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OpEdNews Op Eds    H1'ed 5/27/16

Hillary Clinton: A Major Gold-Digging Liability

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Reprinted from Counterpunch

Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton
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As much as the Clinton machine may welcome their stay at Hotel California in early June, they might check out any time they like only to find themselves never leaving the Trump-leads-the-national-average-poll syndrome.

This was never the original script, as Manifest Destiny was supposed to have -- finally -- fully entitled the Queen of the Perma-Smirk to the Presidency. What has she done to deserve this? Well, a myriad of factors come into play. Let's cut to the chase and follow the money.

Now that I found you I can't let you go

While still in the Senate, the Queen of Chaos manifested a vague interest in going after tax havens, as in "people who create a mailbox, or a drop, or send one person to sit on the beach in some island paradise and claim that it is their offshore headquarters." But -- and that's a crucial "but" -- no bills proposed by Hillary ensued. After all, what to do about the Clinton machine's virtually unlimited access to a pool of vast, non-transparent funds?

The Clinton machine could not be savvier on onshore/offshore tax havens. Six years ago their home in Chappaqua, New York, of subterranean email fame, was conveniently placed in a "residence trust."

Bill Clinton for his part spent a wholesome five years as just a mere adviser to $3.2 billion-worth playboy Ron Burkle -- now reduced to the status of former Clinton pal. While the friendship lasted, Burkle's investment fund registered in Dubai and the Cayman Islands added at least $15 billion to Bill's piggy bank.

Hillary joined the board of directors of the Clinton Foundation relatively late, in 2013. She resigned from the petrodollar funding-happy family business a little over a year ago to run her presidential campaign. Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea remain on the board.

Hillary's deep connection with the secret society-style Clinton Foundation may turn out to be an awesome liability -- especially when juxtaposed with Hillary's soulful speaking on behalf of the Little Man and Little Woman. No one -- not to mention the candidate herself -- can exactly outline, when she was Secretary of State, where State business stopped and where globalist family business started.

Zygmunt Bauman would gladly position the Clintons as prime specimens of the rarified global elite of liquid modernity; nothing could be more light years away from the shrinking, fearful, indebted, cemented to the ground middle class of Little Man and Little Woman.

As Secretary of State, Hillary supported the US-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement. In a nutshell, the deal turned American money transit in Panama into a free flow feast.

Hillary duly denounced Mossack Fonseca immediately after the Panama Papers. But suspension of disbelief intervenes when we examine the hefty Clinton Foundation/Panama connection, involving individual players and corporations.

Hillary also denounced the money-laundering practices ("criminal behavior") of HSBC. "On my watch, it will change." Well, it eventually may, but only after the Clinton Foundation, in 2014, bagged up to $1 million from HSBC.

Following the money reveals an endless run of profitable deals. Since 1997, when the original William J. Clinton Foundation came to light, the family business raised a whopping $2 billion, with an annual budget of $223 million and some 2,000 global staffers receiving significant salaries and benefits. Cynics can hardly anticipate a Trump-Clinton debate on who's a savvier business manager -- dodgy practices included.

That subterranean email blues

Business success aside, uncomfortable facts keep spelling out -- actually screaming out -- that Hillary Clinton had a government security clearance as Secretary of State; she allowed the transfer of classified documents to her unauthorized, private subterranean non-secure server; then the documents were left sleeping in the subterranean server for three years, after her term at the State Department.

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Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst. He writes for RT, Sputnik and TomDispatch, and is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for Asia (more...)
 

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