FARA FRIDAY: A limited-liability company based in Baku, Azerbaijan, has hired Portland PR in support of the company’s work on behalf of the Azerbaijani government. The firm will provide the company with “US & international media engagement, media monitoring, digital recommendations, spokesperson training and preparation of documents/materials as requested,” according to a new Justice Department filing. Portland PR started working for the company on Oct. 19, according to the contract, weeks after fighting broke out between Azerbaijan and Armenia in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
— The conflict has drawn attention in Washington, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo meeting separately last week with the Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov. A resolution introduced by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) earlier this month condemning Azerbaijan and Turkey’s role in the conflict, meanwhile, has drawn 88 co-sponsors.
— The Armenian National Committee of America and the Armenian Assembly of America have pressured Turkey and Azerbaijan’s Washington lobbyists and consultants to stop working for the countries, and they won a victory last week when Mercury said it would stop representing the Turkish government. Turkey still retains Greenberg Traurig and Capitol Counsel, while Azerbaijan’s government is represented by BGR Group. Investment Corporation, the Azerbaijani company that hired Portland PR, also brought on the S-3 Group earlier this month for help with social media. Portland PR’s three-month contract is worth $30,000 a month.
Friday, October 30, 2020
Armenia-Azerjaijan Update
Theodoric Meyer at Politico Influence:
Thursday, October 29, 2020
Movements and Factions
For next week. If you want to trade with someone on the other day, that is okay. Just let me know in advance.
Tuesday
- Farouq
- Janise
- Tyler
- Georgia T.
- Will
- Michael
- Charlie
Thursday
- Eda
- Lucas
- Rachel
- Georgia W.
- Yara
- Abbas
- Max
From last time
BLM
- A "horizontal" movement rather than a traditional organization
- The largest movement in history: 15-26 million people took part in George Floyd protests
What is Antifa?
- What is intersectionality?
- Organizational tributaries
- Progressive movement
- Feminist organizations
- Digital groups
- Sanders coalition
- Loose grassroots groups (e.g., OWS)
- Legal and civic advocacy organizations
- Templates
- Million Man March
- MLK March on Washington
- Arguments and critiques
Transgender Groups
- Did not really have econonomic incentives or patrons, but did require skillful, educated organizers
- Threats produce interactions,which produce group formation
Children 3 to 21 years old with autism served under Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Part B (numbers in thousands) Source: Digest of Education Statistics, various years.
Autistic children aged 3 to 21 receiving services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (in thousands)
Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Internet Hearing
Theodoric Meyer at Politico Influence:
CRUZ CALLS TWITTER ‘A DEMOCRATIC SUPER PAC’ IN HEARING: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) teed off on Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Wednesday over the platform’s decision to temporarily block an unproven New York Post report about former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter — a move that has further stoked conservatives' claims of bias,” POLITICO’s Caitlyn Oprysko reports. “In a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the tech industry’s prized liability protections, Cruz accused Twitter of forcing users, including media outlets like the Post, to ‘genuflect and obey your dictates if they wish to communicate with the American people.’ …’Who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear?’ Cruz asked Dorsey, asserting that Twitter was functioning as ‘a Democratic super PAC.’”
— Cruz criticized Twitter "for initially blocking users from posting links to the New York Post story, a move Twitter reversed within 24 hours and which Dorsey insisted he thought was a mistake."
MORE HEADACHES FOR FACEBOOK AND TWITTER: “The Justice Department said it was concerned that Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. restricted access to recent New York Post stories about the son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, telling lawmakers the department supported bipartisan interest in changing a law providing legal protections to online platforms,” The Wall Street Journal’s Brent Kendall and Aruna Viswanatha report. Stephen Boyd, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, wrote in a letter to lawmakers on Tuesday “that online platforms ‘hold tremendous power over information’ and must ‘be honest and transparent with users about how they use that power. And when they are not, it is critical that they can be held accountable.’”
Sen. Marsha Blackburn today asked if a Google engineer who has criticized her still has a job.
— POLITICO (@politico) October 28, 2020
“He has had very unkind things to say about me and I was just wondering if you all had still kept him working there," she said https://t.co/GsU6TmV4cb pic.twitter.com/ZY2kNjwVA4
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
Severing Police Unions from the Labor Movement
An article in the Nation yesterday described the differences between police unions and traditional labor unions, and argued for a separation of the two.
