Hillary Clinton’s choices for campaign’s strategists spotlights her ties to Big Pharma
03/14/2016 / By JD Heyes
To read more about Hillary Clinton News, please go to Clinton.news for all the latest updates
Not that it will matter one bit to her supporters, but Democratic presidential front runner Hillary Clinton doesn’t have a modicum of integrity, despite her claims to the contrary.
Unbeknownst to her supporters or, perhaps more accurately intentionally disregarded by her supporters, is the fact that, while pretending to be on the side of the American people when it comes to being their savior from Big Pharma and Big Health, Clinton is in the pockets of those two industries so deeply that she may never be able to repay their largess. Indeed, she has even woven both industries into her campaign.
As reported by The Intercept, Clinton has begun campaigning as though her first term will be Barack Obama’s third term. In recent weeks she has described Obamacare as “one of the greatest accomplishments” of this president, “of the Democratic Party, and of our country” (despite the fact that it is failing everywhere). She has also promised she will defend the disastrous Dodd-Frank financial reform law and “defend President Obama for taking on Wall Street.”
Right.
At the same time, however, Clinton has defended her acceptance of huge speaking fees from Wall Street firms, and even larger donations to her campaign from some of the same sources. She claims to have been one of the first to “go after” Wall Street even before the Great Recession of 2007-2008, but as Breitbart News has pointed out, she’s actually lying about it (big surprise). Rather than blaming the housing collapse that started the recession on her husband’s disastrous housing and lending policies (New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is equally culpable), she absolved Wall Street and essentially blamed borrowers.
“Now these economic problems are certainly not all Wall Street’s fault. Not by a long shot,” Clinton said in the speech (4:45 Mark In Video Below).
“And certainly borrowers share responsibility as well. Home buyers who paid extra fees to avoid documenting their income should have known they were getting in over their heads,” Clinton said. (11:55 Mark In Video).
As The Intercept reported:
On financial reform, Clinton has similarly tied herself to Obama’s legacy. Speaking with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last month, Clinton asserted that on Dodd-Frank, Obama’s financial reform legislation, she is one of the “many Democrats” who are “fighting to prevent it from being turned back.”
Clinton’s inner circle, however, has lobbied to help obstruct and roll back many of Dodd-Frank’s signature reforms.
The Benenson Strategy Group, the consulting firm run by Joel Benenson, now serving as the Clinton campaign’s chief pollster and strategist, was retained by the Financial Services Forum, a lobbying group for Wall Street interests such as Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. Lobbying records show the Financial Services Forum has worked over the years to weaken a variety of Dodd-Frank reforms.
Now, in addition to her obvious connections to Wall Street (she was the U.S. senator from New York who represented NYC, the “financial capital of the world,” as she said in the above speech), her campaign is fraught with strategists and fundraisers who have deep ties to Big Health and Big Pharma.
As reported by The Hill in September, Clinton topped the list of donations from Big Pharma, receiving more cash from the industry than any other candidate of either major political party. At the time, she had “accepted $164,315 in the first six months of the campaign from drug companies,” the site reported.
Notably, cash from pharmaceutical companies poured into Clinton’s campaign despite a tough public stance against the industry. In August she unveiled a plan to fight rising drug prices by implementing new policies and clamping down on existing rules for Big Pharma. And in the Democratic debate that month she said drug companies were among the political enemies she was most proud of.
Would an industry donate tens of thousands of dollars to a presidential contender who really felt that way?
To read more about Hillary Clinton News, please go to Clinton.news for all the latest updates
Sources:
Tagged Under: Big Pharma, donations, Hillary Clinton, NaturalNews, Newstarget
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