Congress, Criminal law, Free Speech, Justice, Politics, Society

The Smell of Corporatist Fear, Smells Just Like . . . a Lobbyist Memo

Submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger

UPDATED: Newton’s Third Law of Motion is commonly expressed by the phrase “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”.  The action in question is the Occupy Wall Street Movement.  The reaction in question is fear.

Huffington Post obtained a copy of a memo being sent by high-powered Washington lobbying firm Clark, Lytle, Geduldig, Cranford to one of its major Wall Street clients over Thanksgiving.  Previously unnamed, it has been revealed that the major Wall Street client in question is the American Bankers Association.   The four page memo was first revealed by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, host of the show “Up with Chris Hayes“.  The first two paragraphs of the memo are indicative of the mood and probably sets the tone for what many in the lobbying industry are having to admit as an inconvenient truth.   Namely the truth that the OWS Movement is gaining traction for their cause and doing so in such a way that politicians are eventually going to be forced to put on the appearance of action in bringing the criminals on Wall Street to justice if not actually bring them to justice.  The fear on behalf of the lobbyists and their Wall Street clients is palpable.

The first two paragraphs of the Thanksgiving Memo read as follows:

Leading Democratic party strategists have begun to openly discuss the benefits of embracing the growing and increasingly organized Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement to prevent Republican gains in Congress and the White House next year. We have seen this process of adopting extreme positions and movements to increase base voter turnout, including in the 2005-2006 immigration debate. This would mean more than just short-term discomfort for Wall Street firms. If vilifying the leading companies of this sector is allowed to become an unchallenged centerpiece of a coordinated Democratic campaign, it has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye.

It shouldn’t be surprising that the Democratic party or even President Obama’s re-election team would campaign against Wall Street in this cycle. However the bigger concern should be that Republicans will no longer defend Wall Street companies — and might start running against them too.

While phrased in partisan terms, the memo is possibly indicative of not just fear on behalf of Wall Street and their K Street cohorts, but rather recognizes that the problems created by not bringing to justice those who wrecked our domestic economy and nearly wrecked the global economy with their unfettered greed and massive systemic fraud is growing to ultra-partisan proportions.  Consider the words of Joshua Stephens, a participant in OWS New York City, who said “The danger is not whether or not politicians will defend these institutions. My fear wouldn’t be that.  My fear would be that the politicians that come to their aid will be increasingly irrelevant…That’s the real threat and that’s where things are going.”  OWS is serving as a wake-up call for both Wall Street and Washington.  A wake-up call that this memo acknowledges presents a real and serious problem for both the corporate bankers and the politicians that have been protecting them from prosecution and doing their political bidding in helping dismantle the regulations around the banking industry.  A call for justice that transcends party affiliation and loyalty to the point that the bankers responsible may actually have to face trial with the possibility of prison sentences.  A call for justice that may force politicians to take steps to break up the big banks to prevent the myth and the lie of “too big to fail” from being used in the future as an excuse by corporatists  to raid our nation’s tax coffers thus making society pay for the risks of their private failures all while the banks reaping massive record private profits in the process.  A call for justice that might mean the return of regulation to the banking industry and a return of regulation with teeth.

Perhaps even more telling that the 1% are starting to feel and fear the political pressure is the context of the memo as a sales pitch.  What is it that CLGC is offering to sell the ABA? $850,000 worth of spin.  In the new MSNBC article by Jonathan Larsen and Ken Olshansky, the deliverable of such a spin project is summarized as ” ‘opposition research’ on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct ‘negative narratives’ about the protests and allied politicians.”  If you’d like to read the memo in its entirety, it can be found here in .pdf form.  You may feel a bit queasy after reading it.

OWS could be, should be and might be even bigger than this one set of issues though.  It should be a notice to Washington and the graft merchants of K Street that the United States Constitution says in plain language where the true political power rests in this country and who is really the boss of Washington when push comes to shove: “We the People of the United States”.  Not “We the Corporations” or “We the Biggest Campaign Contributors” or “We the K Street Lobbying  and Revolving Capital Hill Door Conflict of Interest Machine”, but “We the People”.  Washington would be wise to take heed to call to substantively start addressing the needs and demands for justice of the 99% instead of catering to the greedy desires of the 1% and their own over-inflated egos.  Our nation was founded in reaction to the tyranny of oppression and non-responsive government of King George.  Just so, it can be reshaped  in reaction to the tyranny of oppression and non-responsive government of as exemplified by the incestuous nexus of today’s Wall Street and Washington.  We didn’t throw off the yoke of a mad, capricious and economically exploitative king in the 18th Century just to have it replaced by the yoke of venal and corrupt plutocrats and their political lackeys in the 21st.

