Hillary Clinton Sugarcoating Her Disastrous Record
Bernie Sanders is far too easy on Hillary Clinton in their debates. Clinton flaunts her record and experience in ways that Sanders could use to expose her serious vulnerabilities and disqualifications for becoming president. Sanders responds to Clinton’s points, but without the precision that could demolish her arrogance.
For example, she repeatedly says that Sanders has not levelled with people about the cost of full Medicare for all, or single-payer. Really? In other countries, single-payer is far simpler and more efficient than our present profiteering, wasteful, corporatized healthcare industry. Canada covers all of its citizens, with free choice of doctors and hospitals, for about $4,500 per capita, compared to the over $9,000 per capita cost in the U.S. system that still leaves tens of millions of people uninsured or underinsured.
Detailed studies in the New England Journal of Medicine show big savings from a single-payer system in our country.
It is Hillary Clinton who is not levelling with the people about the costs of maintaining the spiraling U.S. costs of drugs, hospital stays and insurance premiums that are the highest in the world. The costs include: 1) the waste of well over $1 trillion a year; 2) daily denials of coverage by the Aetnas of the corporate world; 3) about forty thousand Americans dying each year, according to a peer-reviewed Harvard Medical School study, because they cannot afford health insurance to get diagnosed and treated in time; and 4) daily agonizing negotiations over insurance company denials, exclusions and bureaucratic paperwork that drive physicians up the wall.
Clinton hasn’t explained why she was once for single-payer until she defined her “being practical” as refusing to take on big pharma, commercial hospital chains and the giant insurance companies. She is very “practical” about taking political contributions and speaking fees from Wall Street and the health care industry.
As one 18 year-old student told the New York Times recently about Clinton, “sometimes you get this feeling that all of her sentences are owned by someone.”
This protector of the status quo and the gross imbalance of power between the few and the many expresses perfectly why Wall Street financiers like her so much and prove it with their large continuing monetary contributions.
Hillary Clinton is not “levelling with the American people,” when she keeps the transcripts (which she requested at the time) of her secret speeches (at $5,000 a minute!) before large Wall Street and trade association conventions. Her speaking contracts mandated secrecy. Clinton still hasn’t told voters what she was telling big bankers and many other industries from automotive to drugs to real estate developers behind closed doors.
She has the gall to accuse Bernie Sanders of not being transparent. Sanders is a presidential candidate who doesn’t take big-fee speeches or big donations from fat cat influence-peddlers, and his record is as clean as the Clintons’ political entanglements are sordid. (See Clinton Cash by Peter Schweizer.)
But it is in the area of foreign and military affairs that “Hillary the hawk” is most vulnerable. As Secretary of State her aggressiveness and poor judgement led her to the White House where, sweeping aside the strong objections of Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, she persuaded President Obama to bomb Libya and topple its dictatorial regime.
Gates had warned about the aftermath. He was right. Libya has descended into a ghastly state of chaotic violence that has spilled into neighboring African nations, such as Mali, and that opened the way for ISIS to establish an expanding base in central Libya. Her fellow hawks in Washington are now calling for U.S. special forces to go to Libya.
Whether as Senator on the Armed Services Committee or as Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton has never met a war or raid she didn’t like, or a redundant, wasteful weapons system she was willing to aggressively challenge. As president, Hillary Clinton would mean more wars, more raids, more blowbacks, more military spending and more profits for the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower so prophetically warned about in his farewell address.
So when Bernie Sanders properly chided her for having as an advisor, Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, she bridled and tried to escape by asking Sanders to name his foreign policy advisors.
In fact, Kissinger and Clinton do have much in common about projecting the American Empire to brutal levels. Kissinger was the “butcher of Cambodia,” launching an illegal assault that destabilized that peaceful country into the Pol Pot slaughter of millions of innocents. She was the illegal “butcher of Libya,” an ongoing, unfolding tragedy whose blowbacks of “unintended consequences” are building by the week.
