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Sunday, March 02, 2008

Judgment Day Is Here? Here’s a closer look at the Clinton record

Though Hillary has only been in the Senate for about 6 years she would like us to include her 8 years as first lady in the White House as experience also. While you wouldn’t consider being the husband or wife of a brain surgeon a qualification to operate on you, it is true that Bill will be her top advisor (behind union buster Mark Penn) and many say a co-president. Voters should consider the Clinton-Gore record before voting, so here it is.

During Hillary’s 6 years in office she voted for the war and for continued funding. She told the NY Times she’d keep a small permanent force in Iraq, but tells voters she’ll redeploy our troops and bring them home. She lied and said she’s always been against NAFTA, but she said it was good for America in 2004 and then supported a free trade agreement in Peru that was as bad as NAFTA, if not worse. That’s not a record to be proud of and neither is the Clinton-Gore administration’s. It’s just the Clinton’s art of politics without conscience.

What the Clinton-Gore administration did:

1. Promoted welfare reform that ended the federal safety net and put many children at risk.

2. Lobbied, with big business, NAFTA and GATT into law against labor, consumer, environmental and human-rights groups.

3. Expanded corporate welfare programs.

4. Approved dozens of giant mergers in the chemical, oil, drug, defense, agribusiness, media, HMO, hospital, auto, banking, and other financial institutions.

5. Encouraged larger military weapons exports by the private munitions companies using taxpayer subsidies and approved many costly and redundant weapons programs.

6. Supported a bloated military budget, post-Soviet Union, driven more by defense industry greed than national defense needs.

7. Failed to enforce laws against corporate crime, fraud and abuse.

8. Gave away to corporations massive taxpayers assets in natural resources, scientific, health, space, and other R&D areas.

9. Bailed out, with taxpayer billions, reckless governments and oligarchies through the IMF.

10. Opened up large areas of Northern Alaska for oil and gas drilling and supported the destruction by coal companies of mountaintops in Appalachia.

11. Gave the auto companies an eight-year holiday from higher fuel efficiency and auto safety standards.

12. Signed legislation eroding civil liberties and produced a record that commentators called “abysmal.”

13. Under-enforced the civil rights laws while orating for them.

14. Backed large corporate prison expansions and failed to address discriminatory patterns of criminal justice enforcement.

15. Supported dictatorships and oligarchies that have suppressed their people.

16. Continued the deep sleep of the regulatory agencies at the expense of health, safety and economic assets of consumers and workers.

17. Favored big agribusiness over the family farmer.

18. Subsidized and gave the biotechnology industry insulation from regulation.

19. Raised large amounts of money from almost every corporate interest and let big money continue to nullify honest elections.

20. Opposed ways and means to facilitate consumers, workers, taxpayers, and investors banding together for self-defense.

(*Ralph Nader -Crashing the Party)

Clinton laid the ground work for the Bush administration when he imposed sanctions on Iraq that killed half a million children and made “regime change” in Iraq official US policy. Beginning in 1998, he dropped more bombs on Iraq than all of the bombs dropped on Vietnam. The constitution shredding Patriot Act was wriiten during the Clinton Administration and passed by corporate Democrats like Hillary Clinton.

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Derrick D. Blassingame says:
03 Mar 2008 at 10:22 am | #

Amen!

White Male says:
03 Mar 2008 at 10:35 am | #

From Justin Jeffree:10. Opened up large areas of Northern Alaska for oil and gas drilling…........

YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THIS? ?

This was a topic in the 1980 Reagan-Carter debates, and since then we have the technology to extract natural gas and oil with minimum to zero damage to the environment.

Walter E. Williams worte, some months ago, that photos of polar bears should be placed on the gas pumbs throughout the U.S. and that should serve to remind people why we are paying between $3.00 and $4.00 per gallon of gasoline. Yes, we need to provide a place for polar bears and/or other creatures to play.

Again, Justin, we can accomplish the Alaska oil drilling with no harm to the polar bear. Way back in the 1970s the Alaskan Oil Pipeline was constructed with the environment and animal being included. The pipe is raised at various locations to allow the flow of animals as opposed to serving as a fence limiting their movements.

