Top Clinton adviser Mark Penn CEO of a union-busting P.R. firm. "Doesn't labor deserve more respect?

[Bluebear]

By Joe Conason

There must be moments when the leaders of America's labor movement mutter the dark lament of the late Rodney Dangerfield, because so often they "get no respect" from the same Democratic politicians who depend on union endorsements and funding. This week they could certainly feel that way, after voicing their "concern" over the actions of a huge union-busting public relations company headed by Sen. Hillary Clinton's top political strategist, Mark Penn -- and getting no satisfactory response.

The prodigious Penn, a pollster and counselor to the Clintons since 1995, has risen to the commanding heights of the public relations and research business over the three decades since he entered politics. Having started in a tiny, two-man polling operation in a New York City mayoral campaign, he is now the CEO of Burson-Marsteller Inc., one of the planet's largest P.R. shops, with corporate clients ranging from Microsoft to Shell Oil and Pfizer. For progressive voters, those connections should raise questions about Penn's dominant role in the Clinton campaign, especially because he has reportedly boasted about the business benefits of his political power.

Smart, skillful and tenacious, Penn is also the ultimate expression of a long-standing trend among political consultants -- that is, claiming to serve the public interest during election years while selling their connections and knowledge to special interests every year. For him and many of his colleagues, the affluence that accrues to influence shapes their attitudes (and their advice to candidates). They tend to reject populism and almost any position that might lead to conflict with their corporate benefactors.

The problem with Penn came to a head over the past few weeks when reporter Ari Berman explored his career and the unsavory history of Burson-Marsteller in the pages of the Nation, including themes that had previously been raised by Mark Schmitt in the American Prospect. (Here I should disclose that I am the director of the Nation Institute Investigative Fund, which provided research support for Berman's article.)

Among the most controversial aspects of Penn's firm's business, from the liberal perspective at least, come under the category of "labor relations," a traditional euphemism for suppressing workers and thwarting their right to organize. Before Penn scrubbed his firm's Web site, it advertised this specialty and noted the firm's capacity to confront "Organized Labor's coordinated campaigns whether they are in conjunction with organizing or contract negotiating." Not the most graceful wording, but the idea is clear enough.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2007/06/16/hillary_and_mark_penn/

[Mojambo]

1. This guy is SUCH bad news.

Clinton does not currently have my general election support sewn up.

This guy, and his influence, is a deal breaker for me.

[zazzle]

51. Goldwater, Whitewater, Blackwater = Hillary! No more Clintonwater!

[leftchick]

2. what a slimeball

and what does this say about hillary? Disgusting. :puke:

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. "pollster and counselor"

Watch who she surrounds herself with, and it will tell you everything you need to know.

If we had been smart, we would have done the same with Bush when he was a candidate.

[havocmom]

11. No wonder 'polls' show her as inevitable, though I have yet to meet ANYONE in real life

who will vote for her.

She is the new face for the corporate takeover of the government.

[The Backlash Cometh]

16. If DU is any indication, there is definitely a surge going on to sell

Hillary as the inevitable heiress supreme.

Does that make her the fourth Supreme?

[havocmom]

24. More likely, the next puppet

x(

[intheflow]

22. I haven't met anyone who wants her in, either.

And that's talking to Democrats from all the places I've lived this year: Mississippi, Colorado, and Massachusetts. She is definitely the corporate candidate, and I really resent her being shoved upon us as though she is inevitable.

[stillrockin]

34. I haven't met even one supporter either.

[snowbear]

54. You are so right havocmom..

I don't know a single Democrat --- from Florida to Alaska and all points inbetween -- that is supporting her.

Not ONE.

Although... she is getting that money somewhere..

[havocmom]

57. Love that picture. Worth 10,000 words; even of yours

;)

[cyclezealot]

61. another clue about their orientation.

follow their money.

[Orsino]

4. What should we think of the candidate who keeps him on?

It does not bode well for the candidate's alleged "liberal" bent.

[leftist_not_liberal]

8. That would assume that liberalism

is not and has not always been entangled with this stuff.

And that would be an incorrect assumption. There is a chasm of unimaginable width between the average Joe and those who run things.

[Orsino]

36. They are not of us. n/t

[gulfcoastliberal]

5. Hillary = Wal Mart Board member

You know she is against the unions - why any support her is astounding.

