Mark Penn also the CEO of Burson-Marsteller !!!

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.counterpunch.com/cockburn10202007.html

Penn also the CEO of Burson-Marsteller, (part of the British-based WPP Group), a pr firm that in the course of its career has been retained to winch some sensationally grimy clients out of the mud, such Union Carbide after Bhopal, the Argentine military junta and Royal Dutch Shell after some very poor publicity in Nigeria.

"We live in a world with a deluge of choices" Penn exults, in a typical paean to modern times. "In some sense it's the triumph of the Starbucks economy over the Ford economy.. Starbucks is governed by the idea that people make choices--in their coffee, their milk, their sweetener" It's the way Bill Clinton used to burble on, using research briefs and polls concocted by Penn and Morris to persuade Americans that with Bill at the helm the nation would be on the cutting edge of innovative thinking and performance.

Actually, in terms of their respective products Fordism offered a lot more choices than Starbucks. In the mid-1950s, the options available to the purchaser of a Chevy Bel-Air 4-door sedan were infinite, from a rainbow of paint and fabric combinations including a paisley-pattern roof. The shapes and styles of the cars were prodigious in baroque variety. And the cars were often cheap. As for Starbucks, the company's basic signature is over-roasted beans and its core achievement is to have people fork over $3.50 for a cup of coffee. Starbucks is a predatory franchiser and its arrival in any town usually heralds the extinction of existing small cafes and diners. Its signage , across America and around the world through 13000 outlets, advertises not Penn's "customized, personalized products" but unending repetition.

The trick of Microtrends is to offer an America shaped to match the sort of "non-divisive" political rhetoric favored by the Democratic Leadership Council, an outfit paid for by corporations and designed to purge the Democratic Party of any partiality to the cause of labor or the interests of the poor. The Clintons have always been the DLC's marquee attraction, and its outlook is Pnn's. In the tapestry of Microtrends the spotlight is not on an awful health system with over 40 million uninsured, but on DIYDs, Do-It-Yourself Doctors. Penn tells us "it's the biggest trend in American health care", spearheaded by women and the young and promoted by Penn and Burson-Marsteller, working diligently for the pharmaceutical companies whose products, freed from the trifling restraints of a doctor's prescription, will be at the disposal of the DIYDs in the chain stores. Thus do microtrends find their due place in the great scheme of things.

[frylock]

1. win at any cost..

it really makes your heart well with pride.

[antigop]

2. More here.....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2115018

[seemslikeadream]

3. Thanks so much I missed that

The PR firm that smoothed over EXXON VALDEZ is smoothing over Clinton??

[T.Ruth2power]

4. Thanks for the info

I'll pass it on.

[shance]

5. So disconnected from reality.....from humanity.

n/t

[BelgianMadCow]

6. Relevant info - off t he greatest! n/t

[mod mom]

7. From WaPo: A Few Degrees of Seperation From Hillary Clinton's Top Advisor

A Few Degrees of Separation From Hillary Clinton's Top Adviser

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Tuesday, February 20, 2007; Page A11



Mark J. Penn is a man who wears many hats: high-paid political and corporate pollster, chief executive of an international communications and lobbying company, and chief strategist to New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Enough connections for you?


Well, there are more. Penn's firm, Burson-Marsteller Worldwide -- with 2,000 employees and $300 million a year in revenue -- owns BKSH & Associates, the major lobbying firm chaired by Charles R. Black Jr. That's right, Black, counselor to Republican presidents, reports to Clinton's top strategist.

The connections get even more entangled. Burson-Marsteller is a subsidiary of WPP Group, a London-based advertising and PR giant that owns many of the biggest names on K Street. These include Quinn Gillespie & Associates, Wexler & Walker Public Policy Associates, Timmons & Co., Ogilvy Government Relations Worldwide (formerly the Federalist Group), Public Strategies Inc., Dewey Square Group and Hill & Knowlton.

To be more precise, Penn's parent company employs as lobbyists and advisers an ex-chairman of the Republican National Committee (Edward W. Gillespie), a former House GOP leader (Robert S. Walker), a top GOP fundraiser (Wayne L. Berman), and the former media adviser to President Bush (Mark McKinnon).


-snip


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/19/AR2007021900972.html

TOO CLOSE OF CONNECTIONS FOR MY TASTE. I WISH MARK LOMBARDI WAS STILL ALIVE TO HELP VISUALIZE THE CONNECTIONS.