Imagine your wet dream come true & the Democrats seize control of both houses of Congress this fall. Investigations are possible! Take it one step further & a Democrat is elected to the White House in 2008. Now what? Who are the democratic establishment consultants and advisors vying for policy jobs?
We already know about Clinton Administration spinmeister Mike McCurry, who’s been feverishly running a dis-info campaign, Hands off the Internet, against net-neutrality, using the libertarian appeal (& old Republican theme) against government regulation:
The cable and telephone companies want to abandon this fundamental principle for their high-speed Internet, broadband networks. They want to be allowed to discriminate against service providers and to charge the consumer for access to the network and the content, service, and applications providers for access to the consumer. They want to make exclusive deals with some services for a fast lane, while others are kept off that network. If they are allowed to discriminate they will charge lower rates or give priority in routing or speed to their own services or their allies, while they punish their competitors.
McCurry’s [firm] will join a stable of lobbyists and front groups dedicated to obfuscating this history and turning the facts on their head. In fact, this is the second time around for “Hands off The Internet.” In the late 1990s it was a front group located in a law firms with close ties to AT&T (then a cable company) and its General Council, Jim Ciccone, a Department of Justice official in the first Bush administration and the Executive Director the Bush Presidential library. link
Russ Baker gives the low-down on 25 Democratic Consultants, establishment shakers-and-bakers, who have turned to the corporate lobbying/consulting trough as Republicans control the White House & Congress. Many, like McCurry, have no qualms working with partisan republicans in service to the corporate masters, making the Carville/Matalin marriage less of an anomaly than it might appear to be. Baker notes that:
Once the Democrats turned into the opposition, key Clinton figures found a home in offering their advertising, public relations and arm-twisting skills to industry trade associations and corporations. They retained their links to the party, and have lived a kind of dual life ever since, moving effortlessly from corporate work to campaign work and back. The friendliness with big business has escalated under the reign of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who has assembled his own so-called “K Street Cabinet” – named after the street where the lobbying hordes are headquartered.
The consequence of this trend is profound. Although establishment Democrats are, by and large, still more skeptical of the corporate agenda than Republicans, they have become strikingly less so. This has led to the creation of a kind of permanent corporate governance structure that is truly bipartisan. Many of the firms employing Democratic operatives have them working side-by-side with Republicans – often the same Republicans they go up against in political campaigns. [snip]
In many firms today, former Democratic and Republican legislators work in perfect harmony on behalf of their clients, something that is all but unimaginable on the floor of the House or Senate, where partisanship has made working effectively on behalf of the public, or on behalf of the Republic, next to impossible. As a result, the self-interest of corporations too often trumps the common interest. [snip]
Now that so many key party operatives earn their “real money” helping corporations exert influence in Washington, they face more and more conflicts when advising Democratic candidates who insist they are dedicated to reform and serving the public interest. Such conflicts speak for themselves. At the very least, it’s tricky to be the strategy adviser to a Democratic candidate who supports publicly-funded universal health insurance when one has spent years working for insurance interests that vehemently oppose any changes. But that is just the scenario playing out every day. The paradoxes are staggering. And, for the most part, they are invisible.
Can you name Vice President Al Gore’s Chief of Staff, his Scooter Libby/David Addington righthand man? I couldn’t. Meet Jack Quinn, who
. . . served as Vice President Gore’s Chief of Staff, and later as Counsel to President Clinton. Now he is a partner in a political consulting and lobbying firm with a close friend of Tom DeLay, and together, they have represented clients who want to drill in fragile areas of Alaska, put the screws to already beleaguered American consumers, and prevent the introduction of more healthy dairy substitutes in school lunches. [snip]
After serving at the top of the Clinton-Gore administration, in January 2000 he left what was still a Democratic White House and formed Quinn Gillespie with Ed Gillespie [long-time Republican operative who helped the John Roberts nomination through Congress – A]. This firm was among the pioneers of the one-stop-shopping approach that has since swept Washington. Want to influence the legislative process? Now you can get right to the top of both parties by hiring a single firm.
