2016 Postmortem
Showing Original Post only (View all)"Clinton Policies Have Hurt Women" [View all]
Interesting article from Nakedcapitalism:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/05/clinton-policies-have-hurt-women.html
Yves here. This post is an indictment of the policy positions that Clinton has taken on issues that affect women.
Another disingenuous element of the women should vote for Hillary campaign is that the efforts shes been touting to prove her bona fides, such as her intent to name a Cabinet withhalf the posts filled by women, is that shes selling trickle-down feminism. The tacit assumption is that breaking the glass ceiling is an important breakthrough for women. In fact, that is a concern of elite women. As Hillarys own record attests, and that of women CEOs (Linda Wachner to Marissa Mayer) or women in Congress (Diane Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi are prime examples, as are Republicans like Joni Ernst from Iowa and Shelley Moore Capito from West Virginia), women in positions of influence more often identify with members of their class (well off, well educated women) than middle and lower class people of either gender.
...I strongly argued that we had to change the [welfare] system
I didnt think it was fair that one single mother improvised to find child care and got up early every day to get to work while another stayed home and relied on welfare
The third bill passed by Congress cut off most benefits to legal immigrants, imposed a five-year lifetime limit on federal welfare benefits, and maintained the status quo on monthly benefit limits, leaving the states free to set benefit limits
I agreed that he [Bill] should sign it and worked hard to round up votes for its passage
Weeks after Bill signed the law, Peter Edelman and Mary Jo Bane, another friend and Assistant Secretary at HHS who had worked on welfare reform, resigned in protest. Hillary Clinton in her 2003 memoir Hard Choices.
Not liking Hillary has nothing to do with her being a woman. It has everything to do with the hypermasculine values she espouses.
Hillary is that rare combination, even in our grotesque political landscape, of a smooth-talking neoliberal with the worst tendencies of a warrior-neoconservative. You couldnt say that about Bill to the same extent, but there isnt a regime change opportunity, a chemical or conventional arms deal, an escalated aerial (or lately drone) war, or an authoritarian friend in need, that Hillary hasnt liked. If we get her, we will only be setting back feminism by decades, because her policieslike welfare reformhave always come packaged under the false rubric of caring for women and children. Its like George W. Bushs compassionate conservatism, the rhetorical cover she needs to enact policies, time after time, that erode womens and childrens standing even as she claims to be their steadfast advocate.
In the early 1990s Hillary did represent, to some limited symbolic level, a change for the better in terms of feminist valuesthough this certainly didnt translate into actual policy improvements for women or children or minorities, rather the opposite occurred in policies engineered by the Clintons. Furthermore, one could argue that it was George H. W. Bush who prompted the relative humanization of the 1990s, after the harsh Reagan-era rhetoric, promising a kindler, gentler nation, and aspiring to be the education president and the environmental president. The elder Bushs policies were to the left of either Clinton, when it came to immigration, civil liberties, clean air, disability, and many other issues.
The Clintons went out of their way to pursueoften gratuitouslypolicies that hurt women and children. The reelection seemed safely in their pockets, yet they went ahead anyway with harmful laws on crime, welfare, telecommunications, immigration, and surveillance, legitimizing right-wing discourse that was to bear full fruit in the following decade. It was the Clintons who set the stage for the massive harm that was to befall women, immigrants, the poor, the elderly, and children once they provided liberal cover to social darwinist ideas that had been swirling around in maniacal think tanks but had not been able to make it through Congress.
The Clintons have somehow managed to convince half the sane world that they should be the natural recipients of African-American votes, despite everything they have done, when in power, to erode the economic security of African Americans and other minorities; the false hope raised during the 1990s was that the economic boom, itself a mirage as it turned out, would eventually lead to significant wage gains, but that never happened.
Poor and minority women and children were drastically hurt by the welfare bill the Clintons so enthusiastically pushed through Congress, and likewise all the policies, from trade to student aid, they pursued in the name of fiscal responsibility, cutting the deficit and the debt, and playing by Wall Streets tune. On neoliberal disciplinary virtues (which in Hillarys mouth are twisted in a rhetoric of empowerment), shes little different than Milton Friedman, the greatest post-war popularizer of the free market mythos. Personal responsibility, separating the virtuous from those deserving of sanctions, is as much a credo for her as it was for Reagan, as it was for Barry Goldwater.