We all remember Mitt Romney's secret 47% video where Mr. Romney told a small group of wealthy Republican donors what he really thought of the 47% of Americans who paid no income tax. This came as no surprise to people familiar with Romney's business record, but he was now fully exposed for who he really was. Well, it seems recently veteran corporate lobbyist Richard Berman and the oil industry executives secretly funding him had their own "47% moment" caught on secret tape saying what they really believe about people, animals, the environment, and corporate responsibility. On June 25, 2014 Richard Berman gave a presentation to oil industry executives entitled "Big Green Radicals: Exposing Environmental Groups." In this presentation, Mr. Berman talked about an "endless war" against environmentalists and detailed his "war plan" to discredit the environmental movement. A transcript of the presentation can be found here. What Mr. Berman did not know is an executive in the audience was so disgusted by the presentation he secretly recorded it and turned the tape over to The New York Times. An audio tape of the presentation can be found here. And the New York Times recently published an article about it Hard-Nosed Advice From Veteran Lobbyist: ‘Win Ugly or Lose Pretty’ highlighting the fossil fuel industry's new public relations campaign called "Big Green Radicals" designed to discredit environmentalists.
As noted, during the presentation, Mr. Berman described the battle against environmentalists as "an endless war."
“Think of this as an endless war,” Mr. Berman told the crowd at the June event in Colorado Springs, sponsored by the Western Energy Alliance, a group whose members include Devon Energy, Halliburton and Anadarko Petroleum, which specialize in extracting oil and gas through hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking. “And you have to budget for it.”
What is the objective? Mr. Berman and the oil industry's objective is to win at any cost to people. The New York Times article states:
The company executives, Mr. Berman said in his speech, must be willing to exploit emotions like fear, greed and anger and turn them against the environmental groups. And major corporations secretly financing such a campaign should not worry about offending the general public because “you can either win ugly or lose pretty,” he said.
Mr. Berman also talked a lot about using humor to marginalize people on the other side. He talked about using kids and animals. For example, in the New York Times article he's quoted as saying:
“If you want a video to go viral, have kids or animals,” he said, and then he showed a spot his company had prepared using schoolchildren as participants in a mock union election — to suggest that union bosses do not have real elections."
Mr. Berman has a long record of trying to destroy labor unions (in addition to anything else that costs business money). Diane Ravitch wrote about his national campaign to destroy teachers unions.
His one-man organization, the so-called Center for Union Facts, has taken out full-page ads in newspapers, rented a huge billboard in Times Square, sent out mass mailings–all to claim that Randi Weingarten and teachers’ unions as a whole are responsible for low test scores.
In the transcript, Mr. Berman is quoted as saying also stated that he gets up every morning trying to figure out "how to screw" with labor unions. What is the so called "war plan" against environmentalists? One plan is to present wealthy environmentalists as hypocrites who lead a double life thus taking away their credibility. For example, the campaign has put up billboards in both Colorado and Pennsylvania. One billboard featuring Lady Gaga says "Would you take energy advice from a woman who wears a meat dress?" Another shows Robert Redford and "talks green living, but flies around in a private jet." A third shows Ono Yoko and asks "Would you take energy advice from a woman who broke up the Beatles?" The campaigns website - Big Green Radicals - is a full throttle effort to discredit many environmental groups including Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Food & Water Watch, and the National Resource Defense Council. In fact, EcoWatch reported Mr. Berman told fossil fuel industry executives that he personally researched the history of board members from environmental groups looking for information to discredit them. He also assured fossil fuel industry executives their donations would never be discovered so they didn't need to worry about negative publicity.
Berman told the executives at the June meeting that he had researched the personal histories of board members of these groups, looking for information that could be used to embarrass and discredit them. He emphasized to them how they could operate anonymously through his company, shoveling six-figure donations to his front groups without their involvement being revealed.
His war plan is well discussed in this PR watch article as well. The campaign's war plan against environmentalists and other groups can also be found here (PDF document). The document illustrates that in addition to environmentalists, this right wing corporate lobby has gone after labor unions, health care activists, efforts to lift more Americans out of poverty by increasing the minimum wage, and even the Animal Humane Society of all places! They want to present the Animal Humane Society not as a place that helps cats and dogs or animals at large, but as a vegan organization hostile to the meat industry. They even came out with this ad against the Animal Humane Society:YouTube Video Why would this corporate lobby attack the Animal Humane Society? After all, Americans love their pets. Well, according to Mother Jones magazine the Animal Humane Society has been successful in passing some anti-animal cruelty laws and that increases the cost of doing business:
Rather, it's about the Humane Society's success in altering laws and regulations dealing with animal cruelty, which can sometimes increase the cost of doing business.
Richard Berman also admits that.
“We represent a lot of agriculture interests who are being attacked by Humane Society of the United States."
How low can these corporate lobbies stoop? Crooks and Liars reported Mr. Berman set up a website to convince people mercury in fish poisoning the fetuses of pregnant women is no problem. In other words, it is the same old philosophy to increase profits at any cost to people, animals, or the environment. No ethics. No integrity. No amount of profit will ever be enough. Would a previous generation of business leaders have made these decisions? Probably not. I wrote a diary about that here. I found the document to be both disgusting and thought provoking. I'm reminded how we progressives think its enough to have facts and reason on our side. We don't understand why more people don't support our programs. Well, Mr. Berman points out how corporate lobbies manipulate public opinion. If you can create doubt, you can paralyze people into inaction and obtain the status quo. And the status quo means nothing gets done. For example, most people believe everyone should have health care. But throw in "your premiums will go way up" and suddenly a lot of people are unsure what to believe and that translates into political paralysis. In the PDF document, he talks about how they are using this to defeat efforts to raise the minimum wage:
But if you put enough information out there and say, “Well it could go to $10.10, but you could also lose a lot of jobs, the Congressional Budget Office says you can lose a lot of jobs.” And again, we got a lot of ads on this thing. You get in people's mind a tie. They don't know who is right. And you get all ties because the tie basically insures the status quo.
A complete list of energy companies in the Western Energy Alliance can be found here The website Stop Humane Watch has a full list of media outlets that have run this story (see bottom of article). Here is a complete list of Richard Berman's astroturf empire. That's what progressives are up against whether it is the environment, health care, the minimum wage, labor rights, social security, tax policy, etc. I'm learning that it isn't enough to have facts and reason on your side. We've got to do better.