Hillary Clinton's Wal-Mart Connection Revisited

Although 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton claims to be pro-labor and against the economic exploitation of U.S. working-class women, when her husband was the Governor of Arkansas during the 1980s and early 1990s, the former First Lady sat on the board of a corporation, Wal-Mart, that is notorious for exploiting its non-unionized women workers. As Liza Featherstone recalled in her 2004 book Selling Women Short:

“Her law firm represented Wal-Mart frequently, and she was a shareholder as well as the wife of the governor of Arkansas, where Wal-Mart is headquartered…In November 1986…Hillary Clinton became Wal-Mart’s first female board member, a position…for which she accepted $15,000 a year…Her hourly rate was about 156 times that of a female Wal-Mart worker…Senator Clinton would not comment on her work with Wal-Mart…

“Wal-Mart cannot be blamed on George W. Bush. The Arkansas-based company prospered under the state’s native son Bill Clinton when he was governor and president. Sam Walton and his wife, Helen, were close friends with the Clintons, and for several years, Hillary Clinton, whose corporate law firm represented Wal-Mart, served on the company’s board of directors. Bill Clinton’s `welfare reform’ has provided Wal-Mart with a ready workforce of women who have no choice but to accept the company’s poverty wages and discriminatory policies…”

Next: Hillary Clinton’s Previous White House Experience: May 1993 to July 1993

Big Media Newsroom Racism Historically

The U.S. Establishment’s press still seemed to be integrating its newsrooms at an extremely slow pace as late as the 1990s. As Media Studies Journal Editor Ted Peace noted in an early 1990s essay, titled “Philosophical and Economic Arguments for Media Diversity,” which appeared in Pluralizing Journalism Education:

“At the end of 1990, 8.7 percent of newsroom professionals—reporters, copy editors, desk editors, photographers, graphic artists, and so on—were minorities. The country, however, is more than 24 percent non-white…

“…People of color still are largely excluded from both newsrooms and news content, or are included only as second-class citizens…A variety of scholarly studies of news media performance show that coverage of minorities by those large metropolitan newspapers tends to account for only about 3 percent of their total news coverage. Further, more than half of white journalists and more than 70 percent of minority journalists, responding to a national 1991 study, said that their own newspaper covered minority communities only marginally or poorly.

“From these examples, it is apparent that the news industry, whether intentionally or not, still excludes people from the media mainstream because of their race or cultural perspective. The news industry is not keeping up with demographic change in this country, either in terms of employing people of diverse backgrounds as information-gatherers, or in terms of providing content and coverage of people who are not white…”

(Downtown 11/10/93)

Next: Hillary Clinton’s Wal-Mart Connection Revisited

The Military-Industiral-Academic Complex Revisited: A Review of `The University In Chains' by Henry A. Giroux

The University In Chains by Henry A. Giroux
(Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm Publishers, 2007)

If you think the links between U.S. universities like Columbia and the U.S. war machine were cut forever after the 1968 Columbia Student Revolt, then you probably need to read Henry A. Giroux’s new book, The University In Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex.

In the tradition of Thorstein Veblen’s The Higher Learning In America, Upton Sinclair’s The Goose-Step, and James Ridgeway’s The Closed Corporation, Giroux provides his readers with an updated picture of how the 21st-century U.S. university system has become more closely tied to the U.S. military and the U.S. national security state apparatus and more openly subservient to external special corporate business interests in this post-9/11 “era of permanent war.” In addition, Giroux also describes how academic freedom on U.S. campuses is becoming increasingly endangered, now that well-financed external right-wing pressure groups are targeting U.S. campuses as a place where they feel U.S. right-wing ideological control needs to be established more deeply.

Giroux’s book on the 21st-century U.S. Military-Industrial-Academic Complex consists of an introduction and four chapters. The first chapter “focuses on the growth of militarized knowledge and research, the increasing development of academic programs and schools that serve military personnel and the growing influence of the CIA on college campuses.” The Pentagon, with a budget for research and development of $66 billion a year, funds, for instance, 55 percent of all federally-funded university-based computer sciences research and 60 percent of all federally-funded campus-based electrical engineering research.

