We Forget What It Was Really Like Under the Clintons

NAFTA failures; deregulation of banking and ENRON's rise; "Welfare Reform" that led to more poor people. This and more is what the Clintons gave us.

....

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."

...

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.

...

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.

...

NAFTA was enacted despite the opposition of Clinton's own party. Two-thirds of House Republicans voted in favor while 60 percent of House Democrats voted against. In the Senate, Republicans voted 4-1 in favor while a slim majority of Democrats voted against.

...

And then there is healthcare, an issue that Bai did comment on. History has been rewritten in regard to the Clintons' health initiative. Today it is viewed as a bold but failed effort. Even Michael Moore's movie, Sicko, paints this picture. Nonsense. It was Hillary who concluded that it was politically impossible even to argue for a single-payer system. Whether a single payer initiative would have won is unclear, although the national educational effort around it would have been of unparalleled value. But as it was, Hillary's political miscalculation led not only to the idea of universal health care coverage being taken off the table for the next 13 years, but the loss of the House of Representatives and the coming to power of Newt Gingrich and the Republican right.

...

http://www.alternet.org/story/72336/?page=3

During his eight years in the White House, President Clinton oversaw an Iraq policy that killed over 350,000-500,000 children via sanctions, repeatedly bombed Iraq out of concern over WMD, and made regime change the official policy of the United States.

The most notable aspect of President Clinton's Iraq policy was his maintenance of a sanctions regime that decimated Iraq's economy and that was estimated to have killed 500,000 children. While the figures would later be disputed with lesser estimates of 350,000, their destructive impact is undeniable. Responding to concerns over the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children, Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright would famously state "I think it is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it." Ordinary Iraqis reported significant hardship from the sanctions, while food and medicine were lacking and the economy crumbled.

The complete failure to investigate or even release information about the many crimes of the original Bush administration set the tone, and eventually led to the regime of Bush Jr. Will we make the same mistake again if a Democrat moves into the White House in 2009?

and decreased availability to abortion services nationwide.

Clinton governed from the right. I certainly don't want more of the same.

I was unfortunate enough to be on welfare during some of that time. The system was not conducive to getting back on your feet. Got to live with cockroaches, that made me a better person. Asked to be trained in some marketable skill and they made me work putting books on library shelves. Then when I decided to make lemonade out of that and inquired about being hired there I was told I needed four years of college (which no one was going to help me pay for) to be eligible for a paid job. All other positions there were filled by workfare people like me.

/rant off

I think clinton was a crappy president, but he DID HAVE charisma!! lots of twisted reality concerning the clinton presidency IMO!! I was NOT impressed!! BJ`s in the white house, lying to the american people " I did not have sex with that woman " oh wait we DID have oral sex! does that count??? he was a disgrace to his office! again IMO!!

It's just that some of their lies affect someone outside their own family (where that whole incident should have stayed). There are no perfect, sinless people who seek office. And if we were to elect one, we would probably crucify him/her.

At least Clinton's lies didn't amount to international war crimes, devastation of our Constitution, and an enduring legacy of hatred toward the American people that our CHILDREN will pay for, like the scumbag currently occupying the White House.

On edit: the scumbag CHICKENHAWK currently occupying the White House.

Tell that to the 500,000 Iraqis he allowed and/or caused to die...

He made some mistakes. In his second term I had the most financial stability I've had before or since and the highest skilled job I've ever had. All went to shit with the economy after 9/11. So I have to give the Clinton era at least a 50% I suppose. I was in favor of his impeachment, not for the act but the principal of lying to his nation, and I thought he should have resigned.

Been listening to the radio?

hypocrites. Run along and go play footsie in the mens room now.

I'll bet this makes you hungry, doesn't it.

of the idol in your avatar.

Why don't you stuff it up your a**...

The only reason the Clown Prince isn't getting blow jobs from some big-haired bleach-blonde Texas rodeo groupie is because he's got the sex appeal of a car accident.

Bye-bye now. Back to Repuke land you go.

You disrupted poorly...

That one means the absolute least to me. Do you really think that a consensual blow job is even within several orders of magnitude as big a mistake of the Telecom bill of '96? Other aspects of his presidency were great though. Fuck, I'd accept Bush getting BJs in the Rose Garden during press conferences if it would bring back the Clinton economy. It's kind of sick how you guys seem to focus on oral sex non-stop when it comes to our 42nd President. Is there nothing else you can think of?

As I recall, it cost me $15 for $60 worth of stamps for the month. I lived in a roach infested trailer which cost me $87/mo. I received $187/mo for my son and me. Was required to work and they placed me first in a community college campus restaurant and then with the Probation Dept. Didn't receive pay for the restaurant, but did for the Probation Dept. They did provide child care for the restaurant position but deducted a $1/per day. As I recall it was no bed of roses, but then it wasn't suppose too be.

Again with that LIE?

I know revisionist slander is the style on DU about the benefits of anything connected to the - shock horror - cue mental Gestapo stock image - DLC, but how the heck do they think they can get away with that outright dogturd of a bald-faced lie?

September 92 - 38,014,000 in poverty (14.8% of population)

December 2000 - 31,581,000 in poverty (11.3% of population)

Numbers from a census bureau administered by people even (albeit slightly it seems) less friendly to the Clintons than DU....

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/hstpov2....

Lemme guess the whine next will be about some change in the calculation (imaginary but hey) so let's nix that one in advance...

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/povmeas/papers/orshansky...

Then it will be that inflation ate away at that poverty and real incomes went down (true though that is in this administration, a total crap lie about the previous one)...


1992 nominal median income - 14847. Adjusted for 2005 dollars (time of data tabulation and equally applied to all examples) - 20245

2000 nominal median income - 22346. Adjusted for 2005 dollars - 25331

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/p01ar.htm...

Note that median data does not get skewed by a few wealthy individuals. Bill Gates counts as 1 person here just like a $650 a month disabled SSI recipient.

Numbers.

Even if you were not a computer whiz, you might have benefitted. The restaurant and resort and entertainment fields all had maximum numbers of employees to serve the newly endowed young rich dot commers.

I do think there is a story to tell of the CLinton success in terms of money though - Bill Clinton did oversee a healthy budget process and we had a surplus, rather than the horrendous deficit. IMO, that would be the story to trumpet.

However in part the surplus was due to his telling the Pentagon and others that he was not going to go to war against Iraq. (A few weeks later, the Monica affair took over his Presidency. Funny that timing, huh?)

But since Hillary seemingly has an itchy finger regarding Iran, I am not sure we would see much difference. Unless she plans on heavy duty auditing over her friends in the defense industry, who have substantiallydeepened her camapign coffers.

The dot com bubble was essentially speculative equity trading and venture capital - the employment impact was minimal. The overall GDP impact was less than minimal.

And hey let's pretend it's not bullshit - how come the poverty numbers stayed low after the bubble? Is it or is it not a LIE that there were "more poor people" under Clinton than before? Data please....

IIRC, about 250,000 of those jobs were off-shored in the first year of Cheney/Bush.

were there more poor people under Clinton or not? Why worry about regional idiosyncracies when the question is about national statistics?

It is not just the numbers.

You can say here is a graph with so many people who were doing well under Clinton.

And here is a graph showing how many people are faring badly under Cheney Bush.

But I suspect that a part of the numbers game in terms of increasing poverty has to do with the aging of the Baby Boomers. The Baby Boomers were in their forties during the Clinton era.

NOw the Boomers are significantly older. People in their fifties who have an illness, it affects their job performance, they become unemployed, they can't work due to illness and now are going to get (if lucky enough to qualify) $ 661 a month on disability.

If they hold onto their job and persevere, they feel economically fragile. They are not about to invest or spend. They want to sit tight. They know they are just one illness away from losing the job.

This would have happened under any President who does not embrace a Universal Single Payer Health Care system.

I have no desire to argue what ifs and whys here. My issue is entirely one of facts - the contention was made that there were more poor people under Clinton than before - that he caused more poverty.

I presented real data from official and unfriendly sources proving this to be wrong. That's all I wanted to do. I am simply waiting for either an admission of the lie, or contradictory data. Anything else is digression. It could be interesting in other contexts. It could certainly be true at least from a subjhective perspective, but it's not relevant to the truth or lack thereof of the original statement.

""Welfare Reform" that led to more poor people"

Both NAFTA and welfare 'reform' were predicted to have harmful results, and they have. But conveniently for the Clinton legend, their effects were felt most strongly later, after he was out of office. The fact that we were in the 'longest peacetime economic expansion' blunted the effects of both of those. I do give Clinton some credit for that expansion, but that expansion, like all others, was bound to end at some point. It was when the expansion ended that we really paid the price for those policies.

You are, of course, correct that poverty decreased under Clinton. It's bound to, in any expanding economy. Heck, poverty decreased under Reagan too, from 12.2% in 1982 down to 10.3% in 1989. My point being that the poverty rate follows the economy at least as much as it follows Presidential policies.

You think alot of people in their FIFTIES have illnesses, feel economically "fragile", don't invest or spend...

Oh my god.

Both areas saw real employment growth due to the .com bubble.

The Fed subsidized an extensive network of "Electronic Commerce Resource Centers" which were funded to assist (mostly education and training) small businesses that contracted or subcontracted with the Federal government, to enable them to interact (bid, etc.) using Internet data protocols.

That's just ONE source of employment (and employment stimulus) that was shut down immediately under Cheney/Bush.

During 1992, '93, '94, '95. My husband edged out 28 other people for a job as a receptionist! People with Master's degrees, and with PhD.'s. The job put his career on the map, as he was doing social work and counseling within two years. But I'll never forget how surprised we were that he got the job to begin with.

