Yves here. Below is the section of the Bill Clinton reaction to BlackLivesMatter protestors that Black discusses at length below.
Bizarrely, I came across it via a link claiming how effective Bill was. I have to think this can’t have helped with the intended audience, black voters, and probably hurt hurt. But how much depends on whether BlackLivesMatter and/or other influential voices in the African-American community are effective in calling Bill out.
One key fact that Bill Black does not include in his analysis: the drop in the crime rate in the 1990s was due to getting lead out of gasoline.
By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Originally published at Huffington Post, with a postscript from New Economic Perspective
Remember several weeks ago when Hillary Clinton was complaining that Democrats did not consider her a “progressive?” Bernie Sanders’ big win in Wisconsin ended that tactic and propelled Paul Krugman and Hillary and Bill Clinton to race to the right, inadvertently proving Bernie’s point that they are not progressives on the key issues.
In the last week, Hillary and her surrogates have pivoted hard right and retreated to their long-held positions on the major issues. Indeed, in several cases they have gone even farther to the right than the policies they pushed over a decade ago – even though those policies proved disastrous. They also inadvertently demonstrated the terrible policies that were produced by the Clinton’s vaunted “pragmatism” and compromising with the most extreme Republican demands. That was the story of Clinton’s infamous welfare “reform” – a policy both Clintons championed. Tom Frank details in his new book entitled Listen, Liberal how the Clintons’ “pragmatism” and zeal to work with the worst elements of the Republican Party led to the welfare “reform” bill. Zach Carter has just written the article I was planning to write about that travesty. He entitled it “Nothing Bill Clinton Said To Defend His Welfare Reform Is True.” I encourage you to read it.
As a criminologist (I am also an adviser to Bernie on economics), I will begin my two-part series on Hillary’s race to the right with Bill Clinton’s effort to defend his drug law policies and Hillary’s denunciation of black drug users as “super predators.” The second column explains Krugman’s race to the right on banking in his effort to support Hillary’s hard pivot to right.
Bill’s defense of his policies that helped feed the mass incarceration of blacks and Latinos for drug offense came in the same April 7, 2016 campaign speech in Philadelphia that led to Zach Carter skewering his defense of welfare “reform.” Bill’s speech was strongly protested by Black Lives Matter members, which led to unscripted, angry attacks by Bill on some of the protesters and prompted his defense of his crime bill and Hillary’s attack on “superpredators.”
Bill made four key points about crime in his attempted defense and attacks on the protesters. First he claimed that his 1993 crime bill led to a huge decrease in crime. The reality is that street crimes were declining before his bill and the trend continued after the bill passed. (Elite financial crimes were surging due to the Clinton’s championing of the three “de’s” – deregulation, desupervision and de facto decriminalization of finance – but the Clintons and the authors creating and spreading the myth of the black and Latino “superpredators” ignored them.)
Second, Bill claimed that the bad parts of his crime bill were caused by Republican demands. Tom Frank’s book shows how the Clintons’ “pragmatism” and promises to work with the hard right led to him crafting a bill that produced the mass incarceration of Americans. This problem was compounded by his sentencing provision that punished crack cocaine users 100 times more severely (by weight) than powder cocaine users. When the bill was drafted it seems likely that the drafters did not know that crack cocaine was used overwhelmingly by blacks and Latinos and powder cocaine overwhelmingly by whites. A wide range of people eagerly created what social scientists call a “moral panic” about crack cocaine even though its effects were the same of powder. Bill’s crime bill achieved bipartisan support, including Bernie.
What Bill did not discuss, but what Tom Frank’s book emphasizes, is that the immense racial disparity in sentencing – and the lack of any basis for it given the chemical equivalency of crack and powder – became clear within a year after passage of the act. By 1995, the U.S. Sentencing Commission had gathered the data, conducted the analysis, and done all the drafting to repeal the disparity – and Bill and the Republican Congress promptly worked pragmatically and in a bipartisan manner to block the repeal of the racist sentencing disparity. After he left office, Bill repeatedly apologized for his Crime Act, but a few days ago in Philadelphia he reverted to praising his disastrous law. He is moving exceptionally hard right back to his natural instincts when he gets off script.
