by Aaron Klein
ENTER THE RADICALS
Leading political reporter Ben Smith, then at Politico, reported in April 2009 that the Common Purpose Project was meeting quietly every Tuesday afternoon at the Capitol Hilton, bringing together “top officials from a range of left-leaning organizations, from labor groups like Change to Win to activists like MoveOn.org, all in support of the White House’s agenda.” The group’s membership overlapped, Smith wrote, with “a daily 8:45 a.m. call run by the Center for American Progress’ and Media Matters’ political arms; with the new field-oriented coalition Unity ’09; and with the groups that allied to back the budget as the Campaign to Rebuild and Renew America Now.”
The Common Purpose Project was founded by political consultant Erik Smith. CPP differed from other groups in one major respect: White House communications director Ellen Moran was included in its meetings, Smith reported. One of Smith’s sources stated that the meetings provided a “way for the White House to manage its relationships with some of these independent groups.”44
The innocuous-sounding official CPP description is that it is a 501(c) (4) “founded to bring together progressive leaders and organizations in an effort to collaborate on effective public policy messaging.”45 The majority of CPP’s board members were connected to the 2008 Obama for America campaign.46
Each of these individuals is a member of the KYC/PYC advisory board. There are yet still more members to the team, and we discuss them below. First, however, we will take a look at some of the tactics progressives have employed (and will continue using) to salvage ObamaCare from the jaws of possible defeat—or, in that eventuality, to push with all of their considerable resources for an alternate single-payer health care plan.
CAMPAIGN OF AGGRESSION
While KYC/PYC was announcing its launch in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 2011, the campaign to defend ObamaCare hit the airwaves in Iowa with a commercial defending it as “a boon to small business.”47 Spokesman Eddie Vale said the groups’ “five-figure television buy” was “accompanied by ‘saturation’-level online ads in Des Moines [and] Ames.” The ad featured a “small businessman explaining that ‘there’s plenty to worry about when you own a small business,’ including ‘paying for health insurance.’ “The messaging shifted the focus to jobs creation. Vale explained that the ad “builds on our educational efforts around the Affordable Care Act and expands the case that it’s not just about health care, it’s also about jobs.”
The following month, the PYC website compared ObamaCare to Mitt Romney’s health care plan. A graphic prepared by the Center for American Progress claimed: “Romney’s health care plan in Massachusetts was good policy and an important foundation for the Affordable Care Act. The key to success for both is the inclusion of an individual responsibility provision.”48
On July 13, 2011, the day of the first official Republican debate in Manchester, Nwe Hampshire., PYC launched its first television ad on ABC local WMUR and in the Boston area, as well as online ads. Also, “visibility around town and at the debate” was accompanied by “rapid response and fact checking’ on both ObamaCare and Romneycare.49 The group ran its biggest Internet advertising to date, including a “Google blast” in Manchester and ads run on mobile phones for people on St. Anselm’s college campus, where the debate was held, and via Google searches. Also, PYC did “visibilities” in Manchester and at the debate with signs proclaiming “Hands Off My Medicare,” “Hands Off My Medicaid,” as well as ones “thanking Mitt Romney for his health care plan.” (Note that similar signs were carried by demonstrators March 26–28, 2012, outside the Supreme Court building in Washington.)
Immediately after the September 12, 2011, so-called Tea Party GOP presidential debate, PYC carried on as though it had hit the $100 million lottery. Sam Stein gave an abbreviated account of the chain of events at the Huffington Post:
A bit of a startling moment happened near the end of Monday night’s CNN debate when a hypothetical question was posed to Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX).
“What do you tell a guy who is sick, goes into a coma and doesn’t have health insurance? Who pays for his coverage? Are you saying society should just let him die?” Wolf Blitzer asked.
“Yeah!” several members of the crowd yelled out.
“Paul interjected to offer an explanation for how this was, more-or-less, the root choice of a free society. He added that communities and non-government institutions can fill the void that the public sector is currently playing.