Are Wall Street and their lobbyists starting to fear Main Street?  Is the government?  Is this a sign of the beginning of the end of OWS?  Or is this a sign of the beginning of the beginning of OWS and the effort to reclaim the government for “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”?

What do you think?

Source: Huffington Post, MSNBC, CLGC Memo

~Submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger

467 thoughts on “The Smell of Corporatist Fear, Smells Just Like . . . a Lobbyist Memo”

  1. Bron, that is not the problem. SS has been the most successful government program in history. it has nothing to do with the deficits either. It is solvent for the next 37 years. all we have to do is raise the ‘cap’ so the rich are paying their fair share.

    . And do tell. where in the hell can you get a SAFE 4% annual return now? Because I would sure like to know! You really are stuck in some sort of alternative universe.

  2. instead of penalizing millionaires lets figure out how to make people making 34,500 per year wealthy.

    A good start would be to let them stop paying all taxes of any kind and allow them to eliminate the SS tax if they would take the 15% and invest it in the market. Dont tax any of their capital gains or their dividends and let them put more than 15% aside tax free.

    7,000 dollars per year at an average return of 8.5% for 30 years would yield $1,052,000. if you then at age 55 (assuming 30 years of work) retired and invested in something safe, say an annual return of 4% you would have a retirement income of $54,195 if you only got a 3% return it would be 47,533.

    Seems to me government is screwing the middle class something fierce. What does social security pay? about $1,000 to $1,500 for most people. vs about $4,000 if they could have their own retirement accounts.

    This kind of stuff just makes me laugh at all the suckers who think government is protecting them. Yeah sure it is.

    Lets see on the one hand government takes your money and gives it to everyone else on the other hand you can keep your money and retire at 55 and be a legitimate millionaire. That way your tax dollars wont go to bailing out billionaires.

  3. “I have worked with a lot of oil field people from all around the world and they are by and large very good people. Most are married and have families.”

    Bron,

    That statement is no doubt true, on a superficial level. The 60 Minutes peace on the North Dakota Oil Boom did mention that there isn’t enough housing to go around and the men and women are living communally in large dormitory type affairs. I have no doubt that many of the men there have left their wives and children behind and even while making good money their is no housing available to bring them with them. Most of the people in the Armed Forces are also good people, but on weekend leave away from home, watch out. My guess that the biggest non-oil related growth industry out there is prostitution, followed closely by crystal meth.

  4. “Just because you are capable of some action doesn’t mean that every one else is equally capable of that action.”

    Heck, just because somebody was capable of an action at a specific point in time doesn’t mean they would be capable of that same action at other points in times.

    You never step in the same river twice.

  5. “Maybe so but I have a job and so do the people who pulled up stakes and moved. I wonder if their might be some connection?”

    Bron,
    When did you do this? Because if it was before 1990, you had it good. This is no longer possible.
    For the record, I also did this in 1972, moved from Colorado to Maryland where I had a very good career. Now I live back out west again. What I did is no longer possible or advisable. People must rely on their families in this economy.
    i dont care what kind of propaganda is coming from our government about unemployment rates (much worse than the ‘official’ rate) or inflation, since they no longer count gas and groceries, they are in complete denial about the real cause of our problems. this means nothing will be fixed.

  6. Bron,

    I’ve known people who pulled up stakes and moved for jobs–and then lost those jobs. Some people can’t afford to relocate in hopes of finding work because they don’t have the financial resources. My husband was once offered a job in California. He declined because I would have had to give up my job, which was much more secure. In addition, we would have lost the support and company of our extended family. My mother provided daycare for my young daughter when I was at work. You make it sound all too simple a thing to leave one’s roots. My daughter flourished surrounded by a loving family and caring friends. She was truly a fortunate child.

