02/12/16 – JP Sottile – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all, welcome back.
On the line, I got the news vandal.
He vandalizes the news that is, you know, explains what it is that they're not explaining in the news.
Sometimes, when he writes articles.
Like this great one at consortiumnews.com, Hillary Clinton's pay-for-play reality.
And the reason I said the crack about the articles there is because he also sends out a mess of news stories every morning in, you know, the particular order of what he'd have you look at that I think is very valuable, the news vandal.
You can sign up for that at his website, newsvandal.com.
Follow him on Twitter, at News Vandal.
And then, so yeah, man, but then also the article's great.
And this one, and I really mean that because you really do cover your bases.
You start writing an article, and I'm not saying you go on and on and on too long.
But I'm saying you really make sure to nail down the points you're trying to make with solid evidence and links to your sources in a way.
Pardon me, in a way that I think is impressive and very useful.
So yeah.
Well, thank you.
I mean I really don't want to just offer an opinion and let it hang out there.
It's really about data.
It's about information.
It's about facts.
And, you know, when you think about vandalizing the news, really often what happens with news articles is that there is all kinds of disparate information out there that never gets collated, never coalesces into a cohesive point.
And that's one of the things that I like to do with my pieces.
You know, just to be another opinion writer, it would be great.
I mean it's fun and I do have opinions.
But I think it's really important to show people where the information is, and really it comes down to one thing over and over and over again.
If I write about the military industrial complex, I write about the political industrial complex, it's all about following the money.
Of course.
That's it.
I mean it's quite simple.
This is one of the fascinating things about writing this piece is, you know, it starts with Lloyd Blankfein who went on Squawk Box about a week ago, and that set off a whole thing where he said that this is a dangerous moment, you know, the Bernie Sanders campaign.
Now he didn't say Bernie Sanders specifically.
He said another kid from Brooklyn.
He said it's a dangerous moment because it could, you know, because America is sort of teetering on the brink of targeting Wall Street.
But really what he was talking about, he went on to say, and, you know, I really picked up on the dangerous moment, but what he was really concerned with was the end of political compromise in Washington, D.C., and that's what got my attention because when I think of compromise in Washington, D.C., I think of, well, don't we have this, you know, much ballyhooed gridlock and Republicans and Democrats don't come together.
Ah, but they do come together on a couple of things.
They come together on funding the military industrial complex reliably, and they also seem to come together on protecting and paving the way for Wall Street, and that's what I thought was fascinating because, for example, you know, we have this current, I don't know what you would call this, election cycle.
It's a cluster something, and if you look, when you look at the data from OpenSecrets.org, you have the securities and investment industries so far have given $17.2 million to Hillary Clinton, and they've given $34.5 million to Jeb Bush.
So you have a lot of people who are into hedging their bets and hedge funds.
Well, that's really what the political system is, and it's that kind of compromise when you have one candidate who doesn't want Wall Street's money seemingly leading the Democratic side, and you have another candidate who doesn't need their money leading on the other.
Yeah.
Well, you know, that's what I always try to say is it's the moderate so-called, the bipartisan, mushy middle that they are the real extremists when it comes to the interests of the American people.
I mean, when it comes to the wars, they're even the radical revolutionaries.
You know, if you look at Paul Wolfowitz and some of these guys, the Ledeen doctrine of create boiling cauldrons wherever you go and see what happens.
Well, right.
What was that born out of?
That's born out of – they're called scoopjacks and Democrats, but really it's born out of the presidency of a Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, and the doctrines of Woodrow Wilson that sort of carried forward all the way through into the 60s, and guys like Wolfowitz who said that they were Democrats before they switched.
Well, it's formed this what we call neoconservativism, but really there's sort of a neocon left and a neocon right.
There are neocons on both sides, and that's, you know, one of the things that I think makes Hillary Clinton so distasteful to a portion of her base.
