Chelsea Clinton at UTA

Chelsea Clinton arrived for an informal Q&A session at the Palo Duro Lounge at UTA this afternoon and I was lucky enough to be able to attend. It was a crowded but mostly friendly atmosphere of students, faculty and staff with the foremost making up the majority. I spoke with two theater arts majors who were bright, knew what was going on in the world and came to sense 20 years before I managed it. Bless them for letting an old woman like me go on and bless them for saying it would be cool for me to use pics of the event that she was taking. When she gets them up on MySpace, I'll link.

I say "mostly friendly" because there was a small group of Republicans who stayed on the second floor, mainly kept respectfully quiet throughout and held up their little signs that said, "Stop Hillary Save America". I was very impressed with their attitude and want to give kudos where kudos are due. I also want to point out that they were a) all white and b) a majority of Alex Keaton look-alike males. There were a few women there--two that I saw who kept behind the males standing at the banister. Getting practice for their future of staying three steps behind their man, I gather. One of the young men yelled something about saving us from communists at one point and I had a nasty flash-back to 1980 and Ronald Reagan. It wasn't pretty at all and I did not thank the child for that one bit.

Chelsea didn't make an opening speech; she just started taking questions from the audience. We covered everything from health care to Russia and Chelsea had the answers. We weren't searched or questioned beforehand; the questions weren't vetted in any way. She handled the flat out dumb ones with grace and had intelligent and well thought out answers with back-up for the rest.

She spoke on her mother's health care plan. She described it well--it's a buy-in to the Congressional health plan, with tax credits for those who cannot afford the premiums as well as a percentage cap on how much of one's disposable monthly income can be devoted to health insurance. A person who does not take advantage of the opportunity would, upon seeking health care, be fined and asked which plan they want. If they still won't make a choice, they would be put on Medicaid or something similar. Further, she stated her mother is determined to raise the minimum wage to $9.50/hr and index it to inflation thereafter, which would allow a person to actually afford the insurance. It's also close to what I make now, so...yeah.

The environment came up several times and it seems that Clinton is dedicated to building green, sustainable businesses here to both offer new jobs and help the environment. She mentioned also that buildings are bigger contributors of greenhouse gases than our cars and there's some work to be done there. She really talked up green businesses. She also said her mother would join the Kyoto treaty when it's renegotiated in 2010.

Immigration came up which was one subject I was not real keen on Hillary about. She said that her mother wants a comprehensive immigration reform. She would open a path to citizenship for all those who are here currently except for those convicted of crimes. Those people would be deported. The folks here illegally but who have been paying taxes would pay a fine and get in line behind those who came here legally on the path to citizenship. Those not paying taxes would also pay a fine, pay those back taxes (again as a percentage of income) and get in line behind those who came here legally on the path to citizenship. It's not amnesty. It's not mass deportation, either. It's a middle of the road solution and not a bad one, in my opinion.

The war in Iraq was another thing I was concerned about with Hillary. She voted for it twice and voted for the Iran deal as well. Chelsea said that Hillary wants to sit down and come up with a plan for withdrawal. (Can you imagine it? A President who plans stuff first?!? I've almost forgotten what that looks like in the last 7 years.) Her advisers tell her that would take about 60 days to get the necessary information that is right now unavailable to her--even though she is a senator (!), even though she is on the Armed Services Committee (!!), the Pentagon keeps telling her that they don't have to tell her stuff (!!!)--at which point she would like to begin bringing home the troops one to two brigades a month as well as provide refuge for the Iraqis who helped us while we were there--some 3,500 I think she said. She wants to both provide the catalyst for change in the Iraqi parliament but to do so without creating havoc. However, Chelsea said that the problem isn't military, the problem is political and that's not going to be helped by U.S. troops.

Which brought us to Afghanistan as well. Hillary, through her daughter, says that she wishes to support Karzai way more than we do now. She's been in Afghanistan three times and has told the Bush Admin that we need to give him more support and the Bush Admin has done nothing.

She said that several times. "My mom told the White House about security problems/port security/Afghanistan/etc. and this administration did nothing."

Some other things: estate tax (repeal for those <$7 mil in assets, raise for the 0.3% of Americans with >$7mil.); support higher education by increasing Pell Grant amounts (I'd like to see them raise the income limits as well but she didn't say that); get rid of No Child Left Unharmed...oops, Behind (YAY!!!); open diplomatic discussions with everyone ("She won't go to Tehran on 1/21/09 but she believes in talking to everyone."); untie our hands diplomatically by ending our dependence on carbon-based energy; open up all the trade agreements to make sure that we are both being protected and not exploiting the other folks; get rid of the gag rule.

I have to say, I kept waffling between Obama and Hillary, Hillary and Obama, back and forth since John Edwards dropped out of the race but I think Chelsea just put me firmly in the Hillary camp.

I just wish she could have answered my question which would have been, "President George W. Bush has made an unprecedented grab of power for the executive branch of government with his warrantless wiretapping, Guantanamo Bay, signing statements, waterboarding, secrecy, "everything that I say is executive privilege is executive privilege because I say it is", etc. Will your mother take advantage of this new imbalance of power in order to get some of these programs we've been talking about through or will she restore checks and balances to this government even if it means she might not be able to do all the things she wants to do?" Oh well. Maybe next time I'm in the same room as a presidential candidate's child.

And they're both women! Whee!

(She is a daughter after my own heart, though for telling us to go check out these kinds of pictures online. It's the kind of thing I would do. It's the kind of thing my daughter would do, come to think of it.)