YOU COULD ALSO ADD TO YOUR LIST THE FOLLOWING:

Campainged on the promise of a middle class tax cut, then in office, rammed through one of the largest tax increases in history.

After this, Presidents Bill and Hillary Clinton explored and floated ideas to tap into the United States private pension system.

Secretary of Labor Robert Reich was sent out and about promoting the idea of Economically Targeted Investments (ETIs), a plan that would REQUIRE each and every private pension plan in the U.S. of which there are thousands, to invest up to 10% of their portfolio into government programs. I recall Robert Reich being interviewed on the Mike McConnell Talk Show promoting this nonsense. He assured all of that we would be much better off with this new concept.

Links regarding ETIs…......

http://www.house.gov/jec/cost-gov/regs/eti/issues.htm

http://www.house.gov/jec/cost-gov/regs/eti/radical.htm

GOOGLE SEARCH: ECONOMICALLY TARGETED INVESTMENTS.

As if that were not enough, Preisdents Bill and Hillary Clinton appointed Boston Federal Reserve Bank economist Alicia Munnell to the post of Assistant Tressury Secretary for Economic Policy.

In an article for the NEW ENGLAND ECONOMIC REVIEW just prior to the Clintons begain their primary campaign she wrote…...THE UNITED STATES HAS THE ABILITY TO TAX PENSIONS AND THE TIME HAS COME TO DO IT.

She Called for three taxex on YOUR 401k,IRA, and each and every pension plan in the U.S. (State, Federal,Corporate).

1. A one time 15% tax on the value of pension plans to incluce your 401k or I.R.A.

2. A tax on gains made within your 401k, IRA.

3. A tax on employer contributions.

The one time 15% tax would have been a sudden windfall of possibly $1 trillion to advance give away programs. This would have amounted to nothing less than a transfer or wealth from of segment of the population (the producers) to another segment of the population (the non producers).

LINKS: google CLINTON PENSION GRAB.

http://www.house.gov/jec/cost-gov/regs/eti/grab.htm

http://www.house.gov/jec/cost-gov/regs/eti/quotes.htm

http://www.fpanet.org/journal/articles/1994_Issues/upload/16107_1.pdf

The Republican takeover of congress served as an impedement to any of these ideas. They have remained on the back shelf for several years, but either an Obama or Clinton presidency with a susbstantial majority in the Congress could result in a reappearance of these ideas.

Then Hillary recently has stated that its time to take the oil profits…...

http://www.fpanet.org/journal/articles/1994_Issues/upload/16107_1.pdf

google - Clinton oil profits youtube.

Does Hillary or Obama understand that Exxon paid something like $30 billion in corporate taxes last year?

Does Hillary or Obama that many state and federal pension plans are very heavily invested in Exxon, Chevron, etc.

One plan in Ohio, one of the smaller school employee plans has 74,000 shares of Exxon and about 135,000 shares of Chevron. Gee Whiz - - - what would happen to the value of these pension investments if their profits were seized by the government. Remenber, Justin Jeffre, these pension plans represent the retirement nestegg of millions of people.

JUSTIN JEFFRE may have a difficult time in making a selection for this years election.

Let me suggest Sen. McCain. Mccain is not a conservitave Republican and I am quite dissappointed with him. He will serve as a one-termer, then you liberals can get back to your desired candidcates. I think Obama has several years in when he can run for the presidency. Remember in the election year of 2032 he will be McCain’s age. McCain will then be over 96.

You liberals can be assured that McCain will not appoint the conservative Supreme Court Justices such as

Renquise,
Scalia,
Aliso,
Roberts,
Thomas,

but may lean toward the middle with slight tilt to the right, but not not enough.

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) says:
03 Mar 2008 at 03:09 pm | #

White Male, The Clinton-Gore administration shouldn’t have given the auto companies an eight year holiday from higher fuel standards. Oil and gas drilling does hurt the environment and the polar bears are going extinct. They don’t need a place to play they need for us to stop destroying the planet.