In 1897, the American Federation of Labor rejected the request of police officers to organize a union, saying “It is not within the province of the trade union movement to especially organize policemen, no more than to organize militiamen, as both policemen and militiamen are often controlled by forces inimical to the labor movement.” There have been numerous calls, especially recently, for prominent union federations to stop accepting police unions.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/labor-unions-police/
Civil Rights and Factionalism
For Thursday
- Cigler, ch. 4
- John J. Pitney, Jr., "Autism and Accountability," paper presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. On Sakai.
- Marie Berry and Erica Chenoweth, "Who Made the Women's March?" in The Resistance: The Dawn of the Anti-Trump Opposition Movement, ed. David S. Meyer and Sidney Tarrow (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). On Sakai.
Factions: Assimilation v. Liberation, Conciliation v. Confrontation
- BT Washington v. WEB DuBois
- Birth of a Nation and the NAACP
- Labor and A. Philip Randolph
- NAACP and SCLC: legal/lobbying vs. direct action
- Legislation is a template for other civil rights laws
- Direct action is a template for other movements
- MLK v. Malcolm X
- A social and religious coalition: the Catholic Church actually excommunicated some segs!
- Trayvon Martin
- Alicia Garza, a love letter, Facebook and the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter.
- Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO
- Eric Garner in Staten Island: "I can't breathe"
- A "horizontal" movement rather than a traditional organization
- The largest movement in history: 15-26 million people took part in George Floyd protests
Race and the Environment
- Philadelphia and DIY epidemiology
- 1987 report and 2007 update
- NAACP report: Fumes Across the Fence
- Air pollution
- Philly Thrive
Monday, October 26, 2020
Outside Spending and Florida's Constitutional Amendments
An article out today discusses the outside spending on behalf of two constitutional amendments on the ballot in Florida (ballot measures in Florida take the form of constitutional amendments which require 60% of the vote to pass). First in the article is amendment 2 -
A political committee of the SEIU Florida labor union has spent at least $1.05 million since late September to support Florida For A Fair Wage PAC, which is spearheading a proposal that would gradually raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, according to a state campaign-finance database. The union’s contributions are described as “in-kind” but include covering the costs of digital ads, video production, text messaging and staffing.
The proposal, which appears on the ballot as Amendment 2, is often identified with prominent Orlando lawyer John Morgan, who spent millions of dollars to put it on the ballot and chairs Florida For A Fair Wage. If approved, the proposal would increase the state’s minimum wage — currently $8.56 an hour — to $10 on Sept. 30, 2021, and incrementally increase the rate each year until reaching $15 on Sept. 30, 2026.
I was fascinated to see John Morgan make an appearance, who is quite a prominent outside figure in Florida politics, and also appears in national newspaper articles as a moderate Florida Democrat and big donor (a May 2019 fundraiser at his house raised $1.7 million for Joe Biden). Morgan, of the law firm Morgan & Morgan (the kind with lots of billboards and ads on all the local tv stations), has been involved with Florida constitutional amendments before. In 2014 he spent millions to get a medical marijuana amendment on the ballot, which lost with 58% of the vote. He tried again in 2016, again spending millions, this time successfully.
The opposition to amendment 2 is led by the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association and the Florida Chamber of Commerce, both of which receive substantial contributions from large Florida services industries, as well as chain stores such as Publix.
“Don’t vote yourself out of a job in November … Reject Job-Killing Amendment 2,” the Florida Chamber tweeted this month.
The other amendment discussed in the article, amendment 3, would establish open primaries in Florida.
The political committee All Voters Vote, which has been primarily funded by Miami-Dade County businessman Mike Fernandez, has led the effort to pass the amendment. Fernandez last week contributed $1.2 million to the committee through a personal contribution and a related firm, MBF Family Investments Ltd. Fernandez also put $125,000 into the effort on Sept. 30, finance reports show.
All Voters Vote reported spending about $1.249 million during the past two weeks, with most of the money going to advertising-related expenses.
The proposed amendment has faced opposition from the state Republican and Democratic parties, though it is not clear how much they might have spent to fight it. Late last year, lawyers for the parties unsuccessfully asked the Florida Supreme Court to block the proposal.
Polling has been somewhat variable, with amendment 2 hovering around 60% approval and amendment 3 slightly lower (UNF poll from early October, with results for all 6 amendments). Although there will be a fight over these amendments and a contentious presidential election, one amendment is almost certain to pass, amendment 6, "Property Tax Discount for Spouses of Deceased Veterans."
