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Bill Clinton: Yes, The American Dream Is Under Assault

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Bill Clinton: Yes, The American Dream Is Under Assault

Unread postby Ache » Wed 21 Sep 2011, 19:55:46

"The American Dream has been under assault for 30 years," says former President Bill Clinton.

<...>

I spoke with President Clinton on the eve of the Clinton Global Initiative's annual meeting in New York Monday, where "jobs jobs, jobs" is one of the main topics of the conference.

While the development of a global economy and the information technology revolution caused upheaval for many workers, Mister Clinton says these trends were accelerated by "the adoption of two bad ideas":

<...>

Government as the Enemy: Clinton cites a "30-year anti-government rant," which is a uniquely American phenomenon, as another root cause of joblessness. "Instead of figuring out how the government and the private sector can work together, saying that 'government is the source of all problems and if we just choked it off, never another regulation, never another tax, never had another program all will be well.' There is not a single, solitary example on the planet where that's worked, including in America."

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Re: Bill Clinton: Yes, The American Dream Is Under Assault

Unread postby Cog » Wed 21 Sep 2011, 20:21:15

Bill should get a hobby.
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Re: Bill Clinton: Yes, The American Dream Is Under Assault

Unread postby Keith_McClary » Thu 22 Sep 2011, 00:17:58

Cog wrote:Bill should get a hobby.
He did, but it just got him in a lot of trouble.
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Re: Bill Clinton: Yes, The American Dream Is Under Assault

Unread postby evilgenius » Thu 22 Sep 2011, 02:16:02

There is a recent episode of Charlie Rose where Simon Schama goes into this. I would post a link, but it was days ago I watched it.

Wasn't the civil war fought over this very thing? Didn't the advocates for some form of meaningful government win? Who are these people who claim to be bringing these old things up in the name of your average American? What the hell do they want?
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Re: Bill Clinton: Yes, The American Dream Is Under Assault

Unread postby Roy » Thu 22 Sep 2011, 07:29:42

Dear Slick Willie,

Do you remember yourself (and GHWB) laughing at Ross Perot in the 1992 Presidential debates when he said NAFTA would destroy the American middle class?

You and the Republican 'contract with America' congress (hey Newt -- waves at the 4 times married family values social conservative :lol:) presided over the beginnings of the de-industrialization of America, the collapse of the middle class, and basically ruined everything you touched.

Please go **** up a rope, ****, and ****.
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Last edited by Ferretlover on Sun 25 Sep 2011, 13:21:42, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Altered inappropriate language.
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Re: Bill Clinton: Yes, The American Dream Is Under Assault

Unread postby TreeFarmer » Thu 22 Sep 2011, 07:36:09

+1 to Roy. You're post is right on the money. Slick Willie is now trying to revise history to make himself look better. Jobs didn't start going to China under GWB, it started long before that and 'free traders' like BC put it into overdrive.
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Re: Bill Clinton: Yes, The American Dream Is Under Assault

Unread postby Unconventional Ideas » Sat 24 Sep 2011, 09:22:50

Remind me again why anything Bill Clinton says matters.
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Re: Bill Clinton: Yes, The American Dream Is Under Assault

Unread postby Roy » Sat 24 Sep 2011, 09:35:32

TreeFarmer wrote:+1 to Roy. You're post is right on the money. Slick Willie is now trying to revise history to make himself look better. Jobs didn't start going to China under GWB, it started long before that and 'free traders' like BC put it into overdrive.


Thanks. I think free trade has destroyed economic opportunity for the vast majority of Americans.

Compete? How can a country with environmental regulations and labor laws compete with a country that utilizes slave labor and who's enviromental regulation consists of "dump whatever wherever you want"?

If ANY of the clowns running for President were worth more than a pitcher of warm spit, they would say that American corporations, thanks in part to our tax code, have taken advantage of profit opportunities for the execs and shareholders (my company moved mfg to China in 2000 getting rid of over 500 good paying blue collar jobs). This wasn't an accident.

Americans are the kings of exploitation. We exploited our natural resources for maximum gain, then when that wasn't profitable we went after other country's resources, and finally we're exploiting the last viable resource, the so-called human resource.

Why do you think NK is a member of the axis of evil? Like Iran and Venezuela, they refuse to 'play ball'. What resource does NK posses that we covet? The human resource. Hell if that market was open, China would be moving their factories there. After all, wouldn't a nation of millions of starving desperate people be glad to make $1 a day just to get a bowl of rice?

