Huffpo: Bill Clinton's Ties to Colombia Trade Deal Stronger Than Even Penn's

[flpoljunkie]

Sam Stein
The Huffington Post

Bill Clinton's Ties To Colombia Trade Deal Stronger Than Even Penn's

April 8, 2008 12:59 PM

On Sunday evening, Sen. Hillary Clinton's chief campaign strategist, Mark Penn, resigned after it was revealed he was working (on the side) for the passage of a Colombia Free Trade Agreement that his candidate opposed.

But within the Clinton campaign, Penn is not the highest-ranking adviser with financial ties to groups and individuals supporting the passage of the measure.

Former President Bill Clinton has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars speaking on behalf of a Colombia-based group pushing the trade pact, and representatives of that organization tell The Huffington Post that the former president shared their sentiment.

In June 2005, Clinton was paid $800,000 by the Colombia-based Gold Service International to give four speeches throughout Latin America. The organization is, ostensibly, a development group tasked with bringing investment to the country and educating world leaders about the Colombia's business opportunities.

The group's chief operating officer, Andres Franco, said in an interview that the group supports the congressional ratification of the free trade agreement and that, when Clinton was on his speaking tour, he expressed similar opinions.

"He was supportive of the trade agreement at the time that he came, but that was several years ago. In the present context, I don't know what his position would be. It is not only about union trade rights. It is about what benefit or damage it can do to the US economy," said Franco. "Events with the Clinton campaign are not good at all for the trade agreement... Right now it became a campaign issues and that is sad, because it needs to go through."

more...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/08/bill-clintons-ties-to-col_n_95651.html?view=print

[democrattotheend]

1. Just saw that

You beat me to posting it. Disturbing stuff. Given how much grief Obama got for Goldsbee, I sure hope this becomes a big story.

[DevonRex]

2. Bill and Hill are all about money and power.

Sad but true.

[Andy823]

9. I have to agree!

It's become pretty obvious, at least to me, that Hillary wouldn't be that much different than what we have now when it comes to the so called "free trade" agreements. He is for outsourcing, more visas for people from India, and to think that she knew nothing about Penn and his interests in Columbia, is absurd!

[DevonRex]

21. Yep, absurd.

Now we know where a lot of their income over the last decade came from, at least. I'd like to know more.

[uponit7771]

3. K&R, this shoudl be a HUGE issue in the GE. BO not against free trade just trade that hurts most &..

...helps few

[BenDavid]

4. Gee, and that means what? Nothing. Kinda like I was for Kansas

with the points (+1 1/2)in the game last evening and I was strongly supporting them, but someone else was supporting memphis....What does that mean? bout the same as bill maybe supporting the deal and hrc not....

[DerekJ]

5. I wish one day I will read a post of yours that makes sense, just one.

:eyes:

[flpoljunkie]

6. If you read the entire piece, you may find yourself disturbed by what looks like influence peddling

by a former president of the United States...or not, in your case.

[Lucky 13]

15. I'm sure no Clinton supporter is interested in reading any further...

They don't want to see the corruption so they have blinded themselves to it. They don't want to hear criticism so they have put all critical voices on mute.

The Clintons can do no wrong. They are the pillars of upstanding morality. They never lie. They never obfuscate. They are without blame.

These people have completely deluded themselves.

[PoliticalAmazon]

49. Not all Clinton supporters are like the ones we see on DU....

...Some now have deep doubts about the Clintons, and it is very, very hard for them.

To say they are "disillusioned" would be grossly understating how they feel.

Some may end up voting for Obama out of Democratic Party loyalty, but for many of us (Hillary supporters and non-Hillary supporters) the disillusionment about the Clintons has produced a great deal of sadness and questioning about the Democratic Party itself. I can see many of the Clinton supporters who become disillusioned enough to not vote for her in the primary, deciding to just give politics a rest for awhile and not vote at all.

[natrat]

61. please , wake up the democratic part is jam packed with corruption

[natrat]

60. :)

[Hepburn]

18. WTF???

Can you post something that makes at least minimal sense??? :shrug:

BTW: What the fuck are you smoking?