In a devastating recounting of Hillary Clinton’s disastrous war-making, Professor of Sustainable Economies at Columbia University, Jeffrey D. Sachs concludes that Clinton “is the candidate of the War Machine.” In a widely noted article on Huffington Post Professor Sachs, an advisor the United Nations on millennium development goals, called her record a “disaster,” adding that “Perhaps more than any other person, Hillary can lay claim to having stoked the violence that stretches from West Africa to Central Asia and that threatens U.S. security.”
The transformation of Hillary Clinton from a progressive young lawyer to a committed corporatist and militarist brings shame on the recent endorsement of her candidacy by the Congressional Black Caucus PAC.
But then, considering all the years of Clintonite double talk and corporate contributions going to the Black Caucus PAC (according to FEC reports January through December, 2015), and the Black Caucus conventions, why should anybody be surprised that Black Lives Matter and a growing surge of young African Americans are looking for someone in the White House who is not known for the Clintons’ sweet-talking betrayals?
See Michelle Alexander’s recent article in The Nation, “Hillary Clinton Does Not Deserve Black People’s Votes” for more information on this subject.
Clinton Cash
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 | |
| Author | Peter Schweizer |
|---|---|
| Audio read by | Walter Dixon |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Political Science/American Government |
| Publisher | Harper, Broadside Books |
Publication date
| May 5, 2015 |
| Pages | 256 |
| ISBN | 978-0062369284 |
| OCLC | 906020748 |
| Preceded by | Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money |
| Website | www |
Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich is a 2015 New York Times bestselling book by Peter Schweizer, in which he investigates donations made to the Clinton Foundation by foreign entities, paid speeches made by Bill and Hillary Clinton, and the Clintons' personal enrichment since leaving the White House in 2001.
The New York Times, The Washington Post and Fox News were granted exclusive agreements with the book's author to pursue the story lines found in the book.[1] In the wake of the book's publication, the Clinton Foundation admitted that it made mistakes in disclosing some of its contributions, and it implemented new rules increasing financial reporting and limiting foreign donations.[2]
Synopsis[edit]
Clinton Cash is an investigation of the foreign benefactors of Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation.[3] It investigates alleged connections between Clinton Foundation donors and Hillary Clinton’s work at the State Department.[4]
The book argues that the Clinton family accepted lavish donations and speaking fees from foreign donors at times when the State Department was considering whether or not to award large contracts to groups and people affiliated with those donors.[5]
The book is organized into eleven chapters. Some chapters focus on particular transactions or deals, such as the creation of UrAsia Energy and Uranium One in Kazkakhstan, and the connection shareholders had and have to the Clintons. Other chapters focus on a broader set of relationships, particularly with regard to Bill Clinton’s paid speeches during the years Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State, and whether those paying for his speeches had significant business before the State Department.[5] Schweizer dubs the Clintons' blend of government service and private remuneration the “Clinton blur.” [6]
Publication[edit]
For Clinton Cash, Schweizer granted exclusive agreements with The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Fox News to use his research for their own reports prior to the book's publication. The New York Times called the book "the most anticipated and feared book of a presidential cycle.”[7]
The first New York Times article generated from the outlets exclusive agreement with Schweizer centered on the complicated history of Uranium One, a company which controls 20% of U.S. uranium production capacity and which eventually ended up in Russian hands. The acquisition needed to be approved by several government agencies, including the State Department. While Hillary Clinton was serving as Secretary of State, her husband's foundation was receiving millions of dollars from people with financial stakes in Uranium One. The Times concluded that it is "unknown" whether the donations played a role in the deal's approval, but that they presented "special ethical challenges."[3] Schweizer echoed that conclusion in an interview where he stated that there is "no direct evidence" that Hillary Clinton intervened on the issue but that the donation is part of "a broader pattern" that "warrants further investigation."[8]