[Solly Mack]

6. K& R

"...merely bestowing a patina of moral hygiene on the dirty money"

Love it!

[leftist_not_liberal]

7. There is -nothing- legitimate about the "PR" industry.

Not one thing.

There never has been.

Public Relations is a warping of the already questionable Freudian line of understanding, twisted to control the masses by Freud's nephew Edward Bernays.

It's a despicable industry and just part of the rot of fascism in America that metastasized through the whole of the twentieth century:

Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter described Bernays and Ivy Lee as "professional poisoners of the public mind, exploiters of foolishness, fanaticism and self-interest." And history itself showed the flaw in Bernays's claim that "manipulation of the masses" is natural and necessary in a democratic society. The fascist rise to power in Germany demonstrated that propaganda could be used to subvert democracy as easily as it could be used to "resolve conflict."

In his autobiography, titled Biography of an Idea, Bernays recalls a dinner at his home in 1933 where "Karl von Weigand, foreign correspondent of the Hearst newspapers, an old hand at interpreting Europe and just returned from Germany, was telling us about Goebbels and his propaganda plans to consolidate Nazi power. Goebbels had shown Weigand his propaganda library, the best Weigand had ever seen. Goebbels, said Weigand, was using my book Crystallizing Public Opinion as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me. ... Obviously the attack on the Jews of Germany was no emotional outburst of the Nazis, but a deliberate, planned campaign." Bernays is held in high standards even today, and was even named as one of the 1000 most influential people of all time.

Source: Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton.

In 2006 a Der Spiegel journalist interviewed the founder of the PR firm Burson-Marsteller, Harold Burson, and asked him about the role of Edward Bernays in shaping the course of modern PR. "Bernays thought that he could control public opinion. His methodology, of course, was fundamental. Most of the things we do today were identified by Bernays 80 years ago. He had brilliant ideas. I met him a few times, but didn’t like him. He was one of the most egocentric people I have ever met," Burson said.

- the above taken from sourcewatch



Wikipedia on Public Relations: “One of Bernays’ early clients was the tobacco industry. In 1929, he orchestrated a legendary publicity stunt aimed at persuading women to take up cigarette smoking, which was then considered unfeminine and inappropriate for women with any social standing. He initially consulted with psychoanalyst A. A. Brill, who told him that cigarettes were symbolic of the male penis. Therefore, if one wanted women to take up the habit of it was necessary to first connect the act of smoking to the idea of challenging the established male power in society. Women would smoke, he said, if the cigarette was a statement against the male-dominant ways, because this way women would symbolically have their own penises.”

BBC: The Century Of The Self
"This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy."
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8953172273825999151
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3031880283858584099&q=century+of+the+self&hl=en
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7009899812873111112&q=century+of+the+self&hl=en
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6884155963216756796&q=century+of+the+self&hl=en

Reckon -any- of our leaders are -not- entangled in this shit?

"Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country." - the asshole in his 1929 book 'Propaganda'

[Ron Green]

9. Would that I could recommend this post.

Marvelous. Welcome to DU!

[leftist_not_liberal]

10. Thanks Ron. I'm gonna try treally hard to behave & hang around.

There is so much fantastic content here that whatever I can add is but a tiny drop in the ocean.

But I do appreciate your props.

Feel free to take the post as your own and top post it for others to recommend if you wish. I claim no ownership.

[havocmom]

12. We could recommend leftist_not_liberal post it as an OP

and if not, we could do an OP, quote from l_n_l's informative post and link to it?

It IS a treasure for anyone really interested in how we got into such a mess in America, and planet earth, for that matter.

[havocmom]

13. Welcome to DU!

Looking forward to reading much more from you.

Yes, indeedy!

[leftist_not_liberal]

14. Trust me. I am nothing special.

I just read things smart people say and then steal it.

:evilgrin:

[havocmom]

23. Hey, I LIKE people who actually pay attention

They are refreshing, and I can steal a lot of cool info from them ;)

[Bluebear]

17. Glad to have your voice here.

Welcome.

[ProudDad]

40. As I remember it

Three of the first major successes of the PR industry were;

1) Convincing women to smoke cigarettes
2) Conning people into thinking that heavily "marbled" (fatty) meat from corn fed cattle was better than lean meat from grass fed cattle
3) World War One

They are a dismal pack of amoral sleezeballs...

[Ken Burch]

53. Before that, Edward Bernays helped the Rockefellers explain away the Ludlow Massacre

n/t.