Apple and Slave Labor
Apple paid an outside firm to lobby Congress on legislation targeting American companies working in areas in China that may use forced labor, The Information first reported. It remains unclear whether Apple lobbied against or for the bill.
Why it matters: Apple has faced scrutiny over the years regarding the human impact behind the manufacturing of its popular products.
Between the lines: In March, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute released a report alleging that several Chinese suppliers for Apple used thousands of displaced Uighur Muslims — which are currently the target of a campaign of cultural genocide in the region of Xinjiang — for forced labor.
Apple said in July that it conducted a detailed investigation of Nanchang O-Film Tech, which was added by the Department of Commerce to an export blacklist over its alleged involvement in Xinjiang human rights abuses, and "found no evidence of any forced labor on Apple production lines."
Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a congressional hearing in July that "forced labor is abhorrent, and we would not tolerate it in Apple," but did not specifically state whether the company would sever ties with suppliers that use it.
The big picture: According to congressional records, lobbying firm Fierce Government Relations lobbied for Apple on the "Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act," which seeks to pressure American companies to ensure that their supply chains do not depend on forced labor.
The legislation specifically targets the Xinjiang region, where the Chinese government has been operating mass detention facilities that hold 1 million or more Muslim ethnic minorities since 2017.
The Chamber of Commerce released a statement shortly after the legislation was introduced in September saying they oppose the bill because it "would prove ineffective and may hinder efforts to prevent human rights abuses."
Apple and other tech companies have previously been accused of sourcing raw materials from African mines that purportedly rely on child labor. Apple supplier Foxconn also faced allegations of abusive conditions that led to a spate of suicides about a decade ago.
Talking Turkey
Daniel Lippman at Politico Influence:
MERCURY DROPS TURKEY UNDER PRESSURE: “The lobbying firm Mercury Public Affairs has cut ties with the Turkish government following a pressure campaign by Armenian-American activists incensed by Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan in ongoing hostilities with Armenia. The firm’s decision to scrap its $1 million contract with Turkey is a victory for Armenia in a conflict that’s playing out in Washington as well as the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh along Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan.”
— “In the weeks since long-running tensions between the countries flared on Sept. 27, Armenian-American activists have worked to deprive Azerbaijan and Turkey of what Aram Hamparian, the executive director of Armenian National Committee of America, described as some of their most potent weapons: their Washington lobbyists. ‘A lot of people have bought a lot of summer homes and fishing boats and put their grandkids through college by lying about Armenia and covering up for Azerbaijan,’ he said.” Activists pressured Mercury “by holding protests outside its offices in Washington and Los Angeles and urging Mercury’s clients to cut ties with the firm if it kept representing Turkey.”
— The campaign “recalls the push to convince Washington lobbying firms representing Saudi Arabia’s government to cut ties with the kingdom in 2018 after Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The Washington Post, where Khashoggi had been a contributing opinion writer, threatened to bar two lobbyists from writing columns for the paper unless their firms stopped working for Saudi Arabia. The pressure ultimately led five lobbying firms to sever ties with the kingdom.”
— Turkey also retains Capitol Counsel and Greenberg Traurig, while Azerbaijan relies on BGR Group, according to disclosure filings. Armenia, meanwhile, hired former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Alston & Bird last month for help in Washington. “Hamparian said he planned to ramp up pressure on BGR Group now that Mercury has capitulated. But BGR might be a tougher target: The firm said in a statement that it ‘intends to continue its representation of Azerbaijan.’”
Thursday, October 22, 2020
Public Unions and Police
For Tuesday:
- Garrett Chase, "The Early History of the Black Lives Matter Movement, and the Implications Thereof," Nevada Law Journal 18 (2018), https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1757&context=nlj
- Linda Villarosa, "Pollution Is Killing Black Americans. This Community Fought Back," New York Times Magazine, July 28, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/magazine/pollution-philadelphia-black-americans.html (If you have trouble accessing, please let me know)
Union members as a percentage of employees
.....................................................2018......2019
- Federal government.............26.4......25.6
- State government.................28.6......29.4
- Local government................40.3......39.4.
Sources of power and coalition-building. Eitan Hersh writes at FiveThirtyEight:
Most states — 44 out of 50 — hold some state and local elections off the federal cycle.
...
