{"id":193665,"date":"2015-10-22T20:27:41","date_gmt":"2015-10-22T20:27:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=193665"},"modified":"2015-10-22T20:30:57","modified_gmt":"2015-10-22T20:30:57","slug":"hillary-clinton-pretends-to-be-progressive-shes-actually-conservative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/hillary-clinton-pretends-to-be-progressive-shes-actually-conservative\/","title":{"rendered":"Hillary Clinton Pretends to Be Progressive; She’s Actually Conservative"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/b>Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

The contrast between Hillary Clinton\u2019s stated positions and her actual record, is stark.<\/span><\/p>\n

The record shows that she actually supports international trade treaties that allow the participating countries to allow international corporations to murder labor union organizers to keep wages down. Her financial backers include many of the controlling stockholders in corporations that shift jobs overseas to lower-wage nations so as to boost their stock-profits and executive compensation (those executives are paid largely by stock options in the companies they run \u2013 the more the stock rises, the bigger their pay); and portions of those takes by the top executives and other top owners of international corporations end up in the political campaign chests of conservative U.S. politicians such as of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and virtually all Republicans \u2013 i.e., of corrupt or otherwise conservative politicians. But this article will deal only with Hillary Clinton.<\/span><\/p>\n

She also supports international trade treaties \u2013 such as Obama\u2019s proposed TPP with Pacific countries and TTIP with Atlantic countries \u2013 that will cripple participating countries\u2019 ability to regulate the safety of products, such as drugs, food-contamination, water-contamination, auto-safety, the environment, etc. However, her campaign rhetoric lies disfavoring such treaties, even more blatantly than Barack Obama\u2019s rhetoric against NAFTA did, when he was running against<\/i> her, in 2008.<\/span><\/p>\n

THE TRADE DEALS<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

On National Public Radio\u2019s\u00a0Morning Edition, on Thursday October 22nd,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0David Axelrod, who is one of President Obama\u2019s chief advisors inside the White House, explained Hillary’s switch, from verbally supporting, to verbally opposing, President Obama\u2019s proposed trade deals. The interviewer noted that, “Hillary Clinton had previously spoken in favor of the Pacific trade deal [TPP], then once the details were out she said she was against it.\u201d Axelrod asserted, to explain what happened: “I actually think her switch of positions on trade was as much a response to Biden as it was to Sanders. She knew that the Vice President was very much tied to the President\u2019s policy and would have to be, and she wanted to head him off at the pass particularly with organized labor.\u201d That separation of herself from Obama\u2019s proposed trade deals effectively killed Biden\u2019s opportunity to win the support of labor union leaders who don\u2019t believe that a self-declared \u201csocialist\u201d such as Bernie Sanders is even electable in the United States. Biden had been hoping to wedge into the Democratic primaries as being the \u201ccentrist\u201d Democrat who could pull lots of supporters away from both Clinton and Sanders.<\/span><\/p>\n

The reason why organized labor is opposed to Obama\u2019s trade deals is that (as will be shown) the deals would allow all participating countries to allow international corporations to hire hitmen to murder labor union organizers so as to keep wages down. U.S. workers would then be competing internationally against workers whose rights to participate in labor unions are merely nominal, not authentic. That, in turn, would accelerate the shrinkage of labor unions in the United States; and this would even further benefit the big campaign-contributors. (Obama and Clinton actually support this, though it reduces the labor-union base of the Democratic Party. The electorate are split between a \u2018liberal\u2019 party that wants unions to be weak, versus a conservative party that wants them to be dead.)<\/span><\/p>\n

