The Daily Beast reports: According to the financial-disclosure form she filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics on March 30, 2016, [Green Party presidential nominee Jill] Stein and her husband, Richard Rohrer, have investments (with the exception of real estate) valued at anywhere from $3,832,050 to $8,505,000.
Stein’s controversial investments include:
Big Carbon. On Oct. 26, 2015, Stein’s campaign sent out a statement calling for Exxon to get the death penalty for its “climate-change fraud.” (it should be noted that Stein has called for the abolition of the death penalty for human beings). She has also repeatedly called for public pension funds to divest from companies in the fossil-fuel industry.
Yet Stein has invested $995,011 to $2.2 million in funds such as the Vanguard 500 fund that maintain significant stakes in Exxon and other energy companies like Chevron, Duke Energy, Conoco Phillips, and Toho Gas, a Japanese company that engages in the sale of natural gas, tar, and coke, a fuel made from coal.
Financial Industry. Like Sen. Bernie Sanders, Stein has consistently denounced the banking industry and Wall Street. She has said that big banks should be nationalized or broken up. And she has refused to agree that there is a stark difference between how the Democrats have regulated the financial-services industry and how Republicans have approached the same task.
Yet Stein has invested roughly $1.2 to $2.65 million in funds like the TIAA-CREF Equity Index that have big stakes in the financial-services industry. Holdings in these funds include big banks like JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and Deutsche Bank as major parts of their investment portfolios. Five of the funds that Stein invests in maintain large positions in Wells Fargo, which has come under fire recently amid charges that its employees were pressured to open up fraudulent new accounts for clients.
One of the funds Stein has invested in maintains a significant position in Goldman Sachs bonds. Stein once referred to Goldman Sachs as Hillary Clinton’s best friend. She has also invested in a fund that contains significant investments in mortgage-backed securities, including subprime mortgage-backed securities, and mortgage-backed derivatives. These financial instruments played a significant role in the financial crisis of 2008. [Continue reading…]
Are all these attacks on Jill Stein an implicit support for Hillary Clinton? As it happens, Chelsea Clinton is on the board of directors of the corporation that owns the Daily Beast.
http://www.jill2016.com/beastresponse
The main thrust of opposition to Clinton is that she’s corrupt and a slave of the establishment. This is intended to stand in contrast with the high principles of Jill Stein (and others).
Suppose all the candidates were exposed to the same level of scrutiny on the basis of the disclosure of tens of thousands of emails and decades of public life, I kind of doubt that Clinton would look any more corrupt than anyone else. So, on November 8 the question isn’t about whether anyone is suited for beatification — it’s simply a question about who becomes the next president.
The tentacles of the Clinton octopus extend far and wide — maybe through some cunning they have seized control of this website and it’s no longer under independent editorial control. Who can say? Once under effective mind-control I certainly would no longer be capable of autonomous action because my thought processes would have been hijacked.
As for whether the articles on Stein that I’ve posted recently amount to “implicit support” for Clinton, that could be taken to imply that I’m reluctant to voice explicit support for her. But on the contrary, ever since it became clear that there were only two possible outcomes to this election — either Clinton would win or it would be Trump — I’ve been in no doubt whatsoever that I want Clinton to win and on that basis will vote for her. Moreover, I don’t just support Clinton but think it’s important that she wins by a landslide. The only way of damping the reckless tendencies among Trump supporters will be for them to witness Trump face such a massive and humiliating defeat that in the eyes of the nation and the world, he and the bigotry he stands for have resoundingly been repudiated.
I’m not a Clinton loyalist. Elections come down to the choices that are actually available and the parties that have already built themselves into viable political forces.