Holding Hillary Clinton Accountable in Missoula, Montana

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Mon Apr-07-08 02:16 PM
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Holding Hillary Clinton Accountable in Missoula, Montana

About 1,500 supporters were on their feet in Northstar-Neptune Aviation's hangar to welcome Clinton. She was campaigning in Montana on the heels of her husband, former President Bill Clinton - he traveled across the Big Sky State early last week - and her Democratic competitor, Barack Obama, who staged a full-house rally at the Adams Center on Saturday.

Kids ran around the back of the slurry bomber hangar. Audience members sat about 10 feet from the senator. Clinton spoke for about 45 minutes, then fielded questions from the audience. When the microphone failed, people just shouted out.

She spoke alongside a P2V slurry bomber outfitted by Neptune for fighting wildfires, hitting on issues such as health care, alternative energy, the home-foreclosure crisis, middle-class tax breaks, education, foreign relations and others. She took questions from audience members about the war in Iraq, immigration and social services.

Mike East, 58, of Missoula, waited patiently but eagerly for Clinton to arrive.

In 1996, during Bill Clinton's presidency, East - who has epilepsy - worked a part-time job at McDonald's but had no health insurance. He wrote Hillary Clinton, who was as passionate about the subject then as now, about some of the obstacles to affordable insurance coverage.

"She wrote back," he said. "I've been a Hillary fan ever since."

Sen. Hillary Clinton told supporters she is a “fighter for America” and described the United States as a “can-do” nation during an hourlong town hall meeting Sunday at Neptune Aviation near the Missoula International Airport.

“I believe that America is worth fighting for,” she told the crowd of more than 2,000 people.

Clinton also told the audience that the United States needs a president “who we can hold accountable.”

At Sunday’s town hall meeting, Clinton touched on many of the themes in her Saturday speech, including the need for an investment in clean energy, an end to the No Child Left Behind program and a reciprocal and ac-countable trade agreement, the Missoulian reported.

Sen. Clinton offered some humor when speaking about how long it takes her to get ready compared to her opponents. Speaking about the choice voters have to make in this election, she said, "You can vote for a person based on anything. You don’t like this issue, you don’t like that issue, you don’t like the way look or how they do their hair, you vote for or against somebody on any basis." (http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/04/clinton-says-we.html)

On an even lighter note, Clinton paused and thanked someone in the crowd who complimented her hair. "Thank you I appreciate that, it was done by somebody here in Missoula," Clinton said,"That’s another thing, do you realize how much longer it takes me to get ready than my two opponents. I think I should get points for working as hard as I do for spending so much time getting ready, anyway, back to hiring a president," Clinton continued, as she got back on track and finished her closing argument.

Clinton has a hairdresser and a makeup artist who join her on some trips. But her style mostly goes unmentioned, just part of what she does before the traveling press gets a glimpse of her. Her new comment on the role her hair plays in her life -- a topic she addressed in a 2001 Yale commencement address, when she warned graduating students, "Pay attention to your hair, because everyone else will" -- echoed what Michael Kinsley wrote in an op-ed published in The Washington Post in late March, when he estimated that the male candidates get a half hour more sleep each night, thanks to their easier beauty routines. That works out to an extra two weeks of campaigning or sleeping over the course of a year-and-a-half campaign with 14-hour days and six-day work weeks. (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/04/06/clinton_muses_about_the_hairpr.html)

Instead of broadly touching on all her campaign platforms, Sen. Hillary Clinton used her Missoula public appearance to focus on energy policy, fiscal responsibility and higher education.

"We are going to stand up and say we are on a path to energy independence," Clinton said to a round of applause during her Missoula appearance Sunday morning inside an airplane hangar.

During her speech, she talked about developing wind energy, bio fuels and clean coal technology, mentioning the work Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer has done with clean coal. She noted plans to work with the automobile industry to put cars that get as much as 100 miles per gallon of gasoline on the fast track, and to take tax subsidies away from oil companies.

Oil has gone from about $20 per barrel seven years ago to $112 now, Clinton said.

"The world changed, and frankly people haven't changed with it," she said.

She also spoke to the students in the crowd, saying she would make college affordable by making more direct aid such as PELL grants available to students, offering tuition money for students that did National Service for two years and starting a loan forgiveness program for students that worked in a public service position that contributed to society.

And Clinton got the loudest cheers for her plan to end the FAFSA form that college students must fill every year for federal aid. She said that her staff had tried to calculate the millions of hours parents and students spend filling the form out when, in the end, the government may just end up saying that the student really doesn’t qualify for any aid.

The slurry bomber hangar reverberated with deafening whistles and applause when Clinton lingered on the topic of taxes. Under the existing tax code, she said, America's most wealthy citizens thrive and the middle class suffers.

“I want an economy that works for everyone, not just the wealthy and well-connected,” Clinton said. “They had a president for the last seven years.

“I want to take a hard look at this tax code, which I think is unfair, and frankly, unpatriotic. What sense does it make for the United States tax code to give any business any benefit with your tax dollars to move jobs out of Montana to some foreign country? How can it be fair when we have a Wall Street money manager making $50 million a year pay a lower percentage in income taxes than the teacher and truck driver right here in Missoula who are making $50,000 a year?”

Shouting to be heard over the crowd's enthusiastic endorsement, Clinton said: “Let's expire the tax code.”

“People ask me all the time, ‘Are you going to let George Bush's tax codes expire?' Well, for the people making over $250,00 a year, I will,” Clinton said, and further elaborated: “I want to keep all the middle-class tax cuts.”

Said Clinton, “I want you to look at what I have already done, and I want you to look at what I say I will do . . . I want you to hold me accountable.”

It's time to restore trust between Americans and their government, Clinton said. “When the speech is over, the cameras are gone and the lights are turned off, we have to have a president who you can hold accountable for what we bill you.”

Watch video coverage of Hillary Clinton's Missoula appearance.
http://videos.missoulian.com/p/video?id=1809959

Hillary Clinton’s Plan to Promote Energy Security in Montana
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=6947

Large pics by Emily Haas at New West
http://www.newwest.net/gallery/