Hillary Clinton: Classic or Dud?

'gleefully'... At this point you're just making things up.

I checked Sund4r's State Dept. link defining "modern slavery" and the best fit was:

Forced labor, sometimes also referred to as labor trafficking, encompasses the range of activities – recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining – involved when a person uses force or physical threats, psychological coercion, abuse of the legal process, deception, or other coercive means to compel someone to work.

This definitely fits if the prisoners are threatened, beaten, or specifically punished for refusal to participate in the unpaid labor they are asked to perform. However, a prisoner (at least theoretically) has recourse to the court system to challenge this coercion and their lawyer could cite the State Department's definition as part of their case.

I don't know enough detail about Arkansas' penal system to know if it really fits that definition or not. I'm sure it treads awfully close to that line, but if obvious coercion is baked into the system, I can't see how it hasn't been effectively challenged in court.

finding ways to defend the prison industrial complex is another!

― k3vin k., Thursday, June 8, 2017 1:28 PM (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm not defending the complex as a whole, but this in particular seems like an exceptionally kind way to treat a convicted murderer.

Hm, I think you're right, actually. xp

not defending it, just saying it is exceptionally kind!

wow they get to clean Bill Clinton's dishes what an honor

it is better treatment than their victims received.

Is it better or worse, on the whole, then being locked in a cell for 23 hours a day?

Has anyone asked the men who (were made to?) participating in this program how they felt about it?

it is better treatment than their victims received.

Oh cool, "eye for an eye" bullshit.

it is better treatment than their victims received.

This is the wrong yardstick to apply for so many reasons it is hard to know where to begin.

this strikes me as p fucked-up and indefensible

it is better treatment than their victims received.

― how's life, Thursday, June 8, 2017 2:14 PM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

seems like an interesting bar

just the lack of reflection stuck out to me, not surprised that it's a practice. there was an article or tweet thread a week or so ago about similar practices in Louisiana that rightfully made everybody mad

it would be funny if HRC's defense was that she didn't actually write any of "it takes a village"

I guess it took until 2017 for anyone to read far enough into It Takes a Village to uncover this scandal

^^^^yes, I found that detail amusing. Who tf wants to read a US pol memoir

I was surprised It Takes A Village came out in '96, I thought it was much earlier in the Clinton era, tied into the healthcare fiasco.

It was part of the post-1994 election rebranding of HRC as a First Lady who writes books about children and stuff

That tweet thread about Louisiana was really interesting. https://twitter.com/i/moments/866583376265977856

Just realised by this definition I was briefly a slave, apparently.

It takes a village to finish one of her books amirite

Just remembers one of Dole's big convention speech lines was "It doesn't take a village it takes a family!"

it's hilarious, I've been slapping my knee since '96

i was a little worried i was strawmanning ilx's hillary fans but phil d actually out here with the "actually, this isn't that bad"

No, I asked a question, one which I noticed you haven't bothered to answer.

Has anyone asked the men who (were made to?) participating in this program how they felt about it?

― Old Lynch's Sex Paragraph (Phil D.), Thursday, June 8, 2017 2:17 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If you mean this question, the answer is: their bodies were used to pave the Clintons' secret CIA Cocaine airstrip

Being in prison at all is shitty as all hell (yes I know people who both have been to prison and people who are currently in prison, one for a double life sentence) and the entire system of who does and doesn't go to prison is FUBAR in this country. Being forced to perform uncompensated labor in prison is also shitty. (Labor compensated at third world wages is not much better.)

Since we have pretty much given up on rehabilitation, if I were in prison, I, personally, would rather spend my time cutting some guy's lawn or serving his dinner than sitting in a cell or being subject to the other attendant risks of being in prison. And I was curious as to whether anyone had asked the people being referred to in Clinton's book if they felt the same. Have any of them ever been interviewed? Were they volunteers, or were they forced to participate? Was it something that could be earned, and if so, how arbitrarily could it be taken away?

Apparently kevin k. either a) has asked and declines to share the answers with us, b) hasn't asked but presumes to speak for them because reasons, c) is a fucking shithead or d) some combination of a, b and c.

It says something about how much people cared about uncompensated prison labor back in the 90s-00s that a)HRC wrote about this stuff in a book about parenting, b) the book was roundly attacked for various reasons, but not this one, c)seemingly no one found this stuff notable at the time, or brought it up when she ran for office in 2000, 2006, 2008 or 2016.

This also leads me to believe that no one interviewed these prisoners about their thoughts.

Prison labour in the US is generally mandatory, unpaid (or extremely low-paid), and menial (i.e has no value as work experience)

seemingly no one found this stuff notable at the time, or brought it up when she ran for office in 2000, 2006, 2008 or 2016

what are you talking about there were tons of people saying Hillary is bad and then you get a Fred B in your face

The US public generally is OK with punitive imprisonment and treating prisoners like human shit. It represents a total failure of imagination and empathy, let alone Christian charity and forgiveness.

Interviewing prisoners for their thoughts wouldn't really change anything. It's like every American work questionnaire - having no vacation and struggling blows but it beats dying in the gutter.

I'm sure the prisoners preferred working for the Clintons to breaking rocks - doesn't make either even remotely acceptable.

one of the differences is that when you work for a public institution you are beholden to the state. what was upsetting with this was that they were charged with an additional authority over the workers. they could report them for breaking rules and have them sent back to prison and likely disciplined if they didn't make these those two happy. this is pretty different from following rules in a public prison. much more easy to abuse this newfound authority. if you look at circa scandals like Paula Jones or the Iraq Air strike to divert attention from the Lewinsky trials, there is a pattern of abusing authority. if you were a prisoner who accidentally saw somebody doing some illegal shit (and working w politicans for decades you probably would) it seems like it you may make some powerful enemies.

this is mostly conjecture tho. the casualness of it is the disturbing thing. it would be interesting to interview these people, maybe they were great family friends and it was a way to legit get out of a cycle of imprisonment. it depends on how much you trust the Clintons, i suppose.

