The Clintons gave us international corporate conglomerate favored NAFTA and WTO agreements that destroyed jobs , helped wreck our economy and made illegal immigration far worse (Fencing Off the Immigration Debate) . The Clintons gave us media consolidation which killed local radio as a news and information source and put more power in the hands of right wing leaning broadcasters like Clear Channel and Sinclair – not to mention Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch, a Clinton campaign contributor .
And the most recent GOP Lite stunt : when the Clintons backs were against the wall after Obama took Iowa – Bill and Hill used some good ole “Slick Willie Horton Lite” ,in an effort to inject an extra measure of race into the mix ; that’s classic GOP racial politics ..
Oh – and did I mentioned the Clintons Welfare Reform , that along with the problems listed above have been on the GOP goals and wish list at least since Ronald Reagan .
One of the consequences of Clinton’s Media consolidation is : informing folk on issues is now more difficult , due to the abandonment of news and community oriented programming . Richard Prince has some telling anecdotes on the impact of Media consolidation championed by the Clinton Whitehouse
Richard Prince’s Journal-isms :
Meanwhile, Eric Easter of ebonyjet.com Wednesday linked the campaign in South Carolina to the fight over media consolidation.
“Not to be all self-serving, but an article I did back in August about how media consolidation would begin to impact politics is bearing out, according to our crack reporter, Adrienne Samuels, who’s down in South Carolina looking for some red meat for us,” he wrote on his blog.
“As she noticed, Black talk radio, which would normally be blowing up the airwaves as part of the Get Out The Vote effort, is non-existent in this particular South Carolina race.
“Why? It’s all Clear Channel-owned stations in the major markets. Steve Harvey, Tom Joyner and a host of other syndicated content in the morning and throughout the dayparts. That means little to no local radio mobilization, no on the spot reports of violations or obstructions at precincts come election day, no chance for Obama or Edwards or Clinton to call in to radio stations and talk for 20 minutes directly to someone who can force them to contextualize their arguments for a specific audience with specific issues. . . .
“Not that Joyner et al have no power to organize, of course. But in the trenches the local angle works much better. The ability of a voter to call in immediately and say he or she had trouble at the polls puts an immense amount of power at the hands of the guy in the street. A huge tool in black political organizing is gradually being lost.”
http://www.maynardije.org/columns/dickprince/080124_prince/
MORE:
Fool Me Once …
The Clinton Game: America shouldn’t fall for it this time
By Sam Fulwood
TheRoot.com
Jan 28, 2008
I’m disgusted with Bill and Hillary Clinton. Not merely because they played the race card on Barack Obama, but because they’ve done it before.
It worked to perfection for them in 1992. I saw it up close when I was a part of the Los Angeles Times’ political team covering Bill Clinton’s successful bid for the White House. Clinton entered the race a decided underdog, backed by a fragile coalition of black believers and disaffected white Reagan Democrats. As we crisscrossed the country, it became increasingly clear how he intended to keep the two disparate constituent groups in his corner: He would send mixed messages. In Southern churches filled with pious African-American worshipers, he sounded like a black Baptist preacher. In rural white communities, he did not hesitate to use racially coded rhetoric.
Early in the campaign, Clinton told a largely white audience that he represented the “new Democrats” who “should no longer feel guilty about protecting the innocent” victims of crime. Then he interrupted his campaign appearances to fly home to Little Rock, Ark., to demonstrate his willingness to let the execution of mentally retarded Ricky Ray Rector proceed without interruption. Rector’s execution allowed Clinton to distance himself from political rival the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who had publicly urged Clinton to spare Rector’s life. Second, it made him look tough on crime, especially crimes committed by black men on white victims. Together, these acts solidified Clinton as a “new Democrat” in the eyes of white voters.
Then came Sister Souljah.
On a blisteringly hot Saturday in June, I covered a Clinton speech at Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition at a downtown Washington, D.C., hotel. Relations between Jackson and Clinton were frosty. The civil rights leader had run unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in 1984 and 1988. He was withholding his support of Clinton and was toying with the idea of joining forces with third-party hopeful H. Ross Perot.
I didn’t realize it immediately, but Clinton had come primed for a fight with Jackson. He brought in the heavy guns for his appearance before some 300 African-Americans. In the media gallery, the candidate’s heavy-hitting advisers milled about. Paul Begala, George Stephanopoulos, and James Carville stayed behind the scenes plotting strategy. The fact that all three were there suggested that something big was going on.
Clinton gave a well-received speech that roused the crowd with a full-throated attack on President Bush’s policies. Then, in what seemed to all to be an unscripted moment, Clinton said he felt compelled to discuss racism with the audience because, he declared, all Americans must speak out against it.
