Amy Ridenour is the president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. She and her husband David, the vice president of the National Center, are the parents of three third graders. David's comments, like those of other National Center staff members, directors, associates and fellows, often appear in this blog.
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Thursday, October 22, 2009
Nero Profited While Rome Burned
Looks like the lobbying profession, taken as a group, couldn't be happier that the feds are messing up our health care system so badly.
Notice that the lobbyists quoted in the The Hill story by Jeffrey Young that I linked to above apparently did not want to be identified by name. I guess they still have enough pride to be ashamed of themselves.
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Speaking to the AFL-CIO's 2009 legislative conference in Atlantic City, Vice President Joe Biden said, "When a guy in Minooka is out of work, it's an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law's out of work, it's a recession. When you're out of work, it's a depression."
Hmm... Sounds a bit familiar.
Didn't Ronald Reagan say on the campaign trail in 1980, "Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his"?
I hate it when people remake a classic.
Written by David A. Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli is scheduled to appear on Fox & Friends on Saturday morning, September 26 at 9:50 AM Eastern.
The topic is on the undercover filmmakers who investigated ACORN and whether they should be prosecuted.
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Project 21's full-time fellow, Deneen Borelli, will be a guest Monday morning on the Fox New Channel's Fox & Friends show.
Deneen will appear at approximately 6:15 AM Eastern. She is scheduled to discuss President Obama's lackluster reaction to the ongoing ACORN scandal as well as the Obama Administration's Department of Justice's investigation of the CIA.
As noted here Saturday, Deneen also will be a guest of the nationally-syndicated G. Gordon Liddy radio show on Monday at noon Eastern and on the Great American panel on the September 24 9-10 PM Eastern Hannity Show on the Fox News Channel, among other upcoming appearances.
Posted by Amy Ridenour, president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. E-mail comments to info@nationalcenter.org. Subscribe to this blog's feed.
The Max Baucus money trail. (Is it that expensive to run in Montana?)
John McCain IDs "certainly the worst President of the 20th Century."
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The Atlantic is telling the world its own Andrew Sullivan is the 9th most influential commentator in the United States, which is hogwash (or did I miss the nation following Andrew Sullivan's obsession with Sarah Palin's last pregnancy?).
The Atlantic's often-silly list (Paul Krugman is #1!) is not completely without value, however, as it provides a cautionary tale of how foolish we can look when we pretend there is no such thing as a conflict of interest.
But back to Andrew Sullivan.
Why has a man who is not a citizen of the United States been commenting on U.S. domestic policy for the last couple of decades as if he had a citizen's stake in the nation? As Robert Stacy McCain, Ace, Patterico, Ann Althouse, Glenn Reynolds and others have reported (somewhat incidentally, given the more interesting scandal with intriguing implications to which their attention was primarily directed), after a couple of decades of telling us how to arrange our domestic affairs (in more ways than one), Sullivan's retained his foreign citizenship, at least until whenever his upcoming citizenship hearing is.
Way back in the days when Andrew Sullivan was still a 20-something toiling for the New Republic, I took a phone call from a pollster during a major British election while at a friend's house in London. As I was keenly interested in the outcome of the election, I was sorely tempted to assist my favored candidate with a miniscule poll bump. But I kept my opinions to myself and told the pollster, that, as I am an American, I have no business influencing Britain's internal political processes as if I were a British subject.
Sullivan took a different course. He has been happy to tell Americans how to vote while owing his allegiance to a foreign power. (I don't see a disclaimer on the linked page anywhere, do you?)
A bio of Sullivan I found in a source he presumably approved (an employer, not the often-fictional Wikipedia) doesn't mention his citizenship either way (beyond the fact that he was born and raised in England, a fact he does mention reasonably often), but it does say he testified before the U.S. Congress on domestic legislation as early as 1996. He may have testified as a neutral expert and taken no position on the legislation, but seeing as how the bill was the Defense of Marriage Act, I'm not going to bet on it. And an article Sullivan penned for the October Atlantic entitled "Dear President Bush" is topped by a paragraph including the phrase "our nation's history" (referring to the United States of America), starts with Sullivan saying to the most recent President Bush, "I supported your presidential campaign in 2000, as I did your father's in 1988," and includes the words "the America I love and have made my home."
I ask you, are these activities and phrases that could lead a reasonable reader to believe Andrew Sullivan, domestic commentator, had become an American? And was advising us as one?
Would a little disclaimer once in a while of the I'm-telling-you-how-to-vote-but-be-aware-if-I-ever-get-drafted-it-won't-be-the-U.S.-Army's-unform-I-wear variety really have gone amiss?
Because the team a writer is playing for actually is important information for a reader to know.
Next time I'm in London I suppose I'll answer the pollster (though given that the two biggest parties these days are both run by climate-deluded NHS vote whores, I can't imagine endorsing either one of them). So what if I have no allegiance to the Queen?
Cross-posted at Newsbusters, where comments are enabled
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Tom Blumer: "How crazy is it that Ford has to 'negotiate' a new contract with the United Auto Workers union, even though the union has ownership interests in two of its principal competitors...?
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Paul Mirengoff says Walter Cronkite "didn't represent the victory of substance over style, but rather the victory of a style that implied substance over substance itself." I agree.
Speaking of the government letting people die, here's a story from Fox News last year about a 53-year-old cancer patient in Lane County, Oregon who wanted Oregon's public health plan to help him pay for chemotherapy.
Nothing doing, said Oregon, as the man's cancer was such that chemotherapy stood less than a 95 percent chance of guaranteeing the man would live an additional five years.
Two years or 4 years 11 months of life was not worth the cost of chemo to Oregon.
But don't think Oregon's government-run health plan lacked sympathy. It sent the man a letter offering to foot the bill for physician-assisted suicide.
And no, the letter was not a mistake. It was official policy.
