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Politics, Money and Propaganda |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=5223"><span class="small">Danny Schechter, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Monday, 04 June 2012 15:57 |
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Schechter writes: "One of Washington's thriving industries is the business of destroying political opponents ... while making allies look good. These techniques (and the flood of money) are changing US politics."
Mitt Romney at The Latino Coalition during the Annual Economic Summit, 05/23/12. (photo: Reuters)
Politics, Money and Propaganda
By Danny Schechter, Reader Supported News
04 June 12
 n theory, American elections traditionally get going after Labor Day, but, as we can see by the daily overkill media "coverage," polls and constant reporting about who has raised how many millions - to the degree that anyone really knows in the age of Super Pacs - that the political horses for the 2012 are off and running.
Lots of the "analysis" seems absurd on its face, as everyone who follows politics knows it's much too early to spot key trends. The race will tighten, with what happens in October crucial. Example: the recent survey that found "cell phone users prefer Obama; landline users like Romney."
All of this reflects the obsession the press and its senior wise men have on reporting domestic politics over all other issues. They are like sports fanatics in this respect.
The candidates have been in motion for years. It's known as the "permanent campaign," an idea attributed to one of Jimmy Carters's advisers, Pat Cadell, who said in 1979 that just because you have been elected doesn't mean you stop campaigning, He wrote in his "Initial Working Paper on Political Strategy," "it is my thesis governing with public approval requires a continuing political campaign."
Journalist Sidney Blumental, before he joined the Clinton White House, wrote The Permanent Campaign in 1980, revealing that political parties were dead and had been replaced by political consultants and other campaign professionals. (Disclosure: I helped get the book published by Beacon Press.)
In other words, politics had changed fundamentally: the old-style bosses were out and a new style media-driven system was in. Politics had also become a business with a whole retinue of advertising specialists, market researchers and pollsters.
Today, political journalist Joe Hagen labels this new army of experts for hire a "presidential electoral complex" - almost on the same scale as the military industrial complex. Their advice does not come cheap, with the tail today wagging the dog.
Any serious candidate hires his team and then has to raise millions to pay for it. When politics spawned a profession, the big money that's transformed politics no longer went just to candidates but to the industry around them.
They also developed a stake in the fostering polarization and continuing crisis so that their counsel will be solicited more often. Increasingly political campaigns were run like military commands with centralized top-down direction, defensive and offensive strategies and tactics as well as psychological warfare. The campaign gurus are well schooled in the techniques of perception management.
This industry is bi-partisan with hired guns always shopping for the best deal irrespective of party. One-time dirty trickster Roger Stone who worked first for Richard Nixon ended up advising everyone from Al Shapton to Donald Trump, to Libertarian Gary Johnson.
Some of these advisers step over the legal line like GOP operative Alan Raymond but few get caught. The New York Times reported In New Hampshire's hotly contested 2002 Senate race, Democratic get-out-the-vote phone banks were jammed with incoming calls on Election Day. The Republican, John Sununu, won re-election by under 20,000 votes, and Allen Raymond, a Republican Party operative, went to jail for his role in the jamming.
Raymond has now written a book about his experiences, How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative. In it, he paints a picture of the corruption of modern politics that should leave no doubt about the creativity and cynicism of operatives like Raymond or the need for tough new election-reform legislation.
Wikipedia had two other examples of the focus on permanent campaigns:
"A famous example that illustrates just how strongly this mind-set has come to influence politics was during the Clinton Administration when pollster Dick Morris asked voters to help decide where Bill Clinton would go on vacation.
"In the words of columnist Joe Klein, 'The pressure to "win" the daily news cycle - to control the news - has overwhelmed the more reflective, statesmanlike aspects of the office.' (After getting caught in a sex scandal, Morris was fired by Clinton and later resurfaced as a pundit at Fox News.)
"Scott McClellan, former White House Press Secretary for U.S. President George W. Bush, wrote in his 2008 memoir What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception that the Bush White House suffered from a 'permanent campaign' mentality, and that policy decisions were inextricably interwoven with politics."
