"But, but, but they are a lot better than the Republicans!"

Spinning Hillary Centrist

From Sourcewatch (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Burson-Marsteller)

In May, 2007, the Nation magazine ran an insightful article into the relationship between Burson-Marsteller's top executive world-wide, Mark Penn, and Hillary Clinton. "As Hillary Clinton charges toward the Democratic nomination for President, her campaign has a coterie of influential advisers. ... But perhaps the most important figure in the campaign is her pollster and chief strategist, Mark Penn, a combative workaholic. ... Yet Penn is no ordinary pollster. Beyond his connections to the Clintons, he not only polls for America's biggest companies but also runs one of the world's premier PR agencies ."

From Spinning Hillary Centrist, The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070521/berman), Ari Berman...

Burson-Marsteller is hardly a natural fit for a prominent Democrat. The firm has represented everyone from the Argentine military junta to Union Carbide after the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India, in which thousands were killed when toxic fumes were released by one of its plants, to Royal Dutch Shell, which has been accused of massive human rights violations in Nigeria. B-M pioneered the use of pseudo-grassroots front groups, known as "astroturfing," to wage stealth corporate attacks against environmental and consumer organizations. It set up the National Smokers Alliance on behalf of Philip Morris to fight tobacco regulation in the early 1990s. Its current clients include major players in the finance, pharmaceutical and energy industries. In 2006, with Penn at the helm, the company gave 57 percent of its campaign contributions to Republican candidates.

A host of prominent Republicans fall under Penn's purview. B-M's Washington lobbying arm, BKSH & Associates, is run by Charlie Black, a leading GOP operative who maintains close ties to the White House, including Karl Rove, and was former partners with Lee Atwater, the political consultant who crafted the Willie Horton smear campaign used by George H.W. Bush against Michael Dukakis in 1988. Black regularly disparages the Clintons; he has called Hillary a "martyr figure" and said Bill "tearfully embraced...government preferences for [a]homosexual lifestyle." In recent years Black's clients have included the likes of Iraq's Ahmad Chalabi, the darling of the neocon right in the run-up to the war; Lockheed Martin; and Occidental Petroleum. In the summer of 2005 he landed a contract with the Lincoln Group, the disgraced PR firm that covertly placed US military propaganda in Iraqi news outlets. The agreement, according to Intelligence Online, allowed the Lincoln Group to "tap into BKSH's extensive contacts in the Republican administration." When asked by The New Yorker if there was too much cronyism in Iraq, Black responded, "I just wish I could find the cronies."

As expected with such a lineup, B-M has a highly confrontational relationship with organized labor. "Companies cannot be caught unprepared by Organized Labor's coordinated campaigns," read the "Labor Relations" section of its website (until it was scrubbed after Mark Schmitt of The American Prospect quoted the language in March). It consults frequently with George Washington University professor Jarol Manheim, author of The Death of a Thousand Cuts: Corporate Campaigns and the Attack on the Corporation and Biz-War and the Out-of-Power Elite: The Progressive-Left Attack on the Corporation. And it lends help to [b]some of the most controversial union-busting efforts in America.

...

Back in 2003 two large unions, UNITE (which later merged with HERE, the hotel and restaurant union) and the Teamsters, launched a major drive to organize 32,000 garment workers and truck drivers at Cintas, the country's largest and most profitable uniform and laundry supply company. Its longtime CEO, Richard Farmer, was a mega-fundraising "pioneer" for George W. Bush. Despite posting $3.4 billion in sales and $327 million in profits last year, the company had a record of overcharging consumers, denying workers overtime pay, keeping unsafe working conditions (an employee in Tulsa died recently when caught in a 300-degree drier) and using any means necessary to block the union drive. Management fired employees under false pretenses, according to worker complaints documented by the unions; vowed to close plants; and screened anti-union videos. A plant manager in Vista, California, threatened to "kick driver-employees with his steel-toed boots," according to a complaint UNITE HERE filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). To put a soft face on its harsh tactics, Cintas hired Wade Gates, a top employee in B-M's Dallas office, as its chief spokesman. Gates coined Cintas's shrewd response to labor: "the right to say yes, the freedom to say no," which has been repeated endlessly in the press. In a speech at the USC Gould School of Law last year, Gates outlined Cintas's strategy, calling for an "aggressive defense against union tactics." Says Ahmer Qadeer, an organizer for UNITE HERE: "It's the Burson influence that's made Cintas much, much slicker than they were." The unions have won two NLRB rulings against Cintas, but for four years the company has continued to resist the organizing campaign.

Link: Spinning Hillary Centrist, The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070521/berman)

Burson-Marsteller
From Sourcewatch (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Burson-Marsteller)...

Burson-Marsteller is the world's fifth largest PR company (Source: Council of PR Firms, 2002) and part of the WPP Group. According to a 2004 profile in The Hill, a Washington, DC newspaper, "This multinational PR behemoth has an active public-affairs practice led by Richard Mintz, who ran the media shop at the Department of Transportation during the Clinton administration. He also served as staff director for Hillary Clinton during the 1992 campaign. B-M has won awards recently for its work for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the "No on Proposition 54" campaign in California. Its public-affairs practice is bolstered by its affiliation with Direct Impact (grassroots marketing) and BKSH & Associates (lobbying)."

...

In April 2005, Jack O'Dwyer's Newsletter reported that Burson-Marsteller had joined with Quinn Gillespie & Associates to launch 360 Advantage, a public affairs shop filled with "key players in George W. Bush's successful presidential campaigns."

360 Advantage is headed by Russ Schriefer, who did advertising with the Bush/Cheney 2000 and 2004 campaigns and produced the 2004 Republican National Convention, and by Stuart Stevens, a "Bush adman and veteran political strategist." Schriefer and Stevens were also partners in the Stevens & Schriefer Group in Washington, DC, and have worked on presidential campaigns in the Czech Republic, Nigeria, the Philippines and Congo (Jack O'Dwyer's Newletter, Vol. 38, No. 17, April 27, 2005).

Burson-Marsteller, Sourcewatch (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Burson-Marsteller)

More from Spinning Hillary Centrist, The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070521/berman), Ari Berman...:

Every election cycle Penn discovers a new group of swing voters--"soccer moms," "wired workers," "office park dads"--who happen to be the key to the election and believe the same thing: "Outdated appeals to class grievances and attacks upon corporate perfidy only alienate new consistencies and ring increasingly hollow," Penn has written. Through his longtime association with the Democratic Leadership Council, Penn has been pushing pro-corporate centrism for years. Many of the same companies that underwrite the DLC, such as Eli Lilly, AT&T, Texaco and Microsoft, also happen to be clients of Penn's.

...

Yet despite occupying such a divisive place in the Democratic Party and outsized role in the corporate world--and despite his company's close ties to Republican political operatives and the Bush White House--Penn remains a leading figure in Hillary's campaign, pitching the inevitability of her nomination to donors and party bigwigs. According to the New York Times, "[Hillary] Clinton responds to Penn's points with exclamations like, Oh, Mark, what a smart thing to say!" Politically, his presence means that triangulation is alive and well inside the campaign and that despite her populist forays, Hillary won't stray too far from the center. "Penn has a lot of influence on her, no doubt about it," says New York political consultant Hank Sheinkopf, who worked with Penn in '96. "He's not going to let her drift too far left."

More about Burson-Marsteller (http://home.intekom.com/tm_info/ge_bm.htm):

The public relations business is one of the fastest growing industries in the global market economy. In order to face perils like labor unions, organized consumer activists and environmental groups, governments and corporations have come to rely more on slick PR campaigns. The peril to popular democracy posed by PR firms should not be underestimated. Using the latest communications technologies and polling techniques, as well as an array of high-level political connections, PR flacks routinely "manage" issues for government and corporate clients and "package" them for public consumption. The result is a "democracy" in which citizens are turned into passive receptacles of "disinfotainment" and "advertorials" and in which critics of the status quo are defined as ignorant meddlers and/or dangerous outsiders.

...

On the human rights front, B-M has represented some of the worst violators of our age. These include:
The Nigerian government during the Biafran war, to discredit reports of genocide.

The fascist junta that ruled Argentina during the 70's and early 80's, to attract foreign investment.

The totalitarian regime of South Korea, to whitewash the human rights situation there during the 1988 Olympics.

The Indonesian government, which got into power through a CIA- sponsored bloodbath. (It should be pointed out, however, that B-M denies that it is handling the issue of genocide in East Timor)

Ideological barriers are no object. B-M also represented the late communist Romanian despot Nicolae Ceaucescu.

