Roland Burris’ Bad PR Strategy

/19 Comments/in /by

As Burris’ allies (and the Politico) would have it, the source of Burris’ current problems is his crappy PR strategy.

Here’s his former media relations guy, Bud Jackson, disclaiming any responsibility for his recent woes (Jackson worked with Burris until he became Senator).

As many of you may recall I actively helped my former client, Roland Burris, during his run-up to being successfully seated in the United States Senate.

Since that time, well … his team’s public relations efforts have been less than stellar. Turns out that, because my business is political communication, I need to let folks know that I have not been involved in the decisions that have led to the public relations fiasco over the past week. In fact, I actively counseled his team to take very different actions, to no avail…

I know based on my own private conversations and experience that Senator Roland Burris has been the victim of bad advice and, when set-up to fail, he certainly shall we say, has had less than adeqaute attempts to better and more clearly inform the public at a press conference, or two. It has ben painful to watch. Regardless, the senator has more than 30 years of public service and his integrity has never been questioned. [empahsis original]

And here’s the Politico’s "news" story explaining that Burris’ problems all stem from bad media strategy.

The crisis now threatening Sen. Roland Burris’ political career started with revelations about his entanglements with disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. 

But it was the way the situation was handled by Burris and his advisers — trapped between competing political and legal demands — that has made the problem much worse and has pushed him to the brink of losing his seat. In multiple interviews, several Senate aides and Burris confidants say the senator was unprepared from a public relations and political perspective to deal with the national media frenzy and ethics problems he now confronts.

[snip]

Absent an aggressive communications strategy, the press and the public have formed their own opinions that the senator got his new job on false pretenses. As his support crumbled, Burris made a calculated decision not to rile up his backers — many of whom are black — for fear that it would create a vicious racial debate. But this decision has made him appear completely isolated politically, with virtually nobody in Illinois or Washington speaking up for him.

Read more →

Share this entry

CREW: Obama and Greg Craig Stand with the Dead-Enders

/26 Comments/in /by

This morning, I noted that the January 21 filing supporting Bush’s crazy notions about email might well be the work of Dead-Enders. We know Dead-Enders submitted a brief in another suit naming the President as defendant during the week of the inauguration. And DOJ has added a new lawyer to the team, suggesting it intends to continue the litigation. 

From CREW, one of the plaintiffs in the email suit, we’ve got confirmation that the Obama White House intends to continue the litigation. 

Recognizing the incoming Obama administration may not have had an opportunity to fully evaluate the merits of the motion to dismiss, even though it was filed on behalf of the Executive Office of the President, one of the named defendants, on January 21, we waited several weeks before reaching out to the White House to suggest they consider withdrawing their motion. The response from the White House, on the afternoon of February 20 (the day our brief was due) was that we should go ahead and file. Thus, at least at this point, the new administration has indicated quite clearly it plans to continue litigating this issue.  

The lack of confirmed appointees at the Justice Department does not suggest this is an interim position, given that the White House is the defendant here with a fully-staffed White House Counsel’s Office. As for the change in DOJ counsel, it is simply the result of the trial attorney previously assigned to the case departing DOJ for a detail (in the White House Counsel’s Office). 

The CREW argument that this is not an interim position doesn’t hold much weight, given the al-Haramain example (the President is also the defendant in that suit and their stance has changed since the January 22 filing). 

But, for the moment, it does say that Greg Craig is not only continuing Bush’s legislation, but he’s hiring one of the DOJ Dead-Enders that got us to this point. We’re not going to get very far if Greg Craig sees fit to hire the Dead-Enders into the White House.

Share this entry

Monday, 9AM, Roland Burris Is Still Senator

/33 Comments/in /by

I’ve lost my touch.

It used to be I’d go away for a week and Karl Rove or Alberto Gonzales would resign. Here we are, Monday morning after I’ve been gone a week (thanks to bmaz for really superb work last week!), and Roland Burris is still Senator.

Maybe if I do a recap of Burris’ week, though, and point out the looming holes in his story, then it’ll hasten his departure.

Fitz Joins the Fun

Remember how, in his press conference trying to explain how he forgot to mention his talks with RobBlago and John Harris, Burris couldn’t decide whether he had or had not been contacted by Fitz’ people regarding his negotiations on buying a Senate seat?

That question has now been solved, as Burris spent some time with federal investigators on Saturday.

U.S. Sen. Roland Burris was interviewed by federal authorities for several hours Saturday as part of the ongoing corruption investigation into charges that former Gov. Rod Blagojevich tried to sell a Senate seat for personal or political profit, sources familiar with the talks said.

Burris’ interview, which had been delayed for weeks, took place at his attorney’s offices in downtown Chicago. He has been informed he is not a target of the probe, the sources said.

