Janine Wedel - Unaccountable - How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt Our Finances, Freedom, and Security

One document comes from R.J. Reynolds in 1987: “By year’s end, 550 Smokers’ Rights Groups will have been formed in 500 . . . of the 750 metro areas . . . (in all 50 states).” The document talks about grassroots opportunities in “areas now undeveloped (that is, minorities.)” 3

Some “grassroots” groups like these are anything but, existing solely to promote one cause on behalf of a company or an individual investor.

Nowadays, many such groups are organized as 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofits under the U.S. tax code, or 501(c)(3) “religious, educational” groups and, as such, are not required to disclose their sponsorship. 4These are more formidable beasts than the “fake grassroots” and “front” groups of old.

Network of One

One group that received tobacco money is still around, boasting an eminently innocuous-sounding name, the Center for Consumer Freedom. It is a nonprofit enabler of soda-guzzling, junk-food–loving Americans everywhere. 5

The Center was founded in 1996 by moneys from the tobacco and restaurant industries to thwart regulations on smoking. It has since moved on to fighting government restrictions on junk-food sales and genetically modified food. 6An ad taken out in Roll Call , credited to the Center, presents an emaciated, apparently African child whom the nonprofit says needs “Food Not Propaganda.” 7It does not mention the agri-business or food giant presumably bankrolling the ad. We say presumably because as a nonprofit, the Center for Consumer Freedom, run by former food-industry lobbyist Richard Berman, doesn’t have to report its donors.

From its “About” page: 8

Many of the companies and individuals who support the Center financially have indicated that they want anonymity as contributors. They are reasonably apprehensive about privacy and safety in light of the violence and other forms of aggression some activists have adopted as a “game plan” to impose their views, so we respect their wishes.

Note that the Center for Consumer Freedom, unlike many such groups, at least acknowledges there is an issue.

The Center’s site is no-holds-barred: in one picture, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, much loathed by food companies for his regulations aimed at junk food, appears as Nanny Bloomberg, dressed up in a lavender dress and scarf. There is nothing subtle about the message, though you won’t find details on its sponsorship. 9

Sponsorship is similarly obscure with some of the other five “nonprofits” started by Berman, according to the New York Times , all with “similarly innocuous names.” 10At first glance, Berman might seem like Jesus multiplying the five loaves of bread and two fish to make enough food for his disciples to serve the multitudes.

Except, in Berman’s case, it’s hard to find the disciples.

Shades of simulacra can be seen with his “Union Facts” website, which looks at quick glance like a workingman’s paradise: happy, diverse faces are meant to signal “we care about labor.” But really it’s an anti-union operation; Berman’s organization insists that it is only seeking more “transparency” for union leadership, not the rank and file. 11

His other organizations’ agendas run the gamut from fighting increases in the minimum wage to supporting decreases in blood-alcohol levels for drunk drivers. With “consumer freedom” as his mantra, Berman has tangled with nearly everyone, even Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

Berman eschews the term lobbyist . He apparently prefers advocate : according to a 2010 article in the New York Times , Berman’s detractors allege that his 12

. . . organizations are little more than moneymakers for his for-profit communications firm, Berman and Company. Last month, in what appears to be a new tactic by those critics, the Humane Society and MADD filed a complaint with the New York Commission on Public Integrity, charging that the American Beverage Institute and Berman and Company were in fact lobbying and had failed to register with the state as lobbyists.

It’s hard to find the non in Berman’s “nonprofits.”

Big-Name Surrogacy

Other top-down “grassroots” groups sound positively praiseworthy, and this can make them even more seductive and insidious. Case in point: the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition. Who can argue, after all, with the need for safe and clean energy? For years CASEnergy Coalition has boasted as co-chairs former Environmental Protection Agency administrator and New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman; an original Greenpeace member-turned-PR consultant; and more recently, a former U.S. trade representative and one-time mayor of Dallas. 13

CASEnergy Coalition is described on its website as a “national grassroots organization that supports the increased use of nuclear energy.” You would be forgiven if you missed these four defining words in its “About” section: “Funded by the industry. . . .” 14

As concerns about global warming have swelled, the search for cleaner (if not necessarily safer) power has meant that the nuclear industry has found a more sympathetic ear in corners of both the Republican and Democratic parties. A journalist who dug into CASEnergy Coalition in 2010 found that assisting that effort has been $600 million spent on lobbying over ten years, involving aggressive courting of both Democrats and labor unions. 15

Not all of it is traditional lobbying. 16The journalist reports that, to gain support,

[T]he industry, led by the [trade group] Nuclear Energy Institute, has created a network of allies who give speeches, quote one another approvingly and showcase one another on their Web sites. The effect is an echo chamber of support for nuclear power. While energy lobbies such as big oil and big coal have taken turns in the spotlight, big nuke flies largely under the radar. Alex Flint, the NEI’s chief lobbyist, summed up the strategy last year at a luncheon with utility officials from Southeastern states: “Quiet.” He likes to let surrogates make the case.

For the CASEnergy Coalition, a key “surrogate” is Whitman. Her tenure as a public servant is now serving her very well indeed. And it’s hard to imagine that she or the former mayor of Dallas comes cheap.

You may recall that Whitman sat on BP’s advisory board, along with a roster of other Washington highfliers. (And, after the BP spill in 2010, she wrote an op-ed urging that offshore drilling not be banned, without saying that she had served on a BP advisory board.) Whitman also seized the opportunity to pitch nuclear power, describing CASEnergy Coalition as “grassroots” and not “industry-funded.” 17

Whitman does list CASEnergy as a client on the home page of her own consulting firm, Whitman Strategy Group, but pity today’s multitasking reader who tries to figure out that connection on, say, a mobile phone. Or the newspaper reader who comes across the various opinion pieces she writes without disclosing her industry ties. 18

In 2013, Whitman co-authored a call to arms on the issue of regulating greenhouse-gas emissions in the New York Times ; her op-ed does not point out that Whitman’s clients might stand to benefit if another power industry is stymied by regulation. 19In at least one report, Whitman is clearly identified as being funded by the nuclear power industry, which is useful for her; she can deny that she is hiding anything. But as PR Watch, a Project of the Center for Media and Democracy, found, “A Nexis news database search revealed that nearly two-thirds of news items that mentioned Christine Todd Whitman and nuclear power, from April 2006 to August 2007, failed to disclose her financial relationship with the industry.” 20And that’s just one year’s worth. One only needs to look at the number of more current articles she either writes or gets quoted in that make no clear disclosure of any kind. Some of it comes in the national press, but her writing appears in many local outlets as well. 21