Why I'm Caucusing for Bernie Sanders, Not Hillary

Caption: From left to right, Phil Hemingway, Iowa City Community School District Board of Directors candidate for four-year term, and Bernie Sanders, Democratic candidate for president of the United States.

I’m caucusing for Bernie Sanders at 7:00 p.m. on February 1st, 2016 because he’s honest, he’s clear about what he stands for, and he wants to make our economy work for all Americans, not just the one percent at the top who are garnering most of the new gains in economic wealth today. Bernie wants to make Wall Street accountable, something Pres. Obama and his attorney general chose not to do, and break up the big banks that are “too big to fail.” Nothing has changed since the last big crash on Wall Street that will keep a similar crash from happening again. Foot dragging and corruption have made the recovery less than it could have been. Main Street is still underwater while Wall Street thrives.

Frankly, the books and articles I’ve read about Wall Street criminals and the Obama administration’s failure to hold them accountable have made me mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more. Wouldn’t Hillary be a third term of Barack Obama? She’s reputed to be too cozy with Wall Street. Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman-Sachs, said that Wall Street “would be fine with either Jeb or Hillary.” Goldman is supporting both candidates.

President Barack Obama hired a U.S. Attorney General who belonged to a Wall Street law firm whose business it was to defend white-collar criminals from facing the consequences of their actions. In his capacity as AG, Eric Holder did not hold a single Wall Street criminal accountable for his actions and was welcomed back to his law firm with open arms. Do you think his law firm would have held his job open for him if he had held white-collar criminals accountable? His law firm, Coving and Burling, counts among its clients Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo. Holder extracted big fines from Wall Street but only one individual, Kareem Serageldin, a senior trader at Credit Suisse, is serving a 30-month sentence for inflating the value of mortgage bonds in his trading portfolio, allowing them to appear than they really were, according to the September 2015 issue of the Atlantic magazine. No one else went to prison despite:

· Securities fraud (many forms)

· Accounting fraud (many forms)

· Honest services violations (mail fraud statute)

· Bribery

· Perjury and making false statements to federal investigators

· Sarbanes-Oxley violations (certifying false accounting statements)

· RICO offenses (racketeering) and criminal antitrust violations

· Federal aid disclosure regulations (related to Federal Reserve loans)

· Personal conduct offenses (many forms: drug use, tax evasion, the use of prostitution for business purposes, etc.)*

*(p. 190 in the hardcover copy of Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America, by Charles H. Ferguson)

Bernie Sanders would change that scenario. He is exciting interest and drawing large crowds.

Neither Jeb nor Hillary, both establishment candidates, is particularly exciting to the electorate. Jeb is in the single digits in the polls, though he has a huge bank account of PAC money at his disposal. Donald Trump is on top of the Republican polls in Iowa and elsewhere.

Hillary refused to take a stand on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal that is the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on steroids. Former President Bill Clinton signed NAFTA, and American jobs left the country and went to Mexico and other places.

Ross Perot, a failed independent presidential candidate referred to the “giant sucking sound” of jobs leaving the U.S. following the passage of NAFTA, and he was right.

The weirdest part of the TPP was the fascist oversight accompanying the reading of the bill. U.S. Senators and Congressional Representatives were not allowed to take notes while reading the bill under strict supervision and were not allowed to take photos of the bill. Corporations, on the other hand, had total access to the bill. For all we know, they wrote it themselves.

Pres. Obama’s support of the bill was enthusiastically seconded by Republicans, not most Democrats. A Democrat who co-sponsored the bill with Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah was Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR). His treachery left me breathless. I will never support him financially again.

Hillary, though I enthusiastically supported her in 2008, has run a timid and uninspired campaign. I left an appointment nearby her speaking engagement in downtown Iowa City where she was spoke to the public in a room with a capacity of 200 people at the Iowa City Library. I was there early, though not early enough. I stood in line for over an hour with hundreds of other people and was repeatedly lied to about whether there’d be room in overflow rooms with TV cameras so I could listen to Hillary speak.

I don’t know if Sue Dvorsky, former president of the Iowa Democratic Party, was in charge or she just seemed to be in charge, but all of us were lied to about the possibility of getting in until Hillary was actually speaking inside and there was no chance we’d get into the actual speaking room or any of the overflow rooms.

The venue was unrealistic. It was Hillary wanting an intimate environment over the crowd’s desire to hear her speak. We were lied to about access. Then we were told to wait outside until she emerged after her speech if we wanted to see her or talk to her. I didn’t bother. I’d been able to speak to her personally twice in her 2008 campaign. Frankly, I was annoyed.

But annoyance over the size of the venue and being lied to is not the source of my dissatisfaction. My main problem with Hillary is that she’s too close to Wall Street and she’s not willing to come clean on the issues concerning Wall Street and the TPP. Benghazi is another issue I’d like her to talk about. If her hands were tied, if she was not allowed to use her own best judgment, if the use of military force was not within her purview, I’d like her to talk about that.

Who is she protecting? Certainly not herself, I’d venture to guess. And now that the Obama administration is going after her on the ridiculous issue of her emails, all of which were classified after the fact, she has no reason to protect him.

I’ll vote for her if she’s the nominee. But that would remind me of 2008 and 2012, when I knew Barack Obama would disappoint me as a leader, but he was the lesser of two evils. I’m tired of voting for the lesser of two evils. Pres. Obama is an even worse president than I thought he’d be, and for the life of me I can’t understand why so many people are still drinking the Kool-Aid.