I cannot support Hillary Clinton.

Don’t get me wrong, if she ends up the nominee, I will (rather sadly) vote for her — she’s better than Marco, Ben, Ted, Donald, Jeb, or Carly (although that’s not too difficult).

But there are too many red flags that signal insincerity, an issue the other major Democratic candidate does not have.

Situation after situation, action after action, makes me distrust her -- and there are two main reasons why.

1) She hasn't been a leader. Or rather, a leader who led us the right way.

Time and time again Hillary has trailed behind popular opinion, often not only trailing but actually advocating for the opposite of what Democrats/the public now agree to be right: on criminal justice reform/mass incarceration, welfare reform, immigration, the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, gay marriage, the TPP, the Keystone pipeline, etc. etc.

I'm not the first to say it, and Hillary has responded to lots of criticism about many of these, but it's kind of a screeching, blaring problem.

How can I trust someone who's championed the wrong course of action so many times? Who's stalled and reversed over the course of her career so many times?

It's far too much to explain away as "evolutions" and "mistakes."

—On Criminal Justice Reform—

In 1994, she said,

"We need more and tougher prison sentences for repeat offenders. The 'three strikes and you're out' for violent offenders has to be part of the plan. We need more prisons to keep violent offenders for as long as it takes to keep them off the streets."

That "three strikes law" that “ha[d] to be part of the plan” led to absolutely crushing consequences for the people, doing stuff like sending citizens away 25 years for trying to steal a car radio. It ruined lives, playing a huge part in creating the draconian catastrophe that is our criminal justice system today — the world's leader in incarceration.

By 1999, Clinton's last year in office, the federal incarceration rate was 42 per 100,000 in our country of over 300 million, growing "more than it did under the previous 12 years of Republican rule combined," as the Justice Policy Institute reports. The federal incarceration rate was 61% lower at the end of the first Bush's term, for goodness' sake!

This "needed" bill expanded the death penalty, encouraged states to lengthen prison sentences, and eliminated federal funding for inmate education. It took away the best method to reduce re-imprisonment we have -- knowledge, learning, skills, education. A fair chance, what the U.S. is already supposed to promise its citizens.

From the Institute for Higher Education Policy,

“For example, one analysis examined 15 different studies conducted during the 1990s and found that 14 of these studies showed reduced recidivism for former prisoners who had participated in postsecondary correctional education. Recidivism rates for these individuals were, on average, 46 percent lower than for ex-offenders who had not taken college classes.”

We need education behind bars.

What is prison accomplishing if not allowing the people who come into its walls the opportunity to gain skills and make legal money out in society? They didn’t get it when they were kids, so they committed crime to be able to eat (the audacity), and then the criminal “justice” system puts them in a tiny room for years with no opportunity to change their circumstances.

Besides doing nothing to actually stop crime, it’s punishing our citizens. Punishing our fellow humans for living in a land where public education is unequally funded, where full-time work earns you poverty wages, where college education is so out of reach it might as well be on the moon — punishing our people for being poor and trying to survive any way they are allowed by this oppressive, unjust government.

Prisons are supposed to have people come out better off than they go in, not steal decades of their lives with no chance to learn new skills. The people we release from prison have post incarceration syndrome and go right back to the struggle of making ends meet. There is no change for the better for our citizens, there’s an increase in anger and bitterness, and righteously so. The system does not cause empowerment or change, it serves death and violence and crippling unemployment.

There is no justice in this criminal justice system. We ignore the disparities in education. We do not see that kids born into poverty are more likely to stay poor because of cause and effect, because of reason and logic. It is unfair, unjust, inequitable here in America.

Level the playing field, this legislation did not.

It upped the number of years you spend in prison for a crime and ended up imprisoning obscene numbers of nonviolent offenders. As NPR reports,

"'We now know with the fullness of time that we made some terrible mistakes,' [Jeremy Travis, president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice], said [about the Clinton bill]. 'And those mistakes were to ramp up the use of prison. And that big mistake is the one that we now, 20 years later, have to come to grips with. We have to look in the mirror and say, 'look what we have done.'"

The bill completely ignored why people commit violent crimes and did nothing to address the root causes — poverty, education, job conditions. Rich areas aren't full of crime. It's poor areas, places with few jobs, broken schools (like this one in NYC) that have high rates of crime. It did nothing to address that, or help people — it just demonized them for being born into an utterly hopeless situation.

Some law, huh?

Now, suddenly and with strong rhetoric, Hillary's calling for an end to it all. Suddenly she realizes that,

"families could be and were torn apart by excessive incarceration."

Why didn't you know that in 1994? Why do you often fail to mention that you were one of the huge proponents of this family-tearing machine?

