All-Day Drivel Deluge Predicted for Thursday

And I don’t just mean Obama’s face-off with corporate toadies.

-by Doug Kahn

We ought to pay attention to an important point from Heather on Sunday. A Bill Moyers video: “Just this week, that indispensable journalistic website Talking Points Memo.com reported that an influential Washington lobbying firm is alerting corporate clients on how to use trade associations like the Chamber of Commerce as pass-throughs to dump unlimited amounts of cash directly into elections.”
 


Yes. Like they already did, last fall. Tens of millions of dollars on ads that played nationally, and probably much more than that on ads targeted to specific Congressional districts, some to bully House members who voted for the House version of health care legislation, and some to rub the backs of loyal corporate sycophants.
 
Will the corporations opposing health care reform repeat their performance of last November, and pay for thousands of tv ads starting Thursday, when the President’s Health Care Summit is televised? I have to think they will, since the summit is nationally televised public relations, whether it’s part of a serious strategy to actually pass a health care bill or not. They have to answer back, that’s just business.
 
While the Senate was stitching together their Frankenstein’s monster of health care reform last year, the front group Employers for a Healthy Economy produced ads you may remember. (Really the money came from the US Chamber of Commerce, much of it supplied by health insurance companies.)
 
Sam Stein reported November 4th on an anti-health care reform TV ad from the US Chamber of Commerce, which portrayed a white guy with a real hang-dog look and slumped shoulders being called into the boss’s office, and a black guy keeping his job, and looking extremely anxious. The ad made the claim that “Congress’s latest health care bill” would institute “over $500 billion in crushing tax increases,” contained “nothing to control rising health care costs,” and imposed “expensive new mandates on business that could wipe out even more jobs.”
 
More about the content of the ads further down. What about the dollars that paid for the campaign? From a January 12, 2010 National Journal article by Peter Stone:

Since last summer, the Chamber has poured tens of millions of dollars into advertising by the two business coalitions that it helped assemble: the Campaign for Responsible Health Reform and Employers for a Healthy Economy.
 
In late October, the Chamber helped cobble together a larger coalition, Employers for a Healthy Economy, which became the key advertising vehicle for attacking provisions in the House and Senate bills being developed. The newer coalition includes such business giants as the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Retail Federation and the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors.
 
The U.S. Chamber has spent approximately $70 million to $100 million on the advertising effort, according to lobbying sources. It’s unclear whether the business lobby group went to AHIP with a request to help raise funds for its ad drives, or whether AHIP approached the Chamber with an offer to hit up its member companies.” [AHIP is America’s Health Insurance Plans, which includes Aetna, WellPoint, UnitedHealth Group, CIGNA, Humana, many for-profit Blue Cross/Blue Shield companies, and the rest of the usual suspects.]

A recent Washington Post poll found 80% of Americans objecting to the Supreme Court decision that endorses corporations (and unions) spending as much money as they want to affect elections. I suspect the White House is counting on the public to remember what happens this week, remember who’s cooperating and who’s trying to stick the knife in. It’s hard to imagine what an effective ad campaign would look like and still be positive. The only place they can go back to now is the job loss issue, the negative route they took last fall.
 
The visitor’s logs at the White House indicate that the ‘White House’ had been fawning over the US Chamber of Commerce last year. I wonder how Obama’s crew feel now about that Chamber ad campaign, how every quote in it came from a Wall Street Journal editorial [Lies] and a report from the WellPoint insurance company. You remember WellPoint? The 39% rate increase in California last week? The Wall Street Journal editorial last November said Insurance costs . . . WILL SKYROCKET. WellPoint [The Lying Liars Who Tell Them] was the Journal's source.

The other ‘fact’ in the ad was the headline $572 Billion Tax Increases. (That’s on .3% of US households, a surtax on wealthy Americans.) This ‘fact’ is also from the Wall Street Journal editorial, but the $572 billion number appeared originally on the Dow Jones Newswires on 10/30/09. This is the tax that the WSJ always claims will hit small businesses and entrepreuners. Sort of kind of, if you discount the fact that this refers mostly to rich people who form personal S corporations to reduce their business taxes.
 
A later version of the ad cut out the part where the white guy gets called into the boss’s office, and added, among other things, a 30-something woman pursing her lips in anger, obviously at those gosh-darned Liberal Democrats. (Actually, I think it was revealed at CPAC this weekend that we progressives are members of a cult, or some damn thing. No, I just checked. It was Glenn Beck, and all we are is a cancer on the corporate body politic. Du-uh.)
 
An unknown amount of the Chamber’s $70 million went to multiple versions of two ads (one negative, one positive) that targeted the November 7th final vote on the House health care bill. They focused on Blue Dogs (11 out of the 20), although it also might make sense that they chose marginal districts. It looks to me as though it’s a campaign to keep a tight leash on the Blue Dogs as a group.
 
The negative version criticized individual House members (yes votes on the bill) in his/her own district, with the headline New Mandates on Arkansas Business targeting Marion Berry (AR-01) and others. Alternately: Blue Dogs Brad Ellsworth (IN-08), Baron Hill (IN-09), Earl Pomeroy (ND), and Mike Michaud (ME-02). Also hit were Joseph Cao (LA-02), Vic Snyder (AR-02), Chris Murphy (CT-05), Paul Hodes (NH-2), Dina Titus (NV-03), and Tom Perriello (VA-05). Again, ‘facts’ like $1 Trillion in New Government Spending, directly from the editorial writers of the Wall Street Journal, who are reputed to be full of Brown-25. Anyway, the Congressional Budget Office says the costs are more than offset by increasing marginal rates on the rich and savings generated by the reforms themselves.
 
Which boot-lickers got corporate candy-grams? Glenn Nye (Blue Dog-VA), who is Standing Tall for Virginia Values. Also Blue Dogs Charlie Melancon (LA-03), Heath Shuler (NC-11), Mike McIntyre (NC-07), Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD), and Mike Ross (AR-04). Larry Kissell (NC-08), Rick Boucher (VA-09) and Lee Terry (NE-02) also. I guess, all but very endangered Republican Terry, are on the waiting list to get into the Blue Dog caucus.
 
If anyone out there catches one of the new ads, would you let me know?



UPDATE From Howie

For anyone interested, the White House finally revealed its actual healthcare reform bill. It's a slightly less corporate-oriented version of the abysmal Senate/K Street bill. There's no public option, guaranteeing that Obama will be a one-term president remembered only for his symbolism and utter failure.