JEFF COHEN, jcohen at ithaca.edu, @Roots_Action
Cohen is director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, founder of media watch group FAIR and co-founder of the online activism organization RootsAction.org, which just released the statement “Thousands Ask Clinton to ‘Stop Lying’ About Iraq Vote.”
At last night’s debate in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton again described herself as a “progressive who gets things done.” Cohen just wrote the piece “Hillary Clinton Turns Stand-Up Comic: ‘I’m a Progressive Who Gets Things Done.'”
Cohen writes: “A quick review of Hillary Clinton’s record shows that much of what she gets done is anti-progressive (not unlike President Clinton in the 1990s). For example:
“Promoting Fracking Worldwide is Not Progressive: On behalf of Chevron and other US oil companies, Secretary Clinton and the State Department pushed fracking globally, as Mother Jones has documented: “How Hillary Clinton’s State Department Sold Fracking to the World.”
“Boosting Corporate-Friendly Trade Deals is Not Progressive: Secretary Clinton repeatedly praised the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – as it was being negotiated by the U.S. Trade Representative and her State Department – and she recruited countries into the deal. In October, with Bernie Sanders climbing in the polls, Clinton said she no longer supported the pact, and prevaricated about her earlier boosterism.
“Enabling Military Coups is Not Progressive: When she headed the State Department, it enabled a military coup in Honduras that overthrew democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya, a progressive. Clinton was briefed on the dishonesty that allowed aid to illegally reach the coup government.
“Pocketing Millions from Corporate Lectures Fees is Not Progressive: When Wall Street, Big Pharma and other corporate interests paid a soon-to-be presidential candidate an average of $230,000 for a speech, did Hillary Clinton think it was for her brilliant stand-up comedy? Or was it more akin to political bribery? Clinton now says these firms just wanted to hear the views of a former Secretary of State on our ‘complicated world’ — or about the Bin Laden raid. But Politico reported in 2013 soon after one of her three speeches to Goldman Sachs: ‘Clinton offered a message that the collected plutocrats found reassuring, according to accounts offered by several attendees, declaring that the banker-bashing so popular within both political parties was unproductive and indeed foolish.’ (Releasing the speech transcripts would help settle the matter.)
“Escalating the Afghan War is Not Progressive: As insider books on the Obama administration have revealed, Secretary Clinton was among the most hawkish of Obama’s advisors in country after country – for example, vociferously urging the failed and pointless 2009 troop surge in Afghanistan.
“Chaotic Military Intervention in the Middle East and Libya is Not Progressive: If not for Hillary Clinton’s 2002 Senate vote in support of Bush’s Iraq invasion, Obama would not have defeated her in 2008. As if having learned nothing from the post-invasion chaos in Iraq, Secretary Clinton was one of the strongest voices in 2011 urging Obama to militarily depose Qaddafi in Libya, a country now in total, deadly chaos.”
