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,

    A homebrew? I prefer bourbon. Why don’t you take your own advice and relax? The ultra-wealthy are still safe in their penthouses and gated communities.

    *****

    Closing The Hedge Fund Manager Tax Loophole Would Raise $4 Billion Annually From The 25 Richest Managers
    By Pat Garofalo on Jul 6, 2011
    http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/07/06/261268/closing-hedge-fund-manager-loophole-billions/

    Excerpt:
    During the negotiations regarding raising the nation’s debt ceiling, congressional Republicans have gone to the mat to defend all manner of unwarranted tax breaks, including those for oil companies and corporate jet owners. Despite the drain on the Treasury caused by these tax breaks — and the negligible benefit they provide — Republicans have threatened to allow the nation to default on its obligations rather than abandon them.

    One of the tax breaks upon which President Obama has focused is a provision that allows hedge fund managers — who make billions annually — to receive a substantial tax break. This particular tax break, known as the carried-interest loophole, allows hedge fund managers to treat the money they receive from investors as capital gains, subject to a 15 percent tax rate. Though this money is a paycheck received for services, just like a movie star receiving a bonus if her movie does well, it’s treated as investment income.

    Since hedge fund managers are some of the richest people in the country, this tax break actually causes a significant loss of revenue. In fact, according to calculation by RJ Eskow, closing this loophole would raise more than $4 billion per year just from the 25 richest hedge fund managers:

    The top 25 hedge fund managers in the United States collectively earned $22 billion last year, and yet they have their own cushy set of tax rules. If they operated under the same rules that apply to other people — police officers, for example, or teachers — the country could cut its national deficit by as much as $44 billion in the next ten years.

  3. No, not more government, I do not think any liberal group wants more government! Show me where any liberal group wants more government! these are things the right wing says that have no basis in fact.

    The liberals want government that fulfills its duty to the people and the common good. Not corporate interests

  4. There is no diminution of freedoms by taxing the wealthy! How does that add more government? That dog won’t hunt. By the way, why do conservatives want less regulation, except when it comes to women’s bodies and corporations and the wealthy paying ther fair share?

  5. OS:

    what is illogical is what you guys promulgate. All it does is lead to more government and a further diminution of our freedoms.

  6. OS,
    Great link. Who would have guessed!
    Elaine,
    I agree. It is time for Wall Street and the wealthy to pay their fair share.

  10. raff, bottom line is that he is not listening, does not want to listen, refuses to stop and think about what he is really saying and is tying himself into knots trying to make the illogical logical.

  11. If you think that way, Bron, you are an Occupyer. Our politicians have to raise a billion dollars to run. We need public financing of campaigns and to take back our airwaves, for three months before each election only, for equal time media play.
    That way the people we elect can concentrate on policy instead of politics, problems would be solved with no corporate influence. The hard sciences would have as much weight as corporations. Everything would get better.

    It is not too much to ask. The airwaves are a common good, we should be able to use it for short periods of time. Corporations have a sweet deal on all of our other natural resources too. Very sweet deal, tax breaks and subsidies.
    We can never have a free market system as long as giant Multinationals can buy our politicians.
    Not just me saying this, it is what a derivatives trader on Wall Street said.

  12. Bron,
    It is about Grover Norquist and the 1 per cent. Abortion is legal but is being attacked at the state level and the federal level. The parties have some overlap, but the Republicans are all about corporatism and protecting the almighty wealthy. Just listen to the Republican Presidential candidates. If you can’t see the difference, you aren’t listening.

  13. rafflaw:

    and democrats want to control what we eat, what we can purchase, whether we can smoke and drink, they want to control our bodies and our pocket books.

    So I ask what is the difference? You are too hung up on abortion. It is legal, it isnt going to be repealed at the worst it will be legal in some states and illegal in other states. A bad idea, I admit but with democrats they wouldnt even allow some states to be free from their nonsense.

    Republicans are as bad as democrats and neither party believes in human freedom. That is what scares me. They both allow corruption by monied interests and they both do not believe in our individual sovereignty. They do not believe in us as free individuals.

    I dont know about you but in 2012 I am voting for none of the above. I am hoping someone else runs for congress and senate.

  14. From the economist who predicted the 2008 meltdown:

    Nouriel Roubini
    Super-Committee: Super-Failure, Super-Pathetic, Super-Gridlock, Super-GOP-Lunacy on Taxes, Super-Fiscal Drag in 2012 that ensures double dip

  15. Everyone but the 1%. They have the lowest tax rate in 50 years. So for the past 10 years we have had record low rates on the rich- where is the ‘trickle down”?

    You really need to read David Stockmans book, Bron.
    Trickle down was a marketing idea for Reagan, not based on any economic reality. Even Stockman is saying it was a farce & he is originator of this idea. good god.

  16. CUNY Erupts: “Public Safety” officers charge and club public university students who were nonviolently assembled at Baruch College #N21 #OWS

    Keep it up, police. it only makes the Occupy Movement stronger.

  17. Elaine:

    Have a home brew and relax. It isnt about the 1%, raising their taxes isnt going to change anything. Even if you took every penny from them it would only run the government for a few weeks.

    When the income tax was first introduced it was only a couple of percent and only on the top income earners in the US, approx 100 years later it touches everyone with a pretty hefty burden.

  18. RT @jasonfarbman: @Newyorkist 100 were seated inside, 200 outside, when police entered pushing and beating. Two women reported being groped.

    Yea, I can see the police taking advantage of women in these situations. What won’t they do?
    So far they have denied freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, destroyed private property, stole a truck, sent people to the hospital……

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