Did Hillary spend all her time in the State Dept. shilling for wealthy corporate interests?

[Zorra]

Hillary Clinton's Business Legacy at the State Department

On her 79th and probably last overseas trip as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton made a pit stop in the Czech Republic. One purpose of the 11-hour visit on Dec. 3, squeezed between NATO talks on the future of Afghanistan and the Syrian civil war, was to make a personal appeal to Czech Prime Minister Petr Nečas on behalf of Westinghouse Electric, which is vying for a contract to build a nuclear power plant there. The company is locked in a $10 billion bidding war with a state-owned Russian energy giant, and Clinton pressed the Czech officials about the wisdom of depending on Vladimir Putin’s Russia for something as essential as electricity. Westinghouse Chief Executive Danny Roderick, who’s still awaiting a decision, says Clinton’s intervention made a big impression on the Czechs: “I was proud that she was in the trenches with me.”

In four years as the nation’s top diplomat, Clinton, who is expected to step down this month, has made dozens of similar sales pitches on behalf of U.S. companies. In 2009 she toured a Boeing plant in Moscow and met with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to persuade state-owned Russian Technologies to buy 50 Boeing 737s instead of jets made by Airbus. That $3.7 billion deal was one of several large contracts Clinton helped clinch for Boeing (BA). In December 2011, Lockheed Martin (LMT) announced a $7.2 billion deal to upgrade Japan’s aging fighter jet fleet, beating out Eurofighter. Clinton advocated for the contract with her Japanese counterpart at the United Nations General Assembly. In February 2012, Space Systems/Loral, which builds communications satellites in Palo Alto, won a contract for equipment to create a national broadband network in Australia. Clinton met with former Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd several times to press for the deal. Last summer, Clinton’s undersecretary for economic growth, Robert Hormats, a former Goldman Sachs (GS) vice chair, took executives from Google (GOOG), MasterCard (MA), and Dow Chemical (DOW) to Myanmar to network with government officials, the first such meeting since sanctions against the country were lifted in 2012.
snip----
She’s pressed the case for U.S. business in Cambodia, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, and other countries in China’s shadow. She’s also taken a leading part in drafting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the free-trade pact that would give U.S. companies a leg up on their Chinese competitors.
snip----
To ensure the State Department keeps its business focus, Clinton has tried to change the way the 69,000-person global bureaucracy operates. In one directive, which she calls the “Ambassador-as-CEO” memo, she ordered U.S. embassies to make it a priority to help U.S. businesses win contracts. Science officers now extoll American clean-tech companies. Military affairs officers promote U.S. fighter planes.

http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-01-10/hillary-clintons-business-legacy-at-the-state-department#p3

[NCTraveler]

1. Please read the article.

It answers your blatantly false question. Not often you see someone pose a question and then knock it down all in the same op. Bravo. I hear Bloomberg is in her corner and never embellishes when writing about her. I really don't think there are enough isolationist here who will take issue with the state department working with business abroad. It has happened forever. Isolationism with respect to US policy at the state department would be foolish.

[FreakinDJ]

2. I did read the article - HRC worked as a Corp Shill

What part of

The question now is whether she’s attained her more ambitious goal: reorienting the priorities of the State Department toward business in a way that will allow her successors to continue exerting Hillary-style influence long after she has left the building.

did we miss

[NCTraveler]

3. I get it.

"Did Hillary spend all her time in the State Dept. shilling for wealthy corporate interests?"

It is blatantly false commentary by the op. You excerpt addresses none of what I said or took issue with. Like it was just grabbed and thrown out there in an attempt to add merit to such a false statement.

[HooptieWagon]

5. Correct. She didn't spend ALL her time shilling for corporations.

Just some of it. The remainder she spent shilling for more wars.

[HFRN]

27. pics

?uuid=5ZvVxL7QEeSd-wM2bnGa-A

[TheKentuckian]

30. Which also works out to shilling for the corporations.

[HFRN]

26. 'worked as'?

that implies that she isn't one when she was off that duty

[JaneyVee]

4. Or you can check here as well:

http://correctrecord.org/the-record/

[murielm99]

6. Thanks.

I bookmarked that site.

[AtomicKitten]

13. that's the propaganda arm of the campaign

Their function is to try to dazzle with bullshit.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/05/12/how-a-super-pac-plans-to-coordinate-directly-with-hillary-clintons-campaign/

[shenmue]

20. Oh, wow

[AtomicKitten]

22. undeniable

http://www.thenation.com/article/how-david-brock-built-empire-put-hillary-white-house/

[udbcrzy2]

34. It says, ' pro-Clinton rapid-response operation' lulz n/t

[olddots]

7. I wouldn't say all her time ............

thats a joke . or maybe not .

[Cheese Sandwich]

8. The purpose of government is to help corporations profit. Got it.

To ensure the State Department keeps its business focus, Clinton has tried to change the way the 69,000-person global bureaucracy operates. In one directive, which she calls the “Ambassador-as-CEO” memo, she ordered U.S. embassies to make it a priority to help U.S. businesses win contracts. Science officers now extoll American clean-tech companies. Military affairs officers promote U.S. fighter planes.

This is her whole career in a nutshell. Especially if you count her times as first lady Arkansas and the US.

[Beacool]

10. She was doing her job.

Promoting U.S. corporations is part of the job of any SOS.

