Let's Look at Hillary Clinton's record

First I refer you to the earlier post about how Hillary, as First Lady, took what should have been a Republican scandal and singlehandedly turned it into a Clinton scandal--Travelgate.

Hillary OFTEN mentions her mentor at the Children's Defense Fund--the legendary Marian Wright Edelman.

So let's look at what Marian Wright Edelman thinks of Hillary Clinton's alleged "record." Democracy Now reports:

AMY GOODMAN: Marian Wright Edelman, we just heard Hillary Rodham Clinton. She used to be the head of the board of the Children’s Defense Fund, of the organization that you founded. But you were extremely critical of the Clintons. I mean, when President Clinton signed off on the, well, so-called welfare reform bill, you said, “His signature on this pernicious bill makes a mockery of his pledge not to hurt children.” So what are your hopes right now for these Democrats? And what are your thoughts about Hillary Rodham Clinton?

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Well, you know, Hillary Clinton is an old friend, but they are not friends in politics. We have to build a constituency, and you don’t—and we profoundly disagreed with the forms of the welfare reform bill, and we said so. We were for welfare reform, I am for welfare reform, but we need good jobs, we need adequate work incentives, we need minimum wage to be decent wage and livable wage, we need health care, we need transportation, we need to invest preventively in all of our children to prevent them ever having to be on welfare.

And yet, you know, many years after that, when many people are pronouncing welfare reform a great success, you know, we’ve got growing child poverty, we have more children in poverty and in extreme poverty over the last six years than we had earlier in the year. When an economy is down, and the real test of welfare reform is what happens to the poor when the economy is not booming. Well, the poor are suffering, the gap between rich and poor widening. We have what I consider one of—a growing national catastrophe of what we call the cradle-to-prison pipeline. A black boy today has a one-in-three chance of going to prison in his lifetime, a black girl a one-in-seventeen chance. A Latino boy who’s born in 2001 has a one-in-six chance of going to prison. We are seeing more and more children go into our child welfare systems, go dropping out of school, going into juvenile justice detention facilities. Many children are sitting up—15,000, according to a recent congressional GAO study—are sitting up in juvenile institutions solely because their parents could not get mental health and health care in their community. This is an abomination.

The woman Hillary Clinton regularly mentions as her mentor strongly criticizes Hillary's alleged record. I personally would love to see a humane, progressive woman in the White House....but Hillary Clinton is NOT that woman. Hillary likes to compare herself to Margaret Thatcher, who was often jokingly referred to as a "man in drag" because of her policies.

Hillary will probably love the fact that Mosquito Blog is criticizing her...it will maker her appear more centrist.

I can personally understand the symbolic importance and progressive act it would be to elect our first woman president. That would be joyful indeed. But not if our first woman president is not progressive.

Does one's gender make one immune from betraying helpless children and the poor? The safety net in this country was ripped apart under the Clinton's and we have more children in poverty today because of their version of welfare reform.

Taking money from the poor to "give it" to the rich corporations is not beneficial to our country.

H/T to Buzzflash for the inspiration.