lobbying

As part of a broader public relations and lobbying push, Kazakhstan's government paid Johns Hopkins University to author three reports about the country. The arrangement was brokered through APCO Worldwide, Kazakhstan's Washington DC lobbying firm. The Kazakh government paid $52,300 for reports titled "Kazakhstan's New Middle Class" and "Parliament and Political Parties in Kazakhstan." A third report, "Kazakhstan in its Neighborhood," was "also underwritten by the government," but lobbying reports that would disclose the amount paid for it are not yet available. The reports, issued by the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins, do not disclose the Kazakhstan funding. Institute director S. Frederick Starr said their "relationship was only with the lobbying firm and not directly with the government." He added that "the entire editorial process was 100 percent in our hands." The author of the third report, Hudson Institute fellow Richard Weitz, said, "It's an important topic so I would have written about it anyway." The Kazakhstan funding also required the Johns Hopkins Institute to sponsor "think tank discussions" on each report, "sponsored by the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute."

Americans for American Energy (AAE), an energy front group established by the public relations firm Pac/West Communications, asked Congress to investigate "possible illegal coordination between U.S. Interior Department officials and several national environmental groups." At issue are contacts between the Department's National Landscape Conservation System and the Wilderness Society and National Wildlife Federation -- groups AAE accuses of "pursuing an anti-American energy political agenda." According to Representative Rob Bishop, a Republican from Utah, the Interior Department's inspector general is already looking into the matter. Federal employees are generally prohibited "from using appropriated funds or their official positions to lobby Congress." The Deseret News notes that the probe "comes after the Interior Department ... found that officials at its Minerals Management Service engaged in sexual relationships with energy industry representatives, and accepted gifts from them."

The UK Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change, a group hosted by the University of Cambridge's Programme for Industry, has written to British political leaders requesting a meeting to discuss the development of a "comprehensive package of policy measures to change every major sector of the economy" to combat climate change. The group argues that there is a need for a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, which may be negotiated at the COP14 meeting in Poland in December 2008, and the COP15 meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009. Among the signatories of the letter were the CEOs of the power company E.ON UK and airport owner BAA. Greenpeace communications director Ben Stewart responded, "This is hypocrisy of the purest strain. ... If the executives of these companies want action on climate change they should immediately lock themselves in their boardrooms and not come out until the Kingsnorth [coal-fired power station] and Heathrow [airport] expansion have been dropped," he told the Guardian.

In July, oil industry figure T. Boone Pickens launched the PickensPlan to promote "energy independence" from "foreign oil" for the United States. In the plan, Pickens promotes the use of wind power to generate 20 percent of U.S. electricity, and natural gas and biofuels for transportation. Pickens now has business interests from funds management, water projects and the use of natural gas as a transportation fuel. O'Dwyers PR Daily reports that Pickens has hired the Washington D.C. lobbying firm Patton Boggs "to win Washington support" for the plan. One of those managing the account for Patton Boggs is Benjamin Ginsberg, who was national counsel to the two Bush-Cheney campaigns and, his biographical note states, "played a central role in the 2000 Florida recount." O'Dwyers reports that Pickens used Sloane & Co for the launch of his plan and has also been using North Bridge Communications for PR support.

After taking control of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the U.S. government told their former chief executives that the "'golden parachute' payments contemplated under their contracts would not be paid." The executives, Daniel Mudd and Richard Syron, "together were eligible to receive as much as $25 million" in severance -- or "golden parachute" -- payments, reports the Washington Post. Imagine what would have happened if Mudd and Syron had not "hired two of the nation's best-regarded fixers." Freddie Mac's Syron hired George Sard, the head of the public relations firm Sard Verbinnen & Co, at his own expense. The firm's clients have included home-living guru Martha Stewart, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and talk show host Nancy Grace. Sard said Syron didn't want "a windfall," just enough to assist with the transition. Fannie Mae's Mudd hired "high-profile Washington lawyer Robert B. Barnett ... with fees to be paid by Fannie Mae." Barnett's former clients include both Bill and Hillary Clinton, Republican strategist Karl Rove and former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan. In related news, the mortgage giants are no longer able to lobby. The restriction hit former Fannie Mae lobbyists at Ogilvy Public Relations, Johnson Madigan and Bryan Cave Strategies, among other firms, reports O'Dwyer's.

