The Clinton's, Haiti and Why Sanders is the Better Choice.

[werknotgoin2takeit]

Forget Benghazi and the myriad of multiple "fake" scandals and lets concentrate on the real vermin crawling in the Clinton woodwork.

Full disclosure, I am a Sanders supporter. I'm excited about him and can't wait to Caucus for him. I am in a solidly blue state but want my voice heard for Senator Sanders. I also despise Hillary Clinton. It is not sexist. I am a 46 year old middle class white woman, her target demographic. I voted for Bill in 1992 but next time around I was so disgusted, I checked out of politics until my hate for George W. drove me back into the fray in 2004. Since then I have been fanatical. In 2008, before I knew better, I was in for Edwards then Obama. Just anybody that was not her. I got really into Obama, saw him speak, volunteered, the whole nine-yards. Was thrilled when he took office. Less so now. He has done good but not really what candidate Obama lead me to believe he would do. I sure do wish that Candidate Obama was our President. Wow, would that of been something. But, I digress. Honestly, I never even knew about this subject. I give credit to listening to Make it Plain with Mark Thompson. He had a discussion on Haiti, talking with a Haitian reporter. At the end I was aghast. How anyone can support Hillary Clinton for anything more than dog catcher is beyond me. Unfortunately, I came in late to his guest who was talking about the Clinton's, emails, the Clinton foundation and the financial shenanigans that have brought still more suffering to people who have already suffered so much. So I don't know her name or where to find the information. It was on his show tonight but google would not give me any thing I could find so forgive me, it is from memory but with other sources I found later included. That is why I am posting to this board. Let me know if this is something that could be in General Discussion. I don't post a lot and the vitriol is something that makes me nervous, even to post this here. Also, let me know if this is inappropriate or has been posted with better documentation by someone else.

In a nutshell, the reporter said how the Clinton Foundation went into Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and using that raised something like 500 million dollars. Only a small fraction of the money found it's way to the Haitian people. Big Clinton Foundation donors suddenly had Mine rights (Hillary's brother), a monopoly on phone service (some Irish investor), a luxury hotel and others. They used this tragedy to enrich themselves even more along with their rich friends. They also meddled in elections and supported corrupt regimes that created even more suffering.

I have included here some articles that I found about this. They are all enlightening:

http://www.haitian-truth.org/the-clinton-foundation-and-haiti-contracts/
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/03/21/wapo-clintons-seen-in-haiti-as-exploiters-elites/
http://thehaitianblogger.blogspot.com/2015/03/hillary-clintons-scandalous-conduct-in.html
and this from DU: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016123850

There are even more illuminating articles here on DU too. I know that what happens in this beleaguered nation may not seem as important as so many of the big issues that face us as a nation but I think that this speaks to character. And in this, the character of Secretary Clinton stinks to high heaven! I don't know why everything concerning Clinton is considered a hit piece by some. There is so much smoke around the Clinton's that something is burning.

[HassleCat]

1. (sigh) I know

I try to focus on the job she's likely to do as president. It will be a mixed bag, at best. I just hope we don't get something like the old K Street Shakedown we had under Reagan. In order to get anything presented to the administration, a big donation was required. It was so overt, CEOs of large corporations actually complained publicly about the high price tag. The big speaking fees and foundation business are hinting at something like that in our future. I hope there is an upside to this, such as decent Supreme Court justices. I think it's too much to expect enforcement of workplace safety, environmental laws, etc.

[werknotgoin2takeit]

2. Depressing isn't it?

At least you are trying to see the the good that may come. Sometimes, I think that Trump would be a better choice (not that I would ever vote for him) but only because I know what I would get with him. He is not trying to be anything but what he is. She is so disingenuous. Her presidency gives me Martin Sheen in The Dead Zone vibes. Thank you for your reply.

[artislife]

4. Just had to watch that to get it.

My destiny....

[werknotgoin2takeit]

5. Yep, "my destiny"

So creepy. She is so sure that this is her destiny. As they say no one who wants it that badly should ever have it.

[artislife]

6. I say I don't want her to have it

so she shouldn't have it!

LOL

I cannot imagine me happy to hear she won the election. Not even a little.

[Paka]

3. Just one more example, on a long list of skullduggery...

...that shows how corrupt the Clinton's are, and have been all along. Best to do it in a long forgotten nation that no one pays any attention to. It is about character and integrity. That's why I support Bernie!

