ethics

"If David Axelrod decides to join the Obama White House, he'll ... have to take an enormous pay cut and possibly reveal the extent of his lucrative corporate public relations work," reports Politico. Axelrod co-founded two high-powered Chicago firms: AKP&D Message & Media, which does political consulting, and ASK Public Strategies, a corporate PR firm. ASK has "established front groups for corporate giants including Madison Square Garden and ComEd to help sway public opinion on controversial initiatives." Axelrod has "already taken a leave from ASK," to work on the Obama campaign. If he were to "sign on as a special assistant to President Obama, as Axelrod confidants expect," there may be pressure for him to sell his interest in both firms before joining the White House. Karl Rove sold his political consulting firm in 1999, "just before going to work for Bush's nascent 2000 presidential campaign." If Axelrod doesn't follow suit, "The same kinds of questions that were asked about Rove need to be asked about Mr. Axelrod," said Republican National Committee chair Mike Duncan.

Annenberg's FactCheck.org has published an analysis of the "spin and hype" in the final U.S. presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama. Elsewhere on the blogosphere, people have been speculating about the "true identity" of Joe Wurzelbacher ("Joe the plumber"), whose brief encounter with Obama has become the centerpiece of McCain's effort to paint Obama as a socialist who wants to raise everyone's taxes.

The same month that Martin Philbert was named the chair of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel considering the safety of bisphenol A, a defender of the chemical made a $5 million grant to Philbert's research center. "Philbert did not disclose the donation, which is nearly 25 times larger than the $210,000 annual budget of the University of Michigan Risk Science Center, where he is founder and co-director," reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The donor, Charles Gelman, was once called "the second worst polluter in Michigan by the state's Department of Natural Resources." Gelman, a retired manufacturer of medical devices, is an "anti-regulation activist" who supports JunkScience.com, the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Philbert said the donation would not impact his work. Bisphenol A is present in many household products, including aluminum cans, baby bottles and water bottles. Most studies on bisphenol A have linked the chemical to cancer, heart disease and reproductive failures in lab animals; "those that didn't find harm overwhelmingly were paid for by the chemical industry." Philbert's panel is expected to announce its findings soon.

The defunct $10,000 billThe insurance company American International Group (AIG), which "vowed to temper spending after hosting a conference at a California resort amid a federal bailout," belatedly canceled "a similar event planned for next week at a $400-a-night hotel." The U.S. government loaned AIG $85 billion in September and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York just loaned the company another $37.8 billion, to "replenish liquidity." Members of Congress harshly criticized AIG's earlier luxury conference, which cost $440,000. Before AIG canceled its more recent event, it considered buying ads to explain that such conferences are necessary to "motivate and educate" independent agents selling AIG coverage. But AIG's public relations consultant, George Sard, warned against the move. Sard, who heads the PR firm Sard Verbinnen & Co., emailed that "to spend the taxpayer's money on an expensive ad campaign to apologize for how you used taxpayer money leaves you open to further attacks." However, Sard mistakenly sent his advice to a Bloomberg reporter.

On October 1, 2008, the city of San Francisco put a law into effect that prohibits the sale of cigarettes in pharmacies. Walgreens drug store chain and Altria/Philip Morris have filed lawsuits against the city over the measure. In a September 30, 2008 statement about the new law, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom related the city's simple rationale: "Pharmacies should be places where people go to get better, not where people go to get cancer."

Familiar corner drug store chains like Rite Aid and Walgreens have long cultivated an image of being all about health. Their web sites feature photos of friendly-looking pharmacists in white coats ready to help us with our health care needs. The Rite Aid company Web site tells us they are "committed to the healthcare needs of our customers." CVS says its vision is to "strive to improve the quality of human life" by making "high-quality health and pharmacy services safe" and easy to access. Walgreens says it stands ready to help people by supplying "health and wellness products" and health information. If all this makes you feel that these drugstore chains have your best interests at heart, it's certainly by design. But don't be taken in too easily.