Why do Democrats and Democratic-aligned groups prefer off-cycle elections? When school boards and other municipal offices are up for election at odd times, few run-of-the-mill voters show up at the polls, but voters with a particular interest in these elections — like city workers themselves — show up in full force. The low-turnout election allows their policy goals to dominate
Backing the Badge
- A 1967 survey of major Northern cities found stark differences between African Americans and whites as to the causes of riots. African Americans tended to blame riots of lack of opportunities, unemployment, and bad living conditions By contrast, the purported causes that whites mentioned most often were outsiders stirring up trouble or hearing news of riots in other cities.
- In 1968, 63 percent told Gallup that “courts in this area” did not deal harshly enough with criminals. One year later, that figure was up to 75 percent. In a 1968 CBS poll, 70 percent of whites thought that police should be “tougher than they have been” in handling riots, compared with just 17 percent of African Americans. (azel Erskine, “The Polls: Causes of Crime,” Public Opinion Quarterly 38 (Winter 1974-75): 288-298.
- After Chicago police attacked anti-war protesters at the 1968 Democratic convention, survey respondents sympathized with the police. In a Gallup poll, 56 percent approved of the police and 31 percent did not. In a Harris survey, 66 percent agreed that Mayor Richard J. Daley was right in the way he used police against the demonstrators, while just 20 percent disagreed
Eliminating police unions. In recent years, some who advocate police reform have accused police unions of blocking efforts to increase officers' accountability for their actions, such as forming independent offices to investigate allegations of misconduct. A majority of Americans, 56%, support eliminating police unions, with results relatively consistent among Black (61%), Hispanic (56%) and White (55%) adults. Despite much higher approval of labor unions in general among Democrats than Republicans, Democrats are significantly more likely than Republicans to favor eliminating police unions (62% vs. 45%, respectively). Political independents fall closer to Democrats, at 57%.
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
New NEA President
Nicole Gaudiano at Politico:
As newly elected president of the 3-million-member National Education Association, the nation’s largest union, [Becky] Pringle, 65, is now the highest-ranking Black female labor leader in the country. Only two other Black women have held the job before her, in the late 1960s and 1980s. Personal experience drives her work leading a national rebellion against President Donald Trump’s education policies and systems, which she says continue to marginalize students of color.
Pringle stepped into her role in September amid deep divisions nationwide about whether to reopen schools, pitting teachers afraid of returning to the classroom against the Trump administration and some governors and local officials calling for in-person classes. The crisis has led to budget cuts that have cost some teachers their jobs, has robbed others of their lives and has shined a spotlight on educational inequities across the country.
Pringle said a second Trump term wouldn’t stop the union’s work in states that are supportive of public education or its fight, for example, for the inclusion of ethnic studies in schools. And the union will keep pushing aggressively for safety and equity in schools during the pandemic through strikes, protests and sickouts — or by backing lawsuits, as it has in Florida, Iowa and Georgia, she said.
The Sources of Union Power
Union officials speak openly and candidly about the source of their influence:
ACB and the AGs
Yesterday, we discussed the role of partisan state officeholder groups such as the Republican Attorneys General Association and the Democratic Attorneys General Association.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) then tweeted about the role of the former in the Supreme Court fight:
And Republican AGs brought the anti-ACA lawsuit they’re rushing Barrett into. And the same person who sent the money picked the nominee. https://t.co/1JLIzu0oPb
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) October 20, 2020
Tuesday, October 20, 2020
Ohio House Bill 6
I would be remiss if I didn’t write about the massive scandal in Ohio politics from this past summer. In July, the FBI arrested now-former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and four others in what U.S. Attorney David DeVillers called, “likely the largest bribery and money-laundering scheme ever in the state of Ohio.”
In addition to Householder, Matt Borges, a lobbyist and former chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, Neil Clark, a lobbyist, Juan Cespedes, also a lobbyist, and Householder’s aide, Jeffrey Longstreth, were also charged.
House Bill 6 promised a $1.3 billion, ratepayer bailout of nuclear energy company First Energy*. Householder pushed the bill through as $61 million in dark money flowed from First Energy to his own bank account and to campaigns of candidates that later elected Householder as speaker. According to the Ohio Capital Journal, “Householder, in turn, rammed through the bailout bill while he and his associates feathered their own nests with some of the FirstEnergy money.”
As we learned in class, 501(c)(4)s do not need to disclose donors, and campaign contributions transpire without public knowledge. Dan McCarthy, a former FirstEnergy lobbyist, created and Ran Partners for Progress, the dark money group that made it all happen. Ohio Capital Journal reports that, “FirstEnergy wired $5 million into the dark money group. Partners for Progress then passed $900,000 to Generation Now, Householder’s dark money group and $300,000 to other entities involved in the bailout, the federal criminal complaint says.”