Third, Bill moved so far right that he resurrected a racist position Hillary had enunciated (and later repudiated). Hillary attacked blacks who used crack as “super predators.” That phrase was crafted as part of the effort to generate a moral panic in order to produce the mass incarceration of blacks. CNN reported on Hillary’s use of the term.
“They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘super predators,’” Clinton said in a 1996 speech, when crime was a major public concern, according to polls at the time. “No conscience, no empathy, we can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.”
Hillary was quoting phrases from three ultra-right authors that were Reagan officials. None of them was a criminologist, yet they claimed that overwhelmingly black “super predators” were growing at such epic rates that we should be so terrified by them that we would support a full scale “war” against black and Latino drug users. They did not simply coin the term “super predator” and stress that they were primarily black – they called them “feral.” That is the word used for a once tame animal that reverts to a wild animal. Black crack users were demonized as subhuman – wild animals whose ancestors had once been tame (as slaves) and who, as Hillary demanded, must be brought “to heel” like trained dogs.
None of this was true, but the racist lies succeeded in creating the moral panic that caused enormous damage to our Nation. Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is an excellent treatment of the shameful result.
Hillary eventually (in 2016) recanted her adoption of the racist “super predator” phrase and meme. Bill is disinterring it now because he got flustered and angered by the Black Lives Matter protesters and reverted in an unscripted fit to what came reflexively.
Fourth, Bill attacked the Black Lives Matter protesters in a way that was unworthy of him. Indeed, his attack on them came directly from his bizarre effort to support Hillary’s use of the term “super predator” months after she had repudiated that term. Bill invoked the same racist myths, using the same racist language that was employed over a decade ago even though they have been completely discredited by criminologists. CNN’s report of his Philadelphia speech notes:
He also defended Hillary Clinton’s use of the phrase “super predators.”
“I don’t know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack, and sent them out in the streets to murder other African-American children,” the former president said. “Maybe you thought they were good citizens — she didn’t.”
(Bill also seems to be channeling the interrogation scene from the movie LA Confidential “Were you hopped up, Ray?)
Plainly, Black Lives Matter protesters never suggested that “good citizens” “murder” “children.” Bill’s claim that they did so shows how panicked he was by Bernie’s big win in Wisconsin. Bill’s story that “gang leaders … got 13-year old kids hopped up on crack, and sent them … to murder other African-American children” is a racist myth. Even the ultra-hard right authors that invented the term “super predator” and described black crack users as akin to animals abandoned the term and their claims over five years ago. Bill has gone far to the right of the ultra-right wing by disinterring these racist myths, claiming that they were and are accurate, and making the preposterous claim that Black Lives Matter protesters support those who murder black children.
Postscript
How badly did Bill do on crime in his Philadelphia speech? I’ve just found a Wall Street Journal editorial that they have posted entitled “In Defense of Bill Clinton.” The WSJ’s editorial team praises the Clintons for “telling the truth” about the “super predators,” falsely asserts that the crime bill is what reduced crime, and applauds his claim that Black Lives Matter members seek to defend those who murder black children. Murdoch’s minions then instruct Democrats and Black Lives Matter “agitators” (another racist meme buried 30 years ago that the WSJ dug up for this editorial) on why they should be praising Bill’s disinterring the racist fiction of “gang leaders who got 13-year-olds hopped up on crack and sent them out onto the street to murder other African-American children.”
Progressives at the time were happy to go along with Mr. Clinton’s New Democratic policies when center-right positioning seemed essential to winning the White House. But now they’re too intimidated by Black Lives Matter to tell the truth.
