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15 Ways Bill Clinton's White House Failed America and the World
By AlterNet Staff [1] / AlterNet [2]
June 22, 2015
Bill Clinton remains one of America's most popular presidents. A national
poll last March by NBC and the Wall Street Journal found [3] 56 percent of
Americans had a clearly favorable view of Clinton. That's long been true for
African Americans-from novelist Toni Morrison famously calling him the
"first black president [4]" while in office, to books explaining [5] his
appeal after his presidency ended.
Clinton has used this popularity to build his enormously ambitious global
foundation, collecting $2 billion in assets for many anti-poverty and health
initiatives, as well as building a personal fortune from speechmaking
estimated at $30 million or more. In recent years, most of the public has
forgotten what Clinton did as president, even as he has steadily been in the
news.
But for more than a year before Hillary Clinton launched her latest
presidential campaign, Bill Clinton has been selectively telling media
outlets that he made some mistakes as president and might have acted
otherwise. He's even tried to recast actual events and been taken to task by
fact-checkers who recall his leading role in what became major crises, such
as the 2008 global financial implosion.
What follows are 15 ways Bill Clinton's presidency did not serve America or
the world, and in many ways deepened and perpetuated the problems we face
today. This article was prepared by AlterNet staff members Janet Allon,
Michael Arria, Jan Frel, Tana Ganeva, Kali Holloway, Zaid Jilani, Adam
Johnson, Steven Rosenfeld, Phillip Smith, Terrell Jermaine Starr and Carrie
Weissman.
1. Prison-loving president. In May, on the heels of the unrest in Baltimore
sparked by Freddie Gray's death in police custody, Clinton apologized for
locking too many people up. Thanks, Bill.
The 2.4 million people in prison and the 160,000 Americans serving life in
prison largely because of his policies might be excused for not accepting
Clinton's apology. Tag-teaming with ex-President Ronald Reagan, Clinton is
the president most responsible for the mass incarceration of Americans on an
epic scale. The gung-ho crime fighter-in-chief passed the single most
damaging law with his omnibus federal crime bill in 1994, which included the
infamous "three strikes" law (three felony convictions means a life
sentence) and ensured that mandatory minimum sentences imprisoned even
low-level, non-violent offenders for a long, long time.
Clinton discussed his regrets about the crime bill with CNN's Christiane
Amanpour. "The problem is the way it was written and implemented is we cast
too wide a net and we had too many people in prison," he said. "And we wound
up... putting so many people in prison that there wasn't enough money left
to educate them, train them for new jobs and increase the chances when they
came out so they could live productive lives."
All true, except it was not just lack of funds that eliminated education and
rehabilitation programs in prison, it was a deliberate choice. Sensing the
political popularity of being tough on crime, Clinton fully embraced the
lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key mentality, and gloated about three
strikes. It strains credulity to think that this exceptionally intelligent
man did not understand the dire consequences of what he was doing, as his
wife now says.
Clinton's Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 helped set
the national mood. Dozens of states followed with their own mandatory
minimum laws. While there is some talk today of criminal justice reform on a
minor level (like for low-level drug offenses), no one is talking about the
all-but-forgotten population doing hard time thanks in large part to
Clinton.
2. Punitive welfare reform. The consequences of Bill Clinton's welfare
reform bill have been devastating for millions of American families. The
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 took
a page directly from Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich's
Contract with America [6]. In an atmosphere steeped in decades of
conservative scaremongering around the specter of sexually reckless "welfare
queens," Clinton's 1992 campaign promise to "end welfare as we know it"
played directly to white voters' fears of black crime and poverty. Twenty
years after scrapping the longstanding Aid to Families with Dependent
Children in favor of the right wing's underfunded and more punitive vision,
the number of poor American children has exploded and black welfare
recipients are subject to the system's most stringent rules.
In 2012, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities [7] found that while "in
1996, for every 100 families with children living in poverty, TANF
[Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] provided cash aid to 68 families,"
that number plunged to 27 out of every 100 families living in poverty by
2010. Conservatives trumpet these numbers, often citing the fact that
nationally, TANF enrollment fell 58 percent between 1995-2010. But they
neglect to mention that the number of poor families with children rose 17
percent in the same period.
Sociologist Joe Soss, who has examined the long-term racial consequences of
welfare reform, which allowed states to decide how funds were allotted and
eligibility determined, also noted [8] that, "all of the states with more
African Americans on the welfare rolls chose tougher rules.[E]ven though the
Civil Rights Act prevents the government from creating different programs
for black and white recipients, when states choose according to this
pattern, it ends up that large numbers of African Americans get concentrated
in the states with the toughest rules, and large numbers of white recipients
get concentrated in the states with the more lenient rules."
3. Wall Street's Deregulator-in-Chief. As president, Clinton outdid the GOP
when it came to unleashing Wall Street's worst instincts, by supporting and
signing into law more financial deregulation legislation than any other
president, according to the Columbia Journalism Review [9].
He didn't just push the Democrats controlling the House to pass a bill
(Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act [10]) that dissolved the Depression-era
Glass-Steagall law [11], which barred investment banks from commercial
banking activities. He deregulated [12] the risky derivatives market
(Commodity Futures Modernization Act), gutted state regulation of banks
(Riegle-Neal [13]) leading to a wave of banking mergers, and reappointed
Alan Greenspan as Federal Reserve chair. In recent years, Clinton has
ludicrously claimed [14] that the GOP forced him to do this, which led in no
small part to the global financial crisis of 2008 and the too-big-to-fail
ethos, with the federal government obligated to bail out multinational banks
while doing little for individual account holders.
"What happened?" he told [14] CNN in 2013. "The American people gave the
Congress to a group of very conservative Republicans. When they passed bills
with veto-proof majority with a lot of Democrats voting for it, that I
couldn't stop, all of a sudden we turn out to be maniacal deregulators. I
mean, come on." As CJR put [9] it, "This is, to be kind, bullshit," reciting
a list of Clinton deregulatory actions that began while Democrats were the
majority, starting with appointing "Robert Rubin and Larry Summers in the
Treasury, which officially did in Glass-Steagall and the Commodity Futures
Modernization Act, which left the derivatives market a laissez-faire Wild
West."
CJR concludes [9], "The bottom line is: Bill Clinton was responsible for
more damaging financial deregulation-and thus, for the [2008] financial
crisis-than any other president."
