It's Time for Regime Change

Bill and Hillary Clinton with Eric Holder  > Obama, Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder > Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton again?

How Super-Delegates and a lack the Goldman Sachs Transcripts will determine who our next President is.

After 20 years of the same people, it's time to change the old guard. Political dynasties don't work, and invites too much corruption.

First, to understand why it's important that the American people should see Hillary Clinton's transcripts for speeches that she gave to Goldman Sachs and other banks, consider this short version of events (A longer timeline is farther below): In 1997 Bill Clinton nominated Eric Holder to be the Deputy Attorney General under Janet Reno. In 1999 the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was signed into law by President Bill Clinton and repealed part of the Glass–Steagall Act, opening up the market among banking and securities companies (i.e. Goldman Sachs, Enron, Lehman Brothers) and insurance companies (i.e. AIG). The Glass–Steagall Act had prohibited any one institution from acting as any combination of an investment bank, a commercial bank, and an insurance company. In 2008 reckless and criminal trading on Wall Street had caused the economy to crash just before Obama was elected to President in November 2008. Obama's administration, and those who handled the bank bail outs, had direct ties to Goldman Sachs, who was one of the bigger players in the selling of bogus financial derivatives (credit defaults swaps on bad mortgages). Obama had nominated Eric Holder to be the U.S. Attorney General, who had said (more or less) that the banks were too big to jail and bankers were too big to jail. In 2008, Eric Holder was criticized in a Congressional report for ethical violations involving the infamous pardon of fugitive criminal Marc Rich, followed by the appointment of a Clinton Administration figure and Freddie Mac board member, Rohm Emanuel (who went to become the mayor of Obama's hometown of Chicago). A deal was made with Bill Clinton, so Obama had nominated Hillary Clinton to be the Secretary of State, who worked with Obama and Eric Holder during the Great Recession and it's devastating aftermath. In 2013 Hillary Clinton left the State Department and made 3 speeches to Goldman Sachs for $675,000 A year later in 2014, Eric Holder left the Justice Department and went back to work at his old law firm, which represents many big banks. In April 2015 Hillary Clinton announced that she would be running for President. In January 2016 Holder endorsed her and began campaigning for her. Now in 2016, Hillary Clinton is saying the same thing that Eric Holder said, that no bank is too big to fail and no banker is too big to jail. Today, the banks are bigger than ever, and no CEO of any of the big banks has ever went to jail. Senator Bernie Sanders, who is running against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, asked to see her transcripts for her speeches to Goldman Sachs — but she refuses to release them unless her Republican counterparts also release theirs. She's calling what Senator Sanders asked for "a double standard", because he didn't also ask see the transcripts of the Republican presidential candidates. (See full interview of Hillary Clinton recently discussing this on MSNBC's Morning Joe)

But what was it exactly that had first led to the demand for Hillary Clinton to release all the transcripts to her speeches that she gave to Goldman Sachs in the first place? (You can watch the 3½ video I made directly below that pretty much sums it up — or you can continue reading for more details.

It all started after the biggest banks crashed our economy, when the taxpayers were force to bail them out with TARP and QE, when the bank's executives were using these funds to pay themselves enormously obscene bonuses, when the banks were found to be participating in criminal activities (but were only fined like a parking ticket), when the big banks had foreclosed on millions of homeowners and sent credit agencies after them (destroying millions of lives) — and after Obama's U.S. Attorney General (Eric Holder) had refused to prosecute one single criminal banker, using the excuse that sending CEOs to jail could crash our already crashed economy.

And while all this was going on, Hillary Clinton and her husband were being paid huge sums of money to give speeches, all while collecting donations to their foundation. But to save you time, let's just begin with a simple timeline, starting back about 5½ years ago...

July 21, 2010 - The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (commonly referred to as Dodd-Frank) was signed into law by President Obama. It had been vigorously supported by Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren, who Obama had appointed to a key role of crafting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (She became "Senator" in 2012).

February 1, 2013 (Huffington Post) Hillary Clinton formally resigns from her post as Secretary of State Post, and then-Senator John Kerry is sworn in. (Politico) Hillary Clinton gave 3 speeches to Goldman Sachs that year for a total of $675,00.

March 7, 2013 (YouTube) Eric Holder (the first African-American U.S. Attorney who was nominated by President Obama) made a rather startling confession in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee: "I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that, if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy."

April 27, 2014 (Washington Post) Elizabeth Warren said during an interview on ABC's This Week: "All of the women — Democratic women I should say — of the Senate urged Hillary Clinton to run, and I hope she does. Hillary is terrific." She had noted that she was one of several senators to sign a letter urging Clinton to run in 2016 . Warren had repeatedly insisted she would not run for President. In the past, Warren had criticized Bill and Hillary Clinton and other Democrats who supported a bankruptcy bill that Warren decried as tilted in favor of corporate interests. She lambasted Hillary Clinton (as a New York senator in 2001) for voting for the bill.

