Clinton strongly opposes the proposed merger of pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Allergan.
Bloomberg reports:
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says proposed merger in which Allergan, Pfizer agreed to combine in deal valued at $160b “will leave U.S. taxpayers holding the bag.”
“For too long, powerful corporations have exploited loopholes that allow them to hide earnings abroad to lower their taxes. Now Pfizer is trying to reduce its tax bill even further,” Clinton says in e-mailed statement.
“In the weeks ahead, I will propose specific steps to prevent these kind of transactions, which take advantage of loopholes that litter our tax code, distort incentives for investment, and disadvantage small businesses and domestic firms that cannot game the international tax system.”
Clinton visited a substance abuse clinic and held a campaign rally in Reno, Nevada yesterday.
The Reno Gazette-Journal reports:
Clinton touched on a slew of her usual campaign themes, including increased gun control, equal pay for women, immigration reform, free public college education, reforming student debt and combating the Islamic State without putting American troops on the ground in the Middle East. She also received an endorsement from Assemblywoman Amber Joiner of Reno, who introduced Clinton to the crowd.
Clinton reserved most of her criticism for the Republican Party instead of her challengers, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, including saying the country is four times more likely to experience a recession under a Republican president.
“The only way Republicans can win this election is if they induce a state of amnesia in all of us,” she said.
Leslie Herman, 57, of Reno, said she thought of the rally as a historic moment given the possibility Clinton could become the first woman president.
“Aside from the fact that she’s female, she’s brilliant,” she said. “It’s just a huge moment. My daughter, who is going to vote for the first time, for her to get to see this is just completely historic and monumental.”
Clinton was also successful in courting some voters who were on the fence between her and Sanders. Kristin Warren of Carson City said she liked Sanders, but Clinton’s speech appealed to nearly all aspects of her life: free education for her children, a commitment to keep her son-in-law in the Army out of the Middle East and reform to the health care industry where she works.
“There wasn’t one thing where I said, ‘Oh, that’s it!’” she said. “I’m not a one-issue voter. So I think everything she touched on is something that has to do with me and my life and things that are important to me.”
She also spoke with local media about her record of fighting against Wall Street.
The Reno Gazette-Journal reports:
“I was proud to represent New York and I was very willing to stand up and advocate for policies that I thought were in the best interest of our country that went against what you might call Wall Street interests,” she said.
“Under Dodd-Frank, banks will be allowed to fail if they are on the brink of doing so,” she said. “I’ve said I would break up banks and allow banks to fail if they once again got themselves into a position where they needed to be bailed out.”
One reason many economic experts cite for the massive financial downturn is the repeal of Glass-Steagall, a Depression-era law separating investment banking from commercial banking.
However, Clinton said reinstating Glass-Steagall would not fix the problem as other companies in other sectors, including AIG, Lehman Brothers and Countrywide, would be left untouched.
“They are not covered by Glass-Steagall,” she said. “If all you do is reinstate Glass-Steagall, you miss half of what caused the problem at the very least in ‘07-‘08, and you miss future problems that can be caused by entities besides the big banks.”
She added legislation needed to go further, including her plan to impose fees on banks that want to engage in risky trading. She said the real threat to Wall Street reform were Republicans’ desire to lessen regulations.
“They’re still beating the same drum which is why we’ve got to defend Dodd-Frank and go further and why it’s really important if you care about these issues you have a president who will not go along with the Republicans in Congress. Otherwise we’d be back to all bets are off,” she said.
Boston mayor Marty Walsh is preparing to endorse Clinton, leaving Senator Elizabeth Warren as the only major Massachusetts Democrat with an endorsement still up for grabs.
The Boston Globe reports:
The Democratic presidential candidate will hold a grassroots organizing meeting with Boston Mayor Marty Walsh at Faneuil Hall.
The Boston Globe reported Thursday that Walsh will endorse Clinton at the event now that his friend Vice President Joe Biden is out of the picture.
“They’ve had a number of great conversations,” a source told the Globe’s Jim O’Sullivan.
According to a press release, Clinton and Walsh will launch “Hard Hats for Hillary,” a coalition of pro-Clinton working families in construction, building, transportation and other labor industries.
Clinton’s endorsement strength has become more visible as she releases her state leadership teams, but attention is also turning to her delegate slates for individual states. The current state in the spotlight is Illinois.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
The Illinois Clinton camp has filled the 102 slots allocated to the 18 congressional districts under Democratic National Committee and Democratic Party of Illinois formulas requiring gender equity and diversity.