Much of the Pentagon-funded university research is for the purpose of developing weapons like micro-wave guns, space-based lasers, electromagnetic guns, holograph designs, electric tanks and robot-type weapons. One of the largest recipients of Pentagon research money, MIT, for instance, is also developing remote sensing and imaging systems to help the Pentagon “nullify the enemy’s ability to hide inside complex mountain terrains and cityscapes,” according to Giroux. In addition, an increasing number of college degree programs are now being offered to U.S. military personnel in the form of on-line courses. At Central Texas College, for instance, “74 percent of its 63,000 students are members of the active-duty military.”

Giroux also provides his readers with some examples of the increasing presence of the CIA and other spy agencies on U.S. campuses since September 11, 2001. A CIA-sponsored program to train 150 analysts in anthropology on U.S. campuses, the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program, was established, for instance, after 9/11. U.S. universities also have been developing high-tech gadgets for the CIA and allowing more and more of their faculty members to work as CIA consultants or become recipients of CIA grants and CIA research contracts.

The second chapter of Giroux’s The University In Chains book provides readers with a 21st-century update of how U.S. corporations have increased their special influence over U.S. campus life since Lawrence Soley published his book, Leasing The Ivory Tower: The Corporate Takeover of Academia, on the same topic in 1995. Giroux observes that “as corporate culture and values shape university life, academic labor is increasingly transformed into the image of a multinational conglomerate workforce.” The University of Illinois, for instance, “plans to launch a whole new college, which would be completely online, operate as a for-profit entity, and consist almost entirely of part-time faculty, with no tenured faculty at all.”

Already in 2004, 44.5 percent of all faculty members on U.S. campuses were just employed as part-time employees by their universities; and less than 40 percent of all U.S. professors were employed in 2004 in a tenure-track academic position. Transnational corporations like BMW and IBM are also being given more direct control over the curriculum and hiring procedures at academic research and training centers which they fund at U.S. universities like Clemson, North Carolina State and UC-Berkeley.

If you’re an anti-war professor at a U.S. university these days who criticizes the U.S. social system from a liberal or left perspective, you’ll probably find chapter 3 of Giroux’s book to be worrisome. Titled, “The New Right-Wing Assault On Higher Education,” the chapter indicates the similarities between the post-9/11 attack on Middle Eastern Studies at universities like Columbia by off-campus right-wing pressure groups and the McCarthyism of the 1950s that threatened academic freedom at that time. The role that right-wing foundation-funded conservative intellectuals like David Horowitz have been playing in recent years to try to pressure U.S. university administrations to replace liberal and left-wing U.S. academics with more politically right-wing academics is also examined in this chapter.

Giroux’s final chapter proposes “a strategy to retake the university” from the U.S. war machine and special corporate interests that pretty much control the current political direction of U.S. higher education. Hopefully, more U.S. anti-war students and U.S. anti-war professors will read The University In Chains soon and then unite in a 21st-century anti-war movement of students, faculty and community activists which fights to end U.S. university complicity with the U.S. war machine in this current “era of permanent war,” before there’s yet another U.S. military escalation in the Middle East in 2008 or 2009.

Next: Big Media Newsroom Racism Historically

`Hiding In The Shade'

How many times will the people be fooled
Before they awake from their daze?
Yes, and how many times will they fall for the lies
And consent to be treated like slaves?
And how many times will they cheer for their kings
Who exploit their frustration and pain?
The answer, my friend, is hiding in the shade
The answer is hiding in the shade.

How many seas can their bald eagles fly
Before they’re all captured and drowned?
Yes, and how many towns can their singers exploit
Before people hear their false sounds?
And how many times will the people just cry
And march passively to their graves?
The answer, my friend, is hiding in the shade
The answer is hiding in the shade.

How many years will the prisons be locked
Before all the people revolt?
Yes, and how many years will the poor walk the streets,
Their lives lacking food and all hope?
And how many years will it take till they fight
The class which provides them with chains?
The answer, my friend, is hiding in the shade
The answer is hiding in the shade.
To listen to the "Hiding In The Shade" folk song, you can click on the following music site link:

http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman/Love+Songs+and+Others/Hiding+in+the+Shade

The Hiding In The Shade protest folk song was written in the late 1970s or early 1980s and can be sung to the tune of No More Auction Block/Blowin’ In The Wind. Unfortunately, in the 21st-century the questions still need to be asked, but the answer is still hiding in the shade.