[TahitiNut]

42. Who could possibly deny them when they say "you've come a long way, baby"?

:rofl:

"cum" ... "long" ... uh-huh. That there's a connection with a "baby" is biologically undeniable.

It's insane.

[Raksha]

63. Great post - I learned a lot from that. n/t

[XOKCowboy]

15. Rachel Maddow was talking about Burson-Marsteller yesterday..

Their clients have included Blackwater, the Saudis (after 9/11), assorted juntas and dictators, Chevron (remember the CO2 is LIFE commercial) and all sorts of nefarious scumbags.

[Canuckistanian]

20. Read SourceWatch for a more complete description

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Burson-Marsteller

They've represented Tobacco firms, Big Pharma, Big Oil anti-Global Warming groups.

They've fabricated Wikipedia entries for clients, produced "fake news" stories, and founded a PAC that gave 58% of it's money to Republicans in 2004.

[lateo]

18. People just hate Hillary because she is a powerful woman.

Yeah, right.

[senseandsensibility]

19. yes

of course it does.

[intheflow]

21. K&R -- this dude bodes ill for a Clinton administration.

And his presence in the Clinton camp is really disturbing.

[leftist_not_liberal]

25. Clinton/BM Connection: 1990: Mexico hires B-M to sell NAFTA to the American public

Burson-Marsteller is the world's fifth largest PR company (Source: Council of PR Firms, 2002) and part of the WPP Group. According to a 2004 profile in The Hill, a Washington, DC newspaper, "This multinational PR behemoth has an active public-affairs practice led by Richard Mintz, who ran the media shop at the Department of Transportation during the Clinton administration. He also served as staff director for Hillary Clinton during the 1992 campaign. B-M has won awards recently for its work for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the "No on Proposition 54" campaign in California. Its public-affairs practice is bolstered by its affiliation with Direct Impact (grassroots marketing) and BKSH & Associates (lobbying)."

...

In April 2005, Jack O'Dwyer's Newsletter reported that Burson-Marsteller had joined with Quinn Gillespie & Associates to launch 360 Advantage, a public affairs shop filled with "key players in George W. Bush's successful presidential campaigns."

360 Advantage is headed by Russ Schriefer, who did advertising with the Bush/Cheney 2000 and 2004 campaigns and produced the 2004 Republican National Convention, and by Stuart Stevens, a "Bush adman and veteran political strategist." Schriefer and Stevens were also partners in the Stevens & Schriefer Group in Washington, DC, and have worked on presidential campaigns in the Czech Republic, Nigeria, the Philippines and Congo (Jack O'Dwyer's Newletter, Vol. 38, No. 17, April 27, 2005).

Burson-Marsteller, Sourcewatch
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Burson-Marsteller

A host of prominent Republicans fall under Penn's purview. B-M's Washington lobbying arm, BKSH & Associates, is run by Charlie Black, a leading GOP operative who maintains close ties to the White House, including Karl Rove, and was former partners with Lee Atwater, the political consultant who crafted the Willie Horton smear campaign used by George H.W. Bush against Michael Dukakis in 1988. Black regularly disparages the Clintons; he has called Hillary a "martyr figure" and said Bill "tearfully embraced...government preferences for homosexual lifestyle." In recent years Black's clients have included the likes of Iraq's Ahmad Chalabi, the darling of the neocon right in the run-up to the war; Lockheed Martin; and Occidental Petroleum. In the summer of 2005 he landed a contract with the Lincoln Group, the disgraced PR firm that covertly placed US military propaganda in Iraqi news outlets. The agreement, according to Intelligence Online, allowed the Lincoln Group to "tap into BKSH's extensive contacts in the Republican administration." When asked by The New Yorker if there was too much cronyism in Iraq, Black responded, "I just wish I could find the cronies."

As expected with such a lineup, B-M has a highly confrontational relationship with organized labor. "Companies cannot be caught unprepared by Organized Labor's coordinated campaigns," read the "Labor Relations" section of its website (until it was scrubbed after Mark Schmitt of The American Prospect quoted the language in March). It consults frequently with George Washington University professor Jarol Manheim, author of The Death of a Thousand Cuts: Corporate Campaigns and the Attack on the Corporation and Biz-War and the Out-of-Power Elite: The Progressive-Left Attack on the Corporation. And it lends help to some of the most controversial union-busting efforts in America.

