-TPP-delivered-TAA-treachery-discussed?showAll=yes

Bernie Sanders is becoming a daily nightmare for Republicans. Sen. Sanders went on CNN today and cut through the Republican double talk by letting the entire country know the GOP plan for killing Social Security. On CNN’s Wolf, Sanders said, Look, what Perry and these other guys are talking about, this is the decade-long attack on Social Security by the Republican Party. They want to privatize it eventually. They want to make cuts. We have millions of seniors struggling twelve, thirteen, fourteen thousand dollars a year. I will not accepting cutting Social Security.”


Blitzer asked Sanders about means testing and if millionaires and benefits deserve to get benefits. The Democratic presidential candidate answered, “They’re not talking about millionaires and billionaires. They’re talking about lowering it to forty thousand dollars a year…It’s a universal program. Everybody deserves to put into it. Everybody deserves to get a benefit out of it. We can extend that program by not asking anybody more than the top two percent to contribute into it.”


Republicans love to talk about “saving Social Security” and entitlement reform. What they don’t tell the American people is that they plan to save the program by killing it. Republicans oppose raising the earnings cap so that wealthy Americans pay more into the fund. What they support is imposing means testing requirements that will take Social Security away from anyone earning a middle-class income. In short, Republicans want to kill Social Security.


Bernie Sanders has become an even bigger nightmare for Republicans because, as a presidential candidate with growing support, he can get on national television and speak the truth to more Americans than ever before. Sanders is shaping more than the 2016 presidential campaign. The Senator from Vermont is also shifting the national political conversation.


cont'

http://www.politicususa.com/2015/06/04/republican-nightmare-bernie-sanders-exposes-gop-social-security-killing-dream-national-tv.html

SANDERS WAS TALKING ABOUT CLINTON FOUNDATION CASH IN 2013

Well, (Bill) Clinton was and is a very smart guy, but he is the guy who signed NAFTA. I like Bill Clinton, I like Hillary Clinton, but they live in a world surrounded by a lot of money. It’s not an accident that Clinton is doing a fantastic job with his foundation. Where do you think that money is coming from? The point being that Clinton was a moderate Democrat who was heavily influenced by Wall Street and big-money interests, and Obama is governing in that same way.
CLASS WARFARE WILL BE A MAJOR THEME
We are in the midst of intense class warfare, where the wealthiest people and the largest corporations are at war with the middle class and working families of this country, and it is obvious the big-money interests are winning that war.


THE 1 PERCENT WILL NOT BE BANKROLLING HIS ELECTION

When we were growing up and read about oligarchic countries in Latin America and elsewhere, did you ever think that in the United States one percent would own 38 percent of the wealth and the bottom 60 percent only 2.3 percent?


HAWKS WON’T LIKE HIS FOREIGN POLICY

We should do everything we can to avoid a hugely expensive cold war with China similar to what we had with the Soviet Union. We should also do our best, in a respectful way, to support those elements in China fighting for a democratic society.


SERIOUSLY, THEY’LL HATE IT

If you want to talk about nation building, I know a great nation that needs to be rebuilt. It’s called the United States of America. I would rather invest in this country than in Iraq or Afghanistan. Our roads and bridges and railroads and water systems and schools need rebuilding. We have been at war now for more than a decade. Our troops have done a tremendous job, but it is time for the people of Afghanistan to take full responsibility for their country and for waging the war against the Taliban. And in Iraq, I think it’s clear that nation building didn’t work very well.


HE’LL BE THE RARE CANDIDATE DISCUSSING CIVIL LIBERTIES

The way the drone program has been handled is a major reason I voted against the nomination of John Brennan to head the CIA. Of course we must defend ourselves against terrorism, but I am not convinced Brennan is adequately sensitive to the important balancing act required to make protecting our civil liberties an integral part of ensuring our national security. Drone attacks that kill innocent people are immoral and create an enormous amount of anti-Americanism.


AND THE PATRIOT ACT

I think we can fight terrorism without undermining the Constitution. That is why I voted against the so-called Patriot Act. In my view, that surveillance law gives the government far too much power to spy on innocent U.S. citizens and provides for very little oversight or disclosure.


