Happily Ever After -- Reasons to Vote for Hillary Clinton

Senator Sanders’s policies concerning at least two major issues are wrong and Secretary Clinton is right.

 

Guns: Senator Sanders voted against the ability to sue gun manufacturers and said the consumer's ability to sue would effectively put the gun manufacturers out of business. Funny, filing a lawsuit for damages against a product a company makes and puts into the stream of commerce to sell does not put other corporations, for example, tobacco companies, out of business.  The tobacco industry has been drowning in lawsuits for a very long time paying out significant damages even in present time and still manages to reap immense profits.

 

The ability to sue is important in a free society and is especially so for gun manufacturers because the product they sell carries the ability to kill with it.  Suing a company for monetary compensation when an injury occurs to those who use that product and for whom the product was designed should be universally accepted.  The gun manufacturers should not be allowed to avoid litigation against them nor enjoy exception from it so that their product’s safety can be assured for those who use it.

 

The Bank bailouts: Senator Sanders voted against the bank bailouts but I think Secretary Clinton voting for it was prescient.  In my opinion, the big banks had to be bailed out.  If the big banks failed it would have had a cascading domino effect creating an economic tsunami both here and around the globe.  A catastrophic Everest-size economic volcanic eruption was at risk and Secretary Clinton knew it.  She was 100% right to vote for the bailout.

 

What, however, SHOULD have occurred and Secretary Clinton, I believe, agrees, is that those at the top of the corporate banking structure needed to be held criminally accountable for those fraudulent acts that cost the middle class so much and gave our nation and the world the Great Recession.  They should have been and should now be criminally prosecuted and, if found guilty, ultimately jailed.  They should NOT have been allowed to accept bonuses and pay raises for their clearly egregious, fraudulent and illegal acts.

 

The bailouts saved this nation a much worse economic fate had the bailouts never occurred.  In my opinion, the biggest banks are, indeed, too big to fail because not saving them would have perpetrated devastating harm upon this nation stretching across the globe accompanied by even more significant jobs losses here and beyond that could have brought this nation and the world to its knees.

 

However, criminal prosecution and jail if convicted for those who perpetrated the immense fraud should have occurred sending a clear message to the powerful hierarchy of Wall Street that they face prosecution and jail time if they do not play by the rules.  I suspect Hillary Clinton agrees.

 

In the end the banks and the Detroit automobile industry were saved by bailouts.  Moreover, the nation was paid back its loans and everyone lived happily ever after -- well not exactly -- BUT the Great Recession surely could have and most probably would have been significantly worse.  I think Secretary Clinton would agree to that as well!