The Awl

Big Government Forces Poor Doctors to Report Free Sandwiches

Choire Sicha — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:00:00 +0000

“Some companies fear that doctors may no longer want to engage in consulting arrangements, and such reluctance could chill innovation."
—That's the "executive vice president of the Advanced Medical Technology Association" standing up for American freedom. They're "advocates" for medical technology... with an address on Pennsylvania Ave., so they must know what they're talking about. Big Government is forcing doctors to explain from whom they're taking money and free vacations! When will the U.S. get out of the business of regulating our doctors' bodies?!

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Howard Dean Just Really Passionate About Strange, Well-Funded Issues

Choire Sicha — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 09:40:09 +0000

Hey, what's Howard Dean up to these days? Oh. He's a filthy little shill.

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Evil Lobbyist Places Op-Ed Piece

Choire Sicha — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 11:00:07 +0000

"Decades of research confirm that summer learning loss is real."
—"Jeff Smink is the vice president for policy for the National Summer Learning Association."

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How a Biller Becomes A Lobbyist

Choire Sicha — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 14:30:06 +0000

"Consider, for example, the curious case of Liz Fowler. Fowler went from being the chief counsel for the Senate Finance Committee to being the vice president for public policy and external affairs at health insurer WellPoint in 2006. But two years later, Fowler returned to the Hill as an aide to Democratic Sen. Max Baucus (Mont.), where she—guess what?—made sure that WellPoint's interests were favored during the health care reform debate.

"Naturally, she then moved on to a position in the White House, where her job description became 'to 'oversee' the implementation of the law.'

"I'm sure that Fowler took a substantial pay cut to do both of those jobs, as well, but I'm not worried about her livelihood, because if there's one thing that Max Baucus is very, very good at, it's getting his former staffers high-paying jobs in the health care lobbying industry."

—It's enough to make you join the Tea Party, right?

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Buying Congress is Cheaper Post-Election

Choire Sicha — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 11:20:11 +0000

"These guys ran against Washington, but they ran against the bad parts of Washington—the bloated bureaucracy and Nancy Pelosi's agenda. That's not a contradiction to take money from a trade group or corporation that represents free-enterprise principles."
—Andrew Theodore, fundraising consultant, explaining the flurry of debt-retirement fundraisers in D.C. for the GOP freshmen class. Those free-enterprise supporting corporations include Rolls-Royce, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, Yum Brands, Delta Airlines, K&L Gates (the lobbyists) and the National Automotive Dealers Association PAC.

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Finnish Embassy Is Basically Naked Lobbyist Sexy Room

Choire Sicha — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:00:31 +0000

Just who hobnobs with whom in the hot, dank Finnish Embassy sauna? Now we know! "Melissa Merz, a principal at the public affairs firm Podesta Group [American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity! Cherokee Nation! Lockheed Martin! Wal-Mart!] , arrived with her husband, Robert Mackey, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and historian hired by the government to declassify documents [cough, spook!]. The group then grew to include Lynne Weil, the communications director for the House Foreign Affairs Committee; her husband, Nils Bruzelius, an executive editor at the Environmental Working Group [cell phones kill!]; and Christine Mangi, a spokeswoman for Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) [Committee on Indian Affairs! Committee on Appropriations!] at the Senate Republican Conference.... Mark Landler, the New York Times diplomatic correspondent, arrived with his wife, Angela Tung [former IBM!], a lawyer who wore a made-in-Finland Marimekko dress. Wall Street Journal correspondent Jay Solomon and Block, the AIPAC spokesman [Israel!], followed."

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Cheney, Party of Evil? Now Seating Cheney, Party of Evil.

Choire Sicha — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:00:17 +0000

In D.C., there's always room for one more. So the news that Mary Cheney wants to go into business with her family at a new firm is unsurprising, because, well why not go face-down into the trough, you pigs? Said a coworker of Mary Cheney's: "It's going to be a firm like Kissinger Associates." (Oh yes, the firm at which Tim Geithner spent the mid-late 80s!) This is amusing, because one has many reasons-eight long years of reasons, including the discovery that Dick Cheney was still a private industry operator even while he was residing in the Naval Observatory-to suspect that the Cheneys, in their marvelous, brash way, most definitely lack the fingerspitzengefuhl of Kissinger.

