Have you all seen this nonsense?

[Rebkeh]

How did I not know about this? All I can say is, WTF?

The Real Scandal of Clinton State Department: Wage Suppression in Haiti
By Carolyn Hyppolite - April 6, 2016

The first black nation to overthrow its colonial masters still enslaves 300,000 of its children. Unlike the initial slavery which gave birth to Haiti, this slavery is not a result of kidnapping or intertribal warfare but poverty.

In an island with a population of 6 million, 300,000 children perform unpaid labor because their parents are simply too poor to care of them. Thus, they are given to families slightly better off than themselves where they work in an unregulated market for food and shelter. These vulnerable children are the face of Haitian poverty.

:snip:

Thanks to the tireless efforts of millennials who do their research, it has now become well-known that Hillary Clinton, in her role as secretary of state, intervened in the internal politics of Haiti to prevent the government from raising the minimum wage $.24 per hour to $.61 per hour.

:snip:

However, even that is only half of the scandal. Given the constant bleeding of American jobs to places like Haiti, how does it benefit American workers to keep wages in third world countries low?

From January 2008 to April 2015, about 86,800 jobs (or 39%) in the U.S. apparel manufacturing sector had disappeared. These jobs continue to be shipped abroad because free trade deals have made it lucrative for companies to outsource jobs to places where labor is cheap but to sell goods to places where consumer prices are high.

A State Department invested in the interest of ordinary Americans would have told the garment manufacturers if they don’t like Haiti’s new minimum wage laws, they can bring the 25,000 jobs back to the United States. Instead, Clinton took steps to maintain the very conditions that make outsourcing so attractive to corporations.

Who does our government work for? Who will Hillary Clinton work for?

http://progressivearmy.com/2016/04/06/the-real-scandal-of-clinton-state-department-wage-suppression-in-haiti/

[DetroitSocialist83]

1. The USA has punished

And subjugated Haiti ever since it's revolution, no matter which party is in power. Our parties are two sides of the same coin on many of these foreign issues. It is the same reason for our horrible treatment of Cuba. Those who break free must be punished.

[Rebkeh]

7. I knew about this in general

I didn't know specifically who..

[Baobab]

33. Columbia Journalism Review and TheNation story links- URLS

CJR:

http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/a_pulled_scoop_shows_us_booste.php

The Nation has a scoop—or had, actually—from Wikileaks cables showing that the Obama administration pressured Haiti not to raise its minimum wage to 61 cents an hour, or five bucks a day.

The magazine posted the story the other day and has now pulled it, saying it will repost it next Wednesday “To accord with the publishing schedule of Haiti Liberté,” its partner on the piece.

But you can’t stuff the news genie back in the bottle. They already put it in my browser and many others, so I’ll summarize what it said (and I’ll link to it once The Nation republishes it).

Two years ago, Haiti unanimously passed a law sharply raising its minimum wage to 61 cents an hour. That doesn’t sound like much (and it isn’t), but it was two and a half times the then-minimum of 24 cents an hour.

This infuriated contractors for (UPDATE: I originally wrote that the companies themselves did this here, but The Nation wrote that it was contractors for the companies, so I’ve added “contractors for” here) American corporations like Hanes and Levi Strauss that pay Haitians slave wages to sew their clothes. They said they would only fork over a seven-cent-an-hour increase, and they got the State Department involved. The U.S. ambassador put pressure on Haiti’s president, who duly carved out a $3 a day minimum wage for textile companies (the U.S. minimum wage, which itself is very low, works out to $58 a day).

The Nation:

http://www.thenation.com/article/wikileaks-haiti-let-them-live-3-day/

WikiLeaks Haiti: Let Them Live on $3 a Day

The US Embassy aided Levi’s, Hanes contractors in their fight against an increase in Haiti’s minimum wage.
By Dan Coughlin and Kim Ives
June 1, 2011

Contractors for Fruit of the Loom, Hanes and Levi’s worked in close concert with the US Embassy when they aggressively moved to block a minimum wage increase for Haitian assembly zone workers, the lowest-paid in the hemisphere, according to secret State Department cables.


The factory owners told the Haitian Parliament that they were willing to give workers a 9-cents-per-hour pay increase to 31 cents per hour to make T-shirts, bras and underwear for US clothing giants like Dockers and Nautica.

But the factory owners refused to pay 62 cents per hour, or $5 per day, as a measure unanimously passed by the Haitian Parliament in June 2009 would have mandated. And they had the vigorous backing of the US Agency for International Development and the US Embassy when they took that stand.

