Why was our State Department involved in this?

Is that what we pay State Department employees to do?

But now we know.

The Dept of State turned into HRC Global Marketing Services, Inc., during Clinton's tenure as SOS.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251472342

Oh, wait...

The vast majority of the DU opposition to Clinton clearly comes from a leftist or progressive perspective. As does the criticism of the party establishment and dominant neoliberal ideology that's come from luminaries such as Chris Hedges, Cornell West and the late Howard Zinn. And from sites like Truth Out (example: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/29052-five-reasons-no-progressive-should-support-hillary-clinton).

I was riffing on the ridiculous assertion that much of the DU criticism is coming from a right wing perspective. Exceptions prove the rule, and there are always exceptions. But, for some, those exceptions *are* the rule. The one that really takes the cake is the post that suggested Sanders (and, in a different version, Warren) sounds just like Tea Party types. LOL

And now I expect some irrelevant response like, "Clinton is so going to kick Sanders's ass!" Because that's something else I've observed on this board, an epidemic of irrelevant/unrelated replies. Oh well, you just have to keep on keepin' on.

No. Clinton supporters will continue to claim that virtually all DU opposition to Clinton is from the right, will defend Clinton's connections to the greedy and corrupt (she's just being "pragmatic," don't you know) and will defend her support for anti-progressive, neoliberal policies (in an Orwellian twist, they'll go so far as to claim those policies *are* progressive). It's quite disheartening. But it's no wonder why The Overton Window keeps shifting rightward, why a "European Centrist" like Kucinich was considered a fringe leftist who was run out of politics. We still have self-described "progressives" who defend the numerous horrendous policies from Bill Clinton. Far too many think "Democrat" is synonymous with "progressive." People go where the label takes them, no matter where it goes. I suppose it has to do with our tribal nature, our insistence on group identity. Of course, that "us" vs. "them", simplistic dichotomous thinking also contributes to racism, sexism, heterosexism, and so on. Sad.

My brain hurts.

Obama gave them the healthcare. President Hillary, with a republican congress (meaning 60 or fewer democratic senators), will privatize education and social security.

And you might want to read some Kos comments before thinking this is nefarious. The Mexican govt reached out.

Wall Street's best interest. Lets see where the candidates go with their campaign in the direction of supportive down ticket speeches. Mexican government officials can take a cut just like many foreigners in governments in Africa where there is great wealth from oil but the people being governed are extremely poor and ill. How is privatizing the oil industry in Mexico going to help the Mexican people, needs to be researched into, but we already know what it looks like. Mexico nationalized its oil in 1938 due to corruption.

The 2015 Republican thinking on moving the SS Trust fund to Wall Street.
http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=12227

Privatization of Education
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/5/3/12515/58655


HRC will surely start speaking out about removing and electing candidate that are against the best interest of Wall Street any time now.

I swear, some people could watch a video of Blankfein dumping an armored car of money into HRH's campaign office while she swears undying fealty to Goldman - which has been done, albeit a bit more subtly - and say "well, what's wrong with that?"

How long can this go on ?

Self deluding.

It's been a awhile but when I went to economics class monopolies were considered bad for consumers - even ones in Mexico. When did that change and why?

Secondly, since when does the SoS set policy? I think this irrational and non-sensical complaint should be directed at Obama, not her.

Unbelievable post. SMH.

attributable to her as First Lady, spouses are of limits. Bad policies while she was SOS were Obama's polices and not attributable to her. Bad policies while Senator of NY are not attributable to her because she acted on behalf I her constituency.

On the other hand, anything good from that time is all her.

And if at Obama's direction she convinced them to break with that corrupt monopoly she did exactly the job she is supposed to do.

The haters appear to be getting desperate.

If it was as Senator -- it was NY constituency.

If it was while First Lady -- it was Bill Clinton's policy.

Put on your double-thinking cap and give her credit for anything favorable that occurred while she was in each of those positions.

What's a "hater?"

And she obviously did a great job carrying out the job she was asked to do.

Does that help you sort it out?

Many public services have been monopolies. Local municipal water systems, for example are monopolies.

That's different than a private corporation having a monopoly. Or even several corporations holding a defacto monopoly.

Nationalized industries are an extension of that, in theory. A nationalized oil industry, for example, both controls a nation's resources, and uses the income for the running of a nation.

In reality, a nationalized industry can be unfortunately subject to corruption and mismanagement, just as corporate monopolies or oligarchies might be. But that has more to do with human nature, in that any system is subject to abuses. Mexico has ling had a history of corruption in that regard,.

But, bottom line, whether a nation's resources are controlled as government public entities or private enterprises should be a matter decided by a nation and its people -- it should not be imposed from the outside, and especially it should not be imposed by another nation acting as an instrument of power of corporate interests who want to grab public resources.

That's called Imperialism.

Just so you can blame Hillary. Unbelievable! But you're right on one thing - they are a sovereign nation, and the U.S. DIDNT make them do anything.

Also, let's stop pretending a SoS set policy. They don't. That is the job of the president. That's called civics 101.

t is not just about "bashing Hillary" just as many issues are not about Hillary or Bernie personally but what and whom they represent..In this case, it;s a matter of the too cozy ties between our own govrnment and the Corporate Oligarchy and imperialism.

First of all, there is a fundamental difference between the role and purpose of private corporations and government service/enterprises. The variations are infinite. Our Interstate Highway system was a monopoly (until we started selling that off in the name of "privatization.&quot

Mexico decided at one point in in its history to nationalize its resources industry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pemex
"In 1938, President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–40) sided with oil workers striking against foreign-owned oil companies for an increase in pay and social services. On March 18, 1938, citing Article 27 of the Constitution of 1917, President Cárdenas embarked on the state-expropriation of all resources and facilities, nationalizing the United States and Anglo–Dutch operating companies, creating Pemex. He is famous in saying in his speech addressing the nation He framed expropriation as a necessary national response to the injustice of the operations of foreign companies operating on Mexican soil....."

It has been far from perfect. It has experienced corruption and financial problems. But it is a state enterprise, and we should not be sending out Corporate Buzzards in there to "assist" with privatizing their own infrastructure. That's a form of imperialism that has caused a lot of our problems in the world....If the Mexican people want to enlist foreign corporations, let them approach them.

But godess forbid she do the exact job a SOS should do. The Hillary haters will find some way to twist it into something bad.

The job of the SoS should not be to help Big Oil to go in and take over state enterprises or determine how sovereign nations handle their own internal affairs. That is Corporate Imperialism.

That has been at the root of many of our problems in international relations over the years.

Why the f**k do you think Iran hates us so much, for example? Is "Hillary hating" the motivation for anyone who criticizes our participation in that in the erarly 50;s and our support for a repressive puppet in the decades after that?

The more our government is entrenched with the interests of the Corporations, the worse that kind of problem gets.

THAT's the issue., Not whether or not Clinton was being a "good soldier" as SoS or is a nice person or not.

And why do you get so exercised over corruption in Mexico, but want to look the otehr way at corruption right here in the good ol' USA?

.... that leaves people in poverty? Of course it is. That's one of the reasons we have a state department.

Here's an interesting article that addresses the larger issue involved.

THE NATION
"The Most Effective Foreign Policy Tool in the GOP’s Pocket Is an American Pipeline
Keystone XL is part of a new colonial project—and Canada and Mexico are the frontiers."

http://www.thenation.com/article/most-effective-foreign-policy-tool-gops-pocket-american-pipeline/
Excerpt:
 Mexico presents a different set of obstacles. Under the Mexican Constitution, all hydrocarbon deposits are the property of the Mexican people and their exploitation is reserved solely for the state-owned company, Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex). The country’s expropriation of foreign oil assets on March 18, 1937, is considered a pillar of Mexican sovereignty and that day is still celebrated as a national holiday (Día de la Expropiación Petrolera). As a result, the only way the giant oil companies could gain access to Mexico’s vast reserves of oil and gas would be if its leaders were willing to amendexisting laws to allow the involvement of foreign firms in the development of these assets.

