David Sirota, one of the nation’s top investigative reporters, is now writing for International Business Times. In this article, he describes the differences between Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton.

Categories Democrats

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Bill F. says:

August 8, 2014 at 9:10 am

I don’t see how anyone could argue there is no difference between the two. I like Warren but she is to the left of the country and I don’t think she is electable unless we have another two years of Tea Party craziness. Which is entirely possible.

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Dawn says:

August 8, 2014 at 9:11 am

Elizabeth Warren introduced a bill to reinstate Glass- Steagall, S. 1282, in the Senate. This bill would crush Wall Street shenanigans.Hillary would be very upset if this bill were to pass. The corrupt bankers are her best friends.

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Bill F. says:

August 8, 2014 at 9:17 am

Glass-Steagall was the worst thing Bill Clinton ever did and he should be held accountable for it.

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- Dawn says:
  
  August 8, 2014 at 9:31 am
  
  Clinton did so many things it is hard to pick the worst but putting Hillary in the White House just brings up too many bad memories.
  
  Although he ran on a ticket of reeling in the excesses of big business, Clinton quickly became the financial district’s best friend. During his years in office he completely failed to act on regulating derivatives, a central cause of the crash. In 1999, he repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, a nifty bit of legislation that effectively blocked the creation of today’s dangerously unstable super-banks. As The Guardian noted in 2009, sub-prime loans before the repeal accounted for only 5 percent of all mortgage-lending. By the time of the crash, they’d hit 30.
  
  Clinton also toughened a 1977 act that required lenders to relax their rules for poorer borrowers.
  
  Although he ran on a ticket of reeling in the excesses of big business, Clinton quickly became the financial district’s best friend. During his years in office he completely failed to act on regulating derivatives, a central cause of the crash. In 1999, he repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, a nifty bit of legislation that effectively blocked the creation of today’s dangerously unstable super-banks. As The Guardian noted in 2009, sub-prime loans before the repeal accounted for only 5 percent of all mortgage-lending. By the time of the crash, they’d hit 30. Clinton also toughened a 1977 act that required lenders to relax their rules for poorer borrowers.
  
  NAFTA was meant to be a shrewd economic move by the US, but after two months, it had created a combined trade deficit of $132 billion with both Canada and Mexico. Prior to NAFTA coming in, the US had been running a trade surplus with Mexico. It also screwed over workers. In 2011, the Economic Policy Institute estimated the agreement had cost America nearly 700,000 jobs.
  
  n the aftermath of the 1990s’ Gulf War prequel, the UN Security Council imposed strong economic sanctions on a belligerent Iraq. Strongly championed by the US and UK and fully supported by Bill Clinton, the sanctions were meant to break Saddam and keep him from indulging in any more war crimes. Instead, they killed over half a million children and hundreds of thousands of adults.
  
  Thanks to stuff like hideously unequal drug sentencing laws—which Clinton blocked Washington from changing—nearly 60 percent of those incarcerated in the Clinton years were in for nonviolent drug offenses. The result of this was a ballooning prison population that basically acted as a criminal conveyor belt.
  
  The Rwanda genocide was a 100-day killing spree by ethnic Hutus against their Tutsi neighbors. It was a mindless slaughter that killed up to 800,000 people. Corpses littered the streets and children were dismembered and raped. Then-President Clinton reacted to this senseless tragedy—arguably the worst of the 20th century—by burying any evidence of it.
  
  On August 20, 1998, an American submarine locked onto a suspected chemical weapons factory in Sudan and launched a barrage of missiles. The attack had been authorized by the president himself in retaliation for a US embassy bombing in Nairobi. Within seconds, the factory had been obliterated, killing one person and wounding several others. It was only then that it was discovered that the factory wasn’t used for producing WMDs at all. It was one of only three pharmaceutical factories in the whole of Sudan. In less than a second, the airstrike had wiped out Sudan’s ability to treat devastating illnesses like tuberculosis, malaria, and meningitis at a time when the country was swept by disease and civil war. To add insult to injury, there was no money to rebuild, resulting in epidemics sweeping the land and killing thousands.
  
