From: Hank Roth <pnews@igc.apc.org>
Newsgroups: alt.society.revolution
Date: 20 Jan 93 17:15 PST
Subject: 4 more years of bullshit!
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1672200003:000:6720
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!pnews    Jan 20 17:15:00 1993


/* Written 11:58 pm  Jan 18, 1993 by odin@bluemoon.use.com in igc:p.news */
/* ---------- "4 more years of bullshit!" ---------- */
Subject: 4 more years of bullshit!
From: odin@bluemoon.use.com (Hank Roth)

<<< via P_news/p.news >>>
{From SOCIALIST WORKER, January 1993}
 
FOUR MORE YEARS: CLINTON CABINET APPOINTMENTS 
REVEAL CAMPAIGN PROMISES WERE HOLLOW 
 
THE CLINTON administration take office on January 20 amidst 
expectations that it will reverse the right-wing chokehold on 
national politics that characterized the Reagan-Bush years.
 
Liberals look forward to a new progressive era in Washington. 
 
Rainbow Coaliton president and District of Columbia shadow Sen. 
Jesse Jackson told Jet magazine:
 
"....Now President-elect Clinton and a Congress controlled by 
Democrats have the opportunity to put America back to work and 
rebuild America with jobs, education, housing, health care and 
cleaning up the environment.
 
"The Rainbow Coaliton looks forward, in the words of the Clinton-
Gore book, to `putting People First,' and to join their campaign 
to change America and make of a great nation everything it was 
meant to be."
 
Clinton's actions last month suggested such hopes are misplaced.
 
Clinton's economic team, headed by Treasury Secretary-designate 
Lloyd Bentsen and Budget Director-designate Leon Panetta, is 
strongly pro-business and conservative. The appointments 
immediately won praise from Wall Street and big business.
 
The selections are only the tip of the iceberg. Clinton, who 
campaigned against "twelve years of trickle down economics" and 
who promised action on a universal health care package, is 
preparing public opinion to accept harsh austerity measures.
 
TIME reporter Michael Kramer recounted "Clinton's first crisis," 
an early December meeting between Clinton and his top economic 
advisers, led by liberal economist and Labor Secretary-designate 
Robert Reich.
 
Clinton's advisers told him that the economy is in worse shape 
than current economic growth figures suggest. And they urged him 
to plan on cutting the deficit. 
 
ECONOMIC YAWNFEST
 
In fact, according to the TIME report, Clinton aides set up 
former Ross Perot adviser John White to deliver the harsh, cut-
the-deficit message at the Little Rock economic yawnfest last 
month. 
 
Thus, despite his loss at the polls, Perot's calls for austerity-
-including regressive taxes on workers---could become the 
centerpiece of the Clinton economic agenda. 
 
Action on health care, and other reforms which would cost money, 
are being pushed further back on the back burner. 
 
This was also the message of a report last month by the 
Progressive Policy Institute, the "think tank" associated with 
the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).
 
The DLC is the organization of conservative Democrats formerly 
led by Clinton and Vice President-elect Albert Gore.
 
The 340-page report, entitled MANDATE FOR CHANGE, urges Clinton 
to cut Social Security and other "entitlement" programs; to 
weaken restrictions on firing or transferring federal workers; 
and to institute a "carbon tax" on gasoline.
 
If Clinton's economic policy shows strong conservative 
underpinnings, so does his foreign policy.
 
In selecting a foreign policy team, Clinton stayed strictly 
within the mainstream consensus for a "lean and mean" military, 
ready for deployment to police U.S. interests overseas. 
 
Secretary of State-designate Warren Christopher is a longtim 
member of the Democratic establishment, having served in the 
Johnson Justice Department and the Carter State Department.
 
During his tenure at State, Christopher served on a policy 
committee which recommended the intervention of a "peacekeeping" 
force to save the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua during the 
1979 revolution. 
 
Christopher also presided over negotiations with the Iranian 
government for the release of U.S. embassy personnel whom Iran 
held captive for 444 days. 
 
His was the diplomatic role that complemented the military 
option--the failed March 1980 U.S. invasion of Iran. 
 
Christopher was a loyal supporter of the "Carter Doctrine". 
President Carter's 1980 threat to go to war to protect the flow 
of Persian Gulf oil to the U.S.
 
CLOSEST CONGRESSINAL ALLIES
 
When Bush was preparing to launch the war, one of his closest 
congressional allies was House Armed Servies Committee Chair Rep. 
Les Aspin (D-Wis.), the man Clinton has chosen to be his 
Secretary of Defense.
 
IN OCTOBER 1990, ASPIN URGED BUSH TO USE U.S. AIR POWER TO 
"FLATTEN BAGHDAD." ASPIN AND FORMER U.S. REP. STEPHEN SOLARZ 
(D-NY) LED THE PRO-WAR DEMOCRATS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
 
As an influenctial member and then chairman of the House Armed 
Services Committee, Aspin led Democratic support for the Reagan-
Bush arms buildup and for their hawkish foreign policy. Aspin 
supported the B-1 bomber, the MX missile, and aid to the contras.
 
Clinton foreign policy advisers also include prominent 
neoconservtives.
 
CIA Director-designate R. James Woolsey, for instance, is a 
director of military contractor Martin Marietta and an associate 
of Bush National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft.
 
Clinton's intelligence adviser, Ret. Admiral William Crowe, was 
chairman of the join Chiefs of Staff during the second Reagan 
administration.
 
These appointments shouldn't be surprising. During a campaign in 
which domestic issues dominated, Clinton took several foreign 
policy stands that were to the right of Bush. 
 
He took Bush to task for being too soft on Serbia and Cuba, among 
other examples. 
 
In his last weeks in office, Bush seemed to be heeding Clinton's 
criticism. 
 
The lame-duck president dispatched an invasion force to Somalia, 
and his State Department began laying the groundwork for military 
intervention in ex-Yugoslavia. 
 
Clinton inherits these quagmires from Bush. His hawkish campaign 
rhetoric and the hawkish records of his foreign policy team 
suggest that a Clinton administration could lead the U.S. into a 
full-scale war.
 
When U.S. voters rejected George Bush last November, they hoped 
for an administration that would address the real concerns they 
faced: raising poverty, high unemployment, and increasingly 
inaccessible health care, to name but three.
 
But two months later, the new Clinton administration is preparing 
to betray those hopes. 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------
The SOCIALIST WORKER is the publications of the International 
Socialist Organization...P.O. Box 16085, Chicago, Il 60616
-----------------------------------------------------------
 

 This is from
     odin@bluemoon.use.com
who doesn't have his (or her) own obnoxious signature yet

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