(Cliff Owen/AP Photo)
The
Hillary Clinton for President in 2016 bandwagon has started very early
and with a purpose. The idea is to get large numbers of endorsers, so
that no Democratic Primary competitors dare make a move. These
supporters include Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), financier George Soros
and Ready for Hillary, a super PAC mobilizing with great specificity
(already in Iowa).
Given this early bird launch, it is important to raise the pressing question:
Does the future of our country benefit from Hillary, another Clinton,
another politician almost indistinguishable from Barack Obama’s
militaristic, corporatist policies garnished by big money donors from
Wall Street and other plutocratic canyons?
There is no doubt the Clintons are syrupy political charmers,
beguiling many naïve Democrats who have long been vulnerable to a
practiced set of comforting words or phrases camouflaging contrary
deeds.
Everybody knows that Hillary is for women, children and education.
She says so every day. But Democrats and others can’t get the Clintons
even to support a $10.50 federal minimum wage that would almost equal
the 1968 minimum wage, inflation-adjusted, and would raise the wages of
30 million workers mired in the gap between the present minimum wage of
$7.25 and $10.50 an hour. It just so happens that almost two-thirds of
these Americans are women, many of them single moms struggling to
support their impoverished children. Nearly a million of these workers
labor for Walmart, on whose Board of Directors Hillary Clinton once sat.
Words hide the deeds.
As a Senator on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Hillary had to
start proving that women, just like the macho men, can be belligerent
and never see a weapons system and its use that they didn’t like. Never
did she demonstrate any ongoing interest in debloating the massive,
wasteful, duplicative military budget so as to free up big monies for
domestic public works programs or other necessities.
As Senator she also admitted that she didn’t have time to read a
critical National Intelligence Estimate Report, which had caveats that
might have dissuaded her from voting with George W. Bush to invade Iraq
in 2003. War-mongering and wars of Empire never bothered her then or
now. Just a few weeks ago, she was photographed giving the recidivist
war criminal, Republican Henry Kissinger, a big, smiling hug at a public
event. It’s all part of the bi-partisan image she is cultivating under
the opportunistic banner of “cooperation.” (For more information, read
the New York Times’ Collateral Damage and Nixon and Kissinger’s
Forgotten Shame, or Seymour Hersh’s The Price of Power: Kissinger in the
Nixon White House.)
As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton accelerated the Department’s
militarization, belting far more war-like, threatening assertions toward
governments of developing countries than did the Secretaries of
Defense. She loved to give speeches on “force projection,” the latest
synonym for “the Empire,” and “the pivot” toward East Asia and against
the asserted looming threat of China. Taking due note, the Chinese
generals demanded larger budgets.
The Secretary of State’s highest duty is diplomacy. Not for her.
Despite her heavy travelling, she made little or no effort to get the
government to sign onto the numerous international treaties which
already had over a hundred nations as signatories. These include
stronger climate change agreements and, as Human Rights Watch reports,
unratified treaties “relating to children, women, persons with
disabilities, torture, enforced disappearance and the use of
anti-personal landmines and cluster munitions.” These tasks bore her.
Much more exciting was military action. Against the wishes of
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, she pulled Barack Obama into the
Libyan war. There were consequences. Libya is now in militia chaos,
having spilled over into Mali, but without Gaddafi, its overthrown
dictator who had disarmed and was making peace with western nations and
oil companies.
As a Yale Law School graduate, she was not in the least bothered that
the attack on Libya occurred without any Congressional declaration,
authorization or appropriation of funds – a classic Madisonian
definition of impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors.
Like Bill Clinton, she is an unabashed cheerleader for corporate
globalization under NAFTA, the World Trade Organization and the proposed
sovereignty-stripping, anti-worker Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade
Agreement. Secretary of State Clinton, in the words of trade expert
Jamie Love, "put the hammer to India when the government took steps to
grant compulsory licenses on cancer drug patents."
Even regarding the easy clampdown on waste and fraud, Hillary Clinton
fired Peter Van Buren, a 24-year-Foreign Service Officer, who exposed
such waste and mismanagement by corporate contractors in Iraq. (For more
information, see
http://wemeantwell.com/).
Foreshadowing this season’s headlines, former Secretary of State Clinton
ordered U.S. officials to spy on top UN diplomats including Secretary
General of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon, and those from the United Kingdom. She
ordered her emissaries around the world to obtain DNA data, iris scans
and fingerprints along with credit card and frequent flier numbers. Not
only was this a clear violation of the 1946 UN convention, but after
admitting what happened she didn’t even make a public apology to the
affected parties.
Under her watch, the advice and status of the Department’s foreign
service officers and aid workers were marginalized in favor of the
militarists – and not only in Iraq.
Many Wall Streeters like Hillary Clinton. Expecting their ample
contributions, and socializing with their business barons, it is not
surprising that Hillary Clinton avoids going after the crooked casino
capitalism that collapsed the economy, drained investors, pensions, jobs
and taxpayer bailouts. Hillary Clinton is a far cry from the stalwart
Senator Elizabeth Warren on this towering pattern of unaccountable
corporate abuse.
The surreal world of Hillary Clinton is giving $200,000 speeches,
collecting prestigious awards she does not deserve, including one from
the American Bar Association, and basking in the glory of her admirers
while appropriately blasting the Republicans for their “War on Women” –
the safe refrain of her forthcoming campaign.
It is true that the Republican madheads make it easy for any Democratic
candidate to judge themselves by the cruel, rabid, ravaging Republicans.
But, is that the kind of choice our country deserves?
A Clinton Coronation two years or more before the 2016 elections will
stifle any broader choice of competitive primary candidates and more
important a more progressive agenda supported by a majority of the
American people.
Full Medicare for all, cracking down on corporate abuses, a fairer
tax system, a broad public works program, a living wage, access to
justice and citizen empowerment, clean election practices, and pulling
back on the expensive, boomeranging Empire to come home to America’s
necessities and legitimate hopes are some examples of what the people
want.
Maybe the sugarcoating is starting to wear. Columnist Frank Bruni,
writing in the New York Times (Hillary in 2016? Not so Fast), reports
her polls are starting to slump. Apparently, as Bruni suggests, she’s
being seen as part of the old Washington crowd that voters are souring
on.
As I wrote to Hillary Clinton in early summer 2008, when calls were
made by Obama partisans for her to drop out, no one should be told not
to run. That’s everyone’s First Amendment right. However, not voting for
her is the prudent decision.
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