15 Ways Bill Clinton’s White House Failed America and the World

[RiverLover]

Last edited Tue Jun 23, 2015, 11:34 AM - Edit history (1)

...Just as a preface, I want to say no one was a bigger Bill Clinton fan than me back in the day. He and Al Gore both walked on water. Clinton was my first vote, my very proud first vote...

It wasn't until Jan 2009 when a casual comment by a very smart lady starting a small bank mentioned that it was Bill Clinton who caused the 2007/2008 banking crisis by ending Glass-Steagall woke me up & forever ended my low information days. I went home & started googling away. One thing led to another (& another) thing he did under the cover of clever rhetoric & media cover which I had no idea.

Now, today, I believe he is responsible for a majority of what is wrong with America today. He's the reason I wanted so badly for Elizabeth Warren to run for president & to be our president....& for Hillary not to be.

Here's the article~

15 Ways Bill Clinton’s White House Failed America and the World

Many Americans do not associate Clinton with his dark legacy.

By AlterNet Staff / AlterNet
June 22, 2015

Bill Clinton remains one of America’s most popular presidents. A national poll last March by NBC and the Wall Street Journal found 56 percent of Americans had a clearly favorable view of Clinton. That’s long been true for African Americans—from novelist Toni Morrison famously calling him the “first black president” while in office, to books explaining his appeal after his presidency ended.

Clinton has used this popularity to build his enormously ambitious global foundation, collecting $2 billion in assets for many anti-poverty and health initiatives, as well as building a personal fortune from speechmaking estimated at $30 million or more. In recent years, most of the public has forgotten what Clinton did as president, even as he has steadily been in the news.

But for more than a year before Hillary Clinton launched her latest presidential campaign, Bill Clinton has been selectively telling media outlets that he made some mistakes as president and might have acted otherwise. He's even tried to recast actual events and been taken to task by fact-checkers who recall his leading role in what became major crises, such as the 2008 global financial implosion....

What follows are 15 ways Bill Clinton’s presidency did not serve America or the world, and in many ways deepened and perpetuated the problems we face today. This article was prepared by AlterNet staff members Janet Allon, Michael Arria, Jan Frel, Tana Ganeva, Kali Holloway, Zaid Jilani, Adam Johnson, Steven Rosenfeld, Phillip Smith, Terrell Jermaine Starr and Carrie Weissman.

1. Prison-loving president.....SNIP'd a lot of good, referenced info, please read if you have time...

2. Punitive welfare reform....SNIP'd a lot of good, referenced info, please read if you have time...

3. Wall Street’s Deregulator-in-Chief....SNIP'd a lot of good, referenced info, please read if you have time...

4. Gutted manufacturing via trade agreements....SNIP'd a lot of good, referenced info, please read if you have time...

5. No LGBT equality: Defense of Marriage Act....SNIP'd a lot of good, referenced info, please read if you have time...

6. Expanded the war on drugs....SNIP'd a lot of good, referenced info, please read if you have time...

7. Expanded the death penalty....SNIP'd a lot of good, referenced info, please read if you have time...

8-15~

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/15-ways-bill-clintons-white-house-failed-america-and-world

They missed The Telecommunications Act which allows Cable & Cellular monopolies to merge & end competition & fair pricing from small competitors. Just another way he pissed on FDR's legacy to make America a more republican place to live, while calling himself a "Democrat"~

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the first significant overhaul of United States telecommunications law in more than sixty years, amending the Communications Act of 1934. The Act, signed by President Bill Clinton, represented a major change in American telecommunication law, since it was the first time that the Internet was included in broadcasting and spectrum allotment.[1] One of the most controversial titles was Title 3 ("Cable Services&quot , which allowed for media cross-ownership.[1] According to the FCC, the goal of the law was to "let anyone enter any communications business—to let any communications business compete in any market against any other".[2] The legislation's primary goal was deregulation of the converging broadcasting and telecommunications markets.[3] However, the law's regulatory policies have been questioned, including the effects of dualistic re-regulation of the communications market [4] [5]

wiki

And another (my #17) missed~ He made it so Corporations could tie CEO pay to stock prices for writing off executive pay for lowering their taxes~

...The story begins during Bill Clinton's earliest days in the White House. Soon after his election, he worked with Congress to limit corporations' ability to deduct executive compensation from their taxes, as they do for ordinary workers' wages and other expenses of doing business. A limit of $1 million was set for deductions for executive compensation. There was a big exception, though. Compensation that was dependent on the firm's performance was exempt from the threshold.

...As a result, the new limit didn't prevent executives from receiving ever fatter paychecks -- but they got the money in stock and options, rather than in cash. Clinton and Congress had failed to solve the problem.

"My cynical opinion is that they were trying to look like they were doing something," said Steven Balsam, a professor at Temple University.

Some, like Warren, say the provision was worse than useless. In a speech last week, she called on her colleagues in Congress to change the rules, although without discussing how they'd come about.

"This tax incentive has encouraged financial firms to compensate executives with massive bonuses – bonuses that too often reward short-term risk-taking instead of sustained, long-term growth," she said. "We can close that loophole and stop pushing companies to reward short-term thinking."

Lynn Stout, a law professor at Cornell University and an outspoken skeptic of today's corporate governance, says the Clinton-era shift led executives to try to boost stock prices in the near term by laying off employees and spending less on research and development. These measures, according to this line of thinking, made firms more profitable in the short term because their costs were lower, which resulted in high stock prices, but less able to generate value in the long term for investors and the economy....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/27/bill-clinton-tried-to-limit-ceo-pay-but-elizabeth-warren-thinks-he-made-it-worse/

Can't believe that, like Alternet, I forgot this doozy,...#18~

China's Entry Into The WTO 10 Years Later Is Not What President Clinton Promised
Manufacturing & Technology News
June 15, 2010

It has been 10 years since the U.S. Congress and President Bill Clinton paved the way for China to enter the World Trade Organization (WTO). Most all of the predictions from those pushing the deal at the time have proven to be wrong, according to an analysis done by Robert Lighthizer, former deputy United States Trade Representative during the Reagan administration and head of the international trade department of the Washington firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & From LLP.

Bill Clinton, the country's most ardent booster of opening trade with China, looks especially imprudent 10 years later. During a press conference on March 29, 2000, Clinton said that granting China permanent normal trade relations (PNTR), which allowed China to gain entry into the WTO, would be a great deal for America. "We do nothing," Clinton said. "They have to lower tariffs. They open up telecommunications for investment. They allow us to sell cars made in America in China at much lower tariffs. They allow us to put our own distributorships there. They allow us to put our own parts there. We don't have to transfer technology or do joint manufacturing in China any more. This a hundred-to-nothing deal for America when it comes to the economic consequences."

It didn't quite work out that way. Since 2000, the trade deficit with China has surged by 173 percent, from $83 billion in 2000 to $227 billion in 2009. The United States has lost more than one-third of all its manufacturing jobs -- 5.6 million; U.S. wages have declined; the country has suffered a financial meltdown; it has spent $14 trillion on economic stimulus, only to experience the highest unemployment rates in generations and annual federal budget deficits of more than $1 trillion. These trends are not "likely to end," says Lighthizer.

Granting PNTR to China would "increase U.S. jobs and reduce our trade deficit," Clinton promised....

http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/10/0615/WTO.html