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July 9, 2007
Babble on, Hillary
By Farrell Winter
Comments on the character and candidacy of Hillary Clinton
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The Political Lowe-Down With Derek Lowe
July 4, 2007: Babble on, Hillary
Note: This article generally refers to Hillary Clinton by first rather than last name, not to promote sexism but to distinguish her from Bill Clinton, also referred to here by first name.
"I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him."
Yes, I come to expose Hillary Clinton as yet another loyal-to-the-System right-wing politician, willing to tell any lie to be anointed chief spokesrobot of the ultra-wealthy, the "leader of the free world." In all fairness, Hillary is consistent in at least one area, in that she supports the rights of women and gays. An alternate interpretation is that she temporarily exploits these groups with rote words and actions so they in turn will support her quest to become president.
Although my preference is former Senator Mike Gravel (Alaska), I'm glad both Hillary and Senator Barack Obama (Illinois) are in this race. Neither has a chance of winning the election, though, as discussed at the end of this article. Furthermore, the Democratic Party convention is unlikely to nominate Gravel. On the surface, an African-American and a woman as serious contenders in a presidential election bespeaks progress. Their mere presence bestows legitimacy on the notion of equality, especially gender and ethnic equality. Perhaps from now on we'll see a flood of female candidates and candidates of color running for – and winning – office all over the U.S. That will go a long way to bring this country into the 21st century.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (New York) was born in 1947 in Chicago, and obtained a Juris Doctor degree from Yale in 1973. She has said repeatedly that she supports the "excesses" (my word) of the Bill Clinton presidency, including the scandals, NAFTA, and the dismemberment of Yugoslavia.
The presidents of the "robber baron" era of the latter part of the 19th century were said to be ultra-corrupt. In the early 20th century, Warren Harding and Herbert Hoover especially enjoyed similar reputations. To this day, the Harding Administration Teapot Dome scandal is synonymous with government corruption. With all this as a backdrop, several sources regard Bill Clinton as the most corrupt president in history. He and Hillary were involved in quite a few scandals during his reign. Two of the scandals they share are Whitewater and the Vincent Foster death.
The Clintons were partners in several business ventures with Webster Hubbell (who became President Bill's Assistant Attorney General) and James and Susan MacDougal. Two of these ventures were the intertwined Whitewater Development Corporation and Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan. Courts later convicted the MacDougals and Hubbell of fraud and conspiracy in the Whitewater scandal. The Clintons were not indicted, though Hubbell's indictment referenced Hillary as his "1985-1986 billing partner" in the Rose Law Firm. Hillary was the Rose attorney in charge of Madison's legal matters.
When told that a questionable Madison loan violated Federal and Arkansas State regulations, Hillary said (according to testimony), "You [Madison bank officer] take care of the savings and loan matters and I'll take care of the legal matters." The U.S. Senate counsel investigating Whitewater stated at the time that "Mrs. Clinton...order[ed] the [Madison] records to be destroyed" while "there was a Federal investigation [into Madison's loan activities] underway...." At the very least, Hillary and Bill seem to have gotten away with breaking the law in the Whitewater scandal, while business partners less well-connected went to prison. The Clintons saved themselves by selling out their friends.
Vincent Foster was another old friend of the Clintons (like Hubbell he worked at the Rose Law Firm with Hillary) who became Deputy White House Counsel. Foster left his White House office on July 20, 1993; that evening his body was discovered in Virginia, ostensibly a suicide.
Foster wanted to resign his White House position, according to theory, because as Deputy Counsel to the President he had to sign Bill's financial disclosure statement. This document was false, Foster knew, because it didn't include Whitewater assets. His resignation would reveal the truth about Whitewater. An additional theory is that the statement also did not include Governor Bill's drug-smuggling remuneration: he allowed the CIA to fly cocaine into the airport at Mena, Arkansas, and/or rewrote state law to allow the CIA to launder cocaine money through Arkansas banks. So, old friend or no, the Clintons had Foster killed and his body dumped in Virginia.
