A MARTIN J. RYAN Viewpoint
What you think you see is what you won’t get.
Let me preface the following by saying that after voting for Eisenhower I became a life long Democrat who voted for both Clinton and Obama, twice each. I used to be a Liberal until the Republicans had scared the wimpy left into believing it was a dirty word. So then I woke up one morning and found out I had become a Progressive. A what? Oh well, a rose is a rose, no? Trouble is, seeing over time how the two parties had become so corrupted by money, the difference between them became paper thin. Our government had become so entwined to near absorption by corporate power, we were becoming an oligarchy, prompting me to move so far to the left I fell off the charts and bumped my head. When I came to I was a Dissident. Huh? Scary. But then I figured it was because I recalled Eisenhower had once said, “May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.” So dissent = dissident, right?              Okay, how about The Dissident Party? Or maybe call it the American People Party? Sound too Communist? I guess. But regarding the phenomenal emergence of Donald Trump: non-establishment Republicans are so angry, I think that if a rampaging talking gorilla who spoke in mostly four-letter words, bragged about his enormous thingy and promised to eviscerate Congress, he would be nominated.
Anyway:

Aside from the disastrous reign of George W. Bush, and the election of President Obama, most Democrats have been loyal to Bill and Hillary Clinton for a quarter of a century; and I’m not sure why, considering the bit of history I’ve been uncovering that is so disheartening:

In the newly globalized world, industrial Jobs were shipped overseas. This was a feat encouraged and supported by the American corporate/political establishment, which is no longer your friend and neighbor. Americans across the board were seriously affected but the black population was affected much more than the white. Unemployment rose at a staggering rate among inner city black youths, and in this hopeless environment crime increased significantly.

Bill Clinton, supposedly the hero of the New Democrats opposed to Ronald Reagan’s right wing agenda, did an about face when he supported Reagan’s notion of punishing the poor by attacking “welfare queens” and “criminal predators” (code words for blacks) while railing against “big government” (think safety nets, not to mention important regulation).

Clinton, who could charm the pants off anyone, white or black, and make them feel included, very prominently attended African American churches, singing their hymns and embracing black ministers–and getting their votes. But at the same time he was presenting an opposite face to an angry white working-class constituency by toughening his stance with youthful blacks, now bereft of industrial jobs and ever more ghettoized and unemployed.
This messaging razzle-dazzle by the affable Clinton required one to be watching his right hand while trying to keep track of what his left was doing. Yet this trickery appeared to place Clinton in the Goldilocks political middle, for which he was praised and reelected by both blacks and whites. Whereupon he proceeded to extend and increase the wars on drugs and crimes created by Rockefeller and Reagan. These wars produced the remarkable judicial disparity between those who used and sold crack, and those doing the same with cocaine. Keeping in mind that cocaine was the drug of choice for whites, while the use of crack in the black community resulted in a staggering injustice, racially, in the sentencing and imprisonment of black young men.

Slight-of-hand Clinton, maybe while you were looking for work and unable to watch, assumed an even tougher pose when he supported a “three strikes” law, and a multi-billion dollar crime bill mandating life sentences for three-time offenders, (think crack & black & policing bios), plus billions more for additional U.S. prisons, creating the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Yes, there was sometimes vicious crime on the streets, but it could have been different. Much different. When Human Rights Watch observed that 80% to 90% of drug criminals in American prisons were African Americans, this should have exposed President Clinton as having the worst record for the incarceration of blacks. But were we watching? I guess not, because the truth is blacks are no more involved with drugs than whites. Talk about bios. Currently we have a white middle class hooked on heroin, though I don’t see these people being tossed by the hundreds into prisons, because they, like hooked African Americans, need addiction therapy.

Now we have Hillary Clinton for president, the choice of the majority of Women and African Americans. Hillary is no shrinking violet when it comes to supporting her husband. For instance back in 1994 Hillary was quite outspoken in her beliefs regarding young black males, when she promoted Bill’s crime bill and said: “They are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘super predators.’ No conscience, no sympathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.” Remember that? And when did she ever talk about how they might have ended up that way? Maybe at least in part because of what Bill did?