So I am mainly talking about what I remember. It is a very California perspective. Then came the The dot com stuff. The dot com revolution saved California. If you don't believe me, then you should call the bean counters in Sacramento who grabbed a huge surplus of incoming tax money and threw it into social programs and other things. That also helped the California economy.

When the dot com economy's bubble burst, the song out of Sacramento became quite different. "The money's gone, the money's gone." Then the housing boom stepped in, and people saw their homes inflate at 17% a year, which means a lot if your home was worth say $ 600,000 to begin with.

So now folks could get an equity loan and continue spending on credit cards. People from 2000 to just this summer were flipping houses for a living. The trades people saw good times. Realtors and interior designers and remodeling experts as well.

Now that is all belly up. Sacramento has bad news as of yesterday - Ahnold saying that we are starting the year with a 14 Billion dollar deficit.

and it STILL doesn't m,ean there were more poor people under Clinton. I'm not saying there wer zero, and I'm not saying there were not painful upheavals in some regions and some industries (hell I used to be a steel guy - don't have to tell me about industry shifts).

But you should not, and cannot accurately, extrapolate personal experience and assume that is aggregate data. As I said above, I'm personally doing just peachy recently - but that doesn't mean it's because Bush is a wonderful steward of the economy and everything is wonderful. I look at data - national, aggregate data, to judge these things. It's the only metric that is fair to use about national policies and figures.

If you're really interested in looking behind the facade of the hollow boom years read this book:


Robert Pollin is Professor of Economics and founding Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Among his many books are The Living Wage (with Stephanie Luce) and the edited volume Transforming the US Financial System (with Gary Dymski and Gerald Epstein). He has worked with the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress and the United Nations Development Program.

"The economic boom of the 1990s-low unemployment and inflation, a soaring stock market, big government surpluses-was actually something of a bust, according to this incisive study. Pollin, an academic economist and co-author of The Living Wage, presents his own research on the period and ably synthesizes a comprehensive left critique of Clintonomics. He argues that the Clinton-era boom was mediocre compared with previous ones and based on an unsustainable stock market bubble, the result of financial deregulation that left households and companies carrying high levels of debt and the economy unstable. The benefits, moreover, accrued mainly to the rich, he says; workers' wages stagnated for most of the period, even as their productivity climbed, thanks to pervasive job insecurity caused by foreign competition and weak unions. Meanwhile, Clinton's "Third Way" policies of welfare and social spending cutbacks and shrinking the relative size of government squandered a historic opportunity to reduce poverty. Abroad, the neoliberal prescription of government austerity, privatization and free trade pressed on Third World countries by the Clinton Administration led to slow growth, financial crises and depression. Needless to say, Pollin doesn't view Clinton's successor as an improvement, and lambastes what he sees as Bush's single-minded fixation on undermining organized labor and showering tax cuts on the rich. Pollin's sophisticated but accessible treatment, free of jargon and unobtrusively supported by telling statistics and graphs, is a model of lucid argumentation that will appeal to wonks and laypeople alike. His call for a social democratic program of full employment, higher minimum wages, labor rights and reinvigorated government regulation presents a compelling challenge to the free-market, free-trade orthodoxies of neoliberalism."

I'm not interested in windy theories - give me the facts that support the "more poor people" contention. I am ready to apoplogize sincerely if you can.

Numbers mean so much. But sometimes there is more to a situation than the numbers.

I firmly beleive that the fact that the Baby boomers are aging, and many are not eligible for Social Security or MediCare is in part the reason for the soaring poverty.

Clinton got a free pass on this because the Baby Boomers were young enough to still be healthy.

I also think that the other cause of a lot of economic suffering is the outsourcing of jobs. Which Cheney Bush has been very heavy handed with.

But Clinton did nothing to stop it - in fact he embraced NAFTA and Was an early-on proponent.

And he did other not so favorable things - the twenty billion dollars of US monies to bail out Mexican bankers allowed an immediate drop in wages to Mexico's average incomed worker. The drop in hourly wage was from 74 cents to 47 cents overnight.

When the statement is "more poor people" numbers all ALL that matter when you are assessing the truth or otherwise of that statement.

perhaps I just need a clear answer from those who are arguing with me - do you think there were more poor people when Clinton left office than when he took it? If so please provide data. if not then we're not really arguing over anything substantive.

Geesh, people were scrambling in the mid-nineties...by the turn of the century, many were so beaten down, they no longer counted on any poll or stat the government might try to stick them into. I don't know if it's cause you really want Sen. Clinton as our next prez or what, but that's not much of an excuse for ignoring the realities of that period, the sheer harsh desperation that too many folk fell into. I'll defend Ms. Hillary against all the sexist, senseless attacks I've seen on here during the past week or so, but people with their head in the clouds concerning what she represents for most of us currently struggling just to get by need a jolt or two.

Have you noticed that you are typing your post on "democratic underground dot com"???

Would you have been doing so before the so called "bubble"?

A huge amount of electronic infrastructure, fiber optics, networks, web pages, computer code, etc., were created during the so-called "bubble" which transformed the way we live. That "speculative" (Not!) equity was the way the money was raised to create all that stuff.

There was a slight overshoot in the late 1990s, but in general, it was real investment.

Right?

And that poor people weren't buying tech stocks? Right?

And that mostly well-off and middle class people made money, mostly by those who already had a bunch.


The tech bubble was a MARKET PHENOMENON AND NOT A MACROECONOMIC ONE! To say otherwise is repeating a right wing myth.
The Professor

is that the economy boomed.

California is the equivlent of the FIFTH LARGEST NATION of the world. If we were separate from the USA that is where we would rank: nation number five.
And that is no right wing myth.

Were we California's living inside a MacroEconomic myth??

During the dot com era:
I had a friend who was a music major who got a twelve million dollar buyout of a computer program he wrote from a major software firm

He became worth twelve million dollars. He became of the investor class because of the dot com bubble.

I had writer, artist and music composing friends who became employed for twenty dollars and upwards an hour. The computer industry needed content for all the expansion. Something they had never experienced before. And they were not of the investment class.

The restaurants were hiring, the cruise ships needed entertainers. Businesses were expanding.

During the years of the phenomena, the State of California went into record spending mode. We had programs for children that did not exist previously. We had more social workers. Legal aide clinics had adequate funding. Libraries hired more librarians and were open five and six days a week. Programs that were needed for the homeless and others were being put into place.

There were downsides. I never saw many of my friends who were working in the dot com side of the game - every moment they had, they spent working, because each minute of their life was seen in terms of the rapidly expanding value of their stock shares. And rents went soaring towards the far side of heaven. (Of course if you were a landlord, that was an upside)

And then the bottom fell out of the dot com market.

The economy boomed almost everywhere. But, you keep hanging on to that belief. Sheesh! Faith based economics from a DU'er. How sad.
The Professor

It was boom times.

What part of thirty million people don't you understand?

It might not have affected people in St Louis Missouri that much but it sure affect Californians.

A black music major in San Fran would be dissed as a deadbeat, not praised as a genius in a garage.

How many people went from unemployed to "full employment" and got more real dollars in their pockets thanks to Greenspan's unprecedented manipulation of government statistics?

Oops, I guess you weren't reading The Economist or The New Republic in the 1990s or you'd know about how Greenspan manufactured employment and inflation statistics to keep the stock market climbing while fast food workers (kicked off welfare) went from "unemployed fast food workers" to "employed" due to changes in statistical analysis.

E.g. improvements in computing power used to off-set COL increases in the inflation model in order to claim zero inflation, the biggest Greenspan/Clinton lie of the late 90s.

Bigger than the Welfare lie (that anything other than mandated reduction in the rolls was responsible for reduction in the rolls, which Clintonites still cheer, ridiculously and tautologically.)

As I wrote upthread, the proceeds of the equities that were sold were used to write computer code, create computer networks, string fiber optics, establish web based retail, finance new technology, and yes create a number of very silly web pages that had little more than a "burn rate" through silly investors' money, but also the hardware and software infrastructure that makes "democratic underground dot com" possible.

It wasn't just speculation. During that period, I worked on a steady stream of deals involving small telecommunications companies receiving financing to set up local fiber optic networks, and yes, streets were dug up to lay telecom infrastructure by working class guys who received paychecks for their trouble.

On edit: One of the reasons there was so much money available to finance the telecom revolution of the 1990s at favorable rates was because the Soviet Union collapsed, defense spending stalled, Clinton balanced the budget, the federal government's enormous appetite for debt ended (temporarily thanks to Bush junior) and the upward pressure on long term interest rates was reduced.

Too many people get lost in such nostalgia and forget that Clinton was very much a corporate controlled president. Many of his actions, including the '96 Telecom Act, welfare "reform" and the Financial Services Modernization Act, among others, set the stage for many of the problems that we face today. Time and again we here complaints about the media, yet either fail, or choose not to recognize the part that Clinton played in that problem. Same deal goes with many other issues we face today. Too many people want to think that the Clinton era was a golden one, yet really all it amounted to was simply a kinder, gentler screwing.

Hillary is much in the same mold, another corporately compromised candidate who won't correct any problems, and will exacerbate many.

23 million new jobs. Rising median income. Lower poverty rates. First budget surplus in decades. Unemployment lowest in decades.

Funny how all the revisionist screed is based on anecdotes and wild leaps of assumptions about what bills should have had what impact.

It would be more convincing if the actual results (real data - aggregated. I'm sure some people had a tough time under Clinton. My income has nearly tripled in the Bush years - does that mean I should extol the wonders of Shrub's economic idiocy? Why would that be invalid - and it would be - and anecdotal complaints about Clinton's tenure not be?) were not wonderful don't you think?