And instead of taking responsibility, Hillary says the reason behind this crisis is,

"...because we have allowed our criminal justice system to get out of balance."

"We," she says -- an indeterminate everybody's fault.

I cannot believe she has the nerve to blame others for the reality of prison in America, when she and her husband fought for the legislation that did so much to throw people behind bars, championing a bill that actually incentivized states to convict more of our citizens.

She is deflecting blame, despicably so.

When directly asked about her involvement, Hillary's camp says something like, "things were different back then," but this bill was as terrible an idea in 1994 as it would be today. It was not passed because it was magically a good idea to throw thousands and thousands more Americans behind bars back then, and now it's not. It was not passed because people were committing crime for entirely different reasons than they are today.

It was passed because the public opinion was ripe for it.

Hillary acted for political reasons, not for ration or logic, or, goodness forbid, empathy, but for political gain. As the president of the Vera Institute put it, this law was not passed because of,

"the facts," but because of "public sentiment and a political instinct to appeal to the more negative punitive elements of public sentiment."

Instead of being a voice of reason in this demonization-of-people-who-commit-crime era, she helped stoke the fears.

This isn't a political game, this isn't about reputation or money or personal ambition, this is about Hillary Clinton furthering legislation that hurt real live breathing, bleeding people. Can you imagine if she were forced to go to prison for decades for being a baby in poverty and later (trying) to steal a car radio?

Hillary is concerned with doing what looks good to the public, not with doing what is right, no matter the personal cost. I need someone in the White House who is completely unconcerned with how things appear politically, but wholly concerned with how legislation will affect me and my fellow citizens. I need someone who gets poverty and crime in this country, and is going to work to fix the causes of these issues.

(It's worth noting that Vice President Joe Biden, revered by many Democrats today, also supported the bill -- he was the lead Senate sponsor).

But Bernie Sanders?

In 1991, Bernie Sanders was up in front of Congress, railing with passion against the ideology behind the '94 bill --

“My friends, we have the highest percentage of people in jail per capita of any nation on earth....What do we have to do, put half the country behind bars?"

I highly recommend you watch the full (short) video.

And in 1994, he was up there again, speaking against the very bill Hillary advocated for--

"Mr. Speaker, how do we talk about the very serious crime problem in America without mentioning that we have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world, by far, with 22 percent of our children in poverty and 5 million who are hungry today? Do the Members think maybe that might have some relationship to crime? How do we talk about crime when this Congress is prepared, this year, to spend 11 times more for the military than for education; when 21 percent of our kids drop out of high school; when a recent study told us that twice as many young workers now earn poverty wages as 10 years ago; when the gap between the rich and the poor is wider and when the rate of poverty continues to grow? Do the members think that might have some relationship to crime?"

Bernie Sanders gets it. He gets that people commit crime because of poverty and the lie of equality in this nation.

And he was saying this stuff back in the '90s, before it was cool. He was talking about the gap between the rich and the poor before the Occupy Wall Street movement, before the phrase "the 1%" entered the American lexicon. He was talking about the absurdity of Congress speaking of crime without mentioning poverty, underfunded education, low minimum wage, or the gap between the rich and poor, before it became popular.

And he was saying it cut and dry, no bull poop.

Can you believe that after listening to Bernie spell it out for them, after hearing him explain point by point why the government is the cause of poverty and therefore crime, they still passed legislation to imprison millions more Americans?

He admonished Congress, made them look foolish, and yet still, still, they passed the bill. Can you imagine the frustration and anger that Bernie Sanders must feel? No wonder people think he’s grumpy — he is deeply for the people of this country and deeply furious that we are getting so screwed.

Bernie understands what's really going on in this country and truly cares. You rarely hear anybody in government speak like him (except maybe Elizabeth Warren). I've never delved into anyone's record to see such a wonderful history.

I know he will talk and speak and shout and force this government to bend to its people, because he’s been doing it for decades.

Can you imagine the addresses to Congress and to the public President Bernie Sanders would give? Can you imagine the fiery openness of Bernie after the halting cautiousness of Obama? The focus group-studying and survey-taking Clinton?

He is our populist hero.

This government he’s been fighting against for years doesn't take care of us. We pay them, and they don't work for us. It is abominable that we allow these politicians to sit in their ivory tower, dictating all these rules that hurt us, when we're the ones signing their paycheck.

As Bernie says,

"...Workers are going to have to come together...and say, 'We know what's going on. You vote against us, you are out of your job.’”

In other words, the American people need to stand up and fire their employees, because that’s what they are — our employees.

(Note: Bernie voted for the '94 bill because it included the Violence Against Women Act -- “I have a number of serious problems with the Crime Bill, but one part of it that I vigorously support is the Violence Against Women Act. We urgently need the $1.8 billion in this bill to combat the epidemic of violence against women on the streets and in the homes of America" -- while Hillary advocated for the crime part of the bill. Even without his vote, it would have passed).

