A new poll shows that the number of citizens who identify with the Democratic or the Republican parties are at a near all time low. Only 29 percent of respondents in a Gallup survey identify as Democrats (the lowest point in 27 years). Only 26 percent defined themselves as Republicans in 2015. Thus, while the number of Americans in either party has fallen to near all-time lows, there remains virtually no choice other than those selected by the two parties as leaders. Another surprising poll, however, says that 20 percent of Democrats might support Trump in the general. Some 14 percent of Republicans said that they might support Clinton in the general election.
Roughly four in ten U.S. adults now say they are political independents, though the Democrats have a slight advantage on how independents lean.
In the meantime, critics within the Democratic party have increasingly accused party leaders like Debbie Wasserman-Schulz of openly rigging the process for Hillary Clinton while critics in the Republican Party say Donald Trump will destroy the GOP.
The result is a growing political crisis of disaffected and alienated voters, which explains the popularity of candidates like Trump. The perception of a duopoly is likely to increase the anger of the near majority in the country rejecting both parties. That can produce a dangerous disassociation of the public from their government.
Nick S. “Trump rally goers are saying if Trump doesn’t get the nod, they will vote for Sanders,” Please say you’re joking. How in the Hell does anyone go from Trump to Sanders?
Bernie Sanders Gets Endorsement from Soros’ MoveOn
Supposed outsider candidate embraced by establishment Democrats as Clinton slides in polls
http://www.infowars.com/bernie-sanders-gets-endorsement-from-soros-moveon/
Does anyone here know who George Soros is?
That should be Nomi, not Naomi Prins in “Naomi Prins’ All the Presidents’ Bankers: The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power (Nation Books, 2014).”
Two other books (besides DiLoreno’s on Hamilton) that I highly recommend for understanding the importance of the financial factor in American political history are Naomi Prins’ All the Presidents’ Bankers: The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power (Nation Books, 2014) and Gorham Munson’s Aladdin’s Lamp: The Wealth of the American People (Creative Age Press, 1945).
Munson writes: “Alexander Hamilton was a very gifted man. A fluent, forceful, and highly influential journalist and pamphleteer, he has been called one of the fathers of the American editorial. His code of honor was that of the professional writer who takes pride in the objective use of his skill to present effectively causes in which he has only half-belief or no belief–rather than that of the artist whose code is the uttermost sincerity, Thus, Hamilton wrote his Federalist papers as if he believed wholeheartedly in the Constitution, the adoption of which he was urging; privately, he wrote Gouverneur Morris that the Constitution was a ‘frail and worthless fabric.’ ” (p.62)
Hamilton’s authoritarianism and ethical elasticity (if not his eloquence) are still very much with us, as evidenced by our 43rd and often “misunderestimated” president, who said, “If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heckuvalot easier– just so long as I’m the dictator.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvUEsm0wNIA
And, of course, it was W.’s Treasury Secretary (and Goldman Sachs CEO) Henry Paulson who presented to Congress his 3-page report on the need to very quickly bail out the speculator-banksters (with taxpayer funds, of course) to the tune of 700,000,000,000 dollars.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/25/as_bush_admin_pushes_700b_for
stevegroen
From the foundation up typically means drastic means such as revolution. This creates chaos, a void, and nothing more than opportunities for the same dregs to rise to the top. The problem is perverse and deep. What I appreciate is when facet by facet, layer by layer, a people somehow improves the lot of most and yet still includes the dregs. In German companies the shareholders and others at the top still rake in the bucks. However, the workers are better paid, educated, and taken care of. Money is still made. In order to make the system better, whatever system, the system must be changed by details, not wholesale ideological moves. That simply allows for lack of continuity and opportunity for going backwards. The most graphic example of this is the GOP contenders and their ranting and raving. Regardless of what Clinton is or is not, she represents moving on the details, where the devil resides.
issacbasonkavichi – Clinton was unable to prove that she had made any movement as SoS, what makes you think she will make movement as President. Other than pardoning Bill.
Issac, revolution is certainly faster, i.e., if it works, but there can also be political movement that works, too, albeit more slowly and so long as proles pull their heads out of their collective arse.