Next: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex Revisited: A Review of The University In Chains by Henry A. Giroux

Hillary Clinton's Previous White House Experience: January 1993 to April 1993

When the Clintons first occupied the White House, 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spent her time in the following way between January 20, 1993 and April 30, 1993:

Following her husband’s Inaugural luncheon at the Capitol on January 20, 1993, Hillary Clinton and Bill went by motorcade along the parade route to the White House, where they viewed the Inaugural parade from the reviewing stand. In the evening, the Clintons then attended several Inaugural balls.

The following morning, on January 21, 1993, Hillary and her husband held an open house in the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room. Then, in the afternoon, Hillary and her husband hosted a reception in the White House State Dining Room for their family and friends from Arkansas.

A few days later, on January 25, 1993, Hillary’s husband announced that Hillary would work with three of Bill’s other advisers to drew up an effective health care reform plan. Then, on January 28, 1993, Hillary and her husband attended funeral services at the Washington National Cathedral for Justice Thurgood Marshall in the morning.

Two days later, on January 30, 1993, Hillary and her husband went to Camp David, Maryland for a retreat with her husband’s Cabinet and senior staff members of the Clintons’ White House. The following day, on January 31, 1993, Hillary and her husband returned to the White House from Camp David in the afternoon.

On February 12, 1993, Hillary and her husband then spent the morning touring the Fenwick Center health clinic in Arlington, Virginia.

Nearly two months later, on April 8, 1993, Hillary and her husband next travelled back to Little Rock, Arkansas in the morning. The following day, on April 9, 1993, Hillary and her husband then attended a memorial service for her father, a Republican named Hugh Rodham, at the First United Methodist Church in Little Rock.

The next morning, on April 10, 1993, Hillary and her husband then travelled from Little Rock to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where they attended funeral services for Hillary’s father. In the evening, Hillary and her husband again traveled to Camp David, Maryland for the weekend. Two days later, on April 12, 1993, Hillary and her husband returned to the White House in the morning from their weekend stay at Camp David, Maryland.

Later that month, on April 21, 1993, Hillary and her husband hosted a private reception at Blair House in the evening. A few days later, on April 24, 1993, Hillary and her husband next traveled to Jamestown, Virginia where they went sightseeing with several other Clinton family members. And on the afternoon of April 29, 1993, Hillary and her husband met with King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia of Spain.

The Clintons apparently enjoyed living at taxpayers’ expense in the White House for two terms during the 1990s so much that they’re now hoping to move back into the White House for another two terms in 2009—despite the 22nd amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting U.S. politicians from occupying the White House for more than two terms as U.S. President.

Next: Hiding In The Shade lyrics

Institutional Sexism In Hollywood Historically

Although the fantasy lives of many traditionally-minded U.S. women are still heavily-influenced by Hollywood-produced movies, U.S. women have generally not exercised much influence in Hollywood, historically. As the 1980 book Women And The Mass Media by Matilda Butler and William Paisley observed:

“Motion pictures are the most male-dominated of the media. June 1974 membership figures for the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences show that men are: 89 percent of the actors/actresses; 100 percent of the cinematographers; 99 percent of the directors; 98 percent of the executives; 99 percent of the producers; 92 percent of the writers; 89 percent of the editors; 90 percent of the art directors; and 94 percent of all members…

“Women are far less than 1 percent of the members of the Producers’ Guild (8 out of 3068). They are 1 percent of the members of the Directors’ Guild (23 out of 2366) and 5 percent of the members of the Writers’ Guild (148 out of 2976).”

(Downtown 3/31/93)

Next: Hillary Clinton’s Previous White House Experience: January 1993 to April 1993

Columbia University's "Dinkinsgate Scandal" Connection--Part 13

After New York City voters decided in the 1993 mayoralty election that David Dinkins did not deserve a second term as New York City’s mayor, the Columbia University administration hired the local Democratic Party politician to be a professor “in the practice of public affairs” at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. And during the last few years Columbia University Professor Dinkins (http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/academics/directory/dd98-fac.html ) has apparently attempted to use his remaining special political influence in New York City politics to help his private employer undemocratically implement its land-grabbing campus expansion plan north of West 125th Street in West Harlem, despite the objections of local community tenant activists. Not surprisingly, when Columbia University Professor Dinkins tried to sell Columbia University’s expansion plan to the 700 community residents who attended the local community board’s hearings in August 2007, the former New York City mayor was booed, hissed and shouted down by West Harlem residents and their Columbia and Barnard student supporters.

