Bill and Hilary in action

From Captain's Quarters and Judicial Watch comes this analysis of the records from Hillary Clinton's task force on revamping the American health-care system. Some rather interesting information has come to light about Hilary Clinton's plans for revamping the American health-care system whilst her husband was US President.

You must read the whole article, but some extracts that may haunt Hilary if someone has the balls to bring them up are:

1) "A June 18, 1993 internal Memorandum entitled, “A Critique of Our Plan,” authored by someone with the initials “P.S.,” makes the startling admission that critics of Hillary’s health care reform plan were correct: “I can think of parallels in wartime, but I have trouble coming up with a precedent in our peacetime history for such broad and centralized control over a sector of the economy…Is the public really ready for this?... none of us knows whether we can make it work well or at all…”"


2) "A “Confidential” May 26, 1993 Memorandum from Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) to Hillary Clinton entitled, “Health Care Reform Communications,” which criticizes the Task Force as a “secret cabal of Washington policy ‘wonks’” that has engaged in “choking off information” from the public regarding health care reform. The memorandum suggests that Hillary Clinton “use classic opposition research” to attack those who were excluded by the Clinton Administration from Task Force deliberations and to “expose lifestyles, tactics and motives of lobbyists” in order to deflect criticism."

Do those smearing tactics remind you of New Labour's tactics under Tony Blair/Alastair Campbell and Gordon Brown?


3) "A February 5, 1993 Draft Memorandum from Alexis Herman and Mike Lux detailing the Office of Public Liaison’s plan for the health care reform campaign. The memorandum notes the development of an “interest group data base” detailing whether or not organizations “support(ed) us in the election.” The database would also track personal information about interest group leaders, such as their home phone numbers, addresses, “biographies, analysis of credibility in the media, and known relationships with Congresspeople.”"


4) "The memoranda can now be read in full, and the Rockefeller memo has some interesting passages. He offers the suggestion that opponents should have their "lifestyles" exposed at least twice, and argues both for engaging lobbyists and smearing them. Rockefeller also offers a little intellectually honest advice at least twice. When discussing abortion, he gets very terse (emphasis mine): Response concepts: ... Full Reproductive Services. Do not engage on this topic.
When it comes to actually discussing the plan in detail, Rockefeller had this advice: don't do that, either. He wrote that the effort to mobilize public support should focus on providing only a "broad" picture of the benefits and costs, and that the Task Force would "LOSE by focusing on the mechanical details". Opponents of the plan had to be shown as "perpetrators" who had to be "isolated" from each other."


All in all an interesting read and a good insight into the workings of the Clintons.