4. Gutted manufacturing via trade agreements. Bill Clinton helped gut
America's manufacturing base by promoting and passing the North American
Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA [15], in 1993, when Democrats controlled
Congress. That especially resonates today, when another Democratic
president, Barack Obama, and Republicans in Congress, are allied against
labor unions and liberal Democrats to pass its like-minded descendant, the
Trans Pacific Partnership [16]. "NAFTA signaled that the Democratic
Party-the "progressive" side of the U.S. two-party system-had accepted the
reactionary economic ideology of Ronald Reagan," wrote Jeff Faux, on the
Economic Policy Institute Working Economics Blog [17].
In 1979, then-candidate Reagan proposed a trade pact between the U.S.,
Canada and Mexico. But the Democrats who controlled the Congress would not
approve it until Clinton pushed it in his first year in office. NAFTA has
affected U.S. workers in four major ways, EPI said. It caused the permanent
loss of 700,000 manufacturing jobs in industrial states such as California,
Texas and Michigan. It gave corporate managers an excuse to cut wages and
benefits, threatening otherwise to move to Mexico. Selling U.S. farm
products in Mexico "dislocated millions of Mexican workers and their
families," which "was a major cause in the dramatic increase in undocumented
workers flowing into the U.S. labor market." And NAFTA became a "template
for rules of the emerging global economy, in which the benefits would flow
to capital and the costs to labor."
The World Trade Organization, World Bank, International Monetary Fund all
applied NAFTA's principles, which gave corporations the power to challenge
local laws protecting health and safety if they cut into profits-like
labeling tobacco packaging. The NAFTA "doctrine of socialism for capital and
free markets for labor" could also be seen in the way the U.S. government
"organized the rescue of the world's banks and corporate investors and let
workers fend for themselves" in the Mexican peso crisis of 1994-'95, the
Asian financial crash of 1997, and the global financial meltdown of 2008.
5. No LGBT equality: Defense of Marriage Act. The Defense of Marriage Act
(DOMA) was one of conservatives' biggest victories in the 1990s. Passed by
Congress and signed into law by Clinton in 1996, the bill defined spouse as
"heterosexual" and deprived legally wed same-sex couples of many significant
benefits, from Social Security benefits to hospital visitation rights. It
allowed states to refuse legal recognition of couples married in other
states.
Writing in the New Yorker, Clinton's former advisor on gay issues, Richard
Socarides, addressed [18] why he signed the wildly discriminatory
legislation. For one thing, Socarides said that Clinton's political
opponents outmaneuvered him. He also chalks up the president's decision as
"a failure to imagine how quickly gay rights would evolve." The former
president was hardly an ardent supporter of the legislation. The New York
Times noted [19], "Mr. Clinton considered it a gay-baiting measure, but was
unwilling to risk re-election by vetoing it."
But the damage was done. For almost a decade, same-sex couples suffered
financial and emotional hardships. Gay couples weren't allowed to make
medical decisions for their partners, couldn't get the major tax breaks
afforded to heterosexual couples, and faced unequal treatment in many other
areas [20] of law. In 2013, Clinton stated his opposition to the law. That
year, in a major gay rights victory, the Supreme Court declared DOMA's
Section 3 (which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman)
unconstitutional. Today, 37 states have legalized [20] same-sex marriage,
and in coming days, the Supreme Court is expected to do so.
6. Expanded the war on drugs. Although Clinton called for treatment instead
of prison for drug offenders during his 1992 campaign, once in office he
reverted to the same drug war strategies of his Republican predecessors. He
rejected the U.S. Sentencing Commission's recommendation to eliminate the
disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences. He rejected lifting
the federal ban on funding for needle exchange programs. He placed a
permanent eligibility ban on food stamps for anyone convicted of a felony
drug offense, even marijuana possession. And he prohibited felons from
living in public housing.
He also championed the 1994 crime bill, a $30 effort that included more
mandatory minimum sentences for crack cocaine, extra funds for states that
severely punished convicts, limited judges' discretion in sentencing, and
allocated billions for federal prison construction and expansion. During
Clinton's tenure, federal prison spending jumped $19 billion (171%), while
funding for public housing declined by $17 billion (61%). Under Clinton,
nearly $1 billion in state spending shifted from education to prisons.
The U.S. prison population doubled from about 600,000 to about 1.2 million
during the Clinton years, and the federal prison population swelled even
more dramatically, driven almost entirely by drug war prosecutions. Yet a
month before leaving office, Clinton said in a Rolling Stone interview that
"we really need a re-examination of our entire policy on imprisonment" of
drug users and that pot smoking "should be decriminalized." If only he had
acted on those sentiments when it mattered.
7. Expanded the death penalty. When running for president in 1992,
then-Arkansas Gov. Clinton allowed [21] his state to execute Ricky Ray
Rector, a convicted murderer with severe mental impairments. Despite much
criticism, Clinton's decision not to commute the sentence not only
established his tough-on-crime credentials as a national candidate, it also
became a precedent to the expansion of the federal death penalty under his
White House.
Clinton's 1994 crime bill [22] expanded the death penalty to 60 additional
crimes including three that don't involve murder: espionage, treason and
drug trafficking in large amounts. Throughout his presidency he ignored
calls for a national moratorium on federal executions. In April 1996,
Clinton followed up and signed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty
Act (AEDPA) into law. Introduced by Kansas Republican Sen. Bob Dole in
response to the Oklahoma City bombings in 1995, it severely restricted the
ability of federal judges to grant relief in cases, reduced trials for
convicted criminals and sped up the sentencing process.
In 2011, Troy Davis, an African American convicted [23] of killing an
off-duty cop, was put to death in Georgia. Davis' case sparked nationwide
protests as many believed he was innocent. There was no evidence linking him
to the crime and seven witnesses who helped put him on Death Row later
recanted their testimony.
Many believe Bill Clinton helped seal Davis' fate years before. Many of
Davis' appeals were denied for procedural reasons and his 2004 petition,
which included the recanted testimony and the possible identity of the
killer, was rejected by the federal judge since, under current regulations,
such evidence has to be presented first in state court. Davis' defense was
unable to do that because, shortly before AEDPA became law, Congress slashed
$20 million from post-conviction legal defense organizations. In a piece in
Time [24], Brendan Lowe quoted Dale Baich, an assistant federal public
defender in Arizona: "The bottom line is that the AEDPA is very harsh and
unforgiving."
