Hillary’ Secret Speeches to Corporate Lobbyists & CEOs

ERIC ZUESSE | 16.10.2016

Hillary’ Secret Speeches to Corporate Lobbyists & CEOs

Wikileaks has recently released what the press refers to as Hillary Clinton’s paid secret speeches to corporations, but that’s a gross mischaracterization of the Wikileaks data-dump, because not a single one of her at least 91 paid secret speeches has been released anywhere. Only excerpts, brief quotations from them, have been released. The Wikileaks dump isn’t of her speeches at all, but instead from the email file and other computer files of her campaign chief, John Podesta, when he told his staff to look through her speeches and send to him brief passages that might be used against Hillary’s campaign if the passages were to leak out prior to the election.

Even Podesta hadn’t read the speeches, and he didn’t select the passages that would he «flagged». The complete file is an 80-page docx document (titled «HWA Speech Flags,» meaning excerpts that might cause problems for Hillary) which file Wikileaks unfortunately failed to convert into the universally available, free-of-charge, and more-easily-usable pdf format. (Wikileaks apparently doesn’t much care about accessibility of the information it leaks.)

Podesta’s staff excerpted only non-incriminating passages, which actually won’t be particularly disturbing to progressives, other than indicating that Hillary proudly self-identifies as being part of the monied elite, not as being part of the masses — and conservatives wouldn’t be at all disturbed at her pro-aristocracy views; they too admire the aristocracy; only progressives (including Sanders supporters) might find such passages disturbing. As I’ll indicate at the end of this article, her speeches actually did contain some seriously incriminating passages, but Podesta’s staff failed to include any of them. Perhaps Podesta’s staff are so conservative that that’s the reason why the far-right-wing things she said in her speeches weren’t flagged by them — Hillary’s blatantly fascist assertions didn’t strike them as being at all controversial.

First, then, from the Wikileaks dump, here are some of the excerpts that I found to be marginally interesting (and nothing, really, in the wikileaked dump, was more than that):

Hillary Clinton Said There Was «A Bias Against People Who Have Led Successful And/Or Complicated Lives,» Citing The Need To Divese Of Assets, Positions, And Stocks.* «SECRETARY CLINTON: Yeah. Well, you know what [GoldmanSachs then Citigroup] Bob Rubin said about that. He said, you know, when he came to Washington, he had a fortune. And when he left Washington, he had a small – MR. BLANKFEIN [GoldmanSachs head]: That’s how you have a small fortune, is you go to Washington. SECRETARY CLINTON: You go to Washington. Right. But, you know, part of the problem with the political situation, too, is that there is such a bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives. You know, the divestment of assets, the stripping of all kinds of positions, the sale of stocks. It just becomes very onerous and unnecessary». [Goldman Sachs Builders And Innovators Summit, 10/29/13]

It’s found on page 55 of Podesta’s master-file of all of the excerpts (that’s the docx file).

Hillary Clinton is there opposing the requirement for extremely wealthy people to separate, or otherwise insulate, their wealth from becoming impacted by (grown by) political decisions that they might make while serving as public officials. According to this excerpt, she gave that speech on 29 October 2013. She was implying there that her listeners, if they should decide to leave «the private sector» for «public service» like she has done, oughtn’t be required to sacrifice anything of their existing private income-stream (much less required not to use their public office for enhancing their wealth) — that such personal ‘sacrifice’ should instead be able to be ‘rewarded’ in ways that currently aren’t legal.

She’s implicitly praising both herself and them, as being especially valuable persons, who therefore have an intrinsic right to use their private wealth in any way that they want, not be restrained by ‘unnecessary’ anti-corruption laws, which shouldn’t even exist for such terrific people, who have earned the right to be living «complicated lives». (She speaks in code, which they understand.)

Here’s another excerpt from that speech, and it’s on page 54 of the complete file:

Many of you in this room are on the cutting edge of technology or health care or some other segment of the economy, so you are people who look over the horizon. And coming into public life and bringing that perspective as well as the success and the insulation that success gives you could really help in a lot of our political situations right now.

So: these rich people shouldn’t be required to separate their personal investments from the decisions that they would be making if they were to come to be holding public office (and is she referring to herself there?), but they should be taking advantage of, or exploiting «the insulation that success gives you,» because, somehow, supposedly, it «could really help in a lot of our political situations right now». But does that really make any good sense, from the standpoint of the public? Or is it instead perhaps dangerous to the public?