****************************************

D=R in all but social policies (which their partisans love to focus on and both groups refuse to acknowledge the similarities -- it would destroy their world view). They are in unanimous agreement, both philosophically and in their actions, on the ruinous economic policies of the last 40+ years -- I don't think I need to list them again.

I know some of you are probably tired of reading it from me, but until Americans wake up and start defending their own interests instead of the interests of the top 1% of Americans, things are only going to continue to deteriorate ,
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Re: Bill Clinton: Yes, The American Dream Is Under Assault

Unread postby prajeshbhat » Sat 24 Sep 2011, 10:09:02

Roy wrote:D=R in all but social policies


Nopes. Obama=Bush in all policies. He just has a better vocabulary.
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Re: Bill Clinton: Yes, The American Dream Is Under Assault

Unread postby Cog » Sat 24 Sep 2011, 11:07:09

Power-down implies a lowering of wages and standards of living. Free trade is just making that happen quicker than Peak Oil has. I'm cool with that.
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Re: Bill Clinton: Yes, The American Dream Is Under Assault

Unread postby Plantagenet » Sat 24 Sep 2011, 12:01:01

wrote: Obama=Bush in all policies. He just has a better vocabulary.


1. Obama=Bush=Clinton in all policies.

2. Obama doesn't have a good vocabulary.

Obama just reads all his speeches from a teleprompter----and he spent $100,000 on a teleprompter coach to train him to do that.

When Obama stops reading from the teleprompter he sounds like a dope and makes incredibly boneheaded mistakes like not not knowing how many states the US has or not knowing what year it is. :roll:

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Re: Bill Clinton: Yes, The American Dream Is Under Assault

Unread postby PrestonSturges » Sat 24 Sep 2011, 12:53:55

Roy wrote:Dear Slick Willie,

Do you remember yourself (and GHWB) laughing at Ross Perot in the 1992 Presidential debates when he said NAFTA would destroy the American middle class?

NAFTA did not live up to its promises, but those jobs are no longer in Mexico either. The Mexican jobs went to China. If the jobs were still in Mexico, the Mexicans would stay there.

Last spring there were sombreros in the Dollar Store for Cinqo De Mayo. The tag inside said "Made In China." Mexico's sombrero making jobs went to China.
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Re: Bill Clinton: Yes, The American Dream Is Under Assault

Unread postby Novus » Sat 24 Sep 2011, 14:51:30

Clinton is just waking up now and realizing he sold out America but it is now 20 years too late. The power brokers that put him in charge tricked him into signing NAFTA. It didn't cost him anything except the future of the entire nation. His economic adviser Rubin was a bought and paid for shill from Goldman Sachs. He was completely misled by neo-con lies who cooped the presidency right under him and the same thing is happening to Obama right now.

President goes to his economic advisers about jobs and the adviser tells him about all these free trade deals he needs to sign and how much deregulation will help America grow. All of it was lies, lies, and more lies. He should have listened to Ross Perot who wanted to build factories and revitalize the American worker.

Edit: Another thing no one really talks about regarding Clinton is the Capital Gains tax cut he signed. He cut it from 36% to 15% giving Billionaires the biggest tax cut in History. It is has cost the taxpayer untold trillions. This is why the CEO of Walmart pays less tax rate than the Walmart greeter or CEO of McDonald's pays a lower tax rate than the teenager who asks if you want fries with that.
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Re: Bill Clinton: Yes, The American Dream Is Under Assault

Unread postby The Practician » Sat 24 Sep 2011, 15:50:26

TreeFarmer wrote:+1 to Roy. You're post is right on the money. Slick Willie is now trying to revise history to make himself look better. Jobs didn't start going to China under GWB, it started long before that and 'free traders' like BC put it into overdrive.


Revising history to make himself look better? Thas as All-American as baseball and apple pie! :P
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Re: Bill Clinton: Yes, The American Dream Is Under Assault

Unread postby PrestonSturges » Sat 24 Sep 2011, 18:01:09

Yes well don't forget Bush's Sec of Labor, the Chinese woman (Taiwanese but from Shanghai exporter family) who oversaw the export of over 2,000,000 American manufacturing jobs. She is now married to Senator Mitch McConnell (R - PRC) whose personal fortune has been climbing nicely despite his government salary.

It was under the Bush administration that jobs really collapsed in America.

Clinton signed NAFTA but that was followed by a period of nearly full employment.

