Enough about Hillary's negatives

[wyldwolf]

39. I'll bite (and this is going to be long)

Education

Wellesley College where she majored in political science.
Yale Law School, where she served on the Board of Editors of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action.

Political Activist Experience

Pragmatic Liberal

Always fascinated by radicalism, she wrote her senior thesis on a great radical organizer of poor people, Saul Alinsky of Chicago. Though when she was offered a job by Alinsky, after she wrote about him, and she turned him down--because she didn't think he was effective enough. She said to her boyfriend at that timebe in politics you have to win. And it didn't look to her like Alinsky was winning enough of his battles. She came to question his methodology and concluded in her thesis that larger government programs and funding were needed, not just community action at the grass roots.

She was the commencement speaker at Wellesley in 1969, chosen by her fellow students--there had never been a student commencement speaker there before. The scheduled speaker was Sen. Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, who Hillary had campaigned for, a Republican, the first black to be a member of the U.S. Senate in a hundred years. In his remarks he was patronizing, Hillary thought. He seemed to defend the Nixon administration's conduct of the war, and didn't mention the wrenching events of 68. When he finished, Hillary got up and extemporaneously excoriated him. As a result of that speech, she was featured in Life magazine as exemplary of this new generation of student leaders. They ran a picture of her in pedal pushers and her Coke-bottle glasses. That article made her well known in the student movement in the U.S.

She monitored the Black Panther trial in New Haven. She monitored the trial to see if there were any abuses of the rights of the Panthers on trial, and helped schedule the monitors. Her reports were turned over to the ACLU.

1971 Senator Walter Mondale's subcommittee on migrant workers, researching migrant problems in housing, sanitation, health and education.

Political Campaign Experience

1964 In high school, volunteered for Republican candidate Barry Goldwater.
1968 New Hampshire, Eugene McCarthy primary challenge to LBJ.
1972 Campaigned in the western states for 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern
1976 Jimmy Carter Presidential race, served as an Indiana campaign coordinator.

The Clinton Campaigns (Bill Clinton has stated Hillary played pivotal roles in his campaigns)

1974 Bill Clinton's Congressional race (L)
1976 Bill Clinton's Attorney General race (W)
1978 Bill Clinton's Governor's Race (W)
1980 Bill Clinton's Governor's Race (L)
1982 Bill Clinton's Governor's Race (W)
1992 Bill Clinton's Presidential Race (W)
1996 Bill Clinton's Presidential Race (W)
2000 Hillary Clinton's Senate Campaign (W)
2006 Hillary Clinton's Senate Campaign (W)

Legal Experience

1969 Truehaft, Walker and Bernstein in Oakland, one of the most liberal law firms in the country. They defended the Panthers.
1970 Yale University - city legal services, provided free legal advice for the poor.
1971 Staff attorney, Children's Defense Fund in Cambridge, Massachusetts
1971 Carnegie Council on Children, legal consultant.
1974 Impeachment Inquiry staff in Washington, D.C., advising the House Committee on the Judiciary during the Watergate scandal.
1974 University of Arkansas, Fayetteville School of Law - One of only two female faculty members.
1976 Rose Law Firm. In 1979, she became the first woman to be made a full partner.
1976 Worked pro bono on child advocacy.
1978 Jimmy Carter appoints Clinton to the board of the Legal Services Corporation.

She was twice named by the National Law Journal as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America, in 1988 and in 1991.

First Lady of Arkansas

1979 Chaired the Rural Health Advisory Committee
1979 Introduced the Arkansas' Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youth, a program that helps parents work with their children in preschool preparedness and literacy.
1982 - 1992 Chaired the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee

She was named Arkansas Woman of the Year in 1983 and Arkansas Mother of the Year in 1984.

Clinton had co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families in 1977.

Served on the boards of the Arkansas Children's Hospital Legal Services (1988-1992)and the Children's Defense Fund (as chair, 1986-1992)

Corporate board of directors of TCBY (1985-1992),Wal-Mart Stores (1986-1992), and Lafarge (1990-1992)


Redefined the role of First Lady

1993 First to bring a serious universal healthcare plan to be considered by the US Congress
1997 Helped develop the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997

The First Lady led the effort on the Foster Care Independence bill, to help older, unadopted children transition to adulthood. She also hosted numerous White House conferences that related to children's health, including early childhood development (1997) and school violence (1999). She lent her support to programs ranging from "Prescription for Reading," in which pediatricians provided free books for new mothers to read to their infants as their brains were rapidly developing, to nationwide immunization against childhood illnesses. She also supported an annual drive to encourage older women to seek a mammography to prevent breast cancer, coverage of the cost being provided by Medicare.

