http://www.atlargely.com/atlargely/2009/10/tom-donohue-the-lewis-powell-memo-and-the-undermining-of-democracy.htmlOctober 24, 2009
Tom Donohue, the Lewis Powell Memo, and the undermining of democracyThe Wall Street Journal has devoted an entire article to Tom Donohue's - the president of the US Chamber of Commerce - portraying him as a victim of the Obama White House, just like the propaganda outfit known as Fox News:
"One thing I can tell you: They can go out and chase me and chase the Chamber and put stuff in the newspaper. It only . . . drives more and more support. . . . You think we are going to blink because a couple of people are out shooting at us? Tell 'em to put their damn helmets on."
I happen to know a very good deal about Mr. Donohue because of his involvement indirectly with the political prosecutions of former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz Jr., attorney Paul Minor, and judges Wes Teel and John Whitfield.
Donohue and the Powell MemoThe Powell memo, named after Lewis Powell, its author- whom Nixon later rewarded with a judgeship - was written in 1971 to the then-director committee at the Chamber,Eugene B. Sydnor. The document essentially argued for a fascist take-over of politics by big business through dirty tricks, front groups designed to influence domestic policy, media ownership and propaganda, and a whole lot more. Powell was himself on the board of 11 different corporations at the time of its authoring:
Though Powell's memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration's "hands-off business" philosophy.
Now let's look at one excerpt from the Powell memo:
The Apathy and Default of Business
"What has been the response of business to this massive assault upon its fundamental economics, upon its philosophy, upon its right to continue to manage its own affairs, and indeed upon its integrity?
The painfully sad truth is that business, including the boards of directors' and the top executives of corporations great and small and business organizations at all levels, often have responded -- if at all -- by appeasement, ineptitude and ignoring the problem. There are, of course, many exceptions to this sweeping generalization. But the net effect of such response as has been made is scarcely visible.
In all fairness, it must be recognized that businessmen have not been trained or equipped to conduct guerrilla warfare with those who propagandize against the system, seeking insidiously and constantly to sabotage it. The traditional role of business executives has been to manage, to produce, to sell, to create jobs, to make profits, to improve the standard of living, to be community leaders, to serve on charitable and educational boards, and generally to be good citizens. They have performed these tasks very well indeed.
But they have shown little stomach for hard-nose contest with their critics, and little skill in effective intellectual and philosophical debate."
The culprits Powell is describing as enemies, radicals, "leftists" are people who tried to reform the way business operates, including taxes, consumer safety, and so forth. So Powell and the Chamber set forth to create the "guerrilla warfare" Powell thinks was needed. I suggest you read the whole memo.
Now, Tom Donohue - who is very close friend of Karl Rove and was a key adviser to President Bush on business issues - which has resulted in the massive corruption of unregulated banks and other institutions that we have to deal with now - is a big fan of the Powell memo. More than that even, he is a big fan of laundering political contributions through the Chamber and pouring them into state judicial elections - against the law in some of these states, including Mississippi.
The below excerpts are from my article called "Justice for Sale" (emphasis not in original):
Almost immediately after his appointment to U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi in late 2001, Dunnica Lampton began to investigate key Mississippi Democrats.
Trial lawyer and major Democratic campaign contributor Paul Minor quickly became a target of such an investigation. On July 25, 2003, three months before the Mississippi gubernatorial election, a jury indicted Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz Jr., Paul Minor, former Chancery Court Judge Wes Teel and former Circuit Court Judge John Whitfield on charges of bribery. The charges related to loan guarantees that Minor had made to the three judges to help defray campaign costs.
<snip>
The tortuous trail to Paul Minor’s jailing begins in the 1990s, with the set of history-making cases that several states brought against the tobacco industry seeking to recover smoking-related health costs. Minor was among those representing the plaintiffs, along with other trial lawyers and state attorneys general, including Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore.
The tobacco industry settled without going to trial, paying $246 billion to the states in the largest civil settlement in history. Among those forced to pay were the four largest tobacco companies: R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., Lorillard Tobacco Company and Philip Morris USA.
Trial lawyers like Minor earned millions from the deal, and many became generous contributors to Democratic candidates and campaigns, especially in the South.
In 1999, Mississippi trial lawyers donated as much to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ronnie Musgrove as did the Democratic National Committee. Musgrove received $379,500 from trial attorneys, of which Minor donated $112,000. Minor and his law firm donated hundreds of thousands to Democratic candidates between 2001 and 2004, including, according to the New York Times, $129,000 to then-presidential contender John Edwards.
The tobacco settlement, however, had serious repercussions for the integrity of U.S. elections.
Mississippi attorneys have described the behind-the-scenes political fight sparked by the tobacco ruling as nothing short of “war”—between corporations and Republicans on one side and plaintiffs, trial attorneys and Democrats on the other.
<snip>
But Rove’s role in the U.S. attorney scandal is one that he has played for many years, acting as a broker on deals, which were rewarded by corporate donations to Republican coffers.