How about the fact that the gap between the rich and the rest of us that opened up to a record breaking chasm, surpassing the gap of the Gilded Age? How about the fact that most of those new jobs weren't well paying manufacturing jobs, but lower paying service sector jobs? How about the fact that we saw the emergence of the working poor, and the working homeless? How about the fact that the number of homeless families rose to record breaking numbers?

Sorry, but while the Clinton era looks rosy in hindsight, if you look past the facade, there was some real rot occurring in our society thanks to Clinton and his policies.

I mean all thos elow paying jobs but the median income went up in real and nominal terms? The wealth gap can be as wide as it wants to be in my opinion as long as more people are living better lives. I'm not jealous - I'd rather have hundreds of Bill Gates and everyone else at a comfortable level than have no Bill Gates and 7 million people more in poverty. Wouldn't you? (no that's not saying these are causally related - it's saying that I don;t care about the gap.

Your take on the bills is subjective opinion - it's not debatable at all because it's what ytou think and is thus fungible only to you. Data are not. The data from Clinton's tenure are overwhelmingly and spectacularly positive.

Again a simple question - is the OP a lie or not - were there more poor people after Clinton than before? Please show how this is true or I will assume you agree it to be a lie.

Some were living waaaaay better lives, others, much worse lives, and most were simply treading water.

And no, my take on the bills that I mentioned is not subjective. The Telecom Act did indeed constrict the media voices down to a handful, welfare reform did hurt the poor, the repeal of Glas-Steagal did enable rampant exploitation by the financial sector, which in turn led to our present financial crises. These aren't subjective, the number and data is out there, I suggest that you go look. Kevin Phillips and Howard Zinn are a good couple of places to start.

Sorry, but you're simply buying into the Clinton spin machine. Was he better than Bush, certainly, hell Nixon was better than Bush(and I thought that I would ever say anybody was better than Nixon). However that doesn't make Clinton into the second coming of Kennedy or Roosevelt. As I said earlier, Clinton was simply a corporate controlled president who passed legislation favorable to those who supported him, financial and corporate interests. That is the harsh reality of the matter and you can choose to disbelieve it if you want to, but that still won't change the facts.

Oh, and do you think NAFTA was a panacea for this country? Devastating our manufacturing sector, kicking off an era of outsourcing madness. Hell, I and many others like me spent good money to receive an education in a particular field only to find it outsourced to India or China. Whoopsie, there goes that tuition down the drain.

Oh, and what about Iraq, and those 500,000 dead innocents whose lives were snuffed thanks to Clinton's policies on sanctions and thrice weekly bombing runs? Do you honestly think that was a good thing?

Believe what you want, wallow in nostalgia if you choose, but I prefer to live in the reality based world.

All your arguments are 100% anecdotal. You have yet to provide a real aggregate number at all.

Strange that you claim to live in the reality based world, yet provide only subjective arguments and no empirical data at all.

I'm not providing anecdotal evidence, I am providing facts that did happen, legislation that did pass, and the fallout from that legislation. If you want to disregard those facts, fine, that is your prerogative, but just because you choose to disregard those facts doesn't mean that they are any less true.

I'm not even touching the subject of bills etc. More poor people needs a number to be true. That number needs to be higher than the one it's compared to.

All you have to do is give that number from a credible source. I've already cited the Bush-led agency whose official responsibility it is to measure poverty and proven that there were fewer poor people, so I'm not sure where you can get anything equivalent, but I'm more than willing to listen.

I'm trying to argue about the number of people in poverty and you keep telling me Clinton did some bad things (in your opinion at that). If I ever said "Clinton never did anything anyone could find objectionable" your posts would be very devastating rebuttals.

Unfortunately I'm just trying to argue that there were fewer poor people after Clinton than before, so your posts are merely dancing diversions because you don't want to admit to lying.

And the OP's post. Instead you keep harping on the median income figure and nothing else. Why don't you want to address what the original subject was? Instead you're trying to duck and dodge what I and the OP brought up insisting only on talking about what you want to talk about. Very limited, very narrow.

So until you want to talk about both mine and the OP's post, I'm done with you and our discussion here. I don't have time to waste, and have better things to do. Enjoy your rose colored life:eyes:

The OP said "more poor people" under Clinton. It's right there in bold. I addressed only that issue, which I knew to be wrong.

I proved this with data. I did not raise or respond to any other subject.

Poverty numbers and rates go down. Median income goes up. Fewer poor people. Simple as that.

And where does legislation come from?

From the shitstain of a congress we had with the chief asshat, gingrich, running the show.

Revisionist history is for crap.

Oh, yeah, Clinton. Hell, not only did he sign much of that into law, he actively promoted it. And frankly where were the Dems in Congress at the time? Still trying to find their spine like they're doing now ten years later.

Yeah, revisionist history is crap, too bad so many Clinton sycophants engage in it.

How did we get that Republican Congress?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=3460552#3460801

and post #71 in the same thread. Edited to quote myself.

"Here's what wiki says

"Republicans made the Clinton health care plan a major campaign issue of the 1994 midterm elections,<60> which saw a net Republican gain of 53 seats in the House election and 7 in the Senate election, winning control of both.<61> Opponents of universal health care would continue to use "Hillarycare" as a pejorative label for similar plans by others.<62>"

source #60
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/may96/background/heal...

"November 8, 1994 - Voters deliver a massive repudiation of President Clinton, break the forty-year hold of Democrats on Congress, restore Republicans to power at ever level of government, and set the stage for a further test over the nation's ideological future in 1996. In two years the Democrats have gone from a controlling majority 258 seats in the House of Representatives to a minority of 204. In all the contests House, Senate, and gubernatorial seats, not a single Republican seeking reelection loses."

source #61
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,981987...

"In their postmortems on the elections, many pollsters and analysts tagged the First Lady's health-care plan as a major factor in turning voters against the President and his party. Stanley Greenberg, the White House pollster, found that health care, more than anything else, drove independent voters away. Just last Thursday a federal judge ruled that the health-care-reform task force, a sprawling, arcane and often secretive group led by the First Lady, was guilty of "misconduct" for withholding documents from the public. Last week Hillary conceded that "the perception" of the Clinton health plan "was one of Big Government.""

The OP posted fairly conventional wisdom. Instead of quoting "Balzac and Shakespeare and all them other high falutin' Greeks" why don't you try proving that the huge losses for Democrats had nothing at all to do with the Clintons, because this line: "In all the contests House, Senate, and gubernatorial seats, not a single Republican seeking reelection loses." certainly does NOT prove that Hillary knows how to defeat Republicans."



Clinton inherited a Democratic Congress. One which flipped in 1994 after the RNC made CLINTON a central point of their campaigns.

when Clinton signed CDA, the Communications Decency Act? You would remember that. A sort of Patriot Act for the Internet. Basically, anything that could be deemed indecent or unsuitable for minors could land you in jail, or at the very least slap you with a big fine. And there was no standard defined for establishing indecency, much like the enemy combatant status today is basically Bush's say-so. It was struck down by the Supreme Court two years later.

Now, compared to the Patriot Act, the CA was nothing, a pimple on the face of free speech - but it was blatantly, brazenly unconstitutional, and Clinton signed it. Civil liberties lawyers were aghast, and no-one could understand why someone like Clinton would ever sign such a thing. I don't think he ever explained why, not cogently. I remember staying at home, reading newsgroups and mailing list messages as they were pouring in - like DU on a busy day. That was my personal wake-up call. That was when I understood liberty is not granted once and for all.

I was - am - in Poland, at that time just leaving the totalitarian past behind, and I had assumed that things like that didn't happen in the US. The CDA was the kind of clamp a communist government would put on the people, oh well.

Look it up, it's not an anecdote nor a wild leap of assumptions.

she might have been able to tell him he was fucking up...

I remember an old one that fit me for a while: "23 million new jobs in the clinton economy and I have three of them!"

Sorry, can't jump onto the Clintons are Evil bandwagon, but you go knock yourself out.

the fact is that B Clinton, like Jimmy Carter, lacked sufficient experience when he entered the White House. Let's not repeat that mistake.

or their spouse.

Bill leaving the biggest surplus ever that was ruined by Bush.

So go figure

The significant, albeit limited and uneven, economic expansion that occurred under Clinton was purchased against the future. It was fueled primarily by an inherently tenuous, debt-financed stock market bubble that fueled primarily upper class consumption and which inevitably burst, with recessionary consequences passed on to the presidency of Bush II. The dramatic and dangerous over-escalation of stock prices could have been stemmed with elementary regulatory measures the Clinton administration refused to undertake because of its allegiance to neoliberal prescriptions against government intervention in the workings of the supposed "free market" to limit the excesses of private economic elites.

This is suppose to be for Democrats.

...burying your head in the sand ond pretending that this stuff didn't happen isn't going to do you any favours...

His record and the record of any Democratic leader should be open for constant scrutiny. Or should we, as a party, just keep repeating the mistakes of the past?

is running...

That's worse...

straightforward facts. Is that not to be held as important? Don't you want to know the truths even if they are uncomfortable?

This is all well-documented. And what is in the OP is just a small sample.

As a Democrat I feel it my duty to go beyond blind allegiance. As a clear thinking person who holds no illusions I feel it my obligation.

How do you make political decisions? It seems unbiased information and examination of the record is vital to this. What you are suggesting is that we ignore this knowledge and that it is somehow untidy.

It's silly to pontificate about facts and refuse to present any when your lies are called.

