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Trump's Not Just a Bigot, He's a Huckster and a Sham-Artist |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=36361"><span class="small">Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Facebook Page</span></a>
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Saturday, 04 June 2016 13:54 |
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Reich writes: "Researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research have found that degrees from for-profit colleges and universities are worth less in terms of future earnings than degrees from non-profit colleges and universities - and for-profits also often load students down with heavier debts."
Former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich. (photo: Steve Russell/Toronto Star)
Trump's Not Just a Bigot, He's a Huckster and a Sham-Artist
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Facebook Page
04 June 16
 esearchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research have found that degrees from for-profit colleges and universities are worth less in terms of future earnings than degrees from non-profit colleges and universities – and for-profits also often load students down with heavier debts.
A propos, yesterday, US district court judge Gonzalo Curiel
made public more than 400 pages of Trump University “playbooks” describing how Trump staff should target prospective students’ weaknesses to encourage them to sign up for a $34,995 Gold Elite three-day package. The documents are central to a class-action lawsuit against Trump University.
Trump University staff are instructed to get people to pile on credit card debt even if they have just battled to pay off debts, and to target their financial weaknesses in an attempt to sell them the high-priced real estate courses. “If they can afford the gold elite don’t allow them to think about doing anything besides the gold elite,” the document states. Staff are instructed in how to persuade students to put the cost of the course on their credit cards.
Also, according to newly disclosed sworn testimony from the company's top executive, Trump was personally involved in devising the marketing strategy for Trump University, even vetting potential ads.
Trump has called Judge Curiel a “hater”, a “total disgrace” and “biased”. “[He] happens to be, we believe, Mexican.” Trump went on to attack Curiel further on Twitter Monday and at a press conference in New York.
Trump isn’t just a bigot. He’s a ruthless huckster and a sham-artist, selling hokum and snake oil -- not just to vulnerable prospective students but also to the Republican Party.
What do you think?
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America Excels in Business of Death |
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Saturday, 04 June 2016 13:39 |
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Sottile writes: "America may lag behind the developed world in many categories, but it is No. 1 in the 'merchant of death' business, experiencing a boom in the commerce of boom, especially in areas destabilized by U.S. invasions."
An Iraqi boy covers his face with his hands while weeping as people survey the destruction in a neighborhood following a US airstrike. (photo: Faris DLIMI/AFP)
America Excels in Business of Death
By JP Sottile, Consortium News
04 June 16
America may lag behind the developed world in many categories, but it is No. 1 in the “merchant of death” business, experiencing a boom in the commerce of boom, especially in areas destabilized by U.S. invasions, notes JP Sottile.
 ho says nothing is made in the USA anymore? Certainly not the well-heeled denizens of the State Department’s diplomatic corps. And they should know. That’s because they’re stationed on the frontlines of the ongoing battle to preserve Uncle Sam’s dominant market share of the global weapons trade.
Luckily for the Military-Industrial Complex, it turns out that “Made in the USA” inspires a lot of brand loyalty, even if actual loyalty is often a harder sell (paging Saudi Arabia). To wit, not only was America the world’s leading arms dealer in 2014 with $36.2 billion in sales, but it topped that 35 percent surge in sales over 2013 with yet another profitable spike to $46.6 billion in 2015.
As Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) determined in its recent report on the global arms trade, the United States maintains a commanding “33% share of total arms exports” and is the world’s top seller for five years running. And its customer base includes “at least” 96 countries, which is nearly half of the world’s nations.
A robust 40 percent of those exports end up in the Middle East. Perhaps that’s why the State Department is so darn bullish on the prospects of Uncle Sam’s booming business of selling things that go “boom!”
That’s the takeaway from a recent report in Defense News highlighting the marketing push by “Commercial Officers” stationed at the U.S. embassy in Jordan. They worked the crowd at the kingdom’s eleventh bi-annual Special Operations Forces Exhibition and Conference (SOFEX). Like many of the nearly 100 military-themed “trade shows” held around the world this year alone, SOFEX offered the profiteers of doom an opportunity to display their merchandise and to cut deals with bellicose browsers ready to pull the trigger on a deadly impulse buy.