On page 22 of the complete file, is this:

Hillary Clinton Praised The Increase In Gas And Oil Production In The US, Saying «We Are Now Energy Independent, Something We Have Hoped For And Worked For Over Many, Many Years». In her remarks at Ameriprise, Hillary Clinton said, «And as we speak, Gazprom is attempting to take over other strategic energy infrastructure in Europe. This is pure power politics. And that’s why as secretary of state, starting in March of 2009, I pushed the Europeans to get serious about finding alternative energy sources, and to invest real resources in their infrastructure so they would not be at Putin’s mercy. […]

And we’re in such a great position to do that because of the increase in gas and oil production in our own country, we are now energy independent, something we have hoped for and worked for over many, many years. That gives us tools we didn’t have before. And it also gives us the opportunity not only to invest those resources in more manufacturing and other activities that benefit us directly here at home, but to be a bulwark with our supplies against the kind of intimidation we see going on from Russia». [Hillary Clinton’s Remarks at Ameriprise, 7/26/14]

She elsewhere was pushing Europe to do all that it can to reduce its purchases of oil and gas from Russia. On page 25:

Hillary Clinton Began Urging Europe To Be More Energy Independent And Pushing For »A More Competitive Marketplace For Energy». «HILLARY CLINTON: [On Putin] Secondly, the effort to undermine the market in oil and gas and commodities goes right at the source of Russia’s wealth. When I was Secretary I cannot say I saw this coming, but what I saw was that in 2006 in January he cut off gas to Eastern Europe. I think like a dozen people froze to death in Poland. He did it again in 2009, primarily focused on Ukraine. He has used his energy weapon to intimidate Europe. And starting in 2009 I began having conversations with the Europeans that they had to do more to be more independent and to push for a more competitive marketplace for energy. I formed something called the US-EU Energy Council and began trying to look at what more we could do to really wean people away from Russian supplies. The more we can do that the more difficult it will be for Putin to maintain his hold on leadership, even with his inner circle without changing course». [Hillary Clinton Remarks at Marketo, 4/8/14]

Europe’s main supplier of oil and gas is Russia. The US fracking companies, including especially the majors, would benefit by Europe’s importing more of America’s oil and gas from them, less from Russia. Also, US companies work with, and could build pipelines for, oil and gas from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, and Kuwait, all of which royal families are likewise anti-Russian, which means pro-American-aristocracy. Hillary is making clear to her financial supporters, that she’s on their side, against Russia. She portrays «a dozen people frozen to death in Poland» referring actually to a situation where Russia’s gas supplies through Ukraine had been halted due to Ukraine’s demanding even bigger price-discounts than Russia already was granting to them, but her listeners are anti-Russian and she is bonding with them. Then, on page 38 is this, likewise assuming that when the stockholders of US-based companies benefit, the United States is necessarily benefiting — in other words: assuming that the interests of America’s corporate owners are necessarily identical to the interests of ‘America’:

Hillary Clinton: «I Visited The Boeing Design Center In Moscow… I Made The Case That Boeing’s Jet Set The Global Gold Standard». «In 2010, President Obama set a target of doubling America’s exports over five years, and at the State Department I made export promotions a personal mission. So as I traveled the world on behalf of our country, I did everything I could to go to bat for American companies trying to break into new markets and compete on a level playing field. It took me to some really interesting places, particularly now with all the problems we’re seeing with Russia and President Putin. Back in 2009, when Dmitri Medvedev was actually president, I visited the Boeing Design Center in Moscow, because Boeing had been trying to secure a contract for new planes with the Russians. And I made the case that Boeing’s jet set the global gold standard. And after I left, our embassy kept at it, and in 2010 Russians agreed to buy 50 737s for almost $4 billion, which translates into thousands of American jobs». [Hillary Clinton Remarks at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Convention, 4/10/14]

She was there equating the interests of America’s big exporters — that’s to say the large international corporations that are headquartered in the US — as constituting the interests of «America». «As I traveled the world on behalf of our country,» she was saying there that ‘our country’ was people like themselves — the major executives and stockholders in US international corporations, and their lobbyists. That’s the Wall Street view of ‘America’. But if she had been selling Medvedev planes that were made in America by American workers but for Airbus or another non-US-owned-and-run company, then would Wall Street, and Hillary Clinton, equally think that to be patriotic, or «on behalf of our country»? Clearly: she is equating the United States with the owners and top executives of corporations, instead of with the workers, or the consumers. No wonder, then, that her entire career has been financed by Wall Street — her viewpoint is consistently theirs. She doesn’t have to say that it’s true; she displays that it’s true, regarding her mindset. But she speaks it in code, because saying such things in direct language doesn’t sound nearly so kosher, much less pretty.

