Hillary Clinton may have already wrapped up the Democratic Party's 2016 presidential nomination, but she is still having trouble connecting with non-Democratic partisans. According to the latest The Economist/YouGov poll, just 38 percent of Americans believe Hillary "understands the problems facing ordinary middle class people" while 44 percent of Americans say she does not.
Former-Clinton White House political director Doug Sosnik may have recently inadvertently explained why. In a 2013 memo he wrote:
Americans' long-brewing discontent shows clear signs of reaching a boiling point. And when it happens, the country will judge its politicians through a new filter—one that asks, "Which side of the barricade are you on? Is it the side of the out-of-touch political class that clings to the status quo by protecting those at the top and their own political agendas, or is it the side that is fighting for the kind of change that will make the government work for the people—all the people?"
And which side of that barricade is Hillary on?
One need look no further than the cozy relationship between Boeing, the Clintons, and the Export Import Bank.
In 2010, just months after then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton helped Boeing land a $3.7 billion deal with a Russian firm, Boeing returned the favor by contributing $900,000 to the William J. Clinton Foundation.
All of these wheels were greased, of course, with taxpayer dollars through the Export Import Bank, which helped finance Boeing's 2010 deal with Putin's state-owned holding company.
Former-President Bill Clinton has since gone to bat for the Export Import Bank, an entity that candidate-Barack Obama once called, "little more than a fund for corporate welfare."
At an Africa Business Forum this week, the former-president said, "Economics is not theology. If you're running a country, you've got to try to create an opportunity for all of your businesses to be competitive. ... That's all the Ex-Im bank does, and I've heard more ridiculous things said about the Ex-Im bank in the last six months than I have in my adult life."
What Clinton forgot to mention, other then the lucrative way that Export Import bank subsidies get funneled through Boeing and into his foundation, is that the Export Import Bank often subsidizes deals that end up hurting American businesses and killing American jobs. Just ask Delta Airlines which recently told Congress that subsidized Ex-Im financing of Boeing products hurts their bottom line.
The reality is that the Export-Import Bank does not create any net jobs. Whatever jobs it does create for the corporations it subsidizes are lost by non-subsidized businesses.
The only reason the Clintons support the Export-Import Bank is because it gives them an opportunity to graft off of the corporate welfare banks transactions.
These are exactly the type of crony capitalist deals that Americans, especially "ordinary middle class people" are sick and tired of.
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