Like many other politicians Hillary Clinton is using children or her alleged advocacy for them as a campaign slogan repeating it over and over again but her record isn't remotely like the image she tries to portray for herself. Like a lot of other politicians she put in time at jobs that at least seem to advocate for children; however even if she did some good for them at that time when she had the opportunity to make major changes in policy to help them she did much more harm than good, often benefiting campaign contributors, and even one of her supporters who helped give her first break in politics has criticized her for cuts to welfare she supported as first lady among other things.
As the following article plus several others indicates her defense of children is more propaganda than actual protection of them:
How Hillary Clinton Betrayed the Children's Defense Fund for Political Gain 01/24/2008
Hillary Clinton has clearly, succinctly, and repeatedly challenged Barack Obama and John Edwards to let voters judge them or her by their records. Hillary Clinton has included her 8 years as First Lady in her 35 years of political experience, so it is appropriate to take her up on her challenge.
In this post, we will just examine one of the claims Clinton has made about her record, per her request to look closely at not just words, but her actions.
In the hot and testy debate in South Carolina, Clinton countered Obama's correct assertion that she served on the board of directors of Wal-Mart (followed by years as a corporate attorney for the Rose Law Firm) by saying, in essence, that when Obama was wet behind his ears, she was working and being inspired by the legendary Marian Wright Edelman at the Children's Defense Fund. That is true until you get to the issue of results in public office.
As we have noted in a previous editor's blog (along with the page numbers), Hillary brags in her memoirs that she was the one who lured the infamous Dick Morris back as an adviser to Bill (and Hillary) during the White House years in the mid-90s, as Bill Clinton was trying to find a way to counter the Newt Gingrich assault and the never-ending Republican attempts to investigate and impeach him.
As a result of Morris's "triangulating" advice, the Clintons embraced some cold-hearted measures, including what became called euphemistically "welfare reform." In fact, the progressive and children's advocate community considered it a Draconian measure that would punish poor children if their moms didn't find work. The Clintons, both of them, supported it, and Bill Clinton signed it into law.
Among those who ardently and eloquently opposed the Clinton "welfare reform" bill was Marian Wright Edelman. Her husband, Peter Edelman, quit his high-level job at the Department of Health and Human Services in protest when Bill Clinton signed the bill. He was deeply upset about what the legislation would do to helpless children.
In a July 2007 interview with Amy Goodman, Marian Wright Edelman had this to say about the "welfare reform bill" and Hillary Clinton: AMY GOODMAN: Marian Wright Edelman, we just heard Hillary Rodham Clinton. She used to be the head of the board of the Children’s Defense Fund, of the organization that you founded. But you were extremely critical of the Clintons. I mean, when President Clinton signed off on the, well, so-called welfare reform bill, you said, “His signature on this pernicious bill makes a mockery of his pledge not to hurt children.” So what are your hopes right now for these Democrats? And what are your thoughts about Hillary Rodham Clinton?
MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Well, you know, Hillary Clinton is an old friend, but they are not friends in politics. We have to build a constituency, and you don’t—and we profoundly disagreed with the forms of the welfare reform bill, and we said so. We were for welfare reform, I am for welfare reform, but we need good jobs, we need adequate work incentives, we need minimum wage to be decent wage and livable wage, we need health care, we need transportation, we need to invest preventively in all of our children to prevent them ever having to be on welfare. Complete article
Hillary Clinton has clearly, succinctly, and repeatedly challenged Barack Obama and John Edwards to let voters judge them or her by their records. Hillary Clinton has included her 8 years as First Lady in her 35 years of political experience, so it is appropriate to take her up on her challenge.
In this post, we will just examine one of the claims Clinton has made about her record, per her request to look closely at not just words, but her actions.
In the hot and testy debate in South Carolina, Clinton countered Obama's correct assertion that she served on the board of directors of Wal-Mart (followed by years as a corporate attorney for the Rose Law Firm) by saying, in essence, that when Obama was wet behind his ears, she was working and being inspired by the legendary Marian Wright Edelman at the Children's Defense Fund. That is true until you get to the issue of results in public office.