Then, he turned his full attention to Sister Souljah, a young rapper who had expressed solidarity with the rioters in Los Angeles who attacked white motorists following acquittals in the Rodney King police-beating case. A few days earlier, Sister Souljah had been quoted in a Washington Post profile saying: “I mean if black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people? … So if you’re a gang member and you would normally be killing somebody, why not kill a white person?”
The day before Clinton’s speech, Sister Souljah had been invited to speak at the Rainbow Coalition forum where Jackson had praised her for contributions to his organization’s work. Clinton knew Jackson was vulnerable. “If you took the words ‘white’ and ‘black’ and you reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech,” Clinton said, drawing audible gasps in the predominately African-American audience of Jackson supporters. He went on to take notice of her presence at the meeting the day before.
Jackson was embarrassed and outraged. Visibly shaken, he told me, “I do not know why he used this platform to address those issues. It was unnecessary. It was a diversion. … Perhaps he was aiming for an audience that was not here.”
Indeed, he was. Suddenly, I understood it perfectly. That’s why the team from Little Rock was at the ready. They were there to spin the story for the fat Sunday papers and well-watched talking-head shows.
Knowing that the second day story would be reaction from black leaders to the candidate’s comments, I (joined by Gwen Ifill, then of the New York Times) rushed to grab a quote or two from black congressional leaders. I wanted to know if they were as offended by Clinton’s comments as Jackson was.
Comparing notes, Ifill and I realized that Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., had made almost identical comments to us. Clinton had given them his talking points in advance, covering himself beautifully.
You don’t have to strain to see the parallels.
Faced with the prospect of losing, the Clintons tried to marginalize Obama by making him nothing more than the black people’s candidate.
After the results were announced in South Carolina, Bill Clinton added the kicker: “Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in ’84 and ’88,” Clinton said in a speech on his wife’s behalf. “Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here. … Now we go to February 5 when millions of Americans finally get in the act.”
See why I’m so disgusted? I know which Americans Clinton is talking about.
Sam Fulwood III is a writer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and lecturer at Case Western Reserve University.
URL: http://www.theroot.com/id/44468
© TheRoot.com
http://www.theroot.com/id/44468/output/print
Sleeping with the Enemy
by BooMan
Thu Jan 31st, 2008 at 11:31:13 AM EST
Apparently, ABC News got their mitts on some tapes of old Wal-Mart board meetings and aired a nasty piece on Hillary Clinton on this morning’s Good Morning America:
In six years as a member of the Wal-Mart board of directors, between 1986 and 1992, Hillary Clinton remained silent as the world’s largest retailer waged a major campaign against labor unions seeking to represent store workers.
The substance of the charge is that Hillary was mute in meetings where union busting was rigorously discussed. I think it is important to put this is some perspective.
President Clinton defended his wife’s role on the Wal-Mart board last week after the issue was raised by Sen. Barack Obama in a CNN debate.
His wife did not try to change the company’s minds about unions, the former Arkansas governor said.
“We lived in a state that had a very weak labor movement, where I always had the endorsement of the labor movement because I did what I could do to make it stronger. She knew there was no way she could change that, not with it headquartered in Arkansas, and she agreed to serve,” President Clinton said.
The tapes show that Hillary advocated for more environmentally-friendly business practices and better treatment for female employees, but it turns out she wasn’t particularly effective as an advocate.
Critics say Clinton’s efforts produced few tangible results, and Wal-Mart is now defending itself in a lawsuit brought by 16 current and former female employees.
“I don’t doubt the sincerity of her efforts, but we don’t see much evidence that conditions for women at Wal-Mart changed much during the late 1980s and early 1990s,” said Joe Sellers, one of the lawyers suing Wal-Mart on behalf of the women.
Personally, I am not particularly disturbed by this news. It seems to me to be a lot of quibbling that takes too little account of the circumstances of the time. What I find more disturbing than Hillary’s time on the board of Wal-Mart is her ongoing relationship with the company.
According to the New York Times, Sen. Clinton “maintains close ties to Wal-Mart executives through the Democratic Party and the tightly knit Arkansas business community.” The May 20, 2007 article also reported that her husband, former President Clinton, “speaks frequently to Wal-Mart’s current chief executive, H. Lee Scott Jr.” and held a private dinner at the Clinton’s New York home in July 2006 for him.
It’s one thing to maintain old contacts, it’s quite another to hold private dinners at your home for union busting CEO’s. It reminds me of a couple of other tidbits I’ve seen recently.
Asked whether his infidelity is hypocritical, in light of his political commitments, [Richard Mellon-Scaife] refers not to a moral principle but to his own personal history. “My first marriage ended with an affair,” he says, amused. And monogamy is not, he continues, an essential part of a good marriage. “I don’t want people throwing rocks at me in the street. But I believe in open marriage.” Philandering, Scaife says with a laugh, “is something that Bill Clinton and I have in common.”