Other third world human rights violators that have been represented by B-M include the governments of Singapore and Sri Lanka.


Doesn't this bother the consciences of B-M's executives? Not at all. Commenting on his firm's work for Argentina's fascists, B-M founder Harold Burson said that "We regard ourselves as working in the business sector for clearcut business and economic objectives. So we had nothing to do with a lot of the things that one reads in the paper about Argentina as regards human rights and other activities".

...


For years B-M has been involved in major environmental issues all over the world, not hesitating to give polluters a helping hand when confronted by activist groups and/or government regulations. Many transnational corporations have turned to B-M for help in the creation of a pedantic, elitist and corporate-oriented brand of environmentalism. It is the hope of entrepreneurial sectors and neoliberal demagogues that this type of safe and harmless environmental activism will displace the more militant and agressive grassroots groups.

B-M's environmental services have benefited industrial polluters, such as the following:

Babcock & Wilcox, when its nuclear power plant in Three Mile Island had its famous mishap in 1979.

Union Carbide, to handle the public relations crisis caused by the Bhopal tragedy in 1984.

Exxon, to counter the negative press coverage it got in the wake of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in 1989.

Ontario Hydro, an industrial concern, headed by Earth Summit secretary general Maurice Strong, which is the biggest source of CO2 emissions in Canada. This corporation is currently selling nuclear reactors to Argentina and Chile.

The Louisiana-Pacific (L-P) logging company, famous for its union- busting, clear cutting of old growth forests and support for anti- environmental front groups. L-P hopes to convince its employees and the public that ruralunemployment in North America is caused by environmental extremists and opressive government regulation and not by unsustainable logging practices or the relocation of s awmills to low-wage countries like Mexico.

B-M formed the British Columbia Forest Alliance (BCFA), a Canadian front group which has L-P among its founding members. BCFA is campaigning against restrictions on logging and is actively work ing to smear and discredit environmentalists. Other BCFA members include Mitsubishi and Weyerhaueser.

B-M is a key player in the nuclear industry lobby. According to Canadian journalist Joyce Nelson, B-M has for years "represented top nuclear power/nuclear weapons contractors such as General Electric, AT&T, McDonnell Douglas, Asea Brown Boveri and Du Pont. In fact, Canada's first Candu [nuclear] reactor sale to Argentina in the early 1970's was later renegotiated during the reign of the military junta, for whom Burson-Marsteller did an image-cleanup from 1976-1981". In addition to this, since 1993 B-M subsidiary Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly (see sidebar) has been representing Nordion International, a newly-privatised subsidiary of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., Canada's state-owned nuclear power company.

B-M coordinated the oil industry's campaign to discredit and destroy president Clinton's proposal for a BTU tax.

A B-M executive sits on the board of Keep America Beautiful, a front for the packaging and waste hauling industries that lobbies against mandatory recycling laws, especially the passage of a national bottle bill in the US.

B-M's most powerful and influential 'environmental' client is the Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD), an eco-capitalist outfit founded by Swiss banker Stephan Schmidheiny. A leading theorist and advocate of neoliberal dogma and corporate environmentalism, Schmidheiny agressively combines entrepreneurship and statesmanship. He is a board member of NestlE9, and a director and shareholder (5% owner) of B-M client Asea Brown Boveri. BCSD's original task was to act behind the scenes at the 1992 Earth Summit, which was chaired by the current head of B-M client Ontario Hydro Maurice Strong, to neutralize and silence any voices critical of the irresponsible behavior of polluting corporations. In the words of Joyce Nelson, "With the able assistance of public relations giant Burson-Marsteller, a very elite group of business people (including B-M itself) was seemingly able to plan the agenda for the Earth Summit with little interference from NGO's or government leader s". Nowadays BCSD is advocating free markets and unfettered corporate activity as the only salvation of the environment. Its members include the CEO's of Asea Brown Boveri, Browning Ferris Industries, Ciba-Geigy, Dow Chemical, DuPont, BCFA member Mitsubishi, Maurice Strong's Ontario Hydro, Royal Dutch-Shell, and companies from Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Spain, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Thailand and Venezuela.


BURSON-MARSTELLER: PR FOR THE NEW WORLD ORDER (http://home.intekom.com/tm_info/ge_bm.htm)
Carmelo Ruiz

Destroying Health Care (http://home.intekom.com/tm_info/ge_bm.htm)

American and Canadian pharmaceutical and insurance companies that want to crack open the Canadian market are frustrated by the fact that Canadians are very happy with their health care system. Worse yet, more and more Americans, especially in Vermont, are now calling for the introduction of single-payer health insurance in their country--a step in the direction of a Canadian-style system. This presents a grave problem for neoliberal demagogues, since it exposes the basic conflict between capitalism and democracy.

Enter Burson-Marsteller's health care unit, whose staff includes "a medical doctor/physician; former FDA (Food and Drug Administration) commissioner; former hospital administrator; former pharmaceutical communications executives; former non-profit communications chiefs; grassroots specialists, and former reporters" according to the senior editor of O'Dwyer's newsletter, which monitors the PR business.

B-M has plenty of experience in matters of public health. On behalf of client Philip Morris, B-M created the National Smokers' Alliance (NSA) to fight against smoking restrictions. According to John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, the NSA "is a state-of-the-art campaign that uses full- page newspaper ads, direct telemarketing, paid canvassers, (toll free) numbers and newsletters to bring thousands of smokers into its ranks each week. By 1995 NSA claimed a membership of 3 million smokers". The NSA is headed by B-M vice-president Thomas Humber and its members include B-M executives Pierre Salinger and Kennetz Rietz, as well as Peter Kelly, senior partner of B-M subsidiary Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly (see sidebar). In addition to this, B-M was hired by the A.H. Robbins company when its Dalkon Shield IUD contraceptive injured thousands of women who used it, and it is now currently promoting the 'virtues' of Eli Lilly's anti-depressant wonder drug Prozac.

Selling NAFTA

In 1990 the Mexican government hired B-M to sell NAFTA to the American public, media and politicians. B-M subcontracted this job to one of its subsidiaries, The Brock Group (TBG), a consulting firm that has done work for American Express, Bell Atlantic, Bacardi, Toyota and the Taiwanese government. TBG is headed by former senator, Republican National Committee chairman, US trade representative and labor secretary William Brock. He was certainly qualified for the job. As US trade representative, Brock engineered the Caribbean Basin Initiative and the US-Israel Free Trade Agreement, and began the negotiations that would eventually culminate in the signing of the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement.

William Brock co-chairs the Multilateral Trade Negotiations (MTN) Coalition, which was founded in 1990 to 'educate' the public-- and lobby for--the now-completed Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The coalition's members include American Express, General Motors, IBM, General Electric, Cargill, Citicorp, Procter & Gamble and other companies and trade associations. According to Malaysian activist Martin Khor Kok Peng, the MTN Coalition had a big influence on the 1990 G-7 Summit meeting held in Houston, USA, in which GATT figured prominently. At the Houston Summit, MTN held a high- profile press conference and released a report by an 'eminent persons group' on world trade.

Mark Penn at Work

Mark Penn is chief strategist for the Hillary Clinton campaign. This article explains how Penn uses bogus polling and other dirty tricks to manipulate pubic opinion and "sell" candidates and ideas. He is the man behind the PR campaign that created a false illusion, as far back as January, that Clinton was the "front runner" and had broad support with the public.

Coup D'etat in Venezuela: Made in the USA (http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=11471)
The U.S.-designed Plan to Overthrow Hugo Chavez in the Days Following the Election
by Chris Carlson

In his article, "Coup D'etat in Disguise," Jonathan Mowat described how these "polls" work: "Penn, Schoen and Berland (PSB) has played a pioneering role in the use of polling operations, especially "exit polls," in facilitating coups. Its primary mission is to shape the perception that the group installed into power in a targeted country has broad popular support. ""...the deployment of polling agencies' "exit polls" broadcast on international television...give the false impression of massive vote-fraud by the ruling party, to put targeted states on the defensive."

That is, the goal is to either get enough support to sway the election in their favor, or, if that isn't possible, to give the impression that the elections were fraudulent and encourage the population to overturn them. The strategy has been so successful in overthrowing regimes, or installing the regimes that the U.S. prefers, that the operation has evolved into a blueprint to be used in countries around the world. Ian Traynor described it in the Guardian in November 2004 as follows:

"[T]he campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavory regimes...The operation - engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience - is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people's elections"

...