Firm clients have included: major telecommunications firms; Enron; the American Petroleum Institute (lift federal ban on offshore drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf, including Alaska; oppose proposal to raise taxes for oil companies by changing the way profits are calculated); the Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care (lobbied against proposed Medicare reform that cut $1.5 billion in add-on payments to nursing homes; Alliance was indicted in late 2004 for $100,000 illegal contribution to DeLay’s PAC); the Partnership to Protect Consumer Credit (which wants to preempt tougher state and local laws designed to protect consumers); the International Dairy Foods Association (which opposes the introduction of more healthful dairy substitutes in school lunches), Entergy (big energy bill proposed in 2003, which included provisions to benefit electric industry); “Ax the Double Tax” coalition (tried to eliminate the individual tax on corporate dividends and has worked on legislation that would allow Hewlett-Packard to repatriate profits from foreign subsidiaries at a lower tax rate); Bank of America (fighting stricter consumer data-protection legislation proposed after big data breach at BOA).
Quinn was also instrumental in securing the pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich (still living comfortable in Switzerland), whose lawyer, was Scooter Libby. Small world.
There’s heavyweight Thomas Quinn (no relation to Jack Quinn), whose remark
about the work of his firm, Venable LLC, applies to the whole politically-neutral K Street scene today: “Here we work very collegially, and I’ve gotten more collegial as there are more Republicans. We work closely with Republicans. All of us are in this together.”
Thomas Quinn has been active in Democratic politics from Sen. Edward Kennedy’s (D-MA) presidential run in 1980 to Sen. John Kerry’s (D-MA) in 2004. He’s a key player on financial services, taxation and homeland security issues. Venable’s clients have included: Wal-Mart, Tsakopoulos Investments (real estate developer which has worked with Wal-Mart; lobbying concerning the Endangered Species Act); Timmons Real Estate (Endangered Species Act); National Company for Mechanical & Electrical Works Ltd (Kuwaiti firm re contracts in Iraq); Allied Capital (US government ran a criminal investigation of the firm’s largest subsidiary, which makes government-backed loans to small businesses; Venable hired an SEC attorney who grilled a critic of Allied); McWane (Birmingham, AL-based cast iron pipe manufacturer; the company was heavily fined and executives convicted in federal court for environmental crimes).
Baker doesn’t note that above-mentioned client Tsakopoulos is the mentor & ex-businesspartner of California gubernatorial candidate & establishment insider, Phil Angelides (see Bill Bradley’s A Brighter Shade of Gray for their background & involvement in the CA Burton/Feinstein machine).
Baker’s list is “is not intended to be comprehensive, nor is it some kind of ‘top 25’ list, but rather is meant to illustrate what is happening. The people cited below vary in their influence, professional longevity, and client base, and scores of others do similar work.”
The issues at stake “run the gamut from tobacco to military contracting, dumping toxic chemicals to skirting labor laws. Nearly all of these firms serve big clients in ‘homeland security’ and defense work, insurance, health care and pharmaceuticals.”
Specific affected areas include Free Trade (“pushing trading partners, including the European Union, to lower their health, environment and safety standards on all manner of products, from chemicals to finished goods, in the name of unfettered trade”), Wal-Mart (“helping this increasingly dominant corporation win a publicity war through a host of techniques, from aggressive tactics to the adoption of measures that soften the company’s image”), genetically-modified (GM) crops, big PHARMA, credit issuers, and gambling.
Two lobbying firms are highlighted, the Glover Park Group and Burson-Marsteller.
the GLOVER PARK GROUP:
Founded in 2001, this strategic communications company based in Washington and New York became the chief haven for those exiled by the change of administration. Founders were Bill Clinton’s former spokesman Joe Lockhart and Al Gore’s top strategists Carter Eskew and Michael Feldman. In 2004, Lockhart and partner Howard Wolfson took leaves to work on the Kerry campaign and at the DNC. Miramax, which financed the movie Fahrenheit 9/11, hired the firm to come up with a major national publicity campaign and handle a very public battle with Disney. In 2005, the firm was ranked the fastest-growing private company in the District of Columbia.
Founding partner CARTER ESKEW served as Al Gore’s chief media adviser in 2000; has done work for senators Chris Dodd, Joe Lieberman, and Tom Harkin. Close to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. Was criticized for his work in the 1990s providing media advice to the tobacco industry (through his then-PR firm, Bozell Sawyer Miller Group).
Partner JOEL JOHNSON worked in the Clinton White House as senior adviser for policy and communications, was an aide to former South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle, and chief of staff to ex-Ohio Sen. Howard Metzenbaum. Served as managing director of the Harbour Group LLC, a Democratic-connected lobbying firm with clients in the oil, airline, pharmaceutical and food processing industries. In 2004 he, along with Glover Park partners Joe Lockhart and Howard Wolfson, went to work for the Kerry campaign (Wolfson went to the DNC), then after the campaign joined them at Glover Park. Johnson has represented the Asbestos Study Group, a coalition of companies seeking to limit liability in asbestos lawsuits, and represented the Major League Baseball Players Association in opposing congressional action on steroids.
