[Peace-discuss] The Clinton/Bush generation

[n.dahlheim at mchsi.com]

Christopher Hedges hit the nail right on the head.  The neoliberal consenus supports the raping and 
pillaging of the environment as well as the American public, and the corporations basically own both 
parties.  Arguably, the domestic economic agenda of the Clinton years from NAFTA through welfare 
reform and the capital gains tax cuts as well as the Medicare cuts from the "Contract with America" 
gang was even more reactionary than that advanced by the old feeble-minded Gipper himself.  Also, 
the behavior of the Clinton Administration at Waco was abomidable in that made for TV holocaust, not 
to mention bombing th aspirin factory in Sudan and the "terrorist" camps in Afghanistan.  And to really 
cut the cake--------HAS EVERYONE FORGOTTEN WHAT A WATERSHED THE SEATTLE PROTESTS WERE 
IN SHOWING HOW SUCH A BROAD SECTION OF THE POPULACE WAS OPPOSED TO WORLD CORPORATE 
CONTROL THROUGH ORGANIZATIONS LIKE THE WTO?

And, nobody really notices when George HW Bush and Clinton are all buddy, buddy.  FYI, the 1992 
election probably was more or less a staged event (though not like 2000 or 2004) as Bush needed to 
leave the White House because his thyroid condition was getting out of control.  The famous vomiting 
on the Japanese P.M. case illustrates my point amongst other incidents in the Bush I Presidency.  
Clinton quietly cleaned up some of the blood from that Bush Administration and advanced the 
reactionary agenda with liberal rhetoric oh, so beautifully....  Probably just as planned among the 
corporate oligarchs that rule this country.


----------------------  Original Message:  ---------------------
From:    "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>
To:      Peace Discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Subject: [Peace-discuss] The Clinton/Bush generation
Date:    Wed, 19 Sep 2007 02:42:50 +0000

> [There are few things more disgusting in contemporary US politics than a 
> Democrat slavering for a Clinton Restoration.  Bush is in fact a 
> thoroughly worthy purveyor of the Clinton legacy, as Bill Clinton 
> himself was of Bush I/Reagan. A pox on both their houses. --CGE]
> 
> 	
> CHRIS HEDGES, ALTERNET - The misery sweeping across the American 
> landscape may have begun with Ronald Reagan, but it was accelerated and 
> codified by Bill Clinton. He sold out the poor and the working class. 
> And Clinton did it deliberately to feed the pathological hunger he and 
> his wife have for political power. It was the Clintons who led the 
> Democratic Party to the corporate watering trough.
> 
> The Clintons argued that the party had to ditch labor unions, no longer 
> a source of votes or power, as a political ally. Workers would vote 
> Democratic anyway. They had no choice. It was better, the Clintons 
> argued, to take corporate money and use government to service the needs 
> of the corporations. By the 1990s, the Democratic Party, under Clinton's 
> leadership, had virtual fund-raising parity with the Republicans. In 
> political terms, it was a success. In moral terms, it was a betrayal.
> 
> The North American Free Trade Agreement was sold to the country by the 
> Clinton White House as an opportunity to raise the incomes and 
> prosperity of the citizens of the United States, Canada and Mexico. 
> Goods would be cheaper. Workers would be wealthier. Everyone would be 
> happier. I am not sure how these contradictory things were supposed to 
> happen, but in a sound-bite society, reality no longer matters. NAFTA 
> would also, we were told, staunch Mexican immigration into the United 
> States. . .
> 
> Clinton's welfare reform bill, which was signed on Aug. 22, 1996, 
> obliterated the nation's social safety net. It threw 6 million people, 
> many of them single parents, off of the welfare rolls within three 
> years. It dumped them onto the streets without child care, rent 
> subsidies and continued Medicaid coverage. Families were plunged into 
> crisis, struggling to survive on multiple jobs that paid $6 or $7 an 
> hour, or less than $15,000 a year.
> 
> But these were the lucky ones. In some states, half of those dropped 
> from the welfare rolls could not find work. Clinton slashed Medicare by 
> $115 billion over a five-year period and cut $25 billion in Medicaid 
> funding. The booming and overcrowded prison system handled the influx of 
> the poor, as well as our abandoned mentally ill.
> 
> The growing desperation provided a pool of broken people willing to work 
> for low wages and without unions or benefits. And while Clinton was busy 
> selling out the poor, he lowered the capital gains tax from 28 percent 
> to 20 percent, a reduction that permitted the wealthiest 1 percent of 
> the population to derive 80 percent of the tax savings. Clinton, like 
> George W. Bush, also provided lavish government funding for his 
> corporate backers, including in 1998 a $200-billion highway and 
> transportation package for the big construction companies and a 
> $17-billion increase in the military budget.
> 
> This was the largest increase in military spending since the end of the 
> Cold War. Corporations, flush with government aid, saw their taxes 
> dwindle. Amway, for example, had its taxes cut during the Clinton years 
> by an estimated $280 million. The Clinton and Bush administrations, 
> through tax breaks and corporate bailouts, have squandered billions of 
> our tax dollars on corporate welfare.
> 
> 	###
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