Friday, May 04, 2007

Hillary's Mother-F'ng Tour Business

From our friend Greg Palast:

Before his untimely death in a plane crash, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown said,

“I’m not Hillary’s mother-f****** tour guide!”

That wasn’t a nice thing for a member of the President’s cabinet to say about the First Lady, now my Senator, Hillary Clinton.

And it’s probably not polite for me to bring it up now. But if I don’t, surely the Karl Rovarians will - if Senator Mrs. Clinton nails the Presidential nomination.

Bill Clinton used to say that, once he became president, he finally earned more money than his wife. That was a carefully crafted bit of modesty to show Bill as an aw-shucks regular guy versus Richie Rich-kid George Bush.

But Bill’s cute remark raised a question in my mind: How did Hillary get that big ol’ salary? And another question arises: how has she stayed out of prison?

The story’s a little complicated, involving a New Orleans power company, Indonesian billionaires, a New York nuclear plant and plain old influence peddling. But if we follow the money, we’ll get the picture. And it ain’t pretty.

But first, let’s stop at Wal-Mart. Read an official biography of the Senator and you’ll find her six-month stint on a child-protection task force. Yet you won’t find her SIX YEARS on the board of directors of Wal-Mart Corporation. She may have earned a Grammy for “It Takes a Village to Raise a Child.” But it takes a Governor’s wife to provide cover for Wal-Mart’s profiteering off systematic wage-enslavement of children in its factories in South America.

Sam Walton called Hillary, “My little lady.” Sam paid her an eyebrow raising sum for a director - equal to 60% of her entire not-insubstantial salary as a lawyer. By contrast, Wendy Diaz (her real name), a 13-year-old in Honduras, was paid 25 cents an hour to make shirts for the “little lady’s” label.

Hillary’s rake-in was made possible by Wal-Mart’s 100% union-free operation and out-sourcing of 100% of its manufacturing, some to prison factories in China. Now, you could say that Hillary couldn’t hear the screams of the kiddies in Kamp Wal-Mart in Honduras. After all, she relied on the intelligence provided her by the President (of Wal-Mart).

Fast forward to 1994 and the Brown ‘mother-f’ing tour guide’ business. According to Nolanda Hill, the Commerce Secretary’s long-time business partner and love interest, Brown, who died in 1996, endorsed a Hillary cash-for-access scheme ($10,000 for coffee with the President, $100,000 for a night in the Lincoln bedroom). However, Brown resented the discount rate the First Lady put on US executives joining Brown’s lucrative trade missions. ‘I’m worth more than $50,000 a pop!’ he said.

One company more than happy to pony up for a cash joy-ride with Brown was Entergy International. This electric company, based in Little Rock, became one of the world’s biggest power system operators on the planet under the Clinton regime. Interestingly, Bill Clinton began his political climb by running for Arkansas Attorney General campaigning on a pledge to fight Entergy’s electric price hikes. His pro-consumer plan was defeated in court by Entergy’s law firm - which included one Hillary Rodham.

There were more favors for Entergy. In 1998, I discovered, while working under cover for the Guardian and Observer, that Tony Blair was personally fixing the system to let Entergy to violate British policy on coal plants. Why? I picked up in my secret recordings of Blair’s cronies that calls to take care of Entergy, rules be damned, had come in from the office of ‘the Flotus’ - the First Lady of the United States.

It gets creepier. In June of 1994, Entergy’s partner in Asia, the Riady family of Indonesia paid recently-resigned Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell a $100,000 consulting fee. Odd that: Hubbell was on his way to prison for the felony crime of inflating his legal bills. Why would Asians pay a lawyer for advice on Asia who was on his way to the pokey?

Maybe it had to do with his partner in crime. I’ve conducted investigations of lawyer over-billing. It is nearly impossible for a senior lawyer to pad billing records unless the junior partner also fraudulently monkeys with time logs to make sure the records don’t give away the game. Who was Hubbell’s “little lady” junior partner? Today we call her Madame Senator.

Hillary’s logs were worth close inspection by authorities, no? But the funny thing about Hillary’s billing records: when requested for disclosure in another suit, they disappeared. First, her law firm’s computers went ka-blooey. Then the paper printouts vanished, but not before, during the 1992 Presidential campaign, they were secretly combed over, line by line, by … Web Hubbell.