I’m not so sure you’re right about Hillary. She and Kerry are sellouts to their former principles (if that’s what they were – it seems to me it was more about the resume than principle in hindsight) or they would have taken a stand rather than worry about their respective legacies.
I know people marry for all sorts of reasons, but staying with that cad after throwing a White House lamp at him reflects poorly on her principles, which in turn can only mean her objective has always been her place in history.
An email-listserve friend once wrote that he spoke with Kerry at a fundraiser while the latter was campaigning in New Mexico in 2004. When my friend asked why he supported the Iraq War, Kerry answered, “Anyone who didn’t support the war was dead meat politically.” My friend wrote that wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear. Nor mine. By the way, Hillary supported that war. So you’re right: the devil’s in the details.
@stevegroen
1, January 12, 2016 at 7:36 pm
“Capital has always controlled government here and abroad in the Industrial Age.”
Because this is such an enormously important issue, I want to quote in its entirety a powerfully explanatory essay by economist Thomas DiLorenzo regarding the contribution of Alexander Hamilton (and his present-day acolytes) to our current impoverished plight:
What Hamilton Has Wrought
By Thomas DiLorenzo
October 6, 2008
“The current economic crisis is the inevitable consequence of what I call “Hamilton’s Curse” in my new book of that name. It is the legacy of Alexander Hamilton and his political, economic, and constitutional philosophy. As George Will once wrote, “Americans are fond of quoting Jefferson, but we live in Hamilton’s country.’
“The great debate between Hamilton and Jefferson over the purpose of government, which animates American politics to this day, was very much about economic policy. Hamilton was a compulsive statist who wanted to bring the corrupt British mercantilist system — the very system the American Revolution was fought to escape from — to America. He fought fiercely for his program of corporate welfare, protectionist tariffs, public debt, pervasive taxation, and a central bank run by politicians and their appointees out of the nation’s capital.
“Jefferson and his followers opposed him every step of the way because they understood that Hamilton’s agenda was totally destructive of liberty. And unlike Hamilton, they took seriously Adam Smith’s warnings against economic interventionism. (Emphasis added)
“Hamilton complained to George Washington that ‘we need a government of more energy’ and expressed disgust over ‘an excessive concern for liberty in public men’ like Jefferson. Hamilton ‘had perhaps the highest respect for government of any important American political thinker who ever lived,’ wrote Hamilton biographer Clinton Rossiter.
“Hamilton and his political compatriots, the Federalists, understood that a mercantilist empire is a very bad thing if you are on the paying end, as the colonists were. But if you are on the receiving end, that’s altogether different. It’s good to be the king, as Mel Brooks would say.
Hamilton was neither the inventor of capitalism in America nor ‘the prophet of the capitalist revolution in America,’ as biographer Ron Chernow ludicrously asserts. He was [however] the instigator of ‘crony capitalism,’ or government primarily for the benefit of the well-connected business class. (Emphasis added)
“Far from advocating capitalism, Hamilton was ‘befogged in the mists of mercantilism’, according to the great late nineteenth-century sociologist William Graham Sumner.
“The Curse of Government Debt
“In a lengthy ‘report’ to Congress on the topic of the public debt, Hamilton said that ‘a national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a public blessing.’ He would spend the rest of his life politicking for excessive government spending — and debt. The reason Hamilton gave for favoring a large public debt was not to finance any particular project, or to stabilize financial markets, but to combine the interests of the affluent people of the country — particularly business people — to the government.
“As the owners of government bonds, he reasoned, they would forever support his agenda of higher taxes and bigger government. (He condemned Jefferson’s first inaugural address and its minimal government message as ‘the symptom of a pygmy mind.’) No wonder one historian entitled his book on Hamilton American Machiavelli.
“Wall Street financiers naturally took an immediate liking to Hamilton’s idea, and became the financial cornerstone of the Federalist Party (and later, the Whigs and Republicans). When Hamilton engineered the nationalization of the states’ debt as treasury secretary — something that was totally unnecessary since many states like Virginia had nearly paid off their war debts — the plan was to cash out much of the old debt at face value. This immediately became public knowledge in New York City, but the news spread ever so slowly to the rest of the country.