“We never turned anybody away from the hospital,” he said of his volunteer work for churches and his career as a doctor. “We have given up on this whole concept that we might take care of ourselves, assume responsibility for ourselves … that’s the reason the cost is so high.”50
Eddie Vale immediately went into full propaganda mode, telling the Los Angeles Times, “The moment offered ‘a disturbing view into the Tea Party’s extreme right-wing position on health care when members of the audience clapped and cheered the idea of letting someone without health insurance die.’ Even worse,” Vale continued, “none of the Republican candidates on stage expressed a word of disapproval as the Tea Party audience literally clapped for blood. This was a spectacle one would have expected back in the gladiatorial combat of ancient Rome, not at a presidential debate.’”51
Michael Muskal, writing at the Los Angeles Times, provided a different version of the exchange between Blitzer and Paul, which makes clear that it was Blitzer who kept pushing until he got his gotcha moment. Mukasy, however, was just as guilty of skewing his own report. Right before reporting Vale’s comment, Mukasy inserted: “Still, that some in the audience were willing to let people die became a symptom of the conservatives’ disregard for people, at least as far as progressives are concerned.”52 This is a good example of how progressive messaging is predictably exploited by the compliant news media.
Stein reported at the Huffington Post that PYC had already launched a new website with a riff on Let him die? The LetHimDie.com website asked visitors: “Who will the Republican candidates listen to? The Tea Party or the American people? Watch our ad on the Tea Party’s cheering and applauding for letting an uninsured man die.”53
On September 14, Vale told the Boston Globe that PYC was expending $5,000 to test its ads that day and expected to spend between $10,000 and $15,000 for Google ads online, as well as in the early voting states of New Hampshire, Iowa, and Florida, that would run nationwide until the next presidential debate the following week. The total cost, according to Vale, would “depend on how many people click on the ads.” Additionally, Vale said PYC was launching an online petition linked to the ads, “urging the Republican candidates to condemn the cheering.”54
In opposition to the PYC campaign, in a September 16 column at USA Today, Katrina Trinko complained:
As no fan of ObamaCare, I apparently want to see the streets littered with the dead bodies of the uninsured … Never mind that the Tea Party mob consisted of two or three loudmouthed jerks in an audience of over a thousand. [Nor is it such a remote possibility that the yellers might actually have been progressive plants.—Ed.]
The disagreement between liberals and conservatives isn’t about whether to save the man’s life, but how to save his life. Liberals see the ideal solution as government-funded (and mandated) insurance for all, while conservatives see the best way as encouraging personal responsibility, and if that falls through, bringing together family, community, and generous donors to pay the bills.55
Also let us note that PYC’s website, LetHimDie.com, was actually a joint project with Americans United for Change (AUFC), a group heavily involved in Obama’s 2008 campaign. According to Discover the Networks, AUFC was founded in 2005 to “fend off” President George W. Bush’s “top policy priority at the time: privatizing Social Security.” AUFC later advocated for the usual socialist platform, including allowing Medicare to directly negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs and “improving access to affordable healthcare for all Americans [b
y means of government-controlled, socialized medicine, that is].”56 While claiming to be a “non-partisan” organization, DTN wrote, AUFC’s “agendas are entirely consistent with, and supportive of, those of the Democratic Party.” In fact, FactCheck.org reported in October 2011 that the AUFC message “closely mirror[ed] that of the Obama White House.”57 In 2009, AUFC, with the financial support of MoveOn.org, SEIU, and AFSCME, backed an advertising campaign to support Obama’s massive “stimulus” bill.58
AUFC’s acting executive director is Tom McMahon, formerly executive director of the DNC and deputy national campaign manager for Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential bid. AUFC’s deputy executive director is Caren Benjamin, an aide to then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)59 and a senior media specialist with the AFL-CIO in the D.C. metro area.60
What might AUFC have in store for 2012?61 In a Washington Post account headlined “Obama offers 2012 election supporters change they can believe in—next term,” AUFC’s senior strategist said,
A successful campaign will heavily focus on the radical, do-nothing Republican Congress. That will resonate with people. Most [Americans] believe Obama shares their values and their concerns, and where he has failed them is his effectiveness to improve the economy.
