UnitedHealth Pressures Workers to Oppose Health Reform
The country's largest private health insurer, UnitedHealth Group, is urging its 75,000 employees to phone their senators and write letters-to-the-editor to protest the inclusion of a public health insurance option in health reform legislation.
Biotech's Ghostwriting Haunts Congress
The New York Times reports that biotechnology industry lobbyists were especially successful in getting their spin mouthed by House Members during the health care reform debate: "Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies."
Scott Talbott Wins Golden Throne Award
The Center for Media and Democracy and BanksterUSA are pleased to present a "Golden Throne Award" to Scott Talbott of the Financial Services Roundtable, who has done his utmost to hold off any meaningful financial reforms, even after the industry collapsed the global economy and sent U.S. unemployment above 10%.
"Americans for Quality and Affordable Healthcare": Yet Another Health Insurance Industry Front?
According to the Associated Press, "Americans for Quality and Affordable Healthcare" (AQAH) is a "secretive" group that organizes "below-the-radar" activities to drum up opposition to health care reform. AQAH is opposed to a government-run public health insurance option, but supports a mandate to require all citizens to purchase health insurance -- views that happen to exactly match those of the health insurance industry. The group's Web site contains no address, telephone number or other contact information. AQAH is operated by one of the largest law firms in North Carolina, Moore and Van Allen. A spokesman for the law firm, Matthew French, refused to disclose the group's funders, and would say only that "They want to stay in the background and off the front page ... They want the message to be the important thing."
Center for Medicine in the Public Interest Fronting for the Drug Industry
The pharmaceutical industry-funded front group Center for Medicine in the Public Interest (CMPI) is helping its corporate funders fight health care reform by disseminating misinformation and orchestrating campaigns to generate fear about health care reform. CMPI arose out of the Pacific Research Institute, a corporate front group that worked with Philip Morris in the past to fabricate academic support for the tobacco industry. CMPI has been sponsoring anti-Obama Tea Party protests, producing attack ads against health care reform and creating Web sites that feature "horror stories" about citizens in countries that offer universal health care. CMPI is headed by Peter Pitts, the head of global health care for the international corporate public relations firm Porter Novelli, which specializes in helping drug companies evade FDA marketing restrictions by using stealth marketing techniques, like creating fake, unbranded "public service ads" nominally to raise awareness of diseases, but that really drive people to drug-company funded Web sites that advertise drugs.
Lessons in Legislative Manipulation From the Tobacco Industry
The article in the November 14 issue of the New York Times about the extent to which the biotech firm Genetech was able to put their own words into legislators' mouths raises the next logical question: To what extent are corporations in the U.S. actually drafting laws and getting them passed?
We can't deny this is happening, yet few want to talk about it. Tobacco industry documents, though, show exactly how corporations can and do co-opt legislative processes from start to finish, and how successful they are at it. Big Tobacco's success at staving off regulation shows its ability to control legislative processes. The tobacco industry's pioneering work in this area has drawn a road map for other industries showing how to manipulate state and federal legislatures as well.
There are many ways that businesses turn legislative processes to their own advantage. Certainly they lobby to thwart laws they don't like, but they also actively draft and push through laws of their own design, for lots of purposes. Tobacco documents demonstrate this.
A New Mike for Perino to Stand Behind
President Barack Obama has announced his intention to nominate Dana Perino as a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). Perino, who is currently Chief Issues Counselor for the global PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, and a commentator on Fox News. Perino was spokesman for President George W. Bush between 2007 and 2009. BBG is the body that oversees several U.S. funded international broadcast channels, including Voice of America, Radio Sawa, Al Hurra and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.The board is comprised of four Democrat appointees, four Republicans appointees and the Secretary of State.
U.S. Skeptic Has a European Outing
Fred Singer is one of the veteran climate change skeptics appearing at the Have Humans Changed the Climate? conference in Brussels hosted by Roger Helmer, a British Conservative Party representative in the European Parliament. Billed as speaking on the topic of "Why can’t we trust IPCC?" [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], Singer staked out a position that even other sceptics disagree with. "We are certainly putting more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. However there is no evidence that this high CO2 is making a detectable difference," he claimed. Singer, who has been a consultant to oil companies and the now defunct Global Climate Coalition, has also been a critic of regulatory restrictions on secondhand tobacco smoke. Ben Stewart of Greenpeace said that "conferences like this are designed to create confusion and play into the very understandable psychology of denial that most humans have ... This is what these people are relying on. Some are funded by fossil fuel companies so it is a very simple motivation, others have more complex reasons, but it does not change the fact they are wrong."