—On Welfare Reform—

Hillary was also a proponent of the 1996 welfare "reform" legislation. As she wrote in her first memoir, Living History:

"I agreed that [Bill] should sign it and worked hard to round up votes for its passage."

What'd this bill that Hillary worked so hard for do? Well, it definitely slashed the number of people on welfare rolls, but it did nothing to actually lift them out of poverty.

Johns Hopkins university professor and researcher Kathryn Edin has studied poverty in America for over two decades. Recently, she went back into the impoverished areas of America to follow up on previous research and was,

She and Luke Shaefer, an expert on surveys of the income of poor people, wrote an exceptional book, $2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, detailing their findings. In it they write in great detail of how the 1996 Clinton welfare reforms, so pushed and fought for by Hillary Clinton, are one of the key reasons so many Americans are now living in such destitution.

From the Guardian,

"Using national data administered by the US Census Bureau, Edin and Shaefer found that since the welfare reforms of 1996 in particular... the number of families in the US surviving on cash incomes as low as $2 a day per person has skyrocketed. The research documents how by 2011 the number of $2-a-day households had more than doubled 'and at a distressingly fast pace' to 1.5 million (1 in 25 of all families). Around three million children are now in such households. To put it in context, the US government’s definition of “deep poverty” is $8.50 per day, per person."

The law Hillary “worked hard” for thrust millions into crushing poverty. It threw people off the benefits that were helping them survive, benefits that gave them some relief from the oppressive air of poverty, and created a third world nation within a first world one.

It actually caused her friends within the Democratic Party and working for Clinton’s administration to quit in protest. It caused her long-time mentor/highly respected advocate for the poor, children, and peoples otherwise disadvantaged Marian Wright Edelman to say Hillary was,

"not a friend in politics."

This is huge not only because Edelman is a very respected professional, but because she was the founder of the Children's Defense Fund which, as I'm sure you know, was where Hillary got her start out of law school.

It's the job she is constantly bringing up to assure people of her liberal credentials.

At the Democratic Debate, Anderson Cooper asked her, "Do you change your political identity based on who you're talking to?"

And she said,

"No...I have a range of views, but they are rooted in my values and my experience. And I don't take a back seat to anyone when it comes to progressive experience and progressive commitment. You know, when I left law school, my first job was with the Children's Defense Fund, and for all the years since, I have been focused on how we're going to un-stack the deck, and how we're gonna make it possible for more people to have the experience I had."

Well, your mentor and boss at the Children's Defense Fund says this about your "progressive commitment" --

"[Hillary and I] profoundly disagreed with the forms of the welfare reform bill, and we said so. We were for welfare reform, I am for welfare reform, but we need good jobs, we need adequate work incentives, we need minimum wage to be a decent...livable wage, we need health care, we need transportation, we need to invest preventively in all of our children to prevent them ever having to be on welfare. And...many years after...when many people are pronouncing [Clinton's] welfare reform a great success...we’ve got growing child poverty, we have more children in poverty and in extreme poverty over the last six years... The real test of welfare reform is what happens to the poor when the economy is not booming. Well, the poor are suffering, the gap between rich and poor widening. We have what I consider one of—a growing national catastrophe of what we call the cradle-to-prison pipeline. A black boy today has a one-in-three chance of going to prison in his lifetime, a black girl a one-in-seventeen chance. A Latino boy who’s born in 2001 has a one-in-six chance of going to prison. We are seeing more and more children go into our child welfare systems, go dropping out of school, going into juvenile justice detention facilities. Many children are sitting up—15,000, according to a recent congressional GAO study—are sitting up in juvenile institutions solely because their parents could not get mental health and health care in their community. This is an abomination."

It is enormous that her main mentor, her boss at the Children’s Defense Fund -- a job that is supposedly proof of her long commitment to working for the people -- is completely against what Hillary Clinton has done in government.

Clinton has not been “focused on how we’re going to un-stack the deck” since she left the Children’s Defense Fund. She’s been focused on how she’s going to use public opinion to further her own political career.

She’s fought for laws to throw all those people she says she’s a champion of behind bars and destroy their government aid while doing nothing to establish a living wage, health care, transportation, or equal education, which is most definitely not the “experience [she] had.”

She doesn’t care about the people of this nation. She cares about Hillary Clinton getting into power.

It is a huge cause for concern when an expert (and friend of the Clinton's) says she “profoundly disagrees” with the policy Hillary championed.

Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, voted against this disastrous law.

His words ring exactly like Edelman's. I think they would indeed be "friends in politics."