To resolve the impasse between the factory owners and Parliament, the State Department urged quick intervention by then Haitian President René Préval.

“A more visible and active engagement by Préval may be critical to resolving the issue of the minimum wage and its protest ‘spin-off’—or risk the political environment spiraling out of control,” argued US Ambassador Janet Sanderson in a June 10, 2009, cable back to Washington.

Two months later Préval negotiated a deal with Parliament to create a two-tiered minimum wage increase—one for the textile industry at about $3 per day and one for all other industrial and commercial sectors at about $5 per day.

Still the US Embassy wasn’t pleased. A deputy chief of mission, David E. Lindwall, said the $5 per day minimum “did not take economic reality into account” but was a populist measure aimed at appealing to “the unemployed and underpaid masses.”

[notadmblnd]

2. Well- since she wasn't doing any favors for any corporation who donated to her Foundation

in exchange to have favors done by her for them- Cause she just never would do that. It must be that she doesn't believe that POC, decendants of American Slavery- don't deserve to earn decent wages.

Any one else have a better explanation?

[Divernan]

8. See Post 6 below re corporate quid pro quos in Haiti

One of the benficiaries re occupying a new industrial park and paying slave labor wages is Walmart.

Also, as I posted earlier on DU:
Murky, but Clinton Foundation pays itself for "facilitating", i.e,

they line up funding from corporations and foreign governments, and skim a share off the top for their services. The Clinton Foundations has invested hundreds of its millions with an outfit run by the woman who was a classmate & matron of honor at Chelsea's wedding. That woman's husband is a partner with Chelsea's husband in his Eagle hedgefund. Is some or all of that $250 million parked in that hedgefund? Inquiring minds want to know.


Another flashpoint came in 2013, when the foundation was renamed the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, an elevation of the Clintons’ daughter that struck some of the old guard as presumptuous and troubling. It was one thing, they grumbled, to add the name of a former first lady who had also been elected a United States senator and was coming off an acclaimed stint as secretary of state—but their kid?

They worried that the family was letting her use the foundation to establish herself as a serious player in her own right. She expanded the foundation mission into new causes—including curbing elephant poaching and ivory harvesting—that seemed peripheral to its core missions of fighting AIDS, climate change and childhood obesity, or Hillary Clinton’s efforts to increase opportunity for women and girls.

And some rolled their eyes when the foundation’s $250 million was invested with a firm called Summit Rock Advisers where Chelsea Clinton’s best friend Nicole Davison Fox is managing director. The two were classmates at Sidwell Friends School and Davison Fox interned in the Clinton White House. She later served as matron of honor in Clinton’s wedding, and her husband was a founding employee of the hedge fund started by Clinton’s husband, Marc Mezvinsky.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/03/clinton-foundation-eric-braverman-115598_Page3.html#ixzz3c6DqGeU1

Getting obscenely wealthy off of human suffering. One pampered well-manicured hand washes the other.

[Divernan]

12. Way to go, Brownie! Oops, I mean SOS Clinton

Bad enough, her goal was to exploit a natural disaster to provide cheap labor for her corporate buddies; but she couldn't even do that right.

Yet in a larger sense, the project is the result of an economic philosophy promoted by Washington for poor and ravaged countries around the world: that setting up a low-paying textile sector to cheaply stock U.S. stores and closets is a first step on the path out of poverty. In fact, it has been the core U.S. economic plan for Haiti since the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the country's economy was under the control of the dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. And still today, it's a plan that — unlike other forms of development aid — the U.S. is generally eager to finance: More than $270 million has been set aside for Caracol by the U.S. Agency for International Development and Inter-American Development Bank.

But despite those high expectations — or maybe because of them — some officials in Washington are as frustrated as the factory's neighbors. Nearly three years after the project was announced, the park still has just one major tenant: Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd., a Seoul-based textile giant that supplies Wal-mart, Gap, Target and others. (The sole other occupant, a Haitian franchisee of Sherwin-Williams Paints, has only a few dozen employees.) Even with another apparel maker expected in the park soon and Sae-A planning to create another 1,400 jobs by year's end, the park is nowhere close to producing the 20,000 jobs its backers have promised over the next few years, much less the 65,000 predicted by the State Department.


http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/10/a-glittering-industrialparkfallsshortinhaiti.html

[SoapBox]

19. Ok...now I really feel sick to my stomach.

I can only stomach so much Clinton at one time...now I'm shaking mad...again.

