Where Was The `Change' During The Clintons' First Two Terms?--Part 10

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 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:

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

The failure of the Clintons’ Administration, after 448 days, to adequately respond to the special economic needs of U.S. youth may eventually provoke a U.S. Youth Revolt in the 1990s. Instead of worrying so much about what the North Koreans, the Bosnian Serbs or Irish solidarity activists are up to, perhaps Bill “Whitewater” Clinton should begin to allow U.S. youth to sit on the same U.S. government panels and corporate boards upon which [2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate] Hillary Rodham-Clinton sat—in order to radically democratize the economic, political and Big Media decision-making process in the U.S. in the 1990s?

And instead of worrying about what happens to his Trilateral Commission friends in Mexico, perhaps Bill “NAFTA” Clinton should do something about providing economic equality for African-American people in the United States in 1994 and redistribute some of Hillary Rodham-Clinton’s personal wealth to women welfare recipients in Washington, D.C.—since, as Bill Clinton stated in his March 24, 1994 press conference, “Every year I was governor my wife worked in a law firm that had always done business with the state” and “Now all I can do is tell you that she believes there was nothing unethical about it.”

(Downtown 4/13/94)

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

The “Bill Clinton of Japan”—former Kumamoto Prefecture Governor Morihiro Hosokawa—recently resigned as the Japanese Establishment’s prime minister, after “he conceded…that he did not pay the interest” on a $1 million loan he took in 1982 from “a trucking company, Tokyo Sagawa Kyubin, that spent much of the 1980s buying influence from the country’s leading politicians…” (NY Times 4/9/94). Like Japan’s recently-resigned [in 1994] prime minister, former Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton and his corporate lawyer-lobbyist wife also apparently accepted money and special favors in the 1980s from special corporate interests which sought to secure special influence with leading politicians. And 462 days after the Clintons’ inauguration, the pro-CIA “Agents of Change” have failed to change much of anything in a positive way during their uncreative and unexciting administration.

Bill Clinton has, however, recently [in 1994] escalated U.S. military intervention in Bosnia’s civil war, a few days after his wife went to a baseball game in Chicago and threw out the first ball on opening day. Perhaps the CIA is preparing for yet another war? And perhaps Ms. Rodham-Clinton is preparing her pitching arm for the day when she succeeds her husband as U.S. Establishment president and is sworn in as the first woman president of the United States?

(Downtown 4/27/94)

Next: Where Was The “Change” During The Clintons’ First Two Terms?—Part 11

Where Was The `Change' During The Clintons' First Two Terms?--Part 9

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:

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

There’s still no economic prosperity in the Big Apple, 420 days after the Clintons’ inauguration. Nor is there any health care insurance program yet established for people who lack health insurance. And an adequately-financed federal crash research program to find a cure for AIDS is also still not in existence.

But the threat of World War III breaking out in the Balkans or the Middle East appears to be greater these days. As the German poet Bertolt Brecht once wrote:

“When the leaders speak of peace
The common folk know
That war is coming.

“When the leaders curse war
The mobilization order is already written out.”

Ironically, World War I also was triggered when “The Austrian statesmen in 1914 decided that the time had come when it would be necessary to control the Serbian menace, and they consciously planned an ultimatum to Serbia of such severity that it would be practically impossible for Serbia to concede all of their demands” (Genesis of the World War by Harry Barnes), although “Serbia felt a natural and justifiable impulse to do what so many other countries had done in the 19th Century—bring under one nation’s Government all the discontented Serb people” (Origins Of The World War by Sidney Fay).

Yet the Clintons’ Administration still apparently regards Europe as a chessboard on which to play a 19th-Century game of power politics, in apparent support of the special interests of German, French and British imperialism, the transnational oil corporations and the CIA’s military-industrial-media complex. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

(Downtown 3/16/94)

434 Days After The Clinton’s Inauguration: Where’s The Change?

Like Richard Nixon, Bill “Whitewater” Clinton should be able to land a multi-million dollar contract from one of the book-publishing media conglomerates to write his memoirs, if he decides to resign his post soon. He also stands to make big bucks and have more time to play golf and jog if he decides to get a job as a lawyer-lobbyist for some Washington, D.C. corporate law firm or some Japanese transnational corporation. On March 11, 1994, the Times noted that “the financial markets were worried that the investigation of the president and first lady’s various Arkansas business and political dealings, known collectively as the Whitewater affair, would turn more serious" and “overseas metals markets were shaken briefly in the morning by rumors that Mr. Clinton would resign over the affair.”

