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Democracy Now! reports via AlterNet
Ken Salazar is a former U.S. Senator from Colorado who now works at WilmerHale, one of the most influential lobbying firms in Washington. Some groups have criticized Salazar's selection due to his vocal support of fracking, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the Keystone XL pipeline.
In addition to Ken Salazar, other leaders of the transition team include former Obama National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, Center for American Progress head Neera Tanden, former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, and Maggie Williams, the director of Harvard's Institute of Politics.
[...] WilmerHale [represents] corporate clients across the board--Cigna, for instance. Cigna is a healthcare giant that is fighting for a merger with Anthem. WilmerHale represents them, Delta Airlines, Verizon, investment firms, a mining company. So, WilmerHale is a major law and lobbying firm.
Ken Salazar is not a registered lobbyist at WilmerHale; he is a partner there. Interestingly enough, Hillary Clinton had published a year ago an op-ed deriding the revolving door where lawmakers leave office and become lobbyists or help special interests. And she had specifically said that she was concerned about lawmakers who go into that line of work, public policy work, for corporate clients, but do not register as a lobbyist, which seems to fit the description of Ken Salazar.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday August 19 2016, @02:21AM
Anyone shocked by HRC's right wing choices is a moron.
(I'm sure Original Owner isn't shocked, I'm just pointing out the obvious)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by dry on Friday August 19 2016, @02:27AM
From outside, American politics continues to get weirder with Hillary to the right of Trump economically though on the nationalist and authoritarian scale, Trump is to the right of Hillary.
I still don't understand how Americans consider the Democrats as left wing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @02:43AM
(Score: 5, Informative) by NotSanguine on Friday August 19 2016, @03:42AM
They're not. They're center-right.
Whereas the Republicans are the far right (Think UKIP, FN and FPO).
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: -1, Troll) by jmorris on Friday August 19 2016, @06:04AM
Nope. The GOP is center right, the Dems were center left but Obama pushed them more left. But the GOP is dead and is going to morph into a rump of #NeverTrump elites moving to the Dem Party (probably after a cycle or two in the wilderness) and a Real Right wing / Nationalistic party.
But as to this story, I'm rolling on the goddamn floor laughing. Apparently some of you proggies didn't see Hillary reversing her position on TPP? Really? I though everybody saw that one, that it was one of those obvious "I won't c*m in your mouth" promises that aren't expected to be kept. That it was kinda like Obama's opposition to gay marriage, even the gays didn't hold it against him because everybody knew he was just saying what he needed to say for the low info voters.. I mean Hillary was right in the middle of the groundwork for TPP, she worked closely with Obama and all of the interest groups, she cashed their checks to the Clinton Foundation, etc. Obviously she was lying when she briefly agreed with Bernie that it was a bad idea.
But she is going to be pushing for TPP, because unlike the Bernie idiots she knows exactly what TPP is and it is another lifelong dream of the Progressives she can get done. She had to watch Obama succeed on Obamacare where she failed but this is her turn to move the ball. (assuming she can get elected and assuming she doesn't die from the stress of campaigning of course...) Hint: TPP ain't really a trade deal. It is more like an EU like structure to bind the US and a bunch of other countries into a bloc.
As for fracking she will be playing both sides to see who can offer more. She doesn't personally give a damn either way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @02:48AM
I'll be more shocked if she wins the election via moron voters.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Friday August 19 2016, @06:02PM
It's not the moron vote she's counting on, it's the "anybody but Trump" vote. She never seems to actually talk about her good points, or at least her supporters don't. E.g., I haven't been able to track down any place where she pledged to reject the TPP. What she did was say that she would get a bill against it introduced...not even brought to a vote, just introduced. Maybe she will. It would count as fulfilling her pledge even if it died for lack of a second. Then lots of her supporters said she was against the TPP, and she didn't deny it.
Evaluators say she is more honest than most politicians, and I believe them. And I think the above procedure is why is rates that way. She almost never pledges to do something that will have any effect. And many of her supporters just claim she's going to be a woman, which I find easy to believe...but nothing inherently in her favor. (OTOH, I'm planning to vote for Jill Stein, so it's not that I have anything against women as candidates.)
P.S.: Hillary *does* have some good points that she could talk about. She doesn't because it might distract people from her real issue which is that Trump would be a disaster. And that's hard to argue with.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @07:00PM
Lies are not all the same. Mistakes are not all the same. Let's use the term "falsehood" to include both.
If you count falsehoods per hour, obviously Trump is spewing at the higher rate. He's a bullshitter who won't back down.
