Letters to the Editor
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Published Letters: 349 Editor's Choice: 43
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More On The Clinton Legacy
[Read the article: Obama's plan to change the economy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hey weeping for brunnhilde, thanks! At least I've got one fan in the world!
You are downplaying some things, conflating others, attributing long term trends to Clinton and making meaningless assertions like "the Clinton Administration also presided over the Enron fiasco, the cancerous growth of mortgage scam factories like Ameriquest and Countrywide." "Presided"? What does the even mean? That the Clinton admin was responsible for the Enron situation and the Ameriquest and Countrywide mortgage scams? Nonsense.
If you're running the show, you're responsible for whatever happens on your watch. That's what leadership means. The Clinton Administration not only failed to use the tools at their disposal to prevent the mess we've found ourselves in today, they aided and abetted the crooks who caused it.
What things am I "downplaying"? I factually stated what happened during the Clinton Administration to our economy, and the results of policies the Clintons not only permitted, but actively embraced (like NAFTA, which the administration lobbied for against bipartisan resistance in Congress, or borrowing against the Social Security trust - hope you like getting your retirement benefits in the form of IOU's signed by Bill Clinton).
What "meaningless assertions" did I make? The Clinton Administration had 8 years to reign in the excesses of Wall Street crooks and of phony lenders like Ameriquest and Countrywide, with their increasingly predatory lending practices and securitization of mortgage debt. Gee, I don't suppose their failure to act would have anything to do with the massive amounts of cash the Arnalls at Ameriquest raised for the Clintons, do you?
The Clinton Administration signed off on the repeal of regulations which had protected businesses and investors from widescale fraud for more than a generation. Brilliant. They supported the strong dollar policy, which benefited Wall Street and the moneycenter banks at the expense of our once robust manufacturing economy and the high-paying jobs it once provided. Brilliant. They allowed the Fed to inflate a massive asset bubble under the misleadership of that obvious hack Greenspan. Brilliant. They presided over massive trade deficits, stagnant incomes, questionable to fraudulent accounting in both the private and public sector and an explosion in consumer debt. Brilliant.
It's funny how Hillary is supposedly running on her "experience", but whenever you point out the disastrous results of the Clinton Administration's policies and its mismanagement of important issues like the economy or the disintegration of the Soviet Union, suddenly the Clintons aren't responsible for any of it, even the stuff that happened on their watch. If they were just helpless spectators, how useful is all of that experience? You might as well elect a potted plant to the White House.
Turning to Hillary to help rebuild the economy would be like calling Dr. Kevorkian to help your sick grandmother - useful only if you're looking to euthanize the patient, not cure them. We need somebody philosophically opposed to the laissez-faire madness of the past 30 years, not two of its most prominent enablers, Bill and Hillary Clinton.
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Missing The Point
[Read the article: Obama's plan to change the economy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Reagan was effective at getting his vision implemented."
So what? So was Hitler. Being able to set direction and influence people is a primary competency for an executive, but there are plenty of powerfully influential executives who screw things up royally on a daily basis.
That's nice. But if you can't even manage the former - getting your vision implemented - nothing else really matters. You might as well be replaced by a potted plant.
We experienced the exact same kind of economic "recovery" under the Clintons as we experienced under Bush, in large part because both were reading off the same tired script. We had 8 years of the Clintons already, and they accomplished next to squat for the economy, apart from getting out of Dodge before Greenspan's last asset bubble popped.
Poor idiot Bush hasn't even been that lucky. Couldn't have happened to a nastier chimp.