Rolling Stone: Cap and Trade is a Carbon Tax Structured So Private Interests Collect the Revenues
Tom Borelli of our Free Enterprise Project has repeatedly warned Americans that passage of cap-and-trade will lead to the creation of a new economic bubble (see here, here or here).
Now Rolling Stone magazine is getting into the act, and it's not pulling any punches.
A sample paragraph to whet your appetite:
...cap-and-trade, as envisioned by Goldman [Sachs], is really just a carbon tax structured so that private interests collect the revenues. Instead of simply imposing a fixed government levy on carbon pollution and forcing unclean energy producers to pay for the mess they make, cap-and-trade will allow a small tribe of greedy-as-hell Wall Street swine to turn yet another commodities market into a private tax collection scheme. This is worse than the bailout: It allows the bank to seize taxpayer money before it's even collected. [Emphasis in the original]
"If it's going to be a tax, I would prefer that Washington set the tax and collect it," says Michael Masters, the hedge fund director who spoke out against oil futures speculation. "But we're saying that Wall Street can set the tax, and Wall Street can collect the tax. That's the last thing in the world I want. It's just asinine."
We've said all along that if you actually believe human beings are causing dangerous global warming, and you honestly believe that this global warming must be fought by suppressing energy use, the only approach that has any hope of not being corrupt is increasing energy taxes. We do oppose increasing energy taxes, but would prefer that by far to cap-and-trade.
I did not expect to see this sentiment in Rolling Stone, but we welcome it to the club.
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Carol Browner's Hijinks: They Call This Open Government?
Mark Tapscott is on the case of White House "climate czar" Carol Browner, who appears to be continuing her wily Clinton Administration pattern of dodging and weaving whenever legal niceties interfere with her left-wing agenda.
Carol Browner, former Clinton administration EPA head and current Obama White House climate czar, instructed auto industry execs "to put nothing in writing, ever" regarding secret negotiations she orchestrated regarding a deal to increase federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards.
Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-WI, is demanding a congressional investigation of Browner's conduct in the CAFE talks, saying in a letter to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA, that Browner "intended to leave little or no documentation of the deliberations that lead to stringent new CAFE standards."
Federal law requires officials to preserve documents concerning significant policy decisions, so instructing participants in a policy negotation concerning a major federal policy change could be viewed as a criminal act...
Browner should answer these charges and very specifically, too, but President Obama must be held to account as well. It's not as though he didn't know what he was getting when he appointed Browner. As my husband David Ridenour pointed out in an op-ed published around the U.S. early this year, when Browner was head of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton Administration, it made a practice of skirting the law.
Throughout [Carol Browner's] years as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration, EPA officials routinely violated the Anti-Lobbying Act - a law prohibiting federal employees from using agency money for 'telephone, letter, printed or written matter, or other device intended or designed to influence in any manner a Member of Congress.'
In 1995, the EPA flagrantly violated that law when it lobbied against the Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act, a bill that would have curbed some of the EPA's worst abuses.
As James Hinchman, comptroller general of the United States, noted, EPA officials 'distributed EPA fact sheets to various organizations' and 'directly lobbied the Congress.' Not only that, but an EPA regional administrator wrote a strong op-ed designed to stop the bill's passage.
Four years later, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., accused the EPA of violating the Anti-Lobbying Act again. Byrd - who has made a career of steering pork to his state - complained that the EPA's Transportation Partners Program was coordinating and funding anti-road lobbyists against the law and his state's interests. Browner was forced to terminate the program. The following year, Browner was at it yet again. This time, her agency was accused of allowing special interests to improperly influence last-minute - so-called midnight - environmental regulations.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the EPA to preserve communications with such groups. Instead, Browner had her computer hard drive re-initialized, wiping it clean. Lamberth then held the EPA in contempt for 'contumacious conduct.' As little respect as she's shown for the law, Browner has shown even less for science. During her years at the EPA, agency scientists who didn't toe the party line were subjected to relentless harassment.
David Lewis, an EPA Science Achievement Award recipient, publicly criticized the quality of science used in crafting regulations. In response, the EPA charged Lewis with ethics violations and repeatedly denied him promotion. Although he won whistle-blower judgments against the EPA, he was eventually forced into retirement.
Project 21 just issued a press release criticizing the Congressional Black Caucus's apparent plans to retaliate against the House Office of Congressional Ethics, which concluded that several CBC members should be investigated by the full Ethics Committee for alleged violations of gift rules.
The release says:
Project 21 Critical of Members of Congress Under Ethics Investigation for Retaliating Against House Ethics Office and for Playing 'Race Card'
An apparent effort by the Congressional Black Caucus to deter ethics investigations of its membership is drawing sharp criticism from members of the black leadership group Project 21.
CBC members reportedly are considering changes to the law authorizing the House Office of Congressional Ethics, or OCE, in retaliation for the OCE referring allegations against several CBC members to the House Ethics Committee.
CBC members reportedly also have complained that the OCE does not have enough minority staffers, adding a racial element to the apparent retaliation.
"What does the racial or ethnic makeup of the Office of Congressional Ethics have to do with the fact that these members of the Congressional Black Caucus may have violated ethics laws? It has absolutely no bearing on the charge, and to claim that is a lack of diversity at the OCE is playing the race card plain and simple," said Project 21 member Joe Hicks, also a commentator for Pajamas Television. "It is laughable that CBC members are charging the OCE with some sort of racial targeting. The OCE was created by Speaker Pelosi, someone who shamelessly bends over backwards to be politically correct."
Of the three investigative counsels hired by the OCE, one is black. The chairman of the formal Ethics Committee investigation sparked by the OCE referral is a black Member of Congress, Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-NC), a CBC member.
"A legitimate complaint has been filed and an investigation has begun, but political pressure is now being applied to cover up the allegations and brush everything under the rug," said Project 21 member Bishop Council Nedd II. "So much for those promises to 'drain the swamp' and root out the 'culture of corruption.' It seems that swamp has turned into a hot tub for them rather quickly."
