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In Defense of Hillary Clinton, Democrats Embrace ‘Citizens United’
In Defense of Hillary Clinton, Democrats Embrace ‘Citizens United’
David Sirota
5/1/15
...When the ruling was handed down, Democrats were outraged, and Hillary Clinton herself has recently suggested she wants it overturned. Yet with revelations that firms with business before Clinton's State Department donated to her foundation and paid her husband, Clinton's campaign and rank-and-file Democratic activists are suddenly championing the Citizens United theory.
In campaign statements and talking points—and in activists' tweets and Facebook comments—the party seems to be collectively saying that without evidence of any explicit quid pro quo, all the Clinton cash is acceptable. Moreover, the inference seems to be that the revelations aren't even newsworthy because, in the words of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, “there’s nothing new” here.
To advocates for limiting the influence of money in politics, this pushback from Democrats is particularly rich (pun intended) coming from a party that spent a decade asserting that Republicans raking in cash from Big Oil and pushing oil-friendly policies was rank corruption. The Democratic defense of their presumptive presidential nominee registers as especially disturbing to campaign finance reform advocates considering the mighty efficiency of the Clinton fundraising machine.
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 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....
http://inthesetimes.com/article/17895/hillary_clinton_citizens_united
David Sirota
5/1/15
...When the ruling was handed down, Democrats were outraged, and Hillary Clinton herself has recently suggested she wants it overturned. Yet with revelations that firms with business before Clinton's State Department donated to her foundation and paid her husband, Clinton's campaign and rank-and-file Democratic activists are suddenly championing the Citizens United theory.
In campaign statements and talking points—and in activists' tweets and Facebook comments—the party seems to be collectively saying that without evidence of any explicit quid pro quo, all the Clinton cash is acceptable. Moreover, the inference seems to be that the revelations aren't even newsworthy because, in the words of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, “there’s nothing new” here.
To advocates for limiting the influence of money in politics, this pushback from Democrats is particularly rich (pun intended) coming from a party that spent a decade asserting that Republicans raking in cash from Big Oil and pushing oil-friendly policies was rank corruption. The Democratic defense of their presumptive presidential nominee registers as especially disturbing to campaign finance reform advocates considering the mighty efficiency of the Clinton fundraising machine.
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 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....
http://inthesetimes.com/article/17895/hillary_clinton_citizens_united
regarding the OP author, who is a progressive not a RWr~
David Sirota, an In These Times senior editor and syndicated columnist, is a staff writer at PandoDaily and a bestselling author whose book Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now—Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything was released in 2011. Sirota, whose previous books include The Uprising and Hostile Takeover, co-hosts “The Rundown” on AM630 KHOW in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at http://www.davidsirota.com.
David Sirota, who graduated from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in 1998, is at the center of the national debate about the future of the Democratic Party. As a political strategist, Sirota has helped populist Democrats win elections in some of the most conservative parts of America. As a writer, he has worked to expose how our government has been corrupted by Big Money.
Sirota has served as the press secretary for Independent Rep. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, as the spokesman for the U.S. House Appropriations Committee Democrats, and as a fellow at the Center for American Progress. He most recently served as a senior strategist helping Brian Schweitzer become Montana’s first Democratic governor in sixteen years.
David Sirota, who graduated from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in 1998, is at the center of the national debate about the future of the Democratic Party. As a political strategist, Sirota has helped populist Democrats win elections in some of the most conservative parts of America. As a writer, he has worked to expose how our government has been corrupted by Big Money.
Sirota has served as the press secretary for Independent Rep. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, as the spokesman for the U.S. House Appropriations Committee Democrats, and as a fellow at the Center for American Progress. He most recently served as a senior strategist helping Brian Schweitzer become Montana’s first Democratic governor in sixteen years.
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