In this election cycle, there is only one major presidential
candidate who has meaningful goals towards curbing the immense concentration of
economic and political power of billionaires and corporate interests and
redistributing it back to the people: Senator Bernie Sanders.
If Bernie doesn’t get the nomination, I will not
#SettleWithHillary. Honestly, if she ran a clean campaign as a proud moderate
and did not have all the baggage she has, I might have reluctantly voted for
her. Instead, having already been effectively disenfranchised by the electoral
college in Texas, I will be voting Green instead in the hopes that they can
gain 5 percent of the vote and get access to federal funding.
My staunch opposition to Hillary comes from four areas:
First, Hillary has no
real plan for addressing the institutional corruption of American governance
via the campaign finance system.
As
I’ve noted in a previous post, Congress is severely paralyzed and unlikely
to pass anything meaningful unless there is comprehensive campaign finance
reform. None of the issues we care most deeply about – climate change, health
care, progressive taxation, financial reform, decriminalized drug policy, or
education reform – can be substantially changed without addressing the immense
power special interests groups have on the election of congressmen and the way
they govern.
While Hillary has proposed
a modest
publicly financed campaign system in the form of matching small donations,
she hasn’t done much to address the problem of big donors in politics. Here’s
her specific proposal:
Hillary will establish a
small-donor matching system for presidential and congressional elections to
incentivize small donors to participate in elections.
As the costs of running a campaign continue to skyrocket,
congressmen will inevitably become more dependent on big donors over time. Campaigns
are unlikely to meaningfully track the issues small donors care about; however,
for bigger donors who give close to the legal limit of $2,700, their concerns
are taken seriously. And this still gives lobbyists a lot of power, for they
could multiply their influence by bundling multiple donors who max out, or
threatening to raise large sums of money for opponents if a congressman demurs
on their concerns.
In addition, this system can potentially support speech we
fundamentally oppose. Just imagine your taxpayer money going to fund the
campaign of Ted Cruz. Or Donald Trump. Or Mitch McConnell. Yeah.
What’s worse, the way Hillary has campaigned so far inspires
little confidence in her willingness to push even her modest proposal. She has
raised
close to $190 million in Super PAC money. 77 percent of the $130 million
she has raised for her campaign committee have come from large donors, those
who donated more than $200;
close
to $60 million came from those who donated the maximum amount. She
regularly holds fundraisers with Wall Street and other powerful corporate
interest groups. She has taken millions from corporate lobbyists, Super PACs,
Wall Street, the health care industry, and even private prisons. While I
realize there is some use in using the system to help destroy it, there is
serious risk in becoming dependent on the very system you are trying to change.
I think Hillary and the Democratic Party stand to lose far too
much to be able to mount a serious commitment to change the way campaigns are
financed. When a similar proposal, the Fair Elections Now Act,
was proposed in the
House in 2010 while Democrats had strong majorities in both houses of
Congress, it didn’t even come up for a full vote. And good luck getting
anything through a Republican majority.
Second, even without
the aforementioned institutional barriers, Hillary is far too moderate to
effect the magnitude of change we need.
Even assuming all of Hillary’s plans pass overnight, we
would still not have done enough (and I have serious doubt she will follow
through with her platform given her solicitation of campaign contributions from
opposing special interest groups).
Let’s go through some of her core proposals:
Minimum wage.
Hillary supports a
$12
federal minimum wage. Assuming a 40 hour workweek and 50 weeks of working a
year, that translates to an annual rate of $24,000. It’s certainly better than
the current level, but a $15 wage would translate to $30,000 a year, a $6,000
or 20 percent increase. Under a $12 wage, if a single person were supporting a
family of four,
that
household would be below the poverty line. Looking elsewhere, Denmark has
an
effective
minimum wage of $18, and the world hasn’t fallen apart. People there could
afford a reasonably comfortable lifestyle even with minimum wage work.