Here’s what he said in 1994 on C-SPAN:

"My concern is [that] in the process of welfare reform... we make sure that we improve the situation and not punish poor people and children, especially the children."

In his 1997 book, he wrote,

"The bill, which combines an assault on the poor, women and children, minorities, and immigrants is the grand slam of scapegoating legislation, and appeals to the frustrations and ignorance of the American people along a wide spectrum of prejudices."

He was calling out the usage of the worst part of American society as a political tool to get elected. Like Donald Trump and Ben Carson exploiting fear of Islam today, both Clintons exploited the fear of crime and the frustration with poverty in the '90s. He also wrote, in 1997,

"Do I have confidence that Clinton will stand up for the working people of this country—for children, for the elderly, for the folks who are hurting? No, I do not."

Hillary, on the other hand, consistently characterized these at-risk people -- the poor, the elderly, the children that Bernie defended and advocated for -- as

"deadbeats"

who had

"known nothing but dependency all their lives."

She views the hard working, suffering, struggling people of this nation, people working the most thankless jobs for minimum wage, desperately trying to get afloat out of poverty, as welfare queens (a proven political device and untruth) and little children who only wish to be taken care of.

This is the logic that says oppressed people want to be oppressed. This is the stuff of white slave masters saying their slaves like to be enslaved. This is white tourists wondering why house slaves would run away if they didn’t have to work in the fields, why they’d want freedom if they weren’t physically beaten. This is the heinous idea that poor people and black people like to stay poor, because then they don’t have to work. Then they can subsist off the meager benefits of welfare.

Race is heavily intertwined to poverty in this country: over 1/4 of black Americans are poor, second only to American Indians, the most poverty-stricken racial group in America — a fact directly true because of our past and our history (imagine that, the past informing the present). Her statements ring like the American settlers and slaveholders who thought that the non-white were somehow “lesser,” “dirtier,” and more “childish” than the wealthy white. That native people needed to be “taught the right way” and black people needed to be enslaved “for their own good.” She is spewing the exact same kind of infantilizing beyond-garbage that had white men calling black men “boy.” This makes her statements deeply racist. This woman is not deeply committed to civil and black rights.

It is also important to note that, at the height of slavery, only 1.4% of white Americans owned slaves, meaning the rich white have always oppressed the poor white, meaning it's less about race than finding ways to get more money/power/status than other humans. It holds true today that the majority of white people are not rich, and the majority of poor people in this country are white. So, besides being racist, she is actually spreading this hateful rhetoric beyond its historical origins.

It is all too evident that Hillary does not understand the issues the people of this country face. She does not understand why the poor are poor. She does not understand that people with no money are victims of a corrupt society and system of entrenched racism that has, since its founding, worked against them. She does not understand the long history of oppression that is bled into the soil of this land. She does not understand the evilness in her words.

She is just like every rich person, every white person who deeply does not get it. Who thinks that any adult in this country actually wants to be unable to work 40 hours a week for a decent paying job, buy a home, take care of their kids, see them go to college, pay for vacations, gifts, restaurants, take care of themselves, live. Who thinks that the adults in this country somehow have less pride and dignity than she does.

Edin and Shaefer write about a man named Paul, who has not held a job for five years. The government (you, Hillary) would say he's "not in the labor force." You would call him a "deadbeat." But he does work, furiously, to keep his family afloat.

"He has been busy collecting metal for the scrapyard. He's been busy sitting by the washing machine, waiting to catch the rinse water so that he can reuse it in the next load. (When his water was shut off, he was busy rigging up the gutter and garbage can to catch rainwater that could be used to flush the toilet, and driving to his friend's house and making trips to the neighbor's to fill up empty milk jugs with clean water). He's been busy driving the kids to the local food pantry -- to prove just how many mouths they have to feed. And when he hasn't been running back and forth, he's been occupied welding his crumbling van together and buttressing the collapsing floor of his home."

This is not the exception, but the rule.

"In terms of his work ethic," the authors continue in $2 a Day Poor, "[Paul] is the archetype. As his story and the others in this chapter show, the work of survival at the very bottom of America's economic ladder is hard. It's about turning what little you have in the way of assets into cash or goods [and] honing your entrepreneurial skills in ways that allow you to make do with less, in an effort to ease the many hardships associated with life on no income."

People not on government employment rolls donate plasma (an arduous, taxing, painful way to make $10 an hour), collect aluminum, do handy work, babysit, sell cigarettes or cigars, sell meals, clean homes, clean windshields, shine shoes, do hair, sell handmade goods, play music, piece together the private charity services scattered throughout cities (even sparser in rural areas), and sometimes, sometimes, resort to illegal activities.

Mostly, they just make do with less.

