Donor Wall Quotes

There are many men who deserve to die, but they live. I can’t see the end, the purpose. Even wise men can’t. We can put a barrier, a wall, around ourselves, but try as we might, we can’t keep the world out.

One rather odd use of xerography insures that brides get the wedding presents they want. The prospective bride submits her list of preferred presents to a department store; the store sends the list to its bridal-registry counter, which is equipped with a Xerox copier; each friend of the bride, having been tactfully briefed in advance, comes to this counter and is issued a copy of the list, whereupon he does his shopping and then returns the copy with the purchased items checked off, so that the master list may be revised and thus ready for the next donor.

That’s why, in addition to exposing the vast conspiracy against it, I’m going to tell you about the real Trump presidency, which has accomplished so much despite the dark forces arrayed against it. That includes tax reform, a booming economy, record-low unemployment, and a renewed manufacturing base. ISIS is vanquished, there are historic peace talks on the Korean peninsula, and we are moving toward a more mutually respectful relationship with China. I’m talking about fairer trade with partners who have run roughshod over previous administrations, cared little for what happened to most Americans as long as their Wall Street and corporate donors kept the contributions flowing.

But then something unexpected happened. Donald Trump, a real estate mogul and television celebrity who did not need the Koch donor network’s money to run, who seemed to have little grasp of the goals of this movement, entered the race. More than that, to get ahead, Trump was able to successfully mock the candidates they had already cowed as “puppets.” And he offered a different economic vision. He loved capitalism, to be sure, but he was not a libertarian by any stretch. Like Bill Clinton before him, he claimed to feel his audience’s pain. He promised to stanch it with curbs on the very agenda the party’s front-runners were promoting: no more free-trade deals that shuttered American factories, no cuts to Social Security or Medicare, and no more penny-pinching while the nation’s infrastructure crumbled. He went so far as to pledge to build a costly wall to stop immigrants from coming to take the jobs U.S. companies offered them because they could hire desperate, rightless workers for less. He said and did a lot more, too, much that was ugly and incendiary. And in November, he shocked the world by winning the Electoral College vote.

What is the House of Clinton? It is a large family syndicate predicated on the three facts. One, Bill is a amoral, well-connected ex-president and good old boy schmoozer who enjoys a lifestyle that only ethical misconduct can ensure. Two, a less charismatic Hillary plays good cop to his bad, and for thirty years has been seen by donors as the likely first female president. Three, as flexible liberals, they have no ideological reluctance to snag Wall Street and corporate pay-for-play cash — and they let that be known to the one-percent who in turn feel that the Clintons’ populist verbiage is simply good insurance. The result is that although Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea are not business people, they became multimillionaires precisely because they can offer access and at least the scent of favorable government treatment to billionaires.

Wall Street and corporate American know there is no deal considered beneath the Clintons. If they will, as reported, wheel and deal off the human tragedy of the Haitian disaster, then they will indeed do anything. If they are willing to defame and destroy women abused by Bill Clinton, they will not only do that, but proclaim themselves feminists. They have created a huge shakedown conglomerate in the Clinton Foundation in Machiavellian fashion: the philanthropy brilliantly masks the cynical tapping of such funds for personal aggrandizement. Quid pro quos go through the foundation to “help” the helpless while providing the family the moral veneer to moonlight and rake in huge fees from foundation donors, who do not give such largess for nothing. Hitting up corporate finaglers for $70 million in tag-along private jet travel would be burdensome; but creating a tax-free “philanthropy” to provide such corporate one-percent travel for the three Clintons (whether to lecture on global warming or the unfair tax policies of the one-percent) is brilliant in the Medieval sense.

Since 2013, when Hillary stepped down from her position as secretary of state, $262 million has come in from foreign entities. The largest share of donations from the financial services sector has been from those contributors with close ties to Wall Street. A third of foundation donors who have given more than $1 million are foreign governments or other entities based outside the United States, and foreign donors make up more than half of those who have given more than $5 million. “The role of interests located in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Argentina may spur questions about the independence of a potential commander in chief who has solicited money from foreign donors with a stake in the actions of the US government.”569 This, of course, ignores the fact that these Islamic nations brutally oppress women denying them the right to vote, drive a car, get an education, choose their own husbands, or show their face in the public square.

Charles Schumer (D-N .Y.) Terms: 2 (9 in House) Total raised: $62.2 million Top donors: A major defender of Wall Street interests before the crash, Schumer has netted more big-bank money than any member of Congress who hasn’t run for President. Over one-hundred-million dollars was given to Chuck Schumer over the past decade!