Hubbell knew his own logs were phonied, and he understood the consequences of exposure. Ultimately, bloated hours on those records caused him to lose his law license, his Associate Attorney General post and his freedom. He got 21 months in the slammer.

What did Hubbell see and know about Hillary’s logs? Hubbell won’t say, except for a cryptic remark, after seeing her bills, that ‘every lawyer’ fabricates records. Hubbell pleaded guilty, but refused to answer investigators’ questions, a requirement in any plea bargain - so the judge had to sentence him to prison.

Why would Hubbell choose to do time on the chain gang over testifying about the First Lady? His prosecutors did not know at the time of the $100,000 Riady payment, the first of over half a million dollars Hubbell would receive from Clinton friends in the weeks up to his entering jail.

And those Hillary billing records? Hubbell lost them - how convenient. Then they reappeared two years later, just outside Hillary’s office, right after Hubbell announced he would refuse to testify against her.

Maybe the Clintons knew nothing about the big money flowing to prison-bound Hubbell. Knowledge of the payments would suggest they were buying Hubbell’s silence. In 1996, when the LA Times uncovered the payments, Mrs. Clinton’s First Man Bill stone-cold denied he knew anything about it.

Then, in 2000, in a deposition by the Justice Department, the President changed his tune. Investigators confronted the President with this: on June 20, 1994, Hubbell met with Hillary. Two days later, James Riady, the Asian billionaire Entergy partner, met with Hubbell for breakfast. Just a few hours later, Riady returned to the White House, then met again with Hubbell, then made two more treks to the White House. Two days later, a videotape shows the beginning of another meeting in the Oval Office between Clinton and Riady — but oddly, before they talk, the tape goes blank. Two days after that, Hubbell gets his $100,000 through a Riady bank.

Lying to journalists is a venal sin, but lying to the Feds is perjury. In his deposition, the President’s denial transformed into amnesia. He couldn’t remember if Riady mentioned the payment. Then, the President slyly opened the door to the truth. “I wouldn’t be surprised if James told me,” Clinton said. Neither would I.

What did Riady get? The Flotus herself, says Nolanda Hill, forced Brown to accept the appointment of Riady’s bag man, John Huang, as a Commerce Department deputy. According to records of calls the Guardian obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, Huang’s first order of business was to wheedle his way into confidential CIA briefings on Indonesia and China, then call Riady and his Entergy partners.

The same day Riady met the President, documents show he called on a Clinton crony at the top of the department’s Export-Import Bank. “We just came over from the Oval Office,” is a nice way to provide assurance of the ‘political connection’ required for help. These and other Riady team meetings at Commerce are marked ’social’. Yet, shortly thereafter, the department agreed to promote and fund the Riady-Entergy China venture.

Influence is not a victimless crime. Riady and his minions’ visits to the White House (94 times!) included successful requests for the President to meet Indonesian dictator Suharto and to kill negative reports on East Timor and working conditions in Indonesia. Timorese and Indonesians paid for these policy flips with blood.

Has Entergy’s investment in Hillary’s jail-bird partner continued to pay dividends?

Code Pink and New York environmentalists have been pulling out their hair over Senator Clinton’s backing of the operation of the creaky old Indian Point nuclear plant just above - and within irradiating distance of - New York City. The owner of the Indian Point nuke? Hillary’s old buck buddies, Entergy.

Am I saying Hillary would arrange for a payoff to keep witnesses silent, to poison US foreign policy for the profit of corporate cronies, to vote in Washington loaded down with conflicts of interest? I would never say so. Even if the evidence will.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

The GOP Morality Scam

From today's post on my blog, American Politik:

The Republican Party has made hypocrisy their political trademark the past couple of decades. Heck the biggest political headline of the day, likely Bush vetoing the Iraq emergency spending bill that passed in Congress, reeks of such hypocrisy. Bush who is choosing not to accept the funds made available by Congress by vetoing the bill somehow thinks he can blame the Congress for not funding the troops.

This post however, is about a different type of hypocrisy.

Sex is the biggest morality play to the Republicans far right religious base. They used President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky as a way to connect Democrats to immorality. Forget the fact that the man leading the charge, Newt Gingrich, was having an affair himself. They impeached Clinton in the House because of it and rode George W. Bush to the White House promising to clean up a supposedly dirty Washington D.C.