Many of the press secretaries and campaign managers work hard to contain mistakes. The bookshelves are filled with advice about how to do that. This is from an email promoting interviews with a campaign expert turned author:
"Every word and action on the campaign trail from a televised debate to a town meeting, to an innocent question from a voter to a pointed question from the media … all of these daily events call for immediate, strategic communication.
"Any blunder should be a wake-up call: communication has power. But as with any form of power, it needs to be harnessed effectively or it can all too often backfire.
"This year's primaries were riddled with missteps and over-reaching. As the focus shifts from primaries to the general elections, Romney will have to walk the line between connecting to the audience and pandering. On the other hand, President Obama will be less under scrutiny for potential gaffes, but more for his inattention to issues that are brewing, followed by a dramatic game-changing address.
"'However, this can all change in a split-second, as proven by the undeniable power of word choice,' comments Helio Fred Garcia, President of the crisis management firm Logos Consulting Group and the Executive Director of the Logos Institute for Crisis Management & Executive Leadership."
Garcia, who teaches now at NYU, discusses strategies that might be useful in a new book on the Power of Communication, or is it manipulation:
• "Leaders are judged on the fulfillment of expectations. Leaders must resist saying what merely sounds good in the moment and creating a say-do gap.
• "The only reason for communication is to change something - to influence the way audiences think and feel. Before you communicate, know what it is you want to change.
• "Facts do not speak for themselves. If we speak only facts, the audience will either not pay attention to those facts or will provide their own context to make sense of the facts, which could trigger a negative frame.
• "Communication is a continuation of business by other means. You need to engage your audience to enhance your position, thereby improving your competitive advantage.
• "Leaders must conquer the first mover advantage - a maneuver that prevents critics and adversaries from framing the situation. This has become increasingly more important in today's world of social media."
This same techniques are also used to sell war, as Mother Jones reported: "As long as the United States appears to be on the move against foreign adversaries, the question of whether any action is actually taken becomes of secondary interest. As Blumenthal suggested two decades ago, results and concrete proposals are less important than perception and image."
Even as Blumenthal was partial to Hillary Clinton, who hired him for her unsuccessful primary campaign in 2008, The Economist noted that his description of a permanent campaign soon became President Obama's prescription:
"Mr. Obama is currently deploying the formidable resources he built up during his campaign - including contact details for 10m donors, supporters and volunteers - to sell his policies. David Plouffe, the man who managed Mr. Obama's presidential campaign, has sent millions of e-mails to encourage them to support the White House's agenda.
"One of them contains as good a definition of the permanent campaign as any: 'In the next few weeks we'll be asking you to do some of the same things we asked of you during the campaign - talking directly to people in your communities about the president's ideas for long-term prosperity.' Another, which includes a video of the president, asks supporters to put pressure on their congressman to pass Mr. Obama's budget, by calling his or her office and reciting a little pro-Obama speech."
The Republicans have learned these lessons too, and now have more money than Democrats to invest in them. Politics is now a growing industry, with money and politics more joined at the hip than ever, and an interest in keeping the big money flowing into its bank account.
News Dissector Danny Schechter blogs at News Dissector.net. Consimo Books has just published two of his books, Blogothon and Occupy: Dissecting Occupy Wall Street. He hosts a weekly radio show on Progressive Radio Network (PRN.fm). Comments to
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Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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FOCUS: Wisconsin Has to Get Out There and Vote |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104"><span class="small">Charles Pierce, Esquire</span></a>
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Monday, 04 June 2012 11:50 |
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Pierce writes: "There have been very clearly defined layers in the campaign to rid Wisconsin of Governor Scott Walker. The original fire came from a ferocious backlash among the state's unionized working class and the professional classes, most notably public school teachers."