***
The Black Lives Matter agitators should thank President Clinton, not excoriate him.
When Murdoch’s mouthpieces purport to “tell the truth” to blacks and progressives it’s a sure sign that they are lying.
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The Power hungry lying Clintons got the Black votes they needed in the South, now pivot to racist Reagan Democrats & Trump Independents. Sickening.
I knew it would happen, but even jaded & cynical yours truly is left stunned by the speed and apparent shamelessness with which Hillary & Bill are making the pivot… throwing their southern black “firewall” under the bus already.
blacks, progressives, they’ve had a lot of practice throwing people under the bus. efficiency!
Hey, they do so under the protection of ‘kill every budding sprout in the liberal movement’ philosophy that has been on the Obama agenda since 2009. Yves posted something about that a while ago.
Why Liberals are Lame, Part 3: Why a Warren Run for Senate is a Terrible Idea This seems a tad harsh perhaps, giving Warren a somewhat Jaded attitude, in retrospect but gives interesting tonal finesse to analysis of what Warren is up to these days. I’m not sure Warren can do more than preach as the Senate is in a do-nothing mode these days. She sure generates a lot of heat though.
Next we have actual discussion of how the White House has trampled on Progressive movements in the budding stage because of Oval Office priorities. My own research on this topic (one could start up a home business with all the links out there) yielded a perverse, kinda ‘reverse’ Progressive movement of the Oval Office’s enthusiasm for Fracking. I did a Google search for Erik Smith & Obama administration and Voila! I was set for days. Get a big pot of your favorite brew, it’s snowing here in Michigan. Happy researching.
It’s truly a stunning speech for it’s ineptness in presentation at the least. Slick willy? Not these days. I begin to doubt if people so horribly inept at unscripted campaigning can even win against Ted Cruz. And wow that’s saying something.
Bill is showing his age, and the Clinton charm ain’t what it used to be.
He’s just a Dirty Grandpa now.
Still gazing at young boobs and ass but getting ever creepier at it.
His sell-by date has long since past, as has Hillary’s. There’s no room for Republicrats in the new political system growing up from the ground.
I maintain that it was effective. I argue that African Americans were not the intented audience. I did some googling on the video after it came out, found the neocon Commentary Magazine and FrontPage Magazine defending Bill Clinton, found it on /pol/ with posters praising Bill, right next to the Holocaust denial thread, found it on Stormfront, nazi forum, and Free Republic, radical Repulican forum, although with less comments.
Racism is not something that exists just in implicit association tests. There are people who actually hate black people and want to see them suffer. Because of the ‘lesser evil’ strategy, the Democratic party only needs to less racist than the Republicans. However, the racist vote exists, and the Democrats keep competing for it. The ones that don’t want to burn crosses, but do strongly oppose BLM.
With Cruz being a far right radical, and people projecting their every fear on Trump, anything short of accepting an endorsement from the Klan is going to just get the Clintons more votes. I could be wrong, about the pivot, but if that were the case, then at least you would have expected one of the Clintons to try to remediate the situation.
I am not saying anything Bill said was true, and I absolutely oppose these policies and the people I mentioned above. Their values are diametrically opposed to mine.
Agreed. The Clinton camp has been the GOP nominee in all but name for some time.
Who is the real Bill Clinton? Who is the really Hillary Clinton? That’s what it all boils down to. Once elected, which version gets sworn in?
With Bernie Sanders – what you see is what you get.
Can’t wait for Chelsea to have HER day in the sun………barf….;(
She tried to care about money, but just couldn’t.
Mom and dad already laundered all she’ll ever need. Will this spare us future Clintons being inficted upon the body politic?
Grifters? Do they appear to be anything else? In the 19th century, they would be selling black gold as a cure all elixir.
Use CLINTONS Soothing Syrup for whatever doesn’t ail ya!
It does seem he’s never looked more southern in the most unflattering way possible (in a neil young way). Hick willy.