...

Every election cycle Penn discovers a new group of swing voters--"soccer moms," "wired workers," "office park dads"--who happen to be the key to the election and believe the same thing: "Outdated appeals to class grievances and attacks upon corporate perfidy only alienate new consistencies and ring increasingly hollow," Penn has written. Through his longtime association with the Democratic Leadership Council, Penn has been pushing pro-corporate centrism for years. Many of the same companies that underwrite the DLC, such as Eli Lilly, AT&T, Texaco and Microsoft, also happen to be clients of Penn's.

...

Yet despite occupying such a divisive place in the Democratic Party and outsized role in the corporate world--and despite his company's close ties to Republican political operatives and the Bush White House--Penn remains a leading figure in Hillary's campaign, pitching the inevitability of her nomination to donors and party bigwigs. According to the New York Times, " Clinton responds to Penn's points with exclamations like, Oh, Mark, what a smart thing to say!" Politically, his presence means that triangulation is alive and well inside the campaign and that despite her populist forays, Hillary won't stray too far from the center. "Penn has a lot of influence on her, no doubt about it," says New York political consultant Hank Sheinkopf, who worked with Penn in '96. "He's not going to let her drift too far left."
Spinning Hillary Centrist, The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070521/berman

The public relations business is one of the fastest growing industries in the global market economy. In order to face perils like labor unions, organized consumer activists and environmental groups, governments and corporations have come to rely more on slick PR campaigns. The peril to popular democracy posed by PR firms should not be underestimated. Using the latest communications technologies and polling techniques, as well as an array of high-level political connections, PR flacks routinely "manage" issues for government and corporate clients and "package" them for public consumption. The result is a "democracy" in which citizens are turned into passive receptacles of "disinfotainment" and "advertorials" and in which critics of the status quo are defined as ignorant meddlers and/or dangerous outsiders.

...

On the human rights front, B-M has represented some of the worst violators of our age. These include:


* The Nigerian government during the Biafran war, to discredit reports of genocide.

* The fascist junta that ruled Argentina during the 70's and early 80's, to attract foreign investment.

* The totalitarian regime of South Korea, to whitewash the human rights situation there during the 1988 Olympics.

* The Indonesian government, which got into power through a CIA- sponsored bloodbath. (It should be pointed out, however, that B-M denies that it is handling the issue of genocide in East Timor)

* Ideological barriers are no object. B-M also represented the late communist Romanian despot Nicolae Ceaucescu.

* Other third world human rights violators that have been represented by B-M include the governments of Singapore and Sri Lanka.



Doesn't this bother the consciences of B-M's executives? Not at all. Commenting on his firm's work for Argentina's fascists, B-M founder Harold Burson said that "We regard ourselves as working in the business sector for clearcut business and economic objectives. So we had nothing to do with a lot of the things that one reads in the paper about Argentina as regards human rights and other activities".

...


For years B-M has been involved in major environmental issues all over the world, not hesitating to give polluters a helping hand when confronted by activist groups and/or government regulations. Many transnational corporations have turned to B-M for help in the creation of a pedantic, elitist and corporate-oriented brand of environmentalism. It is the hope of entrepreneurial sectors and neoliberal demagogues that this type of safe and harmless environmental activism will displace the more militant and agressive grassroots groups.

B-M's environmental services have benefited industrial polluters, such as the following:


* Babcock & Wilcox, when its nuclear power plant in Three Mile Island had its famous mishap in 1979.

* Union Carbide, to handle the public relations crisis caused by the Bhopal tragedy in 1984.

* Exxon, to counter the negative press coverage it got in the wake of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in 1989.

* Ontario Hydro, an industrial concern, headed by Earth Summit secretary general Maurice Strong, which is the biggest source of CO2 emissions in Canada. This corporation is currently selling nuclear reactors to Argentina and Chile.

* The Louisiana-Pacific (L-P) logging company, famous for its union- busting, clear cutting of old growth forests and support for anti- environmental front groups. L-P hopes to convince its employees and the public that ruralunemployment in North America is caused by environmental extremists and opressive government regulation and not by unsustainable logging practices or the relocation of s awmills to low-wage countries like Mexico.

* B-M formed the British Columbia Forest Alliance (BCFA), a Canadian front group which has L-P among its founding members. BCFA is campaigning against restrictions on logging and is actively work ing to smear and discredit environmentalists. Other BCFA members include Mitsubishi and Weyerhaueser.