More than being merely inadequate to the needs of America's millions of truly disadvantaged citizens, the Clinton administration actually attacked the disproportionately poor in numerous interrelated ways. Clinton signed a punitive neoliberal welfare "reform" bill that ended the federal government's guarantee of financial help to impoverished families with dependent children. By forcing poor families getting federal cash assistance (such families were mainly non-white single-parent units) to find employment without establishing concomitant government programs to create or directly provide livable wage jobs, Clinton flooded the nation's low- and poverty-wage and no-benefits job market with hundreds of thousands of defenseless new workers. He also scored points with the grinders of the poor by taking welfare benefits away from legal as well as illegal immigrants.

It was all done in the name of "Personal Responsibility," "Work Opportunity," and "Reconciliation," to use the key Orwellian phrases of the Clinton-Gingrich welfare-elimination regime.

Fewer people in poverty in 2000 than 1992

Lower percentage of people in poverty in 2000 than 1992

Higher median income in real terms in 2000 than 1992

Higher median income in nominal terms in 2000 than 1992

Lower unemployment in 2000 than in 1992.

Again - PROOF of this "more poor people" BS is all I seek. There were 7 million fewer people in poverty when Clinton left office than when he assumed it. You can blather on all you want about what bills did what and how mean and nasty he was and how the dot com bubble was everything, but the facts remain that there were NOT more poor people after he left office, and thus that statement is a lie.

Responding to concerns over the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children, Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright would famously state "I think it is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it."

I also remember her also saying, "It was collateral damage and that it was worth it" . . . . It was the first time I heard the word 'collateral damage' being used like it was an okay thing, until Timothy McVeigh used the expression to justify the children he killed in the OK bombing.

were Saddam Hussein's fault.

gave him almost everything to promote said condition. The US certainly didn't deal with a situation that could have avoided many children from dying, 'eh?

Is placing the blame else where a good way to sweep these atrocities under the rug?

Madam dim-light is a joke and always has been. Get real!

white

established government. It's not going to happen there.

of the neoCON's. I don't know but I think there is a lot more to the story than what we know or have been told

not the least of which was handing Bill Somalia on a hot steaming platter of shit.

This was ALL by design.

This hero complex is killing our country. We need to make it so that we can get reps who represent us, and can do their jobs without having to sign their souls on the dotted line for the cash to be elected.

We don't need heroes- we need a working and stable system, free from interference by moneyed interests.

where Bill Clinton looks terrific in comparison. And he was-in comparison. You have to decide if the worst President in modern history is going to be your standard.

One thing missing, we were at the brink of war with North Korea in 1994, fueled in part by Clinton feeling he needed to look tough on the world stage. If it wasn't for the heroic and brilliant actions of Jimmy Carter negotiating a deal, we very likely could have been in a frightening quagmire. One of the great under-reported stories of bringing peace. The guy should have a statue in Washington for saving countless lives and preventing misery, but we reserve those accolades largely for warmongers.

Coming from Palast's 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy' ...page 101

Following the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, Clinton hunted Osama with a passion -- but a passion circumscribed by the desire to protect the sheikdom sitting atop our oil lifeline. In 1994, a Saudi diplomat defected to the United States with 14,000 pages of documents from the kingdom's sealed file cabinets. This mother lode of intelligence included evidence of plans for the assassination of Saudi opponents living in the West and, tantalizingly, details of the $7 billion the Saudis gave to Saddam Hussein for his nuclear program -- the first attempt to build an Islamic Bomb. The Saudi government, according to the defector, Mohammed Al Khilewi, slipped Saddam the nuclear loot during the Reagan and Bush Sr. years when our own government still thought Saddam too marvelous for words. The thought was that he would only use the bomb to vaporize Iranians.

Clinton granted the Saudi defector asylum, but barred the FBI from looking at the documents. Al Khilewi's New York lawyer, Michael Wildes, told me he was stunned. Wildes handles some of America's most security-sensitive asylum cases. "We said , 'Here, take the documents! Go get some bad guys with them! We'll even pay for the photocopying!'" But the agents who came to his office had been ordered not to accept evidence of Saudi criminal activity, even on U.S. soil.

In 1997, the Canadians caught and extradited to America one of the Khobar Towers attackers. In 1999, Vernon Jordan's law firm stepped in and -- poof! -- the killer was shipped back to Saudi Arabia before he could reveal all he knew about Al Qaeda (valuable) and the Saudis (embarrassing). I reviewed, but was not permitted to take notes on, the alleged terrorist's debriefing by the FBI. To my admittedly inexpert eyes, there was enough on Al Qaeda to make him a source on terrorists worth holding on to. Not that he was set free -- he's in one of the kingdom's dungeons -- but his info is sealed up with him. The terrorist's extradition was "Clinton's." "Clinton's parting kiss to the Saudis," as one insider put it.

I haven't recovered yet. All I could get were crappy, low paying retail jobs where I had to stand up all day behind a counter, selling merchandise I was totally ashamed of, and get swollen ankles, or temporary jobs that didn't pay all that well. Job market went to shit.

Boy, that doctorate sure did me a whole fuckin' lot of good, didn't it??? Just as much good as that difficult bachelor's degree did too!!! :sarcasm:

:banghead:

....does that mean he's a great president and economic genius?

$1.50 per gallon gas, america being one of the most respected nations on the planet, the "nuclear armageddon" clock being the furthest from midnight since it's inception.....damn, i'm glad those days are over.

Here is a portion of activist/mother, Terri Swearingen's acceptance speech for the Goldman Environmental Prize, given April 14, 1997:



I am not a scientist or a Ph.D. I am a nurse and a housewife, but my most important credential is that I am a mother. In 1982, I was pregnant with our one and only child. That's when I first learned of plans to build one of the world's largest toxic waste incinerators in my community. When they began site preparation to begin building the incinerator in 1990, my life changed forever. I'd like to share with you some of the lessons I have learned from my experiences over the past seven years.

One of the main lessons I have learned from the WTI experience is that we are losing our democracy. How have I come to this sad realization? Democracy is defined by Merriam Webster as "government by the people, especially rule of the majority," and "the common people constituting the source of political authority." The definition of democracy no longer fits with the reality of what is happening in East Liverpool, Ohio. For one thing, it is on the record that the majority of people in the Ohio Valley do not want the WTI hazardous waste incinerator in their area, and they have been opposed to the project from its inception. Some of our elected officials have tried to help us, but the forces arrayed against us have been stronger than we or they had imagined. Public concerns and protests have been smothered with meaningless public hearings, voodoo risk assessment and slick legal maneuvering.

Government agencies that were set up to protect public health and the environment only do their job if it does not conflict with corporate interests. Our current reality is that we live in a "wealthocracy" big money simply gets what it wants. In this wealthocracy, we see three dynamics at play: corporations versus the planet, the government versus the people, and corporate consultants or "experts" versus common sense. In the case of WTI, we have seen all three.

The second lesson I have learned ties directly to the first, and that is that corporations can control the highest office in the land. When Bill Clinton and Al Gore came to the Ohio Valley, they called the siting of the WTI hazardous waste incinerator next door to a 400 student elementary school, in the middle of an impoverished Appalachian neighborhood, immediately on the bank of the Ohio River in a flood plain an "UNBELIEVABLE IDEA." They said we ought to have control over where these things are located. They even went so far as to say they would stop it. But then they didn't! What has been revealed in all this is that there are forces running this country that are far more powerful than the President and the Vice President. This country trumpets to the world how democratic it is, but it's funny that I come from a community that our President dare not visit because he cannot witness first hand the injustice which he has allowed in the interest of a multinational corporation, Von Roll of Switzerland. And the Union Bank of Switzerland. And Jackson Stephens, a private investment banker from Arkansas. These forces are far more relevant to our little town than the President of the United States! And he is the one who made it that way. He has chosen that path. We didn't choose it for him. We begged him to come to East Liverpool, but he refused. We begged the head of EPA to come, but she refused. She hides behind the clever maneuvering of lawyers and consultants who obscure the dangers of the reckless siting of this facility with theoretical risk assessments.

-snip

http://www.ohiocitizen.org/campaigns/wti/et0897s17.html




There has always been something incongruous about Stephens Inc. Despite the Little rock firm's attempts to portray itself as a small- city operation that closes for the duck season and got fabulously lucky on a couple of down-home deals like Wal-Mart, it was, at the incinerator's inception, the ninth-largest investment bank in the country. Since it is not headquartered in New York, its dealings are local news, little noticed by the national press, even when they have national implications. And, as a source close to the company once remarked, "The farther you get from Arkansas, the better it looks."

Stephens Inc. was founded by Witt Stephens, a state legislator's son who parlayed a Depression-era belt-buckle, Bible, and municipal-bond business into an immense personal fortune. After his retirement in 1973, the company was run by his shy younger brother, Jackson (a classmate of Jimmy Carter's at the Naval Academy). Witt Stephens and Stephens Inc. did much to create the economic paradox that is modern Arkansas: a desperately poor state with a scant 2.3 million inhabitants that is nonetheless home to a number of wealthy companies. Without the financial assistance of the Stephens brothers, Sam Walton might have ended his days as the most innovative merchant in Bentonville. Stephens money was also important to the fortunes of enterprises as various as Tyson Foods and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, the television producer and reigning First Friend. Stephens Inc. is an important client of the Rose law firm, whose chairman, C. Joseph Giroir, made Hillary Rodham Clinton a partner. And back in 1977, Stephens assisted BCCI's infiltration of the American banking system by brokering the latter's purchase of National Bank of Georgia stock held by Bert Lance, former President Jimmy Carter's friend and disgraced budget director.