And I think, Scott, this is a fascinating moment in both parties because even though Rand Paul – look, you know, poor Rand, poor Rand, you know, you don't launch – Oh, he don't get any sympathy here, but go ahead.
But you don't launch your campaign as a libertarian alternative in front of a warship, for example.
You just, you know, what are you going to do?
He tried to ameliorate the moderate middle, right?
This is the problem.
But inside the Republican Party, and I think one of the reasons why Donald Trump has gotten traction is because here you had a major Republican candidate criticizing the Iraq War over and over and over again.
And on the other side last night, Bernie Sanders going at Kissinger.
That's the – if you want to call it a – what is it?
A dog whistle, the not-so-subtle sign to the Democratic base that this is a break with Democratic neoconservative foreign policy ideas.
All right, so now on Hillary Clinton, she's kind of the perfect example, as you say, of this kind of moderate middle.
But, you know, what I think is probably, you know, because most criticism of her by far comes from the right, and some of that would be justified and other of it is completely ridiculous and beside the point and all that.
And then there's partisan attacks on her on the left where it's pro-Sanders types really sniping at her, but they're more likely than not to miss the point since they have their own conflict of interest in explaining the truth here.
But I wonder what you think is, you know, could you give us the highlights of which parts of her career you think that are most important for people to know in terms of the things she really did either, you know, as during her husband's administration, she had any influence there.
Like I know she, you know, argued for NAFTA and some bailouts and other things publicly.
But then, of course, she's been a senator since 2001.
She was a senator until 2009 and then was secretary of state.
So go ahead and enlighten the hell out of us, man, if you can.
Well, yeah, there are a number of ways to go.
You know, in this piece, I focused on Goldman Sachs and the speaking fees because that's the hot topic right now.
I have another piece that I am working on, and I guess I'll just go ahead and let the cat out of the bag a little bit.
I'm going to be talking about the rise of big box Democrats.
And what does that mean?
Well, you know, after Dukakis lost that incredible campaign moment when Susan Estridge put him in a tank and he looked like a bobblehead.
And, you know, that also the Willie Horton ad really sunk him.
And there was a desire among Democrats, at least among the Democratic Leadership Council, which Bill Clinton was running to shift toward a more business friendly approach.
One of the interesting things about the Clintons is they hail from Arkansas and the headquarters of Wal-Mart is from Arkansas.
And Hillary Clinton was on the board of Wal-Mart before Bill Clinton became president.
And interesting to note, you'll probably remember this because you, like me, are an old guy who's been following politics forever.
In the lead up to the 1999, 1992 election, one of the hot topics was actually Tiananmen Square in China, because the then Bush administration, Poppy Bush's administration, after Tiananmen Square happened, actually sent, I think it was Brent Scowcroft over there to shake hands with the Chinese leadership.
Of course, Herbert Walker Bush, who was sort of the where's Waldo of postwar American foreign policy, was ambassador to China for a period of time during the Nixon administration before going to the CIA and onward.
This was a big issue, a bone of contention.
And during that election, Bill Clinton promised he would promote the human rights of the Chinese people and would not extend most favored nation trading status to the Chinese.
Well, Hillary left Wal-Mart, Bill got elected, and Bill quickly changed his position.
And guess what?
MFN was a consistent policy throughout his presidency.
And who benefited most from that, from the cheap labor of China?
Wal-Mart.
All right, hold it right there.
We'll be right back with J.P. Sotili, the news vandal, newsvandal.com, right after this.
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All right, kids, welcome back.
I'm Scott.
This is my show, Scott Horton Show, ScottHorton.org, Liberty Radio Network, et cetera, et cetera, Twitter and all that.
OK.
ConsortiumNews.com is where I found this article here.
Hillary Clinton's Pay for Play Reality by J.P. Sotili, the News Vandal, NewsVandal.com.
Sign up for his morning email.
It'll help you out.
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Make it easy on you.
So the article is about how Blankfein went on TV and said, oh, my God, can you imagine if Sanders got up there?