Perhaps the CIA and its mass media have decided—434 days after the Clintons’ inauguration—that they won’t be able to market the Clintons again as “agents of change” during the 1996 U.S. presidential election [or in the 2008 U.S. presidential election]?

(Downtown 3/30/94)

Next: Where Was The “Change” During The Clintons’ First Two Terms?—Part 10

Where Was The `Change' During The Clintons' First Two Terms?--Part 8

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:

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

Bill “Whitewater” Clinton has been spending a lot of U.S. tax money flying around Europe and even making a 1996 re-election campaign appearance on Russian television. Yet such foreign travel activity hasn’t produced much “change” within the United States. Federal Medicaid cards have still not been issued to U.S. citizens who still lack health insurance. Apartments have still not been provided for people in the U.S. who are presently forced to live on the freezing Winter streets. The official African-American unemployment rate in the U.S. still exceeds 11.5 percent. And despite all the handshaking in Russia and the Ukraine, the Clintons’ Administration has still not told people in the U.S. when it intends to declare the United States a nuclear weapons-free zone of the Earth.

As you probably realize by now, 378 days after the Clintons’ inauguration, the U.S. Establishment is still unwilling to let people in the United States genuinely participate in the federal government and the Big Media’s day-to-day decision-making process, on the issues which affect their lives. Hence, U.S. society continues to drift into a deeper and deeper political, economic, environmental, moral and spiritual crisis.

(Downtown 2/2/94)

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

As a Japanese businessman named Kenichi Ohmae recently [in early 1994] noted in the Wall Street Journal (1/13/94), “today the average family income in the U.S. is roughly $40,000, a number that hasn’t increased in real terms for a dozen years,” while “in Japan the comparable figure is $72,000.” Because of lower U.S. wage rates, Japanese transnational firms reduce their labor costs by about 30 percent when they invest in the U.S. The United States is rapidly becoming a country of low-wage “permanent temp” workers, 392 days after the Clintons’ inauguration.

If “Uncle Bill” wants to finally give us some of that “change” the Clintons promised, maybe he should start fighting against the special transnational corporate interests and the tax-avoidance activity of the U.S. super-rich, instead of demagogically launching yet another right-wing war on crime, welfare recipients and the civil liberties of U.S. prisoners—as part of his 1996 neo-conservative re-election campaign. But, according to the Times (1/26/94), in last month’s “State of the Establishment” (my quotes) speech “Mr. Clinton offered no new legislative proposals or policy initiatives.” Happy Presidents’ Day!

(Downtown 2/16/94)

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

Like former CIA Director Bush I, Bill “LBJ” Clinton appears willing to drag the United States into yet another costly foreign military adventure by practicing the politics of military threats, instead of practicing the politics of peace and love. And like Bush I, Bill Clinton really has no idea how to reduce unemployment and restore [permanent] economic prosperity to the Big Apple.

By threatening the Serbs of Bosnia with Pentagon bombs and demagogically scapegoating welfare recipients for the failure of the Clintons’ administration to restore full employment in the U.S., Bill Clinton is beginning to sound more and more like “the Ronald Reagan of the Baby-Boom Generation” everyday. People in the U.S. have been patiently waiting 406 days for the Clintons’ Administration to give them some kind of 1990s New Deal. Yet the neoconservative, white Southern Democrats still have no domestic agenda for the radical democratization of U.S. society in the 1990s.

Bill “LBJ” Clinton still seems more interested in what happens in Bosnia these days than in providing apartments for New York City’s homeless people or responding to the demands of People With AIDS. And he also appears more eager to tax food stamp recipients than he is to increase the taxation rate of billionaires like Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch, Si Newhouse, Laurence Tisch [now-deceased] and [then-] Village Voice Owner Leonard Stern. Happy International Women’s Day!

