Clinton - The Master at work

[Oso]

If you want to see how it's done, watch this.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/
Click on the picture of Clinton then be sure to click on the maximize button to make it full screen.

 

[jj]

Ugh. My poor appetite!

 

[Roadtoad]

Bill Clinton mismanaged our nation's budget, gutted our defense, lied under oath, and cheated our nation's seniors.

I'm sorry, incompetence is merely incompetence; it's not sincerity. He can "feel my pain" all he wants, it doesn't solve a damned thing. He was a waste of eight years.

Then again, what we've got isn't looking much better.

 

[RichardR]

Bill Clinton mismanaged our nation's budget...

Well yes, Clinton's surplus is evidence of total mismanagement, especially when compared with the current incumbent's well-managed deficit. Good point!

 

[crackmonkey]

...and of course, the surplus is entirely Clinton's doing. The President can essentially command the economy to perform as he wishes, after all...

 

[TillEulenspiegel]

Bill Clinton mismanaged our nation's budget, gutted our defense, lied under oath, and cheated our nation's seniors.

Clinton mismanaged our nation's budget
Show me the math.

gutted our defense
Show me how ( as that was a function of congress)

lied under oath
Yup and was impeached for it.

cheated our nation's seniors
How ? Show policies and maths directly attributable to Clinton.

 

[clk]

Bill Clinton mismanaged our nation's budget,

Yeah, that pesky $230 billion dollar surplus was sure getting in the way.

gutted our defense,

He gutted it so much that our military wasn't even able to win the war in Iraq. Oh wait...

lied under oath,

If I were in his position, I probably would have lied about the BJ too. I mean, it's none of anybody's business, dammit.

I'm sorry, incompetence is merely incompetence; it's not sincerity. He can "feel my pain" all he wants, it doesn't solve a damned thing. He was a waste of eight years.

Then again, what we've got isn't looking much better.

You left out a few things on your list:
created 20 million jobs
created the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years
created the lowest poverty rates in 20 years
created the first back-to-back budget surpluses in 42 years
created the longest period of economic growth in our entire history
made crime go down by 20 percent, to its lowest level in 25 years
reduced teen births seven years in a row
increased adoptions by 30 percent
cut welfare rolls in half to their lowest levels in 30 years

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Well yes, Clinton's surplus is evidence of total mismanagement, especially when compared with the current incumbent's well-managed deficit. Good point!

Except that there never was a surplus. It's all smoke and mirrors and games they play to rig the numbers. Remember, we are dealing with politicians here.

 

[TillEulenspiegel]

Numbers and sources ( vetted ) to provide credibility of your claims?

 

[corplinx]

Why do leftists still attribute the tech bubble tax surplus to Clinton's economic policy?

The burden of evidence is on you the leftist (clk and till) to somehow link the tech bubble to a Clinton policy that intended to produce that surplus.

If anyone deserves credit in government, it would have been Newt Gingrich for cutting the growth rate of Federal spending. However, his forecasts predicted a balanced budget 4 years later than it actually happened.

I keep hearing this, well, BS about Clinton and the surplus (which was actually social security money and not true tax revenue surplus). I call on you who repeat this propaganda to support it.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Numbers and sources ( vetted ) to provide credibility of your claims?

This explains it pretty well. I have no idea what year the person is talking about, and I know nothing about Progress.Org, whether the are left, right or middle. It makes no difference. His explanation is correct. And this goes on every year. Dis-honest accounting by dis-honest politicians. And they know better. Shame on them. And the gullable public keeps lapping it up.

 

[clk]

Why do leftists still attribute the tech bubble tax surplus to Clinton's economic policy?

The burden of evidence is on you the leftist (clk and till) to somehow link the tech bubble to a Clinton policy that intended to produce that surplus.

OK. The Clinton Technology Policy Initiative definitely put the US in the right direction with respect to technology. I think Clinton and Gore understood the value of technology, so they worked to foster it. Want proof? Well, here's an excerpt:

" Information Superhighways"

New Options offered by Information Technology in Education and Training

-- Computers can create an unprecedented opportunity for learning complex ideas, creating an environment that can closely approximate real work environments or experimental apparatus. -- Interconnected systems can help students work together as parts of a team even if the members of the team are separated geographically. -- Training can be embedded as a part of new equipment. Complex machine tools or software packages can be purchased with tutorials that bring new operators up to speed quickly, that provide quick refreshers for unusual events, and that allow operators to build new competencies during off-hours. -- Advanced systems permit instruction tailored to the learning needs of individuals. This is particularly important for retraining adults that reenter a training environment with a great variety of learning needs and learning abilities. And it is important in ensuring that minorities, women, people with disabilities, and others that may be disadvantaged by traditional approaches to instruction. -- Communication technologies can bring a rich education and training environment to people isolated because they live in remote areas or because of the demands of work and family responsibilities. -- Technology can reduce the burden of record-keeping and other paperwork that consumes so much teacher time in today's classrooms. It can also bring teachers and schools together in ways that facilitate the exchange of ideas and build a sense of community.