[snooper2]

51. I'm tempted..

to take that person off ignore to see what idiotic rambling was posted...


tempted I said :rofl:

[Kittycat]

7. Not to mention that Wolfson is also tied in.

What disgusting liars they are.

[TwilightGardener]

8. Sleazy.

[blm]

10. But...how COULD she have known? Really - she was sleeping at 3AM when Bill was busy working.

Is it HER fault that Advil PMs really work?

[redqueen]

11. Oh noes! I'm so shocked!

:sarcasm:

[Lucky 13]

12. Well... well... well....

Another scandal? Another appearance of conflict of interest? Another lie?

I am shocked. SHOCKED I tell you!!

[Scurrilous]

13. K & R

:thumbsup:

[easy_b94]

14. this why they want the whitehouse back so bad....grrrrrr

[AtomicKitten]

16. All three of the lobbying firms "servicing" Colombia are Clintonites.

Bill Clinton apparently met with the Colombian government and made it so, in fact making phone calls from there to solicit support for the free-trade agreement.

The comeuppance for this duplicity is long overdue.

[Hepburn]

17. Oooooops.....

...the Clintonista message again gets cloudy!

[WA98296]

19. K & R

[Elidor]

20. I hope no one will mind if I call Bill Clinton a whore

Apologies to any prostitutes who may be reading.

[DevonRex]

23. I'll call him a whore too. And...

prostitutes aren't whores anyway. They're just doin' a job. Come to think of it, I don't know if there's a valid definition of whore anymore that relates to having sex. But there IS a valid use for the word whore when it comes to politics and money.

[PoliticalAmazon]

50. You realize, of course, that your radio show will be suspended over this. n/t

[slinkerwink]

22. $800,000 from Colombia?

[mmonk]

24. Yes. It's out there now.

[Jonathan2000]

25. $50 million in speaking fees

All of these groups have a political agenda. It's not illegal but why select a nominee that has personally profited from this.

[Tarheel_Dem]

26. This all sounds really "messy" to me, and reinforces what I've come

to dislike about the Clintons and their new BFF's. The fact that HRC's and McCain's campaign staffs all work for lobbying firms, and in some cases, even work for each other..just makes me very nervous & nauseous.

[OhioBlue]

39. I know what you mean.

I feel the same way. I almost feel like they are the same.

[Tarheel_Dem]

40. which is why I feel the rightwing media is pushing Hillary as hard as

they're pushing McCain. They know that no matter who wins between Clinton & McCain, they get business as usual, and I find that unnerving.

[cseper]

58. Their bashing Hillary...why?

On Drudge Report:

PAGLIA: Why Hillary surrounds herself with girly men...

HOWELL RAINES: Bill Clinton is race-baiting...

ROVE: Hillary's run 'horrific campaign'...

'Other Woman' Shadows Chelsea Clinton...

Traders bet Obama will win nomination...

Why are Drudge and the Republicans bashing Hillary?

And why are so many Republican praising Obama? Think about it.

[Just-plain-Kathy]

43. We don't have a democracy any more.

They’re steeling the election for Hillary. SDs will give Hillary the nomination. "They'll" make McCain looks so bad by connecting him even more with Bush; by November no one would ever believe he could win.

My husband said the other day that McCain is talking about pushing for a mandatory two years of service in the military. There’s been talk about Condi Rice as his VP. Yesterday the women on “the View” (known for ABC molding their “View”) were saying that McCain was a party boy in his youth “just like Bush”.

How could we believe the corporate criminals who stole the last two presidential elections will give up their power so easily? ...We are so screwed.

[EFerrari]

54. Uribe of Colombia is a butcher who has death squads running around

killing people with chainsaws. That would be messy, I'd say.

[PoliticalAmazon]

55. Reinforces my belief that we are now a fascist oligarchy, with...

...basically the rulers being one dominant political party's Elites.

If we want to take back control of our government, the only power we have is the power of the vote, and even that is retroactive.

By NOT voting for the politicians who are corrupt and use the power WE gave them when we voted them into office to advance the best intersts of corporate America, ignoring the best interests of the American citizens, we do several things:

1. First, and foremost, we put ALL politicians on notice: you better perform on your campaign promises, and represent the best interests of your constituents, or you're out the door.