Several details of this are interesting: what was responsible for the "weeks" delay in Burris’ testimony? Did he have to straighten out his story to the legislature first (though he did not do that with the State Supreme Court), so as to attempt to prevent perjury charges? Or did Fitz just want to make sure they had a complete catalog of the times Burris spoke to Blago’s people–including the multiple phone calls to John Harris that Burris still hasn’t ‘fessed to? Perhaps, too, Fitz wanted to wait until after the FBI started collecting information on Patti Blago’s tenure at the Chicago Christian Industrial League, since that was one way (through Burris’ partner Fred Lebed, who is on the board of the charity) that Burris could have influenced Blago in ways other than fundraising directly. Or, maybe, Burris was negotiating the terms on which he would be very forthcoming to Fitz?

Note that Burris’ secret sources (otherwise known as his attorney, I’m guessing) have gone to the Robert Luskin school of prosecutor-talk. Burris "has been informed he is not a target" of the probe. But did anyone mention anything about him being a subject?

Read more →

Share this entry

Inauguration Week Was a Busy Week for Dead-Enders

/7 Comments/in /by

A number of you have pointed to this story describing the "Obama" Administration support for the Bush Administration refusal to reconstruct Dick Cheney’s emails.

The Obama administration, siding with former President George W. Bush, is trying to kill a lawsuit that seeks to recover what could be millions of missing White House e-mails.

That claim is based on a January 21 motion to dismiss much of the National Security Archive suit against the Bush Administration, basically arguing that the only thing an NGO–and the Courts–can do is order the Administration to start restoring emails; they don’t have the grounds to force them to actually restore all the emails.

Check the date on that filing carefully.

January 21, of course, was Obama’s first full day in office, well before Eric Holder was sworn in as Attorney General. Heck, it was well before Obama’s team even got the email working at the White House themselves. And even, in a supreme bit of irony, it was the very same day when Obama signed an Executive Order saying incumbent Presidents, and not former ones, get to control the Presidential records of that former President.

January 21 was also just one day before the "Obama" Administration submitted a filing in the al-Haramain case that completely supported Bush’s unitary executive claims. Curiously, though, when the Obama Administration submitted another al-Haramain filing later in February, it adopted a significantly different strategy than they had in that January 22 filing. In other words, we know that the January 22 al-Haramain filing was indeed Dead-Enders submitting Bush’s strategy under Obama’s name; that strategy has since been changed.

We don’t–yet–have proof that the January 21 email filing was another case of a Dead-Ender submitting legal briefs in Obama’s name.  But there are two interesting details that suggest this might be the case. First, the ubiquitous Michael Hertz was–as he was on the al-Haramain case and just about everything else we’ve hated "Obama’s DOJ" doing–the senior official listed on the January 21 filing.

More interestingly, DOJ submitted a notice of appearance for Carlotta Poter Wells, a new lawyer to the government’s email team, about a week after this filing (though still before Holder was sworn in on Ferbuary 3). Read more →

Share this entry

Lebanese Recipe For Economic Health: Go With What You Know

/29 Comments/in , /by

Whether it is Henry Paulson, Tim Geithner or the yammering dipsticks on CNBC, it seems the there has been a headlong rush to seek analysis, wisdom and solutions from the very self proclaimed geniuses that put the US and the world in the problem to start with. Aren’t there any big bankers/finance ministers that really got it right? Turns out there are, and he comes from a most unexpected place. From the Los Angeles Times comes the story of Riad Toufic Salame:

Instead, the silver-haired banker became a hero by playing it very, very safe. In 2005, he defied pressure from the Lebanese business community and bucked international trends to issue what now looks like a prophetic decree: a blanket order barring any bank in his country from investing in mortgage-backed securities, which contributed to the most dramatic collapse of financial institutions since the Great Depression.

So as major banks in America and Europe were shuttered or partly nationalized and thousands of people in the U.S. financial sector were laid off, Lebanon’s banks had one of their best years ever.

Billions in cash continue to pour in to the relative safety of Lebanese savings accounts, with comfy but not extravagant yields of 6%. A nation shunned for years as the quintessential failed state has become a pretty safe bet, or as safe a bet as investors are likely to find in this climate.

Well, that is kind of refreshing, how did Salame do it? By being a rational technocrat, eschewing excesses, turning a deaf ear to cries for irrational rates of return, maintaining tight regulation, imposing conservative balance-sheet requirements, refusing to launder dirty money and, most critically:

When the real estate boom crested this decade and investors began bundling debt into nebulous financial instruments fueled by easy credit, the pressure was on for Salame to let banks take advantage of the high yields.

But Salame steadfastly refused.

He says the mortgage-backed securities worried him from the start. He watched curiously as investment bankers engaged in what he calls "rituals" to please the credit ratings agencies and got back such safe assessments of their products. He didn’t get it. Why were these considered safe investments? They were just too complicated. They went against a major tradition in Lebanese and Middle Eastern banking: Know to whom you’re fronting cash and who’s going to pay you back.