Exxon continues to make record profits and they’ve gotten huge subsidies from our government. Yes, corporations should pay taxes and Exxon should pay a huge fine for what they did to the Alaska coastline where they destroyed many communities by devastating the environment. They haven’t paid for any of it and that was like twenty years ago.

They also have invested millions to create a false debate about climate change and our role in it. I think the planet is more important than pensions. You can’t breathe money.

I have no idea why anyone would suggest voting for McCain. He has made it clear he’s the candidate for perpetual war. He says it’s fine if we stay in Iraq for 100 or 1,000 years. He sang bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran and actually thought that was funny.

White Male says:
03 Mar 2008 at 05:21 pm | #

From Justin Jeffries….....
They also have invested millions to create a false debate about climate change and our role in it. I think the planet is more important than pensions. You can’t breathe money.
———————————————————————————————

The “false debate” has been created by the wacos such as Al Gore. Justin, don’t worry, you will beathe for a long time.

You can Google information regarding the myth of global warming and/or climate change. Why not try it then after your research expose the hoax for what it is.

I assume you are/were a fan of Johnny Carson. He poked fun at politicians of both parties in good humor with respect. It didn’t matter if the person was a Dem or Repubublican.

He never revealed his true political beliefs or who he supported in an election. He did say in 1968 that this country would be in bad shape if we elect someone like George Wallace as President. Most people probably agreed with this and understood his remark. If Johnny Carson was still on the air during the 2000 election, he would have made the same observation about Al Gore. Without question, Gore is a first class kook and waco as are those who buy into his nonsense.

Union Buster? says:
06 Mar 2008 at 02:53 am | #

Union Busting? There is no worse union buster than your revered Ralp Nader.

http://www.realchange.org/nader.htm

Ralph talks big about democracy and even unions. But when his own workers at one of his magazines, Multinational Monitor, got fed up with cruel working conditions and started agitating for a union of their own, Nader busted the union with all of the hardball techniques used by corporate owners across America. Workers at Public Citizen, another Nader group, also tried to form a union because of 60 to 80 hour work weeks, salaries that ranged from $13,000 down, and other difficult working conditions and were blocked by Nader, who remains unapologetic to this day.
Nader says “I don’t think there is a role for unions in small nonprofit ‘cause’ organizations any more than ... within a monastery or within a union.”

When ringleader Tim Shorrock filed the union recognition papers, Nader immediately transferred ownership in the Multinational Monitor to close friends who ran an organization (“Essential Information”) that Nader had set up. When Shorrock showed up for work the next day, he had been fired, the locks were changed, and management called the police to charge him with theft (of his own work papers.) That charge was thrown out of court, but management fired the two supportive editors and sued the three of them for $1.2 million, agreeing to drop the intimidation suit only when they dropped their NLRB complaint. All of these action are straight from the hardball anti-union playbook, and Nader makes no apology.

According to Nader, “Public interest groups are like crusades…you can’t have work rules, or 9 to 5.” Shorrock, with his “union ploy,” became an “adversary” according to Nader. “Anything that is commercial, is unionizable,” but small public interest organizations “would go broke in a month,” Nader says, if they paid union wages, offered union benefits and operated according to standard work rules, such as the eight-hour day. Remember that Nader’s well-funded organizations were amassing tons of extra money that Ralph has been playing the stock market with during all these events

Give us all a break already.

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) says:
06 Mar 2008 at 01:59 pm | #

Yes, working for non-profits isn’t the same as working for for-profit corporations. You keep cutting and pasting this nonsense. Name one non-profit that has been unionized. I won’t hold my breath.

Hillary (Inc) Clinton’s top advisor, Mark Penn, is the President of a big corporate PR firm Burston-Marsteller and they are union busters. This is what the Nation said about them. The Nation is a credible source unlike the Nader hater site you linked to.

Burson-Marsteller is hardly a natural fit for a prominent Democrat. The firm has represented everyone from the Argentine military junta to Union Carbide after the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India, in which thousands were killed when toxic fumes were released by one of its plants, to Royal Dutch Shell, which has been accused of colluding with the Nigerian government in committing major human rights violations. B-M pioneered the use of pseudo-grassroots front groups, known as “astroturfing,” to wage stealth corporate attacks against environmental and consumer groups. It set up the National Smokers Alliance on behalf of Philip Morris to fight tobacco regulation in the early 1990s. Its current clients include major players in the finance, pharmaceutical and energy industries. In 2006, with Penn at the helm, the company gave 57 percent of its campaign contributions to Republican candidates.

