We live in the United States of Stupid, stupid from lack of
knowledge of recent history. It is
amazing how many people in America believe the Clintons singlehandedly were
able to create NAFTA and reform the welfare system and repeal Glass Steagall, with
no one in congress’ fingerprints on the laws passed.
How stupid are Americans that they have absolutely no memory
of what America looked like when President William Jefferson Clinton took
office? The hatred of the Clinton’s by
the Reagan Republicans is only surpassed by the hatred towards them from the
Reagan Democrats.
Although the Clinton’s were new to the American people when
Bill Clinton won the 1992 Presidential election, they were well known to the
Democratic and Republican establishment.
The Democratic establishment’s hatred of the Clintons is legendary was
on full display during the 2008 Democratic primary.
The lies against Hillary Clinton flew fast and furiously spread
by the Democratic establishment. One of
those lies was that Hillary Rodham the 26 year-old girlfriend of Bill Clinton
was fired from the Nixon impeachment team for lying. From Snopes:
Excerpt:
Is this true or false?
As a 27 year old staff attorney for
the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate investigation, Hillary
Rodham was fired by her supervisor, lifelong Democrat Jerry Zeifman.
When asked why Hillary Rodham was
fired, Zeifman said in an interview, "Because she was a liar. She was an
unethical, dishonest lawyer, she conspired to violate the Constitution, the
rules of the House, the rules of the Committee, and the rules of
confidentiality…"
At that time, the Judiciary
Committee comprised 37 members of the House of Representatives and was chaired
by Representative Peter Rodino, Jr., of New Jersey. The Judiciary Committee was
assisted by a permanent staff, on which attorney Jerry Zeifman served as Chief Counsel
and … by a separate Impeachment Inquiry staff…
That inquiry staff was headed by
former U.S. Justice Department lawyer John Doar, and one of his hires was a
26-year-old Yale Law School graduate then known by her maiden name of Hillary
Rodham…
A pair of articles published during
Hillary Clinton's run for the presidency in 2008, one by Northstar Writers
Group founder Dan Calabrese and one by Jerry Zeifman himself, asserted that
Zeifman was Hillary's supervisor during the Watergate investigation and that he
eventually fired her from the investigation for "unethical,
dishonest" conduct.
However, whatever Zeifman may have thought of Hillary
and her work during the investigation, he
was not her supervisor, neither he nor anyone else fired her from her
position on the Impeachment Inquiry staff (Zeifman in fact didn't have the
power to fire her, even had he wanted to do so), his description of her conduct as "unethical" and
"dishonest" is his
personal, highly subjective characterization, and the "facts" on
which he bases that characterization are ones that he has contradicted himself
about on multiple occasions.
During the 2008 primary race to choose the Democratic
presidential candidate, the partial one term U.S. Senator Barack Obama made the
claim “Reagan changed the trajectory of this country in a way that President
Clinton did not.”
That statement was a clear message to Reagan Republicans and
Reagan Democrats that the policies of George W. Bush would be continued under
an Obama Administration.
Barack Obama was going to return the nation to the Reagan
years. So let’s take a look at the
Presidency of William Jefferson Clinton starting with NAFTA. The Clintons have been accused of passing
NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement that caused massive offshoring
of American jobs. From About News:
Excerpt:
History of NAFTA
NAFTA is the North American Free
Trade Agreement. It was envisioned at least 30 years ago to reduce trading
costs, increase business investment, and help North America be more competitive
in the global marketplace.
What Is Its History?
The impetus for NAFTA actually
began with President Ronald Reagan, who campaigned on a North American common
market. In 1984, Congress passed the Trade and Tariff Act. This is important
because it gave the President "fast-track" authority to negotiate
free trade agreements, while only allowing Congress the ability to approve or
disapprove, not change negotiating points…
NAFTA was signed by President
George H.W. Bush, Mexican President Salinas, and Canadian Prime Minister Brian
Mulroney in 1992. It was ratified by the legislatures of the three countries in
1993. The U.S. House of Representatives
approved it by 234 to 200 on November 17, 1993. The U.S. Senate approved it by
60 to 38 on November 20, three days later.
It was finally signed into law by
President Bill Clinton on December 8, 1993 and entered force January 1, 1994.