Jackson Stephens (who turned over the reins to his son, Warren, in the late eighties) and his firm were both substantial contributors to the campaigns of Presidents Reagan and Bush (to the tune of at least $100,000 in 1980 and 1989), but they have been closer still to Bill Clinton (whom Witt Stephens had been known to call "that boy").

On two occasions, once when Clinton was running for reelection in Arkansas in 1990 and again in March 1992, when his battered presidential campaign was broke, the Stephens family saved Clinton's bacon with an infusion of money. Indeed, it may not be too much to say that their Worthen Bank's emergency $3.5 million line of credit saved the presidential campaign from extinction. --L.J.D.

-snip

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1993/11/davis.html




Who is the octopussy that might be lurking in the Ohio River Valley? Perhaps we should start by asking shy Arkansas billionaire Jackson T. Stephens. After all, Stephens introduced BCCI from Pakistan to the United States and the WTI waste incinerator to East Liverpool, Ohio. Stephens would be a good sketch artist because he's seen some monstrous scandals in his day. Stephens' family firm is the largest privately owned investment bank outside Wall Street. In September 1977, President Jimmy Carter's Budget Director Burt Lance was forced to resign amid allegations about his bank dealings with Stephens (Stephens and Carter were classmates at the Naval Academy). In 1978, Stephens, Lance and BCCI were charged with violating U.S. security laws. The charges were dropped after the defendants promised not to violate security laws in the future, even though they admitted no guilt.

The New York Post reported in February 1992 that it was Stephens who enabled BCCI to gain a foothold in the U.S. and helped the fraud-plagued bank secretly acquire U.S. banks. In Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin's book, False Profits, perhaps the best account of the BCCI scandal, the authors outlined how opium revenue from Afghanistan Mujahedin fighting the Soviets ended up in the accounts of BCCI, founded by Agha Hasan Abedi. The Post reported that Stephens allegedly introduced Abedi to Lance shortly after Lance resigned.

In 1991, Lance testified that he urged Abedi to acquire a Washington bank holding company, but he denied any knowledge of BCCI's subsequent secret ownership of First American Bankshares. The Post reported that Securities and Exchange Commission documents from 1977 substantiate that the idea originated with Stephens.

During Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential run, Stephens and his son Warren boasted of raising more than $100,000 for the campaign. The Stephens family also owned a 38 percent share in Worthen National Bank that extended a crucial $2 million line of credit to Clinton in January 1992.

-snip

http://www.ohiocitizen.org/campaigns/wti/bob.html

Environmental Justice Case Study: Waste Technologies Industries, Inc. and the Fight Against A Hazardous Waste Incinerator in East Liverpool, Ohio

The Problem

The Waste Technologies Industry, Inc. incinerator is located in the floodplain of the Ohio River in East Liverpool, Ohio. The surrounding area is elevated on a bluff, such that incinerator's stack is level with the windows of local buildings. The incinerator is located about 300 feet from homes and just 1100 feet from an elementary school. The location of the facility has been intensely criticized by citizens, scientists, and government officials alike. East Liverpool is located at the juncture of Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, approximately 35 miles from Pittsburgh.

The WTI struggle is a regional issue that drew much national attention during the early 1990's, much to the credit of organizer Terri Swearingen, a citizen of Chester, W. VA. who coordinates the Tri-State Environmental Council. Tri-State Environmental Council became outraged by the various environmental problems that the WTI facility has created for several reasons. First, there has never been a comprehensive study of the potential health effects upon the surrounding community, either from inhalation of toxics or accumulation of materials (such as dioxin, a known carcinogen) in fatty tissues and subsequent transmission via mother's milk or the food chain. Also, the incinerator will be pumping hazardous chemicals into the environment, including mercury and other heavy metals. It is expected to emit 4.5 tons of lead per year, and this less than 400 yards from an elementary school and residential area.

Foremost, issues of environmental justice have been avoided by regulatory officials through this struggle, although it has been observed that East Liverpool and the surrounding communities are predominantly low-income and minority neighborhoods. These neighborhoods have already incurred adverse environmental effects from existing local industry. Government response during the reauthorization process for WTI as well as towards these concerns has been conspicuously slow.

Back to Table of Contents

Background

Waste Technologies Industries' hazardous waste incinerator was first proposed in 1977, and has been under severe scrutiny from its neighbors since 1980. Once construction began in 1990, an intense campaign against the WTI facility and incineration as a means of hazardous waste disposal commenced in East Liverpool, surrounding communities, and eventually the nation. WTI its self has been a topic o national controversy, and was mentioned specifically during the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign. Clinton and Gore promised the American people that not only would the Clinton Administration never let such a facility become a reality, but they aimed to prevent the WTI facility from opening before questions regarding the safety and legality of its operation were answered. Vice-President-Elect Gore, along with five U.S. Senators and two Representatives, followed up on this promise by requesting a General Accounting Office (GAO) investigation of the facility. However, after sixteen years of community struggle after the incinerator was proposed, the facility is currently operating, despite an array of procedural and legal mishaps.
There have been repeated discrepancies in ownership throughout the permit application process. RCRA permits are not transferrable between parties, thus the Ohio Attorney General declared the permits invalid. Furthermore, the initial permit applications were not signed, and thus technically cannot be issued. The initial permits listed Columbiana Port Authority as part owner of the facility. Later, Columbiana Port Authority asked to be removed from the permit, and may have been listed as part owner simply because the land on which WTI sits was once owned by the Port Authority. The land then taken in emminent domain from the Port Authority, later to be sold to WTI. Emminent domain requires that a public entity show "proper public purpose" before it acquires property for public use. Whether WTI's incinerator demonstrates proper public purpose is obviously still at question by the community of East Liverpool.

-snip

http://www.umich.edu/~snre492/mcormick.html









The incinerator failed its March 1993 test burn.<6> Among other shortcomings, its efficiency rating for burning mercury was only 7 percent, as opposed to the required 99.99 percent.

An April 1993 inspection of the facility revealed numerous violations. For example, employees had failed to store some of the hazardous waste in closed containers and were not monitoring the underlying soil conditions, although cracks had already appeared in the incinerator's foundations.

In late June, after a three-year investigation, the Ohio attorney general issued a heavily censored report concluding that, yes, because of all the ownership changes, under state law the incinerator permit was invalid after all. Nonetheless, on August 24, the U.S. EPA ruled that although Von Roll wrongfully failed to register the 1989 ownership change, this did not invalidate the incinerator's operating permit. The EPA just fined Von Roll $64,900 for failing to modify the permit.

On July 28, an EPA whistle-blower charged two senior EPA administrators with fraud for allowing the incinerator to operate despite the decision of the Ohio attorney general. In a memo to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, Hugh Kaufman, whose job is to act as an internal watchdog at the EPA, claimed that Deputy Administrator Robert Sussman and Region 5 Director Valdus Adamkus modified the incinerator's permit to grant it "temporary authorization" to operate, even though they knew the permit was legally invalid. He called for a criminal investigation into Sussman, Adamkus, and the "business entities" running the incinerator. (The federal Justice Department has had no comment on Kaufman's charges.)<7>

-snip

http://www.ohiocitizen.org/campaigns/wti/motherjones.html

Bush I?
Reagan (Iran-Contra was beyond criminal)
Carter (ah, the energy crisis)
Surely not Nixon and Ford?
Should I go back further?

the energy crisis was real, and not of his manufacturing. If anything, he tried to work against the peak oil situation we have today. In that regard he was a visionary.

Just trying to make the point that life hasn't been utopian under any president, and a few of them should have gone to jail. All in all, I thought Bill was a great prez, well respected by the world.

Evo Morales would get my vote too...

So would the Zapatistas in Chiapas, MX...

The real progress in governance in the world is NOT being made in the White, Northern Hemisphere! And for DAMN sure not in the belly of the beast, USAmerika...

Some of you idealists are going to go through life real unhappy because it's never going to be the perfect world you have visions of.

unless she's not counting those 8 years.

have to take all of it.

she had said her 35 years experience included 8 as president.

if so , her math is wrong.

In the White House, sure. Dealing with the media feeding frenzy sure. Working on health care reform (vainly sad to say but hey experience does not only come from success) sure. Other than that one slip of the tongue that was a bit overblown I've never heard her actually claim experience as president itself.

"Bai's contention that Bill Clinton's "wife's fortunes are bound up with his, and vice versa" is incontestable. The primaries and even more so the general election, if Hillary is the nominee, will be a referendum less on Hillary than on Clintonism, the philosophy and strategy that guided the White House for eight years. Hillary clearly welcomes such a prospect, as demonstrated by her constantly reminding voters that she was "deeply involved in being part of the Clinton team."

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

"Advisers to Hillary Rodham Clinton include many former top officials in President Clinton’s administration: former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former National Security Adviser Samuel Berger, former UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke."

...

"...her foreign policy team can be best described as—and I hate to use this word so casually, but—“throwbacks” of her husband’s administration. We have, you know, Richard Holbrooke, Madeleine Albright, you have Sandy Berger as your sort of top-tier advisers, your key advisers, the most recognized faces..."

...

"Richard Holbrooke, in the Carter administration he was the one who oversaw the shipment of weapons to the Indonesian military as they were invading—illegally invading East Timor and killing a third of the population there, and he was the one who kept the UN Security Council from enforcing its resolution against that invasion. Strobe Talbott, he was the one who, during the Clinton administration, oversaw Russia policy, a backing of Yeltsin, which resulted in turning over the national wealth to the oligarchs and a drop in life expectancy in much of Russia of about fifteen years—massive, massive death. And you have various backers of the Iraq invasion and occupation and the recent escalation, people like General Jack Keane, Michael O’Hanlon and others. That’s just Clinton. "
....