Now word gets out that a Washington D.C. escort service has been caught and it's speculated that it could contain a list of thousands of names (possibly including many prominent Republican lawmakers) was released to ABC News as the paid client list. Whether ABC, who was responsible for falsely blaming the Clinton Administration for the 9/11 attacks in a mockumentary last fall, releases the names of the key Republicans or not is still up for debate.

Regardless it's just another sign that Republicans are willing to say one thing and do another when it comes to sex. They use a false morality to seem above reproach on these issues. They confuse the deeply religious into thinking that these men are not the sinners their Democratic counterparts are. And they used those Evangelicals to help get Bush elected as President twice (with the help of some election fraud of course).

Gay Marriage seems the centerpiece of the Republican morality parade. According to the Right, Homosexuality is a "sin" and thus gay marriage is against the laws of God in the Bible.

The problem is this is a mean spirited way to prevent human beings who love each other from having the same rights as their heterosexual peers.

The people leading the charge say ridiculous things to equate their hate mongering for something moral.

Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott equated homosexuality with alcoholism, sexual addiction and kleptomania.

Former Texas State Republican Party Chair Robert Black, famously told the Log Cabin Republicans (Gay and Lesbian Republicans) that they didn't belong and "We don't allow pedophiles, transvestites or cross-dressers, either."

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum said the following disgusting comments:

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery," Santorum said in the interview. "You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does."

At another point in the interview, Santorum said marriage is a bond between a man and a woman. "That's not to pick on homosexuality," he added. "It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be."


Their morality might not be so easy to shoot down if they weren't so blatant about their own lengthy forays into this supposed world of sin.

For instance, here in Wisconsin, John Gard was the furthest right wing ideologue in the Wisconsin Legislature. When Mark Green left his 8th Congressional District House Seat to run for Governor, Gard immediately popped up as the Right Wing's favorite choice to replace him. Gard had made a name for himself by being the man out front in pushing the Gay Marriage Amendment that unfortunately passed here last November.

Gard and the Republicans had control of the legislature then (that has since changed with the Republican purge at the polls that occured in the mid-terms) and he was considerably abusive in getting the amendment through the legislature including keeping opponents out of the room in which it was being put together and yelling, "Go to hell, Marlin!" at one of the opponents in the hall.

Someone this opposed to gay rights and gay marriage certainly would be squeaky clean himself in this area right?



This previously uncirculated photo slipped into my hands thanks to an anonymous source this week. It shows a younger John Gard from the mid-1980s (circled on the right), cross dressing as a female nurse at a party for his UW-La Crosse Cross Country team.

Is there anything wrong with this photo? Not in my opinion. College parties tend to be wild and fun affairs. Dressing outlandishly at one is by no means a news story. Unless you have bigoted views like Mr. Gard does and do so much to contribute against the very society in which Gays, Lesbians, TS/TV citizens live and breath. Seems pretty hypocritical to have such exclusive views and still cross dress..

Of course he's not the only one doing this.


Republican Presidential Candidate Rudy Guiliani cross dressed a couple of times as well. It's all in good fun, until you go out, reverse course and say you are now against Civil Unions (which is a step below marriage even!).

Of course these are not the only walking contradictions for the party which has used Gay Marriage as such a wedge issue to win elections.



How about Evangelical Leader Ted Haggard (see: Jesus Camp)? He was the man described as President Bush's personal pastor. He also got caught having a gay affair and using meth. There's a guy who truly was practicing what he preaches.






What about Republican Mark Foley? He only had erotic online chats with underage male Congressional pages on the floor of the House and had sex with them.






Of course there was the White House's favorite press corps member, straight from a fake news agency, Jeff Gannon. Remember that guy? He had lots of visits to the White House, besides his duties as a "member of the press". Oh yeah and he turned out to be a gay prostitute.

It seems to me that this list could go on forever.



Maybe John Gard and the other Republicans should show a little more compassion towards the GLBT community instead of throwing them under the bus for political gain.

But of course if Gard chooses to run against Steve Kagen again in the 8th Congressional District, Karl Rove already has that targeted (see below, click image to enlarge) as a race he wants to win. Maybe Rove won't be so eager to funnel RNC funds to a cross dressing hypocrite next time.



Is that fair? Nope. But it's the game the Hypocrite Republicans created and now they get to play by it's rules.

-Rp