It is fact rather than theory that members of Hillary's staff removed files from Foster's office within hours of his supposed suicide and after the office was sealed. A member of Bill's staff opened the safe in Foster's office and removed an envelope addressed to then-Attorney General Janet Reno. The envelope subsequently disappeared, never to be seen again. Webster Hubbell commented about the Foster death, "Don't believe a word you hear. It was not suicide. It couldn't have been."
As with the Kennedy assassinations thirty years earlier, there are too many discrepancies in the official version of this incident for it to be credible. The "suicide note" didn't have Foster's fingerprints on it. Officially, he shot himself in the mouth with a 38-caliber handgun. Inconveniently, he had a 22-caliber bullet wound in his neck. No blood on the gun or his clothing, and no fingerprints on the gun. The 38-caliber gun used was not Foster's, and was in his right hand; he was left-handed. The FBI intimidated and harassed witnesses at the scene, and altered their testimony. The original X-rays taken during the autopsy disappeared.
There is no smoking gun tying the Clintons to Foster's murder. Hillary didn't personally rewrite his resignation letter into a suicide note. However, this was not just any fake suicide. Someone in the very highest echelons of government ordered this killing. Foster knew the intimate details of the Rose Law Firm, Madison Guaranty, Whitewater, and perhaps other shady enterprises. Both Clintons were involved in these affairs. A living Vincent Foster might bring down Bill's presidency, or at least ruin Hillary's chances to, say, run for president herself some day. No, it was too dangerous for Foster to remain alive. With Foster dead, there would be no one left who knew the secrets. No one except Hillary and Bill.
Hillary's opportunism demonstrated below is more proof that she is not to be trusted. This incident isn't so much a scandal as an embarrassment, and it's Hillary's alone. In 2004, she was campaigning for a U.S. Senate candidate in Missouri. Eager to laud her newfound pacifism, she opened her remarks with a reference to Mahatma Gandhi, then said, "You know who Gandhi was, don't you? He ran a gas station down in St. Louis." I picture her doing this as Groucho Marx. It was a nod to the stereotype of South Asians (especially Indians) operating most of the gas stations in this country, and suggests racism. I agree with the Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence administrator who commented about this incident, "...I find it offensive when people use stereotypes in that way." Again, in fairness to Hillary, Senator Joe Biden (Delaware) made a similar comment last year, about the same ethnic group.
An event that took place in May of this year again suggests Hillary's prejudice. She was campaigning in New Orleans, where a member of the host committee was longtime Clinton family friend and retired Air Force general Harry Lee, Sheriff of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. As sheriff, Lee prevented black Katrina victims escaping New Orleans from crossing the Crescent City Connection, the bridge to neighboring (and whiter) Jefferson Parish. Lee defended his actions by saying, "We had to protect ourselves," making him even more unpopular with the African-American community than he already had been.
As sheriff, Lee has vowed to "target blacks" because they "commit the crimes." When the NAACP complained about his plan to send armored vehicles into the black community, he responded, "Shut up and let me do my job." This is the caliber of people raising money for Hillary. More to the point, the long term Clinton-Lee friendship, one between a demonstrably corrupt political family and an all-but-admitted racist, indicates a not-so-secret bigotry. If Lee's reputation rubs off on Hillary, that tepid and tenuous ethnic support may desert her for other, more careful candidates.
One last incident, this suggesting that Hillary may have paid for at least some of her African-American support. State Senator Darrell Jackson of South Carolina is considered "one of the most prominent and politically influential black men in the state" government. He originally endorsed former Senator John Edwards (North Carolina). Suddenly he switched and declared his support for Hillary. This occurred at the same time that his political consulting company received a $10,000 contract from Hillary's campaign. That's $10,000 per month. Curioser and curioser, the money may have been laundered through a biotechnology subsidiary of Merck, the world's fourth-largest pharmaceutical company (this and other rankings as of 2003).
