Why I’m NOT Ready for Hillary
Lest we forget: EVERY presidential ticket that the Green Party has offered this country has had a woman on it The last two had ONLY women. Since the beginning we, Greens, have been ready for a woman. We are certainly ready for a woman president alright, but not THIS woman!
If you, like me, ever sent a donation to help any of the few (less than 10 – really) fairly decent Democrats you have probably gotten the mailings asking if you are ready for Hillary. Or maybe, as a political woman, you’ve heard from Angie’s List with the same unimaginative Disappointingacrat backed feminine push for Hillary. It’s only fair to have female leadership for the USA, after over 200 plus years of male rule. I’m sure that we would see a better direction with a woman’s heart. However, with a hawk like Hillary, we will see only superficial change and the reality won’t be better. Women will feel like they have “arrived”. Greens will feel that, while a milestone for women, it’s really a millstone around our necks as we drop further into the greedy sea of corporate rule.
If you get past her blah personality and idolize her as “a strong woman who has been successful”, I counter with the fact there are a lot of strong women out there and women with much better moral compasses. That list is way long and includes many women of color and certainly includes every woman that Greens have run on a presidential ticket. Again, this is the 2 party system telling us that we have to settle. They pat their loyal constituents on the head like little pets. After the winning political move of presenting the first token black president, the lesser evil is throwing out a woman this time. But where is her passion? Her ideas are worn old slogans that seem to ring radical to her supporters ears, even as Greens have better ones and have never had to come to any sort of epiphany about human rights, justice or peace.
It’s what Greens do, it’s who we are.
Many blacks have caught on to the familiar Obama fake left move right continuance of the Disappoiintingacrats formula to appear as the liberal side. Hillary is great at being fake! Women will secretly suffer, but like Stockholm Syndrome victims, lots will still cling to the hope that Hillary will be their champion — just as she claims to be.
As young as age 13, Hillary worked the South Side of Chicago for Republicans. She became a Goldwater Girl, volunteering to campaign for Republican candidate Barry Goldwater in the U.S. presidential election of 1964. Then when future Greens (like me) were trying hard to get the Disappointingacrats to support Eugene McCarthy, who was the progressive peace candidate for president, she attended the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami in support of Nelson Rockefeller! Arguably, her first rubbing of elbows with the multi-millionaires.
She then went on to be a lawyer who would end up defending a child rapist — as a favor to a powerful person and a chance to move up in her field. Now I understand that someone has to defend these individuals, but there are times when a lawyer can refuse to take a case. Most true feminists would turn that down cold. Hillary calculated otherwise. As a partner at Rose Law firm she ran into conflict of interest issues, since her husband Bill was the governor of Arkansas, and appointed judges to hear the case of her firm Whitewater. As the Secretary of State she was cozy with Monsanto and Wall Street. She’s another Teflon political figure that seems to be able to have a long history of unsavory dealings in her past and yet emerge in a clean freshly pressed pantsuit.
Hillary was on the corporate board of TCBY, LaFarge and (of course Arkansas own) Walmart. In fact, Hillary was one of the legal advisers that got Walmart’s anti-union system in place. Are we now to believe that she identifies with the working poor?
While she stood by her man to retain their combined fame, wealth and power, she’s had her share of scandals such as: Travelgate and the Whitewater investment where the Clintons got their losses subsidized, leaving others to suffer the financial repercussions.
She pulled the old fame card strategy out to win the Senate seat for New York, even though she was just barely a resident. Once in, she preceded to cast aside civil liberties for us regular folks and voted yes (twice) for the Patriot Act. To show that she was as tough as the guys (among these “guys” were GW Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney) she supported military action in Afghanistan and the Iraq invasion. She voted for the Wall Street bailouts, that used taxpayer money giving the banksters a break that they never deserved. Greens were the very first to speak out against these bailouts. Supporting a woman who voted in favor is out of the question.
Greens never miss the fact that Democrats have some of the very same Wall Street operators in their cabinets or as Fed reserve chairs. Bill Clinton had Robert Rubin from Citicorp who was instrumental in setting the stage for a financial coups de tat transfer of wealth from the middle class that Hillary claims she is siding with. Every day Hillary lives and thrives on being part of the less than one percent. Bill’s’ moral compass never did seem to bother her, once again, as she witnessed the Glass-Steagal Act being dismantled, NAFTA being signed into law and their supposed pet project of single payer healthcare never even remotely happening. At what point do you separate your moral and political views from what your husband is perpetrating?
While she was Obama’s secretary of state, husband Bill raked in $200,000.00 in a speaking engagement at Goldmann Sachs. A bargain as his going rate is $500 K to $700 K. The funds go to “The Clinton Foundation”. Rostrum, a Russian atomic energy agency, gave a booster donation of 2.3 million dollars to the Clinton Foundation. Then they acquired over 20% of US uranium mines during that period. Oh yes, a Moscow bank paid Hillary’s husband (AKA Slick Willy) a $500K fee for speaking. Other top donors? Not your grandma ! How about $40 million from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Oman!
Now we are liberated enough to separate a husband’s actions from the wife, but Hillary is clearly benefiting from all of Bill’s smoozing and liking it. It does not take a genius to see that Bill is game to go down in history as the first “first man” of the White House. He lies and she lies right along with him. The question is: which one is really the better liar? She plays naive about having a personal e mail handling national business while being the tax payer pay-rolled top diplomat of this nation. A little space out reminiscent of the banksters who “could never recall” how their derivatives became so toxic..
As women, we know about betrayal. It’s even more bitter when done by one of our own. There is no track record here for any belief in a change of pattern, once she reaches her goal. Hillary is a master tactician and has inspired a new term superPACalitical – that means that she takes money from anywhere. She has worked hard for this goal and made all of the right moves to play this role (and I do mean right). She knows the people who can put her there and Hillary will put on a performance to seduce women so eager to vote for and attach their dreams to this likely winning wagon. Yes, I think that we are all hungry for our rightful place at the top, but we can not lose the moral compass on the journey. I get so frustrated with this repetitive pattern that I just want to shout out to them in a voice reminiscence of my childhood: Liar liar pantsuit on fire!
We do know that she is smart, but please don’t let her out smart you. Vote clean and vote Green.
Jennifer Sullivan
Florida Green