On page 60, she pretends that she had no awareness at all of the coup that weeks earlier overthrew the democratically elected President of Ukraine, for whom 75% of Crimeans and 90% of Donbass residents had voted — the February 2014 coup that her own State Department (including her close friend Victoria Nuland) had started preparing inside the US Embassy in Ukraine by no later than 1 March 2013, which was a year before the coup itself culminated; the coup that included a massacre by US-hired mercenaries of the racist Right Sector, against Crimeans who had demonstrated peacefully against the overthrow; she pretended utter ignorance about it all, and alleged that instead it was Putin — not she and Obama — who was copying Hitler by invading an independent country (in this case Ukraine, by means of that bloody Kiev coup):

Hillary Clinton Stated What She Said Yesterday Is That Claims By Putin And Other Russians That They Had To Go Into Crimea Was Reminiscent Of Germany In The 1930s. »What I said yesterday is that the claims by President Putin and other Russians that they had to go into Crimea and maybe further into Eastern Ukraine because they had to protect the Russian minorities. And that is reminiscent of claims that were made back in the 1930s when Germany under the Nazis kept talking about how they had to protect German minorities in Poland, in Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere throughout Europe. So I just want everybody to have a little historic[al — she’s so illiterate that she uses «historic» when she actually means historical] perspective. I’m not making a comparison, certainly, but I am recommending that we, perhaps, can learn from this tactic that has been used before». [03052014 HWA Remarks at UCLA.DOC, p. 19]

Finally, and not at all included in the Wikileaks dump, there was a reporter who, unlike the people on the Clinton campaign staff, did happen to obtain access to, and find to be shockingly fascist, not merely one thing but two things that that reporter actually heard her deliver, and made note of at that time, when he managed to sneak into the particular event where Hillary was giving that particular speech. This occurred at the Biotechnology Industry Organization convention in San Diego, on 25 June 2014, a $225,000 speech that she was giving to lobbyists for GMO firms, a speech that ended up being excerpted-from in just two brief and innocuous excerpts in the Wikileaks dump, but that actually — based upon what the local newspaper reporter heard and transcribed from it — contained far worse in it than Podesta’s ‘researchers’ found and reported to him. As I wrote summarizing the matter, in my own article about this speech, two years after the speech, on 26 June 2016:

In other words: As President, she would aim to sign into law a program to provide subsidies from US taxpayers to Monsanto and other biotech firms, to assist their PR and lobbying organizations to eliminate what she says is «a big gap between the facts and what the perceptions are» concerning genetically modified seeds and other GMOs. In other words: she ignores the evidence that started to be published in scientific journals in 2012 showing that Monsanto and other GMO firms were selectively publishing studies that alleged to show their products to be safe, while selectively blocking publication of studies that — on the basis of better methodology — showed them to be unsafe. She wants US taxpayers to assist GMO firms in their propaganda that’s based on their own flawed published studies, financed by the GMO industry, and that ignores the studies that they refuse to have published. She wants America’s consumers to help to finance their own being poisoned by lying companies, who rake in profits from poisoning them.

The original 25 June 2014 article about the speech, written by reporter Ken Stone in the Times of San Diego, was appropriately titled, «Hillary Clinton Cheers Biotechers, Backing GMOs and Federal Help». It makes clear that she really does feel that Americans should be subsidizing, not resisting, the GMO foods industry, and that Americans even should be subsidizing those corporations’ propaganda, so as to boost those companies’ sales to America’s consumers.

Hillary’s top donor for 2016 is Paloma Partners, advisors to Wall Street. Previously, her top contributors were virtually all of Wall Street. She has all the right support, from all the far-right people, irrespective of their political Party. She is expecting the American public to tag along behind them. Current polls suggest that they probably will.

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