As we have noted in a previous editor's blog (along with the page numbers), Hillary brags in her memoirs that she was the one who lured the infamous Dick Morris back as an adviser to Bill (and Hillary) during the White House years in the mid-90s, as Bill Clinton was trying to find a way to counter the Newt Gingrich assault and the never-ending Republican attempts to investigate and impeach him.
As a result of Morris's "triangulating" advice, the Clintons embraced some cold-hearted measures, including what became called euphemistically "welfare reform." In fact, the progressive and children's advocate community considered it a Draconian measure that would punish poor children if their moms didn't find work. The Clintons, both of them, supported it, and Bill Clinton signed it into law.
Among those who ardently and eloquently opposed the Clinton "welfare reform" bill was Marian Wright Edelman. Her husband, Peter Edelman, quit his high-level job at the Department of Health and Human Services in protest when Bill Clinton signed the bill. He was deeply upset about what the legislation would do to helpless children.
In a July 2007 interview with Amy Goodman, Marian Wright Edelman had this to say about the "welfare reform bill" and Hillary Clinton: AMY GOODMAN: Marian Wright Edelman, we just heard Hillary Rodham Clinton. She used to be the head of the board of the Children’s Defense Fund, of the organization that you founded. But you were extremely critical of the Clintons. I mean, when President Clinton signed off on the, well, so-called welfare reform bill, you said, “His signature on this pernicious bill makes a mockery of his pledge not to hurt children.” So what are your hopes right now for these Democrats? And what are your thoughts about Hillary Rodham Clinton?
MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Well, you know, Hillary Clinton is an old friend, but they are not friends in politics. We have to build a constituency, and you don’t—and we profoundly disagreed with the forms of the welfare reform bill, and we said so. We were for welfare reform, I am for welfare reform, but we need good jobs, we need adequate work incentives, we need minimum wage to be decent wage and livable wage, we need health care, we need transportation, we need to invest preventively in all of our children to prevent them ever having to be on welfare. Complete article
When she was first lady she had no qualms about cutting welfare for those that didn't work but she's very reluctant to defend workers rights so that they can afford to stay off of welfare even when they work. She only supports slowly raising the minimum wage to 12 dollars unlike Bernie Sanders who supports 15. This benefits one of her closest friends and campaign contributors Alice Walton who is constantly supporting Walmarts efforts to minimize workers rights for higher profits.
Hillary Clinton first got involved in politics when there was still a lot of Democratic support for progressive causes and according to, Before She Was Famous: Hillary Clinton’s Political Launch with help from Peter Edelman 04/22/2014 who helped her get a speaking spot at the League of Women Voters. Unfortunately even though Peter Edelman has expressed some concerns when she betrays children he often continues to tout her as "a tireless voice for children" even though he helps provide evidence to the contrary. Nor does either Hillary Clinton or Peter Edelman seem overly concerned about the debate process being taken away from the League of Women Voters over twenty years ago so that the Commission on Presidential Debates could take it over keeping grassroots candidates that don't support the corporate agenda out.
On top of that according to the following articles they're charging small non profits much more than they help them raise, enabling them to take credit for any charity that does come out of it, and possibly use it for political purposes:
Clintons charge big fees to small groups: The Clinton Foundation has taken in as much as $11M in payments from non-profit groups. 06/16/2015
When Condoleezza Rice headlined a 2009 fundraising luncheon for the Boys and Girls Club of Long Beach, she collected a $60,000 speaking fee, then donated almost all of it back to the club, according to multiple sources familiar with the club’s finances.
Hillary Clinton was not so generous to the small charity, which provides after-school programs to underprivileged children across the Southern California city. Clinton collected $200,000 to speak at the same event five years later, but she donated nothing back to the club, which raised less than half as much from Clinton’s appearance as from Rice’s, according to the sources and tax filings.
Instead, Clinton steered her speaking fee to her family’s own sprawling $2 billion charity.
The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, which has come under scrutiny for its fundraising and fiscal management, has taken in as much as $11.7 million in payments from other nonprofit groups. The money was paid for speeches given by Hillary Clinton; her husband, the former president; and their daughter, Chelsea Clinton, since the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency in 2001, according to a POLITICO analysis of a list of speeches voluntarily released last month by the foundation. Complete article
When Condoleezza Rice headlined a 2009 fundraising luncheon for the Boys and Girls Club of Long Beach, she collected a $60,000 speaking fee, then donated almost all of it back to the club, according to multiple sources familiar with the club’s finances.