When the manufacturing jobs fled America, they did not go to Mexico, they went to China under Bush.
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Re: Bill Clinton: Yes, The American Dream Is Under Assault

Unread postby PrestonSturges » Sat 24 Sep 2011, 18:38:27

Bashing Clinton is also all about bringing Back the Bushies to the White House after dumping Perry.

The GOP believes that Obama was elected as the result of a personality cult rather than an overwhelming rejection of Bush policies, so they try to build a flash mob personality cult around a different wingnut every week while planning to bring back Bush policies if not another actual Bush like J.E.B.
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Re: Bill Clinton: Yes, The American Dream Is Under Assault

Unread postby evilgenius » Sun 25 Sep 2011, 11:12:51

PrestonSturges wrote:Bashing Clinton is also all about bringing Back the Bushies to the White House after dumping Perry.

The GOP believes that Obama was elected as the result of a personality cult rather than an overwhelming rejection of Bush policies, so they try to build a flash mob personality cult around a different wingnut every week while planning to bring back Bush policies if not another actual Bush like J.E.B.


You have a point. The election cycle is pretty long and the kind of chaotic storm cloud that is the talk surrounding it can't abide certainty. As for Jeb, Jesus himself wouldn't last long in this kind of climate. Jeb would be infinitely more doomed. Perhaps they are stalling until they can take advantage?

I dread a Republican victory. I believe they think they can fix the economy, even if it means they will have to backtrack on everything they have said while opposing Obama. In the end I'm certain that we all will find out they were carrying too much hubris all along. They stalled when they should have played along. The universe doesn't always give out second chances.
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Re: Bill Clinton: Yes, The American Dream Is Under Assault

Unread postby Loki » Sun 25 Sep 2011, 12:51:39

PrestonSturges wrote:When the manufacturing jobs fled America, they did not go to Mexico, they went to China under Bush.

Uh, Clinton signed the 2000 act that permanently “normalized” trade relations with China. He actively lobbied to get it passed, organized a public signing ceremony to celebrate its passage, and “hailed the measure as a turning point in relations between the world's richest and most populous nations” (CNN article from 2000). Bush II just implemented it.

There isn't a sliver of difference between the leadership of the Dems and the GOP when it comes to trade agreements. Plenty of skepticism among the grassroots of both parties, but the leadership is unanimous in their firm, unquestioning support for liberalizing global trade, even if it guts the American middle class.

NAFTA was negotiated under Bush I but eagerly implemented by Clinton. The 2000 US-China Relations Act was negotiated under Clinton, but eagerly implemented by Bush II. And now we have Obama negotiating his own trade agreements, and eagerly implementing the agreements of Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II. I expect President Perry will eagerly implement Obama's South Korea/Panama/Colombia agreements.

See a pattern here?

Obama was actually railing against NAFTA back in the spring of 08, claiming it led to the loss of 1 million American jobs. Now's he's completely on board with the globalists, hasn't said a word about NAFTA since he got elected. Funny how that works.
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Re: Bill Clinton: Yes, The American Dream Is Under Assault

Unread postby babystrangeloop » Sun 25 Sep 2011, 14:41:29

PrestonSturges wrote:Clinton signed NAFTA but that was followed by a period of nearly full employment.


Explain this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-sD6boQfvk

My explanation is that giant factory plants require a whole lot of energy and when the US was past 1971 it became harder and harder to do business using them. Once a factory plant is moved out of the US into Mexico, fueling it becomes Mexico's problem. NAFTA went ever further by requiring that fuel be provided to the US simultaneously for a US energy win-win: less domestic fuel consumption and more fuel supply.

PrestonSturges wrote:When the manufacturing jobs fled America, they did not go to Mexico, they went to China under Bush.


But the factory plants sent to Mexico didn't disappear when additional ones were moved from the US to China. You can't expect to move all of the US's factories into Mexico, a limit will be reached and then to continue you must find another location where they can be sent. Admittedly China didn't start sending fuel to the US but they did other things to prop up the US economy and the did become the biggest dumping ground for electronic waste shipped out of the US at the same time.
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Re: Bill Clinton: Yes, The American Dream Is Under Assault

Unread postby Zarquon » Thu 03 Nov 2016, 22:06:36

"To get rich is glorious!" And whether Deng Xiaoping actually said that doesn't matter. But it's a fact that the Chinese opened their economy for foreign investment in the late eighties, and the full effect became visible in the early nineties, when Clinton was elected. US and European companies began going to China under Clinton because they couldn't under Bush or Reagan. It didn't really matter which guy was having photo ops in the Rose Garden at the time.
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