“Consequently, Hamilton’s friends and supporters from New York City and New England went on a mad scramble down the eastern seaboard, purchasing bonds from hapless war veterans (who had been paid in bonds) for as little as two percent of par value. Huge fortunes were made by these slick New York speculators. Robert Morris pocketed a nifty $18 million. John Quincy Adams wrote to his father that the wealthiest Federalist lawyer in Massachusetts made a huge fortune with this caper. Hamilton participated in this parade of plunder himself, but claimed that the profits he made were for his brother-in-law.
“The link between Wall Street and the federal government was cemented into place later on, when investment banks took on the responsibility of marketing the government’s bonds, which of course they still do to this day. Thus, Wall Street investment bankers became inveterate lobbyists for any and all tax increases (on the rest of the population, anyway) to assure that their own principal and interest would be paid, and that they could promise their clients — the purchasers of government bonds — that the bonds were a good investment. They were corrupt from the very beginning. (My emphasis)
“When Hamilton and George Washington led some 15,000 conscripts into Pennsylvania to enforce the hated whiskey tax, the purpose was not only to collect the tax and reassure bondholders, but also to send a message to any future tax resisters. The volunteer officers who led the conscripts were mostly ‘from the ranks of the creditor aristocracy in the seaboard cities,’ wrote Claude Bowers in Jefferson and Hamilton. (The rebellion succeeded, nevertheless. George Washington pardoned all of the tax protesters despite Hamilton’s hysterical opposition and his desire to hang all of them).
“James Madison remarked that this episode revealed Hamilton’s agenda of ‘the glories of a United States woven together by a system of tax collectors.’ Douglas Adair, an editor of The Federalist Papers, wrote that ‘with devious brilliance, Hamilton set out, by a program of class legislation, to unite the propertied interests of the eastern seaboard into a cohesive administration party.’ He also ‘transformed every financial transaction of the Treasury Department into an orgy of speculation and graft in which selected senators, congressmen, and certain of their richer constituents . . . participated.’ If this sounds familiar it is because the political descendants of these eighteenth-century ‘propertied interests’ are today’s benefactors of the Wall Street Plutocrat/D.C. Political Class’ $700 Billion Bailout Bill of 2008.
“When Hamilton’s Federalist Party consolidated its power during the Adams administration, government spending and debt skyrocketed. Citizens were prohibited to criticize it, however, thanks to the Sedition Act that outlawed free political speech. The national debt was so large that 80 percent of the government’s annual expenditures were needed to service the debt. This was exactly what Hamilton wanted. As John C. Miller, author of The Federalist Era, wrote, Hamilton’s main objective was ‘concentrating economic and political power in the Federal government,’ even if it meant destabilizing the entire nation’s economy.
“The Founding Father of Central Banking
“Hamilton is also considered to be the founding father of central banking, since America’s first central bank, the Bank of the United States (BUS), existed primarily due to his efforts as Treasury Secretary. As William Graham Sumner wrote in his biography of Hamilton, however, ‘[A] national bank . . . was not essential to the work of the Federal Government.’ The real purpose of Hamilton’s bank, Sumner believed, was ‘the interweaving of the interests of wealthy men with those of their government.’ And interweave it did, providing cheap credit to business supporters of the Federalist Party, attempting to engineer boom-and-bust cycles to influence elections (called ‘political business cycles’ in today’s parlance) and even financing the political campaigns of BUS supporters.
“The BUS was a disaster for the general public, however; excessive money creation by the BUS printing press caused 72 percent inflation in its first five years, from 1791 to 1796. It became so unpopular that its twenty-year charter was not renewed, but then the War of 1812 gave it a new life, and it was resurrected in 1817. It immediately caused the Panic of 1819, and did what all central banks have always done: generated boom-and-bust cycles for the next twenty years.
“The bursting of the housing bubble in our time is the latest example of this hoary tradition.
Hamilton’s BUS was de-funded by President Andrew Jackson, and then a version of it was resurrected once again in 1863 by the neo-Hamiltonian Lincoln administration with several National Currency Acts. This, and other interventions of that period (50 percent average tariff rates, massive corporate welfare for the railroad industry, income taxation, pervasive excise taxation), led historian Leonard Curry to observe in his book, Blueprint for Modern America: Nonmilitary Legislation of the First Civil War Congress, that the interventions ‘ushered in four decades of neo-Hamiltonianism: government for the benefit of the privileged few.’
