Last updated on July 1st, 2012 at 05:21 am
Labor union Change to Win charged in a statement on Friday that Hillary Clinton’s top political strategist Mark Penn met with the Columbian ambassador to discuss the Columbia Free Trade Agreement. “It’s time for Senator Hillary Clinton to send her vaunted ‘chief strategist’ Mark Penn packing — back to his job consulting for union busting corporations and anti-labor governments for good,” the statement said.
It continued, “We have questioned Penn’s role in the Clinton campaign in the past for his representation of union busting employers like Cintas. At that time, Penn said there was a wall between him and his firm’s representation of union busters. The latest revelation that Penn — whose firm represents the Colombian government in its effort to secure passage of a so-called free trade agreement — is actively involved in securing its passage in the middle of Senator Clinton’s presidential campaign is outrageous. It also suggests that he has been playing a double role – advising the Senator on what to say to curry Democratic voters and advising the Colombian government on what to say to curry a majority of votes in Congress.”
The statement concluded, “The vast majority of Americans do not believe that we should be granting preferential trade status to a government that coddles death squads that target union organizers. Colombia remains the most dangerous country in the world for union members, where more than 2,200 workers have been murdered since the 1980s by Colombian death squads for trying to form unions while the government has done nothing to effectively stop the murders. It is time for Penn to go.”
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This is yet another reason why I can barely stop myself from falling to the floor in convulsive laughter every time an ignorant conservative calls Hillary Clinton a liberal. She may be talking the talk on the campaign trail, but at heart she is still the same old free trader who supported NAFTA. Mind you, this wasn’t just any advisor that was meeting with the Columbian ambassador. It was her own personal Karl Rove, Mark Penn. If you need any more evidence of her true feelings towards labor look at her husband’s record in the 1990s. Labor unions aren’t the political force that they used to be, but nobody likes being lied to, and it sure looks like the Clinton campaign has been telling some whoppers to organized labor.
CTW Statement:
http://www.changetowin.org/connect/2008/04/mark_penn_has_to_go.html
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