  “Extraordinary rendition” is when shady government operatives stuff a bag over your head and fly you off to some foreign country where they can legally torture you. Clinton and Gore signed off on the first rendition back in the ’90s, despite being aware that it breached international law.
  http://listverse.com/2014/02/05/10-reasons-bill-clinton-was-secretly-a-terrible-president/
  
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  - Bill F. says:
    
    August 8, 2014 at 9:49 am
    
    Hats off, Dawn.
  - MathVale says:
    
    August 8, 2014 at 11:23 am
    
    That’s why he was called “Slick Willie”. Of course, Dubbya wasn’t perfect either. Unfunded drug plans and wars, and turning over the presidency to Darth Cheney. And the horrid NCLB that morphed into Arne’s crusade of beating teachers into submission. Plus a massive debt trajectory that carried into Obama’s do nothing terms. But there is also a reason Congress has single digit approval ratings. Governing by not governing isn’t a great way to legislate. People want results and solutions – not 50+ repeal votes on Obamacare or constant shouts of “Benghazi!” And a dysfunctional, far right SCOTUS makes corporations people, too.
    
    But deregulation has been increasing since St. Ronnie. Union membership is at an all time low. State Republicans are dismantling schools and silencing educators. Corporate profits are soaring. Job protections are nonexistent. Social Safety nets are cut. The next generation is indentured to debt. Why does the tri-cornered, don’t-tread-on-me-crowd whine so much? Heck, we are living in Randian, free market, GOP utopia!
    
    But blaming just Clinton or Bush isn’t entirely accurate. LTCM’s failure should have been a canary in the mine. Wall Street bears quite a bit of responsibility for irresponsibility. If you want freemarkets without adult supervision, then the Armani suit crowd should be held accountable when it fails. Greenspan, Rubin, Summers should have known better. Banks are still too big to fail and dabble in who-knows-what instruments on shadow markets. America gleefully sends teachers to jail for erasing bubble sheets, yet financiers who wreck Main Street get bonuses. Fine a bank a few billion, they just pass the costs on to families and students.
    
    Warren may be not as far left as portrayed. She hits a populist thread and focuses the public’s anger and dissatisfaction.
  - Dawn says:
    
    August 8, 2014 at 12:17 pm
    
    “There’s a plot in this country to enslave every man, woman and child. Before I leave this high and noble office, I intend to expose this plot.”
    
    – President John F. Kennedy
    7 days before his assassination
    
    He was referring to the Jesuit Order, Knights of Malta, who control everything from their U.S. platforms, the Council on Foreign relations, Georgetown University, Cardinal Dolan in NYC, etc.
    
    The election will be decided by the black pope, the Superior general of the Jesuit order, not us. Check it out. Don’t just call me a nut. And definitely do not bring out that tied rant about anyone suggesting something not in the mainstream news being a conspiracy theorist. That term was intended to shame people into accepting the Warren Commission’s whitewash of the Kennedy assassination. It worked. Open your mind.
    
    http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/blog/?p=14960
  - FLERP! says:
    
    August 8, 2014 at 1:06 pm
    
    This does come off as pretty nutty, Dawn. Can I go ahead and assume that Kennedy quote is made up, or do you have a source for it that isn’t a web site that looks like a Dan Brown novel?
  - Dawn says:
    
    August 8, 2014 at 1:29 pm
  - FLERP! says:
    
    August 8, 2014 at 1:49 pm
    
    First, the words that you claim JFK said don’t appear in the speech in that YouTube link (posted by YouTube user “€ = ☭ DOWN WITH THE NEW WORLD ORDER ✡✈ ▌▌”).
    
    Second, the speech in that YouTube link was highly edited. Here’s what appears to be the full speech (20 minutes versus the 5-minute patchwork in the link you sent): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdMbmdFOvTs.
    
    I’d be annoyed at myself for wasting my time by not sticking with my assumption that your quote was made up, but the speech is interesting. But I’d have no one to blame but myself for wasting anymore time clicking on links to end-of-days, New-World-Order, Illuminati-obsessed web sites.
- MathVale says:
  
  August 8, 2014 at 12:47 pm
  
  ……?
  
  Reply
  - Dawn says:
    
    August 8, 2014 at 1:06 pm
    
    The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, passed during the Great Depression, prevented commercial banks from trading securities with their clients’ deposits and created the FDIC as a guard against bank runs. Passed in 1933 as the Banking Act, Glass-Steagall was chipped away over the years and eventually repealed during the Clinton Administration with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. Some experts believe that the act’s repeal contributed to the 2008 financial crisis.
    
    What is the Glass-Steagall Act?
    