The day the book was published, Hillary Clinton's campaign set up a portal called "The Briefing" on its official website. The Briefing is designed to rebut the allegations made in Schweizer's book. Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta, while not outright denying any of the book's allegations, said that "The book has zero evidence to back up its outlandish claims...While we will not be consumed by these kinds of attacks, we will also not let them go unchallenged."[9]
Reception[edit]
Clinton Cash debuted at number two on the New York Times Best Seller list. Writing for The Washington Post, academic and political activist Lawrence Lessig wrote "On any fair reading, the pattern of behavior that Schweizer has charged is corruption."[10] Ed Pilkington, writing for The Guardian, wrote that "Even in the hyper-partisan world of American political publishing, the storm generated by the latest book about the Clintons has been impressive." Pilkington writes that Schweizer does not prove corruption on the part of the Clintons, but that he reveals several "glaring conflicts of interest."[2]
PolitiFact.com confirmed that since leaving the White House in 2001 and 2013, Bill Clinton made 13 speeches for which he commanded more than $500,000; all but two of those mega-money earners occurred in the period when Hillary was at the State Department.[11]
Several weeks after the book's initial publication, Harper Collins and the author made several corrections to the Kindle edition of the book. Schweizer corrected “seven or eight” passages that were revealed to be inaccurate after the book was released.[4]
James Freeman reviewed the book for The Wall Street Journal, writing that "Almost every page of the fascinating Clinton Cash...will be excruciating reading for partisans on both sides of the aisle" and that "The fact that even liberal media outlets are taking the book seriously suggests that a post-election payday is getting harder to achieve."[12]
Impact[edit]
The Washington Examiner cited a poll that registered a drop of 13 percent among respondents who view Hillary Clinton as honest, compared to a year earlier. According to the Examiner, "one reason for the trend is surely... [the] release of Clinton Cash."[13]
Journalist and former Bill Clinton staffer George Stephanopoulos donated a total of $75,000 over several years to the Clinton Foundation, but he did not disclose the donations to ABC News, his employer, or to his viewers.[14] Stephanopoulos did not reveal the donations even on April 26, 2015, while interviewing Schweizer about Clinton Cash.[14] After exposure of the donations by Politico on May 14, 2015, Stephanopoulos apologized and admitted he should have disclosed the donations to ABC News and its viewers.[14][15] The story was broken by The Washington Free Beacon which had aggressively questioned ABC News regarding the matter.[16] The donations had been reported by the Clinton Foundation, which Stephanopoulos had considered sufficient, a reliance ABC News characterized as "an honest mistake."[15]
Based on Stephanopoulos' donations to the Clinton Foundation and his behavior during prior interviews and presidential debates, Republican Party leaders and candidates expressed their distrust and called for him to be banned from moderating 2016 presidential debates due to bias and conflict of interest.[16][17] He agreed to drop out as a moderator of the scheduled February 2016 Republican presidential primary debate.[18]
02/05/2016 12:25 pm ET | Updated Feb 05, 2016
6 K
Jeffrey Sachs
Director, Earth Institute at Columbia University
JEWEL SAMAD VIA GETTY IMAGES
There's no doubt that Hillary is the candidate of Wall Street. Even more dangerous, though, is that she is the candidate of the military-industrial complex. The idea that she is bad on the corporate issues but good on national security has it wrong. Her so-called foreign policy "experience" has been to support every war demanded by the US deep security state run by the military and the CIA.
Hillary and Bill Clinton's close relations with Wall Street helped to stoke two financial bubbles (1999-2000 and 2005-8) and the Great Recession that followed Lehman's collapse. In the 1990s they pushed financial deregulation for their campaign backers that in turn let loose the worst demons of financial manipulation, toxic assets, financial fraud, and eventually collapse. In the process they won elections and got mighty rich.
Yet Hillary's connections with the military-industrial complex are also alarming. It is often believed that the Republicans are the neocons and the Democrats act as restraints on the warmongering. This is not correct. Both parties are divided between neocon hawks and cautious realists who don't want the US in unending war. Hillary is a staunch neocon whose record of favoring American war adventures explains much of our current security danger.
Just as the last Clinton presidency set the stage for financial collapse, it also set the stage for unending war. On October 31, 1998 President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act that made it official US policy to support "regime change" in Iraq.