Penn was Bill Clinton’s top advisor and was described as “the most powerful man in Washington that you’ve never heard of”.

It was said that Penn was the only person who could get Bill Clinton and Bill Gates on the same line. Penn’s largest client was Microsoft, and he saw no contradiction between working for both the plaintiff and the defense in what was at the time the country’s largest antitrust case. A variety of controversial clients enlisted PSB. The firm defended Procter & Gamble’s Olestra from charges that the food additive caused anal leakage, blamed Texaco’s bankruptcy on greedy jurors and market-tested genetically modified foods for Monsanto. PSB introduced to consulting the concept of “inoculation”: shielding corporations from scandal through clever advertising and marketing.

They even advertised their union busting skills on their website.

As expected with such a lineup, B-M has a highly confrontational relationship with organized labor. “Companies cannot be caught unprepared by Organized Labor’s coordinated campaigns,” read the “Labor Relations” section of its website, describing that branch of the company (the section was altered after The American Prospect quoted it in March).

They helped Cintas bust a union here.

Back in 2003, two large unions, UNITE (which later merged with the hotel and restaurant union, HERE) and the Teamsters, launched a major drive to organize 32,000 garment workers and truck drivers at Cintas, the country’s largest and most profitable uniform and laundry supply company (it posted $3.4 billion in sales and $327 million in profits last year). Its longtime CEO, Richard Farmer, was a mega-fundraising “Pioneer” for George W. Bush. Cintas was sued for overcharging consumers and denying workers overtime pay—it settled both cases out of court—and was ordered by a California superior court to give employees $1.4 million for not paying them a living wage. It has also maintained unsafe working conditions (an employee in Tulsa died recently when caught in a 300-degree dryer) and, according to union officials, has used any means necessary to block the organizing drive. According to worker complaints documented by the unions, management fired employees on false grounds, vowed to close plants and screened antiunion videos. A plant manager in Vista, California, threatened to “kick driver-employees with his steel-toed boots,” according to a complaint UNITE HERE filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). To put a soft face on its harsh tactics, Cintas hired Wade Gates, a top employee in B-M’s Dallas office, as its chief spokesman. Gates coined Cintas’s shrewd response to labor: “the right to say yes, the freedom to say no,” which has been repeated endlessly in the press. In a speech at USC Law School last year, he outlined Cintas’s strategy, calling for an “aggressive defense against union tactics.” Says Ahmer Qadeer, an organizer for UNITE HERE, “It’s the Burson influence that’s made Cintas much, much slicker than they were.” The unions have won two NLRB rulings against Cintas, but for four years the company has continued to resist the organizing campaign.

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) says:
06 Mar 2008 at 05:24 pm | #

What’s the matter anon, can’t you name one non-profit that is unionized? Oh yeah, they don’t exist.

Would you care to explain how Hillary’s top advisor, Mark Penn, isn’t a union buster?

Clinton busted up unions by lobbying NAFTA with big business. So both of Hillary’s top advisors are union busters. Hillary was busted lying about NAFTA in the last debate, wasn’t she?

And now she’s trying to act like she’s against the war she voted for and funded.

White Male, there is no debate about global warming. The scientific community agrees that man is having a serious impact.

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) says:
06 Mar 2008 at 10:21 pm | #

Would anyone like to explain how Clinton’s NAFTA didn’t hurt unions?

Please explain how Hillary’s top advisor Mark Penn could have his companies website say; “Companies cannot be caught unprepared by Organized Labor’s coordinated campaigns,” and he’s not a union buster.