President Obama\u2019s Trade Representative, his longtime personal friend\u00a0Michael Froman,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0organized and largely wrote Obama’s proposed trade treaties: TPP, TTIP, and TISA. Froman told the AFL-CIO and U.S. Senators that when countries such as Colombia systematically murder labor-union organizers, it\u2019s no violation of workers\u2019 rights \u2013 nothing that\u2019s of any concern to the U.S. regarding this country’s international trade policies or the enforcement of them. On April 22nd, Huffington Post, one of the few U.S. news media to report honestly on these treaties, bannered\u00a0“AFL-CIO’s Trumka:\u00a0USTR Told Us Murder Isn’t A Violation,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and reported that, “Defenders of the\u00a0White House push for sweeping trade deals argue they include tough\u00a0enforcement of labor standards. But a top union leader scoffed at such\u00a0claims Tuesday, revealing that [Obama] administration officials have said privately\u00a0that they don\u2019t consider even the killings of labor organizers to be\u00a0violations of those pacts.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words: This is and will be the low level of the playing-field that U.S. workers will be competing against in TPP etc., just as it is already, in the far-smaller existing NAFTA (which Hillary had helped to pass in Congress). “Trumka said that\u00a0even after the Obama administration crafted an agreement to tighten labor\u00a0protections four years ago, some 105 labor organizers have been killed,\u00a0and more than\u00a01,300 have been threatened with death.\u201d The Obama Administration is ignoring the tightened regulations that it itself managed to get nominally implemented on paper. “Pressed for\u00a0details about Trumka\u2019s assertion that murder doesn\u2019t count as a\u00a0violation of labor rules, Thea Lee, the AFL-CIO deputy chief of staff,\u00a0told HuffPost that USTR officials said\u00a0in at least two meetings where she\u00a0was present that killing and brutalizing organizers would not be\u00a0considered interfering with labor rights under the terms of the trade\u00a0measures.\u201d Furthermore: \u201c’We documented\u00a0five or six murders of Guatemalan trade unionists that the government had failed\u00a0to effectively investigate or prosecute,’ Lee said. ‘The USTR told us that\u00a0the\u00a0murders of trade unionists or violence against trade unionists was not\u00a0a violation of the labor chapter.\u2019\u201d That U.S. Trade Representative, Michael Froman, is the same person Obama has negotiating with foreign governments, and with international corporations, both Obama’s TPP, and his TTIP.<\/span><\/p>\n

Any country in TPP, TTIP, or TISA, that introduces worker-protection regulations which are beyond this abysmally low level, will then be fined by corporate panels, and those fines will become income to the companies whose \u2018rights\u2019 (such as to murder labor-organizers) have been violated, under the terms of the given treaty: TPP, TTIP, and TISA.<\/span><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s just one example of the type of sovereignty (in this instance over workers\u2019 rights<\/i>) that is being, essentially, ceded to panels controlled by international corporations, under these ‘trade\u2019 deals. They\u2019re actually about a lot more than just tariffs etc.; they\u2019re about sovereignty \u2013 switching sovereignty to international corporations.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the UN\u2019s top official on such matters has said, TTP & TTIP will produce\u00a0“a dystopian future in which corporations and not democratically\u00a0elected governments call the shots.”<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Here was Hillary Clinton\u2019s past record on NAFTA, her own husband\u2019s trade deal, which was almost as bad as are the ones that Obama is now trying to pass \u2013 and Obama\u2019s will cover vastly more nations:<\/span><\/p>\n