A sign to recall Scott Walker hangs on a statue in front of the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison last year. (photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Wisconsin Has to Get Out There and Vote
By Charles Pierce, Esquire
04 June 12
 he last time I talked with Gwen Moore, the congresswoman from Milwaukee who most assuredly don't take no mess, we'd just heard Michelle Obama give a speech in the Pabst Theater downtown in which the soon-to-be First Lady said that, for the first time in her life, she was proud of her country, a line that was perfectly banal and obvious in its meaning to everyone in the hall, but that soon became fodder in the wingnut precincts of Blogsylvania. Moore and I both saw this coming, and, if I recall correctly, we both predicted with great confidence all the screeching and poo-flinging that would ensue, and did.
Since then, and since the state of Wisconsin erupted into god's own political volcano over the past couple of years, Moore has become something of a celebrity, at least as celebrity is reckoned in the green rooms of various cable-news outfits. She is blunt and funny and great on TV, and she is more than a little fearless; in May, as the House was attempting to replace the Violence Against Women Act with a useless simulcrum of the same bill, Moore told the story of how she'd been a victim of sexual assault, and pretty much told the assembled House Republicans to put their pale shadow of a bill where the sun don't shine. On Sunday, she was one of the leading speakers, along with Jesse Jackson, at a boisterous rally on North 72nd Street.
There have been very clearly defined layers in the campaign to rid Wisconsin of Governor Scott Walker. The original fire came from a ferocious backlash among the state's unionized working class and the professional classes, most notably public school teachers. At the same time as he was stripping the latter of their collective bargaining rights, Walker also was taking a meat ax to social programs, most notably BadgerCare, the state's health-care plan. Suddenly, low-income voters, especially the African American community in and around Milwaukee, became engaged, and a vigorous, if unwieldy, coalition was born. And, if Tom Barrett is going to win on Tuesday, he's going to need a huge turnout in the city of which he is presently mayor, which is where Gwen Moore comes in. For her constituents, and for so many others, this stopped being a brawl over labor rights a long time ago. Instead, for them, it turned into a fight over a general feeling of alienation and disenfranchisement. What little stake they felt they had in the government appeared to be on the verge of being snatched away.
"I think that a lot of the center of the action was in Madison, which is 80 miles from here, and now that it's time to actually get the vote out, we recognize that this is where the concentration of Democrats live, in Milwaukee," Moore syas. "There are a lot of people in Milwaukee who have had adverse impacts from Scott Walker. He's managed to mess over everyone in Milwaukee. We got folks on waiting lists for BadgerCare. He actually transferred wealth from middle-income people and poor people to wealthy people. All of us lost about $20,000 value in our homes here in Milwaukee because he took $25 million of the mortgage settlement to balance his budget.
"No matter what you look at - whether it's BadgerCare, or the mortgage settlement, or the loss of services from Planned Parenthood, you pay more now for your prescription drugs, efforts to destroy senior care - he has managed to have an adverse impact on the average Milwaukeean."
Compared to how odd and airless the campaign has become elsewhere, there was a real charge on Sunday night in Destiny Plaza, an old moviehouse on the city's far north side that has been converted into a charter high school. Even though the hall was only a little more than half-filled, it was plain that, somehow, the stakes in this election for the people gathered here, a motley mix of neighborhood activists and union members, had become higher and more mortal. They seemed to be playing for something much greater than simply winning or losing an election, or defenestrating an unpopular governor. They appeared to be desperate to reassert their simple rights as citizens to be heard.
Jesse Jackson, of course, played on this like a grand piano. He brought out all the old riffs. They were somebody, and they should keep hope alive, and, above all, they should vote. He got a call-and-response thing going with them as a kind of chorus to his remarks.
"I can vote."
(I can vote.)
"I shall vote."
(I shall vote.)
I must vote.
(I must vote.)
Jackson hammered that at them, over and over again. They had to vote because people had died so they could vote. They had to "keep faith with the martyrs." Ultimately, he told them, the simple act of voting had never been simple at all. Not long ago, teenagers could get shipped off to Vietnam without being able to vote. Not long ago, not only could black people not vote, but neither could "the poor white farmer, who couldn't afford the poll tax." Not that much longer before that, women couldn't vote. Defining moments come along, he told them, when you're not looking for them.