"President Obama has long proclaimed that it is special interest lobbyists who are the root of what is wrong with our federal government. This latest lapse in congressional sensibilities exposes the fact that it is wayward members of Congress themselves, whether Republican or Democrat, who pose the greatest threat to good government for the citizens of this country," said Project 21 member John Meredith. "The idea of disbanding the one avenue the citizens of this great nation have to track congressional malfeasance is an affront to the pledge of transparency in government and the use of the race card to facilitate the closing of the Office of Congressional Ethics is insulting not only to black people but to people of every color."
In November 2008, Flaherty attended the "Caribbean Multi-Cultural Business Conference" on the Caribbean island of St. Maarten. Although the conference officially was sponsored by the Carib News Foundation, according to Flaherty, signs and materials present indicate the event was funded by Citigroup, Pfizer, American Airlines, Verizon, IBM and other large corporations with business before Congress. CBC members Charles Rangel (D-NY), Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-MI), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Donald Payne (D-NJ), Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Delegate Donna Christensen (D-Virgin Islands) attended the event.
Members of Congress have been prohibited since 2007 from taking funded trips of over two days if those trips are paid for or coordinated by companies that "employ or retain a registered lobbyist."
Flaherty alerted the OCE. In his letter to the OCE, Flaherty noted: "My characterization of the trip as a 'junket' is based on my observation that the sessions were lightly attended. Most attendees spent significant time at the beach or the pool. Members of Congress attended the sessions when they had a speaking role." Flaherty also said any suggestion that attendees could not see evidence of corporate involvement was "implausible."
A Gateway Pundit post on this tonight leads with: "After Weeding Out GOP-Linked Dealers, Chrysler Looking To Open New Dealerships."
This article sticks out in my mind: "After Surviving Katrina, a Local Car Dealer Becomes a Casualty of the Economy." Nothing overtly political in that story, but it's worth a read for the angle of the guy who pulled up his bootstraps to get a dealership in the first place, only to be hit by Katrina and spend years recovering, now to suffer a killing blow from his government.
Paul Ibrahim notes, accurately, I believe: "Regardless of whether these specific allegations are true, one would be foolish to believe that government makes decisions based on business judgment as opposed to political considerations."
The ...investigation of the Speaker of the House has been an opportunity to direct public attention to several issues that conservatives have considered key. Among these: the unprecedentedly heavy-handed tactics of the majority in Congress...; the frequently-disastrous self-serving involvement of Members of Congress into foreign affairs...; the leaking of classified information for partisan gain...; the unfair targeting of conservatives only in politically-motivated "ethics" probes.
If you guessed May 22, 1989, you are correct.
It could almost be written today, couldn't it?
The paragraph comes from an in-house report I wrote on May 22, 1989 regarding National Center for Public Policy Research activities to bring public attention to the ethics problems of Speaker of the House Jim Wright of Texas. I found the report while searching some old files for something else entirely and couldn't resist posting part of it after I realized the date was twenty years ago exactly today.
I was amused by the following paragraph:
Our second activity was a "Clean the House" rally "in demand of a full and fair investigation of Speaker Wright" held at the Democratic National Committee on April 20... The Democrats were not pleased. An internal DNC memo circulated to all staff inside the headquarters in advance of the rally instructed DNC staffers to ignore the rally and forbade them from looking out the windows overlooking the rally site. Some staffers disobeyed, however, and threw a large stack of copies of photographs of Republican Members of Congress and leading conservatives (Oliver North, Jerry Falwell) from the DNC roof onto the rally.
I no longer recall, but as we all had carried brooms at the rally, I guess we swept them up.
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With the ugly sanctimony of those who never had to make hard decisions, the American left demands show trials of those who kept us safe after 9/11. Wrapping themselves in repugnant self-righteousness, the MoveOn.org set wants political prosecutions. Should President Obama acquiesce, he won't be furthering the rule of law, but dismantling it...
On the other hand, he's given the high-profile position of "climate change czar" to former EPA Administrator Carol Browner, whose record leads many to suspect she believes that anti-lobbying laws are there to be broken.
As David Ridenour (full disclosure: my husband) of the National Center for Public Policy Research writes in Monday's Washington Times:
...Throughout her years as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration, EPA officials routinely violated the Anti-Lobbying Act - a law prohibiting federal employees from using agency money for "telephone, letter, printed or written matter, or other device intended or designed to influence in any manner a Member of Congress."
In 1995, the EPA flagrantly violated that law when it lobbied against the Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act, a bill that would have curbed some of the EPA's worst abuses.
As James F. Hinchman, comptroller general of the United States, noted, EPA officials "distributed EPA fact sheets to various organizations ... directly lobbied the Congress." Not only that, but an EPA regional administrator wrote a strong Op-Ed designed to stop the bill's passage.
Four years later, Sen. Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, accused the EPA of violating the Anti-Lobbying Act again. Mr. Byrd - who has made a career of steering pork to his state - complained that the EPA's Transportation Partners Program was coordinating and funding anti-road lobbyists against the law and his state's interests. Mrs. Browner was forced to terminate the program.
The following year Mrs. Browner was at it yet again. This time, her agency was accused of allowing special interests to improperly influence last-minute - so-called "midnight" - environmental regulations. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the EPA to preserve communications with such groups. Instead, Mrs. Browner had her computer hard drive re-initialized, wiping it clean. Judge Lamberth subsequently held the EPA in contempt for "contumacious conduct."...
Did President Obama stern admonish Carol Browner that behavior of this sort would not be tolerated in an Obama Administration (and, if so, why take the risk of appointing her at all?)? Or are rules against "outside" lobbyists the only ones Barack Obama wants enforced?