    The Banking Act, now known as Glass-Steagall, was sponsored by Senator Carter Glass (D-VA) and Representative Henry Steagall (D-AL) with the intent of forestalling bank runs and preventing future crises. The legislation had two main provisions:
    
    1. Creation of the FDIC
    
    The period from 1929 to 1933 saw a number of bank runs, which destabilized the American (and world) economy. Fearful that their banks would fail, people pulled their deposits out, which actually caused those banks to fail. To stop that self-perpetuating cycle, Glass-Steagall created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which guaranteed bank deposits up to a certain amount (initially $2,500, now $250,000).
    
    2. Separation of Commercial and Investment Banking
    
    As important as the FDIC’s creation was, the term Glass-Steagall usually refers to the set of rules that kept a savings-and-loan type bank from engaging in speculative, risky training with customers’ deposits. If a bank took deposits, it could not trade in anything other than government bonds; if it underwrote securities or engaged in market-making, it could not take deposits.
    
    The motivation for this separation rested on alleged conflicts of interest. Glass and Steagall, as well as others, accused banks of partnering with affiliates which later sold securities to repay banks’ debts, or accepted loans from banks to buy securities. They also worried that banks engaged in risk-taking speculation, rather than investing in corporations to promote growth.http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/banking/glass-steagall-act-explained/
- Bill F. says:
  
  August 8, 2014 at 1:40 pm
  
  Black pope? I think Dawn has achieved escape velocity from planet reality. But hey, what’s life without a good conspiracy?
  
  Reply
  - Dawn says:
    
    August 8, 2014 at 1:47 pm
    
    Even Wikipedia has an entry for the black pope. I am glad you called it a conspiracy and not a theory. So Hats off! has been downgraded to “left the planet” by the mere mention of a term you never head of so therefore it must not exist.
    
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_General_of_the_Society_of_Jesus
- retiredbutmissthekids says:
  
  August 8, 2014 at 1:47 pm
  
  How about NAFTA?
  
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  - retiredbutmissthekids says:
    
    August 8, 2014 at 1:59 pm
    
    Oops, sorry–I meant to add, THAT was the worst thing ever done by Bill.
- Bill F. says:
  
  August 8, 2014 at 1:51 pm
  
  Fraid so, Dawn. So far I’ve seen that the Black Pope sank the Titanic and was behind 9/11. So let me go with: Aluminum foil hat off. Have a great weekend, everybody!
  
  Reply
  - Dawn Hoagland says:
    
    August 8, 2014 at 2:22 pm
    
    I guess I should refer to him by his real name, Adolfo Nicolas, so that there is no confusion as to his whereabouts or his reality. No tin foil here. Just a willing suspension of disbelief of the mainstream news.
    
    The position sometimes carries the derogatory nickname of the Black Pope, after his simple black priest’s vestments, as contrasted to the white garb of the Pope. The current Superior General is the Reverend Father Adolfo Nicolás.
joe prichard says:

August 8, 2014 at 9:34 am

Nothing much was said about education…..I posed a couple of comments…..I am not very good at it….I got a little carried away about….Obama’s Bill Gates-Arne Duncan educational policies of “we love teachers, but we have corporations which are going to require us to just kick the krap out of teachers…particularly veteran teachers, and people who whine about too much standardized testing…we need to do that for the kids”……

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- rpillala says:
  
  August 8, 2014 at 10:16 am
  
  I think you are very good at it.
  
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  - vwclown says:
    
    August 9, 2014 at 11:44 am
    
    Agreed.
Linda says:

August 8, 2014 at 9:48 am

In an excellent 5 min. video, Diane linked previously, David Sirota skewers the hedge fund education deformers. He is the man who leads the Campaign for America’s Future and the man behind the “Looting the Pensions” article, published in Rolling Stone.
Please consider clicking on the International Business Times link above, in Diane Ravitch’s post, and add a comment supporting his work.

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mmjjbb says:

August 8, 2014 at 10:03 am

I would like to know their positions on education reforms including but not limited to: CCSS, SBAC and PAARC tests, testing in general, data collection and the changes in the FERRPA regulations, etc.

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joe prichard says:

August 8, 2014 at 10:43 am

I would like to find a reporter willing to ask them.