Berzelius Windrip come to life? The second coming of Huey Long? North America’s answer to Juan and Eva Peron? I give up: what’s the answer.
America’s answer to Juan and Eva Peron.
Glorious! Mind if I steal that?
Recently, I read that Bernie Sanders did not have a clue how to break up the big banks. I thought at the time that some intelligent regulator would probably be happy to help him out with that. So, Bill Black has stepped forward to do just that. Senator Sanders could not have hoped for a better advisor. Senator Sanders is correct in educating the public about where our politicians get their money to run for election. A fifth grader can see that if you take millions of dollars from a corporation (Wall Street, fossil fuels, etc.) they are likely to expect something in return. One of the Koch brothers actually said as much. We will never get rid of the oligarchy unless we change the way elections are funded. This is the revolution we need.
This illustrates how the media has smeared Bernie and people like you buy into it.
Bernie’s break up the banks plan is the plan devised by Elizabeth Warren, what she calls her 21st Century Glass Steagall Act. Fed Vice Chairman Danny Tarullo, who is one of the few pro bank reform regulators, helped devise it. The bill was co-sponsored by John McCain and Maria Cantwell.
The better media reports (sadly on the blogosphere) have dissected how the NY Daily News didn’t know what it was talking about and depicted Sanders as being incorrect when he was accurate. The Washington Post has similarly misrepresented Sanders on this issue.
It is in fact pretty much unheard of to expect a presidential candidate to articulate the fine points of how his policy plans will work. Did anyone ask Obama how he’d close down Gitmo, something he has in fact never done, or how he’d implement health care reform in anywhere near the detail that has been demanded of Sanders?
I don’t doubt what you just said regarding Sanders, however, how can anyone of reason hope to expect ANY good from the likes of McCain, or even Cantwell…..my senator, who is one of those feckless TPP, TTIP, ISDS s trade traitors we should dispise ??!
I thought NC had linked this article a couple of days ago, but now I can’t find it:
http://theweek.com/articles/617065/bernie-sanders-hollow-aspirational-politics
It’s worth reading because it does a good job of crystallizing two ideas underlying the criticisms of Sanders (and of any challenge to the current oligarchy):
– Trump and Sanders say some of the same things; because Trump is an idiot, Sanders is an idiot.
– Aspiration is foolhardy, it can never work, and one is wrong (practically, but also morally) to even desire, much less attempt, anything other than what the current establishment offers.
This will appeal, on deeply emotional and superficially intellectual levels, to people who see their interests (current and near-future) as more dependent on the stability and predictability of the existing established order than on their (or anyone’s) ability to improve on the performance of that established order (by reform or alternative). The argument (using the alphabet) is that one can only do anything in one particular way, and nothing else can ever work. Pretty much the antithesis of any innovation anywhere ever, and if it were actually true, evolution itself would be invalid (so this also appeals of creationists of various stripes).
In short, hopelessness is the greatest virtue, because its pragmatism is unassailable (within its paradigm).
It’s really a shame that the author of that article, Damon Linker, wasn’t around in 1776 to advise the founding fathers; or in 1860 to advise Mr. Lincoln on the futility of aspiration…
theweek is ………how shall I say, ……weak!
“Don’t Hope and Change”
You see? Calling neoliberals what the are – “far to the right of the ultra right” – makes understanding what is being said more accessible and easily understood than using the inferior and confusing term “neoliberal.” Bill Black repeatedly calls Hillary & Bill what they are – “far to the right of the ultra right” NOT neoliberal. Just like Obama is far to the right of the ultra right.
I think Bill was creating a Strawblackman argument for himself, then Berning it down, leaving the opposing thumb BLM folk with the obvious intelligent choice – Of course psycho, murdering, crack cocaine crazed 13 year olds are not “good citizens”.