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Clinton Pal Lanny Davis: Busy Bee, Honduras Operative

Choire Sicha — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:57:29 +0000

Hey, what is Clintonista lawyer Lanny Davis up to these days? Oh wait, he's what? "He is just bad, for the country. And not just our country! He is now being bad for Honduras, where the military recently seized power, on behalf of the business elite, who were worried that some of their wealth might be redistributed to that nation's poor." I miss the old days, when we'd just go south of the border and shoot people. Oh wait, we still do that too?

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The Great New PR Campaign For Traders And Their Friends

Chris Lehmann — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:19:11 +0000

It was easy to miss amid last week's great celebrity die-off, but while a nation turned its lonely eyes to the departing shade of Billy Mays, the securities industry moved into what it ominously termed the "execution phase" of its campaign to roll back "populist" resentment against the lords of the paper economy.

This effort comes on the heels of a similar lobbying blitz announced earlier this month by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, called the Campaign for Free Enterprise. In announcing its bold capitalism-preserving crusade, the Chamber called out a faithless cabal of "union leaders, some environmentalists, and a growing force of anti-business activists." These shadowy lumpen-advocacy interests are hellbent on "pushing government at all levels to close trading markets, lock down capital markets, expand entitlements, and raise taxes to unsustainable levels," Chamber President and CEO Thomas J. Donahue warned.

Of course, the only place you're likely to hear a call to "lock down capital markets" or "close trading markets" would be some sort of nightmare slogan-off between the Young Spartacists and the LaRouchites. And the Chamber is, in principle anyway, itself on record supporting certain kinds of entitlement expansion, albeit in limited doses. That pretty much leaves tax increases, which are moving back to Clinton-era marginal rates for earners making more than $250,000 a year, and rate a basic "Meh" from battle-tested conservative tax warriors such as Bruce Bartlett.

But having a faulty message has never been much of an impediment to business lobbying before. And both the Chamber and the securities industry officials are backing up their self-pitying pitches for public sympathy with generous complements of cash. The Chamber is coy about how much its laying out to save free enterprise, but when Donahue tersely announces "enough is enough" and pledges that the business lobby is launching "one of the most important and necessary initiatives in the Chamber's nearly 100-year history," you can practically hear the champagne corks pop all up and down K Street.

And the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), according to Bloomberg News reporter Robert Schmidt, is plunking down a cool $85,000 a month to "polling, lobbying, and public relations companies." In the Orwellian cadences of Washington-ese, this is what passes for a "city-by-city, grassroots" undertaking, according the internal SIFMA memos outlining the effort.

And a securities-minted notion of "grassroots" messaging is even more attenuated than the DC lobbying shops' standard rent-a-constituency model. The SIFMA memos, for instance, "call for using regional securities firms, many of which have escaped notoriety in the financial crisis, to push the industry's message with their local members of Congress." Yep, when Americans rise up to decry Wall Street corruption and excess, and the complete failure of the financial industry to own up to a chastened new economic climate, that's when you call up your industrial reserve army of regional securities firms. In your face, outraged citizenry!

Nor does it help matters, perception-wise, that two of the lead lobbyists contracted out on the SIFMA effort are Michele Davis, onetime spokeswoman for Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and Jim Wilkinson, Paulson's former chief of staff. Both now ply their image-managing wares for Brunswick Group LLC, which SIFMA has hired out on a monthly retainer of $70,000. Paulson, of course, is the mastermind behind the Troubled Asset Relief fund, whose frantically vague mandate and seeming total lack of oversight are what produced the AIG scandals, Bank of America's outbreak of executive trough-bulimia and other provocations to the riled-up populist national temper in the first place.

All in all, it seems that image maintenance just isn't the financial industry's strong suit. To really get out in front of industry trends, Wall Street should probably stick to tried-and-true causes like jury-reform.

Previously: Steve Forbes Misunderstands Augustus, Caesar and Hannibal

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Opinions That Don't Make Any Sense

Choire Sicha — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 09:33:17 +0000

Oooh, so the head of the Consumer Electronics Association has revealed himself to be a very confused man. Because of the TARP that is hanging over us, and because the President is drowning us in debt (um, unlike the Bush administration!), he claims: "The next generation won't have a Bill Gates, a Steve Jobs or a Mark Zuckerberg because the budding American entrepreneur won't be able to secure the financing to create the next dynamic technology company that would have energized the economy." Oh no, a generation without a Mark Zuckerberg! In the end, very little of this makes any sense.

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