Letters to the Editor
ljwalker53
Published Letters: 559 Editor's Choice: 9
-
Grammatical Correction
[Read the article: Barack Obama agrees with me]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Damn! What is it with this man? He must be some smooth talker. His voting record, his campaign financing are just as average (or superior, depending on your perspective) to Hillary Clinton's.
I meant to say this:
"...His voting record and his campaign finances are no better and no worse that Hillary Clinton's."
Sorry. Just tired.
-
Check The Records
[Read the article: Bill Clinton looks backward]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I posted voting record and campaign finance information for both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the story re: SC polls and how they are being interpreted by "the Clintons." The nomination is and should be about the candidates, not their spouses and not their campaign staff's spin/hype.
I support Hillary Clinton. I'll stand by my choice. But if she isn't the nominee I'll support and work for the candidate who is. I want us to win back the White House. I'm sick and tired of Bush/Cheney and all the lies they have ginned up for their global empire-building schemes. Enough already!
Politics is politics is politics, no matter how hurtful, upsetting, annoying, or frustrating it is. If you've been through one, you've seen and heard it all. That is life; that is the way of our world. The only way to change that is to work within the systems we have.
Voters with any sanity will check the candidates' voting records, their campaign finances, and their plans/programs for the future, and do some honest comparison.
To that end, here are three sites that will help you do just that:
http://www.vote-smart.org
http://www.opensecrets.org
http://www.http://thomas.loc.gov
Stop letting the media determine the direction of our party and the direction of our democracy!
-
@ Dolores Flower
[Read the article: Barack Obama agrees with me]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Several organizations with which I worked in D.C. were part of a progressive coalition that worked with Congress and the White House (Hillary, primarily) to pass the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). There were also other non-legislative issues that Hillary was involved in: child care, health care (of course), work for women's rights in China and elsewhere, a Supreme Court case that affirmed "hostile work environment" as one factor that could be used to prove sexual harassment, and as a pro-choice advocate, getting more low-income women into skilled trades jobs and apprenticeships, working for parity in women's wages.
Just a couple of asides here: we started work on the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1982. It took us nearly 13 years to get it passed. Hillary Clinton helped a great deal with this. The same is true for the ADA, for pay equity/parity and sexual harassment. We worked throughout the Reagan presidency to get these measures passed and approved. It was not until the Clinton presidency that we finally succeeded. Hillary Clinton took a personal interest in these issues. She bucked the norm of a First Lady to involve herself with us in moving these issues forward successfully.
Now the less enlightened of the media critics here and elsewhere would say all of this doesn't count as experience. But anybody who has spent any time in Washington, D.C. knows that it takes working coalitions, working together with Congress and countless other agencies and individuals to get something accomplished. It's ironic really that Barack Obama talks reverently about Ronald Reagan and his coalition-building skills, because the reality in Washington, D.C. during his presidency was not at all that way. It was his administration, mostly through his henchmen, that really created the "us vs. them" dynamic, especially when it came to any type of progressive issues. He was good on the surface with the rhetoric and the smile and the "aw-shucks" attitude. But he was no coalition-builder, except to get elected.
The Clinton presidency, on the other hand, was many things: somewhat dysfunctional, over-the-top, often chaotic. But, whatever people think of the Clintons personally, both of them accomplished much good during Bill's tenure. His leadership on the economy led us out of a huge deficit and into a huge surplus; new jobs were created; trust and stability was restored to a government that Ronald Reagan had nearly decimated.
It is unfortunate that Bill chose to practice his sexual peccadilloss while president. Yet even during his impeachment for lying to Congress he was enormously popular. His approval ratings, as I recall, never fell below 40 percent. When he left office in 2000 he had the highest approval ratings (60 percent, I think) of any president since FDR.
Hope this answers your questions. Thanks for asking. Don't believe all the anti-Hillary Clinton c*** you read. She's not the monster that the media -- including our more enlightened "peers" in cyberspace -- makes her out to be.