After the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was "pummeled by Congress for poor inspections of tainted vegetables, drugs and other products," the agency wanted public relations help. First, it hired Mildred Cooper as "a temporary FDA consultant ... on a two-year contract to advise FDA Commissioner Andrew C. von Eschenbach and other officials." Cooper, who previously did public affairs work for the Defense Department and Federal Emergency Management Agency, then contacted a friend at the PR firm Qorvis Communications. The friend directed her to Qorvis crisis communications director Don Goldberg. Goldberg worked with Cooper to steer an additional FDA contract to Qorvis. But, as Goldberg explained, "It was not appropriate [for the FDA] to hire Qorvis directly." Instead, the PR proposal came from Alaska Newspapers Inc. (ANI), "a firm owned by an Alaska Native corporation that does not have to compete for federal work." Emails between the FDA's Cooper and Qorvis' Goldberg show that ANI agreed beforehand to give the $300,000 no-bid contract to Qorvis. Qorvis also works for the drug industry group PhRMA. The FDA contract, which was supposed to "create and foster a lasting positive image of the agency for the American public," has since been suspended. The House Committee on Energy and Commerce may investigate the contract, according to chair John Dingell.

A leaked draft PR plan by the Clean Coal Council, a Queensland state government partnership with the coal industry, stated that a "key outcome" would be to "turn around attitudes that clean coal is an unproven and unsafe technology." While the PR plan noted that "stakeholders" wanted investment directed to "emissions-free renewable energy technologies, not clean coal," the Council has other ideas. It ridiculed renewable energy technologies by claiming that they would only cater for "certain niche markets" and are still in the "development stages." Environmentalists dismissed the plan as government propaganda. "The Queensland Government is spending taxpayer money to fund a campaign to deceive the next generation of voters," said Simon Roz from Greenpeace Australia. Mines and Energy Minister Geoff Wilson conceded the draft plan was misleading. "I don't agree with the description of renewable energy," he said. Queensland and the neighboring state of New South Wales produce 97 percent of Australian coal production.

The Republican Jewish Coalition says it hired the political polling firm Central Research to "understand why Barack Obama continues to have a problem among Jewish voters." But the poll questions upset many of the hundreds of Jewish voters in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey who received the calls. Some say it was a push poll, designed to spread negative information and disinformation. Others say the calls, with more than 80 questions, were too long to be push polls; instead, they may be testing messages for future attack ads. One question the pollsters asked is whether it would affect the respondent's vote if she or he knew that Hamas' leader had "expressed support for Obama." The Republican Jewish Coalition, which has endorsed John McCain for President, also helped launch the pro-war lobby group Freedom's Watch. In the 2000 primary campaign, the Bush team targeted McCain with a push poll in South Carolina that claimed McCain had fathered an illegitimate black baby.

"The Ear and Hearing Journal has rebuked a Washington University researcher for failing to disclose that he was working as a paid expert for a siren manufacturer when he published a study saying firefighters weren't at risk for job-related hearing loss," reports David Armstrong. The study's author, William W. Clark of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, claimed that "no external funding was received for this study." In fact, Federal Signal Corp., which manufactures emergency equipment, helped conceptualize the study and acquired the original data for Clark, according to documents uncovered in a lawsuit filed by Chicago firefighters. The Center for Science in the Public Interest pointed out in 2006 that "Federal Signal lawyers paid Clark $9,300 in consulting fees while the study was underway and a $25,000 retainer for future testimony shortly after its publication."

"Politicians have never been known for telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but generally when caught exaggerating the truth they usually stop. This year things seem to be different," observes Andrew Tanenbaum of Electoral-Vote.com. "For example, Sarah Palin has said over and over that she never requested any earmarks as governor. That is patently false. She requested $450 million in earmarks and got most of it. Although Congress wouldn't finance the bridge to nowhere, Palin got to keep the money anyway and spend it on other projects. When called on this, a McCain spokesman, Brian Rogers said 'We're running a campaign to win.' In other words, we don't care what the media think. Michael Cohen has a column in the NY Times about lying anno 2008. Ruth Marcus has one on what an economist called 'the symmetry of sin.' The idea is that if a reporter criticizes McCain or Palin for lying, they have an obligation to criticize Obama or Biden for lying, too. But she argues that it is not symmetric this year. Obama has been stretching the truth a little bit like quoting McCain on staying in Iraq for 100 years (which he did say) but leaving out the part where he compared it to the U.S. military presence in Germany for 60 years. In contrast, McCain and Palin have told out-and-out lies (e.g., about how Obama would raise everyone's taxes, something he never said) and repeated them even after they were pointed out numerous times." As David Corn points out, the "strategic goal" of these attacks is "to keep Obama pinned down. Should the Obama campaign waste time knocking down these purposeful errors and excessive spin? That would be letting McCain shape the debate to his advantage. But if the campaign allows this stuff to hit the wall -- and maybe stick -- the McCain mob wins."