There I was, standing on a cold marble floor in a long room and staring at white walls lined with the names of the donors who had contributed to building the library. I was starting to get nervous. What’s going on? Did they forget about me? Suddenly, a huge line of serious-looking Secret Service men with radios in their ears and an attitude that showed they were all-business came into the room. A moment later, I realized why, as they were followed by all five living Presidents and their wives. Barack Obama. Bill Clinton. George Bush. Jimmy Carter. George W. Bush. I froze against the wall like a mannequin. I tried to will myself to be invisible and not get in anyone’s way. George W. Bush, in a black suit and blue-checkered tie, spotted me and caught my eye. I saw him glance down at my prosthetic leg decorated with the American flag as he waved at me and interrupted the conversations going on around him. “Let me introduce you to my friend, Melissa,” he said. All of the Presidents and their wives came over and circled around me. The Secret Service formed a half-circle ring behind them. I was introduced to everybody, one by one. President Bush told everyone about me and my story, and how we had met during the ride at his ranch. I was almost speechless as I managed to say, “Nice to meet you, Mister President,” over and over. I felt like I was in a dream. As the circle dispersed to get back to preparing for the event, President Obama paused to ask me how my life in Chicago was going and about the progress of Dare2Tri. I had no idea how he knew about these things, but we spoke, just the two of us, for a few minutes. “I’m proud of you,” he finally said, getting one of his presidential coins out of his pocket as a gift. President Bush was standing close by, and he put his arm around me as he cracked a joke to put everyone at ease. I noticed Condoleezza Rice had come in and was standing on the opposite end of the room practicing pronouncing the names of all the foreign dignitaries in attendance. It had to be the most surreal moment of my life. I felt like I was exuding pure patriotism, just being in that room with those people. On that day, political views didn’t matter—what was important was that several of our country’s leaders had come together to honor one of their peers, and, by extension, America itself. I had never been prouder to be American.

The candidates promised to cut taxes for those in the highest brackets, preserve Wall Street loopholes, tolerate the off-shoring of manufacturing jobs and profits, and downgrade or privatize middle-class entitlement programs, including Social Security. Free trade was barely debated. These positions faithfully reflected the agenda of the wealthy donors, but studies showed that they were increasingly out of step with the broad base of not just Democratic but also Republican voters, many of whom had been left behind economically and socially for decades, particularly acutely since the 2008 financial crash. Trump, who could afford to forgo the billionaires’ backing and ignore their policy priorities, saw the opening and seized it.

Never mind the fact that trickle-down economics never quite seemed to trickle down to white working-class voters either—that tax cuts and trade agreements favored Wall Street and the Republican donor class, that the real welfare fraud is large U.S. corporations’ fleeing overseas to hire cheap labor and avoid environmental rules, and then collecting a tax break from their allies in the White House and Congress.

Dharma Master Cheng Yen is a Buddhist nun living in Hualien County, a mountainous region on the east coast of Taiwan. Because the mountains formed barriers to travel, the area has a high proportion of indigenous people, and in the 1960s many people in the area, especially indigenous people, were living in poverty. Although Buddhism is sometimes regarded as promoting a retreat from the world to focus on the inner life, Cheng Yen took the opposite path. In 1966, when Cheng Yen was twenty-nine, she saw an indigenous woman with labor complications whose family had carried her for eight hours from their mountain village to Hualien City. On arriving they were told they would have to pay for the medical treatment she needed. Unable to afford the cost of treatment they had no alternative but to carry her back again. In response, Cheng Yen organized a group of thirty housewives, each of whom put aside a few cents each day to establish a charity fund for needy families. It was called Tzu Chi, which means “Compassionate Relief.” Gradually word spread, and more people joined.6 Cheng Yen began to raise funds for a hospital in Hualien City. The hospital opened in 1986. Since then, Tzu Chi has established six more hospitals. To train some of the local people to work in the hospital, Tzu Chi founded medical and nursing schools. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of its medical schools is the attitude shown to corpses that are used for medical purposes, such as teaching anatomy or simulation surgery, or for research. Obtaining corpses for this purpose is normally a problem in Chinese cultures because of a Confucian tradition that the body of a deceased person should be cremated with the body intact. Cheng Yen asked her volunteers to help by willing their bodies to the medical school after their death. In contrast to most medical schools, here the bodies are treated with the utmost respect for the person whose body it was. The students visit the family of the deceased and learn about his or her life. They refer to the deceased as “silent mentors,” place photographs of the living person on the walls of the medical school, and have a shrine to each donor. After the course has concluded and the body has served its purpose, all parts are replaced and the body is sewn up. The medical school then arranges a cremation ceremony in which students and the family take part. Tzu Chi is now a huge organization, with seven million members in Taiwan alone—almost 30 percent of the population—and another three million members associated with chapters in 51 countries. This gives it a vast capacity to help. After a major earthquake hit Taiwan in 1999, Tzu Chi rebuilt 51 schools. Since then it has done the same after disasters in other countries, rebuilding 182 schools in 16 countries. Tzu Chi promotes sustainability in everything it does. It has become a major recycler, using its volunteers to gather plastic bottles and other recyclables that are turned into carpets and clothing. In order to promote sustainable living as well as compassion for sentient beings all meals served in Tzu Chi hospitals, schools, universities, and other institutions are vegetarian.

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