Corporations

Public Campaign, an advocacy group that campaigns for election finance reform, has launched a new website called HowDareThey.org to challenge wartime profiteering by corporate lobbyists. The site features information on topics such as the airline bailout, airline security weaknesses, the high cost of pharmaceutical drugs like Cipro, and the "economic stimulus package" that recently passed the House of Representatives. "We have our hands on our hearts, saluting the flag, mourning the people who are dead, and at the same time these special interests are trying to pick our pockets.

The U.S. Congress has passed a Republican-drafted stimulus bill, ostensibly designed to speed the recovery from the damage done to an already wobbly economy by the terrorist attacks and the more recent anthrax scare. However, the bill consists mostly of a $70 billion tax cut to corporations, while offering only token support for the unemployed. At latest count, 7 million Americans are without work, the highest number in 4 1/2 years.

Within 48 hours of the attacks on the World Trade Center, airport security companies formed their own trade organization, the Aviation Security Association, retained a former transportation department official to lobby for them, and hired international PR giant Burson-Marsteller. According to the Holmes Report, in the past month, B-M has designed a website for the association, written position papers that were distributed to Capitol Hill, sponsored meetings with congressional staffers, and set up editorial board meetings.

"US lawmakers are finally moving the return of the three-martini lunch ... to the front of the national agenda," PR Week reports with considerable satisfaction. "Unsure whether the best way to help their country is to offer pro bono work or to send hefty checks to relief agencies, flacks may put themselves to good use by revisiting their glory days, and by being the first to the trough," it states.