It seems to me the case the campaign needs to make is that that failure is a consequence of the damage created by Republicans and the refusal of Congress to take the necessary steps that he proposed for the economy.62
The assessment comes from Robert Creamer, who heads the Strategic Consulting Group and is married to progressive Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL). Creamer himself is no newcomer to progressive activism, and illustrates how progressive think tanks and their political cohorts both draft and promote radical legislation. According to his own company bio, Creamer worked with AUFC, “where he helped coordinate the campaign to pass President Obama’s landmark jobs and economic recovery legislation.”63 Cut from the left-wing theorist Saul Alinsky’s cloth, around 1970, Creamer worked with Heather and Paul Booth, of the radical incubator Midwest Academy, on a project called Campaign Against Pollution. By 1977, then executive director of the Illinois Public Action Council, Creamer was among those invited to attend VISTA roundtable discussions.64 He also served on Midwest’s board of directors (1999–2000).65 In more modern times, during summer 2007, Creamer was one of the instructors for Camp Obama, a summer training program for campaign interns and volunteers.66
Creamer is a “political force in his own right,” political blogger John Ruberry wrote in September 2005. Creamer consulted for former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and since-convicted felon Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich on prior political campaigns.67 In 2009, Creamer was the author of a blueprint for universal health care. Creamer wrote the document while incarcerated in federal prison for five months in 2006, after signing a plea bargain on bank fraud and tax evasion charges while heading Citizen Action of Illinois.68
AGIT-PROP FOR THE CAMERAS
Aside from LetHimDie.com, another joint PYC-AUFC operation—this one a progressive reincarnation of old Soviet-style agit-prop—was staged on October 21, 2011, at the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania. This incident illustrates two important dimensions of the “save ObamaCare” campaign—the use of 1960s-style radical direct action protests, and the videotaping of same for use as viral propaganda on the Internet.
First, protesters from groups including PYC, AUFC, Occupy Philly, Philadelphia AFL-CIO, Fight for Philly, SEIU PA State Council, Keystone Progress, Moveon.org, NCPSSM, Progress Now, and AFSCME demonstrated at the Philadelphia school following the cancellation of a speech there by U.S. House majority leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA). According to Think Progress, a propaganda website of the Center for American Progress, Cantor was “apparently afraid of dissident audiences.”69 The Los Angeles Times and other news media confirmed that Cantor had cancelled a planned speech on income inequality because he feared protestors would “fill the seats,” as attendance was not limited to “students and others affiliated with the school.”70
The day before Cantor was to appear, the unofficial count of tents pitched at Occupy Philly opposite City Hall had reached 304. This did not include protesters simply “hanging out” there during the occupation’s third week.71 By that night, the University of Pennsylvania’s Capitol Police had informed Representative Cantor that it was “unable to ensure that the attendance policy [for students, faculty, alumni, and other members of the UPENN community] previously agreed to could be met.” So Cantor cancelled, but then approximately five hundred Occupy Philly protesters stormed the campus and, by force, entered Huntsman Hall, where Cantor was to have given his lecture. Protesters chanted “Eric Cantor, come out, come out wherever you are” and “We are the 99 percent.”72
Think Progress actually watered down its version of the event, reporting merely that “hundreds of protesters entered the Wharton School and chanted about economic justice.” A thirty-seven-second video on its website shows protesters shouting inside the hall while students on a balcony inside the building are “chanting in unison, ‘Get a job! Get a job!’”73 Recall here that the Huffington Post’s Michael McAuliff and Sam Stein had written in April 2011 that CAP was going to send out “trackers to film various events” at town hall forums.74 Obviously, CAP’s “film trackers” were not confining their activities to formal meetings between the citizenry and their elected representatives.