Last week, Mr. Schoen, of Penn, Schoen & Berland, released the findings of his latest survey on the Venezuelan evening news. As expected, Penn's survey showed that Chavez's opposition, Manuel Rosales, was nearly tied in the polls with Chavez. Chavez, it showed, had only 48% support, and his opponent Manuel Rosales had gained significantly up to 42%. This poll is now being reported across all the major Venezuelan media, to a huge audience, showing that Rosales was gaining more and more everyday, and could possibly win. Mr. Schoen added his personal opinion, "The momentum is clearly with Rosales."(10)

With the help of the mainstream media, almost all of which is vehemently opposed to the popular president, these fake polls have reached a wide audience. All the newspapers, the major television channels, and internet news sites report the poll results as if they were true, valid, findings. They don't mention the fact that these findings are not supported by any other polling agency. Again, although the reality is that Rosales has almost no chance of winning in the December elections, much of the population now believes he will. The reality doesn't seem to matter, all that really matters is what the population believes. When their candidate loses by a large margin, it will be a difficult reality to deal with. If the opposition strategy works, it might be possible to produce large protests and even riots.

Global Leadership

Mark J. Penn, Worldwide President & CEO

http://www.burson-marsteller.com/About_us/Global_Leadership/GlobalLeadershipPic/penn.jpg

Mark Penn is worldwide CEO of Burson-Marsteller and President of Penn, Schoen and Berland. As CEO of Burson-Marsteller, Mark oversees a global network of 94 offices and 1600 employees that brings world-class public relations to companies around the world. As President of PSB, a position he has held since 1975 when he was an undergraduate at Harvard, Mark focuses on providing research-based communications strategy to political figures, corporations and crisis situations.

Mark has been called "Master of the Message" by Time Magazine; "The king of polls" by the London Times; and an "incandescent intellect" by the New York Times. On his wall are notes saying "you were brilliant" from Tony Blair after his historic third win and "thanks" from Bill Clinton after his impeachment acquittal along with photos of Mark working with CEOs including Bill Gates and Bill Ford, Jr. The Washington Post, in "Politics and Policy by the Numbers" summed up his influence in the White House and the corporate boardroom as a "unique vantage point: adviser to the preeminent innovator of the past decade in the realm of politics, Bill Clinton, and the preeminent innovator in the realm of business and technology, Bill Gates."

The techniques applied to these political and corporate battles were honed from early major corporate experiences with AT&T, Texaco and others. In "The Guru of Small Things" the New York Times explains how he has combined innovative techniques of micro-targeting, issue-based messaging and visual message testing to win major corporate, marketing and political battles.

Today, Mark serves as strategic consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and CEOs on a wide range of image, branding and corporate reputation issues. His client relationships include Ford Motor Company, Merck, Verizon, BP, McDonald's and Microsoft. He has been a key adviser to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer since 1998, helping Microsoft affect a complete corporate turnaround from anti-trust scandal to Most Trusted Company (Wall Street Journal).

In 2007, Mark published a ground-breaking book, Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes that has been compared to The Tipping Point by Kirkus Reviews and has received praise from President Bill Clinton and Bill Gates.

Mark has helped to elect over 25 leaders in the United States, Asia, Latin America and Europe. Most recently, he served as advisor to Prime Minister Tony Blair, helping achieve an unprecedented third term win for the Labour party in the United Kingdom. He is also well known for serving as President Clinton's pollster and political adviser for the 1996 re-election campaign and throughout the second term of the administration. Currently, Mark serves as a key strategic advisor to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. He has worked with Mrs. Clinton for over six years, since he ran the polling and messaging for her successful election to the US Senate in 2000.

Mark won the Pollster of the Year award, given every 4 years, in both 1996 and 2000, the top honor in his profession, from the American Association of Political Consultants. Mark has written for publications including the New York Times and the Washington Post, and has appeared frequently on networks including CNN and Fox News.

About Us >Global Leadership > Mark J. Penn (http://www.burson-marsteller.com/About_Us/Global_Leadership/Lists/GlobalLeadership/DispForm.aspx?ID=1&nodeName=Global%20Leadership&SubTitle=Mark%20J.%20Penn)

Issues & Advocacy Practice

Organizations face a barrage of challenges to their reputation, stability and freedom to operate. When tough issues arise, they can move markets, disrupt operations, create media firestorms and lead to crises that test even the most tightly-run and well-led institutions. The elections of 2007 further complicated the environment in which corporations and industries operate, with heightened scrutiny and aggressive regulatory reform creating a growing sense of vulnerability. Even those who have yet to feel the heat are thinking about what they need to do to be prepared—or to head off trouble beforehand.

To help our clients prevail in an ever-evolving – and often hostile – business and political environment, Burson-Marsteller has established a cross-functional, integrated team of professionals focused solely on the disciplines within issues management and advocacy communications. Linked with the resources of our family of government relations, grassroots advocacy, advertising and opinion research business units, the Issues & Advocacy Practice creates a powerful capability for companies and organizations to deal effectively with unanticipated crises, onerous regulatory decisions, complex litigation, media-based attacks, legislative threats and a whole host of other challenges that can adversely affect businesses and industries.

The Issues & Advocacy Practice spans Burson-Marsteller's network of U.S. offices, comprising a team of professionals whose diverse backgrounds include congressional offices, federal and state agencies, corporations, trade associations and nonprofits.

No other public relations and public affairs network can claim Burson-Marsteller's track record, global footprint, and depth of talent when it comes to successfully managing thorny issues.
Define your company—before your opponents define it for you. We can help.

Integrated into seamless client teams, our practitioners also provide specialized expertise in areas such as:

* Crisis & Litigation Communications

Key Contact:
Karen Doyne
Managing Director
Washington, D.C.
202-530-4523

* Labor Relations

Burson-Marsteller has developed a specialized capability surrounding labor relations communications, whether it be for companies engaged in contract renewal negotiations; companies facing strikes or lock-outs at negotiation impasse; companies facing the constant deluge of negative publicity and attacks through a "corporate campaign;" or companies pursuing more positive partnerships with labor organizations. We seek to position companies in a way that is first consistent with, and complementary to, their existing corporate reputation, brand promises and commitments, and then provide the company with greater control of its critical reputations and relationships, and therefore able to effectively pursue its strategic goals. For each company in its own unique situation, this requires a different approach.

* Corporate Social Responsibility

* Stakeholder Engagement

Our approach to stakeholder engagement is built on two pillars: relationships with NGOs that influence agendas affecting corporate operations and reputation; and a proven set of tools for identifying and engaging the NGOs and stakeholders that matter most.

Our NGO expertise stems from long-standing professional and personal relationships that our Corporate Responsibility team has with influential international organizations. We leverage these relationships to understand NGO advocacy and campaign methods and approaches; to develop communications strategies that address issues so that we can counsel clients on how to engage in productive dialogues and develop partnerships.

* Coalition & Issues Management

In addition, the Burson-Marsteller Issues & Advocacy Practice also offers a wealth of experience and expertise in industry-specific issue areas, such as:

* Food Safety

From the farm to the table, our experience with many agricultural and food clients has demonstrated that we must constantly strive to stay in touch with society's changing expectations. We help clients address new science, emerging threats, regulatory issues, NGO and media scrutiny, product recalls, food safety legislation and litigation.

Our experience shows that we can make a meaningful difference in meeting diverse stakeholder expectations: safeguarding public health, protecting product brand and organizational reputations, enhancing the safety of the food supply, as well as restoring markets and reassuring consumers following recalls and outbreaks of food-borne illness.

* Environment, Sustainability & Climate Change

Burson-Marsteller's team of environmental communications consultants includes professionals with strong experience in issues management, crisis communications and reputation management. They also have a strong understanding of the complex regulatory, political and social landscapes that influence how natural resources are protected, conserved and used.

Burson-Marsteller aligns a unique environmental knowledge and expertise with diverse communications capabilities to help clients inform and engage key stakeholders about sustainable business practices and environmental stewardship.

Climate Change Working Group Report

* International Affairs & Country Representation

The Burson-Marsteller International Affairs/Country Representation Team consists of seasoned communications professionals who have achieved a wide range of relevant experience in the reputation management, international affairs and media relations arenas. Members of this bi-partisan team have worked on behalf of numerous international clients, both in the U.S. and in-country. Furthermore, many members of our senior team have themselves served as U.S. government officials in the areas of national security, trade and commerce, and diplomatic positions, as well as on relevant Congressional Committees.