* Note: Here's a video at YouTube from 2004 when Professor Elizabeth Warren was on the The Bill Moyers show when she talked about a meeting she had with then-first lady Hillary Clinton and about her support of that bill — a bill that disproportionately harmed the poor — and more specifically, African-Americans — especially, Black women. But for some unknown and odd reason, Senator Warren has since abandoned that criticism of Hillary Clinton.

May 5, 2014 (YouTube) In a video address, Attorney General Eric Holder says: "There is no such thing as 'too big to jail'. Some have used that phrase to describe the theory that certain financial institutions — even if they engage in criminal misconduct — should be immune from prosecution due to their sheer size and their influence on the economy. That view is mistaken; and it is a view that has been rejected my the Department of Justice. To be clear, no individual or company, no matter how large or how profitable, is above the law."

February 17, 2015 (New York Times) Hillary Clinton held a private meeting with Senator Elizabeth Warren in December 2014. The two met at the Northwest Washington mansion of the Clintons, without aides and at Clinton’s invitation. She supposedly did not ask Warren to consider endorsing her presidential candidacy. The conversation occurred at a moment when Ms. Warren’s clout had become increasingly evident. The meeting was a rare direct interaction between Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren, who supporters hope will run for president as a liberal and populist alternative to Clinton. Warren had repeatedly said she would not be running for president, but the Run Warren Run movement had persisted.

September 25, 2014 (Politico) Eric Holder announces he will step down as U.S. Attorney General.

March 19, 2015 (my post) Hillary Clinton gives her last (known) paid speech before running for President. She received $225,000 for a speech for the American Camp Association. Their member camps hire young foreign workers as summer counselors under the J-1 visa program. Bloomberg News:

"While a camp conference in Atlantic City is an unusual venue for a former secretary of state and likely presidential candidate, it makes more sense considering her host: Jay Jacobs, a camp director and chairman of the Nassau County, Long Island, Democratic Party. Jacobs, who's also on the Democratic National Committee's credentialing committee, had given $5,000 to Ready for Hillary.

April 12, 2015 (New York Times) Hillary Clinton officially announces her 2016 Presidential bid.

April 27, 2015 (CNN) Loretta Lynch was nominated by President Obama to replace Eric Holder, making history as she was sworn in as the first female African-American U.S. Attorney General.

April 30, 2015 (CNN) Senator Bernie Sanders, the Independent from Vermont, officially announced that he is running for President.

July 9, 2015 (In These Times) The team behind Ready for Warren recently launched a new initiative, Ready to Fight, endorsing Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. At that time, progressive groups such as MoveOn and Democracy for American did not shift their support to any other single candidate. But since then, both groups took membership votes, and both had overwhelming supported Senator Bernie Sanders and officially endorsed him.

September 8, 2015 (My post) Elizabeth Warren is wooed on Air Force One (while Bernie Sanders walked a union picket line).

September 2015 (The Atlantic) "In February, shortly before Lynch succeeded him, Holder gave federal attorneys and their staffs a deadline: they had 90 days to bring any new prosecutions against individual bankers, traders, or executives on Wall Street before probes against them would be closed. That deadline came and went in May. Lynch, since her elevation, has been largely silent about Wall Street misconduct leading up to the crash ... But in fairness, it’s not clear how much she could do anyway: the peak of bad behavior on Wall Street seemed to occur in 2005 and 2006, about 10 years ago, meaning the statute of limitations is just about up. Holder, meanwhile, has returned to the white-shoe law firm that he left in order to join the Justice Department—Covington & Burling, which counts among its clients Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo."

November, 2015 (US News and Report) Two months before voting began in the 2016 presidential primaries, Senator Elizabeth Warren remained the only female Democratic senator not to have endorsed Hillary Clinton. Clinton held an event inside a Capitol Hill hotel with 13 of the Senate's 14 female Democrats, making Warren's absence particularly glaring. According to the book HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton, there was one candidate that Bill Clinton had notably stayed away from: and that was Senator Elizabeth Warren.

The only place he was asked to go that he declined to visit was Massachusetts, where Elizabeth Warren, an Obama acolyte, was running for Senate. Bill would only offer his support in the form of an e-mail fund-raising solicitation, but he would not appear in person with Warren, who was often mentioned as a potential progressive rival to Hillary in 2016.

January 13, 2016 (Politico) Former U.S. Attorney General under President Obama (Eric Holder) endorses Hillary Clinton, and begins campaigning for her (and he even appears in one of Hillary's campaign ads.)

February 26, 2016 (MSNBC) On Morning Joe Hillary Clinton reminded viewers that Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote her a letter urging her to run for President; and reiterated that she (Hillary) would reign in Wall Street, and that we had the Dodd-Frank bill if the banks ever became too big to fail (even though they are much bigger now than they were before the Great Recession), and she also made the usual talking points that it’s a "double standard" to ask her for the Goldman Sachs transcripts for her speeches.