Some of the bigger, “glitzy” trade shows — like the International Defence Exposition and Conference (IDEX) held yearly in Abu Dhabi — are full-on one-stop-shopping destinations for the up-and-coming military power on the move, the newly-minted pro-Western junta eager to armor-up, and the forward-thinking “Coalition Partner” looking for the latest in “kinetic warfare.”
If nothing else, trade shows offer defense contractors a chance to give out “promotional tchotchkes” to potential future customers who might be swayed to double-back by a branded camouflage carryall or a Digi Camo Military Bert Stress Reliever. No doubt it’s a tedious affair, but the presenters toiling behind the displays are not alone on the battlefield of commerce.
That certainly was the case at SOFEX, where the U.S. Embassy deployed Senior Commercial Officer Geoffrey Bogart and Regional Safety and Security chief Cherine Maher to act as sale-force multipliers for America’s military moneymakers.
The Mideast Arms Bazaar
As Jen Judson detailed, Bogart and Maher tracked down sales leads throughout a region gripped by chaos since America wantonly destroyed a bystander nation under false pretenses (a.k.a. Iraq). Here are Judson’s highlights from Bogart and Maher’s magical misery tour of the profitable market forces currently shaping America’s recently reshaped Middle East:
JORDAN: “We are very high on the safety and security market in Jordan,” Geoffrey Bogart, a commercial officer at the U.S. Embassy said. Bogart said there is an abundance of market prospects for U.S. companies to do business in Jordan, including in border security, cyber security, command and control centers, telecommunications equipment, military vehicles, artillery, tactical equipment, bomb and metal detectors, and closed circuit television (CCTV) and access control.
EGYPT: “Egypt is facing a lot of challenges especially in terms of border control and whether it’s from the West or the East or the North or the South, so the main project that is going on is border and perimeter control,” Maher said, which means the country really wants bomb detection, jammers and improvised explosive device diffusers.
LIBYA: The current instability in Libya has led to challenges for U.S. firms, according to Maher; however, U.S. companies’ products are in high demand there. “The trick is how to enter the market, who to sell to, and making sure of export license,” she said, adding some products that had been permitted to be sold to Libya now have restrictions.
TUNISIA: There is continuous growth in Tunisia’s defense market, Maher said. Tunisia plussed up its security forces budget in 2016 due to growing terrorist threats in the region. The country wants to build up its force capacity to deter regional threats, strengthen defensive capabilities and support counterterrorism operations.
LEBANON: Lebanon is interested in border security; however, it’s particularly interested in securing public buildings and providing for civilian protection due to ongoing insecurity in some towns and cities near Beirut, Maher said.
IRAQ: Maher said Iraq has a particularly “dynamic” market valued in 2014 at about $7.6 billion, which is about 3.44 percent of its GDP. With the ongoing war against the Islamic State group, it is anticipated that Iraq will soon spend around $19 billion, which would make up about 18 to 20 percent of its GDP. Like all the other countries in the region, Iraq is investing heavily in safety and security equipment, and also wants personal protective gear and security systems for residential and commercial buildings, according to Maher.
Kicking Back a Share
A “dynamic” market is right … that is, if you’re General Dynamics. Or Lockheed Martin. Or Boeing. Or any of the big six defense contractors who together took home $90.29 billion of the over $175 billion worth of taxpayer dollars doled out last year to the top 100 military contractors. Not coincidentally, seven of the top eight U.S. Government contractors are defense companies, with only health care services provider McKesson making it past a phalanx of defense wheelers and dealers.
It’s a rarified world greased last year by $127.39 million of lobbying largesse and another $32.66 million spent so far this year, according to OpenSecrets.org. Of course, lobbying offers a great bang for the buck when it comes to stoking sales. A MapLight analysis earlier this year found that “major U.S. government contractors have received $1,171 in taxpayer money for every $1 invested in lobbying and political action committee contributions during the last decade.”
Now that’s some serious ROI! Still, nothing quite compares to the breeder reactor effect that comes from using expensive military hardware to destroy regimes in a never-ending global war against a tactic. Regime change touched off civil war in Iraq. That spread to Syria which, in turn, sent over 660,000 refugees into Jordan and over one million refugees into Lebanon … all of which explains why Bogart and Maher are so bullish on the sale of security-related products to those two nations and why the entire region is in the midst of a military buying spree.
