There are likely a number of factors for why Clinton went from a critic of these corporate-written trade agreements to a supporter while in the Obama administration to more or less neutral today. But one very important factor for voters to know about is the role her own personal wealth might have played in the matter.
Because spousal income is shared, cabinet officials are required to report not only their own personal financial data but also incoming income their spouse receives. While Clinton was Secretary of State, her husband continued his lucrative corporate speaking tour, receiving millions of dollars from both foreign and domestic corporations.
I'd like to hold out just a tiny glimmer of hope that this one thing would spark an open and honest discussion about what these trade deals are all about, but I think we all know by now that it's much more likely to be politics-as-usual, and we'll have to hack our way thru all the media/consultancy/advocacy bullshit first, which means we'll run outa time way before we get to learn anything of substance, which means 100 million Americans will vote for somebody whose position on this fairly important policy will be almost complete unknown. And that's not to mention the shitty little feeling everybody has that there's a buncha stuff in TPP that has nothing to do with trade. We might get a good look at how adept Hillary has become. I'm not giving her a lotta props yet because she still sounds pretty clunky to me, but if she can manage a turn-around on this one and make something good for herself out of it, I'm willing to lay off a little.
LSU and many other public colleges in Louisiana might be forced to file for financial exigency, essentially academic bankruptcy, if state higher education funding doesn't soon take a turn for the better.
Louisiana's flagship university began putting together the paperwork for declaring financial exigency this week when the Legislature appeared to make little progress on finding a state budget solution, according to F. King Alexander, president and chancellor of LSU.
"We don't say that to scare people," he said. "Basically, it is how we are going to survive."
Moody's Investors Service also announced this month that it was lowering LSU's credit outlook from positive to stable based on concerns about the university's overall financial support. The lowering of LSU's credit rating makes it more likely the university will have to pay more for its building projects in the future.
This kinda crap doesn't happen by accident, kids. Try to resist thinking Jindal and his Client Cronies aren't doing this on purpose. LSU is a prestigious joint, which makes it a valuable property, which means it should be awarded to a Corporate Friend who'll take it under his benevolent wing and blah blah blah.
And in case anybody needed the reminder, LSU was very much up front about calling out BP for the Deep Water Horizon fuck up - along with any number of other monumentally shitty things that go on in Louisiana in the name of freedom and Unfettered Market Economics.
So let's see if we can identify the basics here - your Environmental Science guys get all uppity about how Big Petro-Chem is making it next to impossible for actual human-type people to live anywhere near The Gulf, so what we'll do is buy lotsa face-time with a yokel governor who wants to run for president, and trade him a pile of campaign cash for looking the other way while we also pour money into the pockets of state legislators (not to mention US Senators & Representatives) so we can cut the school's budget to the point of no return - and then use that little bit of convenient leverage to get our buddies at Moody's to put the squeeze on their credit - all of which drives the price down to where we can swoop in and "rescue" the failing failure from the failures of the failing eggheads who've failed utterly in their failed efforts to make all of God's America fail. And before ya know it, our schools will be turning out good wholesome young academics who know the real value of a dollar and who won't be having their minds poisoned with all that boring science-y stuff, which everybody knows is the devil's propaganda anyway.
Marco "Big Gulp" Rubio (see tengrain at MockPaperScissors) gives us the standard smarmy dodges when asked about Climate Change ("hey, the climate's always changing - what's the big deal?"). That one's bad enough, but the real fun starts when he kicks in on Marriage Equality (at about :45).
And here's the smarminess revealed thru translation: Marriage (ie; Civil Rights) can be regulated (ie: Denied) by the states.
For just a moment, let's disregard Big Gulp's total abandonment of a GOP Article of Faith - Thou shalt not regulate - and focus on the fact that he bails on the question with the typical States' Rights bullshit. He's saying the individual states have the authority to deny equal protection under the law. Of course, that's not really news because it's also a GOP Article of Faith that they get to fuck people over at the state and local levels, which they've been doing (whenever they're in power) for a very long time. And they get to do that again now because they own most of the governments at the lower levels, so they're right back to playing the Nullification card, saying the Federal Gov't ain't the boss of me; you're not my real gubmint - I can do what I want.
But then again, he's not abandoning anything - nobody in the GOP has any more distaste for Regulation than any other Ruler Wanna-Be; they're perfectly down with regulating, but they lie about it by calling it exactly the opposite. Anyway, he's just turning it inside out, and then he's giving the rubes a little language massage that helps ease the pain of all that Cognitive Dissonance.
Repubs fully intend to regulate the fuck out of like-gender marriage while pretending that that kind of regulation doesn't actually reinforce the Wingnut Notion that a government has the power to restrict everybody's rights for any reason the government pulls out of its ass at any given moment. So they hafta disguise it. They Orwellian-ize it - The Freedom To Buy Puppies For Your Grandkids Act. That should do it - let's see those stupid libtards vote against that one.
In the end tho', it's just distraction. We need to be given something to argue about so we won't be paying attention to how all this connects up with why it seems we can't figure out some way to deal with the world that doesn't involve bombing every fucking thing in sight. And why every police and sheriff's department here at home looks and acts exactly like the US military looks and acts everywhere else in the world.
This is what creeping authoritarianism looks like once it gets up on its hind legs. This is the transition from Nanny State to Daddy State to Bully State.
It ain't easy - nothing really worth doing is ever particularly easy. First, you pick a day; you commit to it; and then you get yourself off of that stoopid fucking merry-go-round. It can majorly suck at first, but almost before you know it, lotsa things have gotten better, you're saving money, and c'mon - there really isn't anything more important for us to be doing, is there? Be nice to your mom - she's the only one ya got.