O what a tangled web Hillary and friends weave. Let's stop a minute and examine this. Hillary may be in bed with pharmaceutical giant Merck. Roche Holding AG, the world's ninth-largest pharmaceutical company, is another big contributor to her campaign. Roche owns over half of biotechnology firm Genentech, the world's twentieth-largest pharmaceutical company. Roche itself is one-third owned by Novartis, the world's third-largest pharmaceutical company. Hillary's health plan is to establish insurance companies as the ultimate arbiters of health care. What is her definition of this health care, do you suppose, organic food and yoga or pills from Big Pharma? This is not the first time, and undoubtedly won't be the last, that Hillary practiced to deceive.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect during Bill's presidency. It was essentially the creation of Mickey Kantor and Thomas McLarty. Kantor is a Monsanto Company board member who was U.S. Trade Representative at the time (1994). Two years later, he was promoted to U.S. Secretary of Commerce. McLarty, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations who was President Bill's Chief of Staff, founded a business-consulting firm with Henry Kissinger. McLarty also ties the Clintons to George W. Bush, with whom Hillary claims to differ. McLarty is currently on the board of directors of the Carlyle Group. He is also a Carlyle senior advisor, focused on "buyout investment opportunities in Mexico." The Carlyle Group is of course the alleged money conduit between the Bush and Bin Laden families.
NAFTA has been an economic horror for the people of Mexico and the people of this country as well. Indeed, it has been "disastrous for working people in both Mexico and the U.S.," as noted by a California-based writer and journalist. A research assistant at the Institute for Policy Studies has commented that "multinational corporations [get] unfettered access to economies all over the world" through NAFTA and similar agencies. Corporations have prospered as they slashed wages and eliminated benefits, safety concerns, and job security throughout North America. Neither Hillary nor any other presidential candidate favoring NAFTA deserves the support of intelligent and compassionate voters. Let us call for the elimination of NAFTA and all similar trade agreements. Dismantle Bill Clinton's NAFTA, and stop the worldwide war on working people!
Yugoslavia – the Union of (Southern) Slavic Nations – was an experiment in carrying out the Rodney King principle of everyone "just getting along." Yugoslavia combined bickering provinces as republics within a federal government structure. Josip Tito, the leader of Yugoslavia, defied Stalinist Russia (the "Soviet Union") and built a country that operated under the principle (beginning in 1950) of "workers' self-management," a system described by a Serbian historian and writer as authoritarian, enlightened "direct democracy, although these terms might sound very contradictory...everything was very contradictory."
Under workers' self-management, the people as a whole participated in direct democracy by meeting in councils to make decisions on issues like housing and wages. Ironically, this is similar to the original soviet-style economic system proposed for Russia after the overthrow of the Czar. Tito led Yugoslavia from the end of World War II until his death in 1980.
President Bill had General Wesley Clark, the NATO Supreme Allied Commander, bomb the non-aggressive nation of Yugoslavia from March to June of 1999. A week into the carnage, even the carefully conservative Wall Street Journal felt moved to comment that NATO effectively had become the air force of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The KLA was an insurgent group that wanted the province of Kosovo to break away from Yugoslavia and become an independent country. Rumors abounded that the Albanian government had armed and funded the KLA. One reason for the climate of ongoing tension was (is) that Albania and Kosovo are Muslim and Serbia is Christian. At the time, the KLA was on the U.S. Government's list of drug-smuggling organizations. Bill did not attack and destroy Yugoslavia out of concern for human rights, as is often claimed. In the scramble to beat Russia to control of Caspian and Black Sea oil pipeline terminals, human rights was not a consideration. Additionally, the U.S. wanted to build military bases in Yugoslavia (which had not allowed any foreign nations to do so) to protect those pipelines and terminals. At the time, there were allegations that these bases also protected Asian, particularly Chinese, opium converted into heroin for distribution by the KLA.