Following, is the final section of an article on “The Dinkinsgate Scandal” which first appeared in the August/September 1991 issue of the Lower East Side newspaper, Shadow:

On December 7, 1988, the New York Times reported that “Donald Trump is prepared to spend $2 million of his own money on anti-Koch television commercials in next year’s mayoral race” because he “says Koch has systematically mismanaged New York City and allowed it to become a `cesspool of corruption and incompetence.’” ( In 1985, Trump had previously backed Columbia University Professor Dinkins in his successful campaign for Manhattan Borough President).

The following day, December 8, 1988, the New York Times reported that “Borough President David Dinkins comes close to announcing his candidacy for New York City Mayor” but “despite desire to run and favorable poll, Dinkins says he will wait 2 months to determine how much support and money he can get.”

After Dinkins decided to run for Mayor in 1989, he was rewarded for the way, as Manhattan Borough President, he apparently protected the special, private, corporate interests of the Dinkins and Sutton family’s Inner City Broadcasting Corporation/Queens Inner Unity Cable System and their Time-Warner business associates.

On October 21, 1989, the New York Times reported on its back pages that “Percy Sutton, Dinkins’ political mentor, Sutton’s relatives and businesses with which he is connected have contributed over $70,000 to Dinkins’ New York City mayoral campaign.” As of October 2, 1989, Percy Sutton and his family had donated $23,150 to fund the Dinkins for Mayor Campaign and Sutton’s Percy Sutton International firm had donated $8,500 more to fund Dinkins’ 1989 campaign. Another $8,470 was donated to Dinkins by other officials of his family’s Inner City Broadcasting Corporation. Another business associate of Sutton, Eugene D. Jackson of the National Black Network, donated $5,500 to the Dinkins campaign.

The Times also noted that “officers of Time Warner Inc., part of the Queens Cable consortium, and a law firm representing it account for more than $25,000 in Dinkins contributions.” Six thousand dollars of this Time-Warner money for Columbia University Professor Dinkins’ 1989 campaign was contributed by the now-deceased former Time-Warner Co-Chairman Steve Ross and his wife. The Permanent Government: Who Really Rules New York? book had noted in 1981 that:

“Steve Ross is the president of Warner Communications. He contributed $48,000 to [then New York governor] Hugh Carey in 1978 and flies Carey around in his corporate jet. Ross wants cable television franchises and is interested in casino gambling.”

Brooklyn Queens Cable Television President Richard Aurelio and his wife, Suzanne, donated $6,250 of the Time-Warner subsidy for the Dinkins campaign. Aurelio was New York City’s Deputy Mayor in the early 1970s. He later apparently traded his political influence for a lucrative Warner Communications lobbying job in the late 1970s.

Another $14,750 of the Time-Warner campaign funding for the Dinkins for Mayor 1989 campaign was contributed by another Time Warner lobbyist, Sid Davidoff, and Davidoff’s law partners. In 1968, Davidoff was the assistant of the now-deceased former New York City Mayor John Lindsay who helped supervise the New York City police invasion of Columbia University’s campus on April 30, 1968 and May 21-22, 1968. In the early 1970s, Davidoff also approved and monitored the bank that got interest-free deposits of New York City public funds from the Lindsay Administration. In 1972, one of the banks, Century National Bank, gave Davidoff a $9,000 unsecured loan so that he could get into the restaurant business. According to The Permanent Government: Who Really Rules New York?, Davidoff’s “restaurant eventually went bankrupt and Davidoff was indicted for nonpayment of taxes to the state.”

Predictably, when the white New York City corporate and real estate establishment apparently told Dinkins to utilize his political power as New York City Mayor to use police violence to clear out the Lower East Side’s Tompkins Square Park and occupy Tompkins Square in 1991, Columbia University Professor Dinkins obediently issued the anti-democratic order to his police force.

Next: Institutional Sexism In Hollywood Historically