* B-M is a key player in the nuclear industry lobby. According to Canadian journalist Joyce Nelson, B-M has for years "represented top nuclear power/nuclear weapons contractors such as General Electric, AT&T, McDonnell Douglas, Asea Brown Boveri and Du Pont. In fact, Canada's first Candu reactor sale to Argentina in the early 1970's was later renegotiated during the reign of the military junta, for whom Burson-Marsteller did an image-cleanup from 1976-1981". In addition to this, since 1993 B-M subsidiary Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly (see sidebar) has been representing Nordion International, a newly-privatised subsidiary of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., Canada's state-owned nuclear power company.

* B-M coordinated the oil industry's campaign to discredit and destroy president Clinton's proposal for a BTU tax.

* A B-M executive sits on the board of Keep America Beautiful, a front for the packaging and waste hauling industries that lobbies against mandatory recycling laws, especially the passage of a national bottle bill in the US.

* B-M's most powerful and influential 'environmental' client is the Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD), an eco-capitalist outfit founded by Swiss banker Stephan Schmidheiny. A leading theorist and advocate of neoliberal dogma and corporate environmentalism, Schmidheiny agressively combines entrepreneurship and statesmanship. He is a board member of NestlE9, and a director and shareholder (5% owner) of B-M client Asea Brown Boveri. BCSD's original task was to act behind the scenes at the 1992 Earth Summit, which was chaired by the current head of B-M client Ontario Hydro Maurice Strong, to neutralize and silence any voices critical of the irresponsible behavior of polluting corporations. In the words of Joyce Nelson, "With the able assistance of public relations giant Burson-Marsteller, a very elite group of business people (including B-M itself) was seemingly able to plan the agenda for the Earth Summit with little interference from NGO's or government leaders". Nowadays BCSD is advocating free markets and unfettered corporate activity as the only salvation of the environment. Its members include the CEO's of Asea Brown Boveri, Browning Ferris Industries, Ciba-Geigy, Dow Chemical, DuPont, BCFA member Mitsubishi, Maurice Strong's Ontario Hydro, Royal Dutch-Shell, and companies from Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Spain, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Thailand and Venezuela.
http://home.intekom.com/tm_info/ge_bm.htm

[leftist_not_liberal]

26. Guess Who?

Coup D'etat in Venezuela: Made in the USA
The U.S.-designed Plan to Overthrow Hugo Chavez in the Days Following the Election
by Chris Carlson
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=11471

In his article, "Coup D'etat in Disguise," Jonathan Mowat described how these "polls" work: "Penn, Schoen and Berland (PSB) has played a pioneering role in the use of polling operations, especially "exit polls," in facilitating coups. Its primary mission is to shape the perception that the group installed into power in a targeted country has broad popular support. ""...the deployment of polling agencies' "exit polls" broadcast on international television...give the false impression of massive vote-fraud by the ruling party, to put targeted states on the defensive."

That is, the goal is to either get enough support to sway the election in their favor, or, if that isn't possible, to give the impression that the elections were fraudulent and encourage the population to overturn them. The strategy has been so successful in overthrowing regimes, or installing the regimes that the U.S. prefers, that the operation has evolved into a blueprint to be used in countries around the world. Ian Traynor described it in the Guardian in November 2004 as follows:

"he campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavory regimes...The operation - engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience - is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people's elections"

[mod mom]

27. Joe Conanson is always right on the mark-YES LABOR DESERVES BETTER! NO DLC!

[KoKo]

28. and Conason was accused of being in Hillary's pocket because of his work

with Murray Waas and Gene Lyons on exposing the Mellon-Scaife operation in "The Hunting of the President." They did all that great work on Salon exposing the Vast RW Conspiracy.

When he's talking about this...it's important to listen.

[me b zola]

29. k&r

[leftist_not_liberal]

30. Screen capture of scrubbed page at Burson-Marsteller's website

[LibertyorDeath]

35. Wow what a vile piece of work these guys are

They should change their name Fascists are US!

[Mark D.]

52. For God's Sake

Get this screen capture to Obama/Edwards/Kucinich
people ASAP (and Gore's if he decides to run). We
do NOT need a person cozy with Union-busters as
a president. After her for-for-profit health care,
joke 'universal' plan, this was all I'd needed to
flip me over to see her as the won Bush wants
to win, if a Democrat wins. It'd be the same
shit, different dictator. This is ridiculous.

