Monday, January 28, 2008

Where Was The `Change' During The Clintons' First Two Terms?--Part 16

In their current campaign to secure a third term in the White House, in violation of the spirit of the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which limits U.S. Establishment politicians who become the U.S. president to two terms in office), the Clintons are claiming that a third Clinton Administration in Washington, D.C. will bring democratic political “change” to U.S. society. Yet as the following historical column items from Downtown indicate, when Bill Clinton was the U.S. President during the 1990s the Clintons failed to bring democratic political change to U.S. society:

253 Days After The November 1994 Election: Where’s The Change?

Remember Bill Clinton? He’s the student government politico who’s been campaigning for the U.S. presidency since he was in high school. Yet he hasn’t brought much democratic change or much economic equality to the United States since the Clintons began squatting in the White House on Jan. 20, 1993. Nor has “Waco” Clinton yet signed a generous peace treaty with Saddam Hussein or brought much peace to Bosnia, although his media consultants sometimes marketed him as a former anti-war activist during the 1992 presidential campaign.

With regard to U.S. political prisoners, the Clintons still appear as eager as Newt Gingrich to keep Leonard Peltier locked up and to allow Pennsylvania governor Ridge to have Mumia Abu-Jamal executed next month.

(Downtown July 19, 1995)

974 Days After The Clintons’ Inauguration: Where’s The Change?

For nearly 1,000 days, the Clintons have been squatting in the White House. Yet despite the First Family’s rhetoric about human rights violations everywhere else, U.S. political prisoners like Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal are still kept locked-up within the United States. U.S. anti-war folks who believe the Clinton Administration lacks the legal authority to launch a U.S. Air Force bombing campaign in Europe, without a Declaration of War or a Congressional debate, are still denied equal access to Manhattan’s TV studios. And [permanent] economic prosperity has still not been restored to New York City or Jersey, despite the Clintons’ 1992 campaign promises.

The threat to the Earth and world peace posed by the French government’s nuclear weapons testing program near its Tahiti colony is apparently regarded as less important by the Clintons’ Administration than its attempt to reverse the results of Bosnia’s Civil War. And the 40 million people in the U.S. who lack health insurance 974 days after the Clintons’ inauguration, still better not get sick; because the Clintons’ Administration is still unwilling to immediately issue Federal Medicaid cards to all U.S. citizens who lack health insurance. Nor has Bill Clinton yet bothered to deliver a nationally-televised evening speech explaining what the Clintons’ administration has accomplished in finding a cure for AIDS.

So don’t expect the Clintons’ Administration to now declare a national day of mourning in the U.S. [in September 1995] for William Kunstler. All Big Media Power To The People! Free Leonard Peltier Now!

(Downtown 9/20/95)

Next: Where Was The “Change” During The Clintons’ First Two Terms?—Part 17