Partner HOWARD WOLFSON served as a spokesman for Hillary Clinton and as the executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Bounces up and back between corporate and Democratic work. In 2004, he went to work for the Democratic National Committee.
With numerous Glover Park staffers regularly advising Hillary Clinton, expect some if not most of them to be extremely influential if she is elected president, with Howard Wolfson perhaps occupying a position similar to that now held by Karl Rove.
The corporate world’s general receptivity to Hillary may in good part be explained by these connections. Murdoch’s New York Post went from gleefully pillorying Hillary to praising her and attacking her critics and opponents. That’s less surprising when you consider that Rupert Murdoch paid Glover Park about $200,000 for work to block tv ratings changes that could harm ad revenues at his Fox Broadcasting (the attempt was unsuccessful). Glover also got a large retainer for pr work and organizing groups (including the Don’t Count Us Out coalition, initially gave the impression it was an independent group representing the interests of people of color) against the plan.
Firm clients have included: Pfizer and Visa (comprehensive reputation campaigns); the government of Turkey; Think About It (a group waging an unsuccessful campaign to allow casino gambling in Maine); Microsoft (handled media inquiries about Microsoft’s ties to Jack Abramoff’s lobbying team); The Pentagon; Asbestos Study Group (industry coalition formed to fight for limits on asbestos-related lawsuits); The Coalition to Preserve DSHEA (prevent FDA from treating food supplements as drugs or food additives and allow companies to continue making health claims without scientific backing; backed by multilevel marketing firms, opposed by most health and consumer groups); the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA); MoneyGram International (concerns over money laundering regulations).
BURSON-MARSTELLER:
The global public relations firm, now a part of a giant conglomerate, WPP Group PLC, which also owns Quinn-Gillespie and other DC firms cited in this report. Burson practically invented the concept of faux-grassroots organizations (known in the trade as ‘astroturf’) that were no more than fronts for corporations and industries pushing embarrassing products and agendas. For example, Burson created the “National Smokers Alliance,” a purportedly grassroots movement for smokers rights, on behalf of its client Altria (Philip Morris tobacco). When the NSA dissolved in 2001, it gave $5 million to something called the Center for Individual Freedom Foundation (advocates for “smaller government and greater personal liberties,” led by former B-M exec W. Thomas Humber), which has lobbied to block obesity-related lawsuits against fast-food restaurants. One of B-M’s clients is McDonald’s (recent ad campaigns have sought to give the fast-food chain a healthier image by promoting exercise and balanced diets), which has been the target of several such lawsuits.
Other B-M clients have included major pharmaceutical companies (advised Johnson & Johnson after Tylenol tampering crisis; launched a “corporate reputation campaign” for Merck after its blockbuster arthritis drug Vioxx was pulled off the market); major defense contractors; Royal Dutch Shell (charged with a massive financial fraud in a US class action lawsuit brought by the UNITE National Retirement Fund and the Plumbers and Pipefitters National Pension Fund); the Iraqi National Congress (of the controversial Ahmad Chalabi); Dow Chemical (Dow has refused to compensate the victims of the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India, a liability it inherited when it took over Union Carbide.); National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (crisis management to strengthen consumer confidence in beef safety, despite reports of mad cow disease).
Here’s the experience of John Stauber, a longtime consumer advocate, with Burson-Marsteller: “B-M came to my attention in 1990 when a phony organization called the Maryland Citizens Consumer Council infiltrated a meeting I organized of farm and consumer groups opposed to Monsanto’s genetically engineered cow growth hormone, BGH. The group claimed to be concerned moms who didn’t want their school kids drinking milk from cows injected with this drug. In fact, it was composed of B-M employees who were spying on opponents and critics of BGH. B-M was working for the companies developing BGH. I was outraged and I swore to investigate the PR industry. As a result I founded the Center for Media and Democracy in 1993 to investigate and expose B-M and other corporate PR firms. In 2003 we launched our website www.SourceWatch.org to track PR firms, lobbyists and front groups engaged in the propaganda business of ‘perception management.’ ”
MARK PENN was recently named Burson-Marsteller’s Worldwide Chief Executive. In 2001, Burson’s parent company, WPP, acquired Penn Schoen & Berland Associates (PSB), the opinion research firm of which Penn is a founding partner. Penn was a principal pollster for Bill Clinton. He continues to do work for Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The trend continues. In spring, 2006, a Washington Post blog reported that WPP was in the process of acquiring the Dewey Square Group:
“Dewey Square emerged as one of the titans of the consulting industry during the last presidential election when it had its hands in the campaigns of John Kerry, Sen. Joe Lieberman (CT) and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards. Becoming part of the WPP empire will likely enhance the firm’s prestige and put more resources at its disposal.
