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. The Wikileaks truck has been found, but only after a lawyer got involved. The police originally parked the truck at a bus stop, where it got two tickets- which the judge dismissed (sanity prevailed)

    Here are the police helping him jump start the battery:

    http://yfrog.com/12q16z

  3. Rep. Deutch Introduces OCCUPIED Constitutional Amendment To Ban Corporate Money In Politics
    By Zaid Jilani on Nov 18, 2011
    http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/11/18/372361/rep-deutch-introduces-occupied-constitutional-amendment-to-ban-corporate-money-in-politics/

    In one of the greatest signs yet that the 99 Percenters are having an impact, Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, today introduced an amendment that would ban corporate money in politics and end corporate personhood once and for all.

    Deutch’s amendment, called the Outlawing Corporate Cash Undermining the Public Interest in our Elections and Democracy (OCCUPIED) Amendment, would overturn the Citizens United decision, re-establishing the right of Congress and the states to regulate campaign finance laws, and to effectively outlaw the ability of for-profit corporations to contribute to campaign spending.

    “No matter how long protesters camp out across America, big banks will continue to pour money into shadow groups promoting candidates more likely to slash Medicaid for poor children than help families facing foreclosure,” said Deutch in a statement provided to ThinkProgress. “No matter how strongly Ohio families fight for basic fairness for workers, the Koch Brothers will continue to pour millions into campaigns aimed at protecting the wealthiest 1%. No matter how fed up seniors in South Florida are with an agenda that puts oil subsidies ahead of Social Security and Medicare, corporations will continue to fund massive publicity campaigns and malicious attack ads against the public interest. Americans of all stripes agree that for far too long, corporations have occupied Washington and drowned out the voices of the people. I introduced the OCCUPIED Amendment because the days of corporate control of our democracy. It is time to return the nation’s capital and our democracy to the people.”

  4. Pepper-Spraying UC Davis Cop Accused Of Using Anti-Gay Epithet
    By Igor Volsky on Nov 23, 2011
    http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2011/11/23/375352/pepper-spraying-uc-davis-cop-accused-of-using-anti-gay-epithet/

    Excerpt:
    The police officer who casually pepper-sprayed students at University of California, Davis, was involved in a discrimination lawsuit alleging that he used an anti-gay slur against an openly-gay officer, the Daily Mail reports. The racial and sexual discrimination lawsuit specifically singled out Lt. John Pike, a retired Marine sergeant, for “using a profane anti-gay epithet” against a gay police officer. The case ended in a $250,000 settlement:

    Officer Calvin Chang’s 2003 discrimination complaint against the university’s police chief and the UC Board of Regents alleged he was systematically marginalized as the result of anti-gay and racist attitudes on the force, and he specifically claimed Pike described him using a profane anti-gay epithet.

    Katehi identified Pike as one of the officers involved in the pepper-spray incident in an interview with the campus television station Sunday, and university communications staff confirmed his role Tuesday.

  7. Elaine, if this were in an international conflict, a war, then the actions of the officers and those who issued the orders would be a war crime under the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and 1977.

    Unfortunately for the citizens of the US, the Geneva Protocols do not apply to domestic police actions and they cannot be brought up on charges at the Hague.

    By using pepper spray, which is prohibited, destruction of medical supplies and facilities, and assault on people engaged in religious activities; i.e. praying, the actions would clearly be classified as war crimes if they occurred in a war zone.

  9. The occupy movement can’t be sprayed away
    Katrina vanden Heuvel
    Opinion Writer
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-occupy-movement-cant-be-sprayed-away/2011/11/21/gIQAPYaIlN_story.html?wpisrc=emailtoafriend

    Excerpt:
    Pepper spray can’t be washed off with water. The intense burning it causes — the stinging, the redness, the swelling, the coughing and gagging and gasping — will only subside with time, usually several hours. It can cause tissue damage and respiratory attacks. A study of its most commonly prescribed remedies found that none of them really work. It has been prohibited in war by the Chemical Weapons Convention, so our enemies don’t have to experience it on the battlefield. If only our citizens were so lucky.

