[Dialogue] Eight more years?

[KroegerD at aol.com]

I have great respect and confidence in  Mr. Nader's work and thought.
Dick Kroeger

Eight More Years?
by Ralph Nader
 
For Bill and Hillary Clinton, the ultimate American dream is eight more  
years. Yet how do you think they would react to having dozens of partisans at  
their rallies sporting large signs calling for EIGHT MORE YEARS, EIGHT MORE  
YEARS? 
Don’t you have the feeling that they would cringe at such public displays of  
their fervent ambition which the New York Times described as a “truly  
two-for-the-price-of-one” presidential race? It might remind voters to remember  or 
examine the real Clinton record in that peaceful decade of missed  
opportunities and not be swayed by the sugarcoating version that the glib former  
president emits at many campaign stops. 
The 1990’s were the first decade without the spectre of the Soviet Union.  
There was supposed to be a “peace dividend” that would reduce the vast, bloated 
 military budget and redirect public funds to repair or expand our public 
works  or infrastructure. 
Inaugurated in January 1993, with a Congress controlled by the Democratic  
Party, Bill Clinton sent a small job-creating proposal to upgrade public  
facilities. He also made some motions for campaign finance reform which he  promised 
during his campaign when running against incumbent George H.W. Bush and  
candidate Ross Perot. 
A double withdrawal followed when the Congressional Republicans started  
roaring about big spending Democrats and after House Speaker Tom Foley and  Senate 
Majority Leader, George Mitchell, told Clinton at a White House meeting  to 
forget about legislation to diminish the power of organized money in  
elections. 
That set the stage for how Washington politicians sized up Clinton. He was  
seen as devoid of modest political courage, a blurrer of differences with the  
Republican opposition party and anything but the decisive transforming leader 
he  promised to be was he to win the election.
He proceeded, instead, to take  credit for developments with which he had 
very little to do with such as the  economic growth propelled by the huge 
technology dot.com boom. 
Bragging about millions of jobs his Administration created, he neglected to  
note that incomes stagnated for 80% of the workers in the country and ended in 
 2000, under the level of 1973, adjusted for inflation. 
A brainy White House assistant to Mr. Clinton told me in 1997 that the only  
real achievement his boss could take credit for was passage of legislation  
allowing 12 weeks family leave, without pay. 
There are changes both the Clinton Administration actively championed that  
further entrenched corporate power over our economy and government during the  
decade. He pushed through Congress the NAFTA and the World Trade Organization  
(WTO) agreements that represented the greatest surrender in our history of  
local, state and national sovereignty to an autocratic, secretive system of  
transnational governance. This system subordinated workers, consumers and the  
environment to the supremacy of globalized commerce. 
That was just for starters. Between 1996 and 2000, he drove legislation  
through Congress that concentrated more power in the hands of giant  agribusiness, 
large telecommunications companies and the biggest jackpot-opening  the doors 
to gigantic mergers in the financial industry. The latter so-called  “
financial modernization law” sowed the permissive seeds for taking vast  financial 
risks with other peoples’ money (ie. pensioners and investors) that is  now 
shaking the economy to recession. 
The man who pulled off this demolition of regulatory experience from the  
lessons of the Great Depression was Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin,  
who went to work for Citigroup-the main pusher of this oligopolistic coup-just 
 before the bill passed and made himself $40 million for a few months of  
consulting in that same year. 
Bill Clinton’s presidential resume was full of favors for the rich and  
powerful. Corporate welfare subsidies, handouts and giveaways flourished,  
including subsidizing the Big Three Auto companies for a phony research  partnership 
while indicating there would be no new fuel efficiency regulations  while he 
was President. 
His regulatory agencies were anesthetized. The veteran watchdog for Public  
Citizen of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Sidney Wolfe, said that safety 
 was the worst under Clinton in his twenty nine years of oversight. 
The auto safety agency (NHTSA) abandoned its regulatory oath of office and  
became a consulting firm to the auto industry. Other agencies were similarly  
asleep-in job safety (OSHA) railroads, household product safety, antitrust, and 
 corporate crime law enforcement. 
By reappointing avid Republican Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal  
Reserve, Mr. Clinton assured no attention would be paid to the visible  precursors 
of what is now the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Mr. Greenspan, declined  to use 
his regulatory authority and repeatedly showed that he almost never saw a  
risky financial instrument he couldn’t justify. 
Mr. Clinton was so fearful of taking on Orrin Hatch, the Republican Chair of  
the Senate Judiciary Committee, that he cleared most judicial appointments 
with  the Utah Senator. He even failed to put forth the nomination of 
sub-cabinet  level official, Peter Edelman, whose credentials were superb to the federal 
 appeals court. 
Mr. Edelman resigned on September 12th, 1996. In a memo to his staff, he  
said, “I have devoted the last 30-plus years to doing whatever I could to help  
in reducing poverty in America. I believe the recently enacted welfare bill 
goes  in the opposite direction.” 
Excoriated by the noted author and columnist, Anthony Lewis, for his dismal  
record on civil liberties, the man from Hope set the stage for the Bush  
demolition of this pillar of our democracy. 
To justify his invasion of Iraq, Bush regularly referred in 2002-2003 to  
Clinton’s bombing of Iraq and making “regime change” explicit U.S. policy. 
But it was Clinton’s insistence on UN-backed economic sanctions in contrast  
to just military embargos, against Iraq, during his term in office. These  
sanctions on civilians, a task force of leading American physicians estimated,  
took half a million Iraqi children’s lives. 
Who can forget CBS’s Sixty Minutes correspondent Leslie Stahl’s tour through 
 Baghdad’s denuded hospitals filled with crying, dying children? She then  
interviewed Mr. Clinton’s Secretary of State, Madeline Albright and asked  
whether these sanctions were worth it. Secretary Albright answered in the  
affirmative. 
Bill Clinton is generally viewed as one smart politician, having been twice  
elected the President, helped by lackluster Robert Dole, having survived the  
Lewinsky sex scandal, lying under oath about sex, and impeachment. When is it  
all about himself, he is cunningly smart. 
But during his two-term triangulating Presidency, he wasn’t smart enough to  
avoid losing his Party’s control over Congress, or many state legislatures and 
 Governorships. 
It has always been all about him, Now he sees another admission ticket to the 
 White House through his wife, Hillary Clinton. EIGHT MORE YEARS without a  
mobilized, demanding participating citizenry is just that-EIGHT MORE YEARS. It’
s  small wonder that the editors of Fortune Magazine headlined an article last 
June  with the title, “Who Business is Betting On?” Their answer, of course, 
was  Hillary Clinton. 
_Ralph Nader_ (http://www.nader.org/)  is a  consumer advocate, lawyer, and 
author. His most recent book is _The Seventeen  Traditions_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0061238279?tag=commondreams-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1&creativeAS
IN=0061238279&adid=18PYRMCY036DEP9ZZ0PX&) .




**************Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music.     
(http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp003000000025
48)
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