8. Returned to Cold War priorities. As the Soviet Union collapsed, the U.S.
under President George H.W. Bush forged ahead with the same imperialist
stance toward Europe. As Bush's successor, Clinton had an historic
opportunity to attempt a cooperative, non-aggressive international model
based on international law. While his administration frequently gave lip
service to these ideals, a far-reaching economic and political agenda to
bring Eastern Europe into the NATO-E.U.-U.S. orbit was in the works. As
Clinton's former national security advisor Anthony Lake summarized,
"Throughout the cold war, we contained a global threat to market
democracies: now we should seek to enlarge their reach." And enlarge they
did.
The Clinton administration intervened massively across the former Soviet
satellite states of Eastern Europe, with direct interventions in the Balkans
through NATO, corporate buyouts of industry from Poland to the Czech
Republic, and the notorious "shock doctrine" of neoliberal economic reforms
in exchange for IMF loans: cutting wages and corporate taxes, increasing
working hours and slashing social programs. Bringing the Baltic states and
Eastern Bloc countries into military arrangements associated with NATO, and
establishing a major military garrison in the Balkans, Bill Clinton set the
stage for the clash on Russia's border in Ukraine currently overseen by
Obama, which could last for decades and undermine the process of integrating
Russia into the industrialized world.
9. Joycelyn Elders and the culture war. At a 1994 U.N. Conference on AIDS,
the U.S. Surgeon General, Joycelyn Elders, was asked if "a more explicit
discussion and promotion of masturbation" could help limit the spread of the
virus. Elders said she was "a very strong advocate" of teaching sex
education in schools "at a very early age." She added, "As per your specific
question in regard to masturbation, I think that it is something that is a
part of human sexuality and it's a part of something that perhaps should be
taught. But we've not even taught our children the very basics."
Less than a month later, Elders was asked for her resignation. She had spent
just 15 month serving as Surgeon General of the Public Health Service under
the Clinton administration. As Arkansas governor, Clinton had appointed [25]
her director of the state's Health Department, the first African American to
hold the title.
Elders later clarified that she'd suggested not to teach schoolchildren how
to masturbate, but that masturbation is a natural part of human sexuality.
"People have taken a lot of things I've said in a most unusual way," she
said. However, Clinton White House chief of staff Leon E. Panetta said her
comment was, "just one too many," and her remarks on masturbation were "not
what a surgeon general should say." Elders has also endorsed legalizing
drugs and giving out birth control in high schools.
Then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich said, "It's good for the country and good
for the president that she's departed." But as the New York Times reported,
Elders' dismissal was met with heavy criticism from gay rights
organizations, abortion rights groups and liberal organizations like People
for the American Way. The New York City chapter of Planned Parenthood
commented, "Mr. Clinton will be making a serious political mistake if he
continues to try to out-Newt Mr. Gingrich."
10. Turning Lincoln Bedroom into fundraising condo. The Lincoln Bedroom is
an historic bedroom [26] on the second floor of the White House that was at
one time Abraham Lincoln's personal office. Under Clinton, it served another
purpose: an overnight apartment for top political donors. Between 1995 and
1996, donors who gave a total of $5.4 million [27] to the Democratic
National Committee-including businessman William Rollnick, who gave $235,000
to the DNC, and investor Dirk Ziff, who gave $411,000-stayed overnight as
White House guests.
Clinton had few doubts about the idea. When originally pitched to him in a
note by deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes, the president responded [28],
"Ready to start overnights right away." Sadly, Clinton started a trend [29].
On the campaign trail, George W. Bush criticized Clinton for "virtually
renting out the Lincoln Bedroom to big campaign donors." Yet when Bush took
office he continued the practice, handing the location over to donors who
had given him over $100,000 and personal friends, including Texas oilman Joe
O'Neill and Republican National Committee fundraiser Brad Freeman.
11. Bombed Sudanese pharmaceutical plant. On Aug. 20, 1998 the Al-Shifa
pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum North, Sudan was annihilated by a cruise
missile strike launched by the Clinton administration. President Clinton
claimed the plant was making a deadly nerve agent and maintained connections
to Osama bin Laden, who was unknown to most Americans at the time. Sudan
claimed it was a factory producing medicines that saved thousands.
The factory's owner, Salah Idris, denied the allegations vehemently and
unsuccessfully tried to sue the U.S. government. According to a U.K.
Guardian story, the plant "provided 50 percent of Sudan's medicines" and was
the country's main source of anti-malaria drugs. Germany's ambassador to
Sudan, Werner Daum, says the bombing led to "several tens of thousands of
deaths" and Human Rights Watch wrote a letter to the president explaining
how it had slowed down relief efforts in the region. In his book, Al-Qaeda:
Casting a Shadow of Terror [30], Jason Burke credits the bombing with
bolstering terrorism: "[it] confirmed to [bin Laden and his cohorts], and
others with similar views worldwide, that their conception of the world as a
cosmic struggle between good and evil was the right one." Noam Chomsky has
written that the bombing's consequences "may be comparable" to the attacks
of September 11.
12. Doubled down on Iraq sanctions. Due to President George W. Bush's
disastrous war of choice in Iraq, people forget Bill Clinton's Iraq
humanitarian disaster: U.S. sanctions that decimated the Iraqi economy,
crippled the civilian infrastructure, and according to a 1999 UNICEF survey
[31], ultimately led to the deaths of more than 500,000 children. Though the
sanctions began under President George H.W. Bush in 1990, Clinton expanded
them, insisting a week before [32] he took office in 1993, "There is no
difference between my policy and the policy of the [Bush] administration"
and squashing [33] any subsequent effort to rein them in.
In 1996, Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright continued to defend
[34] the sanctions. By 2000, some members of Congress cited an increasing
[35] number of reports [36] of the humanitarian crisis, calling for an end
to sanctions. House Democratic Whip David Bonior referred [37] to it as
"infanticide masquerading as policy." But Clinton refused to budge,
defending the policy [38] until the end of his presidency in 2001. Al Qaeda
leader Osama bin Laden cited [39] the sanctions as one of his primary
motives behind the 9/11 attacks on New York City and Washington, DC later
that year.
