W.J. Astore
Once again, Hillary Clinton is in the news for the wrong reason. She used a private email account while she was Secretary of State, rather than an official government email account. As a result, not all of her (unclassified) emails are part of the public record. Many may be “lost,” consigned to the dustbin of history, whether by accident or design is hard to say. In the press conference she then gave to explain herself, she was less than forthcoming. And it now appears that her email server wasn’t even encrypted for the first three months she served as Secretary of State, meaning her official emails were eminently hackable and readable by foreign governments.
Just another meaningless scandal, right? No — what this reveals is the arrogance of power. Official rules may apply to “little people” like you and me, but to the Clintons, those rules can be ignored. They think they can do whatever they want. It’s a clear double standard, and it’s just one more reason why the prospect of Hillary Clinton as president disturbs me.
I remember when Hillary Clinton served as First Lady and worked on health care reform in the early 1990s. Her right-hand man was Ira Magaziner. I’d heard of Magaziner since he had served as an outside consultant to my hometown. According to Wikipedia:
“After Oxford, Magaziner and a group of former Brown students attempted to implement social democratic reforms in the city of Brockton, Massachusetts. These reforms included starting an agricultural cooperative, supporting liberal candidates for city council, strengthening the union movement, and printing a progressive town newspaper. Magaziner soon abandoned the project, after the group recognized that the effects of foreign business competition on the local manufacturing base would undercut their efforts.”
Not as I heard it. Magaziner thought he could come to Brockton and serve as its “instant expert,” remaking the city in his image without paying much attention to the desires of the locals. Brockton is working-class, fairly conservative, and tough-minded, proud of its championship boxers (Rocky Marciano and Marvin Hagler). The people of Brockton were less than enamored with Magaziner and his fellow “experts” telling them what to do and how to do it. So Magaziner withdrew, mission unaccomplished.
Magaziner then took his know-it-all approach and applied it to health care reform, working hand-in-hand with Hillary Clinton and her team. They concocted a massive reform of the health care system with no buy-in from major stakeholders. Arrogant policy wonks, they believed their ideas and reforms were so brilliant and compelling they’d easily win assent from Congress. Instead, they fell flat on their faces.
Nobody likes being dictated to. And nobody likes people who make their own rules while dancing on the heads of the little people. Hillary’s latest fiasco once again reminds us of her imperious nature, her arrogance, her lack of political deftness.
She’d make a formidable empress. But a president? No thanks.
Bracing Views 
The double standard you are living by is worse, republican candidates, in office or out are lining their pockets with petty and major felony level thievery, and outright treason. Start getting it.. Soon, or be known as a dullard.
Sent from my iPhone
>
LikeLike
Criticizing Hillary is not a vote for the Republican Party. America desperately needs better candidates, and not just from the two major parties.
LikeLike
Hillary picture looks like the”wicked Witch of the East” .All she needs is the “tin man”. Ah, that’s Bill
LikeLike
Operations within the neo-liberal brain are seldom any easier to fathom than the seething cauldron of cognitive dissonance reality distortion and insane motivated reasoning typical of the typical righter than right conservative. Power and its privilege can exacerbate this condition, sometimes only in spurts but also none-too-rarely nearly constantly. Personal hubris seems to rise in direct proportion to power/privilege.
Hillary if elected would likely not nominate federal judges out of the 19th century patrician mold as a Republican, and maybe she would be a tad more progressive on women’s issues as well, but I’m not sure she would lead any differently on environmental, labor, or educational issues, just to mention three policy areas which our corporate masters demand be returned to the 19th century model post haste.
I’m gonna hate voting for her, if it comes to it, but I’ll stay home before I vote for a Republican. And simply dropping out, sayin f*%# it like so many did during the ’14 election cycle, is not something I consider an acceptible option. Soon enough I may get crushed by anti-democracy forces, but until then I refuse to ever just lie down and take it.
LikeLike
We, the people, are the only ones who will be able correct this mess. But, the mess didn’t happen overnight. It started with the Korean War and went worse very slowly through decades. Correcting it will take a long time, too.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on The Contrary Perspective and commented:
It now appears those Hillary Clinton emails will never be accessible. At Slate, Daniel Politi notes that “Hillary Clinton no longer has copies of the emails she sent when she was secretary of state, her lawyer acknowledged to a congressional committee. After the former secretary of state turned over government-related emails, the settings on the server were changed so that only emails from the last 60 days would be stored, her lawyer, David Kendall, said, according to the New York Times.”
The settings on the server “were changed” — note the convenient use of the passive voice! Who changed them? Under whose orders?
Clinton could give Machiavelli some lessons. But her past is so tainted, her negatives are so high, that her candidacy for 2016 is seriously compromised. If the Democrats care about winning in 2016 (especially against someone like Jeb Bush, not without his own negatives, but also not as notorious), they better find a new candidate, and soon.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on My Blog News.
LikeLike