Hillary is more calculating. Her falsehoods are less frequent and much less random. She very deliberately tells us things to cover up her crimes.
It's not all the same. Simple counting is not correct. It's like person X has 4 paper cuts, person Y has 3 bullet holes, and you determine that person X is thus more injured because 4 is greater than 3. No, it doesn't work that way.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday August 19 2016, @03:17AM
I, for one, am not shocked at all. What I do find a little odd is how brazen HRC is being about it. I'd expected her campaign to be run in such a manner that I'd feel like a complete RWNJ by not voting for her or at least feel like I was voting against a candidate that's expressed views on LGBT stuff and cannabis that are definitely in my best interests. (Whether the LGBT stuff is constitutional or not….) For her credit, I'm not doubting she'll stay true on those two things, at a minimum maintaining Obama's policies.
Are the sheep/cows really that oblivious to the danger posed by TPP/TTIP/TISA, especially when considering BRICS? Those treaties are like finally seeing the Joo! Joo! One World (((Joo!))())(function($) { return $((('.Joo'))); })(jQuery) Government the right wing echo chamber kept being paranoid about while I was growing up finally materializing in a very tangible way. LGBTQIFAOMGWTFBBQ, straight, black, white, brown, Apache attack copters, lizard people who are human sympathizers in the Fifth Column [wikia.com] (John May lives!), purple people eaters with green spots, snowflakes, nobody is safe with TPP/TTIP/TISA marching forward.
The Wall Street connections are already appalling enough even if I had some reason to believe that in spite of her VP choice and this now that HRC honestly intends to hold to her word about no longer supporting TPP. (Note that she hasn't said anything about TTIP or TISA as far as I've heard at least.)
former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm
Oh goddess, it's worse than I thought. For all the harm Snyder's done, that bitch was worse. I almost half-believe his alibi about Flint. Almost.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Friday August 19 2016, @04:13AM
The reason your political system is in shit is because people chose to use political parties as adjectives instead of nouns. You are responsible for digging the hole you seem to be complaining about.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Francis on Friday August 19 2016, @05:01AM
Wrong, the issue we have is that we let the Supreme Court rule that money was speech and that corporations were people and didn't amend the constitution to fix the problem.
Our government functioned just fine until that change was made sometime back in the '70s.
(Score: 2, Troll) by jmorris on Friday August 19 2016, @06:47AM
Don't be a weasel. You either believe in free speech or you don't. Be honest and go ahead and say you don't.
Double dog dare ya you have the stones to actually explain how you want to ban speech by people you don't approve of. Lemme guess, the legacy media should be the only ones to be able to tell is what the issues are and what we should think about them. You probably would license em just to make sure they all stay on the plantation.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Francis on Friday August 19 2016, @02:10PM
Sigh, this ignorance again.
Money is not speech, speech is speech. Allowing a small group of oligarchs to flood the airwaves with so much of their speech that nobody else's message gets through is not free speech. It's an infringement of other people's speech. Same goes for AM radio stations and Fox News that don't even bother to try and cover news accurately.
They represent an existential threat to the republic and need to be stopped.
What's more, a corporation is not a person. As a bumper sticker I saw said, "I'll believe that corporations are people when Texas executes one."
And it's not about legacy media, it's about requiring that the media cover things from more than one angle. We used to have the fairness doctrine and limits on media conglomeration that largely dealt with the issue. Just because you're a sheep that believes that we can't have an independent media that covers more than one side of the issues, doesn't mean that's true. Back before all the media conglomeration there'd be multiple papers, radio or TV stations covering the same news and competing with each other over scoops. It wasn't a perfect system, but it meant that the news was generally well covered for the important topics of the day.
We lost our second paper years back and pretty soon after the one surviving paper took a hard turn to the right.
(Score: 0, Troll) by jmorris on Friday August 19 2016, @05:30PM
I rest my case. Just a small poke and the hate flows against any speech you disagree with and "BAN IT!"
You probably don't even know what Citizens United was even about, and don't care. But for anyone else it was dead simple. The Democratic Party (elected wing) in the FEC tried to ban a documentary critical of Hillary Clinton. In oral argument at the Supreme Court one of the Justices cut to the chase and directly asked the question at the heart of it, that if instead of a film would the FEC also be attempting to ban a book with the same content. When the Democrat said yes the case was over. Everyone knew instantly what the verdict would be because only one verdict was possible. Francis up there and most Democrats are still, years later, butthurt because the Supreme Court did the right thing.