* Congressional Investigations and Testimony Support

Burson-Marsteller's Congressional Investigations team is comprised of former Capitol Hill staffers, political insiders and former journalists. We have a profound understanding of the Hill and bring that expertise to you. We will help you anticipate, plan and prepare for congressional hearings and investigations that affect your organizations and industries, as well as navigate through the political and legal and legislative process on Capitol Hill. This service is focused on preparing clients for the communication challenges surrounding government oversight, regulation and compliance.

* Trade and Development

Burson-Marsteller enjoys a long, rich background of trade communications. Applying a broad range of public relations expertise to complex trade issues, the firm's experience includes a number of high-profile cases and negotiations, from helping pass NAFTA to reducing U.S. and Canadian barriers to lumber sales. Burson-Marsteller has helped public and private clients alike communicate their point of view on Capitol Hill legislation or White House regulation.

* Fundraising Communications

Burson-Marsteller leverages its cadre of experts from multiple disciplines, extensive internal resources and strong external alliances to support high-end, multi-discipline fundraising and capital campaigns. We use a broad and effective array of communications techniques to generate awareness and support for fundraising programs for government and nonprofit organizations.


Issues & Advocacy (http://www.burson-marsteller.com/Practices_And_Specialties/Pages/Issues_and_Advocacy.aspx)

The Real Case Against Mark Penn (http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/may/09/the_real_case_against_mark_penn)

By Mark Schmitt

I predicted a few weeks ago that we would start to see more stories about the bizarrely conflicting roles of one Mark Penn, who holds down the job of "Worldwide President and CEO" of the fifth-largest public relations firm in the universe (Burson-Marsteller) while also apparently being the de facto campaign manager for Senator Clinton's presidential bid. Ari Berman of the Nation has now opened the bidding with a superb article revealing much of what it actually means to be Worldwide President and CEO of Burson-Marsteller, including presiding over more than one Republican lobbying operation and a union-busting outfit that was once prominently featured on the Burson-Marsteller website but was quickly given the "Commissar Vanishes" treatment after I mentioned it in passing. I wasn't actually that interested in Penn's conflicts of interest as in the nature of his advice and his polling, and its influence on American politics. (I'm told that Berman will have more about Penn-as-pollster in the print edition of the Nation.)

...

There is another kind of polling that can be useful to campaigns and which appears to be Penn's specialty, which tries to understand the population by breaking it down into different groups based on demographics and values. This can be hugely revealing and extremely valuable. The Pew Research Center's periodic studies of "Political Typology" are a premiere example of this work, creating categories such as "Upbeats" and "Pro-Government Conservatives" that generally share attitudes on policy and have much in common demographically. Such an analysis is highly complex, as you essentially put all the data together and try to find natural "clusters" of demographics and values that emerge, trying not to impose categories on the data. You can't do it without a fairly large sample size (2,000 in the Pew poll) and a long questionnaire. Pollster Stan Greenberg did a similar analysis, explained most fully in his book, The Two Americas, in which he created such memorable categories as "F-You Boys" -- poorly educated white men under 50, a key part of the Bush base. If these categories are real and robust, it can help a political strategist figure out how to construct a majority -- for example, if you know you're going to capture very few of the "F-You Boys," then what do you need from other categories?

When Penn markets categories such as "soccer moms" and "office park dads," he seems to be doing the same kind of analysis. But it's hard to know, because unlike almost any other Democratic pollster, he never shows his work. Indeed, my first criticism of Penn was here in TPM Cafe last July, responding to an op-ed he co-wrote with James Carville making broad assertions such as that "Democratic and even independent women are thrilled with the idea" of Senator Clinton running for president, all without a single piece of data to support them. It is telling to compare the web sites of Penn, Schoen and Berland and that of Greenberg's firm, Greenberg, Quinlan & Rosner: Both firms do plenty of work that is proprietary, and both have corporate clients. But Greenberg's site is full of actual data -- the link above goes to a page with 192 reports on U.S. politics, eleven since the beginning of this year alone! Penn's site has nothing; a link to "read samples of our thinking" goes to a page with links to those same data-free op-eds! In short, we have no way of knowing whether Penn's demographic analysis of the electorate is as rigorous as Pew's or Greenberg's or whether he, if you'll forgive me some technical jargon, pulls it out of his ass. (see update below)

Penn also makes a particular use of his political typology, which is to declare that a certain voter category of his own devising is "the key" to the election because it could go either way: soccer moms, office park dads, wired workers, etc., or in his corporate work, "Mom-fluentials." Even if the category is firmly defined, and even if it is a "swing" category, that form of analysis rests on two other assumptions: That almost all other demographic categories are not swingable, and that the electorate cannot be expanded -- that is, that non-voters cannot be made voters. But neither assumption is justified: As I argued last fall, Karl Rove showed that the Republican base could be expanded, and so can the Democratic base, and in 2006, virtually every demographic category increased its Democratic vote significantly. To define a particular group as key is to deny those other possibilities, and in doing so, leads to a particular narrowing brand of politics focused exclusively on the concerns of the group defined as "key," which in Penn's case is reliably the upper half of the middle class.

In fact, when elections are as tight as they have been recently, any group can be defined as "key." It doesn't have to be a 50/50 swing vote group. In fact, in 2002, when Penn argued that "office-park dads" (white suburban men 25-64) are "the key swing voter that the party needs in order to win the next election," he was actually highlighting a reliably Republican group, acknowledging that, "Democrats don't need to win office park dads outright...We just need to fight for our share." Sure, but using that kind of logic, any group can be declared the "key swing voter": white evangelicals, atheists, F-You Boys, unmarried women, union members or non-union members, etc. A group voting 10% Democratic could go to 20%; a group voting 80% Democratic could go to 90. The choice is entirely arbitrary.

And that fact proves Ari Berman's conclusion that Penn's choice of categories has little to do with the actual data and everything to do with his presumptions going in -- populism doesn't work, don't criticize corporations -- which in turn have a delightfully precise correspondence with the interests of the clients of the firm of which Penn is Worldwide President and CEO. And that's why neither Senator Clinton, the people with good sense in her campaign, labor leaders or other Democrats should accept lobbyist Howard Paster's explanation to Berman that Penn's corporate and anti-union clientele is "part of a whole 'nother life we lead."

Damage Control!!!!

Whew!! That didn't take long.
Clinton responds on Blackwater (http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1007/Clinton_responds_on_Blackwater.html)

From communications director Howard Wolfson:

Mark Penn did no work on the Blackwater account. Burson has cut its ties to Blackwater, and that was the right thing to do. Mark is and remains a valuable member of our team. Sen. Clinton believes Blackwater must be held accountable for its actions and has laid out a detailed proposal to sharply reduce the number of contractors employed by the federal government by 500,000. She has repeatedly stated her concern that such contractors are not as accountable as federal employees.


From the Penn, Schoen and Berland website:

Crisis Management (http://www.psbresearch.com/how_crisis_management.htm)

Over the last three decades, PSB has advised Fortune 500 CEOs and heads of state through some of the highest profile political and corporate crises around the world. Through that experience we have developed a highly efficient crisis management process for using research to ensure that every move you make, during times when even the smallest move matters, will be the most effective. Our crisis management process involves three basic steps:

1. Before the Crisis, we use our proprietary war gaming research to project how a potential crisis might arise and what impact it will have, and then to play out how events will unfold differently depending on what responsive strategy we use.

2. During the Heat of the Crisis, we conduct flash polls of the key audiences to determine how well we are standing up to the negative messaging and how we need to continue evolving our response in light of how things are unfolding. This is the defense phase of crisis work.

3. In the Aftermath of the Crisis, we work on rehabilitation – that is, moving onto offense to recapture any ground we have lost.

The net impact is a crisis management process that helps you manage your way through the events and recover from them as quickly as possible.

Watch them in action...

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Each day, elected and regulatory officials make decisions that could jeopardize a company's or industry's competitiveness or complicate a non-profit foundation's mission. Burson-Marsteller's Public Affairs professionals serve as trusted advisors to our clients, helping them build reputations and influence in the world's power centers, as well as navigate intensive, short-term policy battles. Our global Public Affairs network has the people, relationships, and expertise to help our clients achieve their public policy and business objectives by shaping the decision-making process -- in state capitals across the United States, Washington, D.C., Brussels, and other major capitals around the world.

Our approach integrates the best of traditional public relations and public education with state-of-the-art digital communications tools to deliver the right message, through the right messenger, to the right people, at the right time. We make your story personally relevant and compelling to each targeted audience segment, and we win the competition for that audience's hearts and minds by reaching them multiple times, through multiple "trusted sources." We deliver against your business goals and gauge our performance based on metrics consistent with those goals.