(Downtown 3/2/94)

Next: Where Was The “Change” During The Clintons’ First Two Terms?—Part 9

Where Was The `Change' During The Clintons' First Two Terms?--Part 7

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 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:

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

As we approach the first anniversary of Clinton’s inauguration, over 300,000 New Yorkers are still “without a job and without the prospect of finding steady employment soon,” as the back pages of the New York Times (12/16/93) recently noted [in late 1993]. Yet as Reclaiming Our Future: An Agenda for American Labor by [the now-deceased] William Winpisinger observed:

“Any government policy or company policy that is based on unemployment is a killer policy that induces crime…If you want to stop crime in the streets, you have to stop crime in the suites first. That means scrapping all the economic claptrap of the past decade and committing this nation, once and for all time, to guaranteed full employment.”

But [then-] New York City Mayor [and now 2008 GOP presidential candidate] Giuliani apparently intends to throw more city government workers onto the unemployment lines this year [in 1994] because “we have no choice anymore but to reduce the percentage of people who work for the city of New York” (NY Times 12/16/93)—despite the New York State government’s expected budget surplus [in 1993].

Bill Clinton, however, still seems more interested in traveling to Russia to try to prop up the shaky government of his favorite Russian leader: “Czar Boris” Yeltsin. Ironically, the new Russian Parliament that was elected after Yeltsin decided he didn’t feel like debating with members of the old Russian Parliament anymore about the wisdom of his economic policies may turn out to be even more anti-Yeltsin than the old Russian Parliament. Supporters of the Clinton-Yeltsin policies in Russia only received about 14 percent of the votes of those Russians who bothered to go to the polls [in 1993].

The Clintons’ foreign policy of trying to push “free market” corporate capitalism and U.S., German and Japanese imperialist economic domination on a nation that isn’t used to being dominated by foreign special interests is not proving to be too popular with people in Russia these days [in early 1994]. Similarly, Bill “NAFTA” Clinton’s domestic policy of trying to impose, under a Democratic Party label, a recycled version of Reagan-Bush I domestic policies on us—with the aid of a non-adversarial Big Media public opinion manipulation machine—is also not proving to be too popular with people in the U.S. [in early 1994]—350 days after the Clintons’ inauguration.

(Downtown 1/5/94)

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

Three years after former CIA Director Bush I launched his “Kuwaitigate War” and one year after Bill “Whitewater” Clinton’s inauguration, a generous peace settlement between the Iraqi government and the U.S. government has still not been negotiated by the Clintons’ Administration. Nor has the Clintons’ Administration revealed its own timetable for either Pentagon or Israeli nuclear disarmament.

Despite all the 1992 campaign promises about such things as tax cuts, national health insurance, environmental protection, the AIDS crisis, equal rights, campaign finance reform, economic recovery and “change,” the CIA’s military-industrial-media complex still seems to be calling the shots in Washington, D.C. And—364 days after the Clintons’ inauguration—it’s still extremely hard to detect any real change for the better in the United States.

Bill Clinton has, however, done a lot of jogging and golfing during the past year. And he recently [in early 1994] demonstrated his commitment to gun control and wildlife preservation by shooting a defenseless duck for sport during a hunting vacation.

(Downtown 1/18/94)

Next: Where Was The “Change” During The Clintons’ First Two Terms?—Part 8

Where Was The `Change' During The Clintons' First Two Terms?--Part 6

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 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:

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

Bill “NAFTA” Clinton was very eager to wheel-and-deal in order to push through Congress the Trilateral Commission-conceived NAFTA pact last month [November 1993]. But 322 days after the Clintons’ inauguration, they’re still not too popular with either U.S. labor or members of their own generation. Nor have the Clintons yet freed Leonard Peltier.

As a practitioner of the “politics of generational treason,” Bill Clinton has always been more interested in pleasing elderly members of the U.S. Establishment than in either prosecuting people responsible for JFK’s death, abolishing the CIA or providing apartments by Christmas [1993] for homeless people in the United States. The “change” the Clintons seem to want to impose on us is a new kind of economy in which U.S. labor will be “re-trained” for dull, low-wage service jobs and “micro-managed” by classist yuppie democratic wheeler-dealers like “Slick Willie” [and his wife, Hillary].