Formed in 1993 by Boston-based operatives Michael Whouley, Charles Campion and Charlie Baker, the firm is again positioned to exert considerable influence on the 2008 race.
Whouley is perhaps the most sought-after operative on the Democratic side due to his grassroots organizing abilities – as demonstrated in Kerry’s Iowa caucus victory in 2004. Whouley is expected to be with Kerry should the senator decide to run again, but if the party’s 2004 nominee bows out there will be a mad scramble for Whouley’s services.
Catherine A. McLean – another member of the Dewey inner circle — is working on behalf of Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, who is considering a run for president in 2008. Minyon Moore will be with Sen. Clinton should she decide to run for president. Nick Baldick, who until recently was a partner at Dewey before striking out to form his own consulting company, is the top political adviser to Edwards.”
It’s a long piece well worth your attention. He goes on to examine specific indivduals, along with their their firms, ties, and clients, who are just some of the Washington insiders eager to journey once again through our capitol’s revolving doors. Removing the republicans from power can only be Step One for progressives of all stripes. If we’re lucky, a few progressive grassroots candidates may be elected this fall. But be assured that amongst the Democrat’s detritus will be plenty of these men & women from the ranks of the bipartisan corporate lobyist/consultant establishment ready to assume the lower but crucial levers of governmental power. They won’t always have progressive interests in mind. Step Two has to include blocking & opposing the appointments & agendas of these corporate shills. Baker does, however, reach to close on a positive note:
This situation need not endure forever. Several organizations are working to reform the political contribution laws that make corporate interests so powerful. And with the election of a president who will appoint democracy-minded federal judges, we may yet see the overturning of Buckley v. Valeo, a decision that ended America’s key experiment with campaign reform, legislation signed, remarkably, by Richard Nixon — which included federal funding of elections, and limits on contributions and campaign spending.
I’ll close by pointing to a quixotic, but forward-looking development from California’s redwood empire. A long-standing legal fiction holds that a corporation has legal standing as a “person.” Voters in Humboldt County, fed-up with WalMart and other corporations pumping massive dollars into electoral campaigns the companies had an interest in, passed a ballot measure that challenges their right to do so. While it may not get anywhere when the measure is litigated, it attempts to fire off a revolutionary call-to-electoral-arms, a progressive Spirit of ’06:
In Northern California’s Humboldt County, voters decided by a 55-45 margin that corporations do not have the same rights — based on the supposed “personhood” of the combines — as citizens when it comes to participating in local political campaigns. [snip]
The “Yes on T” campaign was rooted in regard for the American experiment, from its slogan “Vote Yes for Local Control of Our Democracy,” to the references to Tuesday’s election as a modern-day “Boston Tea Party,” to the quote from Thomas Jefferson that was highlighted in election materials: “I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
Just as Jefferson and his contemporaries were angered by dominance of the affairs of the American colonies by King George III and the British business combines that exploited the natural and human resources of what would become the United States, so Humboldt County residents were angered by the attempts of outside corporate interests to dominate local politics.
Wal-Mart spent $250,000 on a 1999 attempt to change the city of Eureka’s zoning laws in order to clear the way for one of the retail giant’s big-box stores. Five years later, MAXXAM Inc., a forest products company, got upset with the efforts of local District Attorney Paul Gallegos to enforce regulations on its operations in the county and spent $300,000 on a faked-up campaign to recall him from office. The same year saw outside corporations that were interested in exploiting the county’s abundant natural resources meddling in its local election campaigns. [snip]
It was [Tom] Paine who suggested to the revolutionaries of 1776, as they dared challenge the most powerful empire on the planet, that: “We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation similar to the present hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of the new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom from the events of a few months.”
It is time to renew the American experiment, to rebuild its battered institutions on the solid foundation of empowered citizens and regulated corporations. Let us hope that the spirit of ’76 prevailed Tuesday in Humboldt County will spread until that day when American democracy is guided by the will of the people rather than the campaign contribution checks of the corporations that are the rampaging “empires” of our age.
–John Nichols, Citizens 1, Corporations 0