[werknotgoin2takeit]

7. Me too!

It's time for integrity to return to the White House and about damn time!

[Truprogressive85]

8. Thank you

I'm glad someone has finally brought this up


1. My mother is a Haitian immigrant and when I look at Haiti's current state of affairs it breaks my heart.
I can never forgive Bill Clinton for what he did to Haitian farmers and pushing neo-liberal polices ruining the livelihoods of Haitian rice farmers. Bill Clinton himself even says that "we made a devil"


2.Fast forward to present, American corporations with the help of the US state department (during HRC tenure) ,and Haiti's wealthy tiny minority (who are behind coups) made sure that workers would work for .31 cents per hour instead of the .61 cents that Haitian government wanted as a minimum wage.

http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/a_pulled_scoop_shows_us_booste.php


3. whenever the Clinton are in Haiti, they hand out with people like Bulos, Apaid,Mevs (member of Haiti's elite) who Group 184 a right wing organization with the help of International Republican Institute engineered to overthrow with the Jean Bertrand Aristide
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/a_pulled_scoop_shows_us_booste.php






my reasons of not supporting HRC is personal

[werknotgoin2takeit]

9. Wow!

Thank you for this personal and highly eye opening post. God I wish more people knew about this. Anyone who supports clinton over sanders is no liberal. She must not win.

[Divernan]

10. Thank god Clinton Foundation "facilitated" a $45 million luxury hotel in Haiti

so potential corporate investors cough/boodsuckers looking to take advantage of cheap labor/cough could visit in comfort. Those damned ungrateful, greedy Haitians (do I need a sarcasm emoticon?) expected the Clinton Foundation to direct the "donations" cough/bribes/cough to replace housing destroyed by the earthquake. But that $45 million was used to build a 173 room hotel. That works out to $260,000 per room. Way to go, Clinton Foundation! ! ! Five star all the way for corporate investors & your next glittery gathering in Haiti for photo ops.

Once all of the carnage was assessed, more than 100,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed, hundreds of thousands of people were left without homes and Haiti's government put the death toll at 316,000, according to ABC News.

Five years later, after billions of dollars of aid and donations, many are still living in abject poverty created by the earthquake. NBC News notes that while some $13 billion went to the country, more than "85,000 people still live in crude displacement camps and many more in deplorable conditions."

NBC News does note that while many of the roads destroyed by the earthquake have been repaired and some businesses have been rebuilt, very few people displaced by the massive quake have acquired permanent housing.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2015/01/_5_years_after_massive_earthquake_where_is_haiti_now.html

Two years after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake leveled Haiti's capital, a deal brokered by former President Bill Clinton's charitable foundation will add new lodging for aid workers and other travelers to Port-au-Prince -- in the form of a $45 million hotel.

With only about 500 operable hotel rooms, the city has limited space to house aid workers, potential investors and other visitors, according to a news release Monday by the future hotel's owner and its operator.

Caribbean cell phone provider Digicel will own the hotel, which will have 173 new rooms and create 175 new jobs. Marriott Hotels and Resorts will operate the hotel upon completion in 2014. Construction is set to begin in 2012.

[Divernan]

11. Murky, but Clinton Foundation pays itself for "facilitating", i.e,

they line up funding from corporations and foreign governments, and skim a share off the top for their services. The Clinton Foundations has invested hundreds of its millions with an outfit run by the woman who was a classmate & matron of honor at Chelsea's wedding. That woman's husband is a partner with Chelsea's husband in his Eagle hedgefund. Is some or all of that $250 million parked in that hedgefund? Inquiring minds want to know.


Another flashpoint came in 2013, when the foundation was renamed the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, an elevation of the Clintons’ daughter that struck some of the old guard as presumptuous and troubling. It was one thing, they grumbled, to add the name of a former first lady who had also been elected a United States senator and was coming off an acclaimed stint as secretary of state—but their kid?

They worried that the family was letting her use the foundation to establish herself as a serious player in her own right. She expanded the foundation mission into new causes—including curbing elephant poaching and ivory harvesting—that seemed peripheral to its core missions of fighting AIDS, climate change and childhood obesity, or Hillary Clinton’s efforts to increase opportunity for women and girls.