CAP is not the only group capturing GOP events on video and posting clips on YouTube, on behalf of the high-powered Protect Your Care campaign. The Ramirez Group, which describes itself as a “full-service public affairs, strategic communications and political consulting firm” located in Las Vegas, has also posted several.75 Group principals include Andres Ramirez, who began his career as a legislative aide to Senate majority Leader Harry Reid, followed by work for Nevada governor Bob Miller in the state’s Washington, D.C. office, Ramirez served most recently as senior vice president of the progressive think tank New Democrat Network. Ramirez also serves as vice chair of the DNC’s Hispanic Caucus, “where he is tasked with helping the DNC develop and implement its Hispanic engagement strategy.”76 Andres’ wife, Jacqueline (Jacki) Ramirez, who manages client relationships and internal operations for the Ramirez Group, served for nearly a decade as a regional representative to Senator Reid.77
Marco Rauda, prior to joining the Ramirez Group, served in 2010 as the deputy political director for the Rory Reid for Governor Campaign in Nevada. Rory is Harry’s son. Rauda helped organize the 2008 Nevada Democratic Caucuses on behalf of the Nevada State Democratic Party and later “oversaw successful voter registration and mobilization programs targeting Hispanics.”78
Lastly, Warren Flood was hired by the Ramirez Group following the 2008 Nevada Democratic Caucuses, when he served as the Obama campaign’s western region data director. He served also on the Obama-Biden transition team and, in January 2009, was appointed as director of information systems and technology for the Office of the Vice President. After two years, Flood left to join the DNC’s National Targeting team for the 2010 election cycle. Besides his position with the Ramirezes, he is president of the political consulting firm Bright Blue Data.79
With regard to the Hispanic vote in the 2012 presidential election, we must mention the role of the mega-ObamaCare coalition, the Herndon Alliance, which continues to be instrumental in shaping the ObamaCare message. In December 2011, PYC and the Herndon Alliance received the results of two polls conducted on their behalf. The research was done by Anzalone Liszt Research, a firm headed by KYC/PYC board member John Anzalone. ALR had also poll-tested messaging with “encouraging results” for advocates of ObamaCare in June 2011.80 One of the new polls showed that Hispanic voters had a “more positive impression” of ObamaCare “than the population as a whole—a fact that could help the president maintain his strong support among a voting block that backed him by a 36-point spread in 2008.”81 The second poll showed, in the research group’s opinion,
that “not only do Hispanic voters strongly support” ObamaCare, but they also “offer the law’s allies a tremendous opportunity to increase support for the law.”82
WHAT’S NEXT?
With major legal challenges to ObamaCare before the Supreme Court scheduled for late-March 2012, the White House launched an “aggressive campaign” to “help shape public opinion” for the health care act, according to Robert Pear at the New York Times.83 The new campaign reportedly emerged after months of urging by progressives both inside and outside of Congress, to get the White House “to make a more forceful defense of the health care law.” According to the Times report:
White House officials summoned dozens of leaders of nonprofit organizations that strongly back the health law to help them coordinate plans for a prayer vigil, press conferences and other events outside the court when justices hear arguments for three days beginning March 26.84
Pear’s report also mentioned the names of some of the sixty groups represented at the meeting and working with the White House: PYC, SEIU, AFSCME, HCAN, CAP, Families USA (FUSA), and the National Council of La Raza. What followed was the mapping out of a strategy to “call attention to tangible benefits of the law, like increased insurance coverage for young adults.”
Five months after mid-September 2011, when the radical Occupy Wall Street movement had exploded into public consciousness and rapidly spread from New York to hundreds of other locations around the country—and with the endorsement and encouragement of the top Democrat leadership—the White House claimed with the proverbial straight face that it was “sensitive to the idea that they were encouraging demonstrations.”85 A few days later, Robert Bluey of the Heritage Foundation exposed a four-page strategy memo—specifically mentioning Families USA, Know Your Care, and HCAN—that outlined day by day the game plan developed by the White House and progressive advocacy groups for manipulating public discussion during the Supreme Court’s hearing of oral arguments on ObamaCare from March 26 to March 28. Advocacy groups were told to frame the debate over two issues: