I received an email today with a list of very positive views of Hillary Clinton. I believe those are the main strengths that people see in Hillary and I would like to address them, hoping I am not wronging the person in allowing their views to be seen in this way. Perhaps they and my response, even, may help sway some voters to Hillary Clinton. Also, I consider the email to be a response to my Open Letter to Hillary Clinton and feel my response to it should also be public.
The ten most important reasons why I am voting for Hillary
1. It's not the "35 years of experience" that she has frequently mentioned during the presidential campaign. It's what she has done in those 35 years that matters to me. She has a record that shows that she cares deeply about human needs and will work doggedly and tirelessly to change our society and make it better.
Hillary Rodham Clinton understands issues from the most visionary and abstract level right down to the most detailed level. Admittedly, a "policy wonk," she achieves an in-depth understanding of every issue so that she can work to achieve changes in policy that will affect the everyday lives of Americans. Have you ever seen her ask questions as part of a congressional inquiry? She is extremely well informed and insightful. She is one of the most intelligent people I have ever known.
Response: She either had not read on Genetic Engineering or didn't ask Bill what gave him the right to unleash something on the world that is as potentially earth-altering in its consequences as nuclear fission. http://www.purefood.org/... She was silent. She may know much but we had a right to know something that was a danger to our lives and she did not get him to label GE foods, or object when he didn't, when he opposed it, when he threatened farmers who did label, and when he was ready to institute lies as labels (GE good as organic, for instance).
2. She cares about what I care about: universal health care,
Response: rBGH (bovine growth hormone in milk) has been linked at least 30 scientific journals to a 7 times increase in the risk of breast cancer. To offer universal health care while remaining silent while disease risks are completely unnecessarily and dramatically increased by her husband (Mad Cow, prostate cancer, colon cancer, ...), is not caring about my health.
better education for our children,
Response: Education is not just what happens in school. It is about information about the world and being able to get access to it, no matter who one is. Bill kept information from us and our children, too, which was vital to our very existence. Rather than encourage farmers to label - "inform the public" - about their products, he used his FDA, to Monsanto's benefit, to frighten them into doing nothing. Information, the basis of education, was intentionally kept from us and from all our trading partners (which continues today), but Bill did worse, he misled - using his FDA to suggest the labeling GE food as organic. That is the opposite of educating. To my mind, that would have been out and out lying to us. School children filled with dangerous milk and their parents unable to find out the truth and democracy perverted to keep things that way, are a peculiar basis for saying Hillary cares about education.
protecting our constitutional rights,
Response: Free speech is central to a democracy and Bill's FDA threatened farmers with the confiscation of their products if they labeled them (honestly) as not from cows treated with rBGH.
creating jobs,
Response: Small farmers are being utterly wiped out and losing "jobs" (something so much deeper than "jobs") they had for generations and land and family farms as well. An entire rural way of life is being wiped out in this country by Monsanto and corporations she is connected to. The creation of Walmart jobs or any other job, dinky or better, does not make up for this wrenching personal and even cultural loss.
human rights for people across the globe,
Response: It is a human right to have safe food, and to not have a world-threatening new technology forced on us, even as we are protesting. Bill did that and she said nothing.
women's rights here and in the world,
Response: Women's right include human rights, mentioned above. And when women farmers and wives of farmers are losing their livelihood or lives, because of industrial agricultural corporations such as Monsanto and because of US agricultural and trade policies in support of those policies (with Bill's involvement) and when little girls are doing child labor in India for Monsanto and farmers around the world are protesting it and workers are protesting Walmart practices, her claim to care about women rings deeply false to me.
ending the war in Iraq,
Response: She was late on that. She supported it. She had (has she been clear she has changed?) talked of keeping people there afterwards in support military ways, versus what most of the American people want and think she is saying - getting out of there entirely, coming home and ceasing to spend any more money there.
and combating global warming.
Response: What does that even mean given that industrial agriculture is a major contributor to global warming and she is so close to Tyson Foods and even more close to Monsanto, which are the two largest industrial agricultural firms around, and through that, contribute heavily to global warming? She says she supports saving bee colonies but what does that even mean when the things that are causing the colony collapse - pesticides, enlarged cells in beehives to create oversized (but weakened bees), pollination of vast mono-crops, and long and incessant transport - are all industrial agricultural methods? She has not proposed anything substantive and she has not denounce those corporations or a single one of their practices and her campaign is led by person, Mark Penn, who works for PR firm for Monsanto and Blackwater.
3. Hillary has learned what she knows not only by studying issues in depth but also by listening to people like you and me. Visit "The Hillary I Know" section of the web site (http://www.thehillaryiknow.com/), and you will see that people whose lives have been affected by what she has done on their behalf know first and foremost that she really cares and really listens.
Response: She has not been listening to me. I can't even get heard on what matters deeply to me. She has not been listening to other mothers who were scared about bovine growth hormone in milk or women getting breast cancer from its increased risk. She didn't connect the dots to Bill's actions, even.
4. Hillary is our first credible female candidate for president in the history of our country. Think about it. Even if we have several female senators and members of Congress, can you think of one who could have mounted a national, credible campaign for president besides Hillary? I can't. No matter how much the younger generation may feel we have already achieved gender equity, we haven't. Only someone who is a senator and also happens to have been our First Lady could have achieved the status to run a national campaign as she has. I would never support a candidate for president who is a woman because she is a woman, but I feel she is the best in the entire field, Democratic and Republican, and for me the fact that she is a woman is a definite bonus. She stands for me and all the women and men who know that the glass ceiling has held back many highly qualified women from achieving what they could have achieved had they simply been male. If you wonder about this, please read Gloria Steinem's piece in the New York Times on January 8 at http://www.nytimes.com/...
Response: I think she is the first woman to get this close but she does not stand for me as a woman. I do not care about gender. It is no more reason to choose or not someone than race is. I care about human beings and she has allowed thousands upon thousands to die because of her vote on Iraq and her silence on Bill's hubris about unleashing genetic engineering on us all, and in her continued and extreme closeness to Monsanto, considered by some to be one of the most unethical corporations in history. http://www.ethicalinvesting.com/...
5. Hillary has shown the ability to work with people across the aisle—even Trent Lott and Lindsey Graham—who were archenemies of her husband. She achieves results.
Response: I care what the results are about.
6. Hillary has an excellent sense of humor and has the ability to laugh at herself. This is often missed by the mass media and political pundits. She has perspective and a solid sense of who she is as a human being apart from her "political persona". I have known her since 1967, when we were students at Wellesley and worked together in college government. I lament the failure of our media to understand these things about her personality and her character.
Response: Sense of humor? I do not care about her sense of humor. 166,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide since the late 1990s. Her husband helped get US industrial agricultural firms into India and in Maharastra where Monsanto predominates, there is the highest suicide rate. Why would I care about her sense of humor when she is close to and guided by and gets money from Monsanto which is involved in large scale child labor - very young girls mostly - in India?
7. Hillary will fight for the underdogs in our society.
Response: Black people who have to eat the dangerously degraded food Bill's FDA allowed, Black farmers being wiped out by Monsanto (with Bill's multiple assists to them), women with breast cancer, men with prostate cancer, mothers helpless to protect their children - none of them were protected by Hillary Clinton, nor has she stood up to date and said there is a connection between rBGH in the milk and breast cancer risk, or there is Mad Cow material in animal feed, or our main crops - soy and corn - are genetically engineered and people are afraid, everything must not only be labeled but taken off the market until numerous "independent" tests approved by consumers, have been run and proven them passable.
This was recognized by three adult children of Robert F. Kennedy in their op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times. Read it at http://www.latimes.com/... if you missed it.
Response: Robert F. Kennedy's children must not be informed of what happened during Bill's administration because surely they too would care about a threat to all of us, including them, including their children. They are people and for any of us to put it together how this has played out is not easy and takes time. They must not know yet about Monsanto or about Hillary's campaign strategist working for their PR firm. I hope they will learn what Bill did, and what Hillary has been silent about for years, and try to help regular Americans out here who are affected.
8. Hillary is not Bill. There is no such thing or person as "Billary". Hillary's commitment to a progressive social agenda puts her squarely in the tradition of Ted Kennedy (despite his endorsement of Obama) and people like Carl Levin, Russ Feingold, Barbara Boxer, Barbara Mikulsky and the late Paul Wellstone. Bill was the center of the conservative/centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). Hillary's domestic agenda is truly progressive. Only universal health care will help us to get costs down. Hillary's plan is universal, as was John Edwards'. (See Paul Krugman's column in The New York Times today at http://select.nytimes.com/...
Response: No, she is not Bill, but she no more divorced herself from him when he betray her with another woman, than she divorced herself from his policies and actions when he betrayed the American people by promoting Monsanto products that were already proven dangerous and keeping silent about that as well. She talks about "food safety" without ever having distanced from the horrifying ways Bill tore it to pieces during his administration and blocked our knowing what was even in the food. To allow KNOWN Mad Cow material into pet food, pig feed, fish feed and chicken feed, and only label it as not okay for cows and ruminants, is criminal. Where was Hillary, who is supposed to be, as you put it, someone
"understands issues from the most visionary and abstract level right down to the most detailed level. Admittedly, a "policy wonk," she achieves an in-depth understanding of every issue so that she can work to achieve changes in policy that will affect the everyday lives of Americans."?
And she missed breast cancer, Mad Cow and Bird Flu connections from million chicken poultry factories putting sewage out on fields for wild birds to feed on?
She and I both went to Wellesley. I can see it. She should have been able to with her ability to analyze things. She either blew it and missed things that large and horrifying, or she saw and was silent. Which is worse?
9. I may have heard better oratory from another candidate in a large arena with a huge crowd, but I don't think I would find a better candidate to sit at my kitchen table with me and share our hopes and dreams for a better country.
Response: At my table, as at every American's table, there is milk with bovine growth hormone in it, Bt corn that causes liver and kidney toxicity and is in every food product, soft drinks with high fructose Bt corn syrup so an extra wallop of toxicity, candy - the same wallop, genetically engineered soy in every food product that corn isn't in, and a huge amount of fear - all thanks to Bill and Monsanto, Hillary's backer. It is hard to dream of anything but getting rid of corporate connections that are destroying my country. That is my hope and dream. But she is very close to what I and many other knowledgeable people consider one of the worst corporations in the world.
10. I have been against the war in Iraq since long before it began. I chastened my Massachusetts senator, John Kerry, in October 2002 before he voted for the resolution. I therefore am critical of Hillary's vote for the resolution. Despite her failure to publicly disavow this vote as a mistake, I am thoroughly convinced that Hillary knows the war was a terrible mistake from the beginning and would not have started the war had she been the president and known what Bush knew (but kept from our Congress and from the American people). I do not fear that she will get us into another stupid and immoral war.
Tina Jameson
christinajameson@mac.com
Response: Who can be sure? I know she voted for it. I know she has not been clear about removing every American from there.
And I am sure about what she has done in being close to Monsanto and I am sure about her silence or stupidity (a kinder view of her) on what Bill did to us about genetic engineering, and I am even more sure that she knew the American people wanted the food labeled and that farmers had the right to do so, and sat back while Bill's FDA threatened them. Those life threatening and democracy-crushing things going on right here and right now and she has been silent on them. That I know for sure, and I see Monsanto at her side through Mark Penn, Monsanto, a corporation that instigated a massive change to life on earth as starkly different from what went before (all the way back to the beginning of time) as nuclear fission and fusion are, to a time before we had "the bomb." And I know that Monsanto was involved in Bill's administration in ways that repeatedly denied us the critical knowledge we needed to choose for ourselves, forcing something on us that our elected government did not protect us from. And I know she was silent. I know she has not denounced or ever distanced from them.
So, I do not trust at all what she might do about a war on Iraq since I sense now that she is guided by something other than authentic concern for me and my family. i liked her once, I voted for Bill twice.
But I have seen enough to say "no." My family's life depends on it.
All our families' lives depend on our saying "no" to this madness (to too many kinds, but I meant our food, a place to begin), whether to Hillary or any other politician doing this to us.