left wing

AdAge reports that Fenton Communications and its client MoveOn.org have announced a politically liberal advertising consortium using corporate advertising executives and firms to "help change the playing field this year. ... At the moment it will go after presumptive Republican nominee Senator John McCain. ... [David Fenton] said the team would work for a variety of causes, not just MoveOn.org. Fenton also handles public relations for Global Green; Friends of the Earth; Bono's One Campaign; Refugees International; and Human Rights Watch, among others. 'Right now, the idea is to help win the election and talk about issues on [sic] global warming and women's rights,' he said." MoveOn's political strategist Tom Matzzie and its founder Wes Boyd also founded Campaign to Defend America, currently running advocacy TV ads against John McCain.

The Center for Public Integrity has begun a five part report on the stunning impact of big money advocacy groups in electoral politics, from MoveOn to Freedom's Watch. "Their names roll off the tongue with a patriotic cadence: Freedom’s Watch, Democracy Alliance, Citizens United, Progress for America, Foundation for a Secure and Prosperous America. These are the new giants of American politics, the well-funded groups organized behind a veil of secrecy to influence the voters’ choice for president of the United States in 2008. Financed by many of the nation’s wealthiest investors and business leaders, as well as millions of small donors, these organizations are responsible for a flood of political attack advertising. ... With their identities hidden under stunningly misleading names and legal technicalities, many offered questionable facts and unproven charges intended to confuse voters or appeal to their worst prejudices."

Left-wing U.S. bloggers, including Daily Kos editor David Waldman and former Moveon.org lobbyist Tom Matzzie, who now heads the Campaign to Defend America, will spend six days in Israel as the guests of the Israeli government. The trip is sponsored and organized by the Solomon Project. The bloggers will "meet with Israeli bloggers, journalists and Knesset officials," reports Yitzhak Benhorin. "The Foreign Affairs Ministry has long since been exerting considerable efforts to bring the prominent writers for an extensive tour of the country, in recognizing the influence many of the writers wield and the fact some of them represent websites that are less-than-friendly towards the (sic) Israel." The bloggers will receive briefings on Israel's perception of the security situation and will tour the area between Gaza and the West Bank, known as Israel's "narrow waistline," to illustrate the "true meaning of a return to the borders of June 4th 1967." These borders are spelled out in United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which calls for Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967, and were the basis of the Oslo process. The bloggers may also meet Prime Minister Ehud Olmert or Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipi Livni.

Two leading anti-war journalists are challenging MoveOn, one "of the most prominent anti-war voices," to turn its activism against Democratic Party presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Jeremy Scahill and Naomi Klein write, "We should direct our energy where it can still have an impact: the leading Democratic contenders. ... While Clinton and Obama denounce the war with great passion, they both have detailed plans to continue it." But why would MoveOn pressure the Democrats when getting them elected is their number one priority? Blaming the Iraq war on the Republicans and avoiding criticism of Democrats has been MoveOn's strategy for years. MoveOn is now raising and spending millions of dollars to elect Barack Obama, but has made it clear it will support Clinton if she is the nominee. Furthermore, Steve Hildebrand and Paul Tewes of Hildebrand Tewes Consulting simultaneously run MoveOn's anti-war coalition, Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI), while also employed by Obama as two of his top campaign officials. Tom Matzzie, previously the top lobbyist for MoveOn and AAEI, is trying to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for the Campaign to Defend America, a new organization run by him and MoveOn's founder Wes Boyd to attack John McCain. Simply put, MoveOn refuses to pressure the Democrats because they are the Democrats.

The Democratic Party-oriented Campaign to Defend America, a non-profit group spun off from Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, is behind a TV ad attacking John McCain. Campaign to Defend America and its funders "have pledged a multimillion-dollar effort to target McCain and congressional Republicans on the consequences of the Iraq war on the U.S. economy," receiving "at least $1.4 million from The Fund for America, a nonprofit group set up last year by John Podesta, a former chief of staff for President Clinton; Anna Burger, the secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union; and Rob McKay, a California philanthropist (and chair of the Democracy Alliance). Campaign to Defend America is headed by Tom Matzzie, the former Washington director of ... MoveOn.org. Among Fund for America donors are multimillionaire financier George Soros." The Center for Investigative Reporting has created a chart illustrating the liberal money and connections behind the Campaign to Defend America. Recently the groups behind the Campaign and AAEI poured $20 million dollars into a the Iraq/Recession Campaign targeting Republicans in 2008.

