Hillary Clinton, Mark Penn and Free Trade

While Hillary Clinton reaches out to working class voters, as an opponent of free trade agreements, her chief strategist, Mark Penn, accepts money from foreign governments to influence peddle free trade deals.

Mark Penn, the pollster and senior strategist for Hillary Clinton's campaign, met with representatives of the Colombian government on March 31st, as part of his firm's representation of the Colombian government, in its effort to secure passage of a bilateral free trade agreement. According to Justice Department filings, Penn's public relations firm, Burson-Marsteller, received $300,000 to "educate members of the U.S. Congress and other audiences" about a trade deal, and to assist in maintaining U.S. funding for the $5 billion anti-narcotics program, Plan Colombia. It was further disclosed that, while Clinton is appealing to working class voters as an opponent of additional free trade agreements, until national trade policy establishes protections for workers and other safeguards, her campaign was implicated in giving contrary assurances to the Canadians, and her chief strategist is deeply involved in securing a free trade agreement that favors Colombia. In effect, there was a true and provable meeting between a high level, paid ($10.8 million) representative of Hillary Clinton's campaign, who did exactly what she urged the public to believe Barack Obama's unpaid economic advisor, Austan D. Goolsbee did, respecting the Canadian government, and she advocated an interpretation of the event that was contrary to the explanation of all sides, so forcefully that it caused Barack to loose votes in Ohio. Quiet as it is kept, the Canadian NAFTA debacle did not begin with Barack Obama's campaign, it began with an outreach from Hillary Clinton's campaign. Ian Brodie, chief of staff for the Canadian Prime Minister, said "someone from (Hillary) Clinton’s campaign is telling the embassy to take (NAFTA) with a grain of salt...someone called us and told us not to worry.” Could it be that Hillary's campaign feared that their involvement with the Canadian embassy might get out, so they implicated Barack Obama's campaign as a preemptive attack? Support for that idea is contained in two propositions. First, the Canadians initiated the contact; second, certain Canadians, aggressively produced and dispensed information detrimental to Barack Obama's campaign, almost immediately after achieving contact. When assurances are received, from a potentially powerful political ally, generally, the response is not an attack. Austan Goolsbee met with Canadian Consul General Georges Rioux in Chicago, at the invitation of the Canadian consul. He said the visit lasted about 40 minutes, with "two to three minutes" spent discussing NAFTA. He said that he did not make any statement that could be construed as, what was reported, namely, that he announced to these strangers that Barack's position on NAFTA was primarily political rhetoric. Nevertheless, two days before the Ohio election, Canada's ambassador to Washington, Michael Wilson, told CTV journalist Tom Clark that an Obama official told Canada that Obama's public position on NAFTA was only political rhetoric. The next day, the network broadcasted a report provided by Canadians, alleging that it reflected notes of a meeting with Goolsbee, including language that described Barack's position on NAFTA as for public consumption, but not real. Ordinarily, people do not respond to reassurances about something that is in their interests, by publicly exposing the person making the assurances, in a manner designed to ruin him. But it does make sense if the purpose of the relationship is to create an opportunity to misrepresent that party. The Barack Canadian connection has all of the hallmarks of a setup. Austan Goolsbee may have been invited to the consulate for no reason other than to create an opportunity to accuse him of something that Hillary was guilty of. What better way to cover up wrongdoing than to attribute it to somebody else. Hillary has shown she is capable of the aggressive lies required, by her Sinbad challenge. When Sinbad, who accompanied her to Bosnia in 1996, challenged her lies about the dangerous conditions, including dodging bullets, she didn't back down, she responded by intensifying the lies, emphasizing her memory of the event, adding greater detail. And when asked to explain the discrepancy between her account and that of Sinbad, she demeaned him, arrogantly asserting, “Sinbad is a comedian.” Translation, Sinbad is someone, who cannot compete with someone like me, for credibility. And the media proved her right. Finally, Hillary has also been associated with selling the benefits of the Office of the Presidency to private citizens for money. People who contributed to her Senate campaign, and who gave money to her brothers, received presidential pardons for their crimes. Now her long time advisor, Mark Penn, who has worked with her since Bill Clinton's re-election bid in 1996, and through her successful Senate campaign in 2000, is exposed as selling free trade advice to foreign governments, while employed by her. I would take that to mean that she is implicated in that behavior. Major media seems prepared to take Hillary Clinton at her word, although her lies are known to them. Prefacing Mark Penn's free trade activity with protestations of Hillary's non-involvement, "something Clinton opposes," when all that they know is that she said that, before these events even occurred. She doesn't have to make her own a denial, the media does that for her. By contrast, when Barack's campaign was implicated in the Canadian NAFTA event, his denial, his representative's denial, the Canadian government's denial, did not stop the media from reporting the story, as if it was true, up til now Major media may chose to separate Hillary from the purpose and intent of her long time associate and employee, Mark Penn, in his free trade dealings, while employed by her. But, it is generally the case that, "birds of a feather flock together."