Hillary Clinton was not so generous to the small charity, which provides after-school programs to underprivileged children across the Southern California city. Clinton collected $200,000 to speak at the same event five years later, but she donated nothing back to the club, which raised less than half as much from Clinton’s appearance as from Rice’s, according to the sources and tax filings.
Instead, Clinton steered her speaking fee to her family’s own sprawling $2 billion charity.
The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, which has come under scrutiny for its fundraising and fiscal management, has taken in as much as $11.7 million in payments from other nonprofit groups. The money was paid for speeches given by Hillary Clinton; her husband, the former president; and their daughter, Chelsea Clinton, since the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency in 2001, according to a POLITICO analysis of a list of speeches voluntarily released last month by the foundation. Complete article
This is almost certainly part of the reason why she's able to get so many endorsements from organization that allegedly help defend the poor. If they don't support the right candidate or at least remain silent they might get much less funding. Many non-profit organizations are run by people from the upper class that also has connections to multinational corporations, and they often make much more money than the lower level workers. Christine MacDonald wrote about how this is done in the environmental community in "Green Inc." but looking at other non-profit organizations like Planned Parenthood or the American Red Cross who have both had politicians leading them at one time or another indicates that this practice goes way beyond the environmental community.
Her political advisers go back decades to the same ones that helped Bill Clinton with their rapid response team in the nineties and has been learning to be more manipulative since. However in 2008 one of their tactics was exposed when they were caught planting questions as the following article indicates and they almost certainly learned to be more sophisticated since then:
Student describes how she became a Clinton plant 11/13/2007
GRINNELL, Iowa (CNN) -- The college student who was told what question to ask at one of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign events said "voters have the right to know what happened" and she wasn't the only one who was planted.
In an exclusive on-camera interview with CNN, Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, a 19-year-old sophomore at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, said giving anyone specific questions to ask is "dishonest," and the whole incident has given her a negative outlook on politics.
Gallo-Chasanoff, whose story was first reported in the campus newspaper, said what happened was simple: She said a senior Clinton staffer asked if she'd like to ask the senator a question after an energy speech the Democratic presidential hopeful gave in Newton, Iowa, on November 6.
"I sort of thought about it, and I said 'Yeah, can I ask how her energy plan compares to the other candidates' energy plans?'" Gallo-Chasanoff said Monday night.
According to Gallo-Chasanoff, the staffer said, " 'I don't think that's a good idea, because I don't know how familiar she is with their plans.' "
He then opened a binder to a page that, according to Gallo-Chasanoff, had about eight questions on it.
"The top one was planned specifically for a college student," she added. "It said 'college student' in brackets and then the question." Complete article
GRINNELL, Iowa (CNN) -- The college student who was told what question to ask at one of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign events said "voters have the right to know what happened" and she wasn't the only one who was planted.
In an exclusive on-camera interview with CNN, Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, a 19-year-old sophomore at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, said giving anyone specific questions to ask is "dishonest," and the whole incident has given her a negative outlook on politics.
Gallo-Chasanoff, whose story was first reported in the campus newspaper, said what happened was simple: She said a senior Clinton staffer asked if she'd like to ask the senator a question after an energy speech the Democratic presidential hopeful gave in Newton, Iowa, on November 6.
"I sort of thought about it, and I said 'Yeah, can I ask how her energy plan compares to the other candidates' energy plans?'" Gallo-Chasanoff said Monday night.
According to Gallo-Chasanoff, the staffer said, " 'I don't think that's a good idea, because I don't know how familiar she is with their plans.' "
He then opened a binder to a page that, according to Gallo-Chasanoff, had about eight questions on it.
"The top one was planned specifically for a college student," she added. "It said 'college student' in brackets and then the question." Complete article
This received an enormous amount of attention when it happened and almost certainly contributed to her Iowa loss; however they almost certainly learned to be more careful about not being so obvious when they plant questions or relying only on people they can trust to remain silent. On another occasion before she declared as a 2016 presidential candidate, perhaps in 2013, give or take a year, Hillary Clinton was on a speaking tour when another college student asked something like "If you don't run for president to defend women who will?" in an overly dramatic manner that made great propaganda as part of almost non-stop media coverage presenting her as the only viable candidate representing "Progressive" causes.