After all, it’s debate techniques like this that Slick Willy is famous for, and why people marvel at Bill’s attributed lofty intellect. Apparently also why the Clintons are so adored by Black folks, almost Black folks, and even white folks with unsupportive opinions on the subject of racism. I’m sure once Hillary releases her Goldman Sachs speeches, whether in redacted transcript form or even video format with white noise soundtrack, we’ll see that powder cocaine enhanced bankers will weigh in on the “Nay, Against!” side of the racism issue.
Some white folks are doing what we can. The ball is now in BLM’s basketball court.
That in 1995, two years after the Crime Act passage, Clinton and some right wingers blocked the US Sentencing Commission’s repeal of the disparity between crack and powder is a very telling detail. I can’t help but think your comment that “powder enhanced bankers is the reality. Laundry powder. Nixon may have started the war on drugs to perpetuate the war in Vietnam where massive amounts of heroin and hash were “exported” and Reagan paid lip service to how criminal drugs were all the while the DEA/CIA were making a fortune dealing the stuff – and who can forget the story about MENA air base where they were flying in loads of powder with Bill Clinton’s blessing, or Maxine Water’s fury when the CIA was finally outed in California, etc. The 1993 Crime Act was very lucrative – it still is. Making an enormous market for powder.
Haha, maybe you think Goldman Sachs are good citizens. Well, I don’t.
What’s sad is that it’s doubtful that this new racist pivot by the Clintons will cost them more than a tiny handful of African-American votes. Blacks are just as prone to shallow celebrity voting as whites are…
The Clintons are protégées of Pamela Harriman. That is all you need to know.
Call me wild and crazy, but I’m thinking that Bill’s obvious institutional racism will once again prove to be Clinton’s undoing. I believe that a good case can be made that same thing along with some stupid campaign strategy is a big reason why the regulars were able to get Obama the nomination. This was too soon. The Clintons need NY. I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that upstate NY is going to go Bernie. Long Island and Westchester are probably a lock for Clinton. That leaves NYC. Yes there are a lot of rich bankers, investment and real estate folk in the city. But there are also a whole lot of people who are not. And even some of the folks who work in those Clinton friendly businesses who find them disgusting. I think Bill just put the Bronx and Brooklyn further into play. Bernie was already making inroads there (and in Queens and Manhattan), but this helps him. I don’t think Hillary obviously taking the subway for probably first time in her entire life in NY (or maybe the second, she might have done it once in 2000) helped her make the case.
This pivot will not help them secure the nomination, and was too soon for the general.
And for the record I don’t know that Bill or Hillary are racist in the traditional sense. That underestimates them by limiting the depth of their enmity and lack of regard to everyone who is not them. Everyone and anything is a tool that can be abused or discarded. You are only important if there is something in it for them, and that something better be big. I’m quite sure if it had been important to the people they were courting that their ‘reform’ targeted redheads rather than the African American community, they would have been equally behind that.
I’m with Yves in that I don’t understand how the ‘pivot’ helps with black voters. Neither do I understand how it helps with white voters in NY, PA, and CA, the big upcoming Dem races, who are certainly more liberal than their Southern brethren. I think there is at least as much panic as calculation in it.
If this were the general election, I might understand such a ‘pivot’ better. But HRC is in a real battle for the Dem nomination, and that was NOT in the game plan.
Perhaps the “pivot” (and Bill Clinton’s recent outburst) is not about getting the African American vote at all, rather it seems to be about creating a “sistah souljah” moment in order to shore up white votes in rural PA.
Is that more important than progressives, blacks, youth, etc. in CA and NY? I guess it’s possible. It’s just not obvious to me.
It’s still Arkansas 1988 in Clinton land.
This. I love that summary.
I’m with Mike on this, I don’t see how that helps them in NY or California. In fact, I think it hurts them overall. But then I don’t think the Clinton campaign mind trust has shown themselves to be so brilliant in either of the two Presidential nomination campaigns they have run.