* Note: In my view, the new directive to supposedly limit lobbyist influence on spending of the so-called stimulus won't mean much in the end. Businesses, unions, lobbying firms, lobbyist law firms, state and local governments and special interests wanting a piece of our tax dollars will simply lobby for it using personnel who are not required to register as a lobbyist under the terms of the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 (or, in some cases, people who are required to, but didn't). The only way to keep lobbyists from going after federal money is to shrink the pot of federal money available as government-distributed handouts (for instance, by leaving it in the hands of those who earned it in the first place).
Hat tip: I learned about the ACLU's position on the new lobbying directive from the Don Irvine Blog.
Outrage of the Day: Obama Raised Cash for Never-to-Be-Run Senate Race After Leaving Senate
In a move that's cynical, even for him, Barack Obama was still raising money for his 2010 U.S. Senate re-election fund as late as December 26, 2008, more than a month after being elected President of the United States on November 8 and resigning from the Senate itself on November 16.
According to an article by Jim McElhatton in the March 27 Washington Times, an unnamed Obama defender said the funds were raised "to cover outstanding expenses that needed to be paid to wind down the campaign committee," as if "winding down" from a campaign one actually hadn't run is an especially expensive proposition.
According to McElhatton's reporting, Obama's never-to-be-run Senate 2010 campaign fund had $100,000 on hand when it was still raising money for this apparently very luxurious "wind down" operation.
The December 26, 2008 donations, McElhatton reports, included $2,300 "from a top executive of a Wall Street firm that had received a government bailout."
Outrage of the Day: Congress Receiving TARP Funds as Campaign Contributions
Who's getting bailout money?
Michael Isikoff and Dina Fine Maron, writing in Newsweek's March 30 edition, say it just might be your Congressman:
There was plenty of outrage on Capitol Hill last week over the executive bonuses paid out by AIG after getting federal bailout money. But another money trail could make voters just as angry: the campaign dollars to members of Congress from banks and firms that have received billions via the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
A Newsweek review of recent filings with the Federal Election Commission found that the political action committees of five big TARP recipients doled out $85,300 to members in the first two months of this year—with most of the cash going to those who serves on committees who oversee the TARP program...
Businesses receiving bailout money, and/or businesses even partially owned by government, should not be making campaign or PAC contributions. Nor should Members of Congress or other candidates or officeholders accept these contributions if they are offered.
And while we're on the subject, government-subsidized or owned or partially-owned businesses should not lobby or employ lobbyists until they are privately-owned and completely off the dole.
Looks like the lefties get mighty edgy when they get questioned.
Earlier this week we had Disney Chairman Robert Iger swearing at conservative activist Tom Borelli. Now we have the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Charlie Rangel, asking a young man who asks him about his subsidized cars and apartments, "why don't you mind your G-- d----- business"?
I'm thinking it became the young man's business when he had to help pick up the tab. _____________________________
Tom Borelli Interviewed on Breitbart TV About Disney Chairman's F-Bomb Attack at Shareholder Meeting - Watch Online
From David Almasi:
Tom Borelli, director of The National Center's Free Enterprise Project, appeared on Thursday's Breitbart TV "B-Cast" program with hosts Scott Baker and Liz Stephans to discuss being verbally accosted by the CEO of the Walt Disney Company.
To access the Internet broadcast at any time, click here.
After making a presentation in favor of making the miniseries available at the company's annual shareholder meeting, Borelli, who was representing the Free Enterprise Action Fund (a Disney shareholder), tried to shake Iger's hand. Iger scowled at Borelli and said "f--- you." Borelli then returned to the podium reported the exchange to his fellow shareholders. The B-CAST plays the Disney-doctored tape, noting that, at the spot where Tom Borelli and other witnesses say he reported the expletive from the podium, the tape -- including sounds from the audience -- briefly goes mysteriously silent.
The B-CAST program also explains why the mini-series "The Path to 9/11" has become such a headache for Disney. It includes excerpts from John Ziegler's video, "Blocking the Path to 9/11."
On Thursday, Breitbart-TV also posted Disney's version of Tom Borelli's entire presentation at the meeting, as well as the Disney Chairman John Pepper's response, available here.
For more information, see National Center for Public Policy Research press releases here, here, and here.
This post was written by National Center for Public Policy Research Executive Director David Almasi. To send comments to the author, write him at info@nationalcenter.org. Please state if a letter is not for publication or if you prefer that it be published anonymously.
World Net Daily has run two stories on Tom Borelli's presentation to the Walt Disney Company's annual stockholder meeting.
In Foul Mouse! Disney 'Drops F-Bomb' Over '9/11', WND columnist Joe Kovacs asks, "Did the head of the Walt Disney Company drop the F-bomb on one of its own investors at its annual shareholder meeting?" Kovacs goes on to cover Disney's denial, and our response, and includes some additional information about Disney's attitude toward the "Path to 9/11" miniseries it owns, but declines to distribute.
In the news story Disney Censors F-Bomb From CEO Iger to Conservative Activist, NewsMax recounts how the Walt Disney Company edited out of the webcast version of its March 10 annual shareholder meeting the incident in which conservative activist and Disney investor Tom Borelli received the "f-bomb" from Disney CEO Robert Iger.
The piece begins:
The Walt Disney Company has edited out of the webcast version of its March 10 annual shareholder meeting an incident in which Disney CEO Robert Iger dropped the "f-bomb" on conservative activist and Disney investor Tom Borelli.
Iger scowled at and said "f--- you" to Tom Borelli, director of the National Center for Public Policy Research's Free Enterprise Project, at Tuesday's annual Disney shareholder meeting after Borelli told shareholders about Iger's refusal to sell the DVD or the distribution rights of the miniseries "The Path to 9/11."