Bill pulverized Yugoslavia into warring communities to secure the world's dwindling oil supplies, to establish military bases to protect these areas, and perhaps to secure heroin-smuggling routes from China to Kosovo. Bill's Secretary of State offered the opinion that the bloody campaign was worth the lives of estimated thousands of Yugoslavs. In October of 2000 Hillary again reaffirmed her support for her husband's bombing and destruction of Yugoslavia.
What sort of senator has Hillary been? Like her erstwhile business partner George W. Bush, she supports nuclear weapons development, opposes banning land mines, and criticizes the International Court of Justice. She additionally calls for increases in Bush's military budget and has lashed out at Amnesty International for condemning U.S. torture policies. In an effort to maintain some credibility, at one point she criticized China's human rights record. Less than a year later, she voted to give China most-favored-nation trade status. In those ten months, China did not leave Tibet or free Tibetans held in Chinese slave labor camps. Burning Buddhist temples, murdering monks and raping nuns continued all the while. The situation on the ground didn't change, but the political winds did. Having exploited this issue to her advantage by pretending interest, Hillary easily abandoned it when it was no longer useful to her.
After researching her record, a San Francisco political science professor called her the second-most hawkish Democrat in the race (after Biden, for those interested). Hillary repeatedly has voted to authorize the illegal war against Iraq and refuses to recant, responding instead with Clintonesque babble. In 2006 she voted against a bill to bring the troops home in a year. They would have been here by now, instead of still in Iraq, needlessly killing and being killed in Hillary's take-no-prisoners quest for the White House. She has had many opportunities to demonstrate the sincerity of her statement, "The first thing I will do upon taking office is to end the war in Iraq." At each opportunity she has done the opposite.
Hillary consistently reveals that she is not to be trusted. A telling example is one excuse she gave for her pro-war vote in 2002: It was not a vote for war; rather it was a vote to pressure Saddam to allow weapons inspectors into Iraq. At the time, weapons inspectors were and had been in Iraq. What with all the pressures of being a United States Senator, one understands that the presence of weapons inspectors is not information to which she would have access.
Another of her excuses was, "The president [sic] took my vote, and others' votes, and basically misused the authority we gave him" to wage war. How sleazy is it to say you voted for war because you thought the White House Resident would not act on the authority your vote gave him? On this occasion she further reiterated her refusal to stop funding the war. She fully supported this war until she ran for president. Now she claims to be against the war, with nothing at all to back up that claim. Babble on, Hillary.
This calls to mind another New York Senator accused of being a carpetbagger, who went on to run for president. Senator Robert Kennedy (originally from Massachusetts), was adamant in his support of then-president Johnson and the Vietnam War. Until, that is, Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy won the New Hampshire primary on an antiwar platform. Kennedy denounced (not repudiated) Johnson and declared his candidacy – on an antiwar platform – within days.
Hillary's pro-war disguised as pro-peace position confirms the opinion that, like Bill, there is no depth of hypocrisy to which she will not sink. American service members and Iraqi citizens continue to die as long as she continues to vote to fund their deaths. This is the reality. Sadly, these are not noble deaths. They are deaths for an illegal war by a fraudulent president. They are deaths for Halliburton profits and the military bases to protect them. More than three-thousand Americans, more than 800,000 Iraqis have died to preserve, protect and defend the demands of empire. This war must end now. Hillary can end it, simply by voting against funding it.
I extend my sincere sympathy to the families and friends of those who have fallen, and I express my sincere desire to prevent more from falling. Instead of Hillary's babble and broken promises, we need to hear, "This war was wrong – and illegal – from the beginning. The situation has only become worse since the U.S. bombing, invasion, and occupation. The U.S. must get out of Iraq. Bring all American combat forces, military and private, home now. And don't abandon them once they're here."
Iraq is a member of the Arab League. The other member states of the Arab League, with the assistance of the United Nations, should be involved in structuring a genuinely representative Iraqi government, without U.S. influence. This government should likewise control Iraq's economy and resources. Void all agreements to the contrary – and investigate all no-bid contracts. There should be no permanent U.S. bases. If any acts committed by the U.S. against Iraq constitute war crimes, prosecute those acts.
