The discussion of Mark Penn's representation of Columbia while being a top aide to Hillary Clinton inevitably gets reduced to discussions of the politics of trade, or just plain electoral politics.

But let's be clear, the government of Columbia is uniquely hated by the global labor movement. In no other country are labor leaders ROUTINELY murdered in the streets. Not fired from their jobs, not jailed, but killed by rightwing paramilitary forces that linked to rightwing forces backing the exact government paying Mark Penn's exorbinant commission. See this chart of union murders by EPI, outlining recent years of killings, in a country where more than 2,534 unionists have been assassinated over the last 21 years.

Now compare this to Venezeuela's Chavez, not my favorite representative of leftist leadership, but still a head of government who faced rightwing labor leaders who led a general strike against him and even collaborated with a coup against him. Yet Chavez did not have those labor leaders murdered or even engage in mass jailings.  Instead, he fought elections both at the polls and within the labor movement itself.  It's a messy story and some not always stellar democratic actions, but compared to a place like Columbia where labor relations have involved death squads, a shining beacon of democracy.

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