Hillary Clinton Announces Run For President As Clinton Foundation Faces Further Scrutiny

On  Sunday Hillary Clinton officially announced that she was running for president. The announcement surprised few as Clinton has been positioning herself to run for president for quite some time. In the video announcing Clinton's candidacy Clinton said she was going to be a champion for "everyday Americans." t What that will actually entail has yet to be disclosed.

In previous months Hillary Clinton has been dealing with questions about controversial donations to her foundation as well as a scandal surrounding her using a private email server for government communications outside federal rules. Whether or not the stories postponed her announcement for a presidential run is unknown.

Just days previous to her announcement, news broke that when Clinton was Secretary of State she supported a controversial trade deal that helped a major donor and board member of the Clinton Foundation. Though as a presidential candidate in 2008 Clinton had refused to support a free trade deal with Columbia due in part to human and labor rights concerns, when Secretary of State Clinton changed her views and endorsed the agreement. During that same time the Clinton family forged ties with business interests that benefited from Clinton's policy shift.

At the same time that Clinton's State Department was lauding Colombia’s human rights record, her family was forging a financial relationship with Pacific Rubiales, the sprawling Canadian petroleum company at the center of Colombia’s labor strife. The Clintons were also developing commercial ties with the oil giant’s founder, Canadian financier Frank Giustra, who now occupies a seat on the board of the Clinton Foundation, the family’s global philanthropic empire. 

The details of these financial dealings remain murky, but this much is clear: After millions of dollars were pledged by the oil company to the Clinton Foundation -- supplemented by millions more from Giustra himself -- Secretary Clinton abruptly changed her position on the controversial U.S.-Colombia trade pact. Having opposed the deal as a bad one for labor rights back when she was a presidential candidate in 2008, she now promoted it, calling it “strongly in the interests of both Colombia and the United States.” The change of heart by Clinton and other Democratic leaders enabled congressional passage of a Colombia trade deal that experts say delivered big benefits to foreign investors like Giustra.

Ready for shillary? Workers are used to getting sold out by the Clintons (see NAFTA for details) the question is whether labor unions and activists will delude themselves into thinking they are being strategic by laying down in the primary and letting the Clinton Machine roll them over.

The real issue comes down to trust. Why should progressives trust Hillary Clinton to side with the people over moneyed interests?