Remind Me Again; Why Is New Bedford ‘Clinton Country’?

1) December 29, 1992, three weeks before the inauguration of President William Jefferson Clinton, al Qa'eda targeted and attempted to murder US troops in a Yemen hotel bombing. Osama bin Laden happily took credit for it. Thankfully the troops had left for Somalia to aid the starving masses there shortly before the bombs went off.

February 26, 1993, five weeks into the Clinton presidency, Ramzi Yousef and Abdul Rahman Yasin placed a powerful bomb in the garage under the World Trade Center in Manhattan. The pair mistakenly parked the van loaded with the explosives in the wrong area. The plan was to knock the North tower into the South tower which would have killed an estimated 10,000 and then a time released cyanide gas canister was set to go off killing first responders an hour later. The 1,336 pound bomb did kill six and wounded over a thousand but the towers stood. Ramzi Yousef is the nephew of 9/11 mastermind and al Qa'eda's own Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

The Clinton presidency, better known for the .Com economy and sex scandals, was inundated with attacks on Americans and American interests by al Qa'eda. US embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, ambush in Mogadishu, Somalia, a declaration of war on the USA by Osama bin Laden and then USS Cole suicide bombing in Yemen December of 2000.

Clinton could have and should have wiped the Earth clean of al Qa'eda...and didn't and because of this, the attacks on September 11, 2001 were successful and a $5 trillion dollar war with many thousands of casualties, millions of refugees continues in 2016.*That is not to excuse George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq but 9/11 could not have been the catalyst had Clinton done his job.

2) Clinton signed the United States into NAFTA on December 8, 1993. What has been the impact on New Bedford as a result?

NAFTA's opponents attribute much of the displacement caused in the US labor market to the United States' growing trade deficits with Mexico and Canada. The trade deficit in goods (excluding services, which are typically a small surplus) rose from $2 billion in 1994 to $60 billion in 2015. According to the Economic Policy Institute, rise in the trade deficit with Mexico alone since NAFTA was enacted led to the net displacement of 682,900 U.S. jobs by 2010. Now if elected, Hillary will sign the United States into the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) which will drive more jobs overseas and domestic wages down.

New Bedford is known by nothing more than the fishing fleet. It is who we are. The bounties of the seas makes or breaks the economy here. The fishermen have a tough, dangerous job in addition to the realities of the financial problems. The last thing they (we) need is for the federal government to become hostile toward this industry. But with the election of Barack Obama, the environmentalists seized control of the oceans and forced thousands of fishermen into joblessness, foreclosures, bankruptcy. Radical environmentalist Dr. Jane Lubchenco of the controversial Tides Foundation was appointed as director of the National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This was due to our own Senator John Kerry urging the president to appoint her.

According to Mayor Mitchell on the Ken Pittman Show (9am-noon every Saturday on WBSM AM 1420) Neither Clinton, Bill or Hillary, has conveyed to Mayor Mitchell any intention to change current fishing regulations should she become the next president. This despite the mayor providing full access and facilities to break state election laws and allow Bill to campaign for Hillary well within the illegal space of a polling station last April.

Democrats are continuing to ban tens of thousands of square miles of ocean from American's fishing rights. The fishing fleet has gone from over 230 to 37 scallopers in the harbor as a result.

Last April, while he was breaking the law, Bill Clinton said, "I think we've been pretty good to New Bedford and this state."

Not to do any Vinny Barbarino impersonation but..."Who? What? When? Where?..."