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/3/vote_for_change_atrocity_linked_us

and the beat goes on...

items.

Hilarious.

and who in the world he'd replace them with. We forgot that FEMA was actually working very well. We forgot that the Justice Department actually had a lot of career attorneys who tried to prosecute CRIMINALS. We forgot that when our President trraveled abroad he was welcomed. We forgot that when our President spoke, he actually pronounced words correctly and spoke in complete sentences.

Yea, those were though times huh?

NAFTA and deregulating the FEC are just two items that we are still paying for, that changed the landscape of our liberties and livelihood.
some of the seeds of what the bush administration grew were planted in the Clinton Presidency.


unfortunate, but true.

the question is whether Hillary Clinton, whose administration would presumably resemble Bill's, would be a better President than Obama or Edwards.

THAT is the question that needs to be asked.

in office, if there had not been a Clinton (or someone like him) to a) work so consistently on behalf of keeping Bush the elder out of prison or b) work so effectively at setting back progressive politics by another 20 years.

The awesome Clinton record:

longest economic expansion in American history--a record 115 months of economic expansion
More than 22 million new jobs: more than 22 million jobs were created in less than eight years -- the most ever under a single administration
Highest home ownership in American history
Made the Federal government smaller (a feat matched only by Harry Truman; if you like small government, vote Democratic)
Lowest unemployment in 30 years: unemployment dropped from more than 7 percent in 1993 to just 4.0 percent in November 2000; unemployment for African Americans and Hispanics fell to the lowest rates on record, and the rate for women was the lowest in more than 40 years
Largest expansion of college opportunity since the GI Bill
Connected 95 percent of schools to the Internet
Lowest crime rate in 26 years.
Family and Medical Leave Act for 20 million Americans
Smallest welfare rolls in 32 years
Higher incomes at all levels: after falling by nearly $2,000 between 1988 and 1992, the median family's income rose by $6,338, after adjusting for inflation; all income brackets experienced double-digit growth; the bottom 20 percent saw the largest income growth at 16.3 percent
Lowest poverty rate in 20 years: the poverty rate declined from 15.1 percent to 11.8 percent in 1999--the largest six-year drop in poverty in nearly 30 years
Lowest teen birth rate in 60 years
Lowest infant mortality rate in American history
Deactivated more than 1,700 nuclear warheads from the former Soviet Union: efforts of the Clinton-Gore Administration led to the dismantling of more than 1,700 nuclear warheads, 300 launchers and 425 land and submarine based missiles from the former Soviet Union
Paid off $360 billion of the national debt: under Clinton, we were on track to pay off the entire debt by 2009; what a difference a stolen election makes...
Converted the largest budget deficit in American history to the largest surplus
Lowest government spending in three decades
Lowest federal income tax burden in 35 years
More families owned stock than ever before
Most New Jobs Ever Created Under a Single Administration: Republicans really chew the rug when you mention this one, so it's worth repeating constantly
Median Family Income Up $6,000 since 1993
Unemployment at Its Lowest Level in More than 30 Years
Highest Home ownership Rate on Record
7 Million Fewer Americans Living in Poverty
Largest Surplus Ever
Lower Federal Government Spending: after increasing under the previous two administrations, federal government spending as a share of the economy was cut from 22.2 percent in 1992 to 18 percent in 2000--the lowest level since 1966
The Most U.S. Exports Ever: between 1992 and 2000, U.S. exports of goods and services grew by 74 percent, or nearly $500 billion, to top $1 trillion for the first time
Lowest Inflation since the 1960s: inflation was at the lowest rate since the Kennedy Administration, averaging 2.5 percent, down from 4.6 percent during the previous administration
The child poverty rate declined more than 25 percent
The poverty rate for single mothers was the lowest ever
The African American and elderly poverty rates dropped to their lowest level on record
The Hispanic poverty rate dropped to its lowest level since 1979
Lowest Poverty Rate for Single Mothers on Record: under President Clinton, the poverty rate for families with single mothers fell from 46.1 percent in 1993 to 35.7 percent in 1999, the lowest level on record
Smallest Welfare Rolls Since 1969: between January 1993 and September of 1999, the number of welfare recipients dropped by 7.5 billion (a 53 percent decline) to 6.6 million. In comparison, between 1981-1992, the number of welfare recipients increased by 2.5 million (a 22 percent increase) to 13.6 million people
Lowest Federal Income Tax Burden in 35 Years: Federal income taxes as a percentage of income for the typical American family dropped to their lowest level in 35 years
Higher Incomes even after Taxes and Inflation: real after-tax incomes grew by an average of 2.6 percent per year for the lower-income half of taxpayers between 1993 and 1997, while growing by an average of 1.0 percent between 1981 and 1993
AGAINST TERRORISM

# PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON developed the nation's first anti-terrorism policy, and appointed first national coordinator of anti-terrorist efforts.
# Bill Clinton stopped cold the Al Qaeda millennium hijacking and bombing plots.
# Bill Clinton stopped cold a planned attack to kill the Pope.
# Bill Clinton stopped cold a planned attack to blow up 12 U.S. jetliners simultaneously.
# Bill Clinton stopped cold a planned attack to blow up UN Headquarters.
# Bill Clinton stopped cold a planned attack to blow up FBI Headquarters.
# Bill Clinton stopped cold a planned attack to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
# Bill Clinton stopped cold a planned attack to blow up Boston airport.
# Bill Clinton stopped cold a planned attack to blow up Lincoln and Holland Tunnels in NY.
# Bill Clinton stopped cold a planned attack to blow up the George Washington Bridge.
# Bill Clinton stopped cold a planned attack to blow up the US Embassy in Albania.
# Bill Clinton tried to kill Osama bin Laden and disrupt Al Qaeda through preemptive strikes (efforts denounced by the G.O.P.).
# Bill Clinton brought perpetrators of first World Trade Center bombing and CIA killings to justice.
# Bill Clinton did not blame the Bush I administration for first World Trade Center bombing even though it occurred 38 days after Bush left office. Instead, worked hard, even obsessively -- and successfully -- to stop future terrorist attacks.
# Bill Clinton named the Hart-Rudman commission to report on nature of terrorist threats and major steps to be taken to combat terrorism.
# Bill Clinton sent legislation to Congress to tighten airport security. (Remember, this is before 911) The legislation was defeated by the Republicans because of opposition from the airlines.
# Bill Clinton sent legislation to Congress to allow for better tracking of terrorist funding. It was defeated by Republicans in the Senate because of opposition from banking interests.
# Bill Clinton sent legislation to Congress to add tagents to explosives, to allow for better tracking of explosives used by terrorists. It was defeated by the Republicans because of opposition from the NRA.
# Bill Clinton increased the military budget by an average of 14 per cent, reversing the trend under Bush I.
# Bill Clinton tripled the budget of the FBI for counterterrorism and doubled overall funding for counterterrorism.
# Bill Clinton detected and destroyed cells of Al Qaeda in over 20 countries.
# Bill Clinton created national stockpile of drugs and vaccines including 40 million doses of smallpox vaccine.
# Of Clinton's efforts says Robert Oakley, Reagan Ambassador for Counterterrorism: "Overall, I give them very high marks" and "The only major criticism I have is the obsession with Osama".
# Paul Bremer, current Civilian Administrator of Iraq disagrees slightly with Robert Oakley as he believed the Bill Clinton Administration had "correctly focused on bin Laden.
# Barton Gellman in the Washington Post put it best, "By any measure available, Bill Clinton left office having given greater priority to terrorism than any president before him" and was the "first administration to undertake a systematic anti-terrorist effort".
http://liberalslikechrist.org/about/clinton.html
ON THE ENVIRONMENT
Bill Clinton issued an Executive Order on Environmental Justice to ensure that low-income citizens and minorities do not suffer a disproportionate burden of industrial pollution. Launched pilot projects in low-income communities across the country to redevelop contaminated sites into useable space, create jobs and enhance community development.

President Bill Clinton sought permanent funding of $1.4 billion a year through the Lands Legacy initiative to expand federal efforts to save America's natural treasures and provide significant new resources to states and communities to protect local green spaces and protect ocean and coastal resources. Won $652 million for Lands Legacy in the FY 2000 budget, a 42 percent increase.

Launched effort to protect over 40 million acres of "roadless areas," which include some of America's last wild places. Dramatically improved management of our national forests with an ambitious new science-based agenda that places greater emphasis on recreation, wildlife and water quality, while reforming logging practices to ensure steady, sustainable supplies of timber and jobs. Balanced the preservation of old-growth stands with the economic needs of timber-dependent communities through the Pacific Northwest Forest Plan.

Adopted a uniform tailpipe standard to passenger cars, SUVs and other light-duty trucks, producing cars that are 77 percent cleaner -- and light-duty trucks up to 95 percent cleaner -- than those on the road today. Set new standard to reduce average sulfur levels in gasoline by up to 90 percent. Once fully implemented in 2030, these measures will prevent 43,000 premature deaths and 173,000 cases of childhood respiratory illness each year, and reduce emissions by the equivalent to removing 164 million cars from the road.

# Approved strong new clean air standards for soot and smog that could prevent up to 15,000 premature deaths a year and improve the lives of millions of Americans who suffer from respiratory illnesses. Defending the standards against legal assaults by polluters.

# Accelerating Toxic Waste Cleanups. Completed cleanup at 515 Superfund sites, more than three times as many as the previous two administrations, with cleanup of more than 90 percent of all sites either completed or in progress. Secured $1.4 billion in FY 2000 to continue progress toward cleaning up 900 Superfund sites by 2002.

