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