Then there is the chaotic aftermath of regime change in Libya, which threatens to spill over to two more booming markets — Tunisia and Egypt. Of course, Egypt had its own U.S.-endorsed internal regime change at the hands of a loyal customer and longtime recipient of American “aid” — the Egyptian military. It was really a “coup,” but U.S. law would’ve prevented selling Egypt’s military junta tear gas canisters marked “Made in USA” (among other things) if it was officially a coup d’etat, so the Obama Administration simply didn’t call it a coup.
Now, according to Ms. Maher, Egypt’s military is in the market for yet more military hardware that, according to a new GAO report detailed by The Intercept, is not being properly or legally vetted by the State Department. Those purchases are easily funded by the $6.4 billion in U.S. aid since the coup in 2011. And (go figure) Egypt’s wish list is justified, in part, by the sudden need to ward off interlopers from regime-changed Libya, which, according to the aforementioned Ms. Maher, is still a red-hot market for U.S. arms dealers … if they can get the export licenses.
A Circular Business Model
And so the dynamic market churns onward — with tax dollars paying the salaries of State Department “Commercial Officers” who work for the heavily-subsidized U.S. defense industry as salespeople in overseas markets destabilized by taxpayer-funded wars fought by taxpayer-supported American soldiers armed with weaponry purchased from that self-same defense industry with — you guessed it — more tax dollars.
The “diplomats” in the State Department act as important go-betweens in the process, helping “customers” navigate the military-industrial complexities of end-user certificates, export licenses, and human rights restrictions so they can spend taxpayer-funded U.S. “aid” that invariably ends up back in the coffers of Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, and so on.
Once the money makes it back home to the defense industry, those companies invest some of their windfalls into lobbying, into SuperPACS, into both political parties, and directly into campaigns of the Congressional cronies who dutifully rubber-stamp the defense budget that enriches the defense industry. So far this year, they’ve poured over $17 million into those efforts and, in turn, they’ve provided the fuel to run the “dynamic” perpetual machine in which the State Department is a vital cog.
And this is why the folks at the State Department know full-well that, in fact, America still actually makes something — it is the world’s leading manufacturer of war.
JP Sottile is a freelance journalist, radio co-host, documentary filmmaker and former broadcast news producer in Washington, D.C. He blogs at Newsvandal.com or you can follow him on Twitter, http://twitter/newsvandal. [This article was originally published by theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific.]
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FOCUS: The National Political Crisis |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=38303"><span class="small">Ronnie Dugger, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Saturday, 04 June 2016 11:48 |
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Dugger writes: "On the evidence there is now too great a risk that Donald Trump would defeat Hillary Clinton and become President with his thumb poised at the button to detonate some of our almost 5,000 deployed nuclear weapons, killing millions in strikes and retaliations and perhaps ending life on earth. In my considered judgement the two now corrupt major political parties must face the hard facts why, if possible, the Democratic National Convention in July, in conscience and patriotism, should swing from Clinton to Bernie Sanders, even possibly to Elizabeth Warren or Vice President Joe Biden, as their nominee."
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. (photo: ABC News)
The National Political Crisis
By Ronnie Dugger, Reader Supported News
04 June 16
 n the evidence there is now too great a risk that Donald Trump would defeat Hillary Clinton and become President with his thumb poised at the button to detonate some of our almost 5,000 deployed nuclear weapons, killing millions in strikes and retaliations and perhaps ending life on earth. In my considered judgement the two now corrupt major political parties must face the hard facts why, if possible, the Democratic National Convention in July, in conscience and patriotism, should swing from Clinton to Bernie Sanders, even possibly to Elizabeth Warren or Vice President Joe Biden, as their nominee.
All of us who are even dimly watching know the Republicans have nominated and the Democrats seem about to nominate politicians for President each of whom are the most disrespected and distrusted-as-dishonest such candidates in the long history of our country. Clinton is basically tied with Trump in the polls as if they are presently running against each other in November. The American people now seem fenced in toward electing a President Trump, an astounding collapse and quite possibly a death trap for the United States and the human race.