“Rove is a lobbyist,” said one Washington source close to the investigation of convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. “He never stopped being a lobbyist.”
Rove met frequently in 2002-03 with Abramoff, other lobbyists and Alabama campaign operatives—specifically with members of Bob Riley’s gubernatorial campaign. Riley was Don Siegelman’s Republican opponent, and Riley’s campaign adviser, Bill Canary, was Karl Rove’s long-time business associate. Moreover, George W. Bush appointed Bill Canary’s wife, Leura, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, and it is her office that prosecuted Siegelman.
Ten years before the tobacco settlement, in 1988, Rove had already discovered the advantages of appealing to both voters and corporate donors by painting trial lawyers who had won generous settlements in cases of corporate negligence or medical malpractice as greedy corruptors of the judicial process.
Chamber violates state laws and funds corporate owned judgesEnter the Chamber of Commerce and Donohue - who by the way worked with Bill Canary at the American Trucking Association, before both went on to work for Karl Rove. Canary would go on to spin off a local branch of the Chamber in Alabama and Donohue would go on to lead the national organization.
What happens next is astounding. The below is from the fourth installment of my award-nominated seven-part investigative series on corruption of the DOJ by corporations:
Since the deregulations of the Reagan era, the electoral strategy of the Republican Party and the interests of the corporate lobby have become intimately entwined.
Karl Rove – President George W. Bush’s former Deputy Chief of Staff and campaign maestro – capitalized on this alliance in Texas in the early 1990's, when he made campaigning against "activist judges" a cornerstone of Republican victories. He then applied the same technique in Alabama, where he and Republican consultant William Canary began systematically working in 1994 to elect pro-business judges.
<snip>
Despite its seemingly bipartisan name, the Chamber of Commerce has operated as a pro-Republican powerhouse since the fervently anti-regulation Thomas J. Donahue became president in 1997.
“The chamber has become a significant force in state and national politics under Donohue's decade of leadership,” the LA Times’ Tom Hamburger wrote this past January. “Once a notably bipartisan trade association with a limited budget and limited influence, it has hugely increased its political fundraising and developed new ways to spend money on behalf of pro-business candidates.”
Under Donohue, the organization has frequently aligned itself with GOP priorities. Donahue recently announced an intention to play a major role in electing pro-business candidates in 2008, proclaiming, "We plan to build a grass-roots business organization so strong that when it bites you in the butt, you bleed.”
<snip>
Keith Starrett ran in the Mississippi Supreme Court judicial election against Oliver E. Diaz Jr in 2000. In the state of Mississippi judges are not allowed to run on a party ticket or represent a party. But it was no secret that Starrett was supported by Republicans and Diaz by Democrats. In the two weeks preceding the vote, the Chamber purchased over a million dollars of campaign ads on behalf of Starrett and three other Republican candidates. Starrett lost the election anyway.
Starrett told RAW STORY Tuesday he had no knowledge of the Chamber running the ads.
"It was a complete surprise to me and when I found out, I asked that they be stopped," he said. "Oliver's (Diaz) comments about Lampton and me (to other publications) being involved in his prosecution is a boldface lie and a pipe dream."
Diaz did not mention Starrett as being involved in his investigation and prosecution to us.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce refused to reveal their membership list after concern over the ads surfaced. According to Mississippi law, campaign donors must be disclosed, and strict limits are placed on the amount of total contributions an individual, group, or corporation can donate. The state of Mississippi sued the Chamber over the pro-Starrett advertisements and won a ruling on the federal level.
The Chamber, however, had friends in high places. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia granted an emergency appeal to vacate injunctions challenging the legality of the ads.
State rights? What state rights? The Chamber, under Donohue, pulled this same stunt in Ohio, but there, they were successfully forced to reveal their donor list under campaign finance laws.
Their strategy of the "tort reform" propaganda is exactly the type of "warfare" Powell advocated against anyone daring to regulate big business. Moreover, when that did not work, there is every indication that the Chamber played an active role in making sure corporations were never held accountable - they did this through the corruption of not only local judicial elections, but through the use of lobbyists - like Jack Abramoff - to bribe elected officials (see below for additional links).
In other words, Donohue is the latest pretend victim of the Obama administration, when he is anything but a victim. Far from being attacked, as he claims, he is in fact the aggressor who has waged war against democracy by undermining elections both domestically and abroad. He has helped corrupt the judicial system and as a result, has been indirectly implicated in domestic political prosecutions of corporate "enemies."
But leave it to the Wall Street Journal to paint this man a hero, a victim of some left-wing organized war against honest business. He is nothing more than a thug who would eagerly overthrow democracy if it meant putting more millions into his pockets. When I speak of the "enemy" against whom we - the American public - are fighting on a daily basis, I am speaking of people like Donohue who should be in prison for his various criminal activities, not in the pages of any respectable publication.
To really understand this, I urge you to read my entire investigative series called The Permanent Republican Majority and some related articles, listed below:
SEE LINKS AT LARISA'S SITE
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