I know you Clinton fans want to try to change the subject, but he subject is the Clinton record. Why did she pretend she was always against NAFTA when as late as 2004 she public spoke in favor of it?

eye92 says:
07 Mar 2008 at 12:34 pm | #

What’s the matter anon, can’t you name one non-profit that is unionized? Oh yeah, they don’t exist.

i posted a longer response to this yesterday. It must have gotten lost in the mail.

there are tons of non-profit workers that are members of unions. Some quick examples

1. Hospitals are almost always non-profit so all the nurses unions are unions within a non-profit

2. The symphonies all across the united states both non-profits and unions.

You can read about efforts to unionize nonprofits here http://www.philanthropy.com/jobs/2002/11/28/20021128-945997.htm

Here is a 51 page study about non profits and unions

http://www.nonprofitresearch.org/usr_doc/Masaoka.pdf

So yes there are ton of non-profits that are unionized. just not greenpeace or ralph nadars. aka liberal union busters

White Male says:
07 Mar 2008 at 12:57 pm | #

From Justin Jeffre….......
White Male, there is no debate about global warming. The scientific community agrees that man is having a serious impact.
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Justin, can you honestly say there is NO DEBATE about global warming? That is similiar to using the word “never”. We all learn at a young age that we shouldn’t use the word “never”.

LINKS REGARDING THE MYTH OF GLOBAL WARMING:

1. http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/moregw.htm

2. http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/pagan.htm

3. http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/swindle.htm

4. http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/iceage.htm

5. http://www.junkscience.com/news/robinson.htm

6. http://www.look-to-the-skies.com/global_warming.htm

7. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20070315&articleId=5086

8. http://www.ncpa.org/ba/ba230.html

9. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMDi_u0dcig

10. http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=11548

Eight Reasons Why ‘Global Warming’ Is a Scam
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=11548

http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?video_id=DRaeEIN5Sh8&rel=1&eurl=http&#x3A//www.heartland.org/Article.cfm&#x3FartId&#x3D11548&iurl=http&#x3A//s1.ytimg.com/vi/DRaeEIN5Sh8/default.jpg&t=OEgsToPDskJbJBgyETvpUPheUNywWML9

http://www.kafalas.com/urbcol74.htm

WALTER E. WILLIAMS ON GLOBAL WARMING
Fearmongering
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/articles/07/fearmongering.html

Envirobambbozled
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/articles/01/envirobamboozled.html

Help for Americans
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/articles/06/help.html

Environmentalist Agenda
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/articles/97/environagenda.html

Global warming hersey
http://www.cincinnatibeacon.com/index.php/content/comments/judgment_day_is_here_heres_a_closer_look_at_the_clinton_record/#comments

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

This remindes me of Prof Paul Ehrlich who wrote the POPULATION BOMB.

He predicted:

“The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines . . . hundreds of millions of people (including Americans) are going to starve to death.” (1968)
“Smog disasters” in 1973 might kill 200,000 people in New York and Los Angeles. (1969)
“I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” (1969)
“Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion.” (1976)

These predictions made by this professor kinda reminds me of the global warming nonsense we have been exposed to over the past 10 or so years.

When in college, Justin, did you have any professors such as Paul Ehlirch?

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) says:
07 Mar 2008 at 04:14 pm | #

White Male, this subject isn’t worthy of debate and is really getting way off topic. I won’t allow any more posts that don’t have to do with the subject of the artcle which is the Clinton record. If you won’t to submit an article about global warming you are welcome too.

eye92, you really can’t compare billion dollar hospitals to small public interest groups that like small mom and pop stores wouldn’t last a month if they were unionized. Working for these orginizations is public service like the Peace Corp or missionary work. Clinton’s NAFTA killed over a million good paying for-profit union jobs and Hillary’s top advisor advertised his companies ability to help bust union drives which they did with a large local for-profit corporation Cintas. The first off topic cut and paste post should not have been approved because then the whole thread gets hijacked.

You can say what you want in articles about him (this isn’t want one), but this post is about the Clinton record, not Green Peace, Public Citizen, Nader or non-profits. If you writing about anything other than Clinton’s record, NAFTA, Mark Penn or something that has to do with the content of the article you’re hijacking the thread and your post won’t be approved.

