Bernie Sanders, the beloved socialist, recently endorsed Hillary Clinton. She is a candidate who stands for war, corruption, the surveillance state, and big banks; all of which Sanders has strongly opposed for years. I am no Bernie supporter but he aptly challenged much of what I believe to be wrong with Hillary's stances and indeed the positions taken by most politicians in Washington. If Sanders was the principled and consistent candidate in this election, how could he sell out to a corrupt Clinton? During his endorsement speech, Bernie drew parallels between himself and Hillary, but ignored the differences, which I have outlined below.
1. Hillary is a war hawk.
Although she regrets her decision to vote for the Iraq war in 2002, Clinton has supported conflicts in Libya and Afghanistan, as well as President Obama's continued drone operations in Pakistan (and the rest of the Middle East). She supported the Arab spring of 2011 and during her stint as Secretary of State, authorized the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar.
The United States has been at war in the Middle East for well over a decade. What we have spent on war, between Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and the surrounding area is approximately 4 million Muslim lives, about 7,000 military servicemen, and 1.7 billion taxpayer dollars. We have gained a fractured and violent Libya, a new terrorist group called ISIS, and the hate of many people in the region. According to her website, hillaryclinton.com, Hillary would continue to fight ISIS and promote a strong military presence around the globe. She would continue the interventionist policies of Bush and Obama.
2. Hillary is corrupt.
The Clinton Foundation has been (allegedly) used as a way for special interests to give money directly to Bill and Hillary. The special interests that donate consist of arms manufacturers, companies in the military industrial complex, cooperation such as Walmart, GE, and McDonald's, big banks such as Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, among others. All of this means that these companies may have significant influence over Hillary. According to the International Business Times, "Under Clinton's leadership, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation." Both the countries receiving the weapons and the companies manufacturing them gave millions of dollars to the Clinton foundation. Freebeacon.com reported "Hillary Clinton helped secure lucrative foreign contracts for companies who had donated millions to the Clinton Foundation".
This is just one aspect of Clinton corruption. The recent email scandal is the freshest of a long line of dubious things Hillary has done. For the sake of brevity, below is a link to a long list of Clinton controversies.
3. Hillary loves big banks (and also gets lots of money from them).
Since Bill Clinton's time as president, the Clintons have been in bed with the banks. Bill used his office to benefit an ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs by appointing him treasury secretary. Ever since the '90s, both Clintons have received millions of dollars in speaking fees from Wall Street firms, big banks, and other companies. "Bill Clinton’s speaking fees skyrocketed just days after Hillary’s nomination as secretary of state in 2009. Corporations, such as TD Bank, that had never paid a dime to hear him speak suddenly bellied up to the bar, waving fistfuls of cash" (NY Daily News). The article goes on to explain how TD Bank had interests in the Keystone XL pipeline which needed the approval of the new secretary of state. Hillary's three largest donors have been the banks Goldman Sachs, Citibank, and JP Morgan, and such a large influx of money from concentrated donors can have unprecedented sway over her political agenda.
4. Hillary supports the war on drugs.
Although these next two points steer away from Hillary Clinton's ties to big money, both are opposed by Bernie and tenaciously upheld by Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee. The war on drugs was started in 1971 by President Nixon. Throughout the years it has led to the incarceration of hundreds of thousands of nonviolent criminals and thousands of "paramilitary-style SWAT raids on Americans every year" (drugpolicy.org). Roughly 100,000 people have died in Mexico due to drug related conflict. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton continued this legacy of violence and bloodshed by approving the gift of billions of dollars as well as the sale of weapons to the Mexican government.
5. Hillary supports the Patriot Act.
Last but not least, Hillary voted for the Patriot Act (and its re-authorization in 2006), a bill that led to the violation of almost every American's 4th amendment rights. Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA has been collecting vast amounts of phone records from cell phone companies and secretly appropriates banking, credit card, and computer records of private citizens. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board examined the use and effectiveness of the Patriot Act, and found that there was "no instance in which the program directly contributed to the discovery of a previously unknown terrorist plot or the disruption of a terrorist attack" (vox.com). Despite all of the dubious information that has come out regarding the use of the Patriot Act, Clinton has not, to my knowledge, changed her stance on the issue.
In conclusion, the above points are my attempt to dissuade people, especially Bernie supporters, from voting for Hillary Clinton in the upcoming presidential election. Although I am not endorsing another candidate, I feel that her track record in politics has been littered with errors, crimes, and corruption.