Those are surprising words indeed to hear from a man who spent so lavishly to uncover Bill Clinton’s sexual peccadilloes and to advance the movement fueled by family values. But it would be a mistake to read the saga of Richard Mellon Scaife’s divorce as simply a story of moral hypocrisy. His treatment of women, especially his first wife, suggests a high regard for his own gratification…
…Scaife speaks of a “very pleasant” two-hour-and-fifteen-minute private lunch with Bill Clinton at the former president’s New York office last summer. “I never met such a charismatic man in my whole life,” Scaife says, glowing with pleasure at the memory. “To show him that I wasn’t a total Republican libertarian, I said that I had a friend named Jack Murtha,” a Democratic member of the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. “He said, `Oh, Jack Murtha. You’re talking about my golfing partner!’ ”
And who can forget this CBS News headline: Rupert Murdoch Loves Hillary Clinton: Conservative Media Mogul To Host Fundraiser For Liberal N.Y. Senator?
To call them a political odd couple would be a rash understatement.
Conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch will host a fundraiser for liberal New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, the Financial Times reports.
The mating ritual of the unlikely allies has been under way for months. Clinton set political tongues to wagging last month by attending a Washington party celebrating the 10th anniversary of Fox News, the cable news channel owned by Murdoch.
The Financial Times quoted one unnamed source as describing the Clinton-Murdoch connection in this way: “They have a respectful and cordial relationship. He has respect for the work she has done on behalf of New York. I wouldn’t say it was illustrative of a close ongoing relationship. It is not like they are dining out together.”
It’s only in this larger context that I find Hillary’s work for Wal-Mart to be disturbing. It’s not that she didn’t quit the board way back when, it’s that she and her husband don’t seem to know who the enemy is, despite all their experience dealing with them.
UNDERNEWS
A FEW FACTS ABOUT THE CLINTON YEARS
RALPH NADER – A brainy White House assistant to Mr. Clinton told me in 1997 that the only real achievement his boss could take credit for was passage of legislation allowing 12 weeks family leave, without pay.
He pushed through Congress the NAFTA and the World Trade Organization agreements that represented the greatest surrender in our history of local, state and national sovereignty to an autocratic, secretive system of transnational governance. This system subordinated workers, consumers and the environment to the supremacy of globalized commerce.
That was just for starters. Between 1996 and 2000, he drove legislation through Congress that concentrated more power in the hands of giant agribusiness, large telecommunications companies and the biggest jackpot – opening the doors to gigantic mergers in the financial industry. The latter so-called “financial modernization law” sowed the permissive seeds for taking vast financial risks with other peoples’ money (ie. pensioners and investors) that is now shaking the economy to recession.
The man who pulled off this demolition of regulatory experience from the lessons of the Great Depression was Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, who went to work for Citigroup – the main pusher of this oligopolistic coup -Âjust before the bill passed and made himself $40 million for a few months of consulting in that same year.
Bill Clinton’s presidential resume was full of favors for the rich and powerful. Corporate welfare subsidies, handouts and giveaways flourished, including subsidizing the Big Three Auto companies for a phony research partnership while indicating there would be no new fuel efficiency regulations while he was President.
His regulatory agencies were anesthetized. The veteran watchdog for Public Citizen of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Sidney Wolfe, said that safety was the worst under Clinton in his twenty nine years of oversight.
The auto safety agency abandoned its regulatory oath of office and became a consulting firm to the auto industry. Other agencies were similarly asleep in job safety railroads, household product safety, antitrust, and corporate crime law enforcement. . .
TIME: CLINTONS LOSING THE ESTABLISHMENT
TIME – With the Obama endorsement of Ted Kennedy following in the footsteps of endorsements from party luminaries such as Claire McCaskill, Janet Napolitano, and Kent Conrad, it’s clear that Hillary Clinton is not getting the support of some of the establishment Democrats she might have been counting on. This is an important development that is not just about campaign momentum. “Party luminaries” comprise about 800 of the delegates to the Democratic convention — approximately 20% of the total. Up until now, it has been widely assumed that the party establishment would rally heavily to the establishment candidate, namely Clinton, providing her a necessary boost of delegates should the race remain close.
With a general revulsion to the Clinton’s campaign tactics now settling in, that assumption is now questionable. Moreover, even if Clinton should ultimately prevail in a close contest, she and her husband have so alienated a significant number of Democrats that there is likely to be a significant swath of delegates on the floor in Denver who are going to need a lot of persuading to keep them from embarrassing Clinton in her moment of triumph.