Our strategic thinking, our relationships with influentials, and our unparalleled execution of public affairs campaigns have been tapped by a wide range of clients, including industry and professional associations, corporations, nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations, and government agencies. For more information on our Public Affairs specialties, please visit our Government and Energy pages.

Our network: built on our people

Burson-Marsteller's global Public Affairs network is built on the experience of our seasoned communications professionals, many of whom have served in high-level government capacities at the local, state, and national levels, or in the news media. In cities around the globe, our people are well-connected with traditional influencers, including government officials and operatives, influential journalists, and non-governmental organizations. At the same time, our professionals are well-versed in influencing online influencers, an essential component to almost any winning public affairs strategy.

Areas of expertise: an integrated public affairs approach

Burson-Marsteller's Public Affairs professionals know that a successful campaign is about more than media clippings and Web site hits; it is about driving desired behavior. We leverage the right combination of communications tools to educate and motivate each target audience, and we integrate them into a seamless whole campaign with greater impact than the sum of its parts. Our areas of expertise span both "off-line" and online communications, and include:

* Public education
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So, whether it's introducing the redesigned U.S. currency around the world, repositioning Hong Kong as a global city, or explaining energy deregulation to every consumer in Texas, Burson-Marsteller knows how to design and execute successful public education and social-marketing campaigns for public- and private-sector clients. For examples of these campaigns and more, please take a look at our case studies.

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* Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates − With almost 30 years of research-based market and political experience, Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates is a leading research and strategic communications firm that brings the lessons learned on the campaign trail into the boardroom, providing its clients with strategic, actionable recommendations to help them win in the most competitive situations.

Interactive Reputation Management

Media is transforming. For many years, commercial and print media were the main medium for public communications. Today, new technologies and the rise of user-generated media (UGM) is creating an increasingly complex communications environment, and one in which the individual voice is increasingly amplified and trusted. Meanwhile, the corporate voice is struggling to remain relevant and be heard.

Burson-Marsteller advises companies and governmental organisations on how to understand and adapt to this challenging new communications environment, and develops communications strategies that take into account the increasing importance of UGM and its varying relationships with traditional media and wider audiences. We help organizations adapt in an environment where not participating has greater risks than participating.


* Online monitoring: tracking, analysing and reporting online conversations about your company or brand; providing early warning about potential issues

* Online research: online corporate and consumer research, polling and testing; identifying online influencers and e-fluentials

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"Well yes, the Penn story is important but it would, indeed, be unfair to infer from it that all Democrats are somehow implicated in or by it."

That's true. There is an alternative - lose. There is another alternative, as well - take this to the people and relentlessly demand radical and far-reaching reform.

The Clinton defenders, besides the usual "you are trying to smear my candidate and are helping the Republicans" bs and other inanities, like claiming that this is irrelvant or a distraction, are saying things like this:

"Good I am glad we have a Rove on 'our' side."

"This is the way the game is played."

They are right about this being the way the game is played. The way the game is played is the problem.

This is not so much a matter of Clinton hiring a sleazy adviser. This is more like big and corrupt corporate interests hiring Clinton as their front person. Penn, on behalf of his clients, is calling the shots in the Clinton phenomenon, not Clinton, and by extension calling the shoits for the Democratic party and for all of us, as well. There is one big tail wagging a very small dog here.

Penn is creating Clinton, and artifically manufacturing the support for her or the illusion of support, he isn't advising her. Penn and his cohorts have defined and circumscribed the political discussion in the entire country for years. Clinton is a front for powerful interests - Penn makes and breaks her, not the other way around - and those powerful interests are deceiving the public in an orchestrated campaign of manipulation, and have their slimy hands into every soical problem we are supposedly trying to change.

Triangulation, phony and manipulated polls that allegedly show support for pro-corporate and centrist policies, the whole "soccer mom" and "security mom" bullshit, pandering to racism and right wing extremism, the total unwillingness on the part of Dems to confront the right wing extremists in the government, selling out the people again and again with pro-corporate legislation - all of this was authored by Penn and his group, made up from whole cloth for the purpose of deceiving all of us.

This is not similar to an attorney, who takes on the defense of a sleazy client. This is not similar to "making a mistake" and hiring a campaign worker with a checkered past.

That gets to the heart of what is wrong not merely with the Clinton candidacy, but with the party and with the country as well.

I don't think that is necessarily an indictment of the entire Democratic party. But it will be, and is, until and unless this festering cancer of corruption and deception and manipulation is acknowledged and excised.

Fair or unfair? This whole sleazy mess is so grossly unfair to the American people that I can't see how we would worry much about it being fair or unfair to this or that politician who is in bed with this mess - which all must be if they are not to die and see their careers end, or are not willing to confront this courageously and honestly and fight on behalf of the American people.

This is the way the game is played. This is the way you win the game. This is how the illusion of public support for Clinton was manufactured, that is tied into the massive corporate funding of the Clinton candidacy - money that goes to Penn to further manipulate and deceive the public. Penn and his associates are avowed and unapologetic and highly paid masters at doing exactly this - corrupt and deceptive manipulation of the public, the media and governments - that stops at nothing.

If your candidate does not want to play this game to win, the way the game is played, your candidate will lose or be shut out from the public.

It is not like Clinton hired the wrong hair dresser. Clinton might as well work for the people Penn represents. Oh sure there is all sorts of nonsense double-talk to disguise that - all part of the PR effort.

This is "winning." This is where the "I don't care as long as they have a D after their name" and "it is all about winning" thinking inevitably leads us - into a cess pool of unprincipled destruction of everything we care about.

Will Edwards, or someone else, rise to the challenge? If they do, will they be destroyed? Would we stand with a politican who did confront this? Or will Edwards lose, or try to play the game and compete with Clinton? Can he compete without either playing the game and becoming just as corrupt and ineffective as Clinton, or instead taking a courageous stand against the big money control over our lives? Are we going to be so naive that we still cherish the illusion that there is some honorable and effective middle ground, or some way to play the game and win without selling out the people?

How naive and foolish are we going to be? How much do we care?

It is the way the game is played that is the problem. Who will stand against that?

Are we really going to be so naive and foolish as to think that Penn works for Clinton? That would be like inviting the Mafia into your small business to "advise" you, while all of your money came from Mafia connections and without which you would be nothing and HAVE no business. Sure, Penn nominally works for Clinton. But he isn't advising the Clinton campaign, he is creating it. That is what his business is all about, what he brags about being able to do, what he has made millions and millions of dollars doing for every sort of right wing death squad regime, for every slimy corporate enterprise. Where does the money come from that Clinton "pays" Penn with? Mostly from Penn's trusted and intimate corporate connections. Why are corporations pouring money into Clinton's coffers? Because they have a "made guy" on the inside, that is why. What is that money buying? It is buying a shill to advance the agenda of Penn's clients.

Clinton is beholden to Penn, not the other way around. Clinton needs Penn, not the other way around. What employement situation have you ever been in where you held 100 times more power than your boss?

Still want to "win?" Still want to be "reality based" and know how to play the game? Are you inside or outside the party? Still think that our paltry efforts, all based on a false view of the political landsacape that is being manufactured for us through deception and manipulation, can "reform tjhe party from within?" Still want to cozy up to the winners?

Until and unless people emerge in the party ready to tackle this in a radical and courageous way, here is who you are cozying up to, supporting, promoting and defending:

* The Nigerian government during the Biafran war, to discredit reports of genocide.

* The fascist junta that ruled Argentina during the 70's and early 80's, to attract foreign investment.

* The totalitarian regime of South Korea, to whitewash the human rights situation there during the 1988 Olympics.

* The Indonesian government, which got into power through a CIA- sponsored bloodbath. (It should be pointed out, however, that B-M denies that it is handling the issue of genocide in East Timor)

* Ideological barriers are no object. B-M also represented the late communist Romanian despot Nicolae Ceaucescu.

* Other third world human rights violators that have been represented by B-M include the governments of Singapore and Sri Lanka.

* Babcock & Wilcox, when its nuclear power plant in Three Mile Island had its famous mishap in 1979.

* Union Carbide, to handle the public relations crisis caused by the Bhopal tragedy in 1984.

* Exxon, to counter the negative press coverage it got in the wake of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in 1989.

* Ontario Hydro, an industrial concern, headed by Earth Summit secretary general Maurice Strong, which is the biggest source of CO2 emissions in Canada. This corporation is currently selling nuclear reactors to Argentina and Chile.