Although it was signed by President Bush, it was a priority of President
Clinton's, and its passage is considered one of his first successes…
In 1992, before the trade agreement
was even ratified, Independent Presidential candidate Ross Perot famously
warned that "You're going to hear a giant sucking sound of jobs being
pulled out of this country." Ross predicted that the U.S. would lose 5
million jobs -- a whopping 4% of total U.S. employment -- to lower-cost Mexican
workers.
In fact, this never happened as
Mexico entered a recession and the U.S. entered a period of prosperity. True,
American workers were displaced by low-cost Mexican imports. But research
showed it was more like 2,000 per month. (Source: Brad DeLong, "Jobs and
NAFTA").
That is the truth about NAFTA, the Reagan Republicans and
Reagan Democrats passed NAFTA before William Jefferson Clinton became
President. When President Clinton signed
NAFTA into law, there were worker protections included and through the Clinton
years over 20 million new good paying jobs were created.
American workers had 401K retirement plans and average
Americans were shareholders in the economic boom. Senior citizens were courted by banks
offering them trips and high rates of interest on CD’s. Businesses offered discounts for Senior
Citizens.
There were job fairs with employers competing for workers
offering signing bonuses, paid vacations, sick time, overtime pay, health
insurance, paid and unpaid family leave.
Factory workers we able to retire early giving them more time to work
with their stock brokers, and drive their new Escalades to their summer homes
on the lake.
New business startups were possible because people were able
to afford to buy insurance for themselves and their workers. Every area of the economy thrived.
Excerpt:
Truth on Tour
First John Andrew got laid off.
Then he got pissed off. And then he took his anger on the road.
When John Andrew got laid off this
summer he could take solace in having plenty of company: Since George W. Bush took office, nearly 3 million Americans have lost
their jobs.
But the same day that this
client-services director for a Minnesota software firm got his pink slip, he
also heard that the president's economic team was coming to the Midwest on a
"Jobs and Growth" tour -- a three-day, six-city publicity blitz to
talk up the benefits of the Bush tax
cuts.
"It pissed me off," says
Andrew, who felt the administration had no business crowing about an economy that was shedding one job every
15 seconds. "I'm 41 years old; I got two kids," he says,
"and I decided this would be a good time for dad to stand up and
protest."
So Andrew decked out the family's
blue Honda Odyssey with protest placards and hit the highway on his own
"Economic Reality" tour. He shadowed the bus carrying cabinet
secretaries John Snow, Donald Evans, and Elaine Chao, to give his fellow
Americans "the real facts -- that
this economy stinks, and Bush's tax cuts are making it worse."
It wasn't long before the dueling
economic worldviews collided -- outside a Culvers fast food joint (home of the
ButterBurger) in Wausau , Wisconsin. While the secretaries boasted of
collecting, "real-time economic information from real American
people," they apparently didn't want to hear from Andrew, who was turned
away at the door by security.
Undeterred, Andrew drove his
minivan repeatedly into the window-lined drive thru, hoping to catch their
attention. "I probably went through 20 times," says, whose van
quickly filled to overflowing with the Diet Cokes he kept buying.
On his final pass, Andrew caught a
glimpse of secretary Snow walking outside the restaurant. "I rolled down
my window and yelled: 'Hey John!'," Andrew recalls, "which was probably
kind of impertinent considering he's the Secretary of the Treasury."
Flanked by a secret service detail,
Snow came up to the passenger-side window. Andrew explained to the secretary
that he'd just been laid off. "I
told him that I strongly disagreed with the economic policies that this
administration was pursuing, and that I felt that it was ineffective, wrong
headed, and doing nothing to help the majority of American workers."
Snow, in turn, encouraged patience,
reasoning that the first tax cut (now nearly two years old) hadn't had time to
take effect, and that the benefits of the second tax cut were following close
behind. He then offered two parting words of advice: "Just wait."
"I was stunned by the
response," says Andrew. "I'd like to see those words on a PR banner
behind Snow at the podium: 'Jobs and Growth: Just Wait.' Maybe I should call Citibank, which holds my mortgage, and tell them
'Just Wait -- I can't pay you this month…'"
Yes, that is what happened the Bush tax cuts that turned millionaires
into billionaires. In the first two
years of the Bush Administration:
·
He tried to eliminate overtime pay for 8 million
workers
·
He refused to extend unemployment benefits by
six months
·
He eliminated 140,000 highway construction jobs
·
He opposed federal funds for hiring 75,000 new
fire fighters
·
He cut funds for job training and workplace
safety
·
He cancelled collective bargaining rights for
170,000 Homeland Security personnel
·
He forced the EPA to lie about air quality at
Ground Zero, endangering the health of emergency and construction workers
·
He appointed anti-labor, big business cronies to
every labor-related post in his administration
That is just a partial list of the damage done to the American
economy, particularly to American workers by the Administration of George W.
