Yesterday, I read this piece by David Sirota: The left’s Citizens United hypocrisy: Why Hillary is getting a free pass. Then I bumped into this piece by Kevin Mathews at Truthout: Corporations Are Bribing Bill Instead of Hillary.
So, I wonder, if Hillary were a Republican, would Democrats’ hair be on fire?
Sirota’s no hack. He’s a well-respected progressive writer. Here he connects a few dots between Hillary’s action and money flowing to Bill or the Clinton Foundation:
Consider a few undisputed facts that we surfaced in our reporting at the International Business Times:
– While Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, Bill Clinton was paid $2.5 million by 13 corporations that lobbied the State Department. Ten of the firms paid him in the same three-month reporting period that they were lobbying Hillary Clinton’s agency. Several of them received State Department contracts, worth a total of almost $40 million.
– Hillary Clinton switched her position to back a controversial U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement as millions of dollars flowed into her foundation from an oil company operating in Colombia, and from that company’s founder. Amid reports of violence against Colombian unionists, she also certified Colombia’s human rights record, thereby releasing U.S. aid to the Colombian military.
– Hillary Clinton’s State Department delivered contracts and a prestigious human rights award to a technology firm that donated to the Clinton Foundation — despite allegations from human rights groups that the firm sold technology to the Chinese government that helped the regime commit human rights violations.
Mathews provides additional details:
Let’s look at a few specifics. Tech companies have had some of the greatest successes with the Clintons. Shortly after paying Bill $175,000 to speak, Microsoft won a $4 million contract with the US State Department. Oracle’s own government contracts increased by a couple million after giving Bill a $200,000 speaking fee. Meanwhile, Dell is probably the biggest winner of all. While lobbying Hillary, Dell hired an appearance from Bill for $300,000 – not long before the State Department decided to raise its contracts with the company from $2.5 million to a startling $28 million.
And Mathews makes this all too obvious point:
If you thought campaign donations were a corruptive force, this arrangement is actually worse. Unlike campaign donations which can’t directly be used to inflate the Clintons’ wealth, Bill – and his wife – can use the money he earns from giving high-priced speeches however he sees fit.
I remember a decade or so ago Lewis Black commenting that choosing between Bush and Kerry in 2004 was like “choosing between two bowls of shit.”
Sorry, but I’m thinking shit may be the only item on the menu in 2016 as well.
Still scratching my head WHY Hillary Clinton has so much hype, especially when her name is synonymous with flip-flip. Corporations must want to get this lapdog elected BAD!
You know, Bob, your comment about having to choose between two bowls of poop may be the best description of the 2016 election I have read recently. The GOP seems short on good candidates and the Democrat field is pretty sad so far.
This is ridiculous. Hillary will be great on almost every issue and will win. Bernie can’t win the general election. (The Republicans would love him to be the Democratic nominee.) Bill’s foundation is a legitimate charity that has done a world of good and saved 1,000’s of lives. Donors didn’t get any special favors from Hillary when she was at the State Department. If you don’t trust the Clinton’s, think what you’re saying. Bill lied about his sexual escapades and you are conflating her with him and BLAMING HER for his cheating.
Wall Street tells the Republicans to jump and they ask “how high?” Wall Street donates to Hillary because they want good government or, more likely, because they want to support a winner. She doesn’t need them. They need her.
Enough voters couldn’t tell the difference between Kerry and Bush and look what happened. If we lose in 2016 it’s over. The Supreme Court is controlled by right wing nuts for 40 years. That’s the end of voting rights, abortion rights, environmental protection. Instead we will have money and corporate rights. Hillary is the only thing standing in the way. Besides she will be great. Maybe appoint Elizabeth Warren to the Supreme Court?
“Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Andy,
Thank god finally a voice of sanity on the Bob Lord show. With control of the Supreme Court and Congress, we are one president away from a very, very rough time in America. Hillary isn’t my favorite Democrat, but she is so clearly superior to any Republican in the race.
The Clinton Foundation raised about $300 million last year. Does someone honestly believe Hillary is cutting deals for some peanut contribution from the many, many donors.
Now Martha McSally just received over $3 million in campaign help from the Koch Brothers. She turned around and voted to repeal the estate tax. That would give the Koch Brothers each about $20 billion. That is corruption. That is pay to play.
Interesting that you would use McSally and her vote on the estate tax as an example. Had Barber squeaked by in the last election, would he not have voted to repeal the estate tax? Maybe, but Sinema is situated similarly to Barber, and she voted for repeal. Why? She’ll say it’s because she was protecting farmers, but you and I know that’s hogwash. The real reason is fear based. She wanted to inoculate herself from attacks from the right.
So, you want to nominate Hillary in order to inoculate us from the risk of a Republican victory. Also a fear based strategy.
The logic, as it goes, may be sound. But you should consider seriously what Sirota is saying in his piece.
You’re advocating that Democrats need to play “not to lose” in 2016. That strategy may work in the short term. It never does in the long term.
I don’t know what Ron Barber might have done, but he didn’t receive the $3 million in Koch money, in fact, it was used against him.
Krysten Sinema is a real problem. She apparently believes that she can vote however she pleases. I think that Arizona citizens can influence her voting habits.
The new chair of the DCCC, the Democratic Congressional Committee, is Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, D-NM. I would urge readers of this site to contact Rep. Lujan and tell him to cut off all DCCC funding for Sinema. She should be told this now.
As for Hillary, I have a very simple test. Will working people’s lives be better with her as President or a generic Republican. It’s a no-brainer.
“She apparently believes that she can vote however she pleases.”
So you demand that all Democrats think and vote in lock step with the Party line? That is really sad. The idea of having automatons for elected officials, rather than thinking people in those positions, sort of undermines the whole purpose of government.
I seriously believe that Hillary would have Bill cut some peanut deals for cash. It is VERY easy to believe.
The idea of Hillary cutting all these little favorable deals for some speaking fee or donation to the foundation just seems really improbable. Someone that has worked in a large government agency knows that procurement is a complicated process. The idea that Hillary tells some state department procurement officer to buy Dell computers strikes me as very far fetched.
The example that the author of “Clinton Cash” uses, some uranium project, involved 15 federal agencies all in support.
While you might want to believe in all this conspiracy theory stuff, wouldn’t you think that Bill and Hillary Clinton knew, after 8 years of witch hunts from 1993 till 2001, that they should be very circumspect.
I’m actually quite glad that Bill Clinton is taking money from wealthy corporations and individuals and making a real change in poor folks lives.
“I’m actually quite glad that Bill Clinton is taking money from wealthy corporations and individuals and making a real change in poor folks lives.
Bill Clinton is not making a change in anyone’s life except his own. To say that simply proves how blind you are to the reality of the Clintons. And the Clintons don’t take money to influence who buys what type of computer. That is chump change. They take money to influence government at much higher levels where change really means something.