[BlueJac]

31. Hillary would be the next Bush..........

Put that in the bank!

[snowbear]

55. OMG, that is scary!

[leftist_not_liberal]

32. Trending Towards Inanity

Mark Penn’s new book, Microtrends, is so epically awful that it could take the entire polling industry down with it
http://www.populistindependent.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=6462#6462
By Ezra Klein

First, a bit of full disclosure: Unlike everybody else in Washington, I have never met Mark Penn. This, I am assured, is to my enduring discredit, as he’s apparently a lovely individual, and if I only knew him, I would understand that his protection of a union-busting division within Burson-Marsteller, the PR firm of which he is the CEO, isn’t evidence of anti-union feelings at all. Nor is Penn’s ceaseless advocacy for a cautious, hawkish, pro-corporate, don’t-rock-the-boat Democratic Party a function of his beliefs, corporate background or clients. Instead, it’s merely “The Numbers.” Indeed, nothing Penn says or does can be questioned, because he’s just there to give us The Numbers. His personal thoughts are immaterial.

At the same time, his personal thoughts matter. As the Washington Post recently reported: “In the four months since Clinton officially became a candidate, Penn has consolidated his power, according to advisers close to the campaign, taking increasing control of the operation. Armed with voluminous data that he collects through his private polling firm, Penn has become involved in virtually every move Clinton makes, with the result that the campaign reflects the chief strategist as much as the candidate.” Even there, though, the Penn mystique persists: Penn’s power, we’re told, comes from his “voluminous data,” not his opinions. To argue with Penn is to argue with The Numbers. And you’re not against Numbers, are you?

That’s the Penn defense, and he and his friends have long stuck to it. “Mark is somebody who is very, very comfortable with quantification,” enthused Doug Schoen, his polling partner of over 30 years. “He is very comfortable with numbers.” It is this reputation that, so far as I can tell, Mark Penn has written Microtrends to dispel. Unlike most pollsters, Penn never releases his raw numbers, only his analysis. So we must take it on faith that his methodology is rigorous, his polls accurate and his interpretations fair. This book is our first opportunity to observe, at length, how adroitly Penn handles raw data. And the answer is stunning, even to a doubter like me. Mark Penn cannot handle numbers. If this book were turned in as the final to an entry-level statistics class, Penn would not only be failed, but the professor might well retire in shame.

...

“It takes 1 percent of people making a dedicated choice—contrary to the mainstream’s choice—to create a movement that can change the world,” Penn writes. Why 1 percent? Who knows? Penn doesn’t stick to it himself...

The enterprise has always been dodgy. Populist pollsters reliably discover that the electorate thirsts for more populism. Conservative pollsters routinely discover a small government consensus pulsing at the heart of the body politic. When the libertarian Cato Institute commissioned a poll of the electorate, they found—shockingly—that the essential swing vote was made of libertarians. Remarkably, whenever a politician or self-interested institution releases a poll, the results show a symmetry between the attitudes of the pollster’s employer and those of the voters. But Penn’s book shines light on this phenomenon: If he is the pinnacle of his profession, then the profession uses numbers as a ruse—a superficial empiricism that obscures garden-variety hackery. And that’s a trend worth worrying about.

[leftist_not_liberal]

33. Damage Control:

Whew!! That didn't take long.

Clinton responds on Blackwater

From communications director Howard Wolfson:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1007/Clinton_responds_on_Blackwater.html

Mark Penn did no work on the Blackwater account. Burson has cut its ties to Blackwater, and that was the right thing to do. Mark is and remains a valuable member of our team. Sen. Clinton believes Blackwater must be held accountable for its actions and has laid out a detailed proposal to sharply reduce the number of contractors employed by the federal government by 500,000. She has repeatedly stated her concern that such contractors are not as accountable as federal employees.

Crisis Management

From the Penn, Schoen and Berland website:

http://www.psbresearch.com/how_crisis_management.htm

Over the last three decades, PSB has advised Fortune 500 CEOs and heads of state through some of the highest profile political and corporate crises around the world. Through that experience we have developed a highly efficient crisis management process for using research to ensure that every move you make, during times when even the smallest move matters, will be the most effective. Our crisis management process involves three basic steps:

1. Before the Crisis, we use our proprietary war gaming research to project how a potential crisis might arise and what impact it will have, and then to play out how events will unfold differently depending on what responsive strategy we use.