Hillary Clinton was the only First Lady to keep an office in the West Wing among those of the president's senior staff. While her familiarity with the intricate political issues and decisions faced by the President, she openly discussed his work with him, yet stated that ultimately she was but one of several individuals he consulted before making a decision. They were known to disagree. Regarding his 1993 passage of welfare reform, the First Lady had reservations about federally supported childcare and Medicaid. When issues that she was working on were under discussion at the morning senior staff meetings, the First Lady often attended. Aides kept her informed of all pending legislation and oftentimes sought her reaction to issues as a way of gauging the President's potential response. Weighing in on his Cabinet appointments and knowing many of the individuals he named, she had working relationships with many of them.

She persuaded Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin to convene a meeting of corporate CEOs for their advice on how companies could be persuaded to adopt better child care measures for working families.

With Attorney General Janet Reno, the First Lady helped to create the Department of Justice's Violence Against Women office. One of her closest Cabinet allies was Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Following her international trips, Hillary Clinton wrote a report of her observations for Albright. A primary effort they shared was globally advocating gender equity in economics, employment, health care and education.

During her trips to Africa (1997), Asia (1995), South America (1995, 1997) and the Central European former Soviet satellite nations (1997, 1998), Hillary Clinton emphasized "a civil society," of human rights as a road to democracy and capitalism.

The First Lady was also one of the few international figures at the time who spoke out against the treatment of Afghani women by Islamist fundamentalist Taliban that had seized control of Afghanistan.

One of the programs she helped create was Vital Voices, a U.S.-sponsored initiative to promote the participation of international women in their nation's political process. One result of the group's meetings, in Northern Ireland, was drawing together women leaders of various political factions that supported the Good Friday peace agreement that brought peace to that nation long at civil war.

Hillary Clinton was also an active supporter of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), often awarding its micro-loans to small enterprises begun by women in developing nations that aided the economic growth in their impoverished communities. Certainly one of her more important speeches as First Lady addressing the need for equal rights for women was international in scope and created controversy in the nation where it was made: the September 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China.

When asked about his wife's role in his administration in August of 2000, President Bill Clinton said "She basically had an unprecedented level of activity in her present position over the last eight years.''

Her record as First Lady, Hillary Clinton says, includes work on a major Clinton administration child-care initiative, a huge federal-state children's health insurance program, adoption and foster care bills and foreign aid appropriations for small loans overseas.

''The record's there, and what I did is sort of self-evident I think, but it may come as new information to a lot of people,'' Mrs. Clinton said in an interview in 2000.

Pressed later about whether her new descriptions of acting as, in essence, a senior presidential adviser went beyond the job of first lady, Mrs. Clinton laughed out loud and said: ''I'm not going to have it any more. And the next first lady doesn't have to do it.''

Agency heads, other administration officials, Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill generally confirm Mrs. Clinton's assertions, but say that her role was kept quiet to avoid the kind of vilification she had attracted over her central part in health care policy.

Mrs. Clinton described her White House issues staff, which had offices in both the West Wing and the old Executive Office Building, ''as part of the domestic policy operation in the White House.'' Although she also had a small staff in the East Wing to handle first lady social responsibilities, Mrs. Clinton said that ''I realized very soon that, you know, if I had some first lady staff over here, I wouldn't be able to get things done.''

She said that she and her policy staff had the responsibility for pushing legislation and programs that would benefit children, women and health care -- issues that have concerned her, she said, for the last 30 years.

Mrs. Clinton's Democratic supporters on Capitol Hill echo her claims.

''Her office and her in particular were key allies of ours and the progressives in the Senate who were trying to pursue an agenda in the areas of children, education, health care and job training,'' said Nick Littlefield, who worked with Senator Edward M. Kennedy and was the staff director to the Health, Education and Labor Committee at the time. He added that ''once we discovered that Mrs. Clinton was running a public advocacy organization inside the White House, it followed automatically that we would start talking to her.''

She said, for example, that the Clinton administration program to guarantee free immunizations for poor and uninsured children, passed in 1993, ''was basically drafted in my office under my supervision.'' The program was a precursor to health care and its policy was largely rejected by Congress, but the Clinton administration did get $585 million for vaccines.

Mrs. Clinton also said that her staff had a large part in the development of the Corporation for National Service, the Clinton administration's domestic version of the Peace Corps.

''I hired Shirley Sagawa, who had been Ted Kennedy's person on national service, and so basically it was my staff that was involved in drafting that legislation,'' she said.

Eli J. Segal, the first chief executive of the Corporation for National Service and the 1992 Clinton campaign chief of staff, called the first lady's assertion ''100 percent correct.''

