I appreciate the humor of Barbara’s recent tweet, but I’m not having it. She, as well as the rest of us understand that the relationship between Goldman, Hillary and George isn’t about pay equality, it’s about the fact that Goldman owns both Clinton and George. Perhaps she should have tweeted asking Hillary why she sold out so cheaply?
Back when Benjamin Franklin was still alive, he went off to France, and the French King gave Benjamin a beautiful diamond encrusted snuff box that became the stuff of legend. That box started discussions about conflict of interest, corruption, bribery, and gifts from the powerful, to the influential. It isn’t rocket science, for two hundred years we recognized that it was a bad thing for politicians to accept gifts from people over whom they needed to legislate. It isn’t rocket science, rich people don’t give gifts to politicians for kicks or because they are nice. They do it to gain influence. It isn’t rocket science, we used to recognize that even the appearance of a conflict of interest was to be avoided; now we accept it wholeheartedly.
Given the shellacking that the Democrats and Obama gave the banks over the mortgage fiasco, when he came into power, you’d think we wouldn’t be concerned. Wait, did I say shellacking, I should have said TARP bailout and pass on all criminal charges. How anyone can think that we shouldn’t be concerned over a 14 trillion dollar crime that got a pass, after the banks ushered Obama into power, escapes me. How anyone can think that Hillary will do anything differently than Obama did, also escapes me. At what point do we realize we’ve returned to the gilded age, when robber barons bought and traded politicians like they were baseball cards?
Hillary Clinton isn’t some innocent babe. As has been pointed out, she’s good at her job, and quite qualified. That shouldn’t mean that she knows the inside of donor’s wallets, and it shouldn’t mean that she accepts that she has to do a certain amount of soul selling to become President. Like the founders of this country, she should realize that accepting a snuff box from a King, even if it is simply the King of Wall Street, is a corruption. We should all understand this and stop pretending it is anything else.