"Sooner or later," he told them, "the coach has to stop talking. The ball's in your court now. You can go out and vote on Tuesday. Most of you couldn't have been there in August of 1963 on the Mall in Washington, or marching from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, but God keeps giving us chances to change the world in our times. This is one of those times."
Because, at the end of the day, which is coming on Tuesday, that's all that's left. The marches and the occupations and the gathering of the signatures, it was all prologue to a couple of million individual decisions. Stay home or go out and vote. Everyone's equal when the curtains close.
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It's Class War in Wisconsin, Yet Democrats Sing Kumbaya |
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Monday, 04 June 2012 09:22 |
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Intro: "A vote to recall the state's Republican governor has huge implications for US politics, but the liberals have missed their cue."
Bill Clinton with Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett at a rally for Barrett, who is trying to unseat Governor Scott Walker in Milwaukee. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty)
It's Class War in Wisconsin, Yet Democrats Sing Kumbaya
By Gary Younge, Guardian UK
04 June 12
A vote to recall the state's Republican governor has huge implications for US politics, but the liberals have missed their cue.
here is a degree of hyperbole one comes to expect from American activists around election time. Given the level of polarisation, this is hardly surprising. Every vote, you're told, is about liberty, justice, the American dream, the constitution or the world one wants to leave your children or grandchildren. Then, often, half the eligible voters stay at home and, regardless of who wins, not an awful lot changes.
So when activists on both sides of the effort to recall Wisconsin's governor insist "everything" is at stake, they should not be taken too literally. Nonetheless, this time they have a point.
The recall campaign was sparked last year when Republican governor Scott Walker pledged to remove collective bargaining rights from public sector unions and cut local government workers' health benefits and pension entitlements, claiming this was necessary to balance the state's budget. Walker, a Tea Party supporter, was elected in 2010 against Democrat Tom Barrett, with 52% of the vote. By February 2011, tens of thousands of protesters descended on the state capitol in Madison. In all 50 states, rallies were held to support Wisconsin unions. Before tents ever went up on Wall Street, this midwestern state was occupied. Unable to prevent passage of his anti-union bill and other measures, labour activists and progressives collected more than 900,000 signatures to recall him.
That makes Tuesday's vote a rare chance for a clear referendum on who should pay for this economic crisis - those who created it or those who have suffered most because of it. So in a state with a larger population than Ireland's and a GDP greater than Portugal's, people here will vote on the causes and consequences of austerity.
Walker's record speaks for itself. In his first year in office Wisconsin lost more jobs than any other state, and was one from last in private sector job growth. He has cut tax relief to low-income families and the state's Medicaid program. He has introduced a voter ID bill that will limit minority and low-income electoral participation, reproductive rights legislation that has forced Planned Parenthood to suspend providing basic services to women and repealed the law that protects equal pay for women.
Meanwhile, according to the Wall Street Journal, union membership has slumped since he banned automatic deduction of union dues from salaries. The WSJ reported that membership of the state's second largest public sector union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, fell by more than half in Walker's first year while the American Federation of Teachers lost more than a third of its members.
Unemployment has fallen, although that is most likely because people have left the job market and, depending on your accountant, he has balanced the budget. He has cut property taxes for the first time in 12 years and given millions in tax breaks to corporations.
In short, he has hammered working people, undermined the capacity of those who represent them and marginalised many of those who might vote for their interests while effecting a massive redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich: a more balanced budget for a more unequal society.
The degree to which he is successful in this project has national implications and resonates with struggles that are taking place globally. Neither the unions nor the poor are responsible for this crisis but across the world they have been scapegoated for it.
In the US, unemployment has rarely been this bad for this long, wages have rarely been this stagnant and corporate profits, as a proportion of GDP, have never been this high. In that context the referendum raises the question: should the burden for the recession, precipitated by a banking crisis, fall on labour or capital?