Jerry Brown ran on closing the Department of Education in 1992. I’m not certain the 1992 campaign was particularly wonderful.
If so it was wasted. I live and travel in northern WV and Western PA, and while I wouldn’t downplay the existence of racism, there just aren’t enough blacks in the area to get anyone very worked up. Appalachian Hillbillies may not much like minorities, but they hardly ever see them.
Hillary is deeply unpopular (for largely sexist reasons) among independents here, and the Democrats are still heavily union organized and class oriented (in an ineffectual and corrupt way). This is Trump and Sanders country, and the big issue in a putative general between them would be guns.
I’m glad Bill picked up on the “brought to heel” part of HRC’s disgusting characterization of human beings.
Any dog owner knows what this means and while it is a good and humane thing to do for a dog to keep it safe while walking it, it dehumanizes when used in a context of human control.
When pressed, Bill Clinton reverting back to his hard right natural instincts is the optimal point. It is the stance taken by the elite over the multitude. It is the condescension of the elite for the poor and disenfranchised. It reeks of a I am better than you attitude.
I don’t think the elite even realize how condescending they have become. They act as If the entire society revolves around their efforts alone and when their actions lead to terrible outcomes, never tire of obfuscating and finding fault in everyone except themselves.
I was driving today and heard an advertisement for an MBA program in “Authentic Leadership”. Don’t recall the school promoting their wares, but was struck by the agility of the branding and marketing teams for corporate education. As a nation, and a global community, we are facing a crisis in leadership. A failure of leadership on multiple levels and how does the capitalist system respond to this failure- by offering Authentic Leadership training. Good grief.
I will never vote for Clinton and can’t predict the consequences of that action. However, I will never follow a “Leader” that has the temerity to stand before a group of people, point a bony finger in their faces, and accuse them of refusing to face the truth. The truth about the Clinton’s is that they love you as long as you support their agenda. Question that agenda in any meaningful way and you are discarded as the poor undeserving rabble.
Below the surface, and behind all the coded language, lies the battle of the elite using wealth and power to control the masses. The Clinton’s need to take their booty and retreat into the dustbin of history.
Earlier this year when Bill Clinton was passing thru a crowd, he was asked why Bernie was succceding. He flippantly dismissively responded that it’s because Bernie ‘is offering them free stuff’ (like not being indebted for life for education or medical care…..etc) The hard right meme of ‘makers and takers’
The truth will out.
Generally too late to be effective. This time the truth is out early enough to be effective.
And who is Pamala Harriman? If one wishes to be clear, please post lnks.
She’s a historical figure. Historical Democratic power broker, social queen, who was instrumental in getting Clinton elected. He made her ambassador to France. Now dead.
Doesn’t give you the full picture, particularly her “help” in reshaping the Democratic party, but try her NY Times obit:
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/06/world/pamela-harriman-is-dead-at-76-an-ardent-political-personality.html?pagewanted=all
Missing from the NYT link (surprise, surprise) was the tidbit that Averell Harriman was “Hitler’s Angel”: his Union Banking Corporation underwrote Fritz Thyssen, German steel, and the Nazi war machine. His bank was seized by the Federal Government, pursuant to the Trading With the Enemies Act, long, long after the Nazis had made their nature known.
Harriman’s chief lieutenant at UBC was one Prescott Bush.
After the war, their assets were returned to them and they rebuilt their images, Harriman as Governor of New York and Democratic presidential candidate in 1952 and 1956. Prescott Bush wrapped himself in the flag by founding the USO, went on to become a U.S. senator, and the rest is history.
Why did Bill Clinton appoint Pamela Harriman as Ambassador to France? Power over principle.
She was an American who was born in England and married the hugely unstable Randolph Churchill, son of Winston, knowing that it would advance her in her (inevitable) subsequent marriages. She married other wealthy men, including Averell Harriman. She was a major Democratic party fundraiser and came as close as you can in America to running a salon.