13. Political smears: Sistah Souljah. Clinton was highly regarded by African
Americans during the 1992 election cycle for his ability to articulate how
racism impacted their communities. However, when it mattered most, he
dropped the ball on race when it was completely unnecessary. It started when
he blasted hop-hop artist Sistah Souljah [40] over her comments in a
Washington Post article [41] about the Los Angeles riots [42], which were
sparked by the acquittal of several Los Angeles policemen who beat truck
driver Rodney King. "If black people kill black people every day, why not
have a week and kill white people?" she said.
Souljah claims she was misquoted. However, a few weeks later, both she and
Clinton spoke at Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition conference in Washington.
Clinton used his appearance to criticize her statements [43], saying, "We
can't get anywhere in this country pointing the finger at one another across
racial lines." He compared her remarks to former KKK wizard David Duke.
As Matt Bai wrote for Yahoo [44], Clinton was not going to lose black votes
by calling the rapper out. Black people were (and still are) hyper loyal to
the Democratic Party. But since Clinton is being reflective about his
presidency, perhaps he needs to go back to 1992 and rethink why he used his
time at the Rainbow Coalition to appeal to a segment of white voters who may
have wanted to see him distance himself from Rev. Jackson, still a key
leader in the Democratic Party at the time.
If you read the full Washington Post coverage and listen to some of Sistah
Souljah's commentary on white supremacy, you'll see she makes some valuable
points about anti-blackness and structural racism that are worth
considering. But Clinton chose not to delve into that. Instead, he preferred
to sell a sistah out and play the saxophone on the Arsenio Hall show.
14. Knew about coming Rwandan genocide. This might be Clinton's worst
foreign policy failure. Intelligence analysts knew [45] in advance about the
plans for the Hutu-led genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda, yet the White
House did nothing to try to stop it. In 2013, Clinton told MSNBS that he
could have sent some 10,000 U.S. troops to the Central African nation to
support a U.N. peacekeeping force and perhaps saved 300,000 lives-about a
third of those who perished.
In retrospect, Clinton said, "You can't stop everything bad that's
happening." He pointed to his success ending sectarian violence in Northern
Ireland, the Bosnian war and the 1993 Oslo Accord between Israel and the
Palestinians. The fact remains that the White House knew one of the worst
genocides since World War II was coming, and did not try to halt it.
15. Escalated America's foreign drug wars. In Clinton's second term, he
initiated Plan Colombia, a multibillion-dollar effort to reduce that
country's coca and cocaine production and end a decades-long war between
Bogota and leftist FARC rebels. While Colombian President Andres Pastrana
Arango originally envisioned the initiative as an economic development,
roughly 80% of U.S. aid under Plan Colombia was military assistance, making
Colombia the third largest recipient of foreign aid after Israel and Egypt.
Plan Colombia strengthened the Colombian military, which was allied with
rightist paramilitary groups. It made gains against the drug trade and the
FARC, but at a huge cost. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed and
hundreds of thousands became internal refugees. Concern over human rights
abuses in the Colombian security forces resulted in the passage of the Leahy
Provision, which barred anti-drug aid to any military unit involved in human
rights abuses.
And then there was Mexico. Early this year when in Mexico, Clinton
apologized for the U.S. role in the war on drugs and also for NAFTA, both of
which led to violence. "I wish you had no narco-trafficking, but it's not
really your fault," he said. Clinton's policies were a double blow for
Mexico. He deepened the drug war's efforts to reduce U.S. domestic drug use
by interdicting flows from abroad, forever changing the nature of Mexico's
contraband economy from small-time mom-and-pop operations to the immensely
wealthy, powerful and violent cartels of today. Meanwhile, NAFTA opened the
floodgates to illegal drugs hidden in the massive flows of legitimate
commerce across the border. Large corporations weren't the only
beneficiaries of free trade; so were Mexican drug traffickers.
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Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/alternet-staff-0
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
http://newscms.nbcnews.com/sites/newscms/files/15110_nbc-wsj_march_poll_3-9-
15_release.pdf
[4] http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/clinton/morrison.html
[5] http://aalbc.com/reviews/bill_clinton_and_black_america.htm
[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_with_America#The_Personal_Responsibil
ity_Act
[7]
http://www.cbpp.org/research/tanf-weakening-as-a-safety-net-for-poor-familie
s?fa=view&id=3700
[8]
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/23665-how-bill-clintons-welfare-reform-cr
eated-a-system-rife-with-racial-biases
[9] http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/bill_clinton_the_republicans_m.php
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Legislation
[12]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_Futures_Modernization_Act_of_2000
[13]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riegle-Neal_Interstate_Banking_and_Branching_E
fficiency_Act_of_1994
[14] http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/22/fzgps.01.html
[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement
[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership
[17] http://www.epi.org/blog/naftas-impact-workers/
[18]
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-bill-clinton-signed-the-defense-
of-marriage-act
[19]
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/us/politics/bill-clintons-decision-and-reg
ret-on-defense-of-marriage-act.html?_r=0
[20] http://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps
[21]
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/25/us/1992-campaign-death-penalty-arkansas-ex
ecution-raises-questions-governor-s.html
[22]
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Violent_Crime_Control_and_Law_Enforcement_Ac
t
[23] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Davis
[24] http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1643384,00.html
[25] https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Joycelyn_Elders
[26] http://www.whitehousemuseum.org/floor2/lincoln-bedroom.htm
[27] http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/02/26/clinton.lincoln/
[28]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/campfin/stories/lincol
n.htm
[29]
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Selling-Lincoln-bedroom-disrespectful-
1097153.php
[30] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda:_Casting_a_Shadow_of_Terror
[31] http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1999/08/990812-unicef.htm
[32]
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/15/world/clinton-affirms-us-policy-on-iraq.ht
ml
[33]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/clinton-leads-call-to-keep-iraq-sanc
tions-1381271.html
[34] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM0uvgHKZe8
[35]
http://www.public.asu.edu/~wellsda/foreignpolicy/Halliday-criticizes-sanctio
ns.html
[36] http://www.i-p-o.org/sanctpap.htm
[37] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/646783.stm
[38] http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/27/magazine/27SANCTIONS.html
[39] http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2004/11/200849163336457223.html
[40] http://www.sistersouljah.com/
[41]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/31/AR2010033101
709.html
[42] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots
[43] http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4460582/sister-souljah-moment
[44]
http://news.yahoo.com/jeb-and-the-myth-of-the-sister-souljah-moment-00104104
9.html
[45] http://www.cnbc.com/id/100546207
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Home > 15 Ways Bill Clinton's White House Failed America and the World
15 Ways Bill Clinton's White House Failed America and the World
By AlterNet Staff [1] / AlterNet [2]
June 22, 2015
Bill Clinton remains one of America's most popular presidents. A national
poll last March by NBC and the Wall Street Journal found [3] 56 percent of
Americans had a clearly favorable view of Clinton. That's long been true for
African Americans-from novelist Toni Morrison famously calling him the
"first black president [4]" while in office, to books explaining [5] his
appeal after his presidency ended.