White Male says:
07 Mar 2008 at 05:30 pm | #

From Justin Jeffre:
1. Promoted welfare reform that ended the federal safety net and put many children at risk.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

This is one of the positive accomplishments of the Clinton Administration.

The goal of welfare reform is to encourage people to develop a good work ethic and pass it on to your children.

There are three basic rules that GUARANTEE you will not become poor

1. Finish high school. NO GED.
2. Do not have children untill you are married.
3. NEVER NEVER quit a job until you have a new one lined up.

My message to young people with their first part time job would be to ALWAYS show up for work 15 minutes early and leave about 10 minutes after quitting time.

Yes, there should be a safety net. But a single mother age 30 living in Section-8 housing, 4 children, welfare recepient, food stamps, WIC, medicade, utility vouchers, should be punished for having a fifth baby. Human beings make mistakes - but this lady does not need more than one child.

Plus, the single motehr of a child applying for welfare beneifts should be REQUIRED to identify the father.

Justin, you should know that Hillary, with a Democratic Congress will return welfare as we knew it prior to Welfare Reform.

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) says:
07 Mar 2008 at 05:56 pm | #

The goal of welfare reform is to encourage people to develop a good work ethic and pass it on to your children.

There are three basic rules that GUARANTEE you will not become poor

1. Finish high school. NO GED.
2. Do not have children untill you are married.
3. NEVER NEVER quit a job until you have a new one lined up.

White Male, having a high school education doesn’t guarantee you a job that will pay you enough to move into the middle class. NAFTA sent at least a million and a half good paying jobs overseas. Even jobs that require higher education are being sent over to countries like India because they can work for less. If there were enough jobs that paid a living wage for everybody with a high school degree to get one, I might agree with you.

I don’t have any reason to believe that Hillary would do anything differently than Bill Clinton did. Mark Penn was his top advisor and is hers also. Her husband is one of her other top advisors.

Of course when Bill Clinton spoke about welfare reform he didn’t mean reforming corporate welfare. He expanded corporate welfare while putting children at risk. (Reminds me of what local Dems do.) Do you have a problem with corporate welfare, or is that kind of welfare OK?

White Male says:
08 Mar 2008 at 10:26 am | #

From Justin Jeffre…......
Do you have a problem with corporate welfare, or is that kind of welfare OK?

————————————————————
Would you please explain what you mean by corporate welfare.

I know that corporations provide jobs.
Jobs provide people with the ability to support a family.
People who make sacrifices in life such as paying atention in high school, doing their home work, working hard in college,and take their job seriously are the ones who do well.

You, Justin, also indicated that Clinton allowed corporate mergers. Examples? I do recall that early in the Clinton years Bristol Meyers and Squibb merged, but that had been in the planning stages before Clinton came to office. And to my knowledge, no one went to the Oval Office and asked the President’s permission to merge.

You use words such as corporate welfare and disenfranchisment as if you really really really belive that such things exist. When Democrats lose an election we hear about those being disenfranchised. Can you explain that one?

Regarding Corporate Welfare - - Do you mean giving tax incentives to create new job or research and development?

Did you know that drug companies can sink up to $100 million into a new drug only to have it NOT approved by the F.D.A. Oil companies are constantly in search of oil and in research for energy sources. Thanks to the enviro-wacos it would take up to 11 years to get through the licensing process before a nuclear plant can be built. Suppose you and I wanted to construct a nuclear power plant - we would jump throuh government hoops until about 2019 before we began construction. Nuclear is one clear answer. I almost fell out of my chair a few weeks ago when liberal Elenaor Clift (Mclaughlin Group) even agreed with this.

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) says:
08 Mar 2008 at 10:46 pm | #

White Male, corporate welfare is when the government gives away millions of taxpayer dollars to corporate freeloaders. Sometimes government gives away a billion dollars worth of stadiums to sports teams. Sometimes corporate owned governments give away tens of millions of dollars in free parking garages. And sometimes government gives away $52 million dollars corporations like Convergys.

These deals do create jobs sometimes, but the jobs they created are in places like Indonesia. Convergys and other corporations that receive these huge handouts refused to pay their hard working janitors (most of which had high school degrees) decent wages so they can pay their bills and take care of their families. They refused to even meet with community leaders after we treated them so well. (Many people can’t afford college because the price is skyrocketing and it no longer guarantees you a decent job.)