What the Clintons would like to paper over and forget is the warped claim that unemployment in the 90s was at all time lows for both whites and blacks. But the truth was (and is) that so many young blacks were incarcerated as the result of the unequal enforcement of the crime bill law, they became conveniently invisible behind bars and couldn’t be counted one way or the other in unemployment statistics. That’s what is known as a scam.

In his 1996 State Of the Union, Bill told us, “The era of big government is over.” We didn’t realize that was code red for his shredding Fed welfare like Aid to Families With Dependent Children. What a very vocal Hillary supported in a very big way was: a 5-year limit on welfare assistance, work requirements, and killing public welfare by $54 billion. All applauded by establishment politicians who were, and are, generously bribed into submission by corporate America and Hillary’s friend: Wall Street. A couple of years later extreme poverty in America doubled, which includes the highest child-poverty rate in one of the richest countries in the developed world. Rich for some, that is.

Then we had billions of dollars Bill Clinton cut from public housing and child welfare, money that was put into bigger and better prisons. He cut education grants for prisoners, and encouraged laws cutting financial aid to drug convicted students, blocking their ability to raise themselves above the poverty line. Not to mention cutting welfare and food stamps for past drug convictions, and forbidding ex prisoners to live in public housing, which in effect forbade families with children. These actions placed the men who had done their time on the recidivist fast track, no doubt profitable for the prisons, which is really big business in America.

President Bill Clinton, always boosted by Hillary, signed us up for the now infamous NAFTA, a trade bill promising us Americans, Bill’s constituents, that we would enjoy substantially raised living standards, through the magical creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs with a significant increase in wages. But this was an agreement, thanks to Bill, that was made between corporate investors for corporate investors—only. Before NAFTA we had a trade surplus with Mexico. Since NAFTA, we have a trade deficit with Mexico to the tune of $91 Billion. Would a manufacturer want to employ white or black Americans when they can employ workers for pennies elsewhere, while selling it back to us at a fantastic profit? Of course not. You see how this shifts wealth from us to CEOs and investors. Thank you Clintons.

Readers, regarding trade, if you really give a damn for your future, read this: https://martinjryansamerica.com/2015/05/20/free-trade-globalization/.

Unfortunately, you will find that even President Obama is pushing a TPP trade bill that will further decimate jobs for black and white Americans.

Then in 1999 President Clinton gave us the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act. Signed in to effect by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. This was to stop the run on banks (following the 1929 (Crash), to restore confidence, and to break the linkage between commercial and investment banking, a linkage allowing the kind of reckless speculation that can bring down the economic system. Sound familiar? Clinton’s repeal of Glass Steagall, which he declared no longer important, allowed the same reckless investments in “derivatives” and securities that ultimately contributed to the 2008 crash, vaporizing trillions and trashing white and African American jobs and lives, including single parent women of all colors. Thank you President Clinton, always supported by Hillary.

Bernie Sanders, the man who is the real deal, who has always had concern for his constituents, the man for whom not enough of you are voting, has been declared by Hillary, in so many words, as a one issue, unrealistic socialist A pie in the sky dreamer who is disconnected from political reality. Socialism is fine for Denmark, she says. What we need is someone like her, a realist, who places business-like limits on what she will reach for, who knows how to work the establishment system that she and Bill have been so much a part of for so long. Not a crazy old Socialist like Franklin Roosevelt.

Who? Oops. Made a mistake. Well okay, like crazy very-rich aristocratic President Roosevelt, who gave us Social Security; and protected us from banking slight of hand by signing the Glass Steagall Act, which Bill Clinton took away, no doubt praised by Hillary as he did so.

Roosevelt, who had the guts to pass along social security to us, was called “A traitor to his class,” by guess who? The very rich. What would Hillary say about him? Impractical dreamer?

