Truest statement of the week II

His Friday column, entitled “Sanders Over the Edge,” follows a blog he posted on the Times web site last Sunday accusing Sanders of being a fifth columnist for the Republicans. Krugman wrote: “Engaging in innuendo suggesting, without evidence, that Clinton is corrupt is, at this point, basically campaigning on behalf of the RNC (Republican National Committee).” [Emphasis added]
Without evidence?! The entire political history of Bill and Hillary Clinton has been steeped in hypocrisy and corruption. Extending back to their days in Arkansas, the Clintons perfected the art of combining “I feel your pain” rhetoric with deal-making with various business interests to advance their political careers. This included Bill Clinton’s connections with Frank Perdue of the poultry empire and Hillary Clinton’s six-year stint on the board of directors of Wal-Mart during her husband’s term as Arkansas governor.
During their years in the White House, the Clintons shifted the Democratic Party further to the right, repudiating any program of social reform or redistribution of wealth from the top to the bottom in favor of traditional Republican nostrums. Their strategy of “triangulation” included new draconian prison sentencing laws and the termination of the sixty-year-old federal welfare program called Aid to Families with Dependent Children, driving millions of the poorest Americans into destitution.
At the same time, the Clintons oversaw the final dismantling of any serious banking regulation, marked by the repeal of the 1930s Glass-Steagall Act and its separation of commercial and investment banking.
Since the end of the Clinton presidency, Hillary and Bill have parlayed their White House tenure into a personal fortune in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The two have collected over $140 million in the 15 years since the end of the Clinton administration, while workers were losing their jobs, retirement savings and homes. A major part of this windfall has come in the form of speaking fees from big corporations and banks. In the first 15 months after she left her post as Obama’s secretary of state in 2012, Hillary Clinton took in $5 million in such rewards for services rendered.

In an earlier period, Krugman staked out a position by criticizing the Clinton administration for its adoption of right-wing positions previously associated with the Republican Party. In August 2006, to cite one example, he complained that “in practice Mr. Clinton governed well to the right of both Eisenhower and Nixon.”


-- Barry Grey, "Paul Krugman smears Bernie Sanders" (WSWS).