During the 2008 Presidential campaign, an Obama flyer that Hillary was complaining about, quoted\u00a0Newsday<\/i>\u2019s characterization of Hillary\u2019s NAFTA view in 2006:\u00a0\u201cClinton thinks NAFTA has been a boon to the economy.\u201d Hillary\u00a0was claiming that this was a lie. Many in the press blindly\u00a0supported her accusation against Obama here, because \u201ca boon\u201d was\u00a0Newsday<\/i>\u2019s phrase, not hers. However, it was she, and\u00a0not\u00a0Obama, who was actually lying: Her 2003\u00a0Living History<\/i>\u00a0(p. 182) really did\u00a0brag\u00a0about her husband\u2019s having passed NAFTA, and she said there:\u00a0\u201cCreating a free trade zone in North America \u2013 the largest free trade\u00a0zone in the world \u2013 would expand U.S. exports, create jobs and\u00a0ensure that our country was reaping the benefits, not the burdens, of\u00a0globalization.\u201d This was one of, supposedly,\u00a0her\u00a0proudest\u00a0achievements, which were (p. 231) \u201cBill\u2019s successes on the budget,\u00a0the Brady bill and NAFTA.\u201d But Hillary was now demanding that\u00a0Obama apologise for his flyer\u2019s having said: \u201cOnly Barack Obama\u00a0fought NAFTA and other bad trade deals.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If you want to get insight into the reality of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, just click\u00a0here<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and examine that 8 February 2008 flyer from the Barack Obama for President campaign, during Obama\u2019s Democratic Party Presidential primaries phase, when both candidates were deceiving Democrats, but only Hillary Clinton was provably and clearly lying<\/i> to them. Here are the details:<\/span><\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s flyer said: \u201cOf the two candidates in the race, only Barack Obama has been a consistent opponent of NAFTA and other bad trade deals. [Chicago Tribune, 2\/29\/04]\u201d But, actually, back in 2004, Obama had had nothing to do with NAFTA<\/i>, except campaign-rhetoric against it in his campaign at that time, to become the Democratic nominee to win the open U.S. Senate seat for Illinois, and his main opponent at that time was Daniel Hynes, the son of a former Mayor Daley machine Democratic Ward Committeeman, Thomas Hynes. This was mere rhetoric from candidate Obama.<\/span><\/p>\n

As for Hillary\u2019s record on NAFTA, it was (unlike Obama\u2019s) more<\/i> <\/span>than merely rhetorical, and both her rhetoric and her actions had actually supported NAFTA, before NAFTA became so unpopular among Democrats that she had to become merely rhetorically against it. On 20 March 2008, the day after Hillary finally released her\u00a0schedule during her White House years, The\u00a0Nation\u2019<\/i>s John Nichols\u00a0blogged \u201cClinton Lie Kills Her Credibility on Trade Policy,\u201d<\/span><\/a> and he\u00a0said: \u201cNow that we know from the 11,000 pages of Clinton White\u00a0House documents released this week that [the] former First Lady was\u00a0an ardent advocate for NAFTA; … now that we know she was in the\u00a0thick of the maneuvering to block the efforts of labor, farm,\u00a0environmental and human rights groups to get a better agreement; …\u00a0now that we know from official records of her time as First Lady that\u00a0Clinton was the featured speaker at a closed-door session where 120\u00a0women opinion leaders were hectored to pressure their congressional\u00a0representatives to approve NAFTA; now that we know from ABC\u00a0News reporting on the session that \u2018her remarks were totally pro-NAFTA\u2019 and that \u2018there was no equivocation for her support for\u00a0NAFTA at the time\u2019; … what should we make of Clinton\u2019s campaign\u00a0claim that she was never comfortable with the militant free-trade\u00a0agenda that has cost the United States hundreds of thousands of union\u00a0jobs?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

On 24 March 2008, ABC\u2019s Jennifer Parker,\u00a0headlined a blogpost \u201cFrom the Fact Check Desk: The Clinton Campaign\u00a0Misrepresents Clinton NAFTA Meeting,\u201d<\/span><\/a> and she reported: \u201cI have\u00a0now talked to three former Clinton Administration officials whom I\u00a0trust who tell me that then-First Lady Hillary Clinton opposed the\u00a0idea of introducing NAFTA before health care, but expressed no\u00a0reservations in public or private about the substance of NAFTA. Yet\u00a0the Clinton campaign continues to propagate this myth that she\u00a0fought NAFTA.\u201d Hillary continued this lie about herself, even after it had been\u00a0repeatedly and soundly exposed to be a lie. Her behavior in this\u00a0regard was reminiscent of George W. Bush\u2019s statements on WMD in\u00a0Iraq<\/span><\/a>, and on many other issues.<\/span><\/p>\n