He's winger enough that he's, you know, outside the consensus enough that he might actually oppose a bailout or something like that.
And we can't have that.
And we're terrified.
And so, boy, do we support Hillary Clinton.
I think he was more or less saying there as though we didn't know that.
But good, good politics on his part.
Good, good self-awareness on his part coming out for Hillary like that right now.
Just like John Kerry calling the Islamic State apostates.
Oh, yeah, that's really a judgment call for you to make, Mr. Protestant.
Anyway, but so anyway, point being that here you are writing about Hillary Clinton and her role in the economy, her role in the Iron Triangle system that is the Imperial Court of Washington, D.C.
And you mentioned Walmart.
And I'd like to stick up for the libertarians here.
We are all very much against any restrictions on trade between people in foreign countries.
But that does not necessarily mean we support any kind of fast track deal for Bill Clinton to approve any kind of shady deal that would certainly fall outside of what any libertarian would support.
I mean, right off the bat, it includes all kinds of intellectual property in that.
So we shouldn't conflate those things.
I would be we libertarians would be as opposed as you to those same deals is what I'm trying to say.
Wouldn't you say that the issue is not that there is that these are free trade deals, is that these are actually sweetheart deals in which government intervention actually facilitates the movement of capital, the shifting of labor markets?
That's really the problem with a lot of these deals.
There is a braid as my co-host on my other show, which I'll be doing later today inside the headlines, like to say there's a braid between government and business that happens.
So I actually – And that was no secret back then.
I remember Bill Clinton saying, yes, we're implementing all these programs to promote globalization, like we will subsidize the cost of moving your company overseas.
And if the locals come with pitchforks and torches and burn it down, we'll pay the cost of that.
They had a whole thing.
It was just like we'll guarantee your bank deposit, right?
But it was we'll guarantee your – the U.S. government will guarantee your overseas investments.
And these guys think they never even mind.
Of course the Navy is providing free security at the average schmuck who lost his job's expense for all these companies to float all their goods back and forth all the time, which is a huge cost.
You saw that piece I wrote about Mother Nature's invisible hand and the hydrocarbon economy.
If you look at the oil business, the hydrocarbon economy as I like to call it, it's the most heavily subsidized business in the history of mankind.
And one of the biggest parts of that subsidy, that subsidization is the U.S. defense budget.
I mean why would the United States government put half a billion dollars into upgrading facilities for the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain?
Is it because the American people have a special relationship with the Bahraini people or is it because that's how you protect the oil and gas industry's investments in the Middle East?
It's very, very simple.
And a good way to put it too, not America's investment there but particular interests at the expense of the rest of us.
That's right.
Now back to Hillary, this whole moving on free trade, obviously she supported NAFTA.
You had her husband being against MFN and then for MFN by the end of his administration, he is able to push through permanent MFN status.
Walmart then becomes basically the biggest private employer in America and pushes out all kinds of small businesses, mom and pop businesses as they're often called.
And not ironically or I guess not coincidentally is how I should say it.
Now you have Walmart's closing around the country and leaving communities totally decimated because their access to goods and services has now been destroyed by Walmart which is now leaving.
So now where are they going to go shopping because all the mom and pop stores are gone.
That's sort of like the way this kind of crony capitalism kind of works.
But another – Of course they steal all the land.
They use the local governments to use eminent domain to give them free land and then of course all the tax abatements and whatever.
The excuse for the eminent domain is but they're going to pay so much more property taxes.
But then no, they give them a sweetheart deal where no, they don't have to.
And then they're gone.
Let me give you another one.
How about CAFTA?
This is the – no, excuse me, not CAFTA.
I confuse CAFTA sometimes with the Columbian Free Trade Agreement.
You had the Columbian Free Trade Agreement.
I think it was signed in 2006 but it wasn't getting approved and it was an issue in the 2008 campaign.
Hillary Clinton was against it and then when she became secretary of state, she was for it and she helped catalyze its eventual approval.
Well, interesting to note, there's a big Canadian mining magnate named Frank Giustra.
