----- Original Message ----- From: Yoshie Furuhashi To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org ; furuhashi.1 at osu.edu Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 4:17 PM Subject: [lbo-talk] Prop. 62 Would Squelch Third Parties in California
Just the last lines will do: <Snip> RICHARD WINGER is editor of Ballot Access News (www.ballot-access.org), a non-partisan newsletter reporting on difficulties facing candidates trying to get on ballots across the country. -- Yoshie ============== I want to point something out here:
"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 (Reed Smith.com) in Pennsylvania, and GM's and tobacco giant Brown and Williamson's defense attorneys, Kirkland and Ellis (Kirkland.com) in Ohio."
Like, don't believe everything you read in the Merc.
These are the guys that are trying to make it harder for 3rd parties... at least the ones that interfere with their agenda. Get the *full text* of the proposition, before you vote on it.
----- Original Message ----- From: Leigh Meyers To: Newsroom-L Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2004 7:56 AM Subject: Demo war on Nader fought by Mil, Oil, Coal, GMO, Chem Industry lobbyists
The plot begins to resemble Schindler's List more and more, which I have said for years has nothing to do with WWII and everything to do with the realization that they want us to conceive of the future as a choice between sane capitalists (Kerry/Schindler) and psychopathic capitalists (Bush). --joanna bujes [lbo-talk] ~~~~~~~~~
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.
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/conn10132004/
Progressives as Pawns: Cannon Fodder for Kerry's War on Nader
By Stephen Conn
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 nation-wide pre-emptive attack on voters who might choose Nader. The Democratic Party would field law firms to challenge Nader's access to state ballots with ubiquitous lawsuits 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 (www.obblaw.com), and founding principal of the newly formed National Group (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 (Reed Smith.com) in Pennsylvania, and GM's and tobacco giant Brown and Williamson's defense attorneys, Kirkland and Ellis (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 mainstream 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 Pennsylvania 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. snip~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/conn10132004/ ==============================
[begin signature] "If they can get you to ask the wrong questions
they don't have to worry about the answers" --Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (Proverbs for Paranoids)
Leigh Meyers leighcmeyers at yahoo.com