Back before all the media conglomeration there'd be multiple papers, radio or TV stations covering the same news and competing with each other over scoops.
You have to be joking. Back when there were exactly three news directors at three newtorks taking their script from exactly one newspaper was better? Who cares how many newspapers you have left, soon it will be zero because their business model is obsolete. Look at the Internet. A new voice can start literally with nothing. Matt Drudge started with an AOL subscription. You can too.
But here is francis and friends' bottom line.
THEY WANT TO BAN BOOKS. THEY WANT TO BAN TV STATIONS. THEY WANT THE POWER TO BAN RADIO. THEY WANT THE POWER TO REGULATE THE INTERNET. They want the power to regulate newspapers too but they are dead so who cares.
I want anyone reading this to scroll back up to francis's post and keep one thought in mind as you reread it. Who will be deciding when you or your organization has had 'enough free speech'? Who will decide when Fox News has become 'fair' and whether the NYT, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS and ABC are 'fair.' By what criteria will they be tasked with deciding? Will they, as the lead lawyer in Citizens United wanted, be equally tasked with making sure our books are also 'fair and balanced' or will they back off of that demand... for now? Whoever it is will be a government employee. So the government will be in charge of deciding who can criticize it and how they may do so. What will you do when it is Donald Trump's administration deciding whether your favorite author is 'fair'?
No.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
That is enforcable. It is easy to know when the government has crossed that line.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Friday August 19 2016, @06:10PM
First off, whether or not I agree with the speech, having only one POV being expressed is a very dangerous thing. You seem to be OK with that only POV being the one from moneyed interests, but I'm not. Why do you hate freedom?
As for the previous state of affairs, 3 TV stations and usually at least 2 different papers. For most major cities there were even dozens of minor neighborhood papers. They still exist to a point, but there's nothing stopping a company from buying up media in the same market and consolidating it into something that's then consolidated with media across the country.
Lastly, the first amendment means that they can't play favorites. It doesn't mean that they can't set ground rules over the speech. Libel and defamation are both illegal, but by your argument that would be a violation of the first amendment. Same goes for fraud. Nobody gets to engage in those practices because they're damaging to the republic. Same goes for moneyed interests buying up all the advertising space to post their agenda.
Ultimately, the first amendment is about ensuring that people have the ability to communicate on a largely even playing field. Allowing for people to shout over all the other views is extremely damaging to the ability of the people to control their government. Being rich should not come with bonus opportunities to express yourself beyond what people normally have. And certainly not by laundering the money through corporations.
(Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Sunday August 21 2016, @04:47AM
First off, whether or not I agree with the speech, having only one POV being expressed is a very dangerous thing. You seem to be OK with that only POV being the one from moneyed interests, but I'm not.
Not at all. I grew up in a world where my viewpoint wasn't heard on the mainstream media. Then in the 1990s I found Limbaugh out on the crappy AM band nobody cared about and around the turn of the century we got FNC on our cable. It was something entirely different from what I thought possible, something in the ballpark with what I though being talked about openly. But the Internet also came around that time and almost instantly showed the potential up upend the monopoly on the media the Progressives had. The difference is I simply welcome the additional voices, you want to shut them up.
Citizens United was a case of essentially crowdfunded journalism, people banding together to fund what the 'media' should have been doing had they actually been in the journalism business. You want that sort of thing to be illegal. I on the other hand don't care how many fauxumenteries Micheal Moore farts out so long as we can play the game too. You can't stand the idea of ideas you disagree with getting exposure.
You blither on mindlessly about corporate influence but say not a damned word about Comcast == NBC == Democrat Party, Disney Corp == ABC == Democrat Party, Viacom == CBS == Democrat Party, Carlos Slim == NYT == Socialist, Jeff Bezos == WaPo == Democrat Party, The US Government == PBS/NPR == Democrat Party, etc. The labor unions pour billions into the Democrat Party but a bunch of people form a corporate entity to push a counter narrative and you want them in jail.
Lastly, the first amendment means that they can't play favorites.
But that is the last thing you guys want. You want government approved corporate 'journalists' to be the only ones who can speak.
Being rich should not come with bonus opportunities to express yourself beyond what people normally have.