Borelli, who was attending the meeting on behalf of the Free Enterprise Action Fund, a mutual fund with which he is affiliated, had just ended his presentation and was attempting to shake Iger's hand when Iger used the phrase. Iger also refused to uncross his arms and shake Borelli's hand. Borelli, who had received applause from fellow shareholders after his presentation, went back to the podium and precisely reported to his fellow shareholders what Iger had just said, to gasps from the assembled crowd....
John McCaslin's popular Inside the Beltway column in the Washington Times today began with the Disney story:
The late Walt Disney, who in testimony before Congress accused the Screen Actors Guild of being a Communist front, must have rolled over in his grave when Walt Disney Co. CEO Robert Iger reportedly spouted "[expletive] you" to Tom Borelli, director of the National Center for Public Policy Research's Free Enterprise Project, at Tuesday's annual Disney shareholder meeting.
Mr. Borelli says he just finished informing shareholders from the podium about Mr. Iger's refusal to sell the DVD or distribution rights of the miniseries "The Path to 9/11," and upon returning to his seat attempted to shake hands with Disney's CEO.
That's when the not-so-kind words were uttered. At which time Mr. Borelli says he stepped back before the microphone and quoted Mr. Iger word-for-word, which caused "gasps" from the crowd of shareholders.
"So much for the family-friendly Disney reputation," he now says in a statement released by the District-based conservative think tank and research foundation supportive of a strong national defense.
A two-part miniseries based on the federal 9/11 commission report, "The Path to 9/11" received seven Emmy nominations after airing in 2006 to large audiences over the Disney-owned ABC television network.
The think tank suggests Mr. Iger, who is labeled a longtime donor to "liberal politicians," considers the miniseries too embarrassing to officials who served in the Clinton administration.
Breitbart.tv Posts Borelli Portion of Disney Shareholder Meeting
Breitbart.tv has posted the portion of the audio recording of the Walt Disney Company Shareholder's meeting in which Tom Borelli makes his presentation. Quite apart from the controversy regarding the expletive, Tom's full (and quite frank) presentation to the Disney shareholders will be of interest to many conservative activists, who also are likely to appreciate the fact that the assembled shareholders gave Tom strong applause.
As we noted yesterday, the audio recording the Disney Company released does not include the recording of Tom reporting Iger's remark to him after Tom concluded his presentation.
Walt Disney Company Chairman John Pepper's response to Tom is included at the end of the recording.
The entire recording runs just under nine minutes.
P.S. For those interested, the spot at which Tom returned to the podium to report to the other shareholders the comment Iger had just made to him -- the comment erased from this version of the tape by Disney -- ran from 5:52 to 5:53 on Breitbart.tv's time clock.
More specifically, the tape begins with Disney Chairman John Pepper introducing Tom. Then:
-Tom's presentation -the applause following the end of Tom's presentation starts at 5:46 -Mr. Pepper says "thank you Mr. Borelli" at 5:50 -silence where Tom's comment about what Mr. Iger said is cut out from 5:52 to 5:53 -Mr. Pepper says "let me respond to your comments, Mr. Borelli" at 5:54 -Mr. Pepper responds until the end of the tape
A spokesman for the Walt Disney Company apparently is denying that CEO Robert Iger used an expletive when conservative activist Tom Borelli tried to shake Iger’s hand following Borelli’s presentation at Disney’s annual stockholder’s meeting this week.
Washington, D.C. - Columnist Tommy Christopher at the AOL News website "Political Machine" reported Wednesday that a spokesman for the Walt Disney Company has denied that Disney CEO Robert Iger said "f--- you" to conservative activist Tom Borelli at the company's March 10 stockholder meeting.
Said Christopher:
"According to... the National Center for Public Policy Research, Disney CEO Robert Iger used an F-word other than Fantasia at this year's annual shareholders meeting. Conservative columnist Tom Borelli, senior fellow with the organization... claimed that Iger said "F**k you" to him at the meeting...
...Disney spokesman Jonathan Friedland, however, told me that he was 'sitting right there,' and that 'Bob didn't say anything back to him.' He also said he was 'pretty sure Bob shook his hand.' He described the episode as 'strange.'"
The following are statements from Tom Borelli, Deneen Borelli (Tom's wife and fellow of Project 21, who was present), and Steve Milloy (co-director with Tom Borelli of the Free Enterprise Action Fund, which Tom was representing at the stockholder meeting, and also of the National Center for Public Policy Research's Free Enterprise Project, who was listening to the live audio webcast of the stockholder meeting as it took place):
Tom Borelli:
"Here is what transpired.
On the way to make my statement I stopped and shook Iger's hand. He was sitting in front of the podium and because of the extra time it took for me to greet him I was late getting to the podium. In the audio recording, you can hear Mr. Pepper calling my name for a second time and asking if I'm going to be making the presentation. My first few words of my statement I mentioned I was late because I shook Iger's hand.
After I finished my presentation I again walked by Iger and offered my hand once again. He just stared at me and said 'F--- Y--.' I immediately walked back to the podium where I told the audience what Iger said to me. Passing Iger the second time, a security official was sitting right behind him and shortly after I walked by them Iger left the auditorium. He was not in the theater during the other shareholder proposals.
Finally, the shareholder that responded to my statement about the controversial nature of 'The Path to 911' defended Iger for displaying 'restraint' because he felt I launched a personal attack and he added - 'if it were me I would have probably knocked him on his rear end.'
Perhaps the Disney representative witnessed the first handshake and missed the second encounter."
Deneen Borelli:
"Mr. John Pepper, Chairman of The Walt Disney Company, opened and conducted most of the shareholder meeting. Once he completed several opening remarks, Mr. Pepper introduced Mr. Robert Iger to welcome and address the audience. During this portion of the meeting, Mr. Iger updated shareholders about company business and several sneak previews were aired introducing new Disney movies. At some point during this portion of the meeting, Mr. Iger came down from the stage and took a seat in the audience in front of the podium set up for representatives of the shareholder proposals. Mr. Iger was alone. There were several security personnel seated a few rows behind Mr. Iger.