Health Care. Hillary
has belatedly
added
the public option back onto the table, albeit with an emphasis on setting
it up for individual states. This could provide a path towards universal
coverage, and there are estimates that a public option could offer lower
premiums by
as
much as 30 percent.
However, even if the public option is able to gain
substantial leverage on pricing, private insurers will still struggle to keep
prices down. As
Steven
Brill notes in A Bitter Pill:
Insurers with the most leverage,
because they have the most customers to offer a hospital that needs patients,
will try to negotiate prices 30% to 50% above the Medicare rates rather than
discounts off the sky-high chargemaster rates. But insurers are increasingly
losing leverage because hospitals are consolidating by buying doctors’ practices
and even rival hospitals. In that situation — in which the insurer needs the
hospital more than the hospital needs the insurer — the pricing negotiation
will be over discounts that work down from the chargemaster prices rather than
up from what Medicare would pay. Getting a 50% or even 60% discount off the
chargemaster price of an item that costs $13 and lists for $199.50 is still no
bargain. “We hate to negotiate off of the chargemaster, but we have to do it a
lot now,” says Edward Wardell, a lawyer for the giant health-insurance provider
Aetna Inc.
So under the public option, health care costs overall can go
down, perhaps even by upwards of 15 percent (best case scenario). Even after
that, the
US
will still be spending 15 percent more per capita than the next highest
country, and 50 percent more than the OECD average.
On top of that, Americans will still be paying substantial
costs in premiums, deductibles, and copays. A major illness may cost
considerably less, but it will still cost dearly – and the public option
probably won’t make a sizable dent to the
prevalence
of medical bankruptcy in the US.
Higher Education.
In addition to lower interest rates, Hillary’s plan involves
a
$2,500 tuition tax credit every year. Given the
average
tuition rate at a public university was $9,410 this year and will only go
up, this only covers a little more than a quarter of tuition costs at best (and
that’s before costs in housing, food, textbooks, etc.) Should a student choose
to enroll in an out-of-state public university, this would be even worse. In
addition, this tax credit is unlikely to expand access to college for working
class families: tuition is paid at the start of the school year and the credit
cannot be claimed until April, so it is unlikely to materially influence
spending decisions. While this tax credit could be used for private non-profit
universities, they can also potentially be used on for-profit colleges, which
provide
subpar education,
saddle students in the highest debt load compared to public or private
non-profit universities, and give them few employment prospects after
graduation.
More troubling, such tax expenditures only
expands
the presence of the submerged state. It has the effect of hiding the true
role of government, causing Americans to underestimate the role of government
in shaping social policy and believe that they want a smaller government than
they actually prefer. This makes them deeply hostile to future expansions in
government policy, even where they can get the job done far more effectively
than the private sector. If Americans also don’t realize the government is
benefiting them, it reduces motivation for civic participation as well.
Bernie’s higher education plan would instead provide free
tuition at all 4-year public universities, which
would
cost $62.6 billion a year. It would make college far more affordable and
accessible to the working class and even the middle class. And if wealthy
parents choose to send their kids to public universities, chances are they will
have more than paid for it via the Wall Street speculation tax Bernie proposes
to finance his proposal.
Wall Street. It
appears Hillary has copied some of Bernie’s platform since the last time I
checked (because nothing says leader like following someone else). There are
some decent ideas, such as
taking on the shadow
banking system.
However, Hillary doesn’t really address the fundamental
issue that banks are too big to fail. They have actually gotten more
consolidated than before the financial crisis:
the
top 5 banks in the US collectively own nearly 45 percent of the industry’s
total assets. If any of these banks were to go under, the result would be
so catastrophic that the US would have no choice but to bail them out.
Consequently, the underlying moral hazard of excessive risk taking, knowing the
government will pick up the tab if things go south, remains.
Third, Hillary has a
neoconservative foreign policy that will lead to disastrous military
adventurism abroad.
