"For
years, Hillary Clinton sat on the board of Walmart who was targeted in
the largest gender-discrimination class-action lawsuit in US history.
She fought against an increase in the minimum wage in Haiti where
thousands of poor Haitian women work in Levis, Hanes and Fruit of the
Loom factories. And she actively lobbied for support of DOMA which set
LBGT rights back by 7 years until the Supreme Court reversed the law in
2005."
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: CAN AMERICAN SURVIVE THE MASSIVE TRANSFER OF THE ECONOMY TO THEIR CRONIES?
"The Obama administration, which Hillary Clinton served for four years as Secretary of State, has accelerated the growth of social inequality
through bank bailouts and cuts to social spending."
Hillary Clinton covers for Obama and Democrats in Flint water crisis
Hillary Clinton covers for Obama and Democrats in Flint water crisis
By Shannon Jones
8 February 2016
The visit by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to Flint, Michigan on Sunday was an effort at damage control aimed at covering up the criminal role of the Democratic Party in the lead
poisoning disaster and cynically using the tragedy confronting residents to boost her own campaign.
Speaking at the House of Prayer Missionary Baptist Church, which has a
mostly black congregation, on the North side of Flint, Clinton sought
to gloss over the culpability of local and state Democratic party
officials in the Flint water crisis, while strongly implying that the
poisoning of Flint residents was a racial, not a class issue.
Despite her professions of outrage, Clinton only raised the issue of
lead poisoning after it became an issue in the US and global press in
January. Her visit to Flint, only days before the New Hampshire primary, where polls have her trailing US Senator Bernie Sanders, is atransparent attempt to shore up her flagging poll numbers by using local residents as a backdrop.
The stopover in Flint was little more than a photo-op. After a
15-minute speech the Democratic candidate was hustled out of the city
along with her sizeable press and Secret Service entourage.
In her remarks Clinton touted a paltry $200 million in federal aid
proposed for the city of Flint via legislation sponsored by
Congressional Democrats. This is $400 million less than the inadequate
$600 million in federal emergency relief proposed earlier by Democrats
in an amendment to an energy bill pending before Congress. Conservative
estimates of the cost of replacing Flint’s antiquated lead pipes range
up to $1.5 billion. This does not include a price tag on the
incalculable cost to the health of Flint residents, whose children have
been permanently scarred by exposure to lead-tainted water.
Clinton’s proposal is slightly more than the reported $153 million in speaking fees she and former president Bill Clinton have pocketed since leaving the White House in 2001.
Underscoring the unserious nature of Clinton’s professions of
sympathy for Flint residents, the Democratic aid proposal does not even
match the $1 billion spending package to replace lead pipes in Flint
advanced by Republican Congresswoman Candice Miller.
Viewed from another perspective, the amount of aid Clinton cited for
Flint is little more than the cost of a single F-35 fighter jet. The
policy of both Clinton and Obama is clear: unlimited funds when it comes
to bombing Iraq and Syria, but no money to address the life-or-death
social ills facing working people.
Speaking at a black church, Clinton declared, “if what was happening
in Flint had been happening in” the mostly white Detroit suburbs of
“Grosse Pointe or Bloomfield Hills, we all know we would have had a
solution yesterday.”
The attempt to portray the crisis in Flint as a racial issue is
absurd, given the fact that nearly half the population of Flint is
white. Meanwhile the majority of the largely-Democratic local elected
and appointed officials who presided over the disaster are
African-American.
While the Republican administration of Governor Rick Snyder and
Democrats attempt to shift blame for the crisis, Flint residents
continue to confront elevated levels of lead in their drinking water. To
date, not a single lead pipe in the working class city of 100,000 has
been replaced in the aftermath of the crisis.
The response of the Obama administration to the Flint crisis recalls
the notorious indifference shown by the George Bush administration in
the wake of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. In the
aftermath of the storm that killed 1,800, Bush, abetted by the
Democrats, rejected any serious efforts to rebuild devastated New
Orleans and Gulf Coast cities, leaving the area to rot.
Now, in the wake of Flint, a man-made disaster, the response of all
levels of government is essentially the same. The message of Clinton was
unmistakable: residents of Flint are on their own.
This was expressed in Clinton’s praise of inmates at the Ionia state
prison who volunteered to donate one-third of their meager $10 monthly
stipend to aid the citizens of Flint. Instead of a multibillion federal
public works effort to rebuild Flint’s infrastructure, Clinton touts
donations from prisoners.
Her only other concrete proposal to help Flint was to send AmeriCorps
volunteers to the city. This is a slap in the face to Flint parents,
whose children will need, not untrained volunteers, but rather highly
qualified professionals to deal with the debilitating effects of lead
poisoning.
Clinton absurdly attempted to portray Michigan Democrats as champions
of the people of Flint. She declared, “I thank the elected officials
who are here and I appreciate greatly the work they are doing at the
city, the county and the federal level. I had the opportunity to be with
your friend [Senator] Debbie Stabenow who is working hard with your
friends Senator Gary Peters and the Congressmen Kildee, Levin and others
who are trying to get support and help from the federal government.”
She recited the names of the Michigan Democratic Congressional
delegation in the same breath as that of professor Marc Edwards of
Virginia Tech, who was one of the first to expose lead in the water of
Flint, and Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, the pediatrician who raised the alarm
about the lead poisoning of Flint children.
While Edwards and Hanna-Attisha showed genuine perseverance and
courage, Michigan Democrats can make no such claim. The emergency
manager of Flint, Darnell Earley, who oversaw the switch of the water
supply of Flint from Detroit to the polluted Flint river, was a
Democrat, as was the mayor of Flint at the time. Indeed, the Flint mayor
and Democratic city council toasted the criminal decision to send
highly corrosive Flint River water into the homes of the city’s
residents.
As for the Michigan Democratic Congressional delegation, including US
Representative from Flint Dan Kildee, no one paid heed to the
complaints of Flint residents until after the exposure by Marc Edwards.
Just as criminal as the role of the Snyder administration were the
actions of Obama-appointed officials in the federal Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA). The top EPA official for Michigan, Susan
Hedman, silenced a lower-ranking employee who tried to raise warnings
about lead in Flint’s drinking water. Instead Hedman colluded with state
officials to keep reports of elevated lead levels from the public for
months, until Edwards’ research exploded the cover-up.
Over the past several decades there has been a vast transfer of
wealth from the working class to the richest 1 percent or one-tenth of 1
percent of society. General Motors extracted massive profits off the
backs of the working class in Flint before largely abandoning the city
in the 1980s, leaving a legacy of toxic wastes and poverty.
The Obama administration, which Hillary Clinton served for four years as Secretary of State, has accelerated the growth of social inequality
through bank bailouts and cuts to social spending.
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