If you've ever met any of them, you'll have learned poor people often have way stronger values of working hard and earning their way than the wealthy and very wealthy (like Hillary saying she “worked hard” to pass a law), who can make money simply by being rich. You can make millions sitting in an office all day in comfort (or getting flown in on a private jet to make an hour-long speech), while for wearing your hands raw with cleaning chemicals and getting so cold that you end up with a permanent cough cleaning foreclosed homes you make $7.50 an hour.

Tell me, who has to have the stronger work ethic?

Being deeply poor, living on less than $2 a day, is gratingly hard, oppressive every second of every minute, the reality always there, dense and heavy. It is incredible that people manage to survive when it is so expensive to live poor. It's an art, a skill. A testament to human survival and an abomination in this, the richest country in the world. These people are no “deadbeats,” they are survivors.

And by the way, Paul was a small business owner with 3 successful pizza restaurants in 2007. With the collapse of the economy in 2008 (because of the lax policies on Wall Street that Clinton aided and admits she won't fix), his businesses began hemorrhaging. He had to sell and, in 2009, was diagnosed with diabetes.

Is Paul a "deadbeat," Hillary Clinton? Or just an American screwed by the super rich and in need of justice?

She does Americans unspeakably great disrespect, yet we're thinking of giving her power to control our lives?

And it’s not like she’s changed. Just last year, on July 17th, 2014, speaking with Charlie Rose, Hillary defended hers and Bill's '90s poverty record, saying,

"If I were to compare Reagan’s eight years with Bill’s eight years, it’s like night and day in terms of the effects. The number of jobs that were created, the number of people lifted out of poverty, a hundred times more when Bill was president. And did policies have something to do with that? I would argue that they did."

She gives a sickeningly dishonest portrayal of what she and her husband did to the poor people of America. It is an odious characterization of what those policies did.

Her statement is rated as False by PolitiFact, because the Clinton welfare policy did not lift people “out of poverty.” It sent millions off welfare rolls and into the everyday grind and struggle of deep, deep poverty.

While Hillary criticizes Republicans for forcing America to,

"turn its back on our children and working parents,"

it might do for her to remember her own support, approval, and role in abandoning the children and parents of this nation.

I am worried she will do the same thing, in a different way, if elected president. A way that may be invisible to us for years, much like her role in welfare reform is invisible.

Will this nation ever get justice for its people?

--On the Iraq War--

It's worrying to me how Hillary has been able to sort of bypass this disastrous vote with the, "Well Obama trusted me enough to make me Secretary of State" idea. First of all, he didn't trust you to lead, he trusted you to advise. And secondly, even if he did, he is only one, imperfect man. He is not the end-all-be-all of truth and knowledge. Thirdly, Hillary didn't just vote for the war, she spoke to her peers passionately encouraging them to do the same. In 2002, she made a speech on the Senate Floor, saying,

"It is with conviction that I support this resolution as being in the best interests of our nation. A vote for it is.... a vote that puts awesome responsibility in the hands of our President and we say to him - use these powers wisely.."

Later on she said that she didn't know the president would do what he did --

"Now, obviously, if I had known then what I know now about what the president would do with the authority that was given him, I would not have voted the way that I did."

Why did you ever think it was a good idea to give a president unilateral power and a blank check? That goes directly against the checks and balances grain this nation is so proud of. Hillary also says --

"...Intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001."

Intelligence reports also said that Saddam Hussein was very unlikely to attack the U.S. unprovoked by U.S. military action.

"However," one report said, "should Saddam conclude that a US-led attack could no longer be deterred," he might attack us back. Hussein might "decide that the extreme step of assisting Islamist terrorists in conducting a WMD attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him."

We knew at the time that Hussein was not going to attack us. It would have been a death sentence. We were far, far more powerful than him. Congress was told at the time that an invasion would probably do far more damage than good. And, as Hillary herself says, we knew that Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. There was absolutely no reason to initiate such a costly, devastating, deadly war. American lives were not in danger.

And in fact, there was a more detailed classified report available that Hillary did not read, because she "was fully briefed by the people who wrote that." She did not, as she wrote in her book, make "the best decision I could with the information I had." She didn't even know all the information because she didn't do her homework.

Hillary made an exceptionally poor decision, seemingly another puppet of the Bush/Cheney administration. Bernie Sanders did not and was not. He, too, like Hillary, spoke in front of Congress in 2002. But his message was as different as it could possibly be.

"Mr. Speaker, I do not know why the President feels, despite what our intelligence agencies are saying, that it is so important to pass a resolution of this magnitude this week... Mr. Speaker... all relevant U.S. intelligence agencies now say despite what we have heard from the White House that 'Saddam Hussein is unlikely to initiate a chemical or biological attack against the United States.' Even more importantly... there is more danger of an attack on the United States if we launch a precipitous invasion."