To Ohio Attorney General David Yost, chains of dark money groups enabled the scandal. Yost endorses criminalizing such chains: “I would love to see a law that prevents one 501(c)(4) from giving to another 501(c)(4)… That would at least eliminate the shell game that we saw here.”
Yost is now suing Householder and his accessories.
*Fun Fact: The company's name is on the side of the Cleveland Brown’s stadium
Government Lobbies, Government Employees
Oral presentations are the week after next!
- Avoid uptalk
- Presentations will be very short: 9 minutes max, including q&a. You do not have to use PowerPoint or any visuals at all unless you need photos or graphs!
For Thursday
- Marcia L, McCormick, "Our Uneasiness with Police Unions: Power and Voice for the Powerful?" Saint Louis University Public Law Review 35 (2015), https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1135&context=faculty
Intergovernmental Lobbying (Cigler, ch. 6)
[Source: U.S. Census Bureau]Governments in the US
Regional Governors
Partisan Governors
Other Examples of Government lobbying Government
Case studies:
Union membership, historical:
1869: Knights of Labor
1886: Haymarket Riot
1886: AF of L
1894: Pullman Strike
1905: IWW begins
1911: Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
1912: Massachusetts passes first state minimum wage law
1912: Socialist labor leader Eugene Debs win 6% in presidential election
1913: Federal Department of Labor Established
1919: Federal government imprisons Eugene V. Debs
1919: Coolidge breaks the Boston police strike
1931: Davis-Bacon Act
1933: Perkins becomes Secretary of Labor
1935: Wagner Act
1937: CIO Splits from AFL
1938: Fair Labor Standards Act
1944: CIO invents the PAC
1947: Taft-Hartley Act
1955: AFL-CIO Merger
1962: JFK issues executive order 10988
Why the private-sector decline?
Right to Work Laws and The States
Another reason:
1869: Knights of Labor
1886: Haymarket Riot
1886: AF of L
1894: Pullman Strike
1905: IWW begins
1911: Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
1912: Massachusetts passes first state minimum wage law
1912: Socialist labor leader Eugene Debs win 6% in presidential election
1913: Federal Department of Labor Established
1919: Federal government imprisons Eugene V. Debs
1919: Coolidge breaks the Boston police strike
1931: Davis-Bacon Act
1933: Perkins becomes Secretary of Labor
1935: Wagner Act
1937: CIO Splits from AFL
1938: Fair Labor Standards Act
1944: CIO invents the PAC
1947: Taft-Hartley Act
1955: AFL-CIO Merger
1962: JFK issues executive order 10988
Why the private-sector decline?
Right to Work Laws and The States
Another reason:
Monday, October 19, 2020
Amazon, Microsoft, Pentagon, JEDI, Lobbying
JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) is a Department of Defense initiative for moving the Pentagon's digital infrastructure to the cloud. It is a $10 billion contract, which is one of the most lucrative out there, given the profit margin of Internet businesses.
Of all the bidders, Amazon and its Amazon Web Service has been the leader in cloud computing since the beginning. Microsoft has been playing catch-up for the last few years, now #2. Google, IBM, and Oracle are far behind.
There's a lot of drama happening with this bid: conflict of interest, backdoor connection, unfair competition, personnel changes (Mattis to Esper to ...), etc. As a long time government contractor and Trump's close ally, Oracle has put up a tough fight too...
Lobbying plays a big role in this: former Amazon consultant Sally Donnelly served as former Secretary of Defense Mattis's senior advisor (who allegedly handled all political matters for General Mattis).
In January 2017, Donnelly rejoined the department after successfully shepherding Mattis through the Senate confirmation process. Her title, senior adviser, understated her influence. She emerged as one of the most powerful people in the leadership of the Pentagon, according to numerous DOD staffers. She guided Mattis on politics (which was relatively new terrain for him), relations with the White House and dealing with the press. (ProPublica)
Current Secretary Mike Esper was VP at Raytheon prior to his confirmation. Talk about the deep waters here...
Esper was executive vice president at the Aerospace Industries Association in 2006 and 2007. From September 2007 to February 2008, Esper served as national policy director to Senator Fred Thompson in his 2008 presidential campaign. From 2008 to 2010, Esper served as executive vice president of the Global Intellectual Property Center and vice president for Europe and Eurasia at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He was hired as vice president of government relations at defense contractor Raytheon in July 2010.[16] Esper was recognized as a top corporate lobbyist by The Hill in 2015 and 2016.[17][18] Esper's departure from Raytheon included a deferred compensation package after 2022, based partly on Raytheon's stock price.