THE SENATOR IS NOT A FAN OF CAPITALISM

People have lost sight of America as a society where everyone has at least a minimal standard of living and is entitled to certain basic rights, a nation in which every child has a good-quality education, has access to health care and lives in an environmentally clean community, not as an opportunity for billionaires to make even more money and avoid taxes by stashing their money in the Cayman Islands. Can you argue that the era of unfettered capitalism should be over? Absolutely. Does this system of hypercapitalism, this incredibly unequal distribution of wealth and income, need fundamental reform? Absolutely it does. You have the entire scientific community saying we have to be very aggressive in cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Yet you’re seeing the heads of coal companies and oil companies willing to sacrifice the well-being of the entire planet for their short-term profits. And these folks are funding phony organizations to try to create doubt about the reality of global warming.

PLAYBOY: That’s ironic. You may have been asked this question. This seems like the perfect time for you to run for President, why won’t you do that? I know you’ve been asked this a million times, you’ve mentioned but the country is at a point where it’s ready to blow up.

SANDERS: Well, the answer is that to run a serious campaign, you need to raise hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, that’s number one and I don’t think…

PLAYBOY: Which you could do, you could raise, assuming--let me just back it up and say what you’ve been saying, it’s almost as if you’ve been the Paul Revere or whatever analogy you want to use, everything you’ve said and everything you talk about is coming to pass and there are people out there that are hungry for that. I can understand if you don’t want to go through the arduous process of that, that’s a different issue but you could raise…I mean, Barack Obama proved it, you can raise money.

SANDERS: Barack Obama went to his friends the first time around on Wall Street.

PLAYBOY: That’s true, but he still raised a fair amount of money in small donations.

SANDERS: Yeah, but I’m not Barack Obama, okay? That’s the point. I do not take corporate money.

PLAYBOY: Small donations from regular people.

SANDERS: Yeah, but you need just a phenomenal number of small donations and a kind of an organization, so I appreciate the compliment.

PLAYBOY: You just said nobody is speaking about it, so—

SANDERS: Again, it’s hard to say what kind of media coverage one would get, right wing…Rand Paul, you know, trust me, these things are harder than they look on the surface and I’m not even talking about just money, money is huge, organization.

PLAYBOY: You would have thousands of people willing to work for you, all over the country, campuses, cities.

SANDERS: Tempting, I think people are hungering for a voice out there, that’s what I do think and what would be tempting would be to try to raise issues and demand discussion on issues that are not being talked about. Issues that you and I have talked about, inequality in wealth and trade policy, protecting the social safety net, moving aggressively on global warming, those are issues that are not being talked about and it would be tempting, but…

PLAYBOY: So why do you resist it so much? Let’s say you could raise the money, the people would be there—

SANDERS: Whoa, whoa, whoa, it’s too easy.

PLAYBOY: There would be—

SANDERS: Jonathan! We’re talking about the United States of America, you’re talking about having to put together an organization of tens and tens of thousands of people. Ross Perot can run as an independent because he’s a billionaire.

PLAYBOY: You could raise the money, given the way people can raise money now, particularly small donations over the internet and social media, there would be other people—I’m telling you, you could raise the money. I’m not saying that you could raise Barack Obama type, but enough to run a national campaign. You said there needs to be a voice out there, particularly—Hillary Clinton is going to be the nominee probably for the Democrats, let’s face it. That’s not going to offer an alternative to the country.

SANDERS: No, it’s not.

PLAYBOY: She won’t even explain…nobody has even held her accountable for her vote for the Iraq War and that’s the kind of voice we’re going to have out there.

SANDERS: Well, I thank you very much, if I run I’ll make you my campaign manager.

PLAYBOY: Well, I won’t put it—look, I don’t know if you want me for the campaign manager but there are a lot of people out there who would put time into it and I think you should—I’m just asking, do you ever consider that given that there isn’t the voice that you just described, let’s put it that way.

SANDERS: I wish that there was that voice, whether I’m the right person or not, I have my doubts, but thank you very much. And by the way, I should tell you, people like me do not often make it into the United States Senate. Do you see that plaque in front of you?