Hillary and other Democratic candidates claim to be for peace, but only in Iraq. Everywhere else is up for grabs. Literally. She says an Iran with nuclear weapons is "unacceptable," yet she voted to allow U.S. nuclear cooperation with countries that violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Then again, Hillary and five other of the candidates (all but Gravel and Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Ohio) have declared as acceptable the use of nuclear weapons against Iran in the so-called war on terror.
If my prediction (at the end of this article) is incorrect and Hillary becomes president, I believe that at some point in that four-year stretch she will begin to take steps to pull the U.S. out of Iraq. She has said, "If we in Congress don't end this war before January 2009, as president, I will." In other words, innocent Americans and Iraqis can continue to die until her Administration can take credit for ending the war.
It bears repeating that Hillary has never voted against this war. If she were truly opposed to the war rather than playing politics, she might demonstrate this easily not only by refusing another dollar for war, but by herself introducing meaningful legislation to end the war. She has not done this. Instead she has, again and again, given Bush more money to continue the war, continue the slaughter. This brutal takeover without regard for the rights of the people goes beyond Iraq, beyond the Middle East. Knowingly or not, Hillary and every other member of Congress who support the war are participating in the erosion and complete loss of human and civil rights, in this country and around the world.
Domestically, Hillary supports three strikes laws, "faith-based initiatives" to address police brutality, and fewer restrictions on wiretapping cell phones. She is opposed to solar-powered electric vehicles and so opposed to civil rights that the Democratic Party-friendly ACLU rated her as having a "mixed" civil rights voting record at the end of 2002. As recently as 2006 she voted to renew the PATRIOT Acts.
Hillary opposes universal, comprehensive health care, instead preferring what she calls "a uniquely American solution:" low-cost health insurance. This is not health care; rather it enshrines insurance companies as "the deciders" of people's health, not the people themselves (and their chosen health-care providers). Mandatory health insurance, espoused by many of these candidates, is in place in some states and proposed for many more. If you go to the emergency room and can't prove you have health insurance, will you be arrested instead of treated?
Mandatory health insurance is the latest distraction from the long-urgent necessity of genuine health care with a focus on optimum health, not optimum profits. Under a mandatory system, the Federal Government will force employed Americans to pay insurance companies to deny their legitimate health claims. Our health – physical, mental, emotional, spiritual – will worsen as a result. It will mean a windfall of profits for insurance companies (and the politicians who greased the way), and legally move America to a completely profit-based health system operated by the insurance industry.
It is obvious but apparently still needs to be stated: health insurance rather than health care discriminates against the poor. Health insurance fattens the coffers of the insurance industry – long in bed with both parties. More importantly (to the rest of us), health insurance is a system in which health care decisions are made according to what fattens coffers, not according to what is healthy.
The worst part, perhaps, is the unnecessary absurdity of all this. We don't have to copy the Canadian system, the Australian system, or any others. Nothing has ever prevented any Congress or any Administration from having the Surgeon-General appoint a committee to study health care models in five or ten Western European countries (plus Canada and Australia for good measure). The goal of such a study would be recommending a model that will work best for America. I believe this would be a democratic health care system, in which the consumers of health care make the decisions about health care.
National health care, also known as socialized (uh-oh) medicine, is in place throughout much of the world. At best, it works like this: The national government levies a progressive health tax and uses the income thus derived exclusively to provide cradle-to-grave, comprehensive, universal health care. No fees, never a co-pay, from band-aids to major surgery, just go to the neighborhood health clinic or nearest hospital. It functions much as depicted in the movie Sicko.
Another method, as proposed by one of the candidates (Gravel), is to provide health care vouchers, funded by a progressive national sales tax. The vouchers would be valid for the health care and practitioners of the individual's choice, thus making Gravel's proposal comprehensive and universal as well.