Conservatives seem to understand this. In a large Tea Party rally of several thousand in Racine on Saturday, speakers railed against "union thugs" "union bullies" and "pinko commies". Walker has been caught on video telling a donor, shortly before he announced the cuts, that he intended to use a strategy of "divide and conquer" to defeat the public sector unions by driving a wedge between them and private sector workers. They also see the broader implications in an election year where the economy will take centre stage. Political and financial support has flooded in from around the country. "We are going to chart the course for the rest of the country," said the state's lieutenant governor, Rebecca Kleefisch, who is also being recalled.
The activists on the ground calling for Walker's recall understand this also. Ask them what's at stake and most will say women's rights, union rights and voters' rights. But the Democratic leadership, both locally and nationally, who have taken over the recall effort, clearly don't. They have run a campaign calling for more consensual governance and less divisive rhetoric and accusing Walker of being corrupt. Bill Clinton, who came to town to stump for Barrett on Friday, called for "creative co-operation", bringing unions and business around the table to discuss common interests. There are times that can work. But not when unions are not allowed through the door, let alone at the table.
Nationally, Democrats have kept their distance. Clinton is the only high-profile Democrat to lend his support to a campaign that is being outspent by more than seven to one. Little wonder that most polls show Walker with a small but persistent lead that only a huge Democratic turnout can override. Indeed it's amazing his opponents are doing as well as they are.
So while conservatives are using Wisconsin as a laboratory to openly wage class war, the Democratic leadership keeps extending their hand and singing Kumbaya. The problem is not simply that Walker is divisive - though that is a problem - but that he's on the wrong side of the divide. Calls for unity are meaningless without first spelling out on what basis people should unite and working out where the disunity came from in the first place.
"You get out of a ditch when people stand on each others' shoulders and the person at the top starts pulling people out," said Clinton. True. But the last people you'd rely on are those who dug the ditch and shoved you in - particularly when they're still building and still shoving.
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The Billion-Dollar Mitt Machine |
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Monday, 04 June 2012 09:15 |
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Excerpt: "Led by the billionaire Koch Brothers, forces allied with the GOP are now planning to spend a record-shattering $1 billion to put Romney in the White House."
Charles and David Koch. (photo: John Chiasson/Liaison; Robin Platzer/FilmMagic)
The Billion-Dollar Mitt Machine
By Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone
04 June 12
n my latest Rolling Stone piece I profile the 16 mega-rich donors who've ponied up at least $1 million each for the SuperPAC backing Mitt Romney. But even those giant checks may soon look like chump change, according to a new report in Politico.
Led by the billionaire Koch Brothers, forces allied with the GOP are now planning to spend a record-shattering $1 billion to put Romney in the White House.
The biggest news is that the Kochtopus - the shadowy network of political advocacy groups funded by industrialists Charles and David Koch - is alone planning to spend $395 million to defeat Obama. Take a second to let that sink in with the help of a tweet from former George W. Bush consultant Mark McKinnon this morning:
"Think the $$ political system is screwed up? Koch brothers alone are planning to spend more $$ than McCain's entire 2008 presidential budget."
The Koch money - twice what the billionaire brothers had previously committed - will dwarf even the $300 million the American Crossroads network controlled by ex-Bushies Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie expects to spend.
The Romney-linked SuperPAC, Restore our Future, which raised $50 million for the primary says it now expects to spend another $100 million before election day.
Other megadollar players backing Mitt, according to Politico?
U.S. Chamber of Commerce: $100 million
YG Network (Eric Cantor's SuperPAC): $30 million
American Action Network (led by former GOP Senator Norm Coleman): $30 million
Freedom Works (Dick Armey's group that helped launch the Tea Party): $30 million
The spending seems sure to outpace the money raised by President Obama's SuperPAC - which hopes to raise just $100 million - and Big Labor, whose budget may be as small as $200 million.
The Big Money gap puts tremendous pressure on the Obama campaign to maximize returns from its vast network of small-dollar donors. And it makes even more pivotal the president's most powerful weapon, the intricate network of on-the-ground volunteer organizers the campaign has built out in the electoral battleground.
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