Clinton has used this popularity to build his enormously ambitious global
foundation, collecting $2 billion in assets for many anti-poverty and health
initiatives, as well as building a personal fortune from speechmaking
estimated at $30 million or more. In recent years, most of the public has
forgotten what Clinton did as president, even as he has steadily been in the
news.
But for more than a year before Hillary Clinton launched her latest
presidential campaign, Bill Clinton has been selectively telling media
outlets that he made some mistakes as president and might have acted
otherwise. He's even tried to recast actual events and been taken to task by
fact-checkers who recall his leading role in what became major crises, such
as the 2008 global financial implosion.
What follows are 15 ways Bill Clinton's presidency did not serve America or
the world, and in many ways deepened and perpetuated the problems we face
today. This article was prepared by AlterNet staff members Janet Allon,
Michael Arria, Jan Frel, Tana Ganeva, Kali Holloway, Zaid Jilani, Adam
Johnson, Steven Rosenfeld, Phillip Smith, Terrell Jermaine Starr and Carrie
Weissman.
1. Prison-loving president. In May, on the heels of the unrest in Baltimore
sparked by Freddie Gray's death in police custody, Clinton apologized for
locking too many people up. Thanks, Bill.
The 2.4 million people in prison and the 160,000 Americans serving life in
prison largely because of his policies might be excused for not accepting
Clinton's apology. Tag-teaming with ex-President Ronald Reagan, Clinton is
the president most responsible for the mass incarceration of Americans on an
epic scale. The gung-ho crime fighter-in-chief passed the single most
damaging law with his omnibus federal crime bill in 1994, which included the
infamous "three strikes" law (three felony convictions means a life
sentence) and ensured that mandatory minimum sentences imprisoned even
low-level, non-violent offenders for a long, long time.
Clinton discussed his regrets about the crime bill with CNN's Christiane
Amanpour. "The problem is the way it was written and implemented is we cast
too wide a net and we had too many people in prison," he said. "And we wound
up... putting so many people in prison that there wasn't enough money left
to educate them, train them for new jobs and increase the chances when they
came out so they could live productive lives."
All true, except it was not just lack of funds that eliminated education and
rehabilitation programs in prison, it was a deliberate choice. Sensing the
political popularity of being tough on crime, Clinton fully embraced the
lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key mentality, and gloated about three
strikes. It strains credulity to think that this exceptionally intelligent
man did not understand the dire consequences of what he was doing, as his
wife now says.
Clinton's Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 helped set
the national mood. Dozens of states followed with their own mandatory
minimum laws. While there is some talk today of criminal justice reform on a
minor level (like for low-level drug offenses), no one is talking about the
all-but-forgotten population doing hard time thanks in large part to
Clinton.
2. Punitive welfare reform. The consequences of Bill Clinton's welfare
reform bill have been devastating for millions of American families. The
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 took
a page directly from Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich's
Contract with America [6]. In an atmosphere steeped in decades of
conservative scaremongering around the specter of sexually reckless "welfare
queens," Clinton's 1992 campaign promise to "end welfare as we know it"
played directly to white voters' fears of black crime and poverty. Twenty
years after scrapping the longstanding Aid to Families with Dependent
Children in favor of the right wing's underfunded and more punitive vision,
the number of poor American children has exploded and black welfare
recipients are subject to the system's most stringent rules.
In 2012, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities [7] found that while "in
1996, for every 100 families with children living in poverty, TANF
[Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] provided cash aid to 68 families,"
that number plunged to 27 out of every 100 families living in poverty by
2010. Conservatives trumpet these numbers, often citing the fact that
nationally, TANF enrollment fell 58 percent between 1995-2010. But they
neglect to mention that the number of poor families with children rose 17
percent in the same period.
Sociologist Joe Soss, who has examined the long-term racial consequences of
welfare reform, which allowed states to decide how funds were allotted and
eligibility determined, also noted [8] that, "all of the states with more
African Americans on the welfare rolls chose tougher rules.[E]ven though the
Civil Rights Act prevents the government from creating different programs
for black and white recipients, when states choose according to this
pattern, it ends up that large numbers of African Americans get concentrated
in the states with the toughest rules, and large numbers of white recipients
get concentrated in the states with the more lenient rules."
3. Wall Street's Deregulator-in-Chief. As president, Clinton outdid the GOP
when it came to unleashing Wall Street's worst instincts, by supporting and
signing into law more financial deregulation legislation than any other
president, according to the Columbia Journalism Review [9].
He didn't just push the Democrats controlling the House to pass a bill
(Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act [10]) that dissolved the Depression-era
Glass-Steagall law [11], which barred investment banks from commercial
banking activities. He deregulated [12] the risky derivatives market
(Commodity Futures Modernization Act), gutted state regulation of banks
(Riegle-Neal [13]) leading to a wave of banking mergers, and reappointed
Alan Greenspan as Federal Reserve chair. In recent years, Clinton has
ludicrously claimed [14] that the GOP forced him to do this, which led in no
small part to the global financial crisis of 2008 and the too-big-to-fail
ethos, with the federal government obligated to bail out multinational banks
while doing little for individual account holders.
"What happened?" he told [14] CNN in 2013. "The American people gave the
Congress to a group of very conservative Republicans. When they passed bills
with veto-proof majority with a lot of Democrats voting for it, that I
couldn't stop, all of a sudden we turn out to be maniacal deregulators. I
mean, come on." As CJR put [9] it, "This is, to be kind, bullshit," reciting
a list of Clinton deregulatory actions that began while Democrats were the
majority, starting with appointing "Robert Rubin and Larry Summers in the
Treasury, which officially did in Glass-Steagall and the Commodity Futures
Modernization Act, which left the derivatives market a laissez-faire Wild
West."
CJR concludes [9], "The bottom line is: Bill Clinton was responsible for
more damaging financial deregulation-and thus, for the [2008] financial
crisis-than any other president."