See here for additional detail:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/22/pamela-harriman-the-queen-of-party-politics.html
When did the CIA stop bringing crack cocaine into the U.S.? That might have had something to do with the decrease in drug-related crime.
I don’t know the answer to that, but the new meth and heroin epidemics are interesting in that unlike hard drug use in past decades, it is both rural and urban.
I enjoy cannabis on occasion but I think that the real reason that it is being decriminalized/legalized is that the TPTB for anything that might keep the population sedated.
Don’t fool yourselves Honkeytown and lose your selves in a cesspool of sentimental white liberal sanctimonious drivel. A lot of law abiding black people think feral savages should be brought to heel too. Why do you think they’re still gonna vote for Hillary?
Look at them all laughing and clapping! This was in the mid-1990s right about when Mrs. Clinton said what she said . . . Chris Rock’s BRING THE PAIN . . doing his “I hate niggaz” riff . . .It’s not a black and white issue, no pun intended . . .
youtube.com/watch?v=f3PJF0YE-x4
(However from a social policy/criminology perspective, Professor Black is certainly correct. That’s frankly a separate issue.)
Stockholm syndrome (should be called “slave syndrome”) is still a necessary survival technique for nonwhites in the Confederate States of America. Up north, they’re getting uppity. So should the Clintons tilt Giulani or de Blasio? Bill tilts right while Hillary tilts left. Keep your eyes on the moving shells. Which shell is the money under?
Removal of lead from gasoline and the legalization of abortion. Fewer people of a certain age with less lead affecting their brains.
For those who didn’t read about this astonishing lead emissions/poisoning research, this refers to a MotherJones link by Yves in her intro to the Bill Black piece:
The defense of welfare reform was even more shameless. All he can point to is record low poverty rates at the time it was passed. Even if true it’s a textbook example of the confusion of correlation and causation. But it’s much more malevolent than that really. Everyone knows we were in a boom at the time in the 90s. A Greenspan Fed fueled crazy unsustainable boom perhaps, but a boom nonetheless. And they *USED* those economic good times AS COVER to push forth legislation that would make sure the 99s had no good times EVER in the future!
This was done mostly via the trade agreements (NAFTA, GATT etc..). But also welfare reform caused an equal amount of damage to a much smaller subset of the population than the trade agreements did (poor working mothers). It’s like that investing quip about seeing who is swimming without their shorts when the tide recedes. Well in this case we see how badly we have been devastated by bad policy when the rising tide (the one that lifts all boats) receded after 2001 to some degree, but fully after 2008. How badly the trade agreements devastated us, and for smaller subsets of the population: how badly H1Bs devastated us (white collar professions), how badly welfare reform devastated us (poor single mothers) etc.. It all becomes clear after the good crazy boom times are gone. It’s the hangover the morning after.
By the way: at this point it wouldn’t surprise me if Greenspan was actually paid off from the Clinton’s stash (or was their stash not so big then?), nothing would. But there’s no smoking gun. So all we can say is the artificial crazy boom was needed to steal the shirt of all of our backs forever. It was part of the magicians trick.
Weren’t churches granted tax exempt status during the last Clinton Reign? That’s a hard right agenda that’s had devastating consequences, the scale of which I seriously underestimated at the time.
@meeps – No, churches have been tax exempt since 1894:
http://churchesandtaxes.procon.org/
All Saints Church (Episcopal) in Pasadena, CA: http://articles.latimes.com/2007/sep/24/local/me-allsaints24
Joel @ 9:42
Thanks for the link. These are the arguments I remember hearing in 1992, but this fills in some more detail.