PLAYBOY: This one here?

SANDERS: Yeah, you know who that is?

PLAYBOY: No, who is that?

SANDERS: That’s Eugene V. Debs.

PLAYBOY: Oh yeah, yeah, okay, so Debs ran for President.

SANDERS: Debs ran for President on more than one occasion and he got six percent of the vote, point being that people with my politics don’t often make it to the United States Senate and I’m proud of the work that I’m doing here, I’m proud of representing the State of Vermont, I’m comfortable doing that.

PLAYBOY: In 2016, though, you would get a pass in terms, you wouldn’t be giving up your seat to do it.

SANDERS: All right, we’ll talk about that next time.

PLAYBOY: He obviously doesn’t want to go there. But I’m going to come back to that someday. I understand that you’re hesitant.

SANDERS: I do, I honestly appreciate your support on that, but…

PLAYBOY: I won’t push you again on that right now. Do you think of yourself as an iconoclast in that way, in what you talk about?

SANDERS: Well, I mean, I’m very proud to be the longest-serving independent in American Congressional history, that’s no small thing.

PLAYBOY: Is your iconoclasm, have you always been that way?

SANDERS: I don’t see myself…you know, it’s not like I wake up in the morning and say, I’ve got to be different than everybody else. Everything that I have told you, Jonathan, I believe has the support of most of the people in the country. I am amazed that I have colleagues here who have the great courage to tell their constituents that we should give tax breaks to billionaires and cut social security. That’s very courageous and brave, I am not that courageous. I tell people that we’ve got to stand together to fight for the middle class.

PLAYBOY: I hate to tell you, you just made the argument again, I’m not going to go back to it, he just made the argument again to run for President, right, didn’t he?

SANDERS: It is true, everything that I’ve talked with you, there’s very little—very little—that I have said to you that doesn’t have the vast support of the—the real question is, why aren’t there more people raising these issues? The poll came out, we just saw it yesterday, two-thirds of the American people think that we should lift the cap on taxable income for social security. You understand what I’m saying? Two-thirds of the people! I introduce legislation to do that, is it very brave? I’ve got two-thirds, what’s brave is to cut social security, that takes a lot of courage to do what the people don’t want to do. It astounds me that in fact you have two political parties who day after day after day do exactly what the American people do not want them to do and do not do what the American people want them to do.
[emphasis added]

Hillary Clinton’s left-ward shift was designed to appeal to progressive Americans. She has taken shots at Wall Street bankers, the very people who support her, and Wall Street isn’t happy about it reported Bloomberg.

“There’s something wrong when hedge fund managers pay lower tax rates than nurses or the truckers that I saw on I-80 as I was driving here over the last two days,” said Clinton in April.

“People aren’t getting a fair shake,” she said a month later. “Something is wrong when CEOs earn more than 300 times than what the typical American worker earns and when hedge fund managers pay a lower tax rate than truck drivers or nurses.”

Despite her recent cries against Wall Street financiers, Clinton has been known to consort with the group that she is criticizing on the campaign trail. Now, one hedge fund manager is calling Clinton out on her phoniness.

“I don’t need anybody crapping all over what I do for a living,” said Leon Cooper, a billionaire hedge fund manager. “[Clinton] hangs out with all these people in Martha’s Vineyard and in the Hamptons and then the very first thing she has to say is to criticize hedge fund managers.”

Cooper founded Omega Advisors hedge fund and regularly contributes to Republican election campaigns.

Clinton has been criticized for her cozy relationship with Wall Street financial institutions by fellow Democratic candidates Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley. She even has family ties to Wall Street as her son-in-law is the founding manager of the Eaglevale Partners, LP hedge fund.

When Clinton ran for president ran for president in 2008, Wall Street contributed over $20 million to her campaign. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein reportedly said he’d be okay if either Clinton or Jeb Bush won next year.

http://www.ringoffireradio.com/2015/06/hillarys-progressive-effort-backfires-wall-street-calls-her-out/

On Tuesday’s edition of “The Rachel Maddow Show,” host Rachel Maddow congratulated Bernie Sanders on the successful start of his presidential campaign.

