Monday, February 04, 2008

Rodham Clinont: Rainmaker and Sincer Lawyer

I have mixed feelings about Senator Clinton. It is very difficult to determine who she really is. When she came to the WH with Bill, the text was that ot was 2 4 1 , that she was a brilliant attorney wh was giving up a strike at the Supreme Court to be first lady. etc etc.


Most of that was hype. She has been a rainmaker, corporate attorney, board member ofr Walmart, and a junior senator. Despite th e hype, she has only worked full time for children's issues for one year. As a Senator, she did OK but is not notably associated with any major legislation or reform.

So, the OBJECTIVE evidence is limited and we can only rely of the faulty mirror of the TV tube.
I find her impressive, bright, pulled together ,,, quaties she shares with Obana, Edwards, and Mccain,

What she stands for, is harder t come by. Pretty much a demo list. worker.
anyhow .. here is a mashup of comments on her career.





Clinton's '35 years of change' omits most of her career

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FACTS:

Clinton worked at the Children's Defense Fund for less than a year, and that's the only full-time job in the nonprofit sector she's ever had. She also worked briefly as a law professor.

Dick Morris:

The true facts are: Hillary's main extra-curricular activity in law school was helping the Black Panthers, on trial in Connecticut for torturing and killing a federal agent. She went to court every day as part of a law student monitoring committee trying to spot civil rights violations and develop grounds for appeal.

After law school: Hillary interned with Bob Truehaft, the head of the California Communist Party. She met Bob when he represented the Panthers and traveled all the way to San Francisco to take an internship with him.

Clinton spent the bulk of her career — 15 of those 35 years — at one of Arkansas' most prestigious corporate law firms, where she represented big companies and served on corporate boards.

Dick Morris says that the true facts are: She flunked the DC bar exam and only passed the Arkansas bar. She hadt no job offers in Arkansas and only got hired by the University of Arkansas Law School at Fayetteville because Bill was already teaching there. She only joined the prestigious Rose Law Firm after Bill became Attorney General and made partner only after he was elected Governor.


Clinton did a great deal of public service work during her time at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock. ....She also served on the board of directors of the Children's Defense Fund, and on the board of a children's hospital. ........... Clinton did receive a smaller salary than most other Rose partners, topping out at about $200,000, in part because of her outside activities, according to several biographies.


fe, working as a corporate lawyer, representing corporations," biographer Smith said.

In her autobiography, "Living History," Clinton mentions two cases. In one, she represented a canning company against a man who found part of a dead rat in his pork and beans. In another, she represented a logging company accused of wrongdoing after an accident injured several workers. While Clinton used both anecdotes for comic effect, in both cases she was working for corporate interests.

She also served on corporate boards, including that of retail giant Wal-Mart from 1986-1992, frozen yogurt purveyor TCBY from 1985-1992 and cement manufacturer LaFarge from 1990-1992. She earned tens of thousands of dollars in fees from each.

Clinton's firm represented Wal-Mart and TCBY while she sat on their boards, a cozy practice that corporate governance experts frown upon because of the potential for conflicts of interest.

Politicians naturally want to stick to their chosen narratives, but other aspects of Clinton's relationship with the Rose Law Firm could remind voters of the more controversial side of the Clinton legacy.

There was her work on behalf of Madison Guaranty, a failed savings and loan at the heart of the Whitewater investigation — the billing records of which were mysteriously found in a White House storage room years after investigators first asked for them. And there's Webster Hubbell, a Rose partner, Clinton pal and high-ranking Justice Department official who was convicted of fraud charges related to his work at the firm.

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McClatchy Newspapers 2008
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