    You appear to look at the world and the way things are with tunnel vision. Nothing happens outside of your own narrow point of view. There are no exceptions in the world according to Bron

  7. EM: Since they have all this income from capital gains, they have also bought legislation that lets them avoid paying taxes, any tax at all, on this income:

    McCombs’s fight with the IRS illustrates an overlooked facet in the debate over tax rates paid by the nation’s wealthiest. Billionaires — from McCombs to Philip Anschutz to Ronald S. Lauder — who derive the bulk of their wealth from stock appreciation are using strategies that reap hundreds of millions of dollars from those valuable shares in ways the IRS often doesn’t classify as taxable income, securities filings and tax court records show.
    “The 800-pound gorilla is unrealized appreciation,” said Edward J. McCaffery, a professor of law, economics and political science at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-21/billionaires-duck-buffett-17-tax-target-avoiding-reporting-cash-to-irs.html

    They

  8. “Maybe so but I have a job and so do the people who pulled up stakes and moved. I wonder if their might be some connection?”

    Bron,

    Sometimes I think your attitude is I got mine and put all the blame for those who don’t have anything only on them. Do you really think that most of the unemployed are lazy and incapable? Just because you are capable of some action doesn’t mean that every one else is equally capable of that action. Their home and their roots are important to many people, while others are closely tied to their family. In any event when there is more information amassed about that North Dakota oil boom, history leads me to strongly suspect that it is not
    going to be the next putative utopia, but possibly another version of Tombstone, or Deadwood.

  9. From the Christian Science Monitor link posted by Swarthmore mom:

    “$11.6 million every hour of every day. That’s how much money would be flowing into the US Treasury, but isn’t, as a result of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans.”

  12. Mike Spindell:

    “I’d like to see you send your 21 year old daughter to some burgeoning oil town in North Dakota.”

    If she wanted to go, I would let her. I would be afraid for the men. I have worked with a lot of oil field people from all around the world and they are by and large very good people. Most are married and have families.

    It is a small community relatively speaking but good people and hard workers. Maybe things have changed in the last 25 years but people are people and oil field people are not trash as you imply.

    So yes, I would let my 21 year old daughter go if she wanted to. I am more fearful for her down at her college with those candy ass frat boys and assorted liberal professors. They scare me more than a man who actually works for a living doing something useful.

  13. OS:

    “So far, every time you have offered advice, it is with the level of social comprehension of Dick & Jane in a first grade reading text.”

    Maybe so but I have a job and so do the people who pulled up stakes and moved. I wonder if their might be some connection?

  14. The Richest 0.1 Percent Of Americans Make Half Of All Capital Gains
    By Pat Garofalo on Nov 21, 2011
    http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/21/373507/cap-gains-richest-percent/

    Excerpt:
    The preferable treatment that investment income receives in the tax code is one of the factors driving the income inequality and galvanizing the Occupy Wall Street movement. Because the capital gains tax is capped at 15 percent, “anyone making more than $34,500 a year in wages and salary is taxed at a higher rate than a billionaire is taxed on untold millions in capital gains.”

    The reason this low rate helps create an income divide is that capital gains are made almost exclusively by the wealthy. In fact, “over the past 20 years, more than 80 percent of the capital gains income realized in the United States has gone to 5 percent of the people.” And the concentration is actually far greater than that, as half of all capital gains are made by the richest 0.1 percent of Americans:

    Income and wealth disparities become even more absurd if we look at the top 0.1% of the nation’s earners– rather than the more common 1%. The top 0.1%– about 315,000 individuals out of 315 million– are making about half of all capital gains on the sale of shares or property after 1 year; and these capital gains make up 60% of the income made by the Forbes 400.

    It’s crystal clear that the Bush tax reduction on capital gains and dividend income in 2003 was the cutting edge policy that has created the immense increase in net worth of corporate executives, Wall St. professionals and other entrepreneurs.

  15. SM, have they seen what Hillary is doing at State? She is just as bad as Obama and in some ways worse.

    Bill Clinton brought us NAFTA, CAFTA, etc. & the entrenchment of Neo Liberalism that has done great damage to the world economy and people all over the world.
    This has been the biggest factor in amplifying and extending the take over of the Multinationals, both in government and in strengthening their global power base..

    Remember the campaign promise of both Hillary and Obama to renegotiate NAFTA to include living wages and environmental protections?
    What we got was 3 more ‘free trade’ deals instead of Fair Trade.

    This was one of my major hopes for real change coming on the election victory for Democrats. Now we know the problems cannot be fixed at the election booth. the system itself has to change.

  19. OS, my prediction is the Wikileaks truck is at the bottom of the Hudson river right now.

    big OWS protest planned on Mannings birthday.

  20. Shano, that truck is no doubt in a secure garage somewhere, while NSA and/or CIA operatives dissect it like a frog in 11th grade biology.

    If you can convince me it is really “lost” I will buy you a steak dinner. A safe bet, methinks.

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