Here’s a simple “recap” of what happened, of why her transcripts are now being asked for by Senator Sanders and a growing number of others, including Bernie's supporters, media pundits and debate moderators:

1. Since running for President and debating Hillary Clinton, Senator Bernie Sanders had said he would reign in Wall Street and break up the big banks because they crashed our economy.
2. Then Hillary Clinton claimed that she too would reign in the big a banks, but said she would do a better job (and only break up the banks if they were being naughty again.)
3. Then Bernie asked her how she can reign in Wall Street when she takes money from Wall Street for speeches and campaign contributions.
4. Hillary said she never changed one vote or made any decision based on any money that she or the Clinton foundation had ever received for speeches or campaign contributions (even if they were foreign donors from countries with horrible human rights abuses). As an aside: President Obama makes annual appearances at the Clinton's foundation.
5. Then Hillary began using the "talking point" that Obama also takes money from Wall Street — and that he took more money from the banks than anybody else ever has. Although, that was for campaign contributions — not (to my knowledge) for paid speeches to the bankers, which is cash that goes into someone's pocket, not to run a political campaign.
6. Then Bernie asked her (paraphrased), "Why would Goldman Sachs pay you $675,000 for 3 speeches in just 1 year? Just because they like throwing their money around?"
7. Hillary acted indignant (but she was only pissed off for having to answer for that) and she accused Bernie of "smears and innuendos".
8. Bernie then asked her for the Goldman Sachs transcripts for her paid speeches. Her and her husband received over $125 million for speeches since they left the White House. While legally there's nothing wrong with that (despite any appearances of impropriety), but if someone is running to be President, and if their primary challenger says they want to break up the banks, and they claim that they will broken up "if need be", then the American people deserve know what Hillary had said privately to these very same banks who ruined the economy with criminal behavior. It's called "transparency" in government, and our elected officials owe us this...BEFORE they are elected. It's no different than asking them for tax and medial records.
9. At first, during one debate, Hillary dodged the request for the transcripts, but then coyly replied that she’d “look into it.”
10. Then later, after not producing the transcripts, when asked again for the transcripts, Hillary said that Bernie Sanders made speeches too, and that she’d release her transcripts if Bernie released his.
11. So Bernie accepted her challenge and released all the transcripts that he had for all the paid speeches he gave to Wall Street (there were ZERO); then he asked Hillary again for the transcripts.
12. Then Hillary raised the bar again, and made other conditions, and said she would release her transcripts, but only if all the Republicans also released theirs (even though NO REPUBLICAN has ever claimed they would break up the big banks – and NO REPUBLICAN is currently running against Hillary or Bernie.

Where is the “double standard” between Bernie and Hillary? If Hillary wants to bring the Republicans into the argument, she can wait until a Republican is running against a Democrat. This is still the Democratic primary, and the Republicans shouldn't be a part of the discussion at this point regarding transcripts.

The only reason why I can think of as to why Hillary WON’T release the Goldman Sachs transcripts is two-fold:

1. They will contain comments that would hurt her in the Democratic primary, and Bernie would be nominated,
2. Or, if they were negative comments, and she were STILL nominated, it could still hurt her in the general election debates with the GOP candidate.

Otherwise, if there is nothing incriminating, then rather than allow people (myself included) to speculate, then why not release the transcripts and then just move on? If Hillary has nothing to hide, and she releases the transcripts, not only will it look bad for Bernie (and help her), it would also be one less issue the GOP can use against her in the general election. Then we can start asking the GOP for THEIR transcripts.

Chris Christie just endorsed Donald Trump, and while Trump was giving his speech, it appeared there may have been a couple of BLM protesters there, who were escorted out by security. While this was happening, the CNN cameras had panned to the protesters and Trump had noted that the only time the media showed his large crowds is when he has protesters, and then said "I'm going to have to start producing my own protesters.”

Trump did have a very large crowd: Trump estimated it about 10,000 — and it very well might have been — because it was yuuuuuuuge! It seems that only he and Bernie Sanders are getting these massive crowds, which indicates to me that there is very big clash of cultures going on in this country.

So I'm starting to think that, without the Democratic super-delegates, so far, this would have only been a real race between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. All polls currently show Bernie beating Trump, and by wider margins than Hillary Clinton — but it seems the DNC has been trying to do everything possible to see to it that Bernie isn't the nominee.

But in the end, it very well might be that Trump becomes our next President, because Hillary doesn't generate the same enthusiasm that Bernie does; and if Hillary runs against Trump in the general election, she'll lose — because less Democrats will show up to vote. Trump has already been drawing record-breaking numbers in voter turnout (the Democrats, far less) — and the GOP debates have also draw record audiences as well (the last one was the most entertaining of all so far).

Maybe if we had Hillary's transcripts, they might shed a better light on her true intentions, and give us a better reason to turn out and vote for her. Otherwise, if the Democratic nomination is perceived as being stolen from Bernie Sanders, many angry people just might tell the Democrats to go screw themselves, and out of spite, vote for Trump — or not vote at all.

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