Following the executive session of the Disney shareholder meeting, Mr. Pepper invited Tom to present his proposal. Before taking his place behind the podium, Tom stopped next to a seated Mr. Iger and shook his hand.
At some point while Tom was presenting his proposal, a woman walked past me towards Mr. Iger and took a seat to the right of Mr. Iger - either immediately next to him or with one seat in between them - where they engaged in brief conversation while listening to Tom.
Before Tom completed his presentation, the woman got up and walked away and Mr. Iger was seated alone.
Tom completed his proposal. While returning to his seat, he extended his hand to Mr. Iger. Mr. Iger did not shake Tom's hand. Then, Tom had a surprised look on his face and immediately went back to the podium and repeated what Mr. Iger told Tom."
Steve Milloy:
"I was listening to the live audio webcast. Tom completed his presentation. There was a short pause; then I heard Tom's voice. It sounded like he was near to the microphone, not at the microphone. He said, 'He just told me to go f--- myself,' or something like that.
I find it hard to believe they would deny that; there was a whole room full of people.
If you listen to the Disney version of the tape now, there's a big gap -- like Rosemary Woods. They didn't even have the brains to remove the gap. If they are going to deny it happened, they had better remove the gap.
The guy after Tom complimented Iger on being so restrained; that he would have punched Tom, I guess."
Washington, D.C.: The Walt Disney Company has edited out of the webcast version of its March 10 annual shareholder meeting an incident in which Disney CEO Robert Iger dropped the "f-bomb" on conservative activist and Disney investor Tom Borelli.
Iger scowled at and said "f--- you" to Tom Borelli, director of the National Center for Public Policy Research's Free Enterprise Project, at Tuesday's annual Disney shareholder meeting after Borelli told shareholders about Iger's refusal to sell the DVD or the distribution rights of the miniseries "The Path to 9/11."
Borelli, who was attending the meeting on behalf of the Free Enterprise Action Fund, a mutual fund with which he is affiliated, had just ended his presentation and was attempting to shake Iger's hand when Iger used the phrase. Iger also refused to uncross his arms and shake Borelli's hand. Borelli, who had received applause from fellow shareholders after his presentation, went back to the podium and precisely reported to his fellow shareholders what Iger had just said, to gasps from the assembled crowd. Borelli then sat back down.
On March 11, Disney released on its website what it calls "a re-play of The Walt Disney Company's annual meeting of shareholders on March 10, 2009" at http://tw1.us/lD. A review of the webcast reveals that Borelli's report about Iger's remark to his fellow shareholders has been replaced by white noise.
Borelli's report of Iger's remark was audible, however, during the live webcast of the shareholder meeting, making it apparent that Disney personnel purposefully censored the material before posting the archived version on its website's information page for investors.
Iger's remark to Borelli appears to violate Disney's own "Standards of Business Conduct," which, as described by Iger in an open letter on the Disney website, includes, in Iger's words, "acting responsibly in all our professional relationships, in a manner consistent with the high standards we set for our business conduct." The standards also, Iger's letter says, "govern how we treat everyone with whom we have contact. These are standards of integrity... honesty... trust... respect... fair play... and teamwork." (Original at http://tw1.us/lo.)
For more information on Tom Borelli's presentation at the March 10, 2009 Disney shareholder meeting and Iger's remark to Borelli, please see the press release "Disney CEO Drops F-Bomb at Shareholder Meeting; Iger's Nasty Comment to Investor Rooted in 9/11 Miniseries Controversy," at www.nationalcenter.org/PR-Disney_Iger_Shareholder031009.html.
WMAL Talker Chris Plante on Disney CEO's Expletive
Chris Plante, talk show host on ABC Radio's 630 WMAL in Washington D.C. today discussed the incident in which Walt Disney Company CEO Robert Iger used an expletive to conservative activist Tom Borelli.
The following is a transcript of that segment of Plante's show:
Transcript of the Chris Plante Show, March 11, 2009
Bob Iger, Robert Iger, the CEO of the Walt Disney Corporation drops the F-bomb after it's revealed that he's still carrying water for the Clintons.
Uh, you may remember, I guess a couple of years ago now, the ABC television network, owned by the Disney Corporation, produced a miniseries that was called "The Path to 9/11." It was based on the 9/11 Commission Report and it was supposed to be a factual telling of what led to the attacks of September 11th, and what was done, and what was not done, by, primarily, the Clinton administration.
It was considered to be, in many instances, embarrassing to the Clinton administration; in particular, to Sandy "Burglar," the then-National Security Advisor, who had instructed special operations forces affiliated with the CIA to not pull the trigger on Osama Bin Laden, and, uh, and a couple of other things that they found embarrassing. Well, you may remember that the Clinton administration officials complained to ABC and to Disney, and Disney went back and kind of changed a couple of things, you know, because you certainly wouldn't want to offend any Democrat politicians. Same policy they have with Republicans, right?
Um, well, a fellow, Tom Borelli, who represents a mutual fund, speaking at the Disney Company's shareholder meeting, brought up the fact that Bob Iger, who is a contributor to Democratic causes, a supporter of the Clinton administration, and a big Dem lib, the CEO of Walt Disney, has refused to package up the very, very popular, somewhat controversial "Path to 9/11" miniseries on DVDs and sell them. Well, Tom Borelli brought that up at the shareholders' meeting. And he pointed out the fact that Bob Iger is putting politics before profits and that shareholders are being denied an opportunity to benefit from DVD sales of this ABC miniseries, "The Path to 9/11."
And he said: "Since its broadcast in September 2006, Iger has refused to profit from this project, despite its significant market potential."
"The Path to 9/11," he said, received seven Emmy nominations, had 25 million viewers over two nights, and was highly ranked in the Nielsen ratings. The first night it was number-two and on the second night it was number-one - most-watched TV programs in the country.