“The record of Hamiltonian central banking from that time until the Fed was created in 1913 was summarized in a scholarly paper by economists Michael Bordo, Anna Schwartz and Peter Rappaport: ‘monetary and cyclical instability, four banking panics, frequent stock market crashes, and other financial disturbances.’
“The Wall Street elite’s response to all this central bank-induced monetary instability was even more centralized banking with the creation of the Federal Reserve Board. It may have meant instability to the ordinary citizens, but was the source of great riches to the banking industry and other members of the politically well-connected class. Sound familiar?
“Things have not changed at all to this day. A recent Fed publication entitled ‘A History of Central Banking in the United States’ proudly boasts that ‘the Federal Reserve has similarities to the country’s first attempt at central banking, and in that regard it owes an intellectual debt to Alexander Hamilton’ who, the Fed says, ‘sounded like a modern-day Fed chairman.’
“When Jefferson and his followers fiercely opposed Hamiltonian statism, they were fighting to avoid bringing the rotten, corrupt, and economically-impoverishing system of British mercantilism to America. They understood what Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations, which was a harsh condemnation of British mercantilism as both corrupt and impoverishing. Indeed, many of these men (or their ancestors) came to America in the first place to escape from that very system. Hamilton mocked Adam Smith just as he mocked Jefferson’s ‘pygmy mind’ and his ‘excessive concern for liberty.’
“It may have taken several generations, but that system of ‘crony capitalism’ or ‘government for the benefit of the privileged few’ has been cemented into place for quite some time now. The politically incestuous relation between the banking and finance industries and government is the sole cause of the current economic crisis, particularly the boom-and-bust cycle caused by the Fed and the system of fractional reserve banking (i.e., lending money that you don’t have) that it administers. Hamilton’s Curse is plaguing America once again.” (My emphasis)
See DiLorenzo’s book Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution — And What It Means for America Today.
Ken Rogers: Really good stuff. Thanks. I didn’t know much about Hamilton other than he supported a plutocracy which I guess is all I need to know.
I found this quote interesting:
“Wall Street investment bankers became inveterate lobbyists for any and all tax increases (on the rest of the population, anyway) to assure that their own principal and interest would be paid, and that they could promise their clients — the purchasers of government bonds — that the bonds were a good investment. They were corrupt from the very beginning. ”
Its current analog would seem to be a reduction of corporate tax and that of high wage earners thereby placing the burden on the middle class to bail out corporate hooliganism and pay on public debt.
stevegroen
Today, the most evolved corporations pertaining to employee, employer, and effect on the country are found in Europe, especially Germany. This is not about post WW2 or anomalies like VW. Public companies must have equal representation, corporate and labor on the board of directors, by law. The point of this is that corporations employing tens of thousands affect millions and decisions that may be seen as effective from the corporate perspective, such as outsourcing, when seen from the total view, are often not the same.
In the end the corporation would not exist without the workers and the workers without the country. The administration is no more than a third party, as it should be.
Issac, good post. Unfortunately, I am at the point where I do not believe in publicly-traded companies because their sole purpose is to maximize profit for the shareholders. Boards and officers are fiduciaries required by law to do shareholder bidding to that end. You’ll never be able to impose ethics in a wealth- based business hierarchy with an investor class. They just don’t give an iota about labor when it’s profit their after.
Do you really think sprinkling a few wage-earners on a board of directors is going to change shareholder values? The only way I know of to do that is to have the employees be the only shareholders with equal votes to each employee.
Why the race to build on top of a flawed system? It needs a structural change from the foundation up.
stevegroen – there is nothing that says that you are ethical in your business practices with your clients or even with your competitors. Are you billing at a rate that is ethical for both you and the client? Do you round up or down when billing by the minute? How much pro bono work do you do? And don’t count making wills for the homeless.
Paul, there are what are called rules of professional conduct that tell me that I’m ethical and that I can get me banned from practice if I bend them too far. Do you see that in business, where flat-out lying is encouraged until one is caught? (See, e.g., Volkswagen.) That’s your corporate state at work.
Bill Clinton being suspended from practice for five years for lying about Paula Jones wouldn’t happen at Goldman Sachs, I guarantee you.