"We could not really sense who would be responsible in the end Read more →

Share this entry

Louisiana Gubernatorial Sitcom

/105 Comments/in , /by
Graphic by Twolf
Graphic by Twolf

I tell you what, those Republicans may not have squat for rational ideas, but they sure have some humor. Heck, it was less than two days ago we were watching Crockett and Tubbs Steele and Boner in "DC Vice". Fear not intrepid viewers, these jokers are bringin da funny all over. Our latest episode involves that wacky character Urkel Jindal, Governor of Louisiana. From Yahoo/Politico:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal announced Friday that he will decline stimulus money specifically targeted at expanding state unemployment insurance coverage, becoming the first state executive to officially refuse any part of the federal government’s payout to states.

In a statement, Jindal, who is slated to give the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s message to Congress on Tuesday, expressed concern that expanding unemployment insurance coverage would lead to increased unemployment insurance taxes later on.

Wow, the fine folks in Louisiana must find this hilarious since most governors are constantly scrapping to get their states funding they are in dire need of. And, as you may have heard, there are needs in Louisiana, part of Katrina ground central. Too bad they no longer have Dollar Bill Jefferson around to keep that stimulus money on ice.

What the hell though, life must be a hoot in a state run by a guy named Piyush who changed his name to Bobby because he identified with a character on the Brady Bunch. Personally, I don’t get it. He looks like Urkel to me.

[Awesome graphic by Twolf!]

Share this entry

Down On The Border: State Of War In Mexico

/95 Comments/in , , , /by

Via Laura Rozen comes reference to a chilling piece by Sam Quinones in Foreign Policy on the drug smuggling violence that has escalated to a total state of war rivaling levels in Iraq.

There are so many hot spots for attention these days – Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Gitmo, not to mention the ops that are being run on US citizens by their own government as a result of the Bush/Cheney decision to gin up a military rationale for surveillance domestically – that it is easy to forget what is going on just across the border. Easy, at least, until you take in Sam Quinones’ tale:

That week in Monterrey, newspapers reported, Mexico clocked 167 drug-related murders. When I lived there, they didn’t have to measure murder by the week. There were only about a thousand drug-related killings annually. The Mexico I returned to in 2008 would end that year with a body count of more than 5,300 dead. That’s almost double the death toll from the year before—and more than all the U.S. troops killed in Iraq since that war began.

But it wasn’t just the amount of killing that shocked me. When I lived in Mexico, the occasional gang member would turn up executed, maybe with duct-taped hands, rolled in a carpet, and dropped in an alley. But Mexico’s newspapers itemized a different kind of slaughter last August: Twenty-four of the week’s 167 dead were cops, 21 were decapitated, and 30 showed signs of torture. Campesinos found a pile of 12 more headless bodies in the Yucatán. Four more decapitated corpses were found in Tijuana, the same city where barrels of acid containing human remains were later placed in front of a seafood restaurant. A couple of weeks later, someone threw two hand grenades into an Independence Day celebration in Morelia, killing eight and injuring dozens more. And at any time, you could find YouTube videos of Mexican gangs executing their rivals—an eerie reminder of, and possibly a lesson learned from, al Qaeda in Iraq.

This is neither new nor isolated. When I was younger, I used to go down to Tijuana, it was a great time. It really was easy and fun; what Chinatown was to LA, Tijuana was to San Diego. No longer is even the formerly relatively civil Tijuana docile and appropriate for casual strolling about. Long ago, back in the sixties, on our way back to Read more →

Share this entry

Why GM Matters: Inside the Race to Transform an American Icon

/221 Comments/in , , , , /by
Why GM Matters

Why GM Matters

[As I indicated yesterday in the post "Why American Industry (And Its Future) Matters", we have the privilege of having author William J. Holstein today at Emptywheel and Firedoglake. Mr. Holstein has a long and rich history as a journalist and author. Most importantly for today, he has plunged into the history and ethos of General Motors and produced an incredible work detailing just how critical General Motors, the American auto industry, and American industry itself is to the United States economy and way of life.

As Michael Fitzgerald observed at bnet.com, "Holstein is using GM as a symbol for whether it makes sense for the U.S. to bother with manufacturing. That might sound odd for a country that for now probably remains the world’s largest manufacturing economy. But Holstein argues that our political and financial leaders don’t get manufacturing, and don’t think it’s important. This is the crux of the Main Street vs. Wall Street debate, and it is shaping up as the core fight of economic policy over the next few years: do we get a justifiable return if we invest in making things, or should we focus on information-driven innovation?"