4. Gutted manufacturing via trade agreements. Bill Clinton helped gut
America's manufacturing base by promoting and passing the North American
Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA [15], in 1993, when Democrats controlled
Congress. That especially resonates today, when another Democratic
president, Barack Obama, and Republicans in Congress, are allied against
labor unions and liberal Democrats to pass its like-minded descendant, the
Trans Pacific Partnership [16]. "NAFTA signaled that the Democratic
Party-the "progressive" side of the U.S. two-party system-had accepted the
reactionary economic ideology of Ronald Reagan," wrote Jeff Faux, on the
Economic Policy Institute Working Economics Blog [17].
In 1979, then-candidate Reagan proposed a trade pact between the U.S.,
Canada and Mexico. But the Democrats who controlled the Congress would not
approve it until Clinton pushed it in his first year in office. NAFTA has
affected U.S. workers in four major ways, EPI said. It caused the permanent
loss of 700,000 manufacturing jobs in industrial states such as California,
Texas and Michigan. It gave corporate managers an excuse to cut wages and
benefits, threatening otherwise to move to Mexico. Selling U.S. farm
products in Mexico "dislocated millions of Mexican workers and their
families," which "was a major cause in the dramatic increase in undocumented
workers flowing into the U.S. labor market." And NAFTA became a "template
for rules of the emerging global economy, in which the benefits would flow
to capital and the costs to labor."
The World Trade Organization, World Bank, International Monetary Fund all
applied NAFTA's principles, which gave corporations the power to challenge
local laws protecting health and safety if they cut into profits-like
labeling tobacco packaging. The NAFTA "doctrine of socialism for capital and
free markets for labor" could also be seen in the way the U.S. government
"organized the rescue of the world's banks and corporate investors and let
workers fend for themselves" in the Mexican peso crisis of 1994-'95, the
Asian financial crash of 1997, and the global financial meltdown of 2008.
5. No LGBT equality: Defense of Marriage Act. The Defense of Marriage Act
(DOMA) was one of conservatives' biggest victories in the 1990s. Passed by
Congress and signed into law by Clinton in 1996, the bill defined spouse as
"heterosexual" and deprived legally wed same-sex couples of many significant
benefits, from Social Security benefits to hospital visitation rights. It
allowed states to refuse legal recognition of couples married in other
states.
Writing in the New Yorker, Clinton's former advisor on gay issues, Richard
Socarides, addressed [18] why he signed the wildly discriminatory
legislation. For one thing, Socarides said that Clinton's political
opponents outmaneuvered him. He also chalks up the president's decision as
"a failure to imagine how quickly gay rights would evolve." The former
president was hardly an ardent supporter of the legislation. The New York
Times noted [19], "Mr. Clinton considered it a gay-baiting measure, but was
unwilling to risk re-election by vetoing it."
But the damage was done. For almost a decade, same-sex couples suffered
financial and emotional hardships. Gay couples weren't allowed to make
medical decisions for their partners, couldn't get the major tax breaks
afforded to heterosexual couples, and faced unequal treatment in many other
areas [20] of law. In 2013, Clinton stated his opposition to the law. That
year, in a major gay rights victory, the Supreme Court declared DOMA's
Section 3 (which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman)
unconstitutional. Today, 37 states have legalized [20] same-sex marriage,
and in coming days, the Supreme Court is expected to do so.
6. Expanded the war on drugs. Although Clinton called for treatment instead
of prison for drug offenders during his 1992 campaign, once in office he
reverted to the same drug war strategies of his Republican predecessors. He
rejected the U.S. Sentencing Commission's recommendation to eliminate the
disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences. He rejected lifting
the federal ban on funding for needle exchange programs. He placed a
permanent eligibility ban on food stamps for anyone convicted of a felony
drug offense, even marijuana possession. And he prohibited felons from
living in public housing.
He also championed the 1994 crime bill, a $30 effort that included more
mandatory minimum sentences for crack cocaine, extra funds for states that
severely punished convicts, limited judges' discretion in sentencing, and
allocated billions for federal prison construction and expansion. During
Clinton's tenure, federal prison spending jumped $19 billion (171%), while
funding for public housing declined by $17 billion (61%). Under Clinton,
nearly $1 billion in state spending shifted from education to prisons.
The U.S. prison population doubled from about 600,000 to about 1.2 million
during the Clinton years, and the federal prison population swelled even
more dramatically, driven almost entirely by drug war prosecutions. Yet a
month before leaving office, Clinton said in a Rolling Stone interview that
"we really need a re-examination of our entire policy on imprisonment" of
drug users and that pot smoking "should be decriminalized." If only he had
acted on those sentiments when it mattered.
7. Expanded the death penalty. When running for president in 1992,
then-Arkansas Gov. Clinton allowed [21] his state to execute Ricky Ray
Rector, a convicted murderer with severe mental impairments. Despite much
criticism, Clinton's decision not to commute the sentence not only
established his tough-on-crime credentials as a national candidate, it also
became a precedent to the expansion of the federal death penalty under his
White House.
Clinton's 1994 crime bill [22] expanded the death penalty to 60 additional
crimes including three that don't involve murder: espionage, treason and
drug trafficking in large amounts. Throughout his presidency he ignored
calls for a national moratorium on federal executions. In April 1996,
Clinton followed up and signed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty
Act (AEDPA) into law. Introduced by Kansas Republican Sen. Bob Dole in
response to the Oklahoma City bombings in 1995, it severely restricted the
ability of federal judges to grant relief in cases, reduced trials for
convicted criminals and sped up the sentencing process.
In 2011, Troy Davis, an African American convicted [23] of killing an
off-duty cop, was put to death in Georgia. Davis' case sparked nationwide
protests as many believed he was innocent. There was no evidence linking him
to the crime and seven witnesses who helped put him on Death Row later
recanted their testimony.
Many believe Bill Clinton helped seal Davis' fate years before. Many of
Davis' appeals were denied for procedural reasons and his 2004 petition,
which included the recanted testimony and the possible identity of the
killer, was rejected by the federal judge since, under current regulations,
such evidence has to be presented first in state court. Davis' defense was
unable to do that because, shortly before AEDPA became law, Congress slashed
$20 million from post-conviction legal defense organizations. In a piece in
Time [24], Brendan Lowe quoted Dale Baich, an assistant federal public
defender in Arizona: "The bottom line is that the AEDPA is very harsh and
unforgiving."
