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Indybay Feature

Are you with Hillary? Why?

by Akio Tanaka
Some things to consider before the California Democratic Party primary.
The President who dismantled many of the progressive New Deal legislations of FDR was a Democrat, Bill Clinton: the Telecom Reform Act ’96 paved the way for corporate control of the media including the Internet, the Welfare Reform Act ’96 removed the safety net for the poor, the Freedom to Farm Act ’96 removed the protections for the family farms and led to the gigantic subsidies for the corporate agribusiness. Most fatefully, the Banking Reform Act ’99 took away the government oversight of the banking system, and Commodity Futures Modernization Act ‘00, exempted new financial products like OTC (over-the-counter) derivatives from regulation.

Clinton also pushed and got the Congress to pass NAFTA (North America Free Trade Agreement) and WTO (World Trade Organization) Agreements which allowed corporations to pursue profit free from constraints of the US environmental and worker protection laws. The current illegal immigration crisis in the US is also a direct result of NAFTA, where importation of cheap subsidized genetically modified corn from the US drove Mexican farmers off their land. Globalization is the face of financial imperialism.

During Clinton’s administration there were two major transformations of the national political economy: deregulation of the banks and the off-shoring of production. The off-shoring destroyed the real productive economy and the middle class, and the deregulation of the banks ushered in the era of predatory banks that plundered the American middle-class with the Dot-com Bubble of 2000 and the Subprime Mortgage Housing Bubble of 2008.

As far as Hillary Clinton’s time as first lady—or “co-president” as some called her, Michelle Alexander recently noted that “Hillary wasn’t picking out china while she was first lady. She bravely broke the mold and redefined that job in ways no woman ever had before. She not only campaigned for Bill; she also wielded power and significant influence once he was elected, lobbying for legislation and other measures.”

In 2016, the American people are facing a prospect of another Clinton presidency.

Fool me once, shame on you; Fool me twice, shame on me.
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