There’s no comparison between these two kinds of employment. In fact, the worst part about the law is, and I paraphrase a 50-year veteran attorney (one of eight hundred still in practice here in California) that it used to be a practice that was also a business, but now it’s a business that’s also a practice.
stevegroen – you have given me an answer, but not to the questions I posed.
@stevegroen
1, January 12, 2016 at 7:36 pm
“Capital has always controlled government here and abroad in the Industrial Age. It will always be like that while there’s income disparity and little voice in the masses.”
Steve,
Just a quick compliment on your use of “income disparity,” rather than “income inequality.” In my fairly extensive reading online and in other media, you’re the only other person I’ve seen refer to that phenomenon in a way that reflects actual thinking about economic reality, rather than just reflexively repeating a catch phrase.
I find myself in quite substantial agreement with many other thoughtful observations you’ve made here in JT’s comments section, and I appreciate how articulately you’ve made them.
Please continue sharing your insights.
Ken
Stevegroen
The model of Germany and other Western nations where labor, government, and capital all sit equally at the same table has produced the most successful companies and lifestyles. These countries have the healthiest populations, most educated populations, most aware and most involved populations because they have the largest and growing middle classes.
Unfortunately it is unAmerican to refer to successful paradigms not found in the USA. Most Americans would rather inhabit the illusion and delusion that USA, USA, is number one. The USA is number one in a lot of areas. However, it has slipped into the third tier down in those that count: quality of life, average wage, education, healthcare, etc. Momentum and population will erode.
Reagan did not get elected because his economics were better than Carter’s. Reaganomics caused the greatest recession since the Great Depression and was only eclipsed by the same formula’s recession, the one we are now experiencing, the one created by the same idiots. Reagan got elected because he simply repeated that the USA was good and the USSR was bad. Good versus Evil. The rest was all Dr. Feelgood. The US had been coming to terms with its racist past and the incredible stupidity and crimes of Vietnam and desperately needed to feel good again, about itself. Reagan just happened to be coming along at the right time, or enough Americans happened to be coming along at the right time.
Issac writes, “The model of Germany and other Western nations where labor, government, and capital all sit equally at the same table has produced the most successful companies and lifestyles. These countries have the healthiest populations, most educated populations, most aware and most involved populations because they have the largest and growing middle classes.”
Germany is the model for success? They want Greek loans paid off to their last goat! After WWII, we forgave their reparations. VW’s smog chips are the epitome of German arrogance in the face of good-faith. VW’s new CEO was in Detroit last week claiming without remorse the illegal smog chips were a “technical” problem, and not a word about it flowed from Merkel. I don’t want to hear what Germany’s done!
Reagan got elected because of his economic and anti-entitlement platforms. He was sorely pro-business and pro-military. It depends on who you talk to as to whether Reagan’s economics were better than Carter’s. Even David Stockman revolted against the budget he wrote for Reagan.
Prior to Reagan, we had a healthy middle-class, which Reagan colored evil. Here, he returned the mentally ill to the streets because he didn’t want to pay for them.
We’ve had witch hunts for socialists and communists as had all of western Europe. Let’s try something new, whereby the wealth in this country is relatively mute rather than always in control. The only way to do that is one person-one vote in politics and employment.
Capital has always controlled government here and abroad in the Industrial Age. It will always be like that while there’s income disparity and little voice in the masses.
“gutting the middle class for cheaper labor and increasing the wealth of those who already have it.” describes crony capitalism, a direct result of Keynesianism, not Reagonomics.
“You can’t argue with a straight face that Reaganomics isn’t our primary economic policy”
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
“that government doesn’t have the right to intervene.”
Straw man; an argument no one is making.
The argument is over the degree and breadth of intervention.
the only really interesting thing about this post is the misuse of “facilitated.” The rest is blatantly obvious.
Paul
Like I’ve mentioned to another one who wears blinders and posts here, I am a Canadian/American and have a considerably wider and more worldly perspective on issues than most. Having lived in other countries and spent the past almost thirty years in this one, a person tends to have paid more attention as opposed to those who are what they are because they were simply born there. So, ‘that Canadian’, welcomes your mentioning it. You prove my points for me. America has to look abroad for success stories, especially now when it is in this ‘lack of success story’.