8. Returned to Cold War priorities. As the Soviet Union collapsed, the U.S.
under President George H.W. Bush forged ahead with the same imperialist
stance toward Europe. As Bush's successor, Clinton had an historic
opportunity to attempt a cooperative, non-aggressive international model
based on international law. While his administration frequently gave lip
service to these ideals, a far-reaching economic and political agenda to
bring Eastern Europe into the NATO-E.U.-U.S. orbit was in the works. As
Clinton's former national security advisor Anthony Lake summarized,
"Throughout the cold war, we contained a global threat to market
democracies: now we should seek to enlarge their reach." And enlarge they
did.
The Clinton administration intervened massively across the former Soviet
satellite states of Eastern Europe, with direct interventions in the Balkans
through NATO, corporate buyouts of industry from Poland to the Czech
Republic, and the notorious "shock doctrine" of neoliberal economic reforms
in exchange for IMF loans: cutting wages and corporate taxes, increasing
working hours and slashing social programs. Bringing the Baltic states and
Eastern Bloc countries into military arrangements associated with NATO, and
establishing a major military garrison in the Balkans, Bill Clinton set the
stage for the clash on Russia's border in Ukraine currently overseen by
Obama, which could last for decades and undermine the process of integrating
Russia into the industrialized world.
9. Joycelyn Elders and the culture war. At a 1994 U.N. Conference on AIDS,
the U.S. Surgeon General, Joycelyn Elders, was asked if "a more explicit
discussion and promotion of masturbation" could help limit the spread of the
virus. Elders said she was "a very strong advocate" of teaching sex
education in schools "at a very early age." She added, "As per your specific
question in regard to masturbation, I think that it is something that is a
part of human sexuality and it's a part of something that perhaps should be
taught. But we've not even taught our children the very basics."
Less than a month later, Elders was asked for her resignation. She had spent
just 15 month serving as Surgeon General of the Public Health Service under
the Clinton administration. As Arkansas governor, Clinton had appointed [25]
her director of the state's Health Department, the first African American to
hold the title.
Elders later clarified that she'd suggested not to teach schoolchildren how
to masturbate, but that masturbation is a natural part of human sexuality.
"People have taken a lot of things I've said in a most unusual way," she
said. However, Clinton White House chief of staff Leon E. Panetta said her
comment was, "just one too many," and her remarks on masturbation were "not
what a surgeon general should say." Elders has also endorsed legalizing
drugs and giving out birth control in high schools.
Then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich said, "It's good for the country and good
for the president that she's departed." But as the New York Times reported,
Elders' dismissal was met with heavy criticism from gay rights
organizations, abortion rights groups and liberal organizations like People
for the American Way. The New York City chapter of Planned Parenthood
commented, "Mr. Clinton will be making a serious political mistake if he
continues to try to out-Newt Mr. Gingrich."
10. Turning Lincoln Bedroom into fundraising condo. The Lincoln Bedroom is
an historic bedroom [26] on the second floor of the White House that was at
one time Abraham Lincoln's personal office. Under Clinton, it served another
purpose: an overnight apartment for top political donors. Between 1995 and
1996, donors who gave a total of $5.4 million [27] to the Democratic
National Committee-including businessman William Rollnick, who gave $235,000
to the DNC, and investor Dirk Ziff, who gave $411,000-stayed overnight as
White House guests.
Clinton had few doubts about the idea. When originally pitched to him in a
note by deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes, the president responded [28],
"Ready to start overnights right away." Sadly, Clinton started a trend [29].
On the campaign trail, George W. Bush criticized Clinton for "virtually
renting out the Lincoln Bedroom to big campaign donors." Yet when Bush took
office he continued the practice, handing the location over to donors who
had given him over $100,000 and personal friends, including Texas oilman Joe
O'Neill and Republican National Committee fundraiser Brad Freeman.
11. Bombed Sudanese pharmaceutical plant. On Aug. 20, 1998 the Al-Shifa
pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum North, Sudan was annihilated by a cruise
missile strike launched by the Clinton administration. President Clinton
claimed the plant was making a deadly nerve agent and maintained connections
to Osama bin Laden, who was unknown to most Americans at the time. Sudan
claimed it was a factory producing medicines that saved thousands.
The factory's owner, Salah Idris, denied the allegations vehemently and
unsuccessfully tried to sue the U.S. government. According to a U.K.
Guardian story, the plant "provided 50 percent of Sudan's medicines" and was
the country's main source of anti-malaria drugs. Germany's ambassador to
Sudan, Werner Daum, says the bombing led to "several tens of thousands of
deaths" and Human Rights Watch wrote a letter to the president explaining
how it had slowed down relief efforts in the region. In his book, Al-Qaeda:
Casting a Shadow of Terror [30], Jason Burke credits the bombing with
bolstering terrorism: "[it] confirmed to [bin Laden and his cohorts], and
others with similar views worldwide, that their conception of the world as a
cosmic struggle between good and evil was the right one." Noam Chomsky has
written that the bombing's consequences "may be comparable" to the attacks
of September 11.
12. Doubled down on Iraq sanctions. Due to President George W. Bush's
disastrous war of choice in Iraq, people forget Bill Clinton's Iraq
humanitarian disaster: U.S. sanctions that decimated the Iraqi economy,
crippled the civilian infrastructure, and according to a 1999 UNICEF survey
[31], ultimately led to the deaths of more than 500,000 children. Though the
sanctions began under President George H.W. Bush in 1990, Clinton expanded
them, insisting a week before [32] he took office in 1993, "There is no
difference between my policy and the policy of the [Bush] administration"
and squashing [33] any subsequent effort to rein them in.
In 1996, Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright continued to defend
[34] the sanctions. By 2000, some members of Congress cited an increasing
[35] number of reports [36] of the humanitarian crisis, calling for an end
to sanctions. House Democratic Whip David Bonior referred [37] to it as
"infanticide masquerading as policy." But Clinton refused to budge,
defending the policy [38] until the end of his presidency in 2001. Al Qaeda
leader Osama bin Laden cited [39] the sanctions as one of his primary
motives behind the 9/11 attacks on New York City and Washington, DC later
that year.
13. Political smears: Sistah Souljah. Clinton was highly regarded by African
Americans during the 1992 election cycle for his ability to articulate how
racism impacted their communities. However, when it mattered most, he
dropped the ball on race when it was completely unnecessary. It started when
he blasted hop-hop artist Sistah Souljah [40] over her comments in a
Washington Post article [41] about the Los Angeles riots [42], which were
sparked by the acquittal of several Los Angeles policemen who beat truck
driver Rodney King. "If black people kill black people every day, why not
have a week and kill white people?" she said.