Ironically, both President Bill Clinton and [then] Secretary of Labor Reich are actually the ones who need to be retrained by U.S. organized labor, in order to rid them of their classist, Oxford-Yale-developed, corporate mentalities.

(Downtown 12/8/93)

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

Under the Southern Democratic Administration of Bill “NAFTA” Clinton [and his wife, Hillary], the number of jobless African-American workers continues to rise. Between September 1993 and November 1993, for instance, the official unemployment rate for African-American workers in the U.S. jumped from 12 percent to 12.5 percent as a result of the Clinton Administration’s economic policies. In Michigan, the official unemployment rate increased from 6.7 percent in October 1993 to 7 percent in November 1993. And in Los Angeles—scene of the 1992 urban rebellion—the official jobless rate of 9.4 percent is the same as it was when Bill Clinton was elected in November 1992.

Despite his past ties to Nixon and the Republican Party’s right-wing, the apparently corrupt way he accumulated his billion-dollar fortune and the reactionary role he played in violating the democratic rights and civil liberties of marijuana-users and drug dealers in Texas, the [then-] maverick Billionaire Perot is beginning to look more like “The FDR of the 1990s” in some ways, ironically, 336 days after the Clintons’ inauguration.

With a straight face, Bill Clinton recently [in late 1993] went through the required ritual of assuring the CIA that he wasn’t going to use his presidential power to question the apparent agreed-upon JFK assassination cover-story that “Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin.” Yet even CBS News had to concede [in late 1993] that 90 percent of the people in the U.S. now believe that President Kennedy was eliminated by a conspiracy—despite all the official denials.

As we celebrate yet another Christmas without world peace and enter 1994 without freedom for the majority of humanity, the demand for radical democratic change within U.S. society in the 1990s has still not been met by the U.S. Establishment and the Trilateral Commission’s Rodham-Clinton Administration. And more and more people are likely to get hip to that fact in 1994. Happy holiday!

(Downtown 12/22/93)

Next: Where Was The “Change” During The Clintons’ First Two Terms?—Part 7

Where Was The `Change' During The Clintons' First Two Terms?--Part 5

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 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:

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

As we approach the first anniversary of Bill Clinton’s election, the Yuppie Democratic administration still has neither changed the military interventionist nature of U.S. foreign policy, abolished the CIA, diminished the special influence of transnational oil companies, the Big Five insurance companies and the global media conglomerates or reduced unemployment too much. In September 1993, for instance, California’s official jobless rate jumped to 9.4 percent, New York State’s official unemployment rate still exceeded 7 percent, New Jersey’s official unemployment rate jumped to 7.7 percent and over 12 percent of African-American workers were still officially unemployed in the United States.

Despite all the favorable media hype following Bill Clinton’s speech on health care reform, Public Citizen health expert Dr. Sidney Wolfe calls the Clintons’ health care reform plan “a cruel fraud,” and Physicians for a National Health Plan leader Quentin Young calls it “a formula for total disaster.” (In These Times, 10/4/93). The Clintons’ Administration seems out of touch with the freedom-now aspirations of people in the United States 280 days after the Clintons’ first inauguration.

(Downtown 10/27/93)

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

One year after his election and 294 days after the Clintons’ inauguration, “Slick Willie” Clinton—like former CIA Director Bush I—still doesn’t seem to really have any domestic agenda for democratizing U.S. society, restoring [permanent] economic prosperity and insuring full employment for all U.S. citizens, or ending institutional sexism and institutional racism in the United States.

Like Bush I, the Clintons still seem more concerned about what happens to [then-] Russian Dictator Boris Yeltsin than what happens to the brothers and sisters who are forced to live out on the streets of the United States. Instead of emulating Japan’s more practical “Fortress Japan” foreign policy of the 1990s, the Clintons’ Administration seems too eager to keep playing an impractical, costly “cop of the world” role in a different foreign country each month—despite having its own U.S. domestic economic, political, environmental, cultural, health and moral crisis to confront. No wonder former Nixon Foundation Director Perot still looks like he’ll be able to defeat Clinton in the Big Media’s 1996 election [unless the Big Media is again able to rig the U.S. presidential election process in favor of the Clintons].