This also received an enormous amount of coverage for weeks if not months; however this time the traditional media didn't mention her history of planting questions at all while this was going on, although people at the grassroots level might have.
More recently she was accused by Donald Trump of planting a question about bullying by a young girl about ten years old; their campaign denied it and the girls family also denied it. In this case it is highly unlikely that they would have planted this question so blatantly; however, once again it made great propaganda, regardless of the circumstances.
This doesn't completely mean that they didn't do some screening so that they would be more likely to get favorable questions. Recently they let the public know that an enormous amount of voter information was being gathered by their campaign and that it is now standard operating procedure for campaigns to research their voters so they could get them to the polls. This research could also be used to get them to rallies and enable Hillary Clinton or who ever chooses the people getting opportunities to ask questions picking ones more likely to be favorable without them knowing that they're being screened.
She demonstrated that this is part of her planning when they found out that Black Lives Matter was planning a protest and headed them off ushering them into a back room in an attempt to address their concerns out of view from the crowd; but this tape made it on the air anyway, and she came off very bad.
This seems cynical, and it is, but unfortunately there are numerous examples where politicians representing campaign contributors have been caught doing things like this, including a recent event where a Bush and Ayotte supporter asked liberal questions from Donald Trump.
Hillary Clinton and most other politicians are carefully prepared actors and actresses taught how to behave for voters, and some of this planning has been disclosed at times, in low profile manners by political operators like Frank Luntz or James Carville, but most of these advisers remain silent behind the scenes. They even teach her to appear pleasant and likable by laughing a lot of things off but surprising she often seems to do this very poorly, at least if people are paying attention.
She laughed on camera when asked about defending an accused rapist and her plan to defend her apparently included the possibility that she would attack the victim; she laughed when asked if her claim that victims of rape should be believed included Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey, claiming that their claims have been discredited which isn't true although they weren't proven either that I know of. She laughed when asked about Gadhafi saying "We came we saw he dies." She didn't mention that when it suited her political and financial purposes that she supported Gadhafi for a while.
She claims women are primary victims of war, which along with children is true; however she has a history of supporting wars based on lies including the Iraq war and bombing of several countries that they often previously supported, often for the benefit of corporations donating to her campaigns. As I reported on previous posts she flip flopped on a banking bill, which according to Elizabeth Warren she referred to as "That awful bill" after receiving donations from the banks. This is just a small samples of the examples where she betrayed children women and just about everyone else except her campaign contributors while creating enormous amounts of propaganda to make her look good.
Conservatives are making hay out of Hillary Clinton’s defense of an accused rapist 06/16/2014
Hillary Clinton LAUGHS OFF the question Republicans have been waiting for someone to ask: Are her husband's sex-abuse accusers telling the truth? 12/03/2015
Hillary Clinton Touts Overthrow of Gadhafi, but Doesn’t Mention That Clinton Foundation Donors Did Big Business in Tyrant’s Libya 12/21/2015
How Hillary Clinton's State Department Sold Fracking to the World Fall 2014
The worst thing Hillary Clinton has done During the debate, Clinton touted her years at the Children's Defense Fund. Here's the truth she didn't talk about 10/15/2015
Meet the New, Old Hillary A candidate is reintroduced as the woman she's spent her political career hiding from 06/14/2015
Edit 02/19/2016: In the past few days Hillary Clinton released emotional ad to appeal Nevada Latinos (02/18/2016), where she tells a little girl, "You don't have to worry about what happens to your mom and dad, or somebody else in your family. Let me do the worrying. I'll do all the worrying, is that a deal? I'll do all the worry. I'll do everything I can to help, OK?"
She doesn't tell her that just a few years ago Hillary Clinton said Unaccompanied Minors 'Should Be Sent Back' (06/18/2014), clearly indicating that she agreed with Obama's tough immigration policy that this girl was so worried about.
Propaganda-vs-Children: Who Is Hillary really? 02/15/2016
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