Among her other accomplishments, Mrs. Clinton said she helped to initiate and promote the Children's Health Insurance Program, created by Congress in 1997 to provide $24 billion over five years to states to insure children.

''She was a one-woman army inside the White House to get this done,'' Mr. Littlefield of the Health, Education and Labor Committee said. He said that he and Senator Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who was the major force behind the bill, enlisted Mrs. Clinton's help in the spring of 1997 when the president became ''skittish'' about the program. Mr. Littlefield said the Senate majority leader, Trent Lott, was threatening that it was a ''deal buster'' on the balanced budget agreement that he and Mr. Clinton had reached.

''At that point we went to Mrs. Clinton and said, 'You've got to get the president to come around on this thing,' '' Mr. Littlefield said. ''And she said, 'Absolutely.' And we very quickly noticed a change. The president was very much on board.''

She also said she helped to write bills on adoption and foster care, and lobbied for them.

At the end of the 1997 Congressional session, Representative Dave Camp, a conservative Michigan Republican who was frantically negotiating to save an adoption bill, got a call in the House cloakroom from Mrs. Clinton.

''It was 9:30 or 10 at night,'' Mr. Camp recalled. ''I thought only Congressional night owls did that. I was surprised. You know, you're working wearily on these things, and you're worrying whether this is doing any good.'' Mrs. Clinton gave him a pep talk, Mr. Camp said, and told him the bill was worth it.

''I want to be honest,'' he said. ''It was helpful to me.''

The bill, an administration priority intended to speed up the adoption of children in foster care, had been heavily promoted by Mrs. Clinton on Capitol Hill. Four days after her call, it passed the House and Senate and was soon signed into law by the president.

Others in the Clinton Administration said that they learned to count on Mrs. Clinton as more than a spokeswoman.

''I don't think that the Endowment would be alive today if it weren't for strong White House support, and I'm sure she plays a very important role,'' said Jane Alexander, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.

At the Agency for International Development, Brian Atwood, the administrator, said of Mrs. Clinton's grasp of complex development issues: ''She understands these issues better than 90 percent of the people who operate within the foreign policy community.''

Mrs. Clinton has been working with A.I.D. to import to inner cities lessons learned abroad, on child immunization, for example, and inexpensive techniques to combat diarrhea. She has taken a particularly strong interest in ''microenterprise lending,'' or efforts in developing nations and troubled cities to lend small amounts of money for new businesses, often run by women.

It is no coincidence, Mr. Atwood said, that the Administration is seeking to slightly increase the budget for A.I.D. next year. ''She deserves more credit for that,'' he said, ''than anyone.''

As United States Senator

* Secured, with Senator Schumer and New York's Congressional delegation, $21.4 billion for New York City's clean up and recovery.

* Fought for the Victims Compensation Fund to provide substantial payments to 9/11 victims.

* Extended Disaster Unemployment Assistance for 52 weeks.

* Expedited benefits to the families of fire fighters, police and other public safety officers who died in the September 11 terrorist attacks.

* Secured $10 million for mental health treatment for students in New York and $5 million for mental health treatment for public safety officers.

* Ensured that no less than $500 million of nearly $2.7 billion in Community Development Block Grants funding be used for small businesses and residents in Lower Manhattan.

* Co-sponsored the "Terrorism Risk Insurance Act" which the President signed into law in November 2002.

* Secured $12 million for baseline screening and long-term health care for workers and volunteers at Ground Zero; brought national attention to the need for additional resources for health tracking.

* Worked with FEMA so that $4.5 billion would go toward building a world-class transportation system in Lower Manhattan.

* Secured $140 million for New York Hospitals and health care providers that responded to and were hurt by the disaster.

* Worked to pass the National Construction Safety Team Act that eliminates bureaucratic barrier for safety teams to inspect buildings in the event of a disaster.

* Hosted a Senate field hearing on air quality impacts of the WTC attacks, and pushed the EPA to test and clean indoor air in Lower Manhattan.

* Passed legislation to create a special 9/11 Heroes Stamp, with proceeds going to the benefit of the families of fallen public safety officers.

* Helped pass the first 13-week extension of Unemployment Insurance in February 2002.

* Negotiated a bipartisan bill passed by the Senate to extend Unemployment Insurance another 13 weeks for 2.2 million Americans who lost benefits on December 28, 2002.

* Sponsored an amendment to promote teacher and principal recruitment, securing $35 million in grants including $2.6 million to help Albany, Brooklyn, Dobbs Ferry, Staten Island, the West Bronx, and Niagara Falls recruit teachers.

