Clinton staffer hit on free trade

Change to Win, a group of six partnering labor unions, is charging the Clinton campaign with playing both sides on free trade in reference to chief campaign strategist Mark Penn's meeting Monday with Colombia's ambassador regarding the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. \ \ \ Change to Win executive director Greg Tarpinian had this to say: "It's time for Senator Hillary Clinton to send her vaunted 'chief strategist' Mark Penn packing — back to his job consulting for union-busting corporations and anti-labor governments for good." \ \ \ "We have questioned Penn's role in the Clinton campaign in the past for his representation of union-busting employers like Cintas. At that time, Penn said there was a wall between him and his firm's representation of union busters. The latest revelation that Penn — whose firm represents the Colombian government in its effort to secure passage of a so-called free trade agreement — is actively involved in securing its passage in the middle of Senator Clinton's presidential campaign is outrageous. It also suggests that he has been playing a double role — advising the Senator on what to say to curry Democratic voters and advising the Colombian government on what to say to curry a majority of votes in Congress.\ \ \ "Colombia remains the most dangerous country in the world for union members, where more than 2,200 workers have been murdered since the 1980s by Colombian death squads for trying to form unions while the government has done nothing to effectively stop the murders. It is time for Penn to go."\ \ \ Revelations that Sen. Obama's economic advisor Austan Goolsbee spoke to the Canadian consular from Chicago about NAFTA cost Mr. Obama dearly in Ohio.\ \ \ This is Mrs. Clinton's second strike in as many weeks; first, the story about arriving in Bosnia under sniper fire, which turned out not to be true, and now this. There are barely three weeks to go to Pennsylvania.\ \ \ — Brian DeBose, national political reporter, The Washington Times