* Erik Prince and the other Republican luminaries at the helm of the world's largest and best armed and richest and best connected private, for-profit army, they know they have a problem.

* Three days after 9/11 the government of Saudi Arabia called Burson-Marsteller.

* The government of Indonesia, accused of genocide in East Timor? Quick, someone look up the number for Burson-Marsteller.

* Malaysian Timber Industry Development Council - has felled vast areas of tropical rainforest, particularly in the states of Sarawak and Sabah, threatening the livelihoods of the indigenous peoples who lived there. BM has been hired to "repel falsehood and lies spread by evil-minded environmentalists."

* Kerr McGee - owners of a uranium mine in the Navajo Nation, New Mexico. Accused of paying low wages and not informing the workers about the hazardous effects of uranium. Deaths are being recorded every month.

* Monsanto and Eli Lilly - both companies produce the growth hormone BST to increase milk yields in cattle. It has been criticised for risk of infection in the cows, the fact that there is already a milk surplus, and unknown effects of this hormone on human beings. Acting on this concern, state legislators in Wisconsin, Minnesota, California and Vermont attempted to enforce labelling of milk produced with, and containing, this hormone. Their efforts were thwarted by Burson-Marsteller acting on behalf of these companies.

* The Louisiana-Pacific (L-P) logging company, famous for its union- busting, clear cutting of old growth forests and support for anti- environmental front groups. L-P hopes to convince its employees and the public that ruralunemployment in North America is caused by environmental extremists and opressive government regulation and not by unsustainable logging practices or the relocation of s awmills to low-wage countries like Mexico.

* B-M formed the British Columbia Forest Alliance (BCFA), a Canadian front group which has L-P among its founding members. BCFA is campaigning against restrictions on logging and is actively work ing to smear and discredit environmentalists. Other BCFA members include Mitsubishi and Weyerhaueser.

* B-M is a key player in the nuclear industry lobby. According to Canadian journalist Joyce Nelson, B-M has for years "represented top nuclear power/nuclear weapons contractors such as General Electric, AT&T, McDonnell Douglas, Asea Brown Boveri and Du Pont. In fact, Canada's first Candu [nuclear] reactor sale to Argentina in the early 1970's was later renegotiated during the reign of the military junta, for whom Burson-Marsteller did an image-cleanup from 1976-1981". In addition to this, since 1993 B-M subsidiary Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly (see sidebar) has been representing Nordion International, a newly-privatised subsidiary of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., Canada's state-owned nuclear power company.

* B-M coordinated the oil industry's campaign to discredit and destroy president Clinton's proposal for a BTU tax.

* A B-M executive sits on the board of Keep America Beautiful, a front for the packaging and waste hauling industries that lobbies against mandatory recycling laws, especially the passage of a national bottle bill in the US.

* B-M's most powerful and influential 'environmental' client is the Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD), an eco-capitalist outfit founded by Swiss banker Stephan Schmidheiny. A leading theorist and advocate of neoliberal dogma and corporate environmentalism, Schmidheiny agressively combines entrepreneurship and statesmanship. He is a board member of NestlE9, and a director and shareholder (5% owner) of B-M client Asea Brown Boveri. BCSD's original task was to act behind the scenes at the 1992 Earth Summit, which was chaired by the current head of B-M client Ontario Hydro Maurice Strong, to neutralize and silence any voices critical of the irresponsible behavior of polluting corporations. In the words of Joyce Nelson, "With the able assistance of public relations giant Burson-Marsteller, a very elite group of business people (including B-M itself) was seemingly able to plan the agenda for the Earth Summit with little interference from NGO's or government leader s". Nowadays BCSD is advocating free markets and unfettered corporate activity as the only salvation of the environment. Its members include the CEO's of Asea Brown Boveri, Browning Ferris Industries, Ciba-Geigy, Dow Chemical, DuPont, BCFA member Mitsubishi, Maurice Strong's Ontario Hydro, Royal Dutch-Shell, and companies from Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Spain, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Thailand and Venezuela.

* B-M has plenty of experience in matters of public health. On behalf of client Philip Morris, B-M created the National Smokers' Alliance (NSA) to fight against smoking restrictions. According to John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, the NSA "is a state-of-the-art campaign that uses full- page newspaper ads, direct telemarketing, paid canvassers, (toll free) numbers and newsletters to bring thousands of smokers into its ranks each week.

* Last week, Mr. Schoen, of Penn, Schoen & Berland, released the findings of his latest survey on the Venezuelan evening news. As expected, Penn's survey showed that Chavez's opposition, Manuel Rosales, was nearly tied in the polls with Chavez. Chavez, it showed, had only 48% support, and his opponent Manuel Rosales had gained significantly up to 42%. This poll is now being reported across all the major Venezuelan media, to a huge audience, showing that Rosales was gaining more and more everyday, and could possibly win. Mr. Schoen added his personal opinion, "The momentum is clearly with Rosales."

* It is telling to compare the web sites of Penn, Schoen and Berland and that of Greenberg's firm, Greenberg, Quinlan & Rosner: Both firms do plenty of work that is proprietary, and both have corporate clients. But Greenberg's site is full of actual data -- the link above goes to a page with 192 reports on U.S. politics, eleven since the beginning of this year alone! Penn's site has nothing; a link to "read samples of our thinking" goes to a page with links to those same data-free op-eds!

This is the way "the game is played." Still want to "win?" Still want to play?

Dozens and dozens of everyday non-political people I am showing this too are intensely interested, and you know how hard it is to get everyday people interested in politics. They immediately understand the implications, both politically and morally.

Yet political people are deathly afraid of this. "Truth" movement people and conspiracy theorists won't touch it, though one would think it has all of the drama, intrigue, and nuance they seem to crave, because it is a real conspiracy and makes thier little fantasies look childish in comparison. True blue Dems and Clinton supporters are desperately trying to prevent us going down the path this information leads us. Republicans are afraid of this, because if the public starts seeing the way the game is played the Republican party will be toast.

I think the reason that people don't want to touch this, why so few are willing to see and acknowledge the implications, is because this is not merely about "the way the game is played" in power cirles or in the government, but rather this is the way the game is played everywhere in all of our personal lives.

Every day, in every thing we do we have the same three choices: lose; make a deal with the devil; risk our lives for what is right.

That is what people are trying to avoid.

Mike, if BPs not around I can post this stuff for you on DU

Mike, if BPs not around I can post this stuff for you on DU

Oh yeah, that'll sound natural.

http://www.queermusicheritage.us/DRAG/BigDrag368.jpg

I hadn't looked upthread.

You're a real stinker, Mike. But a convenient one.

Modify, combine, add lots of your own commentary, post in a different order as appropriate, make into more than one thread, post on existing threads.

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Pauli Cannoli (http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/)
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Pharyngula (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/)
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PolitCalypso (http://www.politicalypso.com/)
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Washington Monthly (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/)
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Political Wire (http://www.politicalwire.com/)
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Pop!Litics! (http://poplitics.blogspot.com/)
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Psychopolitik (http://www.psychopolitik.com/)
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Reliable Politics (http://www.reliablepolitics.com/)
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Ripples of Hope (http://www.natthedem.com/blog/)
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Senate 2008 Guru (http://senate2008guru.blogspot.com/)
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Shakesville (http://www.shakesville.com/)
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Skeptico (http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/)
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Straight, Not Narrow (http://straightnotnarrow.blogspot.com/)
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Talking Points Memo (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/)
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Terry Michael (http://www.terrymichael.net/)
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The Art of Peace (http://theartofpeace.blogspot.com/index.html)
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The Blue State (http://thebluestate.typepad.com/)
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The Cloud Community (http://www.2angels.net/2_angels_links.htm)
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The Colette (http://www.thecoletteblog.blogspot.com/)
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The Daily Dish (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/)
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The Daily Spectator (http://www.mooreonsports.typepad.com/the_daily_spectator/)
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The Fine Art of Me (http://lindseywb.net/blog/)
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The Impolitic (http://theimpolitic.blogspot.com/)
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The Liberal Gambler (http://theliberalgambler.com/WordPress/)
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The Liberal Journal (http://liberaljournal.blogspot.com/)
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The Mahablog (http://www.mahablog.com/)
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The Moderate Voice (http://www.themoderatevoice.com/)
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The Panda's Thumb (http://www.pandasthumb.org/)
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The Repubic of T (http://www.republicoft.com/)
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The Unofficial Kerry Blog (http://kerryblog.blogspot.com/)
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The Xsociate Files (http://xsofiles.blogspot.com/)
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Think Progress (http://thinkprogress.org/)
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Tough Enough (http://toughenough.org/)
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Uncommon Sense (http://ucsense.blogspot.com/)
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Watergate Summer (http://watergatesummer.blogspot.com/)
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We Love John Kerry (http://www.welovejohnkerry.com/)
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Mike, if BPs not around I can post this stuff for you on DU

Oh yeah, that'll sound natural.

http://www.queermusicheritage.us/DRAG/BigDrag368.jpg

How did you know what I look like, anyway?