“The message is resonating. People are tired of establishment politics and economics,” said Sanders. “They want to be part of a movement which stands up to the billionaire class and says enough is enough — our country and government belong to all of us, not just a few.”

Maddow asked why Sanders is pushing to have Democrats and Republicans debate before there are official nominees.

“The Republicans get away with murder,” Sanders said. “They have an absolutely reactionary agenda from this candidate to the other, but basically what these guys are about are huge tax breaks for billionaires, massive cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, nutrition, environmental programs, and also, clearly, some of the Republican candidates like Jeb Bush and Chris Christie have talked about [how] they want to cut Social Security. They can get away with that stuff because a lot of people don’t know what they are talking about.”

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/03/republicans_get_away_with_murder_bernie_sanders_eviscerates_the_gops_agenda/

"...It was a lot of fun. It's just strange to see that fun return in an event for Hillary Clinton. The Clinton rebranders, from Media Matters to Ready for Hillary, have had nothing at all do with de Rothschild or any of the PUMAs...."
http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2014/05/06/lady_lynn_forester_de_rothschild_is_the_last_true_american.html

June 2 2015

Hillary Clinton has an aggressive fundraising schedule featuring at least 26 donor events across the country over the next month — including stops in states she hasn’t yet visited as a candidate — according to a campaign list obtained by POLITICO.

The lineup of hosts includes a range of financiers and celebrities, from “Great Gatsby” actor Tobey Maguire to executive Lynn Forester de Rothschild. The events take her across the map — to states including Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts and Minnesota — reflecting a busy early summer schedule for the Democratic front-runner, whose campaign and supportive super PAC are expected to raise well over $1 billion over the next 17 months.

The campaign says it is aiming to gather $100 million before the end of 2015.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/exclusive-hillary-clintons-jam-packed-fundraising-schedule-118562.html

A prominent backer of Hillary Clinton is endorsing McCain.

WASHINGTON (CNN) September 16th, 2008- Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter and member of the Democratic National Committee’s Platform Committee, will endorse John McCain for president on Wednesday, her spokesman tells CNN.

The announcement will take place at a news conference on Capitol Hill, just blocks away from the DNC headquarters. Forester will “campaign and help him through the election,” the spokesman said of her plans to help the Republican presidential nominee.

Forester was a major donor for Clinton earning her the title as a Hillraiser for helping to raise at least $100,000 for the New York Democratic senator’s failed presidential bid.

In an interview with CNN this summer, Forester did not hide her distaste for eventual Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

“This is a hard decision for me personally because frankly I don't like him,” she said of Obama in an interview with CNN’s Joe Johns. “I feel like he is an elitist. I feel like he has not given me reason to trust him.”


http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/16/prominent-clinton-backer-and-dnc-member-to-endorse-mccain/

"...But that was not the story. The story was that the event would be hosted by Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, one of the most hilariously out-of-touch political figures of our modern time. In 2008 an angry de Rothschild took it upon herself to speak for all of the Hillary Clinton supporters who felt cheated by Barack Obama's win. She was obviously a better advocate for the PUMAs—those who rallied under the slogan of "party unity, my ass"—than the yowling and somewhat bigoted-sounding Harriet Christian, who won fame after telling the DNC's rules committee that it was "throwing the election away" by awarding delegates to an "inadequate black male." But in her own way, de Rothschild was a comedy source as pure as the spring water on Martha's Vineyard.

De Rothschild is an example of what my former colleague Matt Yglesias often wrote about—rich people who have no idea what they're talking about. Neither she nor Christian seemed to have any idea how elections or electorates worked, apart from being quadrennial events that bring more politicians to their parties to ask for money. In interviews, especially after she joined the rich-idiot flypaper operation known as Americans Elect, she could talk around the basics of policy without ever seeming to know what she was talking about. (Obama had "done healthcare without dealing with the cost curve," for example.)

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2014/05/06/lady_lynn_forester_de_rothschild_is_the_last_true_american.html