By Jaime Ortega.
Democratic Nominee for President Hillary Clinton, harshly campaigned against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and promised her supporters that she advocated against outsourcing jobs. Sanders ratcheted up her jobs record, and said that she helped companies move jobs overseas –something Clinton denied.
Emails released by wikileaks have shown that Clinton is a versatile politician who seems to cater two different agendas.
“Politics is like sausage being made,” she said. “It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be. But if everybody’s watching, you know, all of the backroom discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.”
In 2004, Clinton was slamming outsourcing as she led the Democrats’ criticism of the Bush administration. She even said that outsourcing was “a strategy for decline. This is a strategy for the destruction of the American job market.”
She pledged to present a Senate resolution, her goal was “to stand against this philosophy in the White House that turns a blind eye to the damage that is being done to the American economy: The loss of jobs, the loss of income, the loss of self-confidence and prestige that is now sweeping our land.”
Thousands of pages of Hillary Clinton’s schedules from her time as secretary of state shed light on the access corporate executives and foundation donors enjoyed at her State Department, but missing portions leave questions about how Clinton spent her days in the administration.
From the private meetings she held with donors at her Foggy Bottom office to a “conference call with CEOs” to raise money for a State Department project, Clinton mixed her exhaustive diplomatic engagements with appointments that favored her political and philanthropic networks.
Clinton met frequently with Kris Balderston, who has remained a shadowy figure that once served in the Office of The Secretary of State, and managed the Global Partnership Initiative, which is an entry point for collaboration between the US Department of State, the public and private sectors, and civil society.
Balderston and Clinton showed determination to court corporate donors in the run-up to the 2010 World’s Fair in Shanghai.
A U.S. presence at the expo became a diplomatic priority for Clinton shortly upon her arrival at the agency, but because she was barred from using taxpayer money to fund the $60 million project, Clinton tapped Balderston to raise the cash.
Wikileaks emails reveal how much Clinton had turned a blind eye on outsourcing. Clinton emailed Bladerston trying to obtain “a call sheet for Bloomberg LLC” to set negotiations that would benefit her foundation through the State Department which gave her political access.
Balderston replied, “It’s not like a traditional trade/Expo with specific booths.” And added, “It is more subtle and the pavilion folks would negotiate creatively on what they want depending on the amount they get on the big wall of contributors.” This email shows that donors would receive favors for their contributions, which should worry those who think Clinton works in favor of the middle class and not elites — something she accuses Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump of supporting.
In the email, Hillary responded to Balderston, and asked, “If a city gives $ do they put up display/exhibits?”
Balderston replied, “This will be an important two weeks to nail down these big companies. We are negotiating with them now about possible options. I’ll keep you posted. May be good to mention this to Mayor Bloomberg if you run into him or see him. Doctor off gave us from B4 Bloomberg, LLC but he thought the Mayor may be interested for the city.”
Clinton replied, “What else can I do to help?”
The email also shows that other companies might have had suspicions and raised eyebrows regarding the intentions of the deal coming from the Clinton foundation, the Secretary of state and the Global Partnership Initiative — but it was important to insist— Google one of them.
“Google has been weird about this whole deal but this whole Expo experience has been fascinating. Some companies will say absolutely no for months (Qualcomm, Bloomberg, J&J) and then pop out of nowhere and say yes. Others like are all in for and then decide not to give us a penny. Therefore we have to keep bugging these guysm,” Balderston replied.
Balderston also rants that they raised $54M, and Bloomberg gave them $500k, but they still needed $7M.
According to the email, Monsanto, Disney and Oracle spoke with Balderston, on behalf of Hillary. He also said that companies like Hormel, Mattel, Invitrogen and Major League baseball “were in range” to negotiate deals with Hillary.
One surprising aspect of the email, is that Balderston and Hillary had the ability to force large companies to push and influence smaller business to raise money for their initiative.
“We have approached groups like Pharma and the fashion industry thru Diane von Furstenburg to get them to bundle smaller companies and both have agreed to do it. I met with DVF and she wants you to know that she is very excited about helping (they are in the range), Balderston said.
In fact the email shows that the Chamber of Commerce was contemplating to push Small Medium-Sized Enterprises to raise $2-3 Million in smaller increments for Clinton.
A few days later, Clinton replied, that “she had made no progress” in raising $7 Million.
The email also shows Clinton courted commercial diplomatic deals with China, and wanted a bridge between Small and medium-sized enterprises in the US to get access to Chinese growing market. As Bernie mentioned, she was all pro-outsourcing jobs.
Balderston replied, “Google should be an obvious co-sponsor of the USA Pavilion and they have consistently pushed us off. Although they bring up IP issues as a reason not to participate, the Chinese frequently note that they do a lot of business in China. We are now at $54 million. If the opportunity arises, it would be helpful to note the importance of a USA standing in Shanghai.”
Balderston’s update Friday, March 5, 2010 6:26 AM:
“Just a quick note to tell you that we are moving forward on the Expo funding. ATT came in at $500k, McGraw Hill at $200k, Intel at $250k more, Delos Living (a Mantz client) $250k, and CITI at a minimum of $2M brings us down to $3.7M. The following are on deck and likely to come in soon – Boeing (more), Carlyle, Blackstone, Alcoa, and AECOM. EB and I chatting with many others.”
Clinton replied, “Good work. Let me know if I need to do anything else.”
However, the letter that seems to confirm that Clinton is pro-outsourcing and might have questionable financial ties with foreign donors came from an email sent by Balderston that recalls a meeting with a high CEO of PNB Indonesia.
“Madame Secretary.
Thank you for meeting with Asep Sulaeman, the Chairman of the local PNB Committee in Indonesia and the Sr VP for Exxon Mobil in Jakarta and Robin McClellan, a newly retired FSO who was the CG in Perth, Australia and is now employed by Exxon.
You briefly met Asep during the PNB dinner earlier this year and I spent time with them both in Jakarta last month. Indonesia promises to be a successful PNB country because like Turkey, a number of US companies are interested in participating.
“Your “hello” and statement that PNB is an important item on your agenda will allow the funding will help them hire a full time Exec Director to run the project. We are helping them develop a mechanism to accept the funds and move forward. She and I have talked about how to move forward.”
The Daily Journalist also released information thanks to Guciffer about how The Clinton Foundation gave banks and corporations TARP in exchange of funding.
New Documents Show Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi Amid TARP Controversy