Mike DU uses a different code for lists than what you had, so I corrected that in the first post you put up. I'll try and post the others as the thread sinks.

It wasn't real noticeable but here is the post with the corrected list code:


Spinning Hillary Centrist

From Sourcewatch (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Burson-Marsteller)

In May, 2007, the Nation magazine ran an insightful article into the relationship between Burson-Marsteller's top executive world-wide, Mark Penn, and Hillary Clinton. "As Hillary Clinton charges toward the Democratic nomination for President, her campaign has a coterie of influential advisers. ... But perhaps the most important figure in the campaign is her pollster and chief strategist, Mark Penn, a combative workaholic. ... Yet Penn is no ordinary pollster. Beyond his connections to the Clintons, he not only polls for America's biggest companies but also runs one of the world's premier PR agencies ."

From Spinning Hillary Centrist, The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070521/berman), Ari Berman...

Burson-Marsteller is hardly a natural fit for a prominent Democrat. The firm has represented everyone from the Argentine military junta to Union Carbide after the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India, in which thousands were killed when toxic fumes were released by one of its plants, to Royal Dutch Shell, which has been accused of massive human rights violations in Nigeria. B-M pioneered the use of pseudo-grassroots front groups, known as "astroturfing," to wage stealth corporate attacks against environmental and consumer organizations. It set up the National Smokers Alliance on behalf of Philip Morris to fight tobacco regulation in the early 1990s. Its current clients include major players in the finance, pharmaceutical and energy industries. In 2006, with Penn at the helm, the company gave 57 percent of its campaign contributions to Republican candidates.

A host of prominent Republicans fall under Penn's purview. B-M's Washington lobbying arm, BKSH & Associates, is run by Charlie Black, a leading GOP operative who maintains close ties to the White House, including Karl Rove, and was former partners with Lee Atwater, the political consultant who crafted the Willie Horton smear campaign used by George H.W. Bush against Michael Dukakis in 1988. Black regularly disparages the Clintons; he has called Hillary a "martyr figure" and said Bill "tearfully embraced...government preferences for [a]homosexual lifestyle." In recent years Black's clients have included the likes of Iraq's Ahmad Chalabi, the darling of the neocon right in the run-up to the war; Lockheed Martin; and Occidental Petroleum. In the summer of 2005 he landed a contract with the Lincoln Group, the disgraced PR firm that covertly placed US military propaganda in Iraqi news outlets. The agreement, according to Intelligence Online, allowed the Lincoln Group to "tap into BKSH's extensive contacts in the Republican administration." When asked by The New Yorker if there was too much cronyism in Iraq, Black responded, "I just wish I could find the cronies."

As expected with such a lineup, B-M has a highly confrontational relationship with organized labor. "Companies cannot be caught unprepared by Organized Labor's coordinated campaigns," read the "Labor Relations" section of its website (until it was scrubbed after Mark Schmitt of The American Prospect quoted the language in March). It consults frequently with George Washington University professor Jarol Manheim, author of The Death of a Thousand Cuts: Corporate Campaigns and the Attack on the Corporation and Biz-War and the Out-of-Power Elite: The Progressive-Left Attack on the Corporation. And it lends help to [b]some of the most controversial union-busting efforts in America.

...

Back in 2003 two large unions, UNITE (which later merged with HERE, the hotel and restaurant union) and the Teamsters, launched a major drive to organize 32,000 garment workers and truck drivers at Cintas, the country's largest and most profitable uniform and laundry supply company. Its longtime CEO, Richard Farmer, was a mega-fundraising "pioneer" for George W. Bush. Despite posting $3.4 billion in sales and $327 million in profits last year, the company had a record of overcharging consumers, denying workers overtime pay, keeping unsafe working conditions (an employee in Tulsa died recently when caught in a 300-degree drier) and using any means necessary to block the union drive. Management fired employees under false pretenses, according to worker complaints documented by the unions; vowed to close plants; and screened anti-union videos. A plant manager in Vista, California, threatened to "kick driver-employees with his steel-toed boots," according to a complaint UNITE HERE filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). To put a soft face on its harsh tactics, Cintas hired Wade Gates, a top employee in B-M's Dallas office, as its chief spokesman. Gates coined Cintas's shrewd response to labor: "the right to say yes, the freedom to say no," which has been repeated endlessly in the press. In a speech at the USC Gould School of Law last year, Gates outlined Cintas's strategy, calling for an "aggressive defense against union tactics." Says Ahmer Qadeer, an organizer for UNITE HERE: "It's the Burson influence that's made Cintas much, much slicker than they were." The unions have won two NLRB rulings against Cintas, but for four years the company has continued to resist the organizing campaign.

Link: Spinning Hillary Centrist, The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070521/berman)

Burson-Marsteller
From Sourcewatch (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Burson-Marsteller)...

Burson-Marsteller is the world's fifth largest PR company (Source: Council of PR Firms, 2002) and part of the WPP Group. According to a 2004 profile in The Hill, a Washington, DC newspaper, "This multinational PR behemoth has an active public-affairs practice led by Richard Mintz, who ran the media shop at the Department of Transportation during the Clinton administration. He also served as staff director for Hillary Clinton during the 1992 campaign. B-M has won awards recently for its work for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the "No on Proposition 54" campaign in California. Its public-affairs practice is bolstered by its affiliation with Direct Impact (grassroots marketing) and BKSH & Associates (lobbying)."

...

In April 2005, Jack O'Dwyer's Newsletter reported that Burson-Marsteller had joined with Quinn Gillespie & Associates to launch 360 Advantage, a public affairs shop filled with "key players in George W. Bush's successful presidential campaigns."

360 Advantage is headed by Russ Schriefer, who did advertising with the Bush/Cheney 2000 and 2004 campaigns and produced the 2004 Republican National Convention, and by Stuart Stevens, a "Bush adman and veteran political strategist." Schriefer and Stevens were also partners in the Stevens & Schriefer Group in Washington, DC, and have worked on presidential campaigns in the Czech Republic, Nigeria, the Philippines and Congo (Jack O'Dwyer's Newletter, Vol. 38, No. 17, April 27, 2005).

Burson-Marsteller, Sourcewatch (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Burson-Marsteller)

More from Spinning Hillary Centrist, The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070521/berman), Ari Berman...:

Every election cycle Penn discovers a new group of swing voters--"soccer moms," "wired workers," "office park dads"--who happen to be the key to the election and believe the same thing: "Outdated appeals to class grievances and attacks upon corporate perfidy only alienate new consistencies and ring increasingly hollow," Penn has written. Through his longtime association with the Democratic Leadership Council, Penn has been pushing pro-corporate centrism for years. Many of the same companies that underwrite the DLC, such as Eli Lilly, AT&T, Texaco and Microsoft, also happen to be clients of Penn's.

...

Yet despite occupying such a divisive place in the Democratic Party and outsized role in the corporate world--and despite his company's close ties to Republican political operatives and the Bush White House--Penn remains a leading figure in Hillary's campaign, pitching the inevitability of her nomination to donors and party bigwigs. According to the New York Times, "[Hillary] Clinton responds to Penn's points with exclamations like, Oh, Mark, what a smart thing to say!" Politically, his presence means that triangulation is alive and well inside the campaign and that despite her populist forays, Hillary won't stray too far from the center. "Penn has a lot of influence on her, no doubt about it," says New York political consultant Hank Sheinkopf, who worked with Penn in '96. "He's not going to let her drift too far left."

More about Burson-Marsteller (http://home.intekom.com/tm_info/ge_bm.htm):

The public relations business is one of the fastest growing industries in the global market economy. In order to face perils like labor unions, organized consumer activists and environmental groups, governments and corporations have come to rely more on slick PR campaigns. The peril to popular democracy posed by PR firms should not be underestimated. Using the latest communications technologies and polling techniques, as well as an array of high-level political connections, PR flacks routinely "manage" issues for government and corporate clients and "package" them for public consumption. The result is a "democracy" in which citizens are turned into passive receptacles of "disinfotainment" and "advertorials" and in which critics of the status quo are defined as ignorant meddlers and/or dangerous outsiders.