2. During the Heat of the Crisis, we conduct flash polls of the key audiences to determine how well we are standing up to the negative messaging and how we need to continue evolving our response in light of how things are unfolding. This is the defense phase of crisis work.

3. In the Aftermath of the Crisis, we work on rehabilitation – that is, moving onto offense to recapture any ground we have lost.

The net impact is a crisis management process that helps you manage your way through the events and recover from them as quickly as possible.

[MilesColtrane]

37. "...we conduct flash polls of the key audiences...

...to determine how well we are standing up to the negative messaging"

Negative messaging? Is that PR speak for "the truth"?

He sounds like a professional liar feeding at the corporate teat, enabling monopolistic companies to destroy unions.

Hillary sure is laying down with a lot of dogs.

Maybe we should send her some flea colllars.

[Rosemary2205]

38. Both Clintons were, are and will always be conservatives.

I have no idea WHY Bill gets the love from progressives. The man totally F'd over the working class with NAFTA and knew what he was doing.

[ProudDad]

39. K&R

This CAN'T BE REITERATED ENOUGH...

Hillary is the corporate candidate this time around. As bush was in 2000 and 2004. As Slick Willie was in '92/'96.

This guy is slime, anti-worker, pro-corporate capitalist masters slime...

Hillary knew that when she hired him. Hmmmmmm.

[frylock]

41. a conspicuous absence of clinton supporters to defend this..

did they take the day off?

[KG]

45. heh.

[WillyT]

46. They're On Their Yachts... Three Day Weekend And All

:evilgrin:

[emilyg]

59. No - here. Just admiring mob mentality at work.

[Ken Burch]

60. But you admit there is no excuse for a DEMOCRATIC campaign having a professional unionbuster

in its inner circle, don't you?

That and the support of the Republican "trade deals" pretty clearly show there's no justification for labor endorsements of this candidate.

[creeksneakers2]

62. I can't find a date for when Penn took over as CEO

of Burson-Martsteller. I believe his appointment was recent and after almost all this sleazy business. I still fault Penn for going to work for such a sleazy company.

Hillary hired Penn in 1996 or earlier. Its likely that she took him on before Penn became involved with Burson-Martsteller. Hillary loves the job Penn is doing. I think that's why she keeps him on. Regularly, successful political consultants from Washington go on to corporate work and big money. That's an unfortunate reality that is hard for anybody in Washington to escape.

I don't like what Penn is doing but its too much of a stretch to hold Hillary responsible for it. Hillary just took a position that's very unfavorable to Blackwater. That shows she makes up her own mind.

[defendandprotect]

43. And LABOR organizations didn't know t his ---- ???? Or overlooking it -- ???? What ????

Keep in mind, as I watched this stuff over the decades the unions were set up with "leaders" and officials who were undermining the unions -- not to mention corporate/organized efforts -- often using organized crime figures -- to undermine the unions.

Organized crime's influence with some labor unions certainly wasn't benefiting labor -- !!!

[defendandprotect]

47. Presume Hillary hasn't made a statement on this yet -- ????

I'm out with Hillary, anyway --
but what about her supporters here -- how is this effecting them -- ???
I'm gonna go see what they're thinking about this . . ..

[WillyT]

44. Meet The New Boss... Same As The Old Boss...

Won't get fooled again, eh?

:banghead:

[MilesColtrane]

48. I wonder if the rank and file of these unions:

United Transportation Union

National Association of Letter Carriers

Transportation Communications Union

International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers

International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers

know that the candidate they are endorsing has a top political advisor whose job is to destroy them?



If I had decided on another candidate, I just might be tempted to try to contact them and let them know, in the hope of his picking up their endorsement.

Hmmm.......

[mod mom]

49. So few people pay attention to the details, if they did the'd be as outraged as

most of us on DU. :mad:

[ooglymoogly]

50. There is no other word....S-H-A-M-E

[JCMach1]

56. This will be a BIG problem if she keeps this guy on

[ryaninfo]

58. Iran and Senator Clinton

Please don't Hilary win!

Look at her stance on Iran:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_DSNy12NBw

Just another Neo-con

[B Calm]

64. Hillary was the President of the Young Republicans when she was

at Wellesley College. To me.. sorry, but I don't trust her!