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