It’s clear and obvious that Sanders as of now has a two, even three times better chance of beating Trump than Clinton has. It’s as plain on the noses of the faces of the Democrats’ unelected “superdelegates.” Those misnamed convention-rigging superdelegates are providing Clinton a net of about 500 of her unelected delegate vote advantage beyond those delegates chosen by the voters.
As Sanders has said accurately, “If you look at all the national polls out there, virtually all of them, if you look at all of the state polls, we do much better against Trump than does Hillary Clinton.” A national poll a week ago showed Clinton 3% ahead of Trump compared to Sanders’ 15-point lead if running against him. An adviser and pollster for President Clinton from 1994 to 2000, Douglas E. Schoen, wrote as of June 1, “Bernie Sanders consistently runs stronger than [Clinton] does against Mr. Trump nationally, beating him by about 10 points in a number of recent surveys.” Schoen forecasts that Clinton may not be the Democratic nominee.
People for Clinton and/or against Trump often fall silent knowing they weaken Clinton perhaps long-run by seeing or arguing that she should not be the candidate because of her mounting weaknesses. That is the kind of risk that is now upon the citizenry. Nevertheless, navigating through this national political crisis, the truth about them must be said and weighed. In brief here are, I believe, seven of the unnerving weaknesses of candidate Clinton.
First, there are huge contributions to Clinton through superPACs from undisclosed donors, and also the payoff-like “fees” big banks and corporations free-handed Clinton, and she accepted, for giving them speeches. That latter was money for her personally, for her own self. For example, within a year she received $225,000 from Goldman Sachs for each one of three speeches. Despite repeated demands from Sanders, as well as in a New York Times editorial, she has so far flatly refused to make the transcripts of those speeches public, keeping secret what she said to the super-bank (at “$200,000 an hour,” Sanders estimated).
In a January 16th debate Sanders said, “I don’t take money from the big banks. I don’t take personal speaking fees for Goldman Sachs.” In Austin he said to 10,000 people that Clinton has a superPAC, as he does not, that is giving her millions of dollars from drug companies, fossil fuel industries, and the like, with the donors kept secret. Every candidate says “But they won’t influence me,” Sanders said, adding: “Very simple. Why are they giving me several million dollars?” In a February 11th debate, Clinton accused him of smearing her on the topic. “A low blow,” he replied. “People aren’t dumb. Why in God’s name does Wall Street make large campaign contributions? I guess for the fun of it. They just want to throw money around.” In a debate April 14th he said while alongside her, “I don’t think you’re going to stand up to the big money interests when you take their money.”
Second is the fact that in 1993 President Clinton, and Ms. Clinton as his official and leading representative, killed national health insurance in favor of a plan preserving private medicine that was DOA in Congress. In this election contest, she actively and vividly opposes single-payer national health insurance, which Sanders advocates, despite maintaining in her mailings, for example, that she champions “universal health care for every man, woman, and child.”
Third, in 1996 President Clinton, with his wife’s approval, signed into law the “end-welfare-as-we-know-it” law which, after 60 years, abolished the New Deal’s fundamental “Aid to Families with Dependent Children” (AFDC) welfare program, turned the welfare program for the poor over to the states, and set new time limits on such aid. In consequence, millions of the poorest Americans have become substantially poorer.
Clinton, fourth, has said she will, if elected, put her husband in charge of the economy, although it was he who in 1999 and 2000 signed laws, including one repealing the New Deal law prohibiting banks from speculating with depositors’ money and others which legalized related banking excesses, that are generally conceded to have been substantial causes of the Great Recession which cost millions of Americans their jobs and homes.
Clinton, fifth, now bears with her the devastating report of the Department of State Inspector General saying she did not ask that agency’s OK, and if she had would have been told no, when she arrogated federal security rules to herself and, from 2009 to 2013 as Secretary of State, used her personal email server in her home for her official and personal business; had refused, along with some of her uppermost staffers, to be interviewed on this by the Inspector General; did not comply with the Department’s policies as she said she had; and did not for two years after leaving State turn her State records over to the Department until she was asked for them and destroyed 30,000 of those emails beforehand which, she said, her lawyers chose as being not official, but personal emails. She and top staffers appear to have interviews ahead of them by the FBI, in a criminal investigation, and by an NGO that in its publications is verbally violent toward her, Judicial Watch. “What If Clinton Gets Indicted?” asks the headline over one of Karl Rove’s columns in the Wall Street Journal.