[He] says: "Not only has Iger decided that Disney will not to sell the DVD, he will not allow the sale of the distribution rights. Lion[s] Gate was told that, uh, distribution rights were not available," and this fellow says it's all because Bob Iger is in the pocket of the Clintons.
Well, Mr. Borelli then walked down into the audience to Bob Iger, went to shake his hand. Bob Iger crossed his arms, refused to shake his hand, and said [pause] "FU!" Although he didn't abbreviate it that way; he used the entire word - "F--- you!" So much for Disney's family-friendly...
I, I, I love this guy "Tom Borelli" at the Disney board meeting, though. He then, after Bob Iger said "F--- you!" to him, in an unabbreviated form, Borelli returned to the podium and explained to the gathered audience exactly what Iger had just said; to the gasps of the audience!
We appreciate Mr. Plante's comments, and his show as well, which -- especially since President Obama's inauguration -- has been quite invigorating. ____________________
Outrage of the Day: Rep. George Miller's "Dirty Money"
Rep. George Miller (D-CA) has long been known for carrying water for labor unions. Now Kevin Mooney of the D.C. Examiner asks if he's carrying dirty union money around, too:
"WHO: Rep. George Miller, D-CA, chief House sponsor, Employee Free Choice Act (aka Card Check).
WHAT: Miller received the following dirty money: Communication Workers of America (PAC) $10,000 in 2008 cycle; $10,000 in 2006 cycle; Boilermakers Union (PAC) $10,000 in 2008; $6,500 in 2006. American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) $2,500 in 2008; $1,500 in 2006. International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) $10,000 in 2008; $10,000 in 2006.
WHY IT'S DIRTY: At least eight members of these four unions have been convicted since 2001 of felonies ranging from embezzlement, falsifying official reports to government, mail fraud and conspiracy."
Outrage of the Day: U.S. To Pay Legal Bills of U.N. Official It Seeks to Prosecute
The United Nations has agreed to pay the legal fees of Benon Sevan, former head of the U.N.'s scandal-ridden Iraq Oil-for Food program.
Sevan has been charged in the United States with bribery and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, but has been hiding in Cyprus.
Because the United States pays approximately one quarter of the United Nations' expenses, about 25 percent of Sevan's legal fees will be paid by American taxpayers.
Carol Browner: Dictating Climate Policy Like Caesar of Old
An op-ed by David Ridenour on President Obama's choice of Carol Browner to serve as a so-called "climate czar" has appeared in newspapers nationwide, including this version from Investor's Business Daily:
Climate Czar Will Reign Like Caesar Of Old
By David A. Ridenour
President Obama vowed to set a new direction of ethics and transparency in government and with his selection of Carol Browner as climate control czar. Unfortunately, her steadfast belief in the far-left policies of extreme environmentalism make that vow impossible to achieve.
An environmental zealot, Browner has so much baggage she could be an airline. But then, maybe not. For despite Browner's best efforts, some of her baggage simply won't stay lost.
Carol Browner is the right person to drive expansion of the state under Barack Obama.
The Washington Examiner recently discovered that she was one of 15 original members of the Commission for a Sustainable World Society, a branch of the Socialist International, an organization linking socialist and labor parties throughout the world.
Among other things, its Declaration of Principles 'demands compensation for . . . social inequities.' That's another way of saying that if you've prospered because of ingenuity or hard work, be prepared to give a lot of it away to those who haven't.
The issue isn't that Browner is a socialist. We crossed the socialism bridge — a real bridge to nowhere — when we sent a man to the White House who promised to spread our wealth around.
The real issue is the attempt to hide this fact from the public. Browner's photograph, which once appeared alongside that of close Vladimir Putin ally Sergei Mironov, was quietly removed from the Socialist International's Web site after the Examiner's story broke. Much like the trillions of dollars in bailouts and economic stimulus, it's as though Browner never existed.
This isn't transparent government, but all-too-transparent politics. Browner has a lot more baggage, too.
Throughout her years as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration, EPA officials routinely violated the Anti-Lobbying Act — a law prohibiting federal employees from using agency money for 'telephone, letter, printed or written matter, or other device intended or designed to influence in any manner a Member of Congress.' In 1995, the EPA flagrantly violated that law when it lobbied against the Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act, a bill that would have curbed some of the EPA's worst abuses.
As James Hinchman, comptroller general of the United States, noted, EPA officials 'distributed EPA fact sheets to various organizations' and 'directly lobbied the Congress.' Not only that, but an EPA regional administrator wrote a strong op-ed designed to stop the bill's passage.
Four years later, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., accused the EPA of violating the Anti-Lobbying Act again. Byrd — who has made a career of steering pork to his state — complained that the EPA's Transportation Partners Program was coordinating and funding anti-road lobbyists against the law and his state's interests. Browner was forced to terminate the program. The following year, Browner was at it yet again. This time, her agency was accused of allowing special interests to improperly influence last-minute — so-called midnight — environmental regulations.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the EPA to preserve communications with such groups. Instead, Browner had her computer hard drive re-initialized, wiping it clean. Lamberth then held the EPA in contempt for 'contumacious conduct.' As little respect as she's shown for the law, Browner has shown even less for science. During her years at the EPA, agency scientists who didn't toe the party line were subjected to relentless harassment.
David Lewis, an EPA Science Achievement Award recipient, publicly criticized the quality of science used in crafting regulations. In response, the EPA charged Lewis with ethics violations and repeatedly denied him promotion. Although he won whistle-blower judgments against the EPA, he was eventually forced into retirement.
The term 'czar' comes from the Latin word caesar — as in Julius Caesar, the Roman leader who proclaimed himself dictator perpetuo (dictator in perpetuity) and oversaw massive expansion of government bureaucracy.
If a czar is actually what President Obama was looking for, Carol Browner may have been the perfect choice, after all.