"As Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign was blasting Sen. Barack Obama for his ties to the Exelon Corporation, the firm of Mark Penn, Clinton's chief strategist, was earning hundreds of thousands of dollars from the very same nuclear energy client," reports Sam Stein. Penn's PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, works for Exelon and the Exelon-funded pro-nuclear group New Jersey Affordable, Clean, Reliable Energy Coalition (NJ ACRE), as the Center for Media and Democracy previously reported. Recently, Exelon paid Burson-Marsteller more than $230,000, coded as "public affairs." Exelon said the work involved NJ ACRE and strengthening local support for "the renewal of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant's operating license." The payment covered Burson-Marsteller's work between June and November 2007, which included carrying out a poll and setting up "speaking engagements and events for Patrick Moore," the Greenpeace activist turned PR consultant and co-chair of the nuclear industry-funded group Clean and Safe Energy Coalition.

The Democratic think tank / advocacy group Third Way has been working with Senate Democrats to help sell a controversial measure granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies, reports Matt Renner. The measure "is the major sticking point over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) legislation that is currently stalled in the Senate." During a meeting with Senator Jay Rockefeller's legislative aide for military and national security issues, Third Way's Matt Bennett suggested "talking points to help make the case for telecom immunity." Bennett said, "We thought it would be a bad idea to allow these companies to be held legally liable for cooperating with the government ... you want to encourage the cooperation of not just the telecom industry, but all other industries in the future." Third Way would not disclose whether the group receives telecom funding, but some of its board members do have telecom ties. Reynold Levy, for example, formerly served as AT&T's senior officer in charge of government relations.

Ryan Grim reports that the biggest and best-funded organizations in the liberal peace movement, primarily MoveOn and the groups in its Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI) coalition, are no longer advocating that Congress end the war. This year "the groups instead will lower their sights and push for legislation to prevent President Bush from entering into a long-term agreement with the Iraqi government that could keep significant numbers of troops in Iraq for years to come. ... The groups believe this switch in strategy can draw contrasts with Republicans that will help Democrats gain ground in November." AAEI's PR spokesperson, Moira Mack of Hildebrand Tewes Consulting, called it "the perfect legislative opportunity." In other words, as CMD's Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber noted last March, for MoveOn and other Democrat-aligned peace groups it's not about ending the war, it's about electing Democrats. Most of the tens of millions of dollars that MoveOn and AAEI have spent lobbying and organizing for "peace" has been directed at pressuring and embarrassing pro-war Republicans, while the Democratic Congress has continued to fund the war and pro-war Democrats have generally been given a pass.

Shortly after the November 2006 election the Democracy Alliance, an exclusive group of about 100 Democratic Party millionaire activists, met in Miami, Florida. Members and their guests heard their keynote speaker and liberal legend Mario Cuomo analyze the Democratic Party in the wake of its stunning electoral victories that had given Democrats control of the US Congress. Cuomo criticized the Democratic Party for lacking vision, big ideas and a winning political argument. His recipe for future Democratic victories was simple: "You seize the biggest idea you can, the biggest idea you can understand. And this is what moves elections."

Cuomo then dared to voice an inconvenient truth: "Now it's 2006 and we're all rejoicing. Why? Because of Iraq. A GIFT. A gift to the Democrats. A lot of whom voted for the war anyway."

IVAW Coffee with the Troops

You can watch some powerful video of our August 5th Coffee with the Troops online at AfterDowning Street, Alternetand on YouTube. We filmed the entire event, which was attended by more than one hundred people at the Yearly Kos Convention Sunday in Chicago.

Leaders of the Iraq Veterans Against the War spoke at Coffee with the Troops hosted by the Center for Media and Democracy and moderated by yours truly John Stauber. Speaking for IVAW were Garett Reppenhagen, Aaron Hughes, Josh Lansdale and Geoffrey Millard who then answered questions about the growing resistance to the war among active duty troops. IVAW members believe that the war on Iraq is illegal and that soldiers have the right to refuse an illegal war.

The event has begun to stir what can only be a healthy discussion and debate about the Netroots, its relationship to the Democratic Party, and the horrific quagmire that is the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Author and filmmaker Stephen Marshall of GNN TV has posted a challenging critique titled Bad Cop, bad cop... in which he concludes: