By Stephen Conn - http://www.counterpunch.org
15 October 2004
The progressives and peace activists who are helping
to stop Ralph Nader and Peter Miguel Camejo don't realize it but
they are being used by people who represent the corporate interests,
especially the military-industrial complex, of the two major parties.
After months of fund raising, research and development
of a detailed attack plan, anti-Nader Democrats hatched a much
publicized two pronged attack on the Nader campaign in meetings
with party leaders from Washington, New Mexico and elsewhere during
the Democratic Convention (David Postman, "Nader foes seek
funding from Democratic donors," Seattle Times. July 28,
2004).
The first prong was a nationwide preemptive attack
on voters who might choose Nader. The Democratic Party would field
law firms to challenge Nader's access to state ballots with ubiquitous
law suits to deplete his resources and limit his candidacy. Nader's
grassroots campaign would be sued to death. The second prong was
a campaign to insinuate and perpetuate a lie found effective by
polling and focus groups, that Ralph Nader was a tool of right
wing Republicans.
The Ballot Project Inc. was funded initially by
former Monsanto CEO and genetic farming proponent Robert Shapiro,
with another $25,000, (an amount far in excess of legislated campaign
finance limits), from West Coast Democratic moneyman, Max Palevsky.
This 527 group, officially called, "Focus on Ballot Qualifications,
Inc,." was founded in July by candidate Wesley Clark's former
counsel-now- Kerry supporter, William C. Oldaker, the first FEC
General Counsel, an elections law strategist and longtime Democratic
insider. Oldaker is a partner in the Democratic law firm Oldaker,
Biden and Belair (http://www.obblaw.com) and founding principal
of the newly formed National Group (http://thenationalgroup.net).
Its clients, including the Bituminous Coal Association, Delta
Air, Corning Glass, Equifax and Neuralstem Biopharmaceuticals
(which Oldaker co-founded) regularly seek largess and other special
favors from government of the kind Nader has long denounced. The
Ballot Project Inc. coordinates the anti-Nader ballot access project
with hundreds of lawyers throughout the country, including the
banking, drug and advertising industries' favorite, Republican
law firm Reed Smith (http://www.Reed Smith.com) in Pennsylvania
and GM's and tobacco giant Brown and Williamson's defense attorneys,
Kirkland and Ellis (http://www.Kirkland.com), in Ohio.
Partners in both the aforementioned firms have
fought Nader's ballot access tooth and nail, expending hundreds
of thousands of dollars in partner hours in their efforts without
a single question from main stream reporters as to how corporate
attorneys of such prominence could justify their pro bono efforts
to restive, paying corporate clients around the world.
Partners in both Reed Smith and Kirkland and Ellis
have been quoted extensively and favorably in the New York Times
and elsewhere as they portray themselves as self-appointed guardians
of the ballot against the likes of Ralph Nader and his ilk. Reed
Smith, a major corporate law firm from Pennsylania that has battled
Nader over advertising to children has provided 12 attorneys including
7 partners billed 1,300 hours to keeping Nader off the ballot.
Kirkland and Ellis, Ken Starr's law firm, which represents GM
and other major corporate efforts is leading the anti-Nader effort
in Ohio.
No journalistic suspicions about this coordinated investment in
"good government" high-mindedness among top corporate
law and lobbying firms have been raised, nor have journalists
noticed the profound absence of the involvement on the other side
by civil libertarian groups who might have rushed to defend the
would-be Nader voters' Constitutional rights.
The second prong, aimed at voters in states where
Nader could not be forced off the ballot or where he is a still
viable write-in candidate, force feeds voters with the most effective
lies discovered in extensive research by Bill Clinton pollster,
Stanley Greenberg, that Nader is "in bed with," funded
and controlled by Right Wing Republicans. For this agitprop campaign
to spread the lies, a Kerry PAC called United Progressives for
Victory was set up in June by Oldaker, housed in the DC offices
of Robert Brandon and Associates, 1730 Rhode Island Ave. suite
712, the same office which houses the Ballot Project.
Robert Brandon is a typical Washington public relations
flack who sings whatever song is placed in his mouth with a check.
He had already made more campaign donations to anti-choice and
anti-Kerry Senator Orrin Hatch than to John Kerry, according to
Center for Responsive Politics' FEC data. This is the same Orrin
Hatch who recently said terrorists "are going to throw everything
they can between now and the election to try and elect Kerry,"
and on Fox News, that Democrats are "consistently saying
things that I think undermine our young men and women who are
serving over there."(Dana* *Milbank, "Tying Kerry to
Terror Tests Rhetorical Limits,". Washington Post, Sept.27,
2004, p1).
In "open letters," full of what lawyers term "boilerplate"
focus group language circulated to national and state progressives
and in press releases, Robert Brandon portrays Nader as a figure
head of the Republican right and as a "divider" of the
progressive moment. Unquestioning anti-war activists and progressives
across the country joined United Progressives for Victory (http://www.upforvictory.com)
without a second thought as to the veracity of Brandon's claims,
ever available as cannon fodder for Kerry's unacknowledged Weapon
of Mass Deception. The Center for Responsive Politics had long
concluded that no more than 4% of Nader funds came from Republicans.
But in campaigns, as in war, truth was indeed the first victim.
Media spokesmen for both the Ballot Project and
United Progressives for Victory are Brandon and Toby Moffett.
Moffett is a former Monsanto official, now lobbyist for foreign
countries, the Cayman Islands, Turkey (at $1.8 million a year)
and the Kingdom of Morocco, defense contractors like Raytheon
and Northup Grumman, and McDermott International, a Houston oil
drilling firm interested in asbestos liability immunity. Moffett
is a partner in the Republican (Bob) Livingston Group (www.livingstongroupdc.com)
and its Livingston-Moffett International Group Practice.
Moffett makes big money for his clients from the war and occupation
of Iraq. One Moffett client is British firm, De La Rue. It secured
contracts to print new Iraqi money and travel documents through
Moffett's efforts. The Livingston group guided Turkey to its lucrative
billion dollar plus foreign aid alliance with the Bush administration.
Nader cites Moffett for turning the Democratic
Leadership Council into a corporate bag man for the party. Corporate
donations have strings. Ralph Nader contends these compromises
are part of the reason Kerry doesn't take a firmer position on
Iraq or promote health care for all.
Apparently the corporate clients of Oldaker and
Moffett have found no conflict between the political strategy
employed by their agents to deny Nader ballot access and defame
him and their own desires to discredit Nader's anti-corporate
agenda and, with it, the progressive moment -whether or not Kerry
is elected. Anyone who reviews the published client lists (and
glowing self-promotion) on the Livingston or The National Groups
web sites will discover the anti-Nader crusade by the Ballot Project
and Progressives United, designed and orchestrated by the Democrats,
is also a very natural extension of both Oldaker's and Moffet's
clients' desires to maintain and extend their corporate influence
in either a new Kerry or a second Bush administration. For foreign
nations to stand by smugly while their lobbyists meddle in American
state elections is what we in Alaska call, "skating on very
thin ice."
Hatred of the progressive agenda and persistent
public meddling by Ralph Nader in corporate matters also could
be said to create a happy coincidence of self-interest between
corporate clients with their attorneys' legal wars against Nader
in the courts and in the press. Kirkland and Ellis' clients, GM
or Brown and Williamson or twenty-nine of the top thirty big banks
and nine of the top ten drug companies all represented by Reed
and Smith can only gain from conflict within or capitulation of
the progressive movement. Whatever the outcome of the Presidential
race, for their law firms to invest vast professional resources
in destruction of Nader and his reputation will ease the way for
their corporate clients as they interact with government, especially
if Nader's Washington influence is diminished.
And what about the Any-butt-Bush's -progressives
who support these efforts by signing on to anti-Nader letters
drafted by Brandon and Associates for the United Progressives?
Perhaps, for them, the end justifies the means. Perhaps they were
fooled or just went along with people they trusted. Whether they
were duped by the fear put out by the ABB campaign or they chose
the direction on their own, they are clearly being used by corporate
interests who they certainly disagree with.
Antiwar activists, feminists and environmentalists
who enthusiastically ride the Brandon-Oldaker-Moffett train over
Ralph Nader and his anti-war, progressive agenda must be a great
source of amusement to occupants of boardrooms, corporate law
firms, and palaces around the world. Who would have guessed that
progressives would be such naive and willing instruments in their
own destruction in a plan designed by openly acknowledged advocates
for multinational and foreign national agenda? The Nader's message
is, after all, their own. Ignorance of this strategy and its links
back to corporations, their lawyers and lobbyists is no excuse.
Any school child could have surfed the web and connected the dots.
Now progressives, to their probable dismay, will.
Stephen Conn is a retired Professor of Justice
at the University of Alaska.