The CTPI was introduced to the country in early 1993, btw, which was well before most people really knew about the internet and computer systems.
Clinton and Gore saw that the future of technology was in computers, and building a so called "information superhighway" would be beneficial to the country. I don't think even they could have imagined how vast the internet could have become. The excerpt above deals primarily with the application of technology to education. The full policy can be found here:
http://simr02.si.ehu.es/DOCS/nearnet.gnn.com/mag/10_93/articles/clinton/clinton.tech.html

 

[epepke]

Clinton mismanaged our nation's budget
Show me the math.

Here's some math: http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm

It doesn't show particular mismanagement during the Clinton years. For the eight years from 9/30/93 to 9/28/01, the public debt climbed about 1.3 trillion dollars. However, from 9/28/01 to the present, about 2.5 years, it's gone up about 1.3 trillion dollars. The four years preceding Clinton, it went up by about 1.1 trillion dollars.

I've chosen later rather than earlier dates on the grounds that economic policies take some time to become implemented.

Assuming that national debt is something that people are concerned about, this doesn't seem particularly well suited toward the notion that the Clinton years were ones of particular mismanagement, at least compared to his temporal neighbors. Even assuming that, say, 200 billion out of the 1.3 trillion the US had to borrow outright for the invasion of Iraq, the remaining 1.1 trillion is still an awfully big number for 2.5 years.

Of course, this will convince nobody of anything, because people will always attribute good things to administrations that they already decided they like and bad things to administrations they already decided that they don't like. People who wouldn't bat an eyelash over claims that Bush is responsible for the "economic recovery" I keep reading about in the papers but don't actually see happening will gleefully claim that Clinton had nothing to do with the economic prosperity of the 1990s. And vice versa.

 

[Roadtoad]

I do not say, nor will I EVER say that Bush is a good president. Our current deficit, which Bush is continuing to expand, is a prime example why I can't stand the guy.

 

[RichardR]

...and of course, the surplus is entirely Clinton's doing. The President can essentially command the economy to perform as he wishes, after all...

Either his policies can affect the economy or they can't.

If they can then you have to judge his management of the economy by the indicators available (surplus, employment, GDP growth etc).

If they can't, then how can he have "mismanaged' the economy?

 

[RichardR]

This explains it pretty well. I have no idea what year the person is talking about, and I know nothing about Progress.Org, whether the are left, right or middle. It makes no difference. His explanation is correct. And this goes on every year. Dis-honest accounting by dis-honest politicians. And they know better. Shame on them. And the gullable public keeps lapping it up.

That's just the way governments do their accounting, it doesn't mean that Clinton "mismanaged the economy", which was the claim made.

 

[TillEulenspiegel]

Central Scrutinizer

A personal site is hardy an authority. When I said vetted , I meant accountable in a critical way, like the CBO,OBM, Fed, any oversite committee, anyone with a bureaucratic mission of oversite of the budget.

Epepke, Yes most people (and government ) don't account for debt. In fact it's the elephant in the halls of congress. The truth is tho on an analytical floor using the same constraints the claim of TCS is not only in error numerically but also in characterization. You will have a different answer to the same question by knowledgeable people. The problem is that the picture can be distorted depending where you get the numbers AND the way they are analyzed. Witness the Medicare brawl on center stage.

The actual case is as normal somewhere between the two extremes. I object to people making grandiose sweeping statements in regards to things they have only a New York Times/Knight Ridder headline knowledge of.

Every time I switch from the Science forum to the Political forum , I get whiplash. You know what I mean, we would never let posters get away with nebulous positions or unsupported generalizations there....Why do we allow it here?

With a tip o' the hat to Your critique. You show precisely the style of argument that seems to be absent here.

 

[RichardR]

I do not say, nor will I EVER say that Bush is a good president. Our current deficit, which Bush is continuing to expand, is a prime example why I can't stand the guy.

Fair enought - and agreed. But it doesn't mean that Clinton mismanaged the economy.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

That's just the way governments do their accounting, it doesn't mean that Clinton "mismanaged the economy", which was the claim made.

That is the way dishonest governments do their accounting.

I didn't say Clinton mismanaged the economy, merely that the "surplus" was imaginary.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Central Scrutinizer

A personal site is hardy an authority. When I said vetted , I meant accountable in a critical way, like the CBO,OBM, Fed, any oversite committee, anyone with a bureaucratic mission of oversite of the budget.

So you're saying I should find a site that exposes the fraud, run by the very people who are committing the fraud?

Ummm...yeah. I'll get right on that. But first I have to sort my sock drawer.