He had the same information that Hillary did, yet he knew the right way to vote. And he argued for his peers to do the same, asking them about the future, eerily predicting what would happen --

"Who will govern Iraq when Saddam Hussein is removed and what role will the U.S. play in ensuing a civil war that could develop in that country? Will moderate governments in the region who have large Islamic fundamentalist populations be overthrown and replaced by extremists? Will the bloody conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Authority be exacerbated?"

Contrary to Republican statements that we won the war until Obama screwed it all up, exactly what Bernie said would happen, happened. We experienced increased chaos in the Middle East, and a responsibility to linger and try to keep some of the peace for Iraqi citizens.

It was a disaster that should have and could have been avoided. Bernie was cautious, pragmatic, thoughtful. Hillary was rash and hawkish. (And, by the way, as Secretary of State she has proved to be hawkish still: championing the Afghan surge, the war in Libya, and aid to Syria's rebels).

What future disasters will Bernie avoid that Hillary will plunge into?

And remember when Hillary told Bernie, "I was in the Senate at the same time. It wasn't that complicated to me. It was pretty straightforward to me" about gun control?

Well, Hillary, Bernie was in the Senate at the same time as you. The Iraq vote wasn't that complicated to him. It was pretty straightforward to him.

Why doesn't that apply to you as you used it against him?

And it's less important to me that Bernie has a D- rating with the NRA as opposed to an F than the fact that you spoke passionately for the most disastrous foreign policy decision in decades.

--

I could go on about gun control, immigration, gay marriage, the TPP (rated as a Full Flop by Politifact), the Keystone Pipeline, and how Hillary has led us in the wrong direction again and again, but this is already getting a bit long.

Criminal justice reform, welfare reform, and the U.S. as a peaceful nation are 3 huge issues in our country/world that Hillary has fought in exactly the opposite direction for as what she says today. Even if that was "all" she'd gone against, it would be enough.

We need a lighthouse in the storm, someone who has been consistent their whole life, who will weather the opposition no matter what. We need someone who will never compromise the values of freedom, justice, and equality that this nation is supposed to stand for. We need someone who will fight for us behind closed doors. We need someone who makes sound decisions and exercises cautious, logical, rational thinking, who has always done so. We need someone who looks at the facts and acts on them in empathetic, fair, intelligent ways. We need a leader to show us the way.

And Hillary hasn't led us right. She has not been a rock in the storm. She has slowly evolved as the public has. Hillary Clinton doesn't stand against the tide. She is swept along with it.

2) She's a part of, and advocate for, corporate 1% America.

This isn't a deal breaker. You don't have to be poor to represent the poor.

But you do have to understand, deeply.

And Hillary, I have found, does not. Besides her Mitt-Romney-47%-like comments about "deadbeats," she has proved through action where her loyalties lie.

Hillary was on Wal-Mart's Board of Directors for six years, a fact left out of her website's biography and all speeches.

In this video she says,

"I'm always proud of Wal-Mart and what we do and the way we do it better than anybody else."

Proud?

Of Wal-Mart's anti-union efforts, low wages, and obscene employee care?

Hillary remained "silent as the world's largest retailer waged a major campaign against labor unions seeking to represent store workers," as reported by the Huffington Post. The New York Times writes, "On... Wal-Mart’s vehement anti-unionism... she was largely silent."

This needs to be addressed and explained, although I suppose it cannot be. Hillary, it seems, has not as she so claims,

"always fought for the same values and principles."

She also represented Wall Street as an attorney, and remains cozy. Although her rhetoric on the campaign trail is populist, as Politico reports,

"Back in Manhattan, the hedge fund managers who’ve long been part of her political and fundraising networks aren’t sweating the putdown and aren’t worrying about their take-home pay just yet. It’s 'just politics,' said one major Democratic donor on Wall Street, explaining that some of Clinton’s Wall Street supporters doubt she would push hard for closing the carried-interest loophole as president, a policy she promoted when she last ran in 2008."

And Robert Wolf, former CEO of UBS Americas and a major Democratic fundraiser, said,

“As a CEO and former Wall Street executive, I applaud Secretary Clinton’s remarks, and I do not view them as populist nor far left."

Politico further reports --

"'I think people are very excited about Hillary,' says one Wall Street investment professional with close ties to Washington. 'Most people in New York on the finance side view her as being very pragmatic. I think they have confidence that she understands how things work and that she’s not a populist.'"

Hillary is painting herself as a enemy of Wall Street, when she is Wall Street. They know she's not going to break up their banks, like Bernie will. They know she will do nothing to truly challenge the status quo.