It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.
Thus were laid the foundations for the Iraq War in 2003.
Of course, by 2003, Hillary was a Senator and a staunch supporter of the Iraq War, which has cost the US trillions of dollars, thousands of lives, and done more to create ISIS and Middle East instability than any other single decision of modern foreign policy. In defending her vote, Hillary parroted the phony propaganda of the CIA:
"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members... "
After the Iraq Liberation Act came the 1999 Kosovo War, in which Bill Clinton called in NATO to bomb Belgrade, in the heart of Europe, and unleashing another decade of unrest in the Balkans. Hillary, traveling in Africa, called Bill: "I urged him to bomb," she told reporter Lucinda Frank.
Hillary's record as Secretary of State is among the most militaristic, and disastrous, of modern US history. Some experience. Hilary was a staunch defender of the military-industrial-intelligence complex at every turn, helping to spread the Iraq mayhem over a swath of violence that now stretches from Mali to Afghanistan. Two disasters loom largest: Libya and Syria.
Hillary has been much attacked for the deaths of US diplomats in Benghazi, but her tireless promotion of the overthrow Muammar Qaddafi by NATO bombing is the far graver disaster. Hillary strongly promoted NATO-led regime change in Libya, not only in violation of international law but counter to the most basic good judgment. After the NATO bombing, Libya descended into civil war while the paramilitaries and unsecured arms stashes in Libya quickly spread west across the African Sahel and east to Syria. The Libyan disaster has spawned war in Mali, fed weapons to Boko Haram in Nigeria, and fueled ISIS in Syria and Iraq. In the meantime, Hillary found it hilarious to declare of Qaddafi: "We came, we saw, he died."
Perhaps the crowning disaster of this long list of disasters has been Hillary's relentless promotion of CIA-led regime change in Syria. Once again Hillary bought into the CIA propaganda that regime change to remove Bashir al-Assad would be quick, costless, and surely successful. In August 2011, Hillary led the US into disaster with her declaration Assad must "get out of the way," backed by secret CIA operations.
Five years later, no place on the planet is more ravaged by unending war, and no place poses a great threat to US security. More than 10 million Syrians are displaced, and the refugees are drowning in the Mediterranean or undermining the political stability of Greece, Turkey, and the European Union. Into the chaos created by the secret CIA-Saudi operations to overthrow Assad, ISIS has filled the vacuum, and has used Syria as the base for worldwide terrorist attacks.
The list of her incompetence and warmongering goes on. Hillary's support at every turn for NATO expansion, including even into Ukraine and Georgia against all common sense, was a trip wire that violated the post-Cold War settlement in Europe in 1991 and that led to Russia's violent counter-reactions in both Georgia and Ukraine. As Senator in 2008, Hilary co-sponsored 2008-SR439, to include Ukraine and Georgia in NATO. As Secretary of State, she then presided over the restart of the Cold War with Russia.
It is hard to know the roots of this record of disaster. Is it chronically bad judgment? Is it her preternatural faith in the lying machine of the CIA? Is it a repeated attempt to show that as a Democrat she would be more hawkish than the Republicans? Is it to satisfy her hardline campaign financiers? Who knows? Maybe it's all of the above. But whatever the reasons, hers is a record of disaster. Perhaps more than any other person, Hillary can lay claim to having stoked the violence that stretches from West Africa to Central Asia and that threatens US security.
Follow Jeffrey Sachs on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JeffDSachs
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/hillary-is-the-candidate_b_9168938.html
2 opmerkingen:
Ik lees liever niet de stukjes van idioot Arnon Grunberg op de voorpagina van de Volkskrant,maar afgelopen zaterdag keek ik weer even naar zijn bizarre stukje over "anti-amerikanisme".Dat deze onbenul zo'n podium krijgt en op handen gedragen wordt is mij een raadsel,...nou ja eigenlijk niet,
maar elke keer lees je die onzin weer vol verbazing....
Grunberg is een windvaan.
Waar lijkt 'ie op? (niet moeilijk).
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