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Hillary and Bill and Paul Krugman Race to the Right to Stop the Bern
Hillary and Bill and Paul Krugman Race to the Right to Stop the Bern
04/09/2016
William K. Black
Prof; Econ & Law, UMKC. Financial regulator. White-collar criminologist. Founding member, Bank Whistleblowers United. Author: The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One.
Remember several weeks ago when Hillary Clinton was complaining that Democrats did not consider her a “progressive?”
...In the last week, Hillary and her surrogates have pivoted hard right and retreated to their long-held positions on the major issues. Indeed, in several cases they have gone even farther to the right than the policies they pushed over a decade ago - even though those policies proved disastrous. ...
<snip>
...Bill made four key points about crime in his attempted defense and attacks on the protesters. First he claimed that his 1993 crime bill led to a huge decrease in crime. The reality is that street crimes were declining before his bill and the trend continued after the bill passed. (Elite financial crimes were surging due to the Clinton’s championing of the three “de’s” - deregulation, desupervision and de facto decriminalization of finance - but the Clintons and the authors creating and spreading the myth of the black and Latino “superpredators” ignored them.)
Second, Bill claimed that the bad parts of his crime bill were caused by Republican demands. Tom Frank’s book shows how the Clintons’ “pragmatism” and promises to work with the hard right led to him crafting a bill that produced the mass incarceration of Americans. This problem was compounded by his sentencing provision that punished crack cocaine users 100 times more severely (by weight) than powder cocaine users. When the bill was drafted it seems likely that the drafters did not know that crack cocaine was used overwhelmingly by blacks and Latinos and powder cocaine overwhelmingly by whites. A wide range of people eagerly created what social scientists call a “moral panic” about crack cocaine even though its effects were the same of powder. Bill’s crime bill achieved bipartisan support, including Bernie.
<snip>
Third, Bill moved so far right that he resurrected a racist position Hillary had enunciated (and later repudiated). Hillary attacked blacks who used crack as “super predators.” That phrase was crafted as part of the effort to generate a moral panic in order to produce the mass incarceration of blacks. CNN reported on Hillary’s use of the term.
Hillary was quoting phrases from three ultra-right authors that were Reagan officials...
04/09/2016
William K. Black
Prof; Econ & Law, UMKC. Financial regulator. White-collar criminologist. Founding member, Bank Whistleblowers United. Author: The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One.
Remember several weeks ago when Hillary Clinton was complaining that Democrats did not consider her a “progressive?”
...In the last week, Hillary and her surrogates have pivoted hard right and retreated to their long-held positions on the major issues. Indeed, in several cases they have gone even farther to the right than the policies they pushed over a decade ago - even though those policies proved disastrous. ...
<snip>
...Bill made four key points about crime in his attempted defense and attacks on the protesters. First he claimed that his 1993 crime bill led to a huge decrease in crime. The reality is that street crimes were declining before his bill and the trend continued after the bill passed. (Elite financial crimes were surging due to the Clinton’s championing of the three “de’s” - deregulation, desupervision and de facto decriminalization of finance - but the Clintons and the authors creating and spreading the myth of the black and Latino “superpredators” ignored them.)
Second, Bill claimed that the bad parts of his crime bill were caused by Republican demands. Tom Frank’s book shows how the Clintons’ “pragmatism” and promises to work with the hard right led to him crafting a bill that produced the mass incarceration of Americans. This problem was compounded by his sentencing provision that punished crack cocaine users 100 times more severely (by weight) than powder cocaine users. When the bill was drafted it seems likely that the drafters did not know that crack cocaine was used overwhelmingly by blacks and Latinos and powder cocaine overwhelmingly by whites. A wide range of people eagerly created what social scientists call a “moral panic” about crack cocaine even though its effects were the same of powder. Bill’s crime bill achieved bipartisan support, including Bernie.
<snip>
Third, Bill moved so far right that he resurrected a racist position Hillary had enunciated (and later repudiated). Hillary attacked blacks who used crack as “super predators.” That phrase was crafted as part of the effort to generate a moral panic in order to produce the mass incarceration of blacks. CNN reported on Hillary’s use of the term.
“They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘super predators,’” Clinton said in a 1996 speech, when crime was a major public concern, according to polls at the time. “No conscience, no empathy, we can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.”
Hillary was quoting phrases from three ultra-right authors that were Reagan officials...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/hillary-and-bill-and-paul_b_9650878.html
William Black's blog makes good reading.
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/category/william-k-black
4 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-politics/8741148/Dick-Cheney-heaps-praise-on-Hillary-Clinton.html
Dick Cheney heaps praise on Hillary Clinton
Former US vice president Dick Cheney has praised Hillary Clinton as one of the more competent members of President Barack Obama's administration, saying it would be "interesting to speculate" on how she would perform as president.
Mr Cheney was asked in an interview with Fox News whether the Democrats would have been better off with Mrs Clinton than Mr Obama as their candidate in 2012.
"Well, I certainly wouldn't want to discourage good primary contest on their side, but I don't want to be the position of endorsing Hillary Clinton. That might be the kiss of death for her," he said.
...
While he wouldn't say that Mrs Clinton would have made a better president than Mr Obama, he said: "Perhaps she might have been easier for some of us who are critics of the president to work with."
...
Dick Cheney heaps praise on Hillary Clinton
Former US vice president Dick Cheney has praised Hillary Clinton as one of the more competent members of President Barack Obama's administration, saying it would be "interesting to speculate" on how she would perform as president.
Mr Cheney was asked in an interview with Fox News whether the Democrats would have been better off with Mrs Clinton than Mr Obama as their candidate in 2012.
"Well, I certainly wouldn't want to discourage good primary contest on their side, but I don't want to be the position of endorsing Hillary Clinton. That might be the kiss of death for her," he said.
...
While he wouldn't say that Mrs Clinton would have made a better president than Mr Obama, he said: "Perhaps she might have been easier for some of us who are critics of the president to work with."
...