I started looking into the backgrounds of Obama's transition team members. Lots of Clinton alums. Looks like Obama believes Hillary's idea that it takes a Clinton to clean up after a Bush.
I don't totally dislike Clinton. He balanced the budget, passed FMLA, had a competent FEMA, took al Qaeda seriously, and didn't surround himself by syncophants. But he was so far to the right, I consider him a Republican (and I consider the current Republican rightwing base fascists... I'm not saying Clinton was like them).
I don't want Obama to be a second Clinton. I want him to represent the American people. The constitution does not begin with the words "We the multinational corporations..." and its stated goal is not "in order to form a more perfect military-industrial complex."
Obama, I bit my lip and supported you 100% until now. And now I get to hold you accountable. We need a president who is totally and completely acting on behalf of the PEOPLE. Not CEOs or corporate shareholders. Clinton didn't get that. Will you? Will you when you have all of Clinton's people advising you?
I wrote a diary yesterday that wasn't widely read, but it documented some of the worst corporate abuses going on right now. These abuses are possible BECAUSE the government has been run - for my entire lifetime - by people who think that the nine most dangerous words in the English language are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
What I read from looking up info on Obama's transition team really scared me. Don't get me wrong - I am THRILLED to have President Obama. I voted for him. I phonebanked for him. He's a HUGE step up over John McCain. But now I want to make Obama as great as possible.
The people on the transition team that I saw were almost all people who worked in the Clinton administration at the highest levels. Several are on corporate boards right now. The EPA Administrator was named to the transition team and under Clinton she had the attitude that we should work with business instead of necessarily regulating them. Now she works with Madeleine Albright's Albright Group, specifically helping multinational corporations navigate environmental regulation.
Another person - a Clinton Dept of Commerce alum - advised Clinton on NAFTA and we all know how that went. NAFTA is one of the most destructive legacies of the Clinton administration. I found a great quote from a Mexican farmer who was interviewed pre-NAFTA, saying that if we sent trains full of American corn down to Mexico, we better put benches in them so they could bring unemployed Mexican farmers back to the U.S. to find jobs.
How true that was! And once these immigrants are here, we exploit and abuse them. Horribly. From my diary yesterday:
In 2008, a meatpacking plant’s senior executive, Sholom Rubashkin, was arrested for employing undocumented workers and helping them obtain fake identification documents. Earlier in the year, a raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested nearly 400 undocumented workers at Rubashkin’s plant, Agriprocessors, including children as young as 13.
Workers who were arrested reported working 17-hour shifts, six days a week. A lawyer representing many of the underage workers reported that some were too young to shave. Although the plant denied any knowledge of underage workers, one youngster identified as Elmer L. told The Dallas Morning News that he had told his supervisors he was under 18. He worked for $7.25 an hour, 17 hours a day, sometimes without overtime pay.
Like the injured worker in a Tyson hog plant I spoke with, the workers at Agriprocessors reported injuries. Elmer L. reported being kicked in the rear by a supervisor, causing "a freshly sharpened knife to fly up and cut his elbow." At a nearby hospital he received eight stitches, but the next day the stitches ruptured on the job. That time, he was merely given a bandage and sent back to work.
Said NAFTA-advising Clinton alum also has ties to Merck and Boeing (oh great, Big Pharma and the Military-Industrial complex) as well as the banking industry.
Regarding the EPA admin person's idea of working hand in hand with business to help the environment, that is a particular strategy of big business, including many of the worst polluters, to get around true environmental progress. (Read Toxic Sludge is Good For You by John Stauber).
By working WITH environmental groups and government, polluters can co-opt those groups. For anyone who won't allow themselves to be co-opted, they marginalize them. It's cheaper to pay for a big PR campaign and lobbyists than to pay to clean up the environment.
The same goes for the cozy relationship between the government and junk food makers. All you need as evidence there are the meetings and conferences and panels in which government and business attend together and the government officials are praising companies like Coca-Cola and Kraft for their excellent commitments to reducing obesity and promoting nutrition. Yeah F-ing Right. If they had any commitment to nutrition, they'd stop making crap and selling it to us. Period.
So Obama, you're great, I love you, I'm glad you won. But Don't Be Clinton. We need someone who puts citizens first. Working with the corporations will NEVER do that adequately. We have too much to lose, and a lot to make up for from the last 8 long years.