Ridenour is vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative, nonpartisan think tank.
Writing on National Review Online, Henry I. Miller excoriates the Environmental Protection Agency.
Here's just a sample:
...The EPA has long been more concerned with public relations than public health. An EPA scheme that was exposed in 2005 planned to divert research funds to pay outside public-relations consultants up to $5 million over five years to improve the website of its Office of Research and Development, conduct focus groups on how to polish the office’s image, and produce ghostwritten articles praising the agency “for publication in scholarly journals and magazines.”
It’s no surprise that EPA must buy good press. The agency is relentlessly inept and corrupt, and motivated by radical ideology rather than a genuine desire to protect the environment. It serves not the public interest, but the most extreme and doctrinaire environmentalists.
The EPA’s payola scheme is similar to the agency’s longstanding practice of buying influence by doling out hundreds of millions of dollars each year to non-profit organizations—money that, according to the inspector general and Government Accountability Office, is dispersed with no public notice, competition, or accountability. Specifically, they documented systematic malfeasance by regulators, including: (1) making grants to grantees who were unable to carry out the terms of the grants; (2) favoring an exclusive clique of grantees without opening the grants to competition; (3) funding “environmental” grants for activities that lack any apparent environmental benefit; and (4) failing to ensure that grantees performed the objectives identified in the grants.
Misconduct, mendacity, and conflicts of interest are just business as usual at the EPA...
With all the other governmental disasters going on, scandals that are business-as-usual at the EPA can fly under the radar. Kudos to Henry Miller for shedding light on this subject.
Obama, Durbin and Kerry Call for Investigations of Alleged Tax Cheating
Remember the ultra-mini Blackwater tax scandal of 2007? In it, liberal Senators Barack Obama, John Kerry and Dick Durbin kicked up a fuss because Blackwater treated security guards it employed in Iraq as independent contractors (making them responsible for paying their own taxes) rather than as employees whose income and payroll taxes were deducted from their paychecks.
Obama and Durbin sent a letter to Bush Administration Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson complaining that misclassification of employees as independent contractors contributes to the "tax gap" (that is, the difference between the amount of taxes legally owned to the federal government versus the amount collected), and seeking a full investigation into Blackwater.
Fast forward 15 months.
After sticking behind a Treasury Secretary nominee with "tax gap" problems of his own, Barack Obama is pushing for an HHS Secretary, Tom Daschle, who somehow managed to leave $83,333 in consulting income off his 2007 tax return, deducted $14,963 in non-existent charitable contributions from his 2007 tax return, and accepted $73,031 worth of car and driver services in 2005, $89,129 worth in 2006 and $93,096 worth in 2007 without it occurring to him over three solid years that these benefits are taxable income.
And then there's the unresolved question of possible tax liability for luxury travel paid for by others.
Of the Daschle nomination, John Kerry is saying "there is a completely understandable, absolutely acceptable and rational explanation for what happened here."
(Blackwater had a stronger case than does Daschle, but never mind.)
For his part, Dick Durbin is assuring the country, "If all you knew about Tom Daschle was that he used to be a Senator, and he made a mistake and had to pay over $100,000 in back taxes, you have a right to be skeptical, even cynical. But if you know Tom Daschle, you know better."
In light of the new federal subpoenas on top Obama aides avid Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, Hot Air's Ed Morrissey asks: "Why did the internal report from the Obama team [on the Rod Blagojevich scandal] not mention Axelrod when they cleared themselves of all complicity in the scandal?" ____
Charlie Rangel's Many Scandals Subject of Project 21 Commentary in Washington Times
By David Almasi:
Remember how Washington's "culture of corruption" played such a large role in the 2006 elections? The issue hasn’t gone away...
Consider the slow burn of House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY). Currently, the number of allegations of questionable ethics of his part number at six - ranging from allegations of abuse of the rules of the House garage to allegedly not filing proper disclosures of income to allegedly using House resources to raise money for a non-governmental pet project.
Project 21's Council Nedd wrote a commentary about the Rangel situation that recently appeared in The Washington Times. Council pointed out the irony that Rangel's 1970 election was due in part to the scandal-plagued history of his predecessor, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
Council wrote, in part:
Four decades later, Mr. Rangel is experiencing uncanny parallels to situations that destroyed Mr. Powell's congressional career. Despite the ignominious circumstances of Mr. Powell's forced retirement, he remains fondly remembered for his civil rights work and his pre-scandal legislative accomplishments.
History may not be so kind to Mr. Rangel, since he and his colleagues assumed power on a promise to clean up Washington's "culture of corruption."
...It is troubling when Mr. Rangel pleads ignorance about his tax problems; more so when one considers that he heads the committee tasked with writing the nation's tax laws.
Mr. Powell was stripped of his committee chairmanship by his Democratic colleagues and later expelled by a vote of the entire House. He did win back his seat, but - after years of legal squabbling - Harlem voters chose to replace him with Mr. Rangel.
The House Ethics Committee is now investigating many of the charges against Mr. Rangel. Despite promises of stronger ethics, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appears to have no intention thus far of disciplining a man she calls "very distinguished."
...Mr. Rangel was elected, in part, to clean up Mr. Powell's mess. Now, he has become his own mess. It reflects poorly on him and hurts Harlem and Washington. Harlem needs another renaissance - an ethical one this time.
This post was written by National Center for Public Policy Research Executive Director David Almasi. To send comments to the author, write him at info@nationalcenter.org. Please state if a letter is not for publication or if you prefer that it be published anonymously.
Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli is scheduled to appear on Fox & Friends on Saturday morning, September 26 at 9:50 AM Eastern.
In a move that's cynical, even for him, Barack Obama was still raising money for his 2010 U.S. Senate re-election fund as late as December 26, 2008, more than a month after being elected President of the United States on November 8 and resigning from the Senate itself on November 16.
From David Almasi: 