They're telling us so! They're telling us she's not a populist! They’re telling us she’s on their side! They’re unzipping her sheep’s clothing and displaying the wolf — we must pay attention.

And they're working to get her elected.

Last week The Wall Street Journal published a piece called: “Price Tag of Bernie Sanders’s Proposals: $18 Trillion.” After calling Bernie's campaign a "long-shot," it goes on to say that Bernie's plan is to add

"at least $18 trillion in new spending over a decade...a sum that alarms conservatives and gives even many Democrats pause.”

The research the article references was done by a man named Gerald Friedman, who was so disturbed by the twisting of his findings he wrote an article called "An Open Letter to the Wall Street Journal on Its Bernie Sanders Hit Piece."

In it, he explains that no, Bernie Sander's plan would not wreck America. In fact, it would save us, the people, and our government, a lot of money. It would however, cost Wall Street (the Journal is aptly named). In his own words,

"It is said of economists that they know the cost of everything but the value of nothing. In the case of the article "Price Tag of Bernie Sanders's Proposals: $18 Trillion," this accusation is a better fit for the Wall Street Journal that published it."

Wowza. Good one, Friedman.

"The Journal correctly puts the additional federal spending...at $15 trillion over ten years. It neglects to add, however, that by spending these vast sums, we would, as a country, save nearly $5 trillion over ten years in reduced administrative waste, lower pharmaceutical and device prices, and by lowering the rate of medical inflation."

Which would happen decade after decade. For a primary investment, we will see returns for as long as the U.S. exists.

"These financial savings would be felt by businesses and by state and local governments who would no longer be paying for health insurance for their employees; and by retirees and working Americans who would no longer have to pay for their health insurance or for co-payments and deductibles. Beyond these financial savings, HR 676 would also save thousands of lives a year by expanding access to health care for the uninsured and the underinsured. The economic benefits from Senator Sander's proposal would be even greater than these static estimates suggest because a single-payer plan would create dynamic gains by freeing American businesses to compete without the burden of an inefficient and wasteful health insurance system. As with Senator Sanders' other proposals, the economic boom created by HR 676, including the productivity boost coming from a more efficient health care system and a healthier population, would raise economic output and provide billions of dollars in additional tax revenues to over-set some of the additional federal spending."

So, it'd be a real good thing.

But they're trying their hardest to stop the proletariat from realizing who the best choice really is. CNN, the host of the 1st Democratic Debate, is owned by Time Warner, which has donated over $400,000 to Clinton's campaigns over the years. No wonder CNN heartily declared Hillary the Debate Winner.

Hillary Clinton has Super Pacs, gifted with $1 million donations from people like Herb Sandler, former CO-CEO of Golden West Financial Corporation.

Bernie does not.

As CNBC reports, "Employees of five financial firms—Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch—gave about $290,000 to Clinton's campaign committee through June 30." That was months ago. In 2008, she got 1.8 million dollars from banks like Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Chase. As USA Today reports,

"Clinton has rejected the idea of reintroducing a Glass-Steagall Act to separate commercial banks from investment banking, saying the issue is "more complicated" than that — echoing excuses by the Obama administration for not following through on more aggressive financial reform. One of the things making it 'complicated' might be the unstinting support Clinton is getting from Wall Street."

She admits she won't break up the banks, as Bernie is calling for. You can't blame her -- it's tough to bite the hand that feeds you. But you can most certainly blame us if we go along with it and elect her instead of the guy who will fight the big corporations and mega banks that control this nation's cash flow.

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Last year (not a decade ago or five years ago, last year), Hillary said she and Bill were "dead broke" when they left the White House.

“We came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt ….We had no money when we got there, and we struggled to, you know, piece together the resources for mortgages, for houses, for Chelsea’s education. You know, it was not easy. Bill has worked really hard. And it's been amazing to me. He's worked very hard." ”

Quite honestly, I can't mince words about this. It is disgusting. It makes me feel polluted and angry. It's the same feeling I got when kids at U of M - Ann Arbor talked about how poor they were. It shows a heinous lack of understanding about what those words really mean.

Hillary Clinton never in her life has been dead broke. She grew up middle-class and in the fall of 1999, the year they were supposedly so destitute, she and Bill bought a $1.7 million farmhouse. As Politico reports,

"Their income skyrocketed. The last year of Clinton’s presidency they reported income of $357,629, which was largely Clinton’s presidential salary. The following year, their combined income was $16.2 million."

You know what this tells me?

Hillary's spent far too long amongst the super rich. She does not understand that being in debt for her is vastly different than being in debt for the rest of America. She might have felt poor in comparison to her fabulously wealthy friends, but she is worlds away from anyone who has had hunger gnaw in their stomach in this country, not sure where their dinner is coming from.