In response to such obstacles, the major US-based oil companies and their financial backers have developed a strategy to promote North American energy interdependence, while stressing the beneficial value of increased US participation in Canada’s and Mexico’s energy industries and the elimination of barriers to cross-border pipelines and other transnational energy infrastructure.

Although oil company executives have rarely discussed such strategic planning in public, there was an exception. In 2012, before the Council on Foreign Relations, Rex Tillerson, chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil, gave its North American strategy an unusually candid airing. “Canada has a huge resource endowment,” he noted. “The United States has a huge resource endowment; Mexico has a huge resource endowment.” In that light, he suggested that the major US energy firms coordinate the full-scale exploitation of all three countries’ fossil fuels. “[If] we approach energy policy and energy security from a North American perspective, the resource base, the technologies that are available, and the like-minded policies that could be put in place could rapidly achieve that energy security that we have been in quest of for all of my career.”

Canada and the United States, he pointed out then, were already moving to embrace such “like-minded policies,” but Mexico still had a long way to go. “We’re hopeful,” he added, “that Mexico, as it continues its pathway to reforms around how it manages its own oil and natural gas resources… will open up opportunities for greater partnerships and collaborations [while] bringing technology to bear on the huge resources that Mexico has as well.”

The task, then, was simply to persuade the leaders of Canada, Mexico and the United States to harmonize their energy policies. As Tillerson explained, “It’s my hope that at some point energy security can become a policy issue in our foreign policy discussions with Mexico, Canada and the United States.” In this Big Oil view of how North America should work lay the foundations for the new Republican strategic vision that Chris Christie, Ted Cruz and other presidential candidates for 2016 are going to turn into an
overarching political mantra......
SNIP
...This Republican vision, after all, rests on the desire of giant oil companies to eliminate government regulation and bring the energy industries of Canada and Mexico under their corporate sway. Were this to happen, it would sabotage efforts to curb carbon emissions from fossil fuels in a major way, while undermining the sovereignty of Canada and Mexico. In the process, the natural environment would suffer horribly as regulatory constraints against hazardous drilling practices would be eroded in all three countries. Stepped-up drilling, hydrofracking and tar sands production would also result in the increased diversion of water to energy production, reducing supplies for farming while increasing the risk that leaking drilling fluids will contaminate drinking water and aquifers.

No less worrisome, the Republican strategy would result in a far more polarized and dangerous international environment, in which hopes for achieving any kind of peace in Ukraine, Syria, or elsewhere would disappear. The urge to convert North America into a unified garrison state under US (energy) command would undoubtedly prompt similar initiatives abroad, with China moving ever closer to Russia and other blocs forming elsewhere.

In addition, those who seek to use energy as a tool of coercion should not be surprised to discover that they are inviting its use by hostile parties—and in such conflicts the United States and its allies would not emerge unscathed. In other words, the shining Republican vision of a North American energy fortress will, in reality, prove to be a nightmare of environmental degradation and global conflict. Unfortunately, this may not be obvious by election season 2016, so watch out

Pemex is wholly corrupt to the detriment of actual, real people in Mexico. No matter how the HRC haters try to spin it.

We have not elected one since Buchanan and it seems to be where politicians go to end their careers, not to further it.


It is entirely possible that becoming SOS was a big mistake on her part. It is causing lots of problems. From emails to telling a voter that she won't answer a question about the Keystone pipeline until after she is President. Now with emails being released every 30 days, we are bound to see a large number of side issues pop up, such as this one. Who knows what me might see next month, or the one after that, or the one after that.....

And for good reason. She was. I don't see that working against her in this election.

I don't know exactly what criteria is used for ranking her as SOS but I think it is obvious that she did do a good job.

Even so, she seems to be in tough positions on TPP, and Keystone pipeline because of it. Now this crazy Mexico oil thing. Besides that thing about the Swiss bank she dealt with that later paid Bill $1.5 million in speaking fees.

It looks like a drip drip drip of little problems that will plague her campaign. Besides the emails being released every 30 days, and the two investigations.

Ambassador to the UN might have been a better choice.

You gotta stop thinking that DU is representive of the real world. It really isn't.

War Criminal Henry Kissinger? That is NOT a compliment.