    Over the past several weeks police have been using pepper spray with alarming frequency in the United States against peaceful protesters. The injured include an 84-year-old woman, a pregnant woman, a priest and an Iraq war veteran. Over the weekend, we had to add to that list a group of college students, gathered nonviolently on the campus of the University of California at Davis

    For refusing to leave an occupy encampment they had set up on campus, more than a dozen students received a point-blank hosing of military-grade pepper spray by a campus police officer dressed, inexplicably, in riot gear. Then they received another one. And another. According to reports, some were punished for trying to protect their faces by having pepper spray forced down their throats. One student was reported to have been coughing up blood 45 minutes after the occurrence. Several were taken to the hospital. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, the chancellor of the universitydefended the actions of the police. She should resign immediately.

    James Fallows wrote of this act of police brutality, “Think how we’d react if we saw it coming from some riot-control unit in China, or in Syria.” We know how we’d react — how we have before: with a combination of disgust and outrage on behalf of those who are viciously victimized abroad, and with a deep sense of relief knowing that the United States is not the kind of place where such things unfold. In that sense, the cause of the brutality is the same as that which has driven so many thousands to occupy parks and squares and campuses: a political system that has abandoned its commitment to the ideals it is meant to uphold.

    It is ironic, as former Seattle Police commissioner Norm Stamper said in the Nation, that “those police officers who are busting up the Occupy protesters are themselves victims of the same social ills the demonstrators are combating . . . and in fact, with cities and states struggling to balance the budget while continuing to deliver public safety, many cops are finding themselves out of work.”

    The deployment of police forces against Occupy protesters is also an illustration of just how backward this nation’s priorities have become. “This is a profound statement about who law enforcement works for in this country,” wrote Matt Taibbi after New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg ordered the eviction of protesters in Zuccotti Park. “There have already been hundreds of arrests, which is hundreds more than we ever saw during the years when Wall Street bankers were stealing billions of dollars.”

  10. Otteray & pete,

    Some interesting statistics on who owns the media from Common Cause:

    Facts on Media in America: Did You Know?
    http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=4923173

    TELEVISION

    FACT: Comcast owns NBC; Disney owns ABC; and News Corporation owns Fox Broadcasting Company.

    Comcast owns NBC, Telemundo, E Entertainment, Versus, 14 television stations, Universal Pictures, and Hulu. Disney holdings include 10 television stations, 277 radio stations, ABC, ESPN, A&E, the History Channel, Lifetime, Discover magazine, Bassmaster magazine, Hyperion publishing, Touchstone Pictures, Pixar Animation, and Miramax Film Corp. Viacom owns 10 television stations, The Movie Channel, Comedy Central, BET, Nickelodeon, TV Land, MTV, VH1, and Paramount Pictures. CBS owns 30 TV stations, Smithsonian Channel, Showtime, The Movie Channel and Paramount Network Television. News Corp. owns 27 television stations, the Fox Network and Fox News Channel, FX, National Geographic Channel, The Wall Street Journal, TV Guide, the New York Post, DirecTV, the publisher HarperCollins, film production company Twentieth Century Fox and the social networking website MySpace. Time Warner owns HBO, CNN, the Cartoon Network, Warner Bros. Time magazine, Turner Broadcasting and DC Comics.

    Currently, six major companies control most of the media in our country. The FCC could decide to relax media ownership rules, which would allow further consolidation and put decisions about what kinds of programming and news Americans receive in even fewer hands.

    FACT: Since 1995, the number of companies owning commercial TV stations declined by more than 40 percent.

    If the FCC votes to relax media ownership limits, it could further erode diversity of ownership at the local level and increase the influence of large media conglomerates.

    CABLE

    FACT: Three media giants own all of the cable news networks. Comcast and Time Warner serve about 35 percent of cable households.