Bush and Dick Cheney.
Another initiative of the taken up by President Clinton when
he took office was Welfare to Work.
Reforming Welfare programs was an initiative of Newt Gingrich’s
“contract with America.” and had support in both parties. From Washington Post:
Excerpt:
Clinton to Sign Bill Overhauling Welfare
President Clinton ended what he
described as an intense and searching debate within his administration
yesterday and announced that he will sign into law the most radical overhaul in
60 years of the way the nation gives help to the poor.
For months, Clinton has prodded
Congress to come closer to his views on reforming welfare but preserved his
options by staying silent about whether he would sign or veto the various
versions churning through the legislative process.
Yesterday, he finally announced his
intentions just hours before the House acted on a plan that would end the
federal guarantee of direct cash payments to the needy, limit assistance to
five years, and give states wide freedom to design their own relief programs
requiring work for benefits rather than traditional welfare.
The bill sailed through 328 to 101
and is likely to comfortably pass the Senate either today or Friday. All
Washington-area lawmakers voted for the legislation.
Clinton said the measure has
"serious flaws" – the most important, aides said, is the elimination
of benefits for legal immigrants – but he pledged to sign it anyway because it
is the "best chance we will have in a long, long time" to fulfill his
1992 campaign promise of "ending welfare as we know it."
That legislation, though deeply flawed worked due to other
legislation that propped up workers and financially helped the poor families
through other programs designed to lift and keep families out of poverty. From American Progress:
Excerpt:
The Clinton administration also saw
that they could grow the economy by opening up the middle class to everyone
willing and able to take on the responsibility of work. To that end, Congress
and the administration promoted smart labor market policies that included:
An expanded earned income tax credit. The EITC offsets federal
income taxes, and for many low-income workers, portions of their payroll taxes
as well. The EITC increases as earnings
increase, up to a point, so it
encourages additional work. In 1993, as part of his larger budget package,
Clinton and Congress expanded the EITC to give a larger benefit to working
families and allow childless workers to benefit as well.
Welfare reform that put Americans to work. Under the Clinton
administration Congress provided $3 billion to reform welfare to help millions
of Americans take responsibility for their future by giving them a greater
opportunity to work. As part of those reforms, more than 200,000 people on welfare received housing vouchers to help
them move closer to jobs.
A welfare-to-work tax credit encouraged businesses to hire long-term
welfare recipients. And communities received federal support to design
transportation solutions to help low-income workers get to work. Between
January 1993 and June 2000, the number of people on welfare fall by 60 percent,
from 14.1 million to 5.6 million, reaching its lowest level since 1961.
Additionally, the Clinton
administration strengthened those
programs that help middle-class families weather economic storms, such as a
major illness, a job loss, or a divorce…
More federal funding for Head Start and child care. Head Start is a
federal early childhood learning program for low-income families. In 1993, the first year of President Clinton’s
administration, federal funding for Head Start totaled $3.3…
The Children’s Health Insurance Program. In 1997, as part of a
budget deal with congressional Republicans that cut spending overall, the
Clinton administration and their allies in Congress created the Children’s
Health Insurance Program. CHIP delivered
federal grants to states to provide health insurance for children whose
families were not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid but who could not afford
health insurance on their own.
Better nutritional and housing support for low-income families… The
Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children—commonly
known as WIC—went from average annual funding levels of $2.7 billion in the
eight years before Clinton took office to $3.9 billion under his presidency, a
45 percent increase.
Together, this broad mix of tax
relief, wage increases, access to health and child care, and protections for
working families helped grow and strengthen the middle class.
The Reagan Democrats blame President Clinton for the repeal
of Glass Steagall Act in 1999. Truth be
told, it was the Reagan Democrats that passed the repeal of Glass Steagall. From New York Times:
Excerpt:
CONGRESS PASSES WIDE-RANGING BILL EASING BANK LAWS
WASHINGTON, Nov. 4— Congress
approved landmark legislation today that opens the door for a new era on Wall
Street in which commercial banks, securities houses and insurers will find it
easier and cheaper to enter one another's businesses.
