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ken salazar
Blasting US 'Recklessness,' Mexico Pauses Embassy Relations Over Judicial Reform Meddling
"They have to learn to respect Mexico's sovereignty," Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said of the U.S. and Canada after their ambassadors weighed in on his controversial proposal.
Aug 27, 2024
Outgoing Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador put the embassies of the United States and Canada on time out Tuesday after their top diplomats and other influential figures weighed in against controversial proposed reforms to Mexico's judicial system.
"The relationship with Ken Salazar is good, but it's on pause. We're going to give ourselves our time," López Obrador—who is widely known as AMLO— said during his morning press conference, referring to the U.S. ambassador. The president said the "pause" also applies to Canada, whose ambassador, Graeme Clark, voiced alarm over the proposed reforms.
"They have to learn to respect Mexico's sovereignty, because we are not going to give them advice there, nor to say that it is okay and what is wrong," he added. "We want them to be respectful, there is a reciprocal relationship in terms of sovereignty."
López Obrador's move came after Salazar asserted last week that "popular direct election of judges is a major risk to the functioning of Mexico's democracy."
"We understand the importance of Mexico's fight against judicial corruption. But direct political election of judges, in my view, would not address judicial corruption nor would it strengthen the judicial branch of government," the ambassador continued. "It would also weaken the efforts to make North American economic integration a reality and would create turbulence as the debate over direct election will continue over the next several years."
"I believe faith and trust in the rule of law are one of the many shared values which unite our nations, while for the private sector, they lay the groundwork for building confidence and inspiring investment in a stable and predictable environment," Salazar added.
Clark subsequently said that Canadian "investors are concerned; they want stability, they want a judicial system that works if there are problems."
López Obrador accused the ambassadors of "recklessness" during his Tuesday press conference, adding that "there are things that only concern our country."
It's not just the ambassadors. On Tuesday, U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Ranking Member James Risch (R-Idaho), and Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said in a joint statement that they "are deeply concerned that the proposed judicial reforms in Mexico would undermine the independence and transparency of the country's judiciary, jeopardizing critical economic and security interests shared by our two nations."
"We are also alarmed that several other constitutional reforms currently under discussion may contradict commitments made in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement, which is scheduled for review in 2026," the senators added.
The Global Enterprise Council, the Mexico City-based lobbyist for 63 multinational corporations operating in Mexico—including Walmart, American Express, AT&T, General Motors, Microsoft, and ExxonMobil—is also opposing the proposed judicial reforms, as are other organizations including the New York City Bar Association and the Washington Posteditorial board.
López Obrador's "Plan C" proposes a sweeping overhaul of Mexico's corruption-ridden judiciary. The plan's most controversial reform would make judges at all levels of the judiciary—who are currently appointed—elected officials. All current sitting judges would be up for election in 2025 and 2027.
The president argues these reforms are necessary to combat corruption and impunity in Mexico's judicial system. He has
accused Mexican Supreme Court justices of being "supporters of the oligarchy, not of democracy" and says they oppose Plan C because "they do not want a government of the people."
Plan C—which came after an earlier proposal was blocked by the Supreme Court—has sparked nationwide protests by opponents, who say López Obrador is trying to weaken the judiciary and the National Electoral Institute and entrench his ruling Morena party as former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, a close ally of the president, prepares to replace him on October 1 after winning June's election in a landslide.
Tensions between Mexico and the United States have been mounting for months over Mexican perceptions of U.S. meddling, including dubiously timed corporate media
reports of alleged links between López Obrador and drug cartels.
Last week, López Obrador said that Salazar's statement "expressing a position on this strictly domestic matter of the Mexican state represents unacceptable interference, contravenes the sovereignty of the United Mexican States, and does not reflect the degree of mutual respect that characterizes the relations between our governments."
"This is an overtly interventionist attitude; I hope it does not happen again," he added.
In separate remarks last week, López Obrador also accused the U.S. of funding organizations working to undermine the Mexican government under the guise of human rights.
For example, the U.S. Agency for International Development—whose decadeslong history of meddling in Latin America runs the gamut from
kidnapping and torturing unhoused Uruguayans to death for instructional purposes to an attempt at toppling Cuba's revolutionary government by infiltrating the island's hip-hop scene—has financially supported Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, a frequent critic of the López Obrador administration.
During his Tuesday press conference, López Obrador reminded Mexicans of centuries of U.S. aggression and meddling in Mexico's internal affairs.
"For many years… the United States has applied an interventionist policy throughout America, ever since it established the Monroe Doctrine," he said.
López Obrador recounted how Mexico lost half its territory as a result of the 1846-48 U.S. invasion—carried out on false pretexts decried by a young congressman from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln—and endured seven months of U.S. occupation of Veracruz in 1914.
The president stressed that having trade agreements with the U.S. does not mean that Washington has the right to meddle in Mexican affairs.
"The treaty is not for us to cede our sovereignty, the treaty is about trade, about forging good economic and commercial ties that suit both nations," he said Tuesday. "But that doesn't mean Mexico must become an appendix, a colony, or a protectorate."
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Clinton's Transition Team: A Corporate Presidency Foretold
Aug 22, 2016
Like other Bernie Sanders delegates in Philadelphia a few weeks ago, I kept hearing about the crucial need to close ranks behind Hillary Clinton. "Unity" was the watchword. But Clinton has reaffirmed her unity with corporate America.
Rhetoric aside, Clinton is showing her solidarity with the nemesis of the Sanders campaign--Wall Street. The trend continued last week with the announcement that Clinton has tapped former senator and Interior secretary Ken Salazar to chair her transition team.
After many months of asserting that her support for the "gold standard" Trans-Pacific Partnership was a thing of the past--and after declaring that she wants restrictions on fracking so stringent that it could scarcely continue--Clinton has now selected a vehement advocate for the TPP and for fracking, to coordinate the process of staffing the top of her administration.
But wait, there's more--much more than Salazar's record--to tell us where the planning for the Hillary Clinton presidency is headed.
On the surface, it might seem like mere inside baseball to read about the transition team's four co-chairs, described by Politico as "veteran Clinton aides Maggie Williams and Neera Tanden" along with "former National Security Adviser Tom Donilon and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm." But the leaders of the transition team--including Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, who is also president of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project--will wield enormous power.
"The transition team is one of the absolute most important things in the world for a new administration," says William K. Black, who has held key positions at several major regulatory agencies such as the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. Along with "deciding what are we actually going to make our policy priorities," the transition team will handle key questions: "Who will the top people be? Who are we going to vet, to hold all of the cabinet positions, and many non-cabinet positions, as well? The whole staffing of the senior leadership of the White House."
Black's assessment of Salazar, Podesta and the transition team's four co-chairs is withering. "These aren't just DNC regulars, Democratic National Committee regulars," he said in an interview with The Real News Network. "What you're seeing is complete domination by what used to be the Democratic Leadership Council. So this was a group we talked about in the past. Very, very, very right-wing on foreign policy, what they called a muscular foreign policy, which was a euphemism for invading places. And very, very tough on crime--this was that era of mass incarceration that Bill Clinton pushed, and it's when Hillary was talking about black 'superpredators,' this myth, this so dangerous myth."
Black added: "And on the economic side, they were all in favor of austerity. All in favor of privatization. Tried to do a deal with Newt Gingrich to privatize Social Security. And of course, were all in favor of things like NAFTA."
As for Hillary Clinton's widely heralded "move to the left" in recent months, Black said that it "was purely calculated for political purposes. And all of the team that's going to hire all the key people and vet the key people for the most senior positions for at least the first several years of what increasingly looks likely to be a Clinton administration are going to be picked by these people, who are the opposite of progressive."
In that light, Salazar is a grotesquely perfect choice to chair the transition team. After all of Clinton's efforts to present herself as a foe of the big-money doors that revolve between influence peddlers and government officials in Washington, her choice of Salazar--a partner at the lobbying powerhouse WilmerHale since 2013--belies her smooth words. That choice means the oil and gas industry just hit a political gusher.
On both sides of the revolving doors, the industry has been ably served by Salazar, whose work included arguing for the Keystone XL pipeline. His support for fracking has been so ardent that it led him two years ago to make a notably fanciful claim: "We know that, from everything we've seen, there's not a single case where hydraulic fracking has created an environmental problem for anyone."
Salazar is part of a clear pattern. Clinton's selection of Tim Kaine for vice president underscored why so many progressives distrust her. Kaine was among just one-quarter of Democrats in the Senate who voted last year to fast track the TPP. When he was Virginia's governor, Kaine said that "I strongly support" a so-called right-to-work law that is anathema to organized labor. A few years ago he faulted fellow Democrats who sought to increase taxes for millionaires.
Clinton announced the Kaine pick while surely knowing that many progressives would find it abhorrent. A week beforehand, the Bernie Delegates Network released the results of a survey of Sanders delegates showing that 88 percent said they would find selection of Kaine "unacceptable." Only 3 percent of the several hundred respondents said it would be "acceptable."
The first big post-election showdown will be over the TPP in the lame-duck session of Congress. Clinton's spokesman Brian Fallon reiterated a week ago that "she is against the TPP before the election and after the election." But her choices for running mate and transition team have sent a very different message. And it's likely that she is laying groundwork to convey anemic "opposition" that will be understood on Capitol Hill as a wink-and-nod from a president-elect who wouldn't mind "aye" votes for the TPP.
Blessed with an unhinged and widely deplored Republican opponent, Hillary Clinton may be able to defeat him without doing much to mend fences with alienated Sanders voters. But Clinton's smooth rhetoric should not change the fact that--on a vast array of issues--basic principles will require progressives to fight against her actual policy goals, every step of the way.
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New Clinton Transition Head Has Some TPP 'Splainin To Do
Aug 17, 2016
Hillary Clinton has appointed Former Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, a big supporter of TPP, to lead her transition team, should she be elected President. Politico has more, in Clinton campaign transition chief has pushed for TPP:
The new chairman of Hillary Clinton's transition team has been an outspoken supporter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and works for a firm that lobbied for trade policy issues as recently as this spring, a review of congressional lobbying records and articles shows.
[. . .] Salazar's employer since 2013, the law firm WilmerHale, has also been an active participant in the debate on Capitol Hill over TPP and other trade policy issues. In late 2014 the firm spent at least $30,000 lobbying for renewal of "fast-track" Trade Promotion Authority and on issues related to the TPP on behalf of the Business Roundtable, an influential group of top executives from major U.S. corporations, the congressional disclosure database shows. More recently, between April and June of this year, it spent $50,000 lobbying on trade policy and regulatory issues more generally on behalf of the building materials company Owens Corning Corporation, records show.
Salazar was also a member of the pro-TPP corporate front-group "Progressive Coalition for American Jobs". Two March, 2015 posts, "A Trade Campaign Built On Four Pinocchios" and "Deval Patrick, Others To Advise AstroTurf Pro-TPP/Fast Track Group" exposed this group as a pro-TPP front.
Someone needs to ask Salazar and Clinton to explain what this says about Clinton's support/opposition to a lame-duck vote on TPP - as well as future job-killing trade deals.
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