[Cheese Sandwich]

11. Yeah but more than her predecessors, Clinton has argued that commercial diplomacy and the promotion

of trade, long the neglected stepchildren of the foreign policy establishment, are central to U.S. strategic interests.

And anyways something like promoting TPP is a matter of policy choice. Obama obviously supports it, and she has the job because she agrees.

It's not "part of the job". The job is diplomatic relations with other countries. Choosing whether and how to promote business interests is a policy choice.

[Sheepshank]

14. Making up shit and hoping it's the sum total of her job description

Not wise when it's so easily researched and refuted.

Perhaps you could c&p her official job description and point out the confined limitations you have described

[Cheese Sandwich]

17. It's not a job like getting a job at mcDonalds or something where you just do what you're told.

The President and the Secretary decide on the role together. The President is the boss and if the Secretary doesn't like it they can quit and maybe write a book about it.

Working at a normal job you do what you're told because you need the job and you need the money.

For multi-millionaire government officials, "just following orders", "just doing my job", is a fake excuse.

Flying around the world convincing foreign leaders to help US companies ship jobs overseas, like with TPP?

That's not the President's or Secretary of State's "job" to do that unless they want it to be.

If it is their "job" I'd like to know who the hell they are working for because it isn't the American people.

[Beacool]

16. The country was in a deep recession when Obama took office.

Of course the president and the State Dept. would want to promote U.S. businesses abroad. I think that it would be self evident that the country's economy needed to grow. I don't get the problem. Would some of you prefer that other countries competed for business abroad and the U.S. just withdrew from competing?

This place is nuts.......

[Cheese Sandwich]

21. "I think that it would be self evident that the country's economy needed to grow."

It's not self evident that a "growing" economy actually helps anybody I care about.

For example The 1 Percent Have Gotten All The Income Gains From The Recovery:

Income inequality is a problem that has been growing for decades, but the recovery from the Great Recession seems to have sped it up.

Between 2009 and 2012, according to updated data from Emmanuel Saez, overall income per family grew 6.9 percent. The gains weren’t shared evenly, however. The top 1 percent saw their real income grow by 34.7 percent while the bottom 99 percent only saw a 0.8 percent gain, meaning that the 1 percent captured 91 percent of all real income.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/01/28/3616308/income-inequality-2013/

Business interests are not the same as the interests of the American people.


This is what happens when government promotes business interests. Corporations profit. No surprise. This is what happens when government serves corporations first:http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/corporate-profits-are-eating-the-economy/273687/

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speedup-americans-working-harder-charts

Pandering to business interests, pretending the benefits will trickle down to the rest of us, it doesn't work. It's Reaganomics by slightly different means.

If you want to make jobs in America then directly create jobs in America.

You say:

"I think that it would be self evident that the country's economy needed to grow."

I don't care if the economy grows. I care if people have jobs, health care and education. It's time to create those things directly without pandering to big business. As it stands now only lip service is paid to these things while almost every major action of the government primarily serves some business interest. That includes the Secretary of State acting as "the government’s highest-ranking business lobbyist".

[Beacool]

9. Do you realize that part of the function of the State Dept. is to promote U.S. interests abroad?

That's why when a SOS visits another country included in his/her entourage are American business people.

[Cheese Sandwich]

12. U.S. interests =/= business interests

The interests of the Chamber of Commerce are not always the same as the interests of the American people.

Actually much of the time their interests are in conflict.

[Sheepshank]

15. Chamber of Commerce has no official international standing.........

.....To negotiate with foreign governments. Much to their chagrin lol

[Beacool]

18. Business interests are U.S. interests when the country needs to sell its products

in a middle of a terrible economy. I guess some of you think that the U.S. should have just stayed home and let China take over every industry in the world.

If we don't promote our industries, how are we going to sell our products abroad? How are those companies going to remain in business? What happens to American workers if those companies close?

[Cheese Sandwich]

19. The State Dept. promotes the interests of US corporations.

Any benefit to American workers is purely co-incidental.

Promoting business interests is not just about promoting exports. It's about helping businesses do whatever they want. Good bad or ugly. And the goal is always one thing. To make money.

They often do more harm than good. For example the Trans-Pacific Partnership would lead to more job offshoring and more income inequality.

[RiverLover]

23. K n R!!

Thank you!! TRUTH

[raouldukelives]

24. No, she shilled for anyone with money in Wall St. Wealthy or not. nt

[randome]

25. "...squeezed between NATO talks..."

[hr][font color="blue"][center]A 90% chance of rain means the same as a 10% chance:
It might rain and it might not.[/center][/font][hr]

[leveymg]

29. No, she had to make time to "save" Libya and Syria

[TheKentuckian]

31. In order to enrich corporate interests. If there was nothing to exploit and profit from

there would be no interest at all.

[leveymg]

37. She did Libya for France mostly, Syria for the Saudis/GCC

She has a lot of friends who have markers and missions from G-d.

[cherokeeprogressive]

32. Pretty much.

[Evergreen Emerald]

33. Karl is that you?

Mr. Koch, is that you?

[BooScout]

35. naaaaa

It's Rove!

[LordGlenconner]

36. Aren't you the one who called BLM folks that name?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=467991

[Comrade Grumpy]

38. And that is germane to this discussion how?