Whether Trump was the key decider or not, the contract went to Microsoft. After a year in court, Microsoft still gets the contract.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/4/21423312/pentagon-microsoft-jedi-amazon-trump-defense-contract-cloud-bezos
ProPublica has done a great job with the general narrative, from Silicon Valley first probing into DoD affairs (with Google ex-CEO Eric Schmidt) to the nasty contest between Amazon & Microsoft & Oracle.
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-amazon-and-silicon-valley-seduced-the-pentagon
NextGov has compiled a pretty thorough timeline for the JEDI bidding process, from start to finish.
https://www.nextgov.com/feature/jedi-contract/
Amazon has put forth some defense as well.
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/jedi-why-we-will-continue-protest-politically-corrupted-contract-award/
Interesting fact: for the recent TikTok debacle, Microsoft (the most likely contender) left with nothing, with the deal going to Oracle. Probably not a great deal, but definitely highlights Oracle & Larry Ellison (founder)'s tie to the Trump Administration.
More to come...
Sunday, October 18, 2020
One Way to Coordinate with Outside Groups
A tweet from a Washington Post reporter reinforces a point that we discussed earlier in the course:
If you sometimes wonder why weird leaks come out of campaigns, keep in mind that they are prohibited from coordinating with super PACs, who might not otherwise know where to direct their resources.
— Blake News (@blakehounshell) October 18, 2020
Saturday, October 17, 2020
Thursday, October 15, 2020
(Legal) Drug Money
Well over one-quarter of all state lawmakers nationwide have accepted money from the pharmaceutical industry since the beginning of 2019, according to a new STAT examination.
In several states, taking drug industry cash was more the norm than the exception: In Illinois, more than 79% of the state’s 177 elected lawmakers have cashed such a check. In California, over 85% of lawmakers have taken pharma money. The data reveals the drug industry has poured over $5 million into state legislators’ campaigns in the past two years alone.
STAT’s analysis, conducted in partnership with the National Institute on Money in Politics, provides a first-of-its-kind study of the drug industry’s influence in state capitols. It follows a companion analysis of drug industry spending at the federal level, which revealed $11 million in industry giving as of July.
US Opinions on the Israel / Palestine Conflict
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/05/23/5-facts-about-how-americans-view-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict/
I thought this article was interesting and relates to our class discussion about the strength of the Israel lobby in the US. The article breaks down American opinions on the Israel / Palestine conflict, and does so by demographic. It is clear that factors such as: political ideology, generational differences and religious lines affect people's attitudes on this issue. The article also talks about how perspectives on the conflict have changed (sometimes significantly) in recent years.
Five core takeaways:
1. Views of Israel and the Palestinians have become more ideologically polarized.
2. Religious groups also differ in Mideast sympathies.
3. White evangelical Republicans are the most likely to support Israel.
4. There is a growing generation gap in Mideast sympathies.
5. Americans are somewhat more optimistic that Israel can “coexist peacefully” with an independent Palestinian state.
More Foreign Influence
For Tuesday
- Daniel DiSalvo, "The Future of Public-Employee Unions," National Affairs, Spring 2020, https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-future-of-public-employee-unions
- Cigler, ch. 6.
- Marcia L, McCormick, "Our Uneasiness with Police Unions: Power and Voice for the Powerful?" Saint Louis University Public Law Review 35 (2015), https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1135&context=faculty
US diaspora groups, of course, have no limit at all.
- Dual citizens
- Foreign-Born Population
- This map shows where each state's largest immigrant group comes from, excluding Mexico
Mideast
- AIPAC and pro-Israel groups
- Public sympathies
- CAIR
- Changing demographics
- Saudi spending
- Turkey
Figures who have been in the news ...
- An early example of foreign ties: Bahama and the drug trade
- Savimbi
- From a bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee:
Manafort hired and worked increasingly closely with a Russian national, Konstantin
Kilimnik. Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer. Kilimnik became an integral part of
Manafort's operations in Ukraine and Russia, serving as Manafort's primary liaison to Deripaska and eventually managing Manafort's office in Kyiv. Kilimnik and Manafort formed a close and lasting relationship that endured to the 2016 U.S. elections. and beyond.
...
The Committee found that Manafort's presence on the Campaign at;td proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign. Taken as a whole, Manafort's high level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat.
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