    Many proponents of deregulation site the expanded numbers of cable stations to argue that media sources are more diverse than they once were. The reality is that — while there may be more stations — they are still controlled by a small number of media companies.

    FACT: Cable TV rates have jumped by more than 90 percent since the Telecom Act of 1996.

    The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was, in part, meant to increase competition in the cable industry. The Act was heavily influenced by industry lobbyists and has had the opposite effect.

    RADIO

    FACT: The Telecommunications Act of 1996 lifted ownership limits for radio stations, leading to incredible consolidation of radio station ownership. One company alone, Clear Channel Inc., owns 850 radio stations across the country. Before the change, a company could not own more than 40 stations nationwide.

    Several large stations owned by Clear Channel briefly banned the music of the Dixie Chicks because of their critical comments about then-President George W. Bush. Stations owned by Infinity have also banned certain musicians based on their political views.

    INTERNET

    FACT: Major corporations, including News Corp., Comcast-NBC Universal, Time Warner, the New York Times, Disney, and Gannett dominate the top Internet news sites.

    EFFECT on DEMOCRACY

    FACT: The public owns the airwaves and the FCC grants licenses to broadcasters with the understanding they will serve the public interest.

    To their corporate owners, media outlets do not exist to promote the public interest; they exist to make profits. But media companies don’t manufacture widgets; they provide information. And information from diverse, competitive, and independent sources is vitally important to the health of a democracy.

    FACT: The entertainment industry – television, motion picture companies, music – has put $283.5 million into federal elections since 1990; in just the past three years (2008-10) the industry has spent roughly that much again on lobbying.

    With their political clout, media giants have the ability to make their case heard at the FCC, the White House and Capitol Hill. The concerns of average citizens do not get the same attention from key policymakers.

    “It is the purpose of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail, rather than to countenance monopolization of that market, whether it be by the Government itself or a private licensee. It is the right of the public to receive suitable access to social, political, esthetic, moral, and other ideas and experiences which is crucial here. That right may not constitutionally be abridged either by Congress or by the FCC.”
    –U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark 1969 case of Red Lion v. FCC

  11. gbk:

    “except that you blame the individual”

    I am not sure how I blame the individual except that we have voted for these assholes for years.

    Other than that I think the problem is an unholy alliance between big business and big government.

    Now if you are talking about my thinking that a person ought to move to another state if there is no work in their own state before they seek government assistance, I am not sure how that is “blaming” the individual?

    I think we need to be mindful that when we go on government assistance for whatever reason that money comes from hardworking people like ourselves and we should do all we can before turning to others who are in just about the same shape we are. And if we do go on government assistance we should be good stewards of the money we receive. Someone worked hard for it.

    I agree with OWS on their major point of bail outs for the rich and maybe this is a good thing if people start asking why the hell does a rich bond trader on Wall St. need my money when I make X number of dollars per year and have 2 kids in college and mortgage. It is messed up.

    It is also messed up to seem some fat assed POS cop spray pepper in the faces of people sitting on the ground. And do it not once but twice. And then ekeyra, on another thread, posted a video about a guy trying to get a complaint form from the police and he got arrested. We live in a goddamn fascist police state. Screw these tyrants. It is time for people who believe in freedom to get really pissed off and rise up.

    I am not voting for the republican candidates for congress and senate this year, to heck with them. I am going to vote for an independent. We need to get rid of both parties, send them to wood shed until the understand they work for us. And while we are it we need to tell these local politicians the same thing. Either play our way or go take a flying leap at the moon.

  12. O S

    hard to do because many fox news viewers only watch fox news. everything else is liberal media/ lame stream media.

  19. raff, as I see it, the two things we need to get on board in order to win are:

    1. Convince the low information voter (translated, that means Fox News viewers) to stop voting against their own economic self interest.

    2. Convince the average gun owner and sportsman the bad old Democrats and progressives are not going to raid their gun cabinet.

    Many times, those are one and the same person.

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