Showing posts with label Bill Clinton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bill Clinton. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 27, 2024

Harris-Trump Bring Excitement and Ectasy to Presidential Campaign: The Russians Aren't Feeling the Joy

You got no right to take my joy, I want it back.

Joy by Lucinda Williams

Posing as vaudeville comedians, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz wrapped up the Democratic convention last week. Harris waved her arms like a seance conjurer, and Walz strutted and gesticulated around the DNC stage like a game show host.

What was the convention’s theme? Not the economy, not crime, not the nation’s border. No, the theme was joy. 

Kamala Harris is “the president of joy,” Bill Clinton told the convention delegates. He knows a lot about joy. He spilled some of it on a blue dress when he was president

New York Times columnist Patrick Healy observed that joy is not a strategy for winning an election, but Healy may be wrong. Harris is ahead of Donald Trump in the polls, even though she hasn’t granted an interview with a real journalist since becoming the Dems' presidential candidate.

Harris is dodging the press because she's afraid a reporter might ask an inconvenient question, which is this: What the fuck are we doing in Ukraine? Such a question might dampen the joy that currently infuses Harris’s frenzied supporters.

Americans whose minds have been turned to Jello by the New York Times, WaPo, and CNN are enthralled by Harris’s clownish behavior, but the Russians aren't feeling the joy. They've suffered over a half million casualties inflicted by NATO weapons, including American cluster bombs, Abrams tanks, uranium-depleted artillery shells, and Bradley fighting vehicles.

If Harris wins the November election, she will find that joy doesn't travel well. 
I doubt Harris’s cackle will charm Vladimir Putin into surrendering Crimea. 

The politics of joy in Ukraine


Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Hillary Clinton's ties to the for-profit college industry: If she becomes President, expect the status quo

The for-profit college industry has had a good run. For years, it has sucked up about a quarter of all federal student-loan money, while only enrolling about 12 percent of the nation's students.

The for-profits have reaped big profits, and why not? Some of them spend more on recruiting than they do on instruction.  Most of their revenues (nearly 90 percent for most for-profit colleges) come from the federal student-loan program, and their docile students passively sign the  loan documents that are pushed in front of them by the for-profits' efficient student processors.

And if anyone accuses them of fraud or misrepresentation--hey, no problem. Most for-profits force their students to waive their right to sue somewhere in the enrollment documents.

For years, the for-profits have greased the wheels on their gravy train by making strategic campaign contributions to important people in Congress and by hiring Washington lobbyists to protect their interests. Everyone from Mitt Romney to Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz got a little money from the for-profits, and so adequately regulating this gang of pirates is out of the question.

Will things change if Hillary is elected President? It's very unlikely. Here are a few tidbits of information about Hillary and Bill Clinton's ties to the for-profit industry that come from a recent article by Michael Stratford.

  • Bill Clinton worked for Laureate Education, which has for profit colleges all over the world. According to Stratford's article, Bill earned $16.5 million between 2010 and 2014 working for Laureate. In fact, Bill Clinton served as honorary chancellor for Laureate International Universities  until last year, when he resigned  shortly before Hillary launched her campaign. 
  • Hillary earned $225,000 making a speech to Academic Partnerships, a for-profit company that makes big bucks partnering with public universities and turning face-to-face courses into online courses that Academic Partnership oversees. 
  • Several of Hillary Clinton's campaign-fund bundlers have worked as lobbyists for Apollo Group, the parent company of University of Phoenix. (And by the way, Barack Obama's "best friend," Martin Nesbitt, is making plans to buy Apollo Group.)
David Halperin, an investigative reporter who has done a good job reporting on the for-profit industry, praised Hillary for taking a "strong, principled stand against predatory for-profit college companies," but I am highly skeptical.

When I was growing up, I was taught that there are only two kinds of snakes: dead ones and live ones. Similarly, with perhaps a few exceptions, there are only two kinds of for-profit colleges: the ones that exploit the student-loan program to the detriment of their students, and the ones that have closed.

Former President Bill Clinton speaks to students at Laureate’s Universidad Latina in Costa Rica.

References

Frank Cerabino. Failed medical college was reliable source of campaign money. Palm Beach Post, November 2, 2015. http://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/news/cerabino-failed-medical-college-was-reliable-sourc/npD6Q/

David Halperin. Top Democratic Lawyer Pushed Pentagon to End U. of Phoenix Suspension. Huffington Post, March 17, 2016. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/davidhalperin/top-democratic-lawyer-pus_b_9487600.html

Richard Rubin. Hillary and Bill Clinton Mad $139 Million in Eight Years. Bloomberg.com, July 31, 2015. http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-07-31/hillary-and-bill-clinton-paid-43-million-in-federal-taxes

Charles M. Smith and Dina Rasor. For-profit colleges are bankrolling Romney to keep to keep student loan money flowing. Truth-out.org, June 14, 2012. http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/9790-for-profit-colleges-are-bankrolling-mitt-romney-and-other-republicans-to-keep-their-public-student-loans-flowing

Michael Stratford. Hillary Clinton's ties to for-profit education companies. Inside Higher Education, April 18, 2016. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/04/18/hillary-clintons-ties-profit-education-companies