...

On the human rights front, B-M has represented some of the worst violators of our age. These include:
[li]The Nigerian government during the Biafran war, to discredit reports of genocide.

[li]The fascist junta that ruled Argentina during the 70's and early 80's, to attract foreign investment.

[li]The totalitarian regime of South Korea, to whitewash the human rights situation there during the 1988 Olympics.

[li]The Indonesian government, which got into power through a CIA- sponsored bloodbath. (It should be pointed out, however, that B-M denies that it is handling the issue of genocide in East Timor)

[li]Ideological barriers are no object. B-M also represented the late communist Romanian despot Nicolae Ceaucescu.

[li]Other third world human rights violators that have been represented by B-M include the governments of Singapore and Sri Lanka.


Doesn't this bother the consciences of B-M's executives? Not at all. Commenting on his firm's work for Argentina's fascists, B-M founder Harold Burson said that "We regard ourselves as working in the business sector for clearcut business and economic objectives. So we had nothing to do with a lot of the things that one reads in the paper about Argentina as regards human rights and other activities".

...


For years B-M has been involved in major environmental issues all over the world, not hesitating to give polluters a helping hand when confronted by activist groups and/or government regulations. Many transnational corporations have turned to B-M for help in the creation of a pedantic, elitist and corporate-oriented brand of environmentalism. It is the hope of entrepreneurial sectors and neoliberal demagogues that this type of safe and harmless environmental activism will displace the more militant and agressive grassroots groups.

B-M's environmental services have benefited industrial polluters, such as the following:

[li]Babcock & Wilcox, when its nuclear power plant in Three Mile Island had its famous mishap in 1979.

[li]Union Carbide, to handle the public relations crisis caused by the Bhopal tragedy in 1984.

[li]Exxon, to counter the negative press coverage it got in the wake of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in 1989.

[li]Ontario Hydro, an industrial concern, headed by Earth Summit secretary general Maurice Strong, which is the biggest source of CO2 emissions in Canada. This corporation is currently selling nuclear reactors to Argentina and Chile.

[li]The Louisiana-Pacific (L-P) logging company, famous for its union- busting, clear cutting of old growth forests and support for anti- environmental front groups. L-P hopes to convince its employees and the public that ruralunemployment in North America is caused by environmental extremists and opressive government regulation and not by unsustainable logging practices or the relocation of s awmills to low-wage countries like Mexico.

[li]B-M formed the British Columbia Forest Alliance (BCFA), a Canadian front group which has L-P among its founding members. BCFA is campaigning against restrictions on logging and is actively work ing to smear and discredit environmentalists. Other BCFA members include Mitsubishi and Weyerhaueser.

[li]B-M is a key player in the nuclear industry lobby. According to Canadian journalist Joyce Nelson, B-M has for years "represented top nuclear power/nuclear weapons contractors such as General Electric, AT&T, McDonnell Douglas, Asea Brown Boveri and Du Pont. In fact, Canada's first Candu [nuclear] reactor sale to Argentina in the early 1970's was later renegotiated during the reign of the military junta, for whom Burson-Marsteller did an image-cleanup from 1976-1981". In addition to this, since 1993 B-M subsidiary Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly (see sidebar) has been representing Nordion International, a newly-privatised subsidiary of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., Canada's state-owned nuclear power company.

[li]B-M coordinated the oil industry's campaign to discredit and destroy president Clinton's proposal for a BTU tax.

[li]A B-M executive sits on the board of Keep America Beautiful, a front for the packaging and waste hauling industries that lobbies against mandatory recycling laws, especially the passage of a national bottle bill in the US.

[li]B-M's most powerful and influential 'environmental' client is the Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD), an eco-capitalist outfit founded by Swiss banker Stephan Schmidheiny. A leading theorist and advocate of neoliberal dogma and corporate environmentalism, Schmidheiny agressively combines entrepreneurship and statesmanship. He is a board member of NestlE9, and a director and shareholder (5% owner) of B-M client Asea Brown Boveri. BCSD's original task was to act behind the scenes at the 1992 Earth Summit, which was chaired by the current head of B-M client Ontario Hydro Maurice Strong, to neutralize and silence any voices critical of the irresponsible behavior of polluting corporations. In the words of Joyce Nelson, "With the able assistance of public relations giant Burson-Marsteller, a very elite group of business people (including B-M itself) was seemingly able to plan the agenda for the Earth Summit with little interference from NGO's or government leader s". Nowadays BCSD is advocating free markets and unfettered corporate activity as the only salvation of the environment. Its members include the CEO's of Asea Brown Boveri, Browning Ferris Industries, Ciba-Geigy, Dow Chemical, DuPont, BCFA member Mitsubishi, Maurice Strong's Ontario Hydro, Royal Dutch-Shell, and companies from Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Spain, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Thailand and Venezuela.


BURSON-MARSTELLER: PR FOR THE NEW WORLD ORDER (http://home.intekom.com/tm_info/ge_bm.htm)
Carmelo Ruiz

Destroying Health Care (http://home.intekom.com/tm_info/ge_bm.htm)

American and Canadian pharmaceutical and insurance companies that want to crack open the Canadian market are frustrated by the fact that Canadians are very happy with their health care system. Worse yet, more and more Americans, especially in Vermont, are now calling for the introduction of single-payer health insurance in their country--a step in the direction of a Canadian-style system. This presents a grave problem for neoliberal demagogues, since it exposes the basic conflict between capitalism and democracy.

Enter Burson-Marsteller's health care unit, whose staff includes "a medical doctor/physician; former FDA (Food and Drug Administration) commissioner; former hospital administrator; former pharmaceutical communications executives; former non-profit communications chiefs; grassroots specialists, and former reporters" according to the senior editor of O'Dwyer's newsletter, which monitors the PR business.

B-M has plenty of experience in matters of public health. On behalf of client Philip Morris, B-M created the National Smokers' Alliance (NSA) to fight against smoking restrictions. According to John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, the NSA "is a state-of-the-art campaign that uses full- page newspaper ads, direct telemarketing, paid canvassers, (toll free) numbers and newsletters to bring thousands of smokers into its ranks each week. By 1995 NSA claimed a membership of 3 million smokers". The NSA is headed by B-M vice-president Thomas Humber and its members include B-M executives Pierre Salinger and Kennetz Rietz, as well as Peter Kelly, senior partner of B-M subsidiary Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly (see sidebar). In addition to this, B-M was hired by the A.H. Robbins company when its Dalkon Shield IUD contraceptive injured thousands of women who used it, and it is now currently promoting the 'virtues' of Eli Lilly's anti-depressant wonder drug Prozac.

Selling NAFTA

In 1990 the Mexican government hired B-M to sell NAFTA to the American public, media and politicians. B-M subcontracted this job to one of its subsidiaries, The Brock Group (TBG), a consulting firm that has done work for American Express, Bell Atlantic, Bacardi, Toyota and the Taiwanese government. TBG is headed by former senator, Republican National Committee chairman, US trade representative and labor secretary William Brock. He was certainly qualified for the job. As US trade representative, Brock engineered the Caribbean Basin Initiative and the US-Israel Free Trade Agreement, and began the negotiations that would eventually culminate in the signing of the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement.

William Brock co-chairs the Multilateral Trade Negotiations (MTN) Coalition, which was founded in 1990 to 'educate' the public-- and lobby for--the now-completed Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The coalition's members include American Express, General Motors, IBM, General Electric, Cargill, Citicorp, Procter & Gamble and other companies and trade associations. According to Malaysian activist Martin Khor Kok Peng, the MTN Coalition had a big influence on the 1990 G-7 Summit meeting held in Houston, USA, in which GATT figured prominently. At the Houston Summit, MTN held a high- profile press conference and released a report by an 'eminent persons group' on world trade.

Oh, yes. I forgot. DU uses proprietary code in keeping with the theme of the corporatization and privatization of the Democratic party. I wonder if that clever brand name - "Democratic Underground" - came from the offices of Mark Penn and Associates?

Oh, yes. I forgot. DU uses proprietary code in keeping with the theme of the corporatization and privatization of the Democratic party. I wonder if that clever brand name - "Democratic Underground" - came from the offices of Mark Penn and Associates?

Haha

The Mark Penn story isn't getting alot of response other than the usual indignation and venom from the lowest grade true believers. Although some of them could be plants too..

http://www.arguewitheveryone.com/genera ... icans.html (http://www.arguewitheveryone.com/general-political-discussion/11256-better-than-republicans.html)

I dunno, those people seem more interested in pissing on each other.