The federal and state prison populations rose more under former President Bill Clinton than under any other president, according to a report from a criminal justice institute to be released today.
In fact, the analysis of U.S. Justice Department statistics by the left-leaning Justice Policy Institute, a project of a San Francisco-based justice center, found that more federal inmates were added to prisons under Clinton than under presidents George Bush and Ronald Reagan combined.
"I remember thinking when Bill Clinton got elected that we would have a chance to turn things around," said Vincent Schiraldi, president of the institute, a project of the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice. "But I think we read the tea leaves wrong."
http://articles.latimes.com/2001/feb/19/news/mn-27373
The economic crisis.
As “Inside Job” director Charles Ferguson put it, “There was a kind of inflection point during the five-year period between 1997 and 2003 — the late Clinton and/or early Bush administration — when all the rules just went away. You went from a period, a regime, where people did have at least some concern about going to jail, to a point where everything is legal, and derivatives couldn’t be regulated at all and nobody went to jail for anything. And looking back I would say that this period definitely started under Clinton. You absolutely cannot blame this on George W. Bush.”
http://www.salon.com/2012/09/14/clinton ... eral_hero/
Economist Stephanie KeltonThe private sector cannot survive in negative territory. It cannot go on, year after year, spending more than its income. It is not like the US government. It cannot support rising indebtedness in perpetuity. It is not a currency issuer. Eventually, something will give. And when it does, the private sector will retrench, the economy will contract, and the government's budget will move back into deficit.
"The Untold Story Of How Clinton's Budget Destroyed The American Economy"
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-bill ... omy-2012-9
Extraordinary rendition
A true story: Several years ago, the CIA informed the White House counterterrorism adviser that it had located a wanted Islamic terrorist and requested White House guidance for how to proceed. The counterterrorism adviser recommended “extraordinary rendition” — snatching the terrorist in a covert operation and secretly whisking him away for interrogation in a foreign country. A White House lawyer demanded a meeting with the president to argue that this would be a violation of international law. In the Oval Office, the lawyer and the counterterrorism adviser argued their cases, when suddenly the vice president walked in. Hearing the lawyer’s objections, he said: “Of course it’s a violation of international law, that’s why it’s a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his a**.’ ” The rendition was authorized.
The vice president in question was not Dick Cheney, nor was the president George W. Bush. Rather, they men who decided to carry out the first extraordinary rendition of a terrorist target — over the legal objections of the White House counsel’s office — were Al Gore and Bill Clinton, according a description of the meeting by the counterterrorism adviser, Richard Clarke, in his memoir, “Against All Enemies.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html
Free trades impact on American employment
When the North American Free Trade Agreement was first signed in 1994, proponents said it would eventually create jobs for the U.S. economy.
17 years later, a new report estimates, the American worker only has hundreds of thousands of job losses to show for it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/1 ... 59983.html
The war on terror, and the resulting mess in the middle east.
Richard Miniter’s new book, “Losing bin Laden: How Bill Clinton’s Failures Unleashed Global Terror,” tells the sad, infuriating history of the number of opportunities President Clinton had to capture and imprison or kill the terrorist Osama bin Laden. Instead, we are still hunting. Bin Laden is still at large and alive enough to sponsor and concoct the details of the worst attack on America in our history — the destruction of the World Trade Center and the bombing of the Pentagon. What other horrors he is planning we do not know, simply because he is still uncaptured.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/200 ... /?page=all