How Establishment/Corporate Politics Are Played Today

Career of Evil

Bill Clinton was only allotted 5 minutes to speak last night-- and not in prime time. The NY Times called it a "blink-and-you’ll-miss-him moment before a party that once revered him" and noted that that "is testimony to how his influence has faded... [and] of the baggage he carries with the re-examination of allegations of sexual assault and harassment over his years in public life in the wake of the #MeToo movement."

Even in John Harris' Politico opus yesterday-- The Bill Clinton Comeback is Coming Soon-- he immediately made sure his readers understood that Clinton's Republican-lite "centrism" isn't what he's talking about, and that it's just his way of making an argument that deserves a revival." Whew. Clinton's "brand of centrism," wrote Harris, "is seen as too compromising, and his private life and disreputable personal associations too compromised." Harris, a New Dem type centrist like Clinton, tries excusing his fear-based-- he was kicked out as Arkansas governor for being a liberal-- conservativism to make the case that he deserves a revival. He doesn't.

This morning I found a 44 page document, a complaint in the New York State Supreme Court pitting Rimylan Enterprises, LLC, Project Applecart, LLC, Tormima, LLC and Minino Productions against Clinton administration scumbags Mark Penn and Nancy Jacobson, two of the worst characters-- a husband and wife team-- in American politics. I spent a lot of time and energy in 2018 and 2019 explaining how their malignant operations against progressives were especially detrimental to Marie Newman in Illinois, Dena and Alan Grayson in Florida and Matt Heinz in Arizona. The lawsuit is against their crooked front operations: "No Labels, Inc. , Forward Not Back, Inc, United For Progress, Inc. United Together, Inc., Citizens For A Strong America, Inc., Govern or Go Home, Inc., Americans Committed For Progress, Inc., Citizens for America, Inc., Progress Together, Inc., Patriotic Americans PAC, Inc., No Labels Action, Inc., and Progress Tomorrow, Inc., as well as Nancy Jacobson personally. The suit claims Rimylan is owed $3,708,214.26 by Jacobson and her nefarious entities. Rimylan wants the $3.7 they're owed plus about a million in damages plus another $3.7 million from Jacobson personally "for fraudulent inducement on the ground that she omitted to tell Rimylan that No Labels did not intend to be bound" by the contract.

Applecart is the trade name for Rimylan, Tormima, and Minino and it is a technology company that provides political data and analytic services. You know what Brad Pascale did for Trump-- the tsunamis of micro-targeted ads? That's what Matthew Kalmans and Sacha Samotin, co-founders of Applecart, do for candidates. Last year Applecart hired a new president, Democratic operative Joe Shafer, who was the head of the Democratic Governors Association’s (DGA) independent expenditure arm, and has begun an association with Rahm Emanuel's brother Ari. The Kalmans and Samotin big idea-- the "Social Graph"-- "uses a combination of human and artificial intelligence to mine publicly available data to identify online and offline social relationships between Americans. In the time since, Applecart has since mapped over 17 billion relationships between more than 250 million Americans and has been deployed as the analytics engine behind the highest stakes advertising campaigns of major politicians, corporations, and advocacy groups." One of their most successful campaigns was Conor Lamb's first congressional run.

Applecart, which had been working for John Kasich was introduced to Jacobson by former Utah Governor and former Applecart client John Huntsman, who was also one of No Label's "Honorary Co-Chairmen."

The suit says that "In October 2015, Kalmans and Samotin proposed to Jacobson that No Labels hire Applecart to demonstrate the impact of their strategy for supporting moderate [meaning conservative] candidates in congressional primaries in two such races, one Republican and one Democrat. In May 2016 Jacobson agreed to this proposal and selected two of several races proposed by Applecart. One, to support moderate Roger Marshall against three-term incumbent Freedom Caucus leader Tim Huelskamp in the Republican primary election in the First Congressional District of Kansas. The other, to support moderate Darren Soto to succeed far-left incumbent Alan Grayson in the Democratic primary in the Ninth Congressional District in Florida. No Labels formed two super PACs to support the elections of Marshall and Soto: Strong Leadership for America ('SLA') and Concerned Citizens for America’s Future ('CCAF'). No Labels established the super PACs because it, as a 501(c)(4) organization, is subject to limits on how much of its budget can be spent on political activities. No Labels also established the super PACs so that their work on behalf of Marshall and Soto would not be tied to No Labels, a bipartisan organization, because such an association was thought likely to be unhelpful in a partisan primary election. No Labels established separate super PACs for Marshall and Soto so that the work of one, on behalf of a Republican, would not be tied to the work of the other, on behalf of a Democrat."

The 44 pages are fascinating-- at least to me-- but what I really want to talk about how how a significant portion how U.S. politics has now come down to laundering money from vain billionaires-- Penn and Jacobson's specialty-- and laundering it into campaigns against progressives through an aggressive campaign of libel and slander while pocketing as much as the vain billionaires are unaware of. In this particular case, the vain billionaire/patsy was Nelson Peltz (chairman of Wendy's), who gives humongous amounts of money to conservative operations-- both the GOP's and Penn's and Jacobson's.

So basically it comes down to a small gaggle of manipulative vultures like Jacobson and Penn enriching themselves by sucking up to virulently anti-progressive billionaires like Peltz so that they can destroy the champions of the working class-- only and always-- in order to do well for themselves while... well, how else to say it: doing evil. This is the dark corruption that pervades American politics.

In 2018 Jacobson failed in her efforts to defeat now-Congresswoman Deb Haaland (D-NM) and this year all those millions she spent against Marie Newman went up in smoke as Newman beat reactionary Blue Dog Dan Lipinski. And, like I said... Bill Clinton was not allowed to address the Democratic convention in prime time.

A member of Congress who I asked about No Labels unethical and probably criminal activities turned me on to some Ryan Grim and Rachel Cohen work looking into No Labels funny business back in December, pointing out the built in conflicts of interest that should have long ago landed Penn, Jacobson and their board members in prison. For example, in late March of 2018, the reporters found an email in which "a representative for a No Labels donor expressed concern over the organization having 'perceived or potential' conflicts of interest. They urged Jacobson to disclose potential conflicts to the No Labels governing board. 'We believe that all Governing Board members need to be aware of the situation in order to prevent any misunderstanding and confusion going forward,' they wrote."

And all we need to do is elect reformers to change this-- not defenders of the status quo like Biden, who makes excuses for lobbyists and crooked operatives, every member of his family being one. Instead we wind up with a classic lesser of two evils "choice" between an outright fascist who is an undeniable existential threat to democracy and the integrity of our nation or a feeble, status quo nothing. Last night, AOC reminded us what could have been (if not for Obama's orchestration of the neoliberal forces against it):