Image from CleanSkies.tvFaced with "public complaints about its new drilling in an urban area" -- Fort Worth, Texas -- the natural gas company Chesapeake Energy is about to launch its own "brand-new media source," Shale.tv. The online video channel will be produced by "three Dallas-area former journalists," and is named after the Barnett Shale natural gas formation in North Texas. In response to questions about Shale.tv's objectivity, Chesapeake spokesperson Julie Wilson pointed out, "We pay those journalists -- whether on Channel 8 or Channel 11 or the [Fort Worth] Star-Telegram -- in terms of advertising support. ... Instead of running ads on the program, we're just writing the check direct." Chesapeake has also hired actor Tommy Lee Jones, "to help deliver its point of view." And, since April, the Chesapeake-funded group American Clean Skies Foundation has run CleanSkies.tv. The online video channel "has applied for press credentials that would place its reporters and crew inside the U.S. Capitol," reports Dow Jones. The CleanSkies.tv program "Clean Skies Sunday," which is anchored by former CBS Morning News host Susan McGinnis, is also broadcast on WJLA-7, the ABC affiliate in Washington DC. A recent show featured Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon discussing a Clean Skies Foundation report that concluded that "natural gas supplies are vast enough to meet current demand for more than 100 years, a key talking point by the natural gas industry in its congressional lobbying efforts."

"If you don't like the oil sands oil, what companies will do [in Canada] is build a bigger pipeline to the west coast and export it to China and India," warned a lobbyist for Nexen Energy, which has "major investments" in the oil sands region of Alberta, Canada. He was attending the U.S. Democratic National Convention, where oil sands backers held a closed-door meeting with presidential candidate Barack Obama and his top energy advisor, Jason Grumet. Grumet had earlier blasted oil sands oil for having "a much greater impact on climate change." Extraction from oil sands produces three times as much greenhouse gas emissions as traditional oil extraction. Canadian cabinet minister Tony Clement, who was in the closed-door meeting with Obama, said, "We have to be more aggressive in representing Canadian values and interests in the American political scene." Nexen has hired former U.S. ambassador to Canada Gordon Giffin as a Washington, DC based oil sands lobbyist. The industry is powerful in Canada. In July alone, oil sands industry representatives held 36 meetings with Canadian ministers and government officials.

The Colombian government will pay U.S. lobbyist Andrew J. Samet another $45,000, "to present Colombia's track record on labor issues to Congress, non-governmental organizations and labor unions." The new contract is similar to Samet's earlier work to push the U.S. - Colombia Free Trade Agreement, on which the Center for Media and Democracy previously reported. Samet served as deputy under secretary for labor under President Bill Clinton and later co-founded the Sorini, Samet & Associates lobbying firm. Samet "was responsible for the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation," an addition to the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada meant to address concerns about workers rights.

Readers of the book "Toxic Sludge Is Good for You" may remember the name Mary Lou Sapone -- a corporate spy who, while secretly in the employ of U.S. Surgical, infiltrated animal rights groups. More recently, Sapone has been active with gun control groups, while secretly working for the National Rifle Association. As Mary McFate (her maiden name), she volunteered with numerous local and regional gun control groups, even running (unsuccessfully) in 2005 for a board position with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "In a 2003 deposition, Tim Ward, who had been president of the Maryland-based security firm Beckett Brown International, said that the NRA had been 'a client' of Sapone's," reports Mother Jones. "Recent emails indicate that in 2007 and 2008 Sapone was working" with a former NRA staffer who was lobbying on behalf of his old employer. Sapone's / McFate's friends in the gun control community were shocked to learn of her true identity. Sapone was "well-positioned for many years to provide the NRA -- or any other gun rights groups -- the plans, secrets, and inside gossip of practically the entire gun violence prevention movement." For example, Sapone pushed U.S. groups to take part in a United Nations meeting on gun control earlier this year. Their participation allowed Sapone "to learn what the anti-gun forces were planning for the UN session -- including the delegates they intended to lobby, and the arguments they would highlight."

It's an "open secret of lobbying," writes Jeffrey Birnbaum. "Public relations firms regularly solicit authors of opinion-page articles, draft the pieces for them and place the articles in publications where they will have the most impact -- all for a fee." Recently, an op-ed criticizing a bill that would reduce credit card fees appeared in Southern newspapers, attributed to Charles Steele Jr., the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The column -- which neither Steele nor his office authorized -- complains that the bill "would boost the profits of Wal-Mart," an SCLC sponsor. Steele's attorney blamed "the K Street public relations shop LMG" for the mix-up. LMG admitted that it had "reached out through its contractors" to send "advocacy materials" to the SCLC and "urged the group to go public with opposition to the bill." Among LMG's clients is the Electronic Payments Coalition, a group of credit card and financial companies that opposes the legislation. The SCLC investigated and concluded that "the wrong draft of the op-ed" had been sent to papers. "The correct draft should not have referenced Wal-Mart or Home Depot," another SCLC sponsor.