# Providing Safe Drinking Water: Proposed and signed legislation to strengthen the Safe Drinking Water Act and ensure that our families have healthy clean tap water. Required America's 55,000 water utility companies to provide regular reports to their customers on the quality of their drinking water.

# Established EPA's Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF) that provides grants to States to finance priority drinking water projects that meet Clean Water Act mandates. To date, the DWSRFs have provided $1.9 billion in loans to communities.

# Awarded nearly $200 million in Department of Agriculture (USDA) loans and grants for over 100 safe drinking water projects in rural areas of 40 states. USDA grants and loans target rural communities plagued by some of the nation's worst water quality and dependability problems.

# Expanded Safe Drinking Water Act protections to protect 40 million additional Americans in small communities from potentially dangerous microbes, including Cryptosporidium, in their drinking water.

# Ensuring Clean Water. Launched the Clean Water Action Plan to help clean up the 40 percent of America's surveyed waterways still too polluted for fishing and swimming. Secured $3.9 billion since 1998, a 16 percent increase, to help states, communities and landowners in reducing polluted runoff, enhancing natural resource stewardship, improving citizens' right to know, and protecting public health.

# Strengthening Communities' Right to Know. Strengthened the public's right to know about chemicals released into their air and water by partnering with the chemical industry and the environmental community in an effort to provide complete data on the potential health risks of the 2,800 most widely used chemicals. Nearly doubled the number of chemicals that industry must report to communities, while expanding the number of facilities that must report by 30 percent.

# Expanded the community right to know about releases of 27 persistent bio-accumulative toxins (including mercury, dioxin, and PCBs). These highly toxic chemicals are especially risky because they do not break down easily and are known to accumulate in the human body.

# Secured $83 million in FY 2000 for two major new efforts to restore salmon in the Pacific Northwest: $58 million for the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund, which provides resources for states and tribes to protect and rebuild salmon stocks; and $25 million to implement the historic Pacific Salmon Treaty with Canada, which established two regional funds to improve fisheries management and enhance bilateral scientific cooperation between the two countries and provides funding to buy back fishing permits in Washington.
# Expanding Wildlife Refuges. Added 57,000 acres, including lands along the last free-flowing section of the Columbia River, to the Saddle Mountain National Wildlife Refuge to protect salmon habitat in Washington.

# Forging Partnerships to Protect Habitat. Completed 255 major Habitat Conservation Plans (HCPs), compared to 14 before the Administration took office, to protect more than 20 million acres of private land and over 170 threatened and endangered species. These voluntary agreements protect habitat while providing landowners the certainty they need to effectively manage their lands.

# Strengthening Protections for Wildlife. Signed legislation that strengthens protections for wildlife by mandating that the most important use of our nation's wildlife refuges is giving refuge to migratory birds and other animals reliant on this rich system of natural habitat.

Protecting our Oceans and Coasts

# Creating Comprehensive Oceans Policy. Directed the development of key recommendations for strengthening federal oceans policy for the 21st century and appointed a high-level task force to oversee the implementation of those recommendations. Convened a National Ocean Conference in June 1998 that brought together government experts, business executives, scientists, environmentalists, elected officials and the public to examine opportunities and challenges in restoring and protecting our ocean resources.

# Strengthening Our National Marine Sanctuaries. Secured a funding increase of over 100% to better support national marine sanctuaries -- homes to coral reefs, kelp forests, humpback whales, and loggerhead turtles. Supporting the five-year Sustainable Seas Expeditions to explore, study and document ways to better protect underwater resources.

# Preserving Coral Reefs. Issued an Executive Order to expand protection of coral reefs and their ecosystems to address issues of coral reef management, expansion of marine protected areas and increased protections for coral reef species.

# Protecting Marine Mammals. Led negotiations resulting in a multilateral agreement to protect dolphins in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. Issued new standards to protect the endangered northern right whale from injuries from ships by instituting a first-ever ship reporting requirement in two areas of right whale critical habitat. Fought for creation of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, an area of more than 12 million square miles off the coast of Antarctica.

# Banning Ocean Dumping of Toxic Waste. Led the world in calling for a global ban on ocean dumping of low-level radioactive waste. The U.S. was the first nuclear power to advocate the ban.

Introduced "Better America Bonds" to generate $10.75 billion in bond authority over five years to preserve open space, improve water quality and clean up abandoned and contaminated properties known as brownfields. Local communities can work together in partnerships with land trust groups, environmentalists, business leaders and others to develop innovative solutions to their community's development challenges.

# Provided leadership critical to successful negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol, which sets strong, realistic targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and establishes flexible, market-based mechanisms to achieve them as cost-effectively as possible.

# Investing in Clean Energy Research. Won more than $1 billion in FY 1999 and in FY 2000 for the Climate Change Technology Initiative, a program of clean energy research and development that will save energy and consumers money. Extended the tax credits for wind and biomass energy production through 2001, reducing emissions and reliance on imported oil.

# Growing Clean Energy Technologies. Issued an Executive Order to coordinate federal efforts to spur the development and use of bio-based technologies, which can convert crops, trees and other "biomass" into a vast array of fuels and materials. Set a goal of tripling our use of bioenergy and bioproducts by 2010 to reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by up to 100 million tons a year -- the equivalent of taking 70 million cars off the road.

# Improving Scientific Understanding. Increased funding for the United States Global Change Research Program to more than $1.7 billion in FY 2000 to provide a sound scientific understanding of both the human and natural forces that influence the Earth's climate system. This record research budget continues strong support for the "Carbon Cycle Initiative" begun last year to improve our understanding of the role of farms, forests, and other natural or managed lands in capturing carbon.

# Energy Efficiency Standards for Appliances. Issued new energy efficiency standards for refrigerators, refrigerator-freezers, freezers and room air conditioners that will save consumers money and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and dependence on foreign oil. The new standards will cut the average appliance's energy usage by 30 percent and save more than seven quadrillion BTUs of energy over the next 30 years, more than seven times the annual energy consumption of the entire state of Arkansas.

# Promoting federal Energy Efficiency. Issued an Executive Order directing federal agencies to reduce energy use in buildings 35 percent by 2010, reducing annual greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of taking 1.7 million cars off the road and saving taxpayers over $750 million a year. Forged new partnerships with industry to develop and promote energy-saving cars, homes and consumer products with the potential to save Americans hundreds of millions of dollars in energy bills and significantly curb greenhouse gas pollution.
http://www.environmentalcaucus.org/gore.html

PS: What about corruption?

Forget about it. As measured by the total number of convictions and forced resignations, Clinton's was the cleanest administration since Teddy Roosevelt.

and don't notice their phoney gripes match the REPUKES like limpballs exactly!

especially considering what he was up against.

Smallest welfare rolls in 32 years -- Your logic is utterly twisted.

The point of the Clinton / Gingrich plan was to kick people off the rolls.

Anyone who doesn't understand that, including EJ Dionne Jr. and Richard Cohen and Joe Klein numerous other Clinton apologists (many of whom happen to be neocons when it came to GWB foreign policy, hmm!) are nitwits and fushheads who can't get over their deep-seated antipathy to poor black "welfare cheats".

Here's another great line for liberals (admittedly I'm not a fan of big gov't but most liberals are, and Clinton hates them too, as proven by Hillary's recent comments about how Obama was "too liberal":

-- DECREASED GOVERNMENT SPENDING! --

and lost that file! Thanks so much for posting this here!:hi:

The problem is that some of it came at the expense of damaging our long-term economic prospects. NAFTA and GATT, for example.

Some of it came at the expense of our finacial security, such as deregulating the energy and financial industry to the point where it's teetering on the point of solvency here in 2008.

It's my impression that union membership, a key component to the concept of a strong middle class, continued to decline.

The telecom de-regulation essentially created the corporate media.

His 1993 Assault Weapon Ban created a backlash that was critical in putting the corporate Republicans in power in 1994, which allowed many of things above to come to fruition in the first place.

But Clinton's public support for the war is a matter of record. Just before George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair invaded Iraq, Clinton published an op-ed in the London Guardian (3/18/03) urging Britons to "Trust Tony's Judgment":

As Blair has said, in war there will be civilian was well as military casualties.... But if we leave Iraq with chemical and biological weapons, after 12 years of defiance, there is a considerable risk that one day these weapons will fall into the wrong hands and put many more lives at risk than will be lost in overthrowing Saddam.

Clinton's column included the less-than-prescient prediction that "military action probably will require only a few days."

Soon after the invasion (3/30/03), Clinton appeared on CBS's 60 Minutes with former Senator Robert Dole and endorsed the war, saying, "Senator, unlike some of your Republican friends during Kosovo, I support our troops in Iraq and the president." (Note that while one can support the troops but not the war, supporting the president in Iraq means supporting the war.)

In a 2004 interview with Time magazine (6/28/04), Clinton reiterated this before-the-fact support for the invasion: "You know, I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq, even though I think he should have waited until the U.N. inspections were over."

...

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3222

most of the Iraq thing was fabrication. You have 80-90% of the Iraq war info concerning things that occured while Clinton was in office, such as bombing and killing civilians to get at WMD. During his time he was handed the job of continuing the '
No Fly Zone' and inherited UN mandated job. Clinton was guilty of several shortcomings, but wanton murder is not one of them, and to imply it is tatamount in my mind to breach of trust. To attempt to foist such despicable shit as this on the DU should, if the fucking adminitrators had the balls of fleas bring you a permanent ban on your ISP address.

What you have posted is a very cleverly crafted piece of character assination, quite worthy of Rove and his understudies.

you aren't addressing any of the salient facts. Your hysterical ramblings don't really mean much.