And some rolled their eyes when the foundation’s $250 million was invested with a firm called Summit Rock Advisers where Chelsea Clinton’s best friend Nicole Davison Fox is managing director. The two were classmates at Sidwell Friends School and Davison Fox interned in the Clinton White House. She later served as matron of honor in Clinton’s wedding, and her husband was a founding employee of the hedge fund started by Clinton’s husband, Marc Mezvinsky.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/03/clinton-foundation-eric-braverman-115598_Page3.html#ixzz3c6DqGeU1

Getting obscenely wealthy off of human suffering. One pampered well-manicured hand washes the other.

[Divernan]

12. SOS HRC presided over the $300 million failed park's opening in 2012

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/10/a-glittering-industrialparkfallsshortinhaiti.htm
A glittering industrial park in Haiti falls short (headline)
A cornerstone of post-earthquake 'reconstruction', the Caracol park is not living up to its backers' lofty promises (subheadline.

CARACOL, Haiti — The young men playing dominoes in this tin-roofed fishing village used to have high hopes for the industrial park being built up the road. They had heard of the U.S. government's plans to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a part of Haiti where most people are barely scraping by, and promises from a South Korean garment manufacturer to create tens of thousands of jobs.

But less than a year after Caracol Industrial Park's gala opening — with Bill and Hillary Clinton, Sean Penn, designer Donna Karan and Haiti's current and former presidents among the guests — the feeling these days is disappointment. Hundreds of smallholder farmers were coaxed into giving up more than 600 acres of land for the complex, yet nearly 95 percent of that land remains unused. A much-needed power plant was completed on the site, supplying the town with more electricity than ever, but locals say surges of wastewater have caused floods and spoiled crops.

Most critically, fewer than 1,500 jobs have been created — paying too little, the locals say, and offering no job security. "We thought there was going to be some benefit for us," says Ludwidge Fountain, 34, laying his domino with a satisfying smack. He worked for two months at the park as a guard, taking home about $3.40 a day, until his contract ran out. "Maybe it’s good for some of the people inside the park. Everyone else got nothing."

The industrial park near Caracol is the centerpiece of U.S.-led reconstruction of Haiti after its January 2010 earthquake — even though the northern village was undamaged, sitting more than 100 miles northeast of the epicenter. The State Department has promised the park will create 65,000 jobs, powering an economic revitalization of northern Haiti while reducing overcrowding in the quake-stricken capital (though northern Haiti is at least as seismically active as the south). At the opening, then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called it "a new day for Haiti and a new model for how the international community practices development."

[Divernan]

13. Way to go, Brownie! Oops, I mean SOS Clinton

Bad enough, her goal was to exploit a natural disaster to provide cheap labor for her corporate buddies; but she couldn't even do that right.

Yet in a larger sense, the project is the result of an economic philosophy promoted by Washington for poor and ravaged countries around the world: that setting up a low-paying textile sector to cheaply stock U.S. stores and closets is a first step on the path out of poverty. In fact, it has been the core U.S. economic plan for Haiti since the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the country's economy was under the control of the dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. And still today, it's a plan that — unlike other forms of development aid — the U.S. is generally eager to finance: More than $270 million has been set aside for Caracol by the U.S. Agency for International Development and Inter-American Development Bank.

But despite those high expectations — or maybe because of them — some officials in Washington are as frustrated as the factory's neighbors. Nearly three years after the project was announced, the park still has just one major tenant: Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd., a Seoul-based textile giant that supplies Wal-mart, Gap, Target and others. (The sole other occupant, a Haitian franchisee of Sherwin-Williams Paints, has only a few dozen employees.) Even with another apparel maker expected in the park soon and Sae-A planning to create another 1,400 jobs by year's end, the park is nowhere close to producing the 20,000 jobs its backers have promised over the next few years, much less the 65,000 predicted by the State Department.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/10/a-glittering-industrialparkfallsshortinhaiti.html

[werknotgoin2takeit]

15. Thank you Divernan!

The deeper you dive the worse it gets. This should be the major scandal, this should be an 11 hour hearing. But I'm sure I'm not the only one who never heard a thing about it before yesterday.

[Hiraeth]

14. Thank you for this OP and for the replies it has generated. K&R

[Catherina]

16. Kicked, rec'd and bookmarked with thanks n/t