I think that is right. Since we cannot layout the entire book in the intro here, Bill and I decided to focus on the emerging technology, and specifically battery/electric technology, and the new product lines, that GM is producing. With that said, what follows are prepared remarks in that regard by Bill Holstein. Take a look, and then join us in discussion. I am looking forward to the best and brightest that inhabit our little corner of the world participating in and driving this. Oh, and visit Bill anytime at his blog WilliamJHolstein.com Also, I heartily recommend purchasing his book, it is a fascinating look into a critical issue of our time, not to mention a great read. – bmaz]

*****
By: William J. Holstein:

It’s time to cut through all the nonsense about General Motors “not making cars that Amrericans want to buy.” The truth is that GM has seized design and performance leadership over its longtime nemesis, Toyota. Toyota’s cars these days resemble appliances, i.e. refrigerators on wheels. They don’t break, but they hardly inspire.

In terms of their physical appearance, GM vehicles have real attitude. The new CTS has a very bold and aggressive front end that designer John Manoogian came up with at the last moment. He and his team decided to take the V-shape that used to stop at the bumpers and let it plunge below the bumpers toward the ground. They also inserted grilles on the right front panels merely for decorative purposes. That nearly drove the engineers crazy because of the challenge of stamping a piece of sheet metal with an odd hole in the middle of it. But they did it. At first, the competition could not believe that GM had figured out how to achieve that.

Read more →

Share this entry

Is This Healthcare Reform Or Just Assistance To Health Corps?

/84 Comments/in , , , /by

I have a busy morning here, but want to draw attention to an article this morning in the New York Times by Robert Pear on the ongoing discussions of healthcare reform for the United States:

Since last fall, many of the leading figures in the nation’s long-running health care debate have been meeting secretly in a Senate hearing room. Now, with the blessing of the Senate’s leading proponent of universal health insurance, Edward M. Kennedy, they appear to be inching toward a consensus that could reshape the debate.

Many of the parties, from big insurance companies to lobbyists for consumers, doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, are embracing the idea that comprehensive health care legislation should include a requirement that every American carry insurance.
…
“There seems to be a sense of the room that some form of tax penalty is an effective means to enforce such an obligation, though only on those for whom affordable coverage is available,” said the memorandum, prepared by David C. Bowen, a neurobiologist who is director of the health staff at the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

The proposal for an individual mandate was one of the few policy disagreements between Mr. Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton in their fight for the Democratic presidential nomination. She wanted to require everyone to have and maintain insurance. He said he wanted to “ensure affordable coverage for all,” but would initially apply the mandate only to children.

The 20 people who regularly attend the meetings on Capitol Hill include lobbyists for AARP, Aetna, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the American Cancer Society, the American Medical Association, America’s Health Insurance Plans, the Business Roundtable, Easter Seals, the National Federation of Independent Business, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and the United States Chamber Read more →

Share this entry

The Iseman Cometh, The Iseman Goeth

/28 Comments/in , , /by
BartCop/Political Humor

BartCop/Political Humor

At the end of December last year, Emptywheel reported that noted high powered Washington lobbyist Miss Vicki Iseman had filed a defamation suit against the New York Times. At issue was a February 21, 2008 Times article that Iseman contended lead people to believe that she played hanky blankie with McCain; but, as EW noted at the time:

What was at issue in the article was the appearance of an affair, not an affair itself, and the beliefs of McCain staffers about that appearance of an affair.

That was exactly right then, and it is still right now and ought to be kept in mind in light of the news yesterday that Iseman’s lawsuit was dismissed:

A lobbyist’s lawsuit against The New York Times over the newspaper’s account of her ties to Senator John McCain has been settled, both sides announced on Thursday.

The suit, filed by Vicki L. Iseman, the Washington lobbyist, was settled without payment and The Times did not retract the article. In an unusual agreement, however, The Times is letting Ms. Iseman’s lawyers give their views on the suit on the paper’s Web site.

Their opinion is accompanied by a joint statement from both sides and a note to readers, which is also appearing in Friday’s edition of the newspaper.

Let me boil down to the bone what has been accomplished legally as a result of Iseman’s complaint. Not a damn thing; both parties are sticking to the same exact public positions they maintained before the meritless suit was filed, it is just that for the sake of their pocketbooks they have agreed to take the pissing match back out of the costly court litigation system. And, now that they are back into an ink fight as opposed to boxing with attorneys, let’s take a look at how Times Editor Bill Keller describes the matter in a published statement today:

What the article set out to do, and did, was to establish that Senator McCain — a man whose career was ensnared by scandal and then rebuilt on a reputation for avoiding even the appearance of impropriety — was sometimes careless of that reputation. The story reported that a senator who cast himself as the scourge of lobbyists rode on the private jets of business executives with interests before his committee, and that a senator who disdained the influence of corporate money accepted corporate money to support that very cause.

Read more →

Share this entry