Sixth, Bill Clinton was receiving huge speaking fees and the Clinton family foundation was receiving many large contributions while Ms. Clinton was Secretary of State. One related complex set of events entailing Kremlin-allied groups was followed by one of those Kremlin-related actors obtaining title to substantial U.S. uranium ores. Presumably Trump, already repeatedly calling Clinton “Crooked Hillary,” has loaded up with “oppo research” in this area.
Seventh, Trump’s speeches are characterized by strong populist themes, for instance, against trade agreements that hurt U.S. workers, against President George W. Bush’s Iraq war, and for his promises to provide more jobs and pay raises for workers. As John Nichols writes in The Nation, Trump could take Democratic votes from Clinton, as happened with Reagan. About half of AFL-CIO members are Democrats, a third Republicans, and the rest are independent.
Sanders’ historical standing as a cultural and political groundbreaker is self-evident. As Clinton has pointed out, he has been the target of almost no negative ads to date. He too, as the nominee, would face all-out oppo research, and perhaps an attempted revival of McCarthyism against him as a Scandinavian-type democratic socialist. Present polling patterns do not and cannot foresee our future that now quails in our imaginations.
Here we all are at this point in the “extremely extraordinary” presidential election of 2016, and down the American road five months from now we all will account to ourselves and others for the thinking we did, the decisions we reached, and the actions we took now, when we could.
Ronnie Dugger, winner of the George Polk career award in journalism in 2012, founded the Texas Observer and has written biographies of Presidents Johnson and Reagan, books on Hiroshima and universities, and many articles in The New Yorker, The Nation, Atlantic, Harper’s, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and other periodicals. He has been a Sanders supporter since this presidential campaign began.
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FOCUS: In Memoriam of Muhammad Ali |
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Saturday, 04 June 2016 10:56 |
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Abdul-Jabbar writes: "During my more than 50 years in the public eye, I have met hundreds of renowned celebrities, artists, athletes, and world leaders. But only a handful embodied the self-sacrificing and heroic qualities that defined my friend and mentor, Muhammad Ali."
Muhammad Ali. (photo: NusaNews)
In Memoriam of Muhammad Ali
By Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's Facebook Page
04 June 16
 uring my more than 50 years in the public eye, I have met hundreds of renowned celebrities, artists, athletes, and world leaders. But only a handful embodied the self-sacrificing and heroic qualities that defined my friend and mentor, Muhammad Ali. A master of self-promotion, he declared early in his boxing career, I am the greatest! This kind of boasting enraged many people, just as he’d hoped, ensuring a large audience that just wanted to see this upstart boy taught a lesson.
But it was Muhammad who taught the lesson because, as he once said, It’s not bragging if you can back it up. And back it up, he did. Again and again. And not just in the ring. Part of Muhammad’s greatness was his ability to be different things to different people. To sports fans he was an unparalleled champion of the world, faster and smarter than any heavyweight before. To athletes, he was a model of physical perfection and shrewd business acumen. To the anti-establishment youth of the 1960s, he was a defiant voice against the Vietnam War and the draft. To the Muslim community, he was a pious pioneer testing America’s purported religious tolerance. To the African-American community, he was a black man who faced overwhelming bigotry the way he faced every opponent in the ring: fearlessly. At a time when blacks who spoke up about injustice were labeled uppity and often arrested under one pretext or another, Muhammad willingly sacrificed the best years of his career to stand tall and fight for what he believed was right. In doing so, he made all Americans, black and white, stand taller. I may be 7’2" but I never felt taller than when standing in his shadow.
Today we bow our heads at the loss of a man who did so much for America. Tomorrow we will raise our heads again remembering that his bravery, his outspokenness, and his sacrifice for the sake of his community and country lives on in the best part of each of us.
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or the record, I don’t know what post-campaign effort will emerge as the lead coalition for the political revolution. I do think it would be a huge mistake to ignore 