Souljah claims she was misquoted. However, a few weeks later, both she and
Clinton spoke at Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition conference in Washington.
Clinton used his appearance to criticize her statements [43], saying, "We
can't get anywhere in this country pointing the finger at one another across
racial lines." He compared her remarks to former KKK wizard David Duke.
As Matt Bai wrote for Yahoo [44], Clinton was not going to lose black votes
by calling the rapper out. Black people were (and still are) hyper loyal to
the Democratic Party. But since Clinton is being reflective about his
presidency, perhaps he needs to go back to 1992 and rethink why he used his
time at the Rainbow Coalition to appeal to a segment of white voters who may
have wanted to see him distance himself from Rev. Jackson, still a key
leader in the Democratic Party at the time.
If you read the full Washington Post coverage and listen to some of Sistah
Souljah's commentary on white supremacy, you'll see she makes some valuable
points about anti-blackness and structural racism that are worth
considering. But Clinton chose not to delve into that. Instead, he preferred
to sell a sistah out and play the saxophone on the Arsenio Hall show.
14. Knew about coming Rwandan genocide. This might be Clinton's worst
foreign policy failure. Intelligence analysts knew [45] in advance about the
plans for the Hutu-led genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda, yet the White
House did nothing to try to stop it. In 2013, Clinton told MSNBS that he
could have sent some 10,000 U.S. troops to the Central African nation to
support a U.N. peacekeeping force and perhaps saved 300,000 lives-about a
third of those who perished.
In retrospect, Clinton said, "You can't stop everything bad that's
happening." He pointed to his success ending sectarian violence in Northern
Ireland, the Bosnian war and the 1993 Oslo Accord between Israel and the
Palestinians. The fact remains that the White House knew one of the worst
genocides since World War II was coming, and did not try to halt it.
15. Escalated America's foreign drug wars. In Clinton's second term, he
initiated Plan Colombia, a multibillion-dollar effort to reduce that
country's coca and cocaine production and end a decades-long war between
Bogota and leftist FARC rebels. While Colombian President Andres Pastrana
Arango originally envisioned the initiative as an economic development,
roughly 80% of U.S. aid under Plan Colombia was military assistance, making
Colombia the third largest recipient of foreign aid after Israel and Egypt.
Plan Colombia strengthened the Colombian military, which was allied with
rightist paramilitary groups. It made gains against the drug trade and the
FARC, but at a huge cost. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed and
hundreds of thousands became internal refugees. Concern over human rights
abuses in the Colombian security forces resulted in the passage of the Leahy
Provision, which barred anti-drug aid to any military unit involved in human
rights abuses.
And then there was Mexico. Early this year when in Mexico, Clinton
apologized for the U.S. role in the war on drugs and also for NAFTA, both of
which led to violence. "I wish you had no narco-trafficking, but it's not
really your fault," he said. Clinton's policies were a double blow for
Mexico. He deepened the drug war's efforts to reduce U.S. domestic drug use
by interdicting flows from abroad, forever changing the nature of Mexico's
contraband economy from small-time mom-and-pop operations to the immensely
wealthy, powerful and violent cartels of today. Meanwhile, NAFTA opened the
floodgates to illegal drugs hidden in the massive flows of legitimate
commerce across the border. Large corporations weren't the only
beneficiaries of free trade; so were Mexican drug traffickers.
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Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/15-ways-bill-clintons-white-house-fail
ed-america-and-world
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/alternet-staff-0
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
http://newscms.nbcnews.com/sites/newscms/files/15110_nbc-wsj_march_poll_3-9-
15_release.pdf
[4] http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/clinton/morrison.html
[5] http://aalbc.com/reviews/bill_clinton_and_black_america.htm
[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_with_America#The_Personal_Responsibil
ity_Act
[7]
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s?fa=view&id=3700
[8]
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/23665-how-bill-clintons-welfare-reform-cr
eated-a-system-rife-with-racial-biases
[9] http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/bill_clinton_the_republicans_m.php
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Legislation
[12]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_Futures_Modernization_Act_of_2000
[13]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riegle-Neal_Interstate_Banking_and_Branching_E
fficiency_Act_of_1994
[14] http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/22/fzgps.01.html
[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement
[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership
[17] http://www.epi.org/blog/naftas-impact-workers/
[18]
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-bill-clinton-signed-the-defense-
of-marriage-act
[19]
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/us/politics/bill-clintons-decision-and-reg
ret-on-defense-of-marriage-act.html?_r=0
[20] http://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps
[21]
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/25/us/1992-campaign-death-penalty-arkansas-ex
ecution-raises-questions-governor-s.html
[22]
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Violent_Crime_Control_and_Law_Enforcement_Ac
t
[23] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Davis
[24] http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1643384,00.html
[25] https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Joycelyn_Elders
[26] http://www.whitehousemuseum.org/floor2/lincoln-bedroom.htm
[27] http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/02/26/clinton.lincoln/
[28]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/campfin/stories/lincol
n.htm
[29]
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Selling-Lincoln-bedroom-disrespectful-
1097153.php
[30] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda:_Casting_a_Shadow_of_Terror
[31] http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1999/08/990812-unicef.htm
[32]
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/15/world/clinton-affirms-us-policy-on-iraq.ht
ml
[33]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/clinton-leads-call-to-keep-iraq-sanc
tions-1381271.html
[34] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM0uvgHKZe8
[35]
http://www.public.asu.edu/~wellsda/foreignpolicy/Halliday-criticizes-sanctio
ns.html
[36] http://www.i-p-o.org/sanctpap.htm
[37] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/646783.stm
[38] http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/27/magazine/27SANCTIONS.html
[39] http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2004/11/200849163336457223.html
[40] http://www.sistersouljah.com/
[41]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/31/AR2010033101
709.html
[42] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots
[43] http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4460582/sister-souljah-moment
[44]
http://news.yahoo.com/jeb-and-the-myth-of-the-sister-souljah-moment-00104104
9.html
[45] http://www.cnbc.com/id/100546207
[46] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on 15 Ways Bill Clinton's
White House Failed America and the World
[47] http://www.alternet.org/
[48] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