* Won adoption of the "Healthy and High Performance Schools" amendment to study the impact of sick and dilapidated schools on children.

* Launched the Energy Efficient Schools initiative to make buildings more efficient and save local districts money.
* Released a statewide report that said New York Schools needed a significant amount of federal aid to repair and renovate their schools: 83 percent could not afford basic repairs like new roofs or maintenance on playground; 40 percent lacked adequate safety equipment, and 80 percent said that they do not have the computers phones and training they need.

* Introduced the "Investing for Tomorrow's Schools Act" to promote healthier and more energy efficient school buildings, and the bill will target hundreds of millions of dollars to New York State schools.

* Worked with the New York Congressional delegation to create a new visa that allows part-time Canadian students continue their education in Western New York's colleges and universities.

* Worked to double funding for the National Science Foundation over five years and preserve a critical program for improving math and science in K-12.

* Fought for an $11.25 billion increase in childcare funding to help more families receive higher quality care.

* Introduced legislation to help children in foster care keep track of their school, medical, and other vital records and secured this provision as an amendment in the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, which was approved unanimously by the Senate Education Committee.

* Introduced legislation to pave the way for children emerging from foster care to serve in AmeriCorps.

* Cosponsored "The Great Lakes Legacy Act" which secures almost $500 million to protect and restore the Great Lakes, and the "Daniel Patrick Moynihan Champlain Basin Program Act of 2002" which honors Senator Moynihan for his work and provides counties in New York and Vermont with funds to restore the Lake Champlain basin.

* Fought to reauthorize the New York City Watershed Protection Program.

* Introduced the "Finger Lakes Initiative Act of 2002" in October 2002 to secure $50 million over the next 5 years to enhance the environmental, economic and cultural benefits of the Finger Lakes.

* Worked with Senator Schumer to pass a one-year ban on drilling in the Finger Lakes, and will continue to work on making the ban permanent.

* Cosponsored "The Clean Power Act of 2001" and "The Acid Rain Control Act" to reduce the amounts of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, and mercury and eliminate the devastating effects of Acid Rain in the Adirondacks.

* Introduced legislation to create a national health tracking system for chronic diseases and environmental health hazards. The bill calls for placing an environmental health officer in every state's public health department, creating a chronic disease rapid response force, fully funding chronic disease prevention and research, and coordinating pollution and disease data.

* Supported "Brownfields Revitalization and Environmental Restoration Act" and succeeded in getting two amendments added to the law: one that targets Brownfields assistance to communities that have high rates of asthma, cancer, birth-defects, and other health problems, and the other ensures that local communities can make sure that contaminated sites in their area are not overlooked.
Encouraged the EPA to go forward with original plans to remove the PCB-contaminated sediments from the Hudson River, which the EPA decided to do in December 2001.

* Fought for funding to clean up Long Island Sound, and offered an amendment to aid in curbing nutrient pollution from facilities that discharge into the Sound.

* Fought to maintain protections against arsenic in drinking water.

* Worked with Senator's DeWine and Dodd to reinstate the "Pediatric Rule" so that all drugs and vaccines are tested and safe for children.

* Introduced legislation to combat global HIV/AIDS, and ensured that provisions were included in the global HIV/AIDS bill.

* Co-sponsored a bill to increase the Federal Matching Assistance Program by 1.35 percent to help ease the financial burden on states as Medicaid costs continue to rise-this proposal would bring almost $550 million in relief to New York.

* Worked with Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR) to include provisions for hospitals to retain and attract qualified nurses in the "Nurse Reinvestment Act of 2002."

* Secured $100 million to increase the number of FDA food safety inspectors.

* Introduced bipartisan legislation to increase access to respite care services for families and supported measures to increase worker and volunteer training.

* Worked with Senator Harkin (D-IA) and Senator Durbin (D-IL) to give the USDA the authority to keep meat safe from dangerous pathogens.

* Introduced legislation with Senator DeWine (R-OH) to protect against future vaccine shortages by providing a stockpile of routine childhood vaccines and requires manufacturers to give a years notice if they plan to stop making the vaccine.

* Announced the "SCHIP Enhancement Act" in July 2001 to expand CHIP and reward states that cover children up to 300 percent of the federal poverty line.

* Fought to extend SCHIP and Medicaid to parents of eligible children as well as making sure legal immigrants are covered and that disabled children are covered under Medicaid.

* Introduced legislation with Senator Jeffords (I-VT) and Senator Snowe (R-ME) that allows small businesses to join together to purchase health insurance for employees and keep costs down, and worked to give small businesses tax credits for purchasing health insurance.

* Worked with Senator Reed (D-RI) to establish a trust fund for teaching hospitals.