That's mindblowingly stupid.

Let's not forget that Killary had Seth Rich killed, so who knows what she did to these guys...

Fred you could probably be a big enough smug c*** to be a Clinton with a little ambition

According to Jones's account, on May 8, 1991, she was escorted to Clinton's (then Governor of Arkansas) room in the Excelsior (now Little Rock Marriott) Hotel in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he propositioned and exposed himself to her. She claimed she kept quiet about the incident until 1994, when a David Brock story in the American Spectator magazine printed an account. Jones filed a sexual harassment suit against Clinton on May 6, 1994, two days before the three-year statute of limitations, and sought $750,000 in damages.

Clinton and his defense team then challenged Jones' right to bring a civil lawsuit against a sitting president for an incident that occurred prior to the defendant becoming president. The Clinton defense team took the position that the trial should be delayed until the president was no longer in office, because the job of the president is unique and does not allow him to take time away from it to deal with a private civil lawsuit. The case went through the courts, eventually reaching the Supreme Court on January 13, 1997. On May 27, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against Clinton, and allowed the lawsuit to proceed. Clinton dismissed Jones's story and agreed to move on with the lawsuit.

On April 2, 1998, before the case could reach trial, Judge Wright granted President Clinton's motion for dismissal, ruling that Jones could not show that she had suffered any damages. Jones soon appealed the dismissal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

On November 13, 1998, Clinton settled with Jones for $850,000, the entire amount of her claim, but without an apology, in exchange for her agreement to drop the appeal. Robert S. Bennett, Clinton's attorney, still maintained that Jones's claim was baseless and that Clinton only settled so he could end the lawsuit and move on with his life. In March 1999, Judge Wright ruled that Jones would get only $200,000 from the settlement and that the rest of the money would pay for her legal expenses.

Before the end of the entire litigation, her marriage broke apart. She also appeared in the news media to show the results of a makeover and of a Rhinoplasty paid for by a donor.

In April 1999, Judge Wright found Clinton in civil contempt of court for misleading testimony in the Jones case. She ordered Clinton to pay $1,202 to the court and an additional $90,000 to Jones's lawyers for expenses incurred, far less than the $496,000 that the lawyers originally requested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Jones

this was going on while these people are working for them. of course she is a Trump supporter nowadays so feel free to pretend none of that happened in reality.

feel free to pretend none of that happened in reality

As I understand it, everything described in that Wikipedia article happened in reality. Paula Jones gave that account, she filed that suit, she got that nose job, the courts handled it as described, and the settlements were in the amounts stated. No pretending required. What's your point?

I don't think it's that hard to defend her, honestly. It was tradition, and she wasn't the governor so it wasn't her call. There.

― Frederik B, Thursday, June 8, 2017 3:46 PM (six hours ago)

she wrote about it in a gross and thoughtless way (or signed off on a book that did), which is more than enough reason to legitimately criticize her.

lol @ "she wasn't the governor so it wasn't her call" coming from the dude who once suggested that clinton's experience as first lady should count as genuine political experience comparable to serving in the senate.

Fred, Hillary isn't running for president anymore. You don't need to worry about damaging her reputation among feckless swing voters.

Also idk if you understand the close relationship between the contemporary American carceral state and slavery, especially in places like Arkansas.

It's not all hardened murderers in there. It's people involved in property or drug crimes who turned to those things -- at least in part -- in response to racial and economic marginalization.

Yes, Treeship, this is an absolutely fucked up part of American White Supremacy. That is why I think it's wrong to reduce it to 'Hillary bad'.

It's also why I would love to see the context for the excerpt, since she makes a point out of noting that they were predominantly African-American, had often been in jail since their teens, and were at times just accomplishes when someone else had shot someone. She is building to a point, but it's been cut to underline how bad Hillary is, rather than present an argument about prison labor.

The racial inequalities in the American judicial system are horribly lopsided and yeah, probably much more so in the South. There's no argument.

But for the love of God, comparing this:

http://i.imgur.com/2D4xFPl.gif

to this:

http://i.imgur.com/ksG9Uem.jpg

is patently ridiculous.

And LOL at this: if you were a prisoner who accidentally saw somebody doing some illegal shit (and working w politicans for decades you probably would) it seems like it you may make some powerful enemies.

If anything, a prisoner is going to make some powerful friends.

Convicted murderer on governor's mansion payroll

http://thegrio.com/2012/01/10/haley-barbour-pardons-4-killers-convicts-were-trustees-at-miss-governor-mansion/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Prince_(nanny)

I haven't read Clinton's book but the dispassion in the passages quoted in that Current Affairs article is monstrous. The prison labor system in this country is a crime against humanity. People should be outraged. Any politician who's aided and abetted or contributed to the growth of that system deserves whatever shit gets thrown at them.

there can be a spectrum, pplains

Morbs OTM - twisting yourself in knots to say today's systematic racism isn't as bad as your great-great-great-grandpa's systematic racism - hey look, it even ends up benefitting some of the poor fuckers trapped within it! - is really, really NAGL.

Just call it what it is: prison labor.

I know it's easier to go HILLARY LIVED ON AN ARKANSAS PLANTATION while the world burns, but you're the one not doing actual slaves - past and present - any justice.