I am going to jump right to it: Hillary Rodham Clinton is dishonest, untrustworthy and indecisive. She does not deserve a single vote from people who actually care about a candidate’s values and morals.
Recently, Clinton condescendingly urged young people to do their own research when questioned about her ties to the fossil fuel industry. Ms. Clinton, I present to you my research:
Clinton claims to be a progressive, consistently championing for positive social change and defending civil liberty. Not quite. In 1964 she supported Barry Goldwater for president. Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that put an end to racial segregation.
She was young and naive, you say? Maybe. In her 50’s, she strongly supported the Defense of Marriage Act signed by President Bill Clinton as a federal law in 1996.
She opposed same sex marriage while running for the Senate, opposed it as a senator and even while running for president in 2008. The turn of the decade showed more Americans polling in favor of gay marriage, and so Clinton jumped on the bandwagon in March 2013.
She was also a supporter of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” – a restrictive and dis- criminatory policy regarding the service of homosexuals in the military. It is another blemish on her husband’s presidency.
That’s the tip of the iceberg. Clinton denounces Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that allows for corporations to funnel money into political campaigns. She says she is against it because most of America is, but beneath another veil of deception, super PACs and PACs have raised more than $62.5 million for Clinton, according to The New York Times.
[media-credit name=”ALYSSA HANDELMAN” align=”alignnone” width=”262″]
[/media-credit]
Onto another important progressive issue: fracking. Being progressive and being categorically against fracking go hand in hand. Not quite for Clinton; she was asked about whether she supports fracking at a March 6 debate hosted by CNN, she answered: “I don’t support it when any locality or any state is against it, I don’t support it when the release of methane or contamination of water is present…” In contrast, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ answer was a lot shorter: “No.”
Maybe she cannot put her foot down because she has received over $4.5 million in campaign funds from the fossil fuel industry. In fact, as secretary of state, she promoted shale gas extraction personally on one occasion and urged countries like Portugal, Tanzania and Pakistan to turn to fracking as an extraction process for natural gas.
The U.S. has a failed private prison system. The number of incarcerated in the U.S. is higher than in China, even though China accounts for 20 percent of the world’s population. And while Sanders will ban private prisons that run for profit, Clinton has so far accepted $133,246 from private prison lobbyists.
In 2012, Clinton hailed the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership as a “gold standard” in trade agreements and called it one of her great accomplishments. In 2015, right as the final versions of the deal were being released Clinton said she does not support the deal anymore. But of course she did. The political climate was such that she had to.
In Clinton’s words from a debate in 2008: “I have been a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning.” Strange, because before her husband signed the trade bill into action, Clinton held strategy meetings for congressional approval and helped block environmental and labor opposition to the bill. I am not sure what “beginning” she was talking about.
Maybe this is a stretch, but Clinton served on the board of Walmart from 1986 to 1992. NAFTA made it such that America’s trade barriers were lifted, al- lowing over 700,000 jobs to evaporate. Industries shut down and manufacturers moved to countries that provided the cheapest (and most exploited) labor and had the least restrictive environmental and safety regulations possible. Guess what? Wally World, and others, saw profits skyrocket.
The list of her flip-flops go on: the U.S.-Korea trade agreement, the Columbia free trade agreement, the issue of raising the payroll tax, providing illegal immigrants with driver’s’ licenses, the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, federal gun control and gun ownership, her stance on clean coal and her vote for the Iraq War, just to name a few.
Hillary Clinton will sway with the popular political sentiment. She will say absolutely anything to appease the crowd she is speaking to. But behind her condescending laugh and holier-than-thou attitude stands a woman who changes her values as per convenience, not conviction. Her slogan is “Hillary Clinton: fighting for us.” It should be “Hillary Clinton: lying to us.”