I hate them.

Time for tea and then walk the dog.

[TexasBushwhacker]

30. And when Bill and Hillary die someday, there are no

inheritance taxes because Chelsea is already a partner.

[Else You Are Mad]

3. The more you dig into the actual history of the Clintons

.... The more you find they have done a lot of awful and shady things. Contrary to what the Clintons say, not t all of it is just right wing smear jobs. I would believe that if it were just a few instances, but this sort of shady crap has been following them around since Bill was a governor. As they say, where there in smoke, there is fire...

[noiretextatique]

4. Yes, and many people don't give a damn

They'd rather harp on Bernie using the word ghetto.

[SoapBox]

20. Or Pope.

[noiretextatique]

37. Yup

A hundred threads about "Yup."

[retrowire]

5. But Bernie saying yup when he might meet the pope is more important. smfh nt

[Divernan]

6. As SOS. HRC collaborated w/Clinton Foundation to guarantee slave labor wages

The Clinton Foundation "facilitated" (i.e., grifted a healthy percentage off the top) millions for disaster relief following Haiti's earthquake, which left several hundred thousand homeless. But instead of facilitating housing, it facilitated building 4 industrial parks, a commercial harbor/port and a luxury hotel in an undamaged part of the island. The hotel was to provide suitable housing for corporate execs coming to the island to set up the manufacturing facilities, and counting on slave labor level wages of approximately $3.00 per day. Most of the promised manufacturing jobs never materialized, and some 200,000 Haitians remain either homeless or living in patched together hovels with no electricity, running water or sewage facilities.

As I posted earlier:
Thank god Clinton Foundation "facilitated" a $45 million luxury hotel in Haiti so potential corporate investors cough/boodsuckers looking to take advantage of cheap labor/cough could visit in comfort. Those damned ungrateful, greedy Haitians (do I need a sarcasm emoticon?) expected the Clinton Foundation to direct the "donations" cough/bribes/cough to replace housing destroyed by the earthquake. But that $45 million was used to build a 173 room hotel. That works out to $260,000 per room. Way to go, Clinton Foundation! ! ! Five star all the way for corporate investors & your next glittery gathering in Haiti for photo ops.

Once all of the carnage was assessed, more than 100,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed, hundreds of thousands of people were left without homes and Haiti's government put the death toll at 316,000, according to ABC News.

Five years later, after billions of dollars of aid and donations, many are still living in abject poverty created by the earthquake. NBC News notes that while some $13 billion went to the country, more than "85,000 people still live in crude displacement camps and many more in deplorable conditions."

NBC News does note that while many of the roads destroyed by the earthquake have been repaired and some businesses have been rebuilt, very few people displaced by the massive quake have acquired permanent housing.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2015/01/_5_years_after_massive_earthquake_where_is_haiti_now.html

Two years after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake leveled Haiti's capital, a deal brokered by former President Bill Clinton's charitable foundation will add new lodging for travelers to Port-au-Prince -- in the form of a $45 million hotel.

With only about 500 operable hotel rooms, the city has limited space to house aid workers, potential investors and other visitors, according to a news release Monday by the future hotel's owner and its operator.

Caribbean cell phone provider Digicel will own the hotel, which will have 173 new rooms and create 175 new jobs. Marriott Hotels and Resorts will operate the hotel upon completion in 2014. Construction is set to begin in 2012.

[Dragonfli]

13. Charitable housing development for the poor as envisioned by the foundation

[Duval]

29. This is sickening.

I hope I never have to vote for her.

[DetroitSocialist83]

9. The show "Vice"

Went to Haiti and did a really sad story on this. Nearly all the foreign "aid" we sent was just put in the pockets of big business. We should be ashamed of what we have done to that country. They deserve reparations from the USA and their European colonial masters.

[Duppers]

34. I saw that.

Horrible.

[appalachiablue]

10. There have been OPs here I've seen on the Clintons' involvement after the Haiti earthquake

and the abject poverty and suppressed slave wages for making garments by US companies like Hanes, Levis and more. *Use the DU search bar to locate previous threads.

[Divernan]

11. SOS HRC presided over the $300 million failed park's opening in 2012

Last edited Sun Apr 10, 2016, 11:44 AM - Edit history (1)

Big Photo Op for Hillary as SOS, where HER state department promised Haitians 65,000 jobs from just one of the 4 industrial parks built via Slick Bill's wheeling and dealing, i.e., "facilitating" for a healthy cut off the top. For all those "reality-based" Clinton fans, the harsh reality was Hills delivered LESS THAN 1,500 jobs and those have proven temporary at $3.40 per day!