I agree with Karen S except four the term “Big Union”. I like unions. I was a member in several back in my prior lives as a human before I was a dog. Some were great, and a few are bad. They help the little guy and gal into the middle class. I knew Hoffa in one of my prior lives. Good man. His son is an excellent Union President. I know all about the Bobby Kennedy hate crimes to imprison and kill Jimmy Hoffa. Turn about is fair play. That don’t include James Earl Ray.
Maybe we need a law which says that all donations are to be revealed to the public. Impeach Roberts, the Supreme Ct Justice who said otherwise. Roberts has ruined our democracy.
BarkinDog – you and that Canadian do not understand the Supreme Court. It takes 5 votes for a verdict, not just one. You would have to impeach 5 justices, not just one. There are not the votes for one, much less 5.
Because we need to throw them all out and start afresh. And reform campaign finance to take money out of politics – no more Big Oil, Big Business, Big Union, Wall Street meddling.
https://www.facebook.com/100009956011072/videos/vb.100009956011072/201237976884735/?type=2&theater
The comments in this thread are spot on. FIRE the military industrial zionist financist complex. FIRE them and their stooges in leviathan!
At the national level, three things are absolutely positively guaranteed with either party.
1. More war
2. More debt
3. Less personal freedom
At least at the national level, ban both major parties for at least the next half C.
Party Hardy! Or hardly. This dog is a Democrat–votes Democrat early and often. Yeah, we have some dweebs. But no Boss Tweeds. There is a lot of Obama bashing on this blog so I will not explain why I like him– and his dog. In the primary I might pull the lever for Bernie although I have not discussed this with my half blind pal (human) for whom I give direction and guidance. For those of you in the Republican Party just think about what you will say when your time comes and you get your interview with Saint Peter at the Holy Gates. Being a Republican is a dog disqualification. Only good humans get to come back as dogs. It is a choice by them, not an echo, but only if Saint Peter consents.
“Reaganomics is unsustainable.”
Steve,
How in the world could you know? The entire system is so entangled in government bureaucracy that no system is reliable.
Olly writes, “‘Reaganomics is unsustainable.’ Steve, How in the world could you know? The entire system is so entangled in government bureaucracy that no system is reliable.”
Reaganomics, whether you realize and/or like it, is about gutting the middle class for cheaper labor and increasing the wealth of those who already have it.
Reducing tax on corporations which increases corporate profit, trade agreements and foreign outsourcing, legislation like TARP which provides a safety net not for the downtrodden citizenry but banks and large corporations, while at the same time flat-lining wages, are why our middle class has vaporized and we have deserted slums like Detroit, and income disparity between the upper and lower class has never been greater. The only reason Reaganomics is still around is because our military is shoving it down the world’s collective throat.
The one question you cannot answer is how the current trend in reducing labor here will benefit the middle class which is the backbone of this country.
A Keynesian economic approach with government’s help when needed from the ’30s through Carter’s administration provided the greatest quality of life this country has ever seen, and we thought it wouldn’t go away. Unfortunately, Harding and Hoover reincarnated into the form of Reagan and it won’t go away without a palpable change in the our economic policy, e.g., simple changes such as no boards of directors, each employee having one vote in the legal entity for which he or she works, and no investor class.
I know government intervention is repugnant to you, but please reflect on how diametrically-opposite the ideology of Ayn Rand, social Darwinists, and the others who would have a slave class do their dirty work are with the following:
“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises . . . to . . . provide for the general Welfare of the United States.”
It doesn’t say the specific welfare of overachievers and the wealthy. It’s the general welfare that is relevant.
Government intervention in domestic crisis was intended by 1787.
You can’t argue with a straight face that Reaganomics isn’t our primary economic policy or that government doesn’t have the right to intervene.
This poll does not surprise me. Here is something that did at first, but then made sense. Reporters covering this election are finding Trump and Sanders rally goers saying they could support the other. Trump rally goers are saying if Trump doesn’t get the nod, they will vote for Sanders, and vice versa. Sanders and Trump are two populists that have tapped into the disaffection. People across the political spectrum are “fed up and not going to take it anymore.” A real Howard Beale moment in time. We may be seeing a new paradigm, and the elitist establishment haven’t a freakin’ clue!