(Downtown 11/10/93)

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

As the November 1993 election results seem to indicate, 308 days after the Clintons’ inauguration people who vote don’t appear that eager to vote for candidates that Bill “Carter” Clinton or Hillary “Sister Frigidaire” Rodham-Clinton endorse. With the official unemployment rate in October 1993 still 9.8 percent in California, 10.8 percent in New York City and 7.1 percent in Florida under the Clintons, U.S. voters have good reasons to be dissatisfied with those Democratic Party incumbents who are still pals of the Clintons.

(Downtown 11/24/93)

Next: Where Was The “Change” During The Clintons’ First Two Terms?—Part 6

Where Was The "Change" During The Clintons' First Two Terms?--Part 4

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 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:

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

Former Nixon Foundation Trustee Ross Perot is apparently considering an attempt to win the Republic Party presidential nomination in 1996 by running in the Republican Party primaries...

Bill Clinton may have a lot of difficulty winning any Democratic Party primary in 1996 [in the absence of being able to obtain Big Media-backing in 1996] if his administration’s next 238 days produce as little genuinely democratic change in the United States as the Clintons’ Administration’s first 238 days. In the absence of huge cuts in Pentagon weapons spending, a huge tax increase for transnational corporations and the super-rich, and a massive federal public works program to employ the jobless, provide homes for the homeless, combat environmental pollution and create more customers for middle-class shopkeepers, it’s not likely that the Clintons’ Administration will restore [permanent] economic prosperity for the Multiple Love Generation under a declining U.S. capitalism.

(Downtown 9/15/93)

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

As we approach the 30th Anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination, Bill Clinton has still not shown much eagerness to let the people of the United States know who was really responsible for the elimination of JFK. Nor has the Democratic Party Establishment in Washington, D.C. shown much ability to restore economic prosperity for working-class and middle-class people in New York City during the first 252 days of the Clintons’ Administration.

Whether [now-Columbia University Professor David] Dinkins or [now-2008 Republican Party Presidential candidate Rudy] Giuliani gets elected Mayor in November [of 1993], people in New York City still aren’t too likely to see U.S. society change positively during the next 252 days. In the eyes of the Democratic and Republican Party politicians, we’re still just objects to be manipulated every four years by their highly-paid media consultants.

(Downtown 9/29/93)

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

Despite Bill “Pinocchio” Clinton’s recent flurry of long-winded speeches, 1996 re-election campaign appearances and White House lawn parties for Big Media talk-show hosts and yuppie journalists, the reality is that 266 days after the Clintons’ inauguration their Yuppie Democratic administration has still not radically changed U.S. society. [Permanent] Economic prosperity has still not been restored to Manhattan. Taxes have still not been cut for middle-class and working-class people. Open lesbians and gay men are still not allowed to receive paychecks from the U.S. military. No federal gay rights bill has yet been passed. Federal funding of abortions is still prohibited. U.S. troops are still in Somalia. No free health insurance has yet been provided by the Clintons’ Administration for the 37 million people [in 1993] who still lack health insurance. No federal crash program to provide either apartments for the homeless or a cure for AIDS has yet been established. The CIA has still not been abolished. No special prosecutor to investigate the CIA’s apparent role in the assassination of President Kennedy has yet been appointed by the Clintons. And U.S. alternative journalists are still not allowed to get on the Big Media’s public airwaves to question the Clintons in an adversarial way about either their “evidence” for the alleged Iraqi “plot” to assassinate former CIA Director Bush I, the Waco, Texas and Baghdad missile attacks, or Hillary Rodham-Clinton’s past legal work for U.S. insurance companies.

But insurance salespeople have never been too famous for their honesty—especially after their customers return from the hospital, receive unexpected medical bills in the mail, and finally start to read the fine print of the policies they were manipulated into purchasing.

(Downtown 10/13/93)

Next: Where Was The “Change” During The Clintons’ First Two Terms?—Part 5