A Hillary Clinton Coronation Will Pave the Way for a Scott Walker Presidency [View all]

[eridani]

http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/04/17/a-hillary-clinton-coronation-will-pave-the-way-for-a-scott-walker-presidency/

While Clinton has been marketed as a progressive, and while her campaign announcement video has clearly tried to brand her as a woman of the people, she has a long record as a hawkish, Wall Street-friendly, fossil fuel-supporting proponent of the security state who embodies crony capitalism and an out-of-touch establishment. So far, major media outlets have ignored the left’s criticism of Clinton’s record in favor of pushing a narrative of a popular candidate catering to middle-class voters (with a decidedly milquetoast economic populist agenda).

In one of two paid speeches to Goldman Sachs that brought HRC a cool $400,000, she was introduced by one of the bankers emceeing the event as “someone who could bring us out of the wilderness.” During the speech, which has not yet been made available to the public, she is purported to have made remarks criticizing politicians who bash Wall Street as “unproductive” and “foolish.” As Zaid Jilani reported in Alternet, Clinton also gave a paid speech to the Biotechnology Industry Organization in which she simultaneously praised genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) in food and advocated cutting corporate taxes, which already make up a record-low percentage of overall U.S. tax revenue. In case voters are still unclear on HRC’s position on GMOs, the Ready for Hillary PAC picked a Monsanto lobbyist as one of the leaders of her Iowa campaign team.

Hillary Clinton is also vilified among environmentalists around the country and the world for her support of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in which jets of water are injected with hundreds of chemicals into the ground to break up natural gas deposits, and often lead to natural gas contaminating local water supplies. In the U.S., fracking is one of the industries chiefly responsible for California’s water crisis by burning through 70 million gallons of water last year alone. This Mother Jones report explores how, as President Obama’s secretary of state, Clinton aggressively introduced fracking to Eastern European countries. Many of these fracking projects were handled by companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron, which made millions of dollars in donations to the Clinton Foundation.