2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumHillary DoubleCrossed Voters:Promised Oppose Colombia Trade Agt, Lobbd for it:Goldman Sachs involved
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
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
ibegurpard
(16,685 posts)This is EXACTLY the sort of shit the public is fed up with from their politicians.
revbones
(3,660 posts)AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)Cheese Sandwich
(9,086 posts)CAFTA is Central America Free Trade Agreement. Hillary voted against CAFTA, so she says.
amborin
(16,631 posts)Cheese Sandwich
(9,086 posts)amborin
(16,631 posts)MisterP
(23,730 posts)senz
(11,945 posts)Can not trust her.
FreakinDJ
(17,644 posts)Recoverin_Republican
(218 posts).. is it possible that she changed her position because of the changes to the original agreement?
beedle
(1,235 posts)she said she 'tries to tell the truth'.
SoapBox
(18,791 posts)No...More...Clintons.
Arizona Roadrunner
(168 posts)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)..needs to be a bulldog and ask her about this. He must bring up the facts and not just generalities.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)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, hes one of the most egregious examples up there with Bob Rubin, literally weve yet seen of the way the revolving door works between business and government generally, and between Citigroup and Treasury in particular.
Im 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 presidents 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 presidents 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 Obamas 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 Obamas economic team, Froman brought in none other than Jamie Rubin, a former Clinton diplomat who happens to be Bob Rubins son. At the time, Jamies 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 Rubins 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. Its the sweetheart deal of the century, putting generations of working-stiff taxpayers on the hook to pay off Bob Rubins 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 Rubins 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 Obamas 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 governments 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 Fromans 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/