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”

  2. Reporter at Baruch slammed into revolving door, will file charges. One student taken in ambulance.
    Police beating people in school building. Tim told he cant film, but keeps filming. National Lawyers Guild in attendance.
    Not letting people out of the building.

  3. Bron,
    The talking point that here is no difference between both parties is all wet. The Republicans want to take away a women’s right to choose and many want to end ontraception! Mant Republicans want to end child labor laws! One Republican Presidential candidate wants to end civilian on’t roll of the military! Those are just a few differences.

  5. Bron really is a good example of the lengths people have to go to in order to earn a few bucks in this economy.

  7. OCCUPY MOVEMENT WINS MAJOR VICTORY
    Unpopular ‘Supercommittee’ Deal Stymied by Popular Opinion

    Democrats tried. They really tried. They were ready to accept deal points that the polls – and their hearts – should have forced them to refuse: Benefit cuts to Social Security and Medicare. A permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. A deal that was heavily weighted toward spending cuts, rather than revenues, even during an economic crisis.

    They might have done it, too, except for one thing: The Occupy movement has changed the subject from the Washington-driven theme of deficits to the economic hardships faced by most people in this country. Sure, the Tea Party is getting credit (yes, I said “credit”) for killing a disastrous deal, and it’s true that it played an important role.

    But so did the Occupy movement. There was talk of occupying Congress, and even occupying the “Super” meeting’s meeting space in the now-infamous Room 200. A march and rally is scheduled for tomorrow, and an Occupy group walking from Wall Street to Washington is scheduled to arrive the day after tomorrow.

    Democrats who signed on to this deal were going to feel the wrath of the 99%, and there’s no way they couldn’t have known it. People who have spent the last two years wishing that they had a Tea Party of their own, one that would pressure Dems the way the Tea Party pressures Republicans, can now rest easy. It’s here. And it’s changing things.

    The moral for Democrats? Embrace jobs and growth, not cuts and austerity. You’ll thank yourself next November. And some Republicans will probably thank you, too, as you’ll see from the next headline.

    GOP VOTERS HOLD “EXTREME” VIEW OF CUTS – EXTREMELY “LIBERAL,” THAT IS
    “Left” Anti-Supercommittee Views Supported by Almost 3 Out of 4 Republicans

    We’re already hearing that the unwillingness of some Democrats to sign on to cuts in Social Security and Medicare – the few, the proud, the real Dems – is a sign of “ideological rigidity on the extreme left.” Pundits are referring Senators like Bernie Sanders and Representatives like the members of the House Progressive and African-American Caucuses.

    Extreme left? Their position is supported by three out of four voters – Republican voters, that is. A new poll confirms what previous polls have shown: Once voters have these proposed deals explained to them, they hate them.

  8. Bron,

    Did I mention anything about fear? I’m mad as hell! I’d say you’re someone who is fearful that the wealthiest 1% might be asked to pay more taxes. I have no sympathy for the greedy boo-hoo billionaires and heirs of the wealthy who didn’t earn their own fortunes–the entitled people of this country who look down upon the middle and working classes–the people who labor long hours in order to live a decent life.

    Go on…cry me a river about the plight of the rich if they had to pay more taxes.

  9. I recall once when I assessed a guy and thought he was malingering because no one could possibly be that crazy. I got him back on another referral a couple of years later and concluded that I was wrong. It WAS possible for somebody to be that crazy.

    Then we come to Bron. I thought he might be able to reason at least as well as your average goose. I was wrong; he is as dense as depleted uranium.

  10. shano:

    we should be producers. You cannot be a consumer without first being a producer.

    By the way, I could just do a voice over with a few minor changes and it would be the democrat party being chastised. Both parties are the same, there is no real difference anymore.

  15. Bron, at this point it hardly matters who we elect. Sure the Republicans are a wholly owned subsidiary of the Multinationals, but the Democrats are doing their bidding also.

    It is not who we elect at this point. The system itself is corrupt and has to be changed. Get money out of politics. Stop free trade deals.

    End the power of the Multinationals, because if we do not, everyone will be driven into poverty and serfdom, not just the poor in third world nations.

  16. Mike,
    Anyone who believes that the stock market is better than Social Security must have slept through the last few years.

  17. “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.”

    Bron,

    Social Security and my pension pay me enough money to live on and have since I was forced to retire due to health 7 years ago. Medicare paid for the heart transplant that saved my life. I retired involuntarily at the time of my greatest earning potential and certainly not out of choice. As far as retirement accounts go, you are right about the return, but at the time I needed every penny I could make and didn’t have the money to invest in a retirement account. When it’s a choice of paying for a sick child’s antibiotics, or paying the phone bill, what do you think gets delayed? That’s how tight my money situation was for many years with both my wife and I working and higher income than perhaps 50% of America. You’ve forgotten, if you’ve ever known how hard it is to support a family of four.

    “if they would take the 15% and invest it in the market.”

    Are you so delusional to believe that for an average family $34,500 is they type of wage that allows them to invest? The extra income if they paid no taxes would quickly be subsumed by daily needs. Also too, when you are at that income level you pay more into SS & Medicaire, then into the IRS. Oh wait I forgot you want to eliminate those programs and then we can all invest our money into that famously stable institution…..the stock market. As Elaine said you have tunnel vision and can only seem to see the world from your own perspective. At times you have expressed sympathy for unfortunate people, but you seem incapable of feeling empathy. Sympathy and empathy are two different things. The former is akin to pity, but the latter is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. You won’t let yourself do that not because you are a bad person, I think you are a good person at heart, but you won’t do it because if you did, you would realize how messed up your political outlook really is.

  18. Mike Spindell:

    so all working class people are crystal meth addicts? Maybe you are right but the guys I knew just drank since drugs would get you canned. The companies I worked for were serious about drug use to, it is dangerous in those working conditions to you and everyone around you.

Comments are closed.