If a leading American presidential candidate – and her husband, a former president – seem to have unnaturally close connections to foreign companies interested in draining American jobs, should that be of interest to Americans? Some, including campaign rival Barack Obama, say “yes”, this should be a big story. But the mainstream media seem to say “no”. Why this media lack of interest?
For the past six years – since Bill Clinton left the White House, since Hillary Rodham Clinton entered the Senate – both Clintons have cultivated close ties with Indian companies. Bill has invested as much as $50,000 in an India-based electronic-transactions company while accepting $300,000 in speaking fees from Cisco Systems, which, among other enterprises, helps American companies outsource jobs to India.
In addition, Bill has established a close relationship with InfoUSA, an Omaha, Neb-based corporation controlled by one Vinod Gupta. A lawsuit by InfoUSA shareholders, irate at Gupta’s free-spending ways, alleges the company has transferred some $3 million to the former president during the past four years.
Contributions
For her part, Hillary has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Indian-American campaign contributors. Sant Singh Chatwal, co-chairman of Indian Americans for Hillary 2008, has pledged to raise $5 million. But Chatwal reportedly has a checkered past.
In 2001, the New York Daily News said, he was charged in India with defrauding a bank of $9 million. The case eventually was settled, with Chatwal repaying the loans in question. In a 1996 case, also reported by the Daily News, Chatwal was involved in bad loans that reportedly cost The First New York Bank for business some $25 million.
Indeed, so tight are the Clintons with the Indian community worldwide that last year she joked – as she accepted $50,000 at a senatorial fundraiser held in the Maryland home of prominent dentist Rajwant Singh – “ I can certainly run for the Senate seat in Punjab and win easily.”
It would seem that the Clintons’ financial dealings – and the policies that flow from those dealings – should be of great interest to Americans, confronted as they are by the accelerating phenomenon of job outsourcing.
Dogmatic free-traders think such outsourcing is great, but others aren’t so convinced. Alan Blinder, a free-trade proponent while serving as an economic adviser in the Clinton White House, has since reconsidered his stance on outsourcing. Last year Blinder wrote that he projected that as many as 40 million American jobs could be lost to outsourcing in coming decades.

About the threat
What does Hillary think of this threat to American well-being? According to the Obama campaign, citing a 2005 Asia Times article, she said, “Outsourcing will continue ... We are not in favour of putting up fences.” Surely middle-class Americans should know about these matters: In the most literal sense, their jobs might depend on it. But the mainstream media don’t seem to agree – maybe because reporters want Hillary to win, no matter what, or maybe because they just can’t imagine being against “free trade,” no matter what.
So, instead of covering the India campaign-finance-outsourcing issue, reporters have chosen to attack Obama for some sort of dirty trick – the “dirty trick” of assembling a fact-laden dossier on the Clintons. The New York Times sniped that Obama’s “political purity is becoming more difficult for him to maintain.” And The Washington Post fretted about his “rough and tough tactics.”
No doubt Obama will back off now, knowing as he does that his career, in 2008 and beyond, depends on media goodwill. And so Hillary can cruise to the Democratic nomination and perhaps the presidency. In which case, American jobs will continue to cruise to India, sped along by campaign and corporate cash.
(L A Times)