And Frank Giustra had a lot of mining interests in Columbia and lo and behold, guess what?
He's also given tens of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation and likes to fly around on his private jet with Bill Clinton.
David Sirota over at the International Business Times did amazing work on this and there's another example.
Now, anytime there's an opportunity to cut a deal or to pave the way for some corporate interests, whatever they might be, whether it's banking or otherwise, it seems that Hillary ends up on the other side of the issue from where she said she was initially.
And this is one of those common triangulations that has made the Clinton name, the Clinton brand very untrustworthy with a lot of voters.
And the untrustworthy numbers among democratic voters in exit polling, particularly in New Hampshire, are striking.
And I think a lot of it has to do with this general sense that people have that say one thing, do another.
Ultimately, on all of these issues, and this is a point that I made in the piece, is that there really isn't an identifiable quid pro quo in Congress among Republicans and Democrats for all the money that's given to them.
And really the sad fact is people don't have to change their votes.
They are simpatico from the get-go and you can't say, well, X gave a million dollars to Y and Y changed votes as a result.
They never have to change their votes because their votes are already baked into the cake before it ever starts.
Absolutely.
In fact, her statement here that you quote is almost verbatim what Bill Clinton said in 1996 about the Chinese government's investment in his reelection when he said, I don't think you can find any evidence of the fact that I change any evidence of the fact that I changed any policy solely due to a campaign contribution, which is a very lawyerly thing.
Yeah.
He doesn't have any confidence in your journalistic skills.
That's it.
He made himself clear.
That's all.
And he was talking to NBC and whatever.
So he was right.
Oh, my.
Well, look, do you want to open up the whole Bernie Schwartz and Laurel space and communication?
Hell yes.
Oh, come on.
I mean, this is one of those things that just drives me up the wall, particularly since we had North Korea just happen.
Right.
And now we're going to get the missile defense there.
Well, missile defense was dying on the vine before Bernie Schwartz went over to China with with Ron Brown, cut a deal to give the Chinese the gyroscopes that would allow their intercontinental ballistic missiles to finally actually cross the Pacific and hit the United States, which then all of a sudden became the predicate for refunding missile defense when missile defense was looked like it was going the way of the dodo.
Yep.
And in fact, they even gave James Riyadi, the guy from the Lippo Bank, they gave his right hand man the job in the Commerce Department of putting the stamp on the approval for the transfers after they stripped the authority away from defense and state and gave it to the Commerce Department.
And so, look, that was talk about direct quid pro quo.
They didn't even have to do it that way, but they did.
Yeah.
And this is a consistent pattern.
And look, we're picking on the Clintons on a sense because in a sense, because here she is, she's running and builds up on the stage with her and whatnot.
This is both sides.
This happens on both sides.
There's no doubt we can just we can go through both Bush administrations and we can find all kinds of examples.
I mean, just just as you said, it's all baked into the whole thing.
That's what Washington, D.C. is.
It's an imperial court.
Which is why I did Republic here.
This is the empire, which is why Trump and Sanders are getting the traction they're getting no matter how distasteful Sanders socialism is or Trump's.
I don't know what you would call it.
Trump's demagoguery, demagoguery is right.
It's really the essential through line is that the American people are actually alive and kicking and they're kicking back and they're and they're hitting back there.
Finally, this is in many ways, I think, a referendum on the financial crisis, which is one of the greatest rip offs in human history and and the Iraq war, which is another financially speaking, one of the great rip offs in American history.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And of course, you know, the the powers that be were in a real tough spot, too, where they're basically stuck literally with another Clinton and another Bush, which is really bad marketing at this point.
Like we're tired, but that was really the best they had to put forward.
So they found themselves screwed up here a little bit.
I still don't think Sanders stands a chance against her in the long run.
But anyway, thanks very much, man.
Sorry, we got to go.
Take care.
JP Soteli, everybody.
The News Vandal Consortium News dot com.
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