2. Neocon collaboration will not be tolerated.

3. Remind politicians that they don't OWN their congressional seat: we lease it to them by our votes. If they don't make timely payments on the lease, by serving the best interests of their constituents, then we WILL cancel the lease, and vote the lease to someone who will serve our best interests.

4. Put our politicians on notice that they ignore us at their own peril. When the majority of their constituents tell them not to support a confirmation or measure, and they do it anyway, ESPECIALLY if it turns out we were right and they are wrong, they need to start looking for a new job, because they WILL be fired at the next election.

As it stands now, politicians have no incentive to fulfill their campaign promises, serve the best interests of We the People, and uphold Party values. Because so many voters will sheeple on up to the polls and vote for ANYTHING with the appropriate letter (D or R) in front of their names. It doesn't matter if, like Hillary Clinton, the politician voted for the Iraq War and energetically worked to send our jobs overseas. No matter what they do, the Party leadership (DNC or RNC) will scare us into voting for the Party's candidate.

On the other hand, if politicians don't perform for their corporate backers and lobbyists, those corporations/lobbyists take their money and special favors elsewhere.

So politicians have a huge incentive to perform on their promises to corporations/lobbyists, and zero incentive to perform on their promises to the voters who put them in office and who, if they grow spines, can taken them out of office.

If we want to break the choke-hold that corporations and lobbyists have on us, and take back control of our government, then we have to stop voting for anything with a (D) in front of its name. If the candidate has not served us well, has not listened to us, and has collaborated with the neocons, we must not send them back to office.

If we do, we have no one to blame but ourselves when they continue to serve the corporations first and the voters last--if ever.

[DrFunkenstein]

27. New Meaning To The Phrase "Two For The Price of One"

I'm sure that Bill Clinton will have no influence on his wife's trade policies. He'll probably just be meandering around the East Wing, making sure all the toilets flush properly.

[Oilwellian]

28. This says it all

"It's clear that President Clinton has a chummy relationship with the Colombian president," said Lori Wallach, director of Global Trade Watch at Public Citizen, "someone whose administration is under a cloud and under investigation for associations with murderous paramilitaries, and whose administration has seen hundreds of labor unionists assassinated but not prosecuted these crimes, and whose administration has been involved in the forced displacement of thousands of Afro-Colombians. Having President Clinton be chummy with such a person, and having him be the closest adviser of Senator Clinton, is extremely disconcerting."

[flpoljunkie]

30. Very disconcerting, indeed!

[backscatter712]

29. K&R

More people need to know about this...

Yet another scandal exposes the Clintons as pathological liars...

[flpoljunkie]

31. Thanks for the K&R.

[City Lights]

32. I don't trust The Hill Bill. At all.

Frank Giustra's name surfaces. Nice.

And as the article states, BC has even more influence than Penn and cannot be pushed out of the campaign.

[flpoljunkie]

33. Yes, Guistra. I have posted the last four paragraphs for those who did not read the entire article.

"It's clear that President Clinton has a chummy relationship with the Colombian president," said Lori Wallach, director of Global Trade Watch at Public Citizen, "someone whose administration is under a cloud and under investigation for associations with murderous paramilitaries, and whose administration has seen hundreds of labor unionists assassinated but not prosecuted these crimes, and whose administration has been involved in the forced displacement of thousands of Afro-Colombians. Having President Clinton be chummy with such a person, and having him be the closest adviser of Senator Clinton, is extremely disconcerting."

This was not the only time Clinton and Uribe met. According to the Wall Street Journal, the former president hosted a "philanthropic event" with the Colombian leaders in September 2005. The purpose, the paper reported, was to introduce Uribe to Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining tycoon who was interested both in mineral rights and Colombian oil, a position that lent itself to a more open-trade environment.