I believe these mega-billion dollar mergers were during the Clinton years and show the sheer size of the combinations: Travelers-Citicorp, $70 billion; SBC-Ameritech, $62 billion; BankAmerica-NationsBank, $60 billion; WorldCom-MCI, $37 billion, Boeing-McDonnell Douglas, $16 billion; Bell-Atlantic-NYNEX, $20 billion; and Daimler-Chrysler, $90 billion.

I’m not sure if anyone went into the oval office to ask Bill Clinton for permission to merge, but they may have used the Lincoln bedroom. It’s a big house and they told corporate America they were open for business. Bubba did HAFTA (I know that’s corny) change some laws to please his corporate paymasters.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the first major overhaul of United States telecommunications law in nearly 62 years. The broadcasting industry couldn’t get the legislation through under Reagan or George H.W. Bush, but it succeeded under Clinton. The day he signed the bill into law, Clinton boasted, “Landmark legislation fulfills my administration’s promise to reform our telecommunications laws in a manner that leads to competition and private investment, promotes universal service and provides for flexible government regulation.”

The Act removed the legal barriers to local and long distance phone companies acquiring each other. The results were immediate and massive. In 1996 there were eight major U.S. companies providing local telephone service and five significant long-distance companies. By 1999, these 13 companies had merged into five telecommunications giants, in a series of record-breaking merger deals.

And he was happy to bow down to his corporate Gods when he overturned the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.

In 1999, the Financial Services Modernization Act overturned the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. The Act effectively barred banks, brokerages and insurance companies from entering each others’ industries, and separated investment banking and commercial banking. The law was enacted in response to revelations of gross corruption and manipulation of the market by giant banking houses that organized huge corporate mergers for their own profit, leading to the collapse of the stock market in 1929.

The Wall Street Journal celebrated the agreement to end such restrictions with an editorial declaring that the banks had been unfairly scapegoated for the Great Depression. The headline of one Journal article declared, “Finally, 1929 Begins to Fade.”

The unleashed and deregulated financial services sector boomed, bringing us the speculative boom that in turn gave us the temporary budget surplus of the late 1990s and the finance-led booms and busts since then. The hedge fund was not invented in the 1990s, but it was under Clinton that they were transformed into their modern form, with the Clinton White House cheerleading that transformation. In 1998, when the hedge fund, Long Term Capital Management, collapsed, leading to federal intervention, the president established the Working Group on Financial Markets. In February 2000, it concluded that hedge funds needed no regulation.

President AWOL wasn’t the only president that was Kenny Boy Lay’s good buddy either.

Clintonism never saw a sector it didn’t want to deregulate. Wholesale electricity deregulation began under George H.W. Bush, but Clinton worked relentlessly to extend it and bring it to the retail level. We forget that Ken Lay, the founder of Enron and the driving force behind electricity deregulation was a friend of and mentor to Clinton as well as George W. Bush. Enron gave $420,000 to Clinton’s party over three years and donated $100,000 to his inauguration festivities.

Clinton’s appointees on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) aggressively deregulated the electric grid system, even refusing to step in when Enron and other electricity traders’ manipulation of prices drove California to the edge of bankruptcy.

Deregulation often means more regulation, just in favor of corporations over people and competition.

You use words such as corporate welfare and disenfranchisment as if you really really really belive that such things exist.

Yes, corporate welfare is very real and we have plenty of local and national examples.

When Democrats lose an election we hear about those being disenfranchised. Can you explain that one?

I can, but we should really stay on topic here. Read Greg Palast’s “the Best Democracy Money Can Buy”, The Conyers Report: “What Went Wrong In Ohio” or the most complete record of the 2004 election in Ohio, “What Happened In Ohio 2004”. I will do a post about that subject at another time, but it’s a whole other topic.

Did you know that most new drugs come from research and development sponsored by the government? Most of the time new discoveries are found at Universities that use government funds and then they are handed over pretty much for free to private drug companies to bring them to market. (It’s sort of like when the government hands over our public airwaves to broadcasters for free and no longer demands that they serve the public interest.)