Even if the US succeeds in dislodging Assad, we will
probably see a repeat of the scenario in Iraq – in the ensuing power vacuum, we
will see heightened sectarian warfare between the majority Sunni population and
minorities such as Alawites, massive civilian deaths, continued proxy warfare
from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Russia, and an environment of chaos where
ISIS and other militant groups such as al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra can thrive.
Time and time again, Hillary has demonstrated exceptionally
poor judgment on foreign policy. It’s striking that Hillary takes cues from
Henry Kissinger, who among other things
contributed
to a genocide in Camodia killing 3 million by bombing the entire country. Hillary
has drawn support from other neocons as well, such as
Robert
Kagan. A Clinton administration will result in disastrous militarist
adventurism, damaging America’s reputation abroad and directly feeding
international instability.
Fourth, and perhaps
most importantly, Hillary has a serious lack of integrity and comes off as
dishonest, untrustworthy, and inconsistent.
Like her husband Bill, Hillary is a triangulating politician
who has picked up a number of inconsistent views over the years. She has
flip-flopped on many issues: Gay marriage,
TPP, Wall Street, Keystone, and Iraq, just to name a few examples. In
conjunction with taking so much money from special interests, it is hard to
tell what Hillary stands for, and what she will actually support if she becomes
president.
She and her surrogates have also pulled a number of dirty
campaign tactics. They have engaged
in
the use of push polling, which are essentially character assassinations
masquerading as polling. On the day of the Massachusetts primary, Bill Clinton
made
stops outside and even inside polling locations, which may have broken
electoral laws blocking the solicitation of votes within 150 feet of a polling
location and, more importantly, effectively stopped voting for several hours as
voters could not bypass his phalanx of security.
Hillary and friends have also attempted to swiftboat
Bernie’s record on multiple occasions (see
here,
here,
and
here),
trying to smear him with accusations that are misleading or even downright
false. Just recently at the Flint debate and Michigan town hall, Hillary has
attempted to equate her moderate plans with Bernie’s far more sweeping ones.
When it comes to attacks on transcripts or the 1994 crime bill, her first
defense is “Bernie did it too.” Throughout the primaries, Hillary and the DNC
have
actively worked to effectively depress voter turnout, which will come to
hurt Democrats in the general election.
Moreover, there are serious ethical questions with the
91
paid speeches Hillary has made from 2013 to April 2015, making a total of $21.7
million, adding to her already immense wealth. These include
$1.6
million to Canadian pro-Keystone groups (which she now “opposes”), and
talks to Goldman Sachs, which was reportedly “rah-rah” and where
“she
sounded more like a Goldman Sachs managing director.” More alarmingly, she
continued to make 50 speeches netting more than $10 million even when
she
seriously considered running for president by 2014. At this point, even The
New York Times, which has endorsed Hillary, has
called
for the release of the transcripts. At best, these speeches represent a
serious error in judgment. At worst, they are ethical violations that should
make us question whose interests she really serves.
As with the transcripts, at best, this entire investigation
has demonstrated a serious error of judgment on Hillary’s part. At worst, this
may result in an indictment and prison time. No other presidential candidate in
history has had an active federal investigation before – and none would have
been expected to survive the fallout.
---
Despite all this, there is still some reason to respect the
policies Hillary supposedly stands for. There is a material difference in her
policy positions compared to whoever emerges as the Republican nominee. If you
live in a swing state, I encourage voting for her anyway, for Supreme Court
nominees and the ability to veto bad legislation or pass good ones are at
stake.
However, if you live in an uncompetitive state like I do,
should the worst happen and Hillary ends up being the nominee, I strongly urge
looking towards a third party option. Jill Stein has very similar positions to
Bernie, and in some cases takes even stronger stances. Whoever becomes the
Libertarian nominee will probably provide a nice combination of fiscal
conservatism and socially liberalism. If a third party gets 5 or more percent
of the popular vote, then they will qualify for federal funding, which could
substantially improve their outreach and make them a contending force, starting
the process of
breaking
up the two-party duopoly.