What of the other candidates? We may dismiss Senator Chris Dodd (Connecticut) and Biden from further consideration because they, like Hillary, claim to be against the war but continue to vote for it. We may dismiss Obama, Edwards, and Governor Bill Richardson (New Mexico) from further consideration because they, like Hillary, support the "war on terror" invented by George W. Bush. Like Hillary again, these other candidates see nothing wrong with using nuclear weapons against Iran.
This leaves Kucinich and Gravel. These two men agree in many areas: the need for immediate withdrawal from Iraq; the use of diplomacy rather than nuclear weapons in dealing with Iran; dismantling NAFTA; single-payer, universal, comprehensive health care; and medicinal marijuana to name a few. Gravel is fifteen years older, and was a Senator for twelve years. Kucinich has been a Representative for ten years, and perhaps may be best known for receiving the Gandhi Peace Award in 2003. He repeatedly has introduced legislation to create a U.S. Department of Peace. I believe Kucinich to be honorable and sincere.
Gravel was one of five U.S. Senators to express some of the earliest Congressional opposition to the Vietnam War. He may be best known for his creative and innovative efforts to end that war, especially his defying then-President Nixon by reading the top-secret Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record. Most interesting in Gravel's current campaign is his call for a national referendum. This would allow citizens to "vote directly on issues which affect our daily lives."
While many of my friends and I are overjoyed at the notion of a vegan running for president, Kucinich just doesn't have the presidential vibe. I greatly approve of his politics, but he has that weird John Edwardsy-smile and always seems like he doesn't fit in, doesn't belong. While one certainly may consider not fitting in an item in Kucinich's favor, it's also somewhat discomfiting. You don't want to have a president whom others disrespect by shunned. Most world leaders don't respect Bush, but they don't shun him. Gravel on the other hand seems to have a presidential bearing and demeanor. If he were somehow to become president, I can see him putting Kucinich in the Cabinet. How about as Secretary of the new Department of Peace?
Here at last, my long-awaited prediction. I believe Hillary will receive the Democratic Party presidential nomination, though perhaps with only a plurality of the convention's votes. I believe she will go on to face Senator John McCain (Arizona) in the general election. Currently, the media speaks of McCain as if his campaign were over. I believe this is a smokescreen, to lull the "opposition" into a sense of comfort. Soon, the media will begin referring to them in sneering tones, while McCain becomes their new darling.
McCain's top Republican rivals are former Governor Mitt Romney (Massachusetts) and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani (New York). Romney is a bigger nutcase than George W. Bush is, and Giuliani is about as trustworthy as Hillary is, with the morals to match. Rumors abound that the current mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, is considering entering the race. His reregistering as an independent (he was Republican) fueled speculation that he was interested in running. If he does run, he will get no more than 20% of the popular vote, drawn from both major candidates. As to the question of Bloomberg's candidacy drawing enough votes to tilt the results to either Hillary or McCain, it hardly matters. Both are loyal to the System and have willingly followed orders all their political lives.
In addition, of course, I believe McCain will win the election. America still is too misogynist to elect a woman president. If Obama were to get the Democratic nomination, McCain would win because America still is too racist to elect a black man (or woman) president. If in some impossible alternative universe Gravel were to get the Democratic nomination, the Democrats would have a very good chance of winning the White House. And of making history.
I believe I have amply demonstrated that Hillary does not deserve election to the presidency. Instead she needs to accompany Bush and all other war criminals to an international war crimes tribunal. It is one thing to lie about one's political positions. It's much more serious – and repulsive – when your lies mean hundreds or thousands more will be senselessly killed.
I have attempted to make this a balanced article. Now, at the end, I feel more contempt for Hillary than when I began. Instead of a babbling brook, she is a babbling crook. So please, when you go to vote in the primary election, remember, don't vote for Hillary Clinton! Thank you.
Naturally, all of the above assumes honest elections: no adjustments by Karl Rove, as in 2000 and 2004.
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