Months earlier, Bloomberg News reported, Giustra had lent Clinton his private jet for Clinton's four day peaking tour in Latin America - the same tour in which Clinton received $800,000 from Gold Service International. And at some point in time, Giustra - who, the New York Times reported, won a Kazakh uranium deal with Clinton's help (again putting the former president at odds with his wife's positions) - donated more than $31 million to Clinton's charitable fund.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Uribe and Giustra "sat in the hallway speaking for about ten minutes. A Clinton aide later told Giustra the meeting had gone well." And indeed, last year a Canadian company that Giustra's investment firm advised successfully acquired oil fields in Colombia.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/08/bill-clintons-ties-to-col_n_95651.html?view=print

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

44. Thanks for posting more of the article, my pc can't load it for some reason.

I am not a Hillary supporter, but I feel like I've just been pushed off the cliff, by Bill.
It's gonna take awhile for me to digest this.
k&r.

[catgirl]

34. Bill sold his soul for money (nt)

[IsItJustMe]

35. You would think that Union peeple voting for Hillary wound find this very troubling.

[flpoljunkie]

45. You would, indeed!

[DearAbby]

36. K&R

[redqueen]

37. Y'all can't prove anything! Those are just speeches!

There's no quid pro quo!

Stop with the character assassination!

[Name removed]

38. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[acmavm]

59. You're are a freaking idiot moron. I would be banned if I let this

racist shit spew out like you just did.

I'm so damn sick of the racist shit around here. You people are disgusting.

[Major Hogwash]

68. Calm down, you used 2 "are's" when you called him a freaking idiot moron.

"You're" is a contraction of "you are", so calm down.

There's a lot of racist shit in the real world, we have to deal with it, but don't get upset over it. Please.

Alert on it, and then let it roll off your back like water off the back of a duck.

[merh]

41. A twofer

that's what many of the hillary fans are so excited about, they get bill back - this kind of crap makes me want to go look at every decision he made while in the WH, when exactly did he sell his soul?

[Zachstar]

42. This trade stuff is going to hurt her campaign even worse than Snipergate.

As it is deep rooted and while the results arent apparent at first. It completely stalls the recovery from snipergate.

[uponit7771]

46. true, I could care less about Wright or Bosnia in the long wrong. Her position on Free Trade will...

...hurt us.

[ShortnFiery]

47. Kick for the afternoon crowd

:dem:

[Fyddlestyx]

48. K & R

:kick:

[me b zola]

52. K&R

[KillCapitalism]

53. Yet so many DU'ers look fondly back at the Clinton years.

Granted, the Clinton years were much better than the Bushco years, but Clinton's record on protecting American jobs is about as bad as W's.

[cseper]

56. I remember the Clinton's eight great years

of the greatest reduction of poverty since the sixties, the first rise in real wages in a decade with the lowest cohort getting the largest increase, the Fsmily and Medical Leave Act, SCHIPS, Northern Ireland etc. And all this - including a surplus that was retiring the private debt and leaving the treasury with $200+ billion a year that could go to domestic programs instead of to bond holders without ONE PENNY OF TAX INCREASE - accomplished with a GOP Congress investigating his butt constantly and demanding a special prosecutor for every cabinet member for littering. What KillCapitalism, do you remember?

[Inuca]

62. Clinton had his merits, no doubt

but much of the economic boom of the 90s was NOT of his making.

[PoliticalAmazon]

57. Have you noticed that Hillary is doing the Republican thing--looking to the past...

...with nostalgia?

This is a criticism we lobbed at Republicans often: they live in the past, want to bring back the good old days, and are unable to look to the future and evoke change that will serve us well in the future.

[mcollier]

63. You've got to be kidding me

What is going on with this Columbia deal... If its good for America, ok. There should be a clear debate on this trade deal. And let the American People understand what is at stake, whats to be gained, and whats to be lost.... Fair enough?

[democracy1st]

64. DLC

top dawg

[orleans]

65. bill made 800000 off it

and hill is against it.

well--how handy for her to be against it--she sure made out pretty fucking good with it.

her being against it doesn't count worth a shit, imo

she's still close to a million ahead from it. she profited by it.

[crankychatter]

66. She should send HER HALF back to Columbia

denounce and reject

[orleans]

67. ok--that would be a good start. then, because of her position, he should

return his half as well.

[thevoiceofreason]

69. And in Huffpo, no less!