It is clear she feels like she knows hardship. It is how she paints herself, and her attempt to sell that populist character makes her fake. You can be rich and advocate for the poor. But you can't pretend to actually identify with the struggle of people screwed by viewers like you, Hillary Clinton.

And the "hard work" she says Bill did to get them out of debt? Talking to people. Getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to talk. Hillary's net worth is $25 million, made mostly from speaking fees and book royalties. She's gone on a whirl wind around the world racking up millions. Her husband is worth far more.

For comparison, Bernie Sander's net worth is $500 grand, made from his Senate salary and Social Security benefits. Or, something that might actually be called work.

And at those speeches, she is not an easy customer. To speak at UCLA, a public university, Hillary demanded $300,000. And not only that. Here's a list of her UCLA demands, unearthed by Washington Post's Freedom of Information Act request and reported by Slate.

“On the stage: Lemon wedges Room temperature water A carafe of warm/hot water Coffee cup and saucer A computer, mouse, printer, and scanner Spread of hummus Chairs with two long, rectangular pillows Two cushions to be kept backstage… A teleprompter and ‘2-3 downstage scrolling monitors’ A special podium (her team rejected the podium that had been set up for her use) Coffee Tea Room-temperature sparkling and still water Diet ginger ale Crudité Sliced fruit Approval for any promotional materials Recording is permitted ‘for archival purposes’ and only a two-minute highlight video can be uploaded to YouTube ‘Prestaged’ group photos so that Clinton doesn’t have to wait ‘for these folks to get their act together.’ The former secretary of state ‘doesn’t like to stand around waiting for people.’

Does this sound like someone who does not care for stuff? A liberal, populist Democrat, person of the people? Someone who tries to give those "everyday Americans" an easy time of it? Who doesn't make a huge deal out of being amongst the peasants?

She is, as so many have called her, "out of touch."

And not only that, but she tries to paint herself as an "everyday American." Probably because that's her only claim to actually being able to represent us, since she's not a rich person who gets it. Instead of owning up to who she really is -- a fabulously wealthy famous person -- she tries to reassure the public that she's just like us.

Don't you know her grandfather worked in a factory? And her dad was a small business owner? Never mind her mother being able to stay home full-time to take care of her and her brothers, never mind her family being able to send her to one of the best private, liberal arts college for women in the country, never mind that she went to law school, never mind she now lives in million dollar homes. Never mind she's a multi-millionaire. She's just like us. —

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I am heart-broken at what I see.

I do not believe in Hillary Clinton. I see that, if elected president, she will not break up the big banks. They have funded her for years, and they would fund her in 2020. She will not step on their toes. She says she can “get things done,” while Bernie is saying that this does not end with his election, that that’s what Obama did wrong. Bernie is calling for a revolution of people to come forth and vote, vote, vote, demand that their state and local governments vote for them or else, “You’re out of a job.” Bernie will change how the American people think about their democracy. He would be revolutionary. Hillary would play into the political game without the support of the people demanding change.

And I think that there is a very good chance she would not win the general, if she took the primary.

You think I’m being too hard on her? The Republicans absolutely hate her. The candidates speak of her with relish and loathing. When Rubio told the 3rd debate crowd that Hillary got away with lying while being questioned about Benghazi they cheered. They don’t see her rationally — and the Republicans have loads and loads of stuff to taint her with and hurl at the minds of voters. She’s losing to them in polls in Minnesota right now, which is a blue state.

But Bernie Sanders has beaten Republicans in polls since May, and still does in a recent NBC News/WSJ poll. All they’ve got on him is being something with the word “socialist,” while the conservatives I know admire him for being honest about what he thinks. He crosses party lines, mentally and physically. He’s going to Liberty University and “making friends,” in the head’s own words. He’s trying to reach out and unite the people of this country, for real. And people like him, everywhere. He’s raised his own super-pac of the citizens, funding his campaign completely on a purely grassroots level. People will campaign for him, go out and organize in their communities, share stuff on Facebook, talk about him. People are passionate about him. He’s creating excitement that will draw people who don’t vote, out to vote.

No Democrat like Bernie Sanders has come along running for president in decades. This guy is FDR-like. This is beyond Republican, beyond Democratic. This is Independent. This is Freedom, This Is Liberty, This Is The Challenge To The Status Quo.

And I’m afraid it might slip us by.

Don’t let someone co-opt the revolution.

And don’t trust me. Do your own research. Compare their records for yourself. But don’t just defend Hillary because you’ve heard all these arguments made before with far less sincerity.

I believe in Bernie Sanders because I looked at the facts.

If he wins the primary, he can win the whole thing.

Vote for Bernie.

You’ve got nothing to lose.