Raimondo, American
LeadHERship PAC: ‘hundreds of Joe Mollicones’
By David Segal in Rhode Island’s
Future- See
more at: http://www.rifuture.org/raimondo-american-leadhership-pac-hundreds-of-joe-mollicones.html#sthash.CuSCkerY.dpuf
Politifact did itself
great credit this month by calling out the “American LeadHERship PAC” — the
political action committee concocted to support the prospective gubernatorial
campaign of Wall Street acolyte Gina Raimondo — on its shameful hit-piece about
her likely Democratic opponent, Providence Mayor Angel Taveras.
The PAC’s
prospectus implies the preposterous slander that Taveras is to blame for a
downgrading of Providence’s bond ratings. Any Rhode Islander old enough
to, as they say, remember where 38 Studios “used to be” surely knows the real
story:
As Politifact writes:
All three downgrades occurred about two months after Taveras took the oath of
office — and only after a committee of financial experts empaneled by Taveras
found and disclosed that the city had a $110-million structural deficit. (A
structural deficit is a built-in long-term gap between revenue and expenses.)
The structural
deficit, equal to one-sixth the size of the budget and aggravated by a depleted
rainy day fund, was inherited from Taveras’ predecessor, David N. Cicilline. In
his final months in office, as he was campaigning for his current seat in
Congress, Cicilline declared that the city was in “excellent financial
condition” — an assessment that he apologized for after winning his new
political office.
Raimondo’s supporters insist:
“We’re really nice guys.” But would you vote for a gubernatorial
candidate whose campaign was backed by hundreds
of Joe Mollicones? That’s precisely what they demand.
Under the contemporary
economic predicament it is possible for an earnest person to push solemnly for
modest pension reforms, lamenting all the while that the detritus of the
demolition of our economy rolls downhill to states and cities.
Recognizing
that so many very wealthy, ever greedy people who run our economy and
government wrecked it for the rest of us, even while making it impossible to
institute appropriate fiscal policies that might have blunted the impact on the
likes of you and me — on our parks, roads, schools, buses, pocketbooks,
bellies, and so on.
Working people aren’t to blame for the deficits, but
cities and (especially small) states only have a few tools in their kits, so:
tradeoffs, tough choices, and all that.
That stinks, but fine.
But that’s not at all what
Raimondo’s been up to.
Rather, she has networked her way into the closed chambers of precisely those
same wealthy, greedy people (and is no doubt quite impressed by herself for
having pulled off such a feat from her modest perch in a down ballot office in
the smallest state).
First, Raimondo convinced Wall Street’s 1% to pay for a secretive propaganda
campaign to advocate for deep cuts in the state pension system.
Doing so garnered her effusive praise from right-wing stalwarts: from the Wall
Street Journal’s editorial page, to the National Review, to Rhode Island’s own
tiny Tea Party, which congratulated Raimondo for her “true leadership” as
General Treasurer. Then there are the fetes by the likes of ALEC, the Manhattan
Institute and the Hedge Fund Industry Awards (for running one of the
hedge-fundiest of mid-sized public pensions).
Unfortunately for
Rhode Island’s working stiffs, Raimondo’s “true leadership” consisted of
slashing benefits even for already-retired seniors on fixed incomes while sending millions of
Rhode Island taxpayer dollars to pay the bloated fees demanded by her hedge
fund manager friends — for which she’s even been derided in the
pages of Forbes Magazine.
Their palates now
whetted, Wall Street is lining up to pay for her hoped-for ascent to the
state’s highest office. The names that pop out during just a cursory
review of the hundreds of people who’ve max-ed out to her still-unannounced
gubernatorial run represent a who’s-who of Washington-to-Wall Street revolving
door corruption in the extreme.
-Pete Peterson, the billionaire former
Chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers, who now runs the foremost
Social Security and Medicare “reform” “think tanks” in Washington, DC, urging
the slashing of benefits from these and other programs that are critical for
middle class and poorer Rhode Islanders.
-All of the dearest
relatives of Robert Rubin, America’s #1 most
“Corrupt Capitalist” and the revolving door poster child who
oversaw the deregulation of Wall Street during is tenure as Treasury Secretary
— between the obligatory stints at Goldman Sachs and Citibank.
-John Arnold, a
billionaire Houston-based former Enron energy trader who funds anti-worker
campaigns across the country. Read Salon’s recent write-up
of Arnold here.
-Securities and Exchange Commission
target and former administration official Steve Rattner,
another exemplar in extremis of Washington-to-Wall Street revolving door crony
capitalist corruption.
Few states have been
more harshly impacted than Rhode Island by the of the instantiation of the the
will of the global financial elite: from NAFTA’s expediting the decline of the
local manufacturing industry, to the outsized local impact of the
housing/mortgage crisis and broader economic collapse.
If Raimondo’s
benefactors get their way, Rhode Island’s relatively aged population will
endure the slashing of Social Security, Medicare, and other programs on which
they rely; even the modest banking reforms urged by Dodd-Frank will fail to be
implemented, and we’ll remain exposed to future cycles boom and (in Rhode
Island mostly) bust.
These people and
institutions give her money not for concern for the people of Rhode Island, but
because under the reign of the Rhode Island proto-Romney, our bright blue state
will bleed as the proving grounds for further right-wing financial
“innovations”. And because she will serve as a trusted sycophant to Wall
Street’s wizard’s should she ever (God forbid) realize her ambition of achieving
federal office.
Let’s please not let that happen, no matter the deceitful
propaganda onslaught that she and her Wall Street backers and the shameful
LeadHERship PAC will surely be foisting on Rhode Islanders in months to come.