Are you saying Clinton did not continue with sanctions? Are you saying Clinton did not okay the bombings?

well Ms. Albright was okay with it and acknowledged it publicly. And it is indisputable. It is on the record beyond a shadow of the doubt.

There are plenty of people who were involved that have since recanted and come forward with the gruesome details. That you do not know this does not change the reality. Halliday being the more public of the figures but there are many others.

Why you deny this is perhaps to maintain an illusion you need or desire.

Your conflations as to why the information was posted are no more than a smear used to avoid dialogue about what seems to be a sacred cow.

My goodness, what is posted in the OP is a mild version of what went down in Iraq under Clinton.

"During his eight years in the White House, President Clinton oversaw an Iraq policy that killed over 350,000-500,000 children via sanctions, repeatedly bombed Iraq out of concern over WMD, and made regime change the official policy of the United States.

The most notable aspect of President Clinton's Iraq policy was his maintenance of a sanctions regime that decimated Iraq's economy and that was estimated to have killed 500,000 children. While the figures would later be disputed with lesser estimates of 350,000, their destructive impact is undeniable. Responding to concerns over the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children, Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright would famously state "I think it is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it." Ordinary Iraqis reported significant hardship from the sanctions, while food and medicine were lacking and the economy crumbled."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

First any deaths from sanctions would be spread across TWO administrations. Second you use the HUGE numbers first and then cover your as with 'estimated' AFTER the useage and further on you finally address the issue that other agencies and authorities dispute these figures. And the fact is you cannot provide evidence in the slightest that could pin-point any numbers at all, they are in fact ALL estimations made by agencies and organizations and groups who would benefit by higher or lower numbers.

Follow that with the rediculous use of a "Ordinary Iraqis reported significant hardship from the sanctions, while food and medicine were lacking and the economy crumbled." as supportive evidence of your contentions.

Face it this is nothing more than a well crafted hatchet job. If you had written this yourself from your own assumptions and conclusions I would not be so irate, but you are a stooge, a simple peddler of propaganda, and that my friend is about as low in my opinion as humans can stoop!

To take that whole piece of crap apart and debunk it thoroughly would take hours, and I don't have that much time to waste, and as you well know the damage by such crap is done on first read, and followup rebuttals are ignored....Rove tactics 101

which is the dramatic increase in incarceration rates and the staggering amount of minorities in those numbers -- basically and entrenchment of the "prison as low-income-housing" phenomenon -- which occurred on Clinton's watch.

to make sure that he got credit for the state murder of Ricky Lee Rector...

http://www.salon.com/april97/news/news2970425.html

"True, Clinton had always favored capital punishment. And true, Rector had slain two men 11 years earlier. But after shooting them, he had turned the weapon on himself. As political reporter John Wordock of Bloomberg Business News recounted in his masterful study of race, poverty, and the 1992 campaign, "Where The Trail Didn't Go," the bungled suicide had doctors scraping bullet fragments from Rector's brain, leaving him essentially "lobotomized." One of Rector's lawyers, Wordock noted, personally informed Clinton of the convict's condition to try to stave off execution.

Too late. Rector, dispatched by lethal injection, could not be exploited against Clinton's campaign as the black felon Willie Horton had been against Michael Dukakis by George Bush in 1988. Clinton, the New Democrat, would not let himself look similarly soft on crime."


Blood thirsty bastard...

a president who really did care about everyone. Boy what a bad president he was. but i guess a pessimist is hard to please huh?

today and why we are having so much trouble getting them to see the facts of what bush is doing to this nation, our constitution, religion and across the world. all because a group of people like the feel of bush and ignore the reality of bush

You liken me to a republican because i felt hope? What the frigg you smoking? It is only one thing of many i remember. Stop being a doof.

that effects the people, this nation and across the world. because in doing this, you lie to yourself, and i never honor a lie, to others or self, for illusion or sense of peace or hope that isnt a reality.

if you want to see the good clinton did, look below, another post brings the good things he did for our awareness. but to ignore facts for a story told never holds for me.

You are pretty high and mighty now aren't you?

Well if i am a likened to a republican i can liken you to those that always put Clinton down? The unspeakable group?

it is just a feel and all yours. what clinton did in office is there for you to read and then decided if you support it or not. that has nothing to do with the feel of that time, it has to do with documented decisions clinton made, good and bad. nothing high and mighty about educating and being informed.

but to look at the documented decisions of clintons and then say it didnt happens is to lie to yourself and anyone you tell that to

pertaining to those years. Was he an ideal president that did everything you and i wanted? no. Did he do some good? yes. For 7 years now i have been represented by a baboon that represents 0% of my ideals and hopes and dreams. At least with Clinton i got a sense that some of my values and ideals were being represented.

and then shortly after voting for Ralph, I was like, D'oh!

n/t

means junior has put us in 5 + 9 trillion dollars in the RED

that we know of.

once again, after a Bush is in office, the theme is going to be
"It's the economy stupid".

Nevertheless, even though the good times rolled as far as the economy went for
the years Bill Clinton was in office,

my vote goes to John Edwards - hoping that somehow we can get this govt responsive to the American people again and not just corporations.

found a few hundred million dollars to "lower the deficit" by caving in to the repukes and CUTTING NEEDED SOCIAL PROGRAMS!!!

And further 'robbing' the Social Security System of the baby boom surplus withholding...

And giving away the farm for the short term profit of big corporations...

And selling the media to the highest (few) bidders...

He paid down NONE OF THE DEBT!

gee, almost sounds like a republican impeachment manager.

Nobody tried to get unlimited executive power, wiretapping without warrant (even the executive branch FISA court) and the incompetence possibly when connections-only are the standard for who gets a job wasn't in evidence.

I remember how good it was back then - and how HORRIBLE they've been getting for over seven years now!

Glad you reminded me...

GOD HOW I MISS CLINTON!!!!!!!!!!

Just a little thing which folks without some background in urban planning and real estate development might not have an opinion on.

Most of the white-guilt Baby-Boomer "soccer moms and dads" who view the 1990s as a golden age NEVER met a low-income tenant they didn't want to send packing.

I should know -- I live amongst them. In a neighborhood chock FULL of Beltway Dems.

I'm waiting.

I don't think Clinton can be blamed for the way Saddam ran Iraq

let's not forget the oil for food scandals

What was the objective? Obviously a dismal failure.

The 1990s was a dystopia for any advocate of the New Deal -- a time of
manufactured "full employment" statistics belied by falling real wages
in spite of manufactured "no inflation" statistics.

A time when Hillary's old boss, Wal-Mart, and Clinton friends such as
Starbucks did to Main Street what Halliburton did to our foreign policy
in the 2000s.

same ol', same ol' eh?

and now, most of our children are sitting in the cells that were so expertly cultivated and expanded during those "boom times". Take a single mom with pre-teen, adolescent kids and force her into a dead-end job, working ten hrs a day for $15k/$20k a yr., with no child-care, and just watch what becomes of those children.

No sirree, no need to remind some of us what type of government we've got, regardless of whoever the prez may be.

find another job. The era was good for labor.

I remember an era of

* a booming economy
* two strong, sensible justices appointed to the Supreme Court
* the Family and Medical Leave Act
* upping taxes on the rich while cutting for the middle and low-class
* veto of the hideous partial-birth abortion ban
* brokering peace deals in N. Ireland

Boy, I sure wouldn't want to go back to that. :eyes:

Electric rates are regulated by states, not the federal government. I don't remember Clinton working relentlessly to deregulate state utility oversight. Clinton was not a fried of Ken Lay's. That was a right wing myth. Lay was not Clinton's mentor. I don't know where that idea came from.

I'm sure there was a perfect president at one time or another. I'm confident that America had a Utopian society at one time or another. I'm happy we had an administration in which employment, GDP, GNP, civil rights, environmental laws, the nation's infrastructure and the arts all increased in an exponential amount relative to all other administrations.

Either that, or we pragmatically take the good with the bad-- accepting that every administration has limitations placed on it by the amount of opposition in the House and Senate, the amount of political capital it has, the current political climate, etc.

I take the latter view, but I'm sure that the candidate you support will lead us into the Promised Land of the first paragraph...

I'm in Michigan and I've got to tell you, my #1 thing right now is people having the ability to find decent jobs. We had jobs a plenty under Bill Clinton. Times have changed so I don't think you can assume another Clinton presidency will have the same situation, and Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton are actually two different people, but hey it wasn't all bad in the 90s.

...and the war on the middle-class began its Katrina-like devastation of working Americans.

Thanks Bill. :mad:

Memories are short in the US and people forget how thoroughly mediocre (at
best) Clinton part I was.

months ago and her insistence that part of Iran's military is a terrorist organization frighten me. I cringe every time I see Albright standing next to Hillary at campaign events - the same Ms. Albright who said the death of 500,000 children was acceptable. And what is the experience Hillary purports - her failed health care policy? She wasn't president -- and to imply that her husband's resume is hers. is from a feminist point of view, deplorable. She not only takes corporate money, which these days is inevitable given the cost of campaigns, but cozies up to them - remember her statement that lobbyists were 'people' too. And letting Murdoch throw her a fundraiser and posing next to him with a broad smile on her face was sickening. Clintonites -- remember!

The first thing, and the most obvious, is Fox News. Fox News can say pretty much anything they want, regardless if it's true or not. Add that with the ability to disguise tabloid journalism (you know, Britney Spears, ad nauseum), and you have one big steaming pile of crap that wouldn't have existed without that legislation being passed.

The second is the consolidation of media companies, the most recent is Rupert Murdoch's purchase of the Wall Street Journal.

after 12 years of having shit jammed in your face.