Take me to...

Friday, May 1, 2015

Hillary Clinton: Champion of Wall Street

Originally published in April 2015 by Voices of Liberty

A month ago the Washington Post disclosed a juicy tidbit of information: the Algerian government made a contribution of half a million dollars to the Clinton Foundation.  This just happened to be at the exact time the Algerian government was lobbying Hillary Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State.

Other than the eyebrows it raises at first, this might not seem so scandalous if it weren’t for the fact that Americans get punished for the same thing.  In 2011 and 2012, multiple American companies were charged and heavily penalized under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.  The corruption they were penalized for was making donations to foreign charities.

The Obama administration acted on the assumption that charitable donations abroad were meant to influence civil servants to take a more favorable stand towards the American businesses.  Therefore, American businesses get charges and heavy fines levied against them, but it’s alright when the beneficiary of foreign corrupt practices is a sitting member of the Cabinet.  And this isn’t the first foreign charitable gift the Clinton Foundation received during Hillary’s Cabinet tenure.

“The U.A.E. gave us money,” Bill Clinton said to the Miami Herald.  “Do we agree with everything they do?  No, but they help us fight ISIS.”  It looks like the former President would have us believe foreign corrupt practices are okay if foreign governments are helping America prolong the Iraq War…

One thing is crystal clear: when vying for Hillary Clinton’s loyalty, money talks.

Her top political contributors have historically included, and still include, big Wall Street firms like Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, and Time Warner.  These numbers don’t include any foreign or domestic groups that donated to the Clinton Foundation to sway the Secretary of State.

As a Senator, in her statement on the 2008 bailouts, she noted “the prevailing dynamic of corporate America, where the sole priority was the dividend, the inflated bonus and the quarterly earnings report…”  She clearly had words to say about “corporate America,” yet one can’t help but think this may have just been political theater.

Senator Clinton’s pro-working-class, pro-middle-class approach would have been a lot more credible had her top campaign contributors been anyone OTHER than corporate America.  And guess what!  She voted for what the WSWS calls “the largest single transfer of wealth to the financial elite in US history,” and it was financed on the dime of struggling families.

Hillary Clinton talks a good game about being for the interests of the working class and middle class, but that’s just another li from another politician.  Hillary may certainly believe in empowering women, the LGBTQ community, and ethnic minorities.  However, her actions show how she just wants some of those people to be among the ruling elites.


Hillary Clinton is with Wall Street, not Main Street.


* * *


Hillary Clinton photo courtesy of the Munich Security Conference via CC BY 3.0 license.

No comments:

Post a Comment