This must be why it came up during that election:
The law against churches intervening in political campaigns was passed by the US Congress in 1954. Since then, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been successful in using the law to revoke the tax-exempt status of only one church: the Church at Pierce Creek in Binghamton, NY, which had placed an advertisement in USA Today and the Washington Times rebuking Bill Clinton four days before the 1992 presidential election. [6] [7]
I have to disagree about the drop in the crime rate, there is something else Bill did that he never got credit for. When he first came him he and Treas. Sec. Lloyd Bensten changed how gun dealers were audited by the BATF. They started tracing guns used in crimes back to dealers and it turned out that some dealers specialized in supplying guns to gangs. They shut those dealers down. They also forwarded lists of licensed gun dealers to municipalities and low and behold there were a bunch of gun dealers in NYC and the city shut them down. Bush stopped all that and congress passed a series of laws that prevented future presidents from doing that.
Legacy isn’t twisting the arms of teachers to dumb down students so they comply with local RE control outcomes, nor forcing parents to have c sections, feed their babies formula, or enroll them in early childhood propaganda systems, to comply with global RE control outcomes. Why is it that the majority seeks order in the conditioning of money to confirm RE control, as the common, the only possible outcome of which is sociopaths running the economy?
What is credit, other than an artificial Pavlov bait and swap, conditioning people to RE control? Why is so much money going into genetics and psychology, derivative outcomes, as if a small group of humans is the center of the universe and a 24/7 soldier running on batteries is the objective.
Of course the CBs and politicians are trapped in a corner.
It’s not about race, so why is the response about race, and who benefits, getting the so assembled races to fight each other?
Like blindly ignoring the motives of males arguing for women’s rights (their own material interests).
Hidden in the article is this: “Bill’s crime bill achieved bipartisan support, including Bernie.” If this is the case, why is the crime bill a primary campaign issue? It was Bill, Bernie and not Hillary who voted/signed the bill. The only difference now, is that Bill rabidly defends his decision … but he is not running for president.
Both Bernie and Hillary have flipped on this issue, trying to distance themselves from the consequences of their vote/support. I would rather Bill Black explain why his candidate voted for the bill, and why this mistake doesn’t show a more general display of poor judgement, as did his vote for the 700 billion F35 fighter.
You could just read Senator Sander’s own explanation for voting for the bill.
https://berniesanders.com/press-release/sanders-voted-for-1994-crime-bill-to-support-assault-weapons-ban-violence-against-women-provisions/
Of course, Sanders has addressed undoing the negative effects of the bill in his platform. While Clinton’s stance appears to be “it was bad, but it’s done now. Nothing we can do” as her stance is on so many things.
As with so many issues, Hillary was for it before she was against it.
Get over it:
Since January 20, 1969 when the Attorney General trumped the Surgeon General, the Global Regime Change agenda had a Domestic counter-party called Drug Policy instead of humane treatment for the many diseases of compulsive behavior. Nixon MAHA (Made America Hate Again) by building walls between economic weak players, feeding them with artificial intelligence that the economy was about their masters’ voice, and the jails and keepers would protect them more than serving themselves.
It’s Souls to the Polls, how the Clinton’s roll; the sinners burning in hell and all’s well as it gets
Gang members shouldn’t kill people with a child’s mentality to prove how tough they are. That’s a job for Arkansas governors.
Perhaps we should begin naming the real super predators. Names that come to my mind are Jamie Dimon, Mort Zuckerman, Rupert Murdoch, Hank Paulson. . .oh, there are so many of them running around free. Anybody else care to name a favorite super predator?
Erik Prince of Blackwater
How about that hideous space monster that ripped itself out of Sigourney Weaver’s womb in Alien?
Fukkkk that was a long time ago but I still get scared thinking about it.
Heehee. That thing was benign when compared to this list! Concentrated acid for blood…
“That shit’s gonna eat through the goddamn hull !!” ………..of democracy…….
Lloyd Blankfein, Robert Rubin.
Tamir Rice’s 14 year old sister being tackle by Cleveland police as she desperately tries to help her dying 12 year brother:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4BT1sOItFA
The Clintons disgust me.