black…MYstory

Late last week, the buzz out of the Clinton camp was about an apparent conflict of interest on the part of her now-former chief strategist Mark Penn (though it appears that he is still working for her campaign), who was trying to help the Columbian government push through a trade agreement that Hillary Clinton has publicly opposed.

However, it appears that conflicts of interest might hit a little closer to home for the Clinton campaign, this time in the person of her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

You see, in the past, Bill Clinton has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees on behalf of groups now attempting to get this trade agreement pushed through the U.S. Congress.

Former President Bill Clinton has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars speaking on behalf of a Colombia-based group pushing the trade pact, and representatives of that organization tell The Huffington Post that the former president shared their sentiment.

In June 2005, Clinton was paid $800,000 by the Colombia-based Gold Service International to give four speeches throughout Latin America. The organization is, ostensibly, a development group tasked with bringing investment to the country and educating world leaders about the Colombia’s business opportunities.

The group’s chief operating officer, Andres Franco, said in an interview that the group supports the congressional ratification of the free trade agreement and that, when Clinton was on his speaking tour, he expressed similar opinions.

“He was supportive of the trade agreement at the time that he came, but that was several years ago. In the present context, I don’t know what his position would be. It is not only about union trade rights. It is about what benefit or damage it can do to the US economy,” said Franco. “Events with the Clinton campaign [concerning Mark Penn] are not good at all for the trade agreement… Right now it became a campaign issues and that is sad, because it needs to go through.”

Now, why didn’t the campaign disclose this fact? Granted, Bill Clinton spoke on behalf of these groups years ago but, given his prominent role in the campaign, especially after the Mark Penn fiasco, shouldn’t this have been made public by them and Bill Clinton be asked to clarify where he currently stands on this trade agreement?

Again, we are getting into the area of credibility and this seems too big a deal to chalk up to just and oversight on the part of this campaign.

UPDATE: CNN is reporting that Bill Clinton remains a supporter of the Columbian free trade agreement, which makes him the second very high-profile member of the Hillary Clinton campaign that is undermining her opposition to this agreement. This is particularly bad considering how many of the working-class people in Pennsylvania are against such agreements, as they have cost the state thousands of jobs.

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From the “what-took-you-so-long?” dept:

Hillary Clinton’s top campaign strategist has resigned. We’ll actually, it appears that he was shown the door. Now, if I were Barack Obama, specifically, I would have a field day with this one. In a moment, I think you’ll understand why.

Often, Obama rails against the influence of lobbyists in Washington. Well, lo and behold, his opponent’s chief strategist, as it turns out, is also the chief executive of the Burson-Marstellar lobbying firm. In this capacity, he met with the Colombia ambassador to the U.S. on Monday. The Colombian government has been using the services of his firm for several months in efforts to get a trade deal pushed through Congress.

The problem? Hillary Clinton is opposed to this trade deal.

So, follow me here — Clinton is against the agreement but, the chief strategist of her campaign is a lobbyist whose firm is on the other side of the issue and Penn didn’t even have the good sense to, at least, not be personally involved in the deal.

For his part, Penn called his involvement in this meeting, “an error in judgement.”

Who knows why the campaign dragged its feet for a few days before letting him go but, make no mistake, this is a very bad thing to happen as the Pennsylvania and North Carolina vote looms. I still don’t expect this affect Clinton much in the polls in Pennsylvania but, in later contests this is going to be a problem. You can’t set yourself up as a champion of the little guy when you have a fat-cat lobbyist running your campaign and, for all you know, using his association with you, either explicitly or implied, to show these clients that he has an inside track into what could be the next Presidential administration.

Finally, in a bit irony, not only is Penn on the outs with the Clinton campaign but, also, his lobbying firm was fired by the Colombian government. It appears that the Colombians were offended that Penn would refer to his dealings with them as an “error in judgement.”

Well, I’ll be interested to see just how all this plays out.

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In this picture, you see Hillary Clinton,in 1996, along with her daughter Chelsea, hugging a child in Bosnia. Now, as you can see, it seems like a pretty ordinary trip for the then-First Lady.

However, according to Clinton, this was the trip that Ms. Clinton referred in these terms:

“I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”

Okay, I won’t be snippy and ask how everyone would be hanging around on a tarmack, out in the open, with children about if there all this sniper fire going on. I also won’t ask about why news accounts from that day make no mention of the First Lady being under fire in Bosnia. I won’t even ask how she was outed on this by none other than the comedian Sinbad, who accompanied her on this trip.

You see, this is part of the so-called “experience” that Clinton has over Obama. However, these “embellishments” (let’s be real and say that she’s just not telling the truth) are raising some questions about just what real experience she holds over Obama, at least in regards to foreign policy experience.

Now, one can’t diminish the role of a First Lady but, we also have to be real. Being First Lady meant that Hillary Clinton had no security clearance so, she wasn’t privy to the information that goes into shaping our foreign policy. She was there to be a ceremonial leader. Now, this is not to say that she did not travel extensively and that she did not meet with foreign dignitaries. She did. However, to say that somehow makes her a shaper of foreign policy is ridiculous. This is like saying that Laura Bush and Barbara Bush, before her, where key shapers of our foreign policy. Again, this role is important but, not in which policy decisions get made.

So, what experience does this leave her? Well, this does give her some life experience that is greater than Obama’s, she has a two-year lead on Obama in terms of U.S. Senate experience and, obviously, she is very politically-savvy. However, by no means, does this mean that the experience gap is as wide as she would like us to believe.

Now, that this had come to the surface, Clinton is hoping to nonchalantly dismiss this as a her having merely “misspoken”. Her spokesperson pointed to the following passage in her book to indicate that this was merely a misstatement:

“Due to reports of snipers in the hills around the airstrip, we were forced to cut short an event on the tarmac with local children, though we did have time to meet them and their teachers and to learn how hard they had worked during the war to continue classes in any safe spot they could find,”

However, the problem is not that she was being honest then but, that she is being dishonest now. Had her recent telling of this story been allowed to stand, you might have been left with certain notions like:

1. Hillary Clinton was bravely risking her life on a diplomatic mission to Bosnia and
2. Bill Clinton must have not minded sending his wife and daughter into certain danger.

Okay, that last statement was my being facetious but, this kind of goes to the point of this story not really holding up.

By itself, this is not a deal-breaker but, it does lead me, and others, to ponder just what experience Hillary Clinton is really touting.

Popularity: 15% [?]