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/10/a-glittering-industrialparkfallsshortinhaiti.html

A glittering industrial park in Haiti falls short (headline)
A cornerstone of post-earthquake 'reconstruction', the Caracol park is not living up to its backers' lofty promises (subheadline).

CARACOL, Haiti — The young men playing dominoes in this tin-roofed fishing village used to have high hopes for the industrial park being built up the road. They had heard of the U.S. government's plans to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a part of Haiti where most people are barely scraping by, and promises from a South Korean garment manufacturer to create tens of thousands of jobs.

But less than a year after Caracol Industrial Park's gala opening — with Bill and Hillary Clinton, Sean Penn, designer Donna Karan and Haiti's current and former presidents among the guests — the feeling these days is disappointment. Hundreds of smallholder farmers were coaxed into giving up more than 600 acres of land for the complex, yet nearly 95 percent of that land remains unused. A much-needed power plant was completed on the site, supplying the town with more electricity than ever, but locals say surges of wastewater have caused floods and spoiled crops.

Most critically, fewer than 1,500 jobs have been created — paying too little, the locals say, and offering no job security. "We thought there was going to be some benefit for us," says Ludwidge Fountain, 34, laying his domino with a satisfying smack. He worked for two months at the park as a guard, taking home about $3.40 a day, until his contract ran out. "Maybe it’s good for some of the people inside the park. Everyone else got nothing."

The industrial park near Caracol is the centerpiece of U.S.-led reconstruction of Haiti after its January 2010 earthquake — even though the northern village was undamaged, sitting more than 100 miles northeast of the epicenter. The State Department has promised the park will create 65,000 jobs, powering an economic revitalization of northern Haiti while reducing overcrowding in the quake-stricken capital (though northern Haiti is at least as seismically active as the south). At the opening, then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called it "a new day for Haiti and a new model for how the international community practices development."

[Dragonfli]

14. You need to fix your link, it needs to be html at the end, not htm (your link "page not found")

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/10/a-glittering-industrialparkfallsshortinhaiti.html

[Karma13612]

16. See the gal who's back is to us in the center of this picture:

What is printed on her shirt?

[Dragonfli]

17. Can't tell, my eyes are not as sharp as they were when I was younger /nt

[randomelement]

21. Looks like "B & H GLOBAL" /nt

[Gwhittey]

23. S&H Global

https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-210006468.html
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/10/a-glittering-industrialparkfallsshortinhaiti.html

http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnvar/20121023/HK98059-d

http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnvar/20121023/HK98059-a

[Karma13612]

25. thanks! yea, so S&H School/factory are tied into the CGI. there ya go! eom

[2banon]

39. I don't know about S & H School.. What does S & H stand fore?

I'm in the middle of fixing dinner. don't have time to google. thanks in advance.. :hi"

[Divernan]

18. Sorry; thanks; fixed it!

[Dragonfli]

24. Oh, no problem, it happens all the time to me, usually when I cut and past a link, sometimes I don't

Grab the entire thing on the copy part, (for instance just missing the last character). I only mentioned it because I guessed you likely didn't know the minor error was made and wanted to give you the heads up.

[FlatBaroque]

15. There is no aspect of Hillary Clinton's

career of ethically dubious actions that has been fully vetted.

[leftcoastmountains]

22. Have you read the books by John Perkins?

His first one was called Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
He has a new one out that expands on the old one.

This kind of stuff has been going on for years.

http://economichitman.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man

Hill is part of the system. The system keeps her rich and happy. She
and her hubby joined the crowd/club they were so desperate to become a part.

[bbgrunt]

26. Everyone needs to read that book!

It is an easy read--not bogged down in a lot of technical jargon or obscure details, but very very eye-opening.

[arcane1]

28. He had quite a few things to say recently about Honduras and Haiti, and wage suppression.

[2banon]

38. excellent book. a real opening primer. Highly recommend read.

[Lodestar]

27. I think you might find this very interesting

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016151607

[lostnfound]

31. Is this real?

Shocking and pitiful, if true.

[lostnfound]

32. Here's a democracynow story that corroborates it

http://m.democracynow.org/stories/11961

Sickening

[Duppers]

35. Fruit of the Loom, Hanes, and Levi's

Won't get my business again.

JesusSChrist, what the Clintons won't do for big business.