A 1998 internal Philip Morris memo, written by John Scruggs of Philip Morris Management Corporation’s Federal Government Affairs (lobbying) Office, describes a key public relations/lobbying technique that corporations use to dominate virtually the entire decisionmaking environment in which legislators operate. Scruggs calls it the “Echo Chamber Approach to Advocacy.” It involves making a corporation’s chosen message, or slight variations of this message, emanate from virtually every major source that can influence legislators’ decisionmaking: constituents, colleagues, opinion leaders, local and national media like TV, radio, newspapers, fundraisers, advertising, etc. Scruggs says “…[T]his repetition, or ‘piling on’ approach works” because the message emanates from those who have ” ‘the greatest degree of credibility’ with the legislator.” This memo was created by Philip Morris in the 1990s, but since then, due to the cigarette industry’s pioneering reputation of success at influencing legislators, the technique has doubtless spread and is now likely in use by many more corporations and industries.
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In the Land of Abortions and Hypocrisy
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A guest post by Attorney Richard Console.
Many pro-lifers feel it is their duty to protect the interests of unborn children. (Photo credit: Flickr.)
Life begins at conception. At least that is what the Catholic Church and other pro-life entities have always maintained. They may tout this belief, but when it comes to their alleged role in the death of a fetus they are quick to drop the classification of an unborn child as a human in favor of a greater cause: their wallets.
This was made clear when in a recent wrongful death lawsuit in Colorado, a Catholic hospital defended the suit on the basis that the fetus in question was, in fact, not a human being. This convenient defense shields them from liability in this matter. This begs the question, just how deep-seated is this belief if the Catholic establishment is willing to alter their stance so readily?
The interesting thing here is that the Catholic Church is one of the loudest voices in the pro-life, pro-choice debate, yet this hospital’s pro-life stance did an about-face when it was to their financial detriment. As a Catholic establishment, aren’t they expected to follow the beliefs of the Catholic Church?
Corporations, Economics, Ethics, Front groups, Health, Lies, Marketing, Media, Propaganda, Tobacco
Tea Party Links to Tobacco Industry Uncovered
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Excerpt from a Tobacco Manufacturers Association summary of tobacco-related activities in the western hemisphere, January, 20000
Rather than being a purely grassroots movement that arose spontaneously in 2009 as