The FDA increasingly will speed up the process for these companies and give them big extensions on their patents so people can’t get a much cheaper generic version for decades. They spend most of what they call their research and development money on advertising over-priced drugs. Usually the generic or older brands of the drugs are much cheaper and just as good.

Oil companies continue to make record profits and still receive corporate welfare. They also get subsidized by our wars and coups that give them access to the resources of countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran (under the US backed Shah). There is bipartisan support for dictatorships all around the world so that corporations get special access and treatment. Google Smedley Butler to learn more.

Nucular (as W would say) isn’t a clear answer. It’s very dangerous and isn’t cost effective. It had to be subsidized as well. She’s not a real liberal, maybe a Neo-liberal like Clinton.

White Male says:
09 Mar 2008 at 11:19 am | #

Justin Jeffre wrote…....
(Many people can’t afford college because the price is skyrocketing and it no longer guarantees you a decent job.)

I agree that college costs are and have been skyrocketing. Each and every year the tuition increases exceed the rate of inflaton.

A highly motivated goal oriented young person can find a way.

A young person can earn up to $10,000 EACH AND EVERY SUMMER by cutting lawns. Between the 7th and 8th grade my son had six lawn jobs in the neighborhood. From April thru June each lawn needed cutting about once per week, then it went to about every two weeks. This was about 10-12 yr ago, some of the jobs paid $30, most around $15-$20. Then in high school he had as many as 12 lawn jobs, plus a part time job. HE SAVED HIS MONEY AND YES, WE DID HELP WITH SOME COLLEGE EXPENSES, BUT HE ALSO CHIPPED IN.

His bride, an engineer, has just paid off her college loans. Both had small scholarships because they applied themselves in high school.

My children held jobs in high school, college, and we helped all of them. I passed a strong work ethic to them.

THE G.I. BILL is an excellent opportunity for all youngsters. The military experience is an excellent start for adult life. I would love nothing more than to have every high school graduate drafted for two years of service. Yes, I did serve, and used the G.I. Bill. Many of my friends (way back in the 1960s) entered college out of high school then after a year joined the military and finished college on the G.I.Bill. Most of my firends financed their own way through college and I know that expenses were not as bad back then. I think one semester at X.U. was about $900. Tuition at U.C. was $11.00 per credit hour for city residents in about 1969-70. A quarter was about $225. The G.I. bill back then paid $388 per month (TAX FREE) for full time married student with 2 children.

Justin, there is no excuse for someone using sykrocketing costs as the reason for not going to college.

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) says:
09 Mar 2008 at 03:39 pm | #

HE SAVED HIS MONEY AND YES, WE DID HELP WITH SOME COLLEGE EXPENSES, BUT HE ALSO CHIPPED IN.

White Male, not everybody has a family that can help with college expenses like your son had. I imagine you helped with other expenses as he was growing up that allowed him to save all of his money. That’s great that he and his wife have a strong work ethic and so do a lot of poor people.

College costs a lot of money, people rack up a lot of debt and it still doesn’t guarantee a decent job. Millions of good jobs were sent overseas by Clinton’s NAFTA. A college degree doesn’t mean much more than what a high school degree used to mean. I agree that it’s better to have one, but it’s increasingly out of reach for more and more Americans.

You shouldn’t have to join the army-where you’ll likely be sent to war in one of the countries we’re occupying for the benefit of oil companies and war profiteers-in order to receive higher education. The US is the richest most powerful nation in the history of the world. In many European countries higher education is free and in the Netherlands the government even gives you money to go to college.

I do encourage people to go to college, but the skyrocketing costs do prevent people from being able to go and it guarantees you’ll be in debt, but not that you’ll be able to find a decent job.

Instead of giving corporate welfare to corporations that have no loyalty to the American people and spending half of all our expenditures on wars that make us less safe, we should be investing in education, health care and transit for our people.

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) says:
11 Mar 2008 at 09:26 pm | #

don’t forget investing in decent housing

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Sunday, March 02, 2008