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Laura H. Chapman says:

August 8, 2014 at 10:47 am

Elizabeth Warren in one of 11 co-sponsors of Tom Harkin’s senate bill that extends and revises NCLB. The bill is filled with language that is charter friendly and in other ways like the Duncan Obama Gates agenda.
There is little likelihood that any members of the Senate will read and understand the implications of the unrelenting drive by federal officials to micromanage schools, teachers, and what kids learn.
Warren, like many colleagues, is a co-sponsor of 211 bills and or resolutions. The typical level of co- sponsors for a single bill is about 22. If the number exceeds 60 the bill is probably about veterans or not a bill but a resolution with no controversy attached.
The house version is, of course, framed to deregulate everything bearing on education.
This is to say that I admire Warren, but that I doubt education is priority and without a super savvy person on her staff, and aggressive preparation for the possibility that she could run against Hillary, all of the hopes for a different direction may be misplaced…again.

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Robert Rendo says:

August 8, 2014 at 11:18 am

Hill and Bill’s marriage is little more than a business arrangement, and they are both almost indistinguishable save for their physical appearance. They are both neo-liberals, corporatists, very right-of-centrist advocates, and just no darn good.

Bill is a sleaze and a pre-cursor to Obama.

Hill used to be on Walmart’s board of directors between 1986 and 1992. All that cheap crap from China, all of those trade imbalances, and our Democrat claiming to be a Democrat ended up being a Demo-crap.

Warren is still being reviewed, but at least the rhetoric she puts forth is better, and she is liked by my very own hero, Bernie Sanders; thus, I think Mr. Sander’s seeming approval is a hopeful sign added to my own independent critical thought.

Still, Hill is an excellent orator, so beware of her ability to charm everyone with her mouth. She’s no Monica Lewinsky, but she’s intelligent and cunning, making her far more embarassing and dangerous. She voted to invade Iraq. Her untalented faux-reporter journalist daughter, who has had more seat time next to Madonna at a runway in Milan, is cut from the same cloth as lascivious Bill and disingenuous Hill.

About the only thing Hill ever did that’s worth mentioning is her draft of the nation’s first nationalized healthcare system, but I’ve never read it and really question if it was as robust as even the weakest of systems, such as those in Canada and Ireland.

Of course, she did this as an insurance policy to prove to the world that she’s still an egalitarian once she;d be caught up in her Whitewater scandal and shady investments. Poor Hill and Bill lost a lot of their money in real estate. . . . Guess all those tenement houses and strip malls housing doughnut shops did not work out for them, and the Clintons did not collect much revenue or rents from the tenants . . . .

As for public education, Hill is one of THEM . . . . she never had to drink the Kool-aid; she IS the Kool-aid . . . . Just add water and mix, but don’t drink any of her rhetoric . . . It may taste good at first, but wreaks havoc on your system hours later.

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michaellangford2012 says:

August 8, 2014 at 12:35 pm

Hilary and Chelsea have teamed up with Melinda Gates for the “No Ceilings” project, collecting data on women worldwide. That InBloom server bank must be made useful somehow. I don’t believe Elizabeth Warren would join forces with Gates.

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retiredbutmissthekids says:

August 8, 2014 at 1:50 pm

Again, I recommend reading the Carl Bernstein book, “A Woman in Charge.” Especially the part about her “having” to make someone “the villains”../in this case, the Arkansas teachers.

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m4potw says:

August 8, 2014 at 5:25 pm

Dear Dr. Ravitch:

I have one personal question for you because you are an historian. How accurate in general could any historian write or recite all stories from war strategies, to all other policies in education, economy, and national and international laws?

For 37 years of living, working, learning and breathing in democratic country, Canada, I am a bit surprised at the naivete of North American people from politician, educators, and investors, bankers to working class, through the crash of stock market like gold mine, oil, and technology in making personal computer…

Would all historians have the invincible protection from powerful, rich, and evil class in order to document the truth to the best possibility of historians’ research and conscience?

From the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, President John F. Kennedy, Lady Dianna, and the sons of all wealthy families (Kennedy’s, Onassis, Dodi ? – Lady Di’s boyfriend) to the boycott of the utmost important democratic process in Teachers’ Tenure Track and Due Process Rights, I wonder at the true conscience or fear of all American politicians from all parties of Democratic and Conservative? Yes, there is still a hope from a letter from a State Commissioner of Education, Dr. Holcomb, and your impartial judgment platform.

Nobody would want to be assassinated before they can accomplish their mission. However, no economic force is more powerful than intellectual force. That is the only reason that civilization and humanity are outlived all evil control freaks/maniacs. I hope that America will have more of Dr. Holcomb and you in order to enrich the meaningful life for working people. Very respectfully yours, May King.

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