Add to that: In July 1965, Democrat President Lyndon Johnson and Congress enacted Medicare to provide health insurance for people age 65 and older, whatever the income or medical history. Impractical? I should add my very own very benefit: The G.I. Bill which allowed me enough schooling to raise myself into a better life than the Great Depression had offered.

We all know what quid pro quo means—something for something. When Hillary, who knows how to work the system, was given hundreds of thousands of dollars by Goldman Sachs to make her speeches before them, what do you think she was saying to them? When I’m president you better watch your collective ass, guys. I’m gonna regulate you into law abiding banking practices to protect my faithful, loving, constituents, by reinstating Glass Steagall. Huh?
No? Well, for hundreds of thousands of dollars–what then? Like maybe whatever code words she used for: Don’t worry guys, I’m your woman? You think? I think yes, especially since the Stock Market appeared to rise when it was learned that Hillary was winning among Women and African Americans, and therefore winning so many delegates. All of which probably soothed Wall Street Translation: she’s their gal.

When she was asked to reveal the transcripts of her speeches to the big banks, she said, sure, if the Republicans release theirs. Huh? That’s commonly known as “moving the gold posts.” Republicans? You think she’s conveniently forgetting that you and I are not voting for Republicans? I mean, since we’re Democrats (Progressives, Dissidents, whatever). Aren’t we?

So as Democrats, why would we men, women, blacks and whites, vote the dynastic Clintons back into office, the two so deeply enmeshed in the corporate/government Establishment that has screwed us up and down and sideways, for just more of the same. Especially since, as Bernie has told us over and over, The fix is in. And will remain in as long as establishment people like the Clintons are able to hoodwink their constituency–us. You and me.

To see how right Bernie sanders is regarding the FIX. If you really care, read the actual facts: https://martinjryansamerica.com/2015/03/25/clintons-obama-bilderbergers/

According to President Carter, a fine American, we have become an Oligarchy. Think about our Establishment politics while you check this video and see for yourself: https://youtu.be/hDsPWmioSHg

Women for Hillary? She supports women? Have you forgotten her description of the white House intern Monica Lewinsky: “Narcissistic loony toon.” This young girl approached by the most powerful man in the world, who was expected to keep everything in perspective, to not be in awe of him and where she was, where history was being created? Really? And then there was the way Hillary threatened the women of Arkansas who accused Governor Bill of sexual harassment. Read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_sexual_misconduct_allegations

Policy wonk Hillary? Really? Claiming that unlike inexperienced “one-issue” Bernie, who only thinks of doing something at home for Americans, she knows how deal with the real world beyond our borders. Like voting for the illegal war, the Iraq war, the moronic greed-driven decision by Bush and Cheney, killing hundreds of thousands of people who had nothing to do with 9/11 and creating the existing mess?

Bernie didn’t vote for that war. He’s a little like Dwight D. Eisenhower who said, “When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.”

But Hillary has claimed, as Secretary Of State, to have made the tough, the right, decisions. As in Libya? When she drew a cautious President Obama to her side of the heavily debated red line in arming the rebels and taking down Muammar Gaddafi? Creating another Iraq? Probably worse than Iraq? When “militias refused to disarm, neighbors fanned a civil war, and the Islamic State found refuge.”

Michael T. Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said about Libya, “This was a disaster. This was not a failure. It was a disaster. … We made it worse. All I know is that in Libya we took a guy out — again not a great guy — but a guy who maintained stability in a bad neighborhood.”

Read the following details, written by investigative journalists, in the NY Times, the newspaper that has supported her candidacy, mind you, to see how her decisions worked out:

Hillary, the woman who has changed her mind on numerous issues, is now copycatting much of Bernie’s progressive ideas, as if they were her own, claiming she will make the positive changes we Progressives so desperately want. But nothing will change. Not if Wall Street has a say in it. Which it will.

Before I sign off—a few words leading to Bernie sanders by submitting the words of one of the Founders: John Adams, regarding his “Thoughts on Government” in 1776:

“Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.” (How’s that working out?)

In today’s context, when you read those words, does Hillary Clinton come to mind? Or does Bernie sanders?
MartinJRyansAmerica.com