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amborin

(16,631 posts)
Wed Mar 9, 2016, 06:38 PM Mar 2016

Hillary DoubleCrossed Voters:Promised Oppose Colombia Trade Agt, Lobbd for it:Goldman Sachs involved

On the eve of South Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary, the U.S. State Department released 1,500 pages of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails from her tenure as secretary of state. Included in the 881 emails published Friday night are messages highlighting Clinton lobbying for a controversial Colombian trade deal she previously pledged to oppose.

During her 2008 presidential run, Clinton said she opposed the deal because “I am very concerned about the history of violence against trade unionists in Colombia.” She later declared, “I oppose the deal. I have spoken out against the deal, I will vote against the deal, and I will do everything I can to urge the Congress to reject the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.”

But newly released emails show that as secretary of state, Clinton was personally lobbying Democratic members of Congress to support the deal, even promising one senior lawmaker that the deal would extend labor protections to Colombian workers that would be as good or better than those enjoyed by many workers in the United States.

One of the 2011 emails from Clinton to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman
and Clinton aide Robert Hormats has a subject line “Sandy Levin” — a reference to the Democratic congressman who serves on the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees U.S. trade policy.

In the email detailing her call with Levin, she said the Michigan lawmaker “appreciates the changes that have been made, the national security arguments and Santos's reforms” -- the latter presumably a reference to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. She concludes the message about the call with Levin by saying, “I told him that at the rate we were going, Columbian [sic] workers were going to end up w the same or better rights than workers in Wisconsin and Indiana and, maybe even, Michigan.”

Froman — a former Citigroup executive who as trade representative was lobbying for passage of the deal — responded by thanking Clinton for her "help and support.Hormats, a former vice chairman of Goldman Sachs who subsequently was hired by Clinton at the State Department, later chimed in, telling her “terrific job” and “GREAT line on Columbian [sic] workers!!!!!”

http://www.ibtimes.com/hillary-clinton-pushes-colombia-free-trade-agreement-latest-email-dump-2326068
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Hillary DoubleCrossed Voters:Promised Oppose Colombia Trade Agt, Lobbd for it:Goldman Sachs involved (Original Post) amborin Mar 2016 OP
Duplicity Is As Duplicity Does cantbeserious Mar 2016 #1
needs to be distributed far and wide ibegurpard Mar 2016 #2
yes amborin Apr 2016 #23
Waiting for the first Hillary supporter trying to shrug it off with a "yawn" or such. n/t revbones Mar 2016 #3
They don't even care enough to do that anymore. AtheistCrusader Mar 2016 #13
Colombia Free Trade Agreement is not CAFTA Cheese Sandwich Mar 2016 #4
that's true, my bad; will change it now amborin Mar 2016 #7
sorry for nitpicking Cheese Sandwich Mar 2016 #11
no, i appreciate it amborin Apr 2016 #24
mostly 'cos it wasn't neoliberal enough MisterP Mar 2016 #10
Can't trust her. senz Mar 2016 #5
but there is nothing in my Emails FreakinDJ Mar 2016 #6
the Obama administration won changes on Labor & environmental issued not included in the original.. Recoverin_Republican Mar 2016 #8
Hey, at least she was a little bit honest when beedle Mar 2016 #9
She is not trustworthy. SoapBox Mar 2016 #12
How can you trust Hillary? Arizona Roadrunner Mar 2016 #14
Yup, but Bernie zentrum Mar 2016 #15
Michael Froman on loan from Citigroup. Octafish Mar 2016 #16
A substantive, evidence-based critique of Hillary's record. K&R, nt. appal_jack Mar 2016 #17
Great albeit scary, concerning summary. Yikes. k/r AtomicKitten Mar 2016 #18
Thanks for the article and link imagine2015 Mar 2016 #19
K & R AzDar Mar 2016 #20
Thanks imagine2015 Mar 2016 #21
kicking amborin Mar 2016 #22

ibegurpard

(16,685 posts)
2. needs to be distributed far and wide
Wed Mar 9, 2016, 06:41 PM
Mar 2016

This is EXACTLY the sort of shit the public is fed up with from their politicians.

 

Cheese Sandwich

(9,086 posts)
4. Colombia Free Trade Agreement is not CAFTA
Wed Mar 9, 2016, 06:42 PM
Mar 2016

CAFTA is Central America Free Trade Agreement. Hillary voted against CAFTA, so she says.

8. the Obama administration won changes on Labor & environmental issued not included in the original..
Wed Mar 9, 2016, 06:54 PM
Mar 2016


.. is it possible that she changed her position because of the changes to the original agreement?




 

Arizona Roadrunner

(168 posts)
14. How can you trust Hillary?
Wed Mar 9, 2016, 09:22 PM
Mar 2016

Bernie has pointed out Clinton's statements of support for the companies in India bringing contract H-1b employees to the USA and Michigan. He also should say this is why we need to see what she told Goldman-Sachs for the $675,000. How much support did she give them? After all, Goldman-Sachs probably tax deducted the "expense" and therefore we have standing to ask what did we get for either paying more taxes or getting less services as a result of the deduction.

Also, she is "currently" against TPP. However the US Chamber of Commerce has put out a message to it's membership that after the election, they are sure she will find reasons to be "currently" in favor of TPP

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2016/02/chamber-of-commerce-chief-tom-donohue.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/chamber-of-commerce-lobby_b_9104096.html

By the way, have you noticed most of Hillary's "wins" are in states that the Democrats have no hope of winning in the general election.

zentrum

(9,865 posts)
15. Yup, but Bernie
Wed Mar 9, 2016, 09:26 PM
Mar 2016

…..needs to be a bulldog and ask her about this. He must bring up the facts and not just generalities.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
16. Michael Froman on loan from Citigroup.
Wed Mar 9, 2016, 10:50 PM
Mar 2016
Michael Froman and the revolving door

By Felix Salmon December 11, 2009

Michael Froman is one of those behind-the-scenes technocrats who never quite makes it into full public view. But according to Matt Taibbi, he’s one of the most egregious examples — up there with Bob Rubin, literally — we’ve yet seen of the way the revolving door works between business and government generally, and between Citigroup and Treasury in particular.

I’m not sure how much of this information is new, but a lot of it was new to me, especially the bit about Froman “leading the search for the president’s new economic team” — while he was still pulling down a multi-million-dollar salary at Citigroup, no less. Apologies for quoting at length:

Leading the search for the president’s new economic team was his close friend and Harvard Law classmate Michael Froman, a high-ranking executive at Citigroup. During the campaign, Froman had emerged as one of Obama’s biggest fundraisers, bundling $200,000 in contributions and introducing the candidate to a host of heavy hitters — chief among them his mentor Bob Rubin, the former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs who served as Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton. Froman had served as chief of staff to Rubin at Treasury, and had followed his boss when Rubin left the Clinton administration to serve as a senior counselor to Citigroup (a massive new financial conglomerate created by deregulatory moves pushed through by Rubin himself).

Incredibly, Froman did not resign from the bank when he went to work for Obama: He remained in the employ of Citigroup for two more months, even as he helped appoint the very people who would shape the future of his own firm. And to help him pick Obama’s economic team, Froman brought in none other than Jamie Rubin, a former Clinton diplomat who happens to be Bob Rubin’s son. At the time, Jamie’s dad was still earning roughly $15 million a year working for Citigroup, which was in the midst of a collapse brought on in part because Rubin had pushed the bank to invest heavily in mortgage-backed CDOs and other risky instruments…

On November 23rd, 2008, a deal is announced in which the government will bail out Rubin’s messes at Citigroup with a massive buffet of taxpayer-funded cash and guarantees… No Citi executives are replaced, and few restrictions are placed on their compensation. It’s the sweetheart deal of the century, putting generations of working-stiff taxpayers on the hook to pay off Bob Rubin’s fuck-up-rich tenure at Citi. “If you had any doubts at all about the primacy of Wall Street over Main Street,” former labor secretary Robert Reich declares when the bailout is announced, “your doubts should be laid to rest.”

It is bad enough that one of Bob Rubin’s former protégés from the Clinton years, the New York Fed chief Geithner, is intimately involved in the negotiations, which unsurprisingly leave the Federal Reserve massively exposed to future Citi losses. But the real stunner comes only hours after the bailout deal is struck, when the Obama transition team makes a cheerful announcement: Timothy Geithner is going to be Barack Obama’s Treasury secretary!

Geithner, in other words, is hired to head the U.S. Treasury by an executive from Citigroup — Michael Froman — before the ink is even dry on a massive government giveaway to Citigroup that Geithner himself was instrumental in delivering. In the annals of brazen political swindles, this one has to go in the all-time Fuck-the-Optics Hall of Fame.

Wall Street loved the Citi bailout and the Geithner nomination so much that the Dow immediately posted its biggest two-day jump since 1987, rising 11.8 percent. Citi shares jumped 58 percent in a single day, and JP Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley soared more than 20 percent, as Wall Street embraced the news that the government’s bailout generosity would not die with George W. Bush and Hank Paulson.


How much influence did Froman have over the appointment of Geithner as Treasury secretary? Geithner, who wanted to become Treasury secretary and who as New York Fed president was a central (if not the central) figure in orchestrating the massive Citigroup bailout just after the election, knew what Froman’s job was in the Obama transition team, and knew that Froman was a senior executive at Citigroup.

CONTINUED...

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009/12/11/michael-froman-and-the-revolving-door/
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