The measure, considered by many the
most important banking legislation in 66 years, was approved in the Senate by a vote of 90 to 8 and in the House tonight by 362 to 57….
''Today Congress voted to update
the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and
replace them with a system for the 21st century,'' Treasury Secretary Lawrence
H. Summers said. ''This historic legislation will better enable American
companies to compete in the new economy…''
''The world changes, and we have to
change with it,'' said Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, who wrote the law that will
bear his name along with the two other main Republican sponsors, Representative
Jim Leach of Iowa and Representative Thomas J. Bliley Jr. of Virginia.
''We have a new century coming, and
we have an opportunity to dominate that century the same way we dominated this
century. Glass-Steagall, in the midst of the Great Depression, came at a time
when the thinking was that the government was the answer. In this era of
economic prosperity, we have decided that freedom is the answer…''
In the House debate, Mr. Leach
said, ''This is a historic day. The landscape for delivery of financial
services will now surely shift…''
''I think we will look back in 10
years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot
the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in
2010,'' said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota….
Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat of
Minnesota, said that Congress had ''seemed determined to unlearn the lessons
from our past mistakes….''
''The concerns that we will have a
meltdown like 1929 are dramatically overblown,'' said Senator Bob Kerrey,
Democrat of Nebraska….
''If we don't pass this bill, we could find London or Frankfurt or
years down the road Shanghai becoming the financial capital of the world,''
said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. ''There are many
reasons for this bill, but first and foremost is to ensure that U.S. financial
firms remain competitive…''
In the House, 155 Democrats and 207
Republicans voted for the measure, while 51 Democrats, 5 Republicans and 1
independent opposed it. Fifteen members did not vote.
Isn’t it interesting that Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senior
Senator from New York, along with Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden were “super
delegates” that supported Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign against
Hillary Clinton in 2008.
Though the citizens in their states voted for Hillary
Clinton by wide margins, 15 percentage points in Massachusetts, their delegates
were awarded to Barack Obama by the super delegates. Shortly after in October of 2008 Barack Obama
received $300 million dollars in small donations of $200 dollars or less in
untraceable, unreportable prepaid credit cards.
From Obama Shrugged:
Excerpt:
Obama Shrugs?
Monday, October 27th, 2008
The authors of this blog are
concerned internet professionals who have worked in and around e-commerce and
internet marketing for over a decade.
We’ve taken to writing this blog due to the media’s unwillingness to tackle what is potentially one of the
largest cases of fundraising fraud in presidential campaign history…
Recently, it has become abundantly
clear that the Obama campaign has deliberately made it easy for motivated Obama
supporters to violate campaign finance law. The Obama campaign has for some reason intentionally deactivated basic
credit card fraud filters on its website, thereby allowing contributors
give donations with fake names and addresses.
What this has done is essentially
create a loophole for folks to circumvent federal election contribution limits
(they can give more than $2,300 and nobody will ever know!). And it creates an added bonus: it is now much easier to give illegal
foreign donations as well!
This is not just
rumor-mongering. Several citizens have
already tested the Obama campaign website by using purposely incorrect names
and addresses. And the results are
in…the Obama campaign has accepted these donations and the respective credit
card accounts were charged.
These fraudulent donations were
accepted as a direct result of the Obama campaign deliberately turning off the
basic fraud checks that are used to verify a credit cardholder’s address. It is
almost unheard of for an online merchant to turn off these filters. Afterall, who wants to ship a product to the
wrong address? Today, it remains unclear why the Obama camp turned these filters
off.
What are the ramifications? Well, the Obama campaign can accept an
almost unlimited amount of money from any contributor by allowing them to
repeatedly use false names and addresses with the same credit card for any
online credit card donations.
This can also feasibly allow non-US
citizens (who are legally prohibited from donating to any US political
campaign) to donate to the Obama campaign by simply making up a United States
address. Depressingly, there are few
real legal mechanisms to prevent this as the FEC reporting requirements for donations under $200 are minimal and
the law hasn’t caught up with regulating these donations online…
There’s a simple way for the Obama
campaign to clear this matter up. All
Obama has to do is simply release his
campaign’s donor records (as have the McCain and Clinton campaigns). If he has nothing to hide, Obama should
welcome the request. Obama talks about
how we need more transparency in government, so let’s see him walk the talk.