The slate is balanced to reflect all races, sexual orientations, the young and people with disabilities – mandates that are not a part of the GOP delegate rules.
Clinton Illinois had an unusual approach to recruiting delegates, which included an application process — and some 500 applied, Conlon said. The folks running to be pledged Clinton delegates to the DNC convention in Philadelphia next summer “will become the face of the campaign” in Illinois, Conlon said.
Finally, one of the strongest pieces about “Hillary Hate” that I’ve ever read, courtesy of Sady Doyle at Global Comment. It’s a lengthy and well-supported article. Please read the whole thing!
She is a strong defender of reproductive health care: Planned Parenthood hailed the announcement of Clinton’s candidacy, in a press release proclaiming that “there has not been a candidate for president with a stronger commitment to women or a clearer record on behalf of women’s health and rights,” and she has been the first candidate to bring up the attempts to de-fund Planned Parenthood in both Democratic debates. (In the second debate, she was also the only candidate to even mention it.) She has consistently and uniquely centered the role of women and girls in foreign policy, beginning with her historic 1995 speech in Beijing — “human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights” — and continuing throughout her time as Secretary of State, and has been credited by some with breaking the long-held but unspoken rule that women had to be “tougher” (meaning: more militaristic and conservative) than men in order to be seen as credible on the international stage.
She is not a do-it-alone feminist or a personal exceptionalist; she has consistently worked to promote and foster female leadership, everything from hiring many women as key campaign staffers to mentoring Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, one of the very few women who’s been put forward as a potential Presidential candidate for the next generation. She has worked to frame gun control and police violence as women’s issues; she is the only candidate so far to make the domestic violence crisis part of her platform, advocating to close loopholes that allow domestic abusers and convicted stalkers to obtain guns. And on the topic of violence against women — and this is particularly delightful for those of us who have certain key reservations about feminists of Clinton’s generation — she has been actively campaigning to address transgender rights and needs, including what she has called “the crisis of transphobic violence.”
I respect feminists, like Geier, who are debating whether Clinton is a perfect feminist. She is not. Nor am I. Nor is any feminist or woman I know. There are valid critiques of her gender politics; again, Clinton has work to do, particularly on racial justice, in order to be the best feminist she can be. Yet Clinton is, in fact, a good feminist, and an unprecedentedly electable feminist, and I would argue that levels of feminism would most likely not even be a subject of debate if she were not in the running. (I like Sanders’ record on certain feminist issues, but for all his strengths, he seemingly subscribes to the old-school lefty theory that class is the determining factor in all oppressions — an approach that tends to invariably marginalize issues of identity as “less important,” and which much feminism, including socialist feminism, has been built around refuting.) When was the last time you debated whether a male Presidential candidate was a great feminist, or merely a good one? When was the last time you questioned whether a male candidate was qualified to represent all men?
Those are the questions to ask yourself. Because this is when the issue snaps into focus. Hillary-hate isn’t just big, obvious declarations that she is a monster. Hillary-hate is also the double standards, the quiet elisions and distortions. It’s what happens when Ben Norton, one of the loudest and most vehement critics of Clinton’s Iraq War vote, advocates for Joe Biden’s candidacy without mentioning that Biden also voted for the Iraq War. It’s what happens when H.A. Goodman declares that voting for Clinton would be a violation of his principles, because she’s too much like a Republican — even though he was openly planning to vote for an actual Republican, Rand Paul, last year. It’s the fact that Hillary has to pass all the same tests that men do, plus several they are never required to take, and that she always has to score twice as high just to get a passing grade. As, for example, in the Democratic race, where she is consistently framed as a risky candidate to nominate, despite literally scoring twice as high as her nearest competition.
And whether or not you like Hillary Clinton, that has a massive impact. This is how little girls learn to doubt their own competence, to play down their ambition or intelligence. This is how little boys learn to treat little girls with contempt. It is how a new generation of young left-wing men is learning that they can leverage sexism to get their way, and that they can deal with women’s criticism — no matter how accomplished those women may be as progressive voices — by condemning those women for “playing the victim,” or calling them insufficiently leftist. It may be how young left-wing women learn that, if they see or experience sexism from the men in their lives, their only safe option is to be quiet and look the other way. And it’s why some white men are able to claim that they care more about marginalized groups than those women do, while also saying that if Hillary gets the nomination, they will attempt to split the Democratic vote and bring on a Republican administration that would be unmitigatedly disastrous and oppressive for immigrants, people of color, the poor, GLBT people, and (oh, yeah) women.
Crossposted at HillaryHQ, an independent, progressive blog committed to the electing Hillary Clinton as the next President of the United States.