Jeffrey Sachs talking:
I think last night’s debate was really a terrific debate, because it did clarify many different things. It also confused a few things, when Hillary Clinton, for example, said that she negotiated the 2012 ceasefire. There was no ceasefire in Syria. She was the reason why the ceasefire never took place then, because she has backed a CIA-led attempt at regime change that has led to a bloodbath there. That’s what I wrote about a few days ago.
And also, on the domestic side, she basically said, “I will change nothing.” And that, I think, is really sobering for those of us who believe in a progressive agenda. She said, “Don’t dream. We can’t do it. Don’t go with this guy. He can’t make these changes.” And that’s very sad, actually, to just be campaigning on the grounds, “No, we can’t.” I think the fact of the matter is, we could accomplish a great deal. And she’s basically saying that the status quo is just fine.
When she said that the bankers were still—had no influence in the Obama administration, it’s an amazing statement, because after all this big campaign support from Wall Street, President Obama put in bankers and strong Wall Street supporters into the White House. And I remember in 2009—and I could go chapter and verse—that they absolutely treated the banks with kid gloves. And that’s why not one executive not only didn’t go to jail, didn’t even resign, after their banks paid tens, even up to $200 billion of fines. This was an administration that did not go after Wall Street. And this has been the problem of the Democratic Party for 20 years, since President Clinton brought Wall Street into the Democratic Party.
And when Hillary Clinton says, “Oh, the total cost of my plan is $100 billion,” people should understand that we have nearly a $20 trillion economy. She’s basically saying, “I’m not going to change anything.”
When we talk about foreign policy, we have a spreading war, and she has been a leading agent of that spread of war, from Iraq to Libya to Syria. This is CIA-led regime change that has led to chaos. And we need a different foreign policy. And that’s why it’s extremely important that people understand what the underlying roots of this problem is. It is the military-industrial complex, and she has supported it all along.
She has supported Wall Street all along. She’s surrounded by bankers and bankers’ friends. Larry Summers back in the White House? No, thank you, not in my book, because in 2009 he absolutely made sure that the bankers got their bonuses. I was on the phone with him, saying, “Are you kidding? These bankers made all these abuses.” He said, “Oh, it was very important we let them have their bonuses. That’s the rule of law,” he said. This is ridiculous. It’s time actually to go up against these vested interests.
I would encourage viewers to go back to The New York Times a couple of weeks ago when they unveiled what many of us knew, which was the secret deal of Saudi Arabia and the CIA to fund the destabilization of Syria. That’s who Hillary Clinton sat down with, with the CIA and with Saudi Arabia. And the bloodbath that we have underway right now is irresponsible. it’s the same kind of irresponsibility of going in to take out Gaddafi and then leaving a civil war and ISIS in Libya. And it’s the same irresponsibility of going in to take out Saddam Hussein. This is a repeated military-industrial complex, CIA-led coup change. And it’s bipartisan, by the way.
when Hillary Clinton says she has experience, her experiences of regime change, that’s the Henry Kissinger mode of operation. It is to back the CIA and the military-industrial complex for violent regime change. She’s done it now three times, that has led to disaster: Iraq, Libya and now Syria. No responsibility. Most of it’s secret, except when The New York Times gives a little bit of a public window to what’s happening. That experience is a dreadful experience, and it is a significant mark against her candidacy.
I think the problem for Hillary is that she has a record. She has a foreign policy record, which is not an enviable one. And she has a domestic record of going with the special interests.
Lee Fang wrote at The Intercept that, “Members of the CBC PAC board include Daron Watts, a lobbyist for Purdue Pharma, the maker of the highly addictive opioid OxyContin; Mike Mckay and Chaka Burgess, both lobbyists for Navient, the student loan giant that was spun off of Sallie Mae; former [Rep. Albert] Wynn, D-Md., a lobbyist who represents a range of clients, including work last year on behalf of Lorillard Tobacco, the maker of Newport cigarettes; and William A. Kirk, who lobbies for a cigar industry trade group on a range of tobacco regulations.
“And a significant percentage of the $7,000 raised this cycle by the CBC PAC […] was donated by white lobbyists, including Vic Fazio, who represents Philip Morris and served for years as a lobbyist to Corrections Corporation of America, and David Adams, a former Clinton aide who now lobbies for Wal-Mart, the largest gun distributor in America.”
We couldn’t understand how progressives, like Keith Ellison, great congressman, was suddenly making this endorsement, when progressives know that Hillary Clinton has been part of this lobbying machine for years and years. And I think you’ve helped us to understand this morning something I didn’t realize, which is what this endorsement meant and how the lobbyists have completely infiltrated this process.
Because that’s what Bernie Sanders is talking about every day. Our politics have been corrupted by the money, which is pervasive. And it’s the big health insurers. It’s Wall Street. It’s the military-industrial complex. And that’s why our policies are so bizarre: why we have the most expensive healthcare system in the world—Bernie Sanders wants to address that; why we’re in constant war—because we have the military-industrial complex constantly pushing this; why we have a destabilized financial system—because Wall Street is pumping in money.
And it’s not true, what Hillary Clinton said yesterday, that they’ve taken care of the bankers. They let the bankers have a free ride on all of this, after this massive collapse in 2008. And we have financial stability every day now. Morgan Stanley paying the billions in fines? They’re one of the biggest backers of Hillary Clinton. They’re on the top of the—near the top of the list, actually. This is what’s wrong with our system. The money is everywhere in this politics, except Bernie Sanders saying, “Stop. We’ve got to have democracy again.”
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Jeffrey Sachs
leading economist and the director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. He’s the author of many books, including, most recently, The Age of Sustainable Development. His recent article for The Huffington Post is titled “Hillary is the Candidate of the War Machine.”
— source democracynow.org