OTHER ISSUES<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton favored\u00a0the coup<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that overthrew the progressive democratically elected President of Honduras on 28 June 2009. And she favored\u00a0the coup<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that overthrew the democratically elected (but like all of Ukraine\u2019s Presidents) corrupt President of Ukraine in February 2014. And she favors\u00a0fracking<\/span><\/a>. (And see more of that\u00a0here<\/span><\/a>.) And she favors\u00a0the Keystone XL pipeline<\/span><\/a>. (And see more of that\u00a0here<\/span><\/a>.) (And\u00a0here<\/span><\/a>.) And she\u00a0condemns proposals for a single-payer health-insurance system such as in Canada, and European countries, or else via universal access to Medicare<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0and she\u00a0vigorously supports healthcare-as-a-privilege that\u2019s based on ability-to-pay<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0But her rhetoric, especially after the challenge from Bernie Sanders, is opposite her actions and her long public record on those and many other key issues.<\/span><\/p>\n

The only issues where her record has been progressive in her actions, and not merely in her words, are ones where the beneficiaries are ethnic, gender, racial, or other label-groups among the general public, whose votes are crucial in order to be able to compete at all<\/i> <\/span>in Democratic Party primaries \u2013 plus, of course, gun-control. However, she has done nothing to oppose\u00a0the interests of her major campaign donors, no matter how contrary they are to those label-groups.\u00a0<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(A more recent version of that, is my\u00a0“Hillary Veers Left, to Head Off Sanders.\u201d<\/span><\/a> And a link there will bring you directly to today\u2019s campaign-finance results.) Those support-groups can intelligently rely upon her to favor their positions on their specific issues, in practice, and not merely in words. In turn, those liberal actions by her will antagonize Republicans, so that her Presidency, if she wins, will be very much like Obama\u2019s has been, no matter how far to the right she (like Obama himself) actually rules. The \u201ccenter\u201d will just keep moving farther to the right (no matter whether the American public keep moving toward the left). The same trends that have been clear ever since George W. Bush came into office will continue, in the same directions. Hillary\u2019s husband started some of these trends himself, such as when he introduced NAFTA and when he ended FDR\u2019s Glass-Steagall Act and deregulated derivatives.<\/span><\/p>\n

CONCLUSION<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

For a candidate such as Hillary Clinton, a rational voter will ignore her merely-stated positions, and will instead examine, and rely solely upon, her actual record. There are a few successful politicians who are honest with the public, and not merely with donors; but, unfortunately, she isn\u2019t one of them. Consequently, all of the pundits\u2019 talk about such things as \u201cBernie moving her to the left\u201d is only about her pretense, not at all about her reality. Her reality is what will be in the Oval Office, if she wins. <\/span><\/p>\n

Reality is only what a politician does<\/i> <\/span>in office, not about mere rhetoric<\/i>. Even when rhetoric is great, such as it was with Abraham Lincoln, it has relied upon honesty in order to be able to be so. Lying rhetoric tends simply to be forgotten by historians. It shouldn\u2019t be, even if this requires us to remember some very bad rhetoric. Lies can be very important, no matter how bad the rhetoric might happen to be. History should deal with what\u2019s important. So should voters.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse The contrast between Hillary Clinton\u2019s stated positions and her actual record, is stark. The record shows that she actually supports international trade treaties that allow the participating countries to allow international corporations to murder labor union organizers to keep wages down. Her financial backers include many of the controlling stockholders in corporations that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":148712,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[115,30,951,96,1035,535,954,698,38,59,1020,804,524,949,523,49,76,40,1024],"class_list":{"0":"post-193665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-clinton","11":"tag-cover-up","12":"tag-daily-news","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-hillary","15":"tag-hillary-clinton","16":"tag-iraq","17":"tag-military","18":"tag-nightly-news","19":"tag-politics-2","20":"tag-russia","21":"tag-sanders","22":"tag-ukraine","23":"tag-usa-news","24":"tag-warfare","25":"tag-white-house","26":"tag-ww3"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}