Who do you think had the capacity to funnel $300 million
into the Obama campaign through fraudulent credit card donations? After taking office, Obama named the
President of the Federal Reserve Bank and ex-World Bank President Timothy
Geithner as Treasury Secretary to oversee the bailout of the banks.
The Federal Reserve Bank printed up over $43 trillion
dollars to bail out the banks and put it on the American taxpayer’s tab. To this day no Wall Street banker has been
jailed for their overt money laundering schemes. From Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone:
Excerpt:
Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail
The deal was announced quietly,
just before the holidays, almost like the government was hoping people were too
busy hanging stockings by the fireplace to notice. Flooring politicians,
lawyers and investigators all over the world, the U.S. Justice Department granted a total walk to executives of the
British-based bank HSBC for the largest drug-and-terrorism money-laundering
case ever.
Yes, they issued a fine – $1.9
billion, or about five weeks' profit – but they didn't extract so much as one
dollar or one day in jail from any individual, despite a decade of stupefying
abuses….
For at least half a decade, the
storied British colonial banking power helped to wash hundreds of millions of
dollars for drug mobs, including Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel, suspected in
tens of thousands of murders just in the past 10 years – people so totally
evil, jokes former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, that "they
make the guys on Wall Street look good."
The bank also moved money for organizations linked to Al Qaeda and
Hezbollah, and for Russian gangsters; helped countries like Iran, the Sudan and
North Korea evade sanctions; and, in between helping murderers and terrorists
and rogue states, aided countless common tax cheats in hiding their cash.
"They violated every goddamn
law in the book," says Jack Blum, an attorney and former Senate
investigator who headed a major bribery investigation against Lockheed in the
1970s that led to the passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. "They
took every imaginable form of illegal and illicit business."
That nobody from the bank went to
jail or paid a dollar in individual fines is nothing new in this era of financial
crisis. What is different about this
settlement is that the Justice Department, for the first time, admitted why it
decided to go soft on this particular kind of criminal. It was worried that
anything more than a wrist slap for HSBC might undermine the world economy.
"Had the U.S. authorities
decided to press criminal charges," said Assistant Attorney General Lanny
Breuer at a press conference to announce the settlement, "HSBC would
almost certainly have lost its banking license in the U.S., the future of the
institution would have been under threat and the entire banking system would
have been destabilized."
Yes not one criminal faced charges and yet we are told that
Hillary Clinton is about to be indicted by the Obama Justice Department for
having e-mails on her personal server that were retroactively stamped
classified. A blatant attempt to derail
her bid for the Presidency. From TheDaily Caller:
Excerpt:
Hillary Will Be Indicted, Says
Former US Attorney
A former U.S. Attorney predicts a
Watergate-style showdown in the Department of Justice if Attorney General
Loretta Lynch overrules a potential FBI recommendation to indict Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
“The [FBI] has so much information
about criminal conduct by her and her staff that there is no way that they walk
away from this,” Joseph diGenova, formerly the District of Columbia’s U.S.
Attorney, told Laura Ingraham in a Tuesday radio interview. “They are going to
make a recommendation that people be charged and then Loretta Lynch is going to
have the decision of a lifetime.
“I believe that the evidence that
the FBI is compiling will be so compelling that, unless [Lynch] agrees to the
charges, there will be a massive revolt inside the FBI, which she will not be
able to survive as an attorney general. It will be like Watergate. It will be unbelievable.”
DiGenova is referring to the
Watergate scandal’s “Saturday Night Massacre” Oct. 20, 1973, when President
Richard Nixon sacked Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox and Attorney General
Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus resigned in
protest.
Joe diGenova and his wife Victoria Tensing have been
pursuing the Clintons for years. When
the Bill Clinton ran for President in 1992 the FBI assigned 200 agents to
Arkansas to comb every trailer park to find anyone willing to make scurrilous
charges against Bill and Hillary Clinton.
When the Whitewater “scandal” turned out to be nothing, they
finally found Paula Jones and her Elvis impersonator husband to bring a well-funded
lawsuit against a sitting President. Just
another bogus lawsuit against the Clintons.
So do you want the truth about Clinton’s Welfare Reform,
NAFTA and Repeal of Glass Steagall?
Maybe Americans can’t handle the truth, they just want to hear lies.
By Patricia Baeten
No comments:
Post a Comment