William Rivers Pitt - Don't Believe the Hype: Candidate Clinton's Sudden Populism

By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks to reporters at a state launch party for her presidential campaign, in Concord, New Hampshire, June 15, 2015. In spite of her use of populist rhetoric on the campaign trail, Clinton's actions, history and friends in the financial industry tell a different story. (Photo: Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist/The New York Times)
...Yet a peek at her donor list is revealing. The roll-call of Mrs. Clinton's top twenty campaign donors is topped by Citibank, and includes Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse Group ... basically, a cohort of the worst people in the United States, the ones who gamed the system by buying politicians like her and then proceeded to burn the economy down to dust and ash while making a financial killing in the process.

The hood ornament on President Obama's second term agenda, the positively nauseating Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and fast-track authority for same, has been much in the news of late. The deal was dealt a blow by Congress some days ago, but the argument is far from complete. Mrs. Clinton's silence on the topic is deeper than what one would hear in deep space. However, in her 2014 book Hard Choices, she positively waxed loquacious:

One of our most important tools for engaging with Vietnam was a proposed new trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which would link markets throughout Asia and the Americas, lowering trade barriers while raising standards on labor, the environment, and intellectual property. ... It was also important for American workers, who would benefit from competing on a more level playing field. And it was a strategic initiative that would strengthen the position of the United States in Asia.

This from the candidate who, while First Lady in 1996, trumpeted NAFTA as "proving its worth" even as it was kicking the guts out of the national economy, who was forced just two years later to admit that it was "flawed," and that "we didn't get everything we should have got out of it." The TPP deal is NAFTA with a jet pack strapped to its back, and candidate Clinton - silent now on the matter as she peddles her newly-printed populist papers - has been pushing it since her days as Secretary of State....

In my humble opinion, her actions, her history, and most importantly her friends in the financial industry, give glaring lie to this sudden eruption of populist fervor. She railed against all of the entities that are tearing the country to rags on Saturday, and then cashed their checks when her pals at the bank opened for business on Monday. That is the sharp truth of it, and all the YEAH BUT REPUBLICANS arguments can go pound sand. When Secretary Clinton and the most terrifying GOP candidates on the skin of the Earth share the same donor list, the (D) after her name doesn't matter a dime.


Please read the complete article here: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/31397-don-t-believe-the-hype-candidate-clinton-s-sudden-populism