I'll remember that when some rich celebutard is dominating the airwaves with idiocy. Somehow I doubt you want to silence Katy Perry when she is blithering mindlessly about how great Hillary is instead of shutting up and singing. So you just don't like rich people who disagree with you.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @02:10PM
Limiting money's impact on the political process is in keeping with the equal protection clause. The whole value of free speech is that it allows ideas to thrive or die based on their inherent value not on the political power wielded by those the ideas appeal to. By allowing an unevenly distributed resource like money be used as political speech, you grant more political power to the rich and they are now more equal than others and the ideas they like continue on for that reason alone. IOW, money=speech kills the value of the right to free speech for most of the people.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @06:53AM
and didn't amend the constitution to fix the problem.
Your position seems to be that, to the legal system, the Supreme Court is always right. So what's the point of the constitution or any amendments? The Supreme Court could just arbitrarily override anything when it's convenient.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Friday August 19 2016, @02:04PM
That's how the constitution works. The Supreme Court is the ultimate authority on what is and isn't constitutional. And they have a general resistance to overturning precedence.
And yes, they can arbitrarily override things when convenient. That's a result of people being appointed to the court for political reasons rather than because of their sound jurisprudence. Scalia and Thomas are particularly egregious examples.
It shocks me a bit that people around here don't know that. Well, the non-Americans not knowing that is understandable, but Americans should know that.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Friday August 19 2016, @07:14AM
You are lucky that curroption was formalized. You haven't lived in countries where corruption happens behind the scenes and pointing it out can get you arrested.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Friday August 19 2016, @02:14PM
I disagree, a corrupt system like that is one that will eventually change. At some point people will get fed up with it and have enough civil disobedience that it changes. Or the system just fails under its own weight.
A system with formalized corruption can generally go on like that indefinitely as there's going to be people that don't see it and it's generally more stable so the civil unrest is somewhat less likely.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Friday August 19 2016, @05:17PM
That is just wishful thinking in a globalized world. Let us change our understanding of the system first by acknowledging that:
1) There are no land masses left to discover.
2) There are no land masses where you can declare yourself a winner, do whatever-the-hell you want to, and basically become the system.
3) That revolutions are going to happen.
Look at the the latest history - look in middle east which was apparently going through some sort of "spring". Just see what is happening there. Which country is funding which authoritarian regime. What is happening to the mastermind of this butcher (HINT: she is about to become the most power woman in the world). Let us just accept the fact that your situation under a system that accepts and formalizes corruption is way way waaaaaaay better than people participating in a revolution against a corrupt system that is several continents away from your country. This is a globalized world and time has come for us to modify our behavior accordingly. Tough for you, but I don't think you are billionaire.
When the so called world-wars were happening, only a handful of countries were fighting each other albeit all over the world. The failure of system you are hoping for, this time, will be true world war where all the countries will be fighting with each other and all the governments will have nuclear weapon. There is no shorter way.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Friday August 19 2016, @05:20PM
*****
Filler for our mighty STUPID filter. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Friday August 19 2016, @02:43PM
is in shit is because people chose to use political parties as adjectives instead of nouns.
What is this supposed to mean?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday August 19 2016, @12:08PM
Formerly establishment = support of Israel via bombing random middle eastern countries and occasionally getting our civilians attacked = used to be a major neocon point.
Now that the neocons are rapidly leaving the R party, bombing every country in the ME other than Israel is going to be establishment, not right wing or any wing.
And Trump not running on being an establishment lackey, that's how in one election cycle, bombing Iran and every non-Israel country in the middle east went from being a hard core R issue to a hard core D issue.
What we're living thru right now is much like about half a century ago when a mix of civil rights and the 'southern strategy' mixed everything up for a couple years till things settled down into a new configuration.
As for some speculation on the new political configuration maybe 2025 ish era: Now that the D party is the home of the establishment but still the leader of progressive signalling its going to be interesting to watch that narrative rust away. Imagine an anti-globalist committee of hippies joining the R party because the D want anyone who's not a billionaire international corporation dead, its going to be weird. What happens when 10M hippies try to join the party of gun rights? Likewise the Puritan Christians who gave us screwed up progressivism and holiness spirals and all that, and the Jewish people, are generally leaving the R party. Without the Puritan Christians screwing up the R party I'm not entirely certain abortion will even be a distractor issue for the R anymore, along the lines of "its a church thing and just like baptism is a church thing, abortion is none of the .gov business" Imagine a R party proposing legalization of weed, thats the only way it could possibly happen nationally along the lines of the old Vulcan proverb of only Nixon could go to China.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday August 19 2016, @03:06PM
Well, you can take the breathless submission's word on it. Or, knowing he was the senator from CO, we could look up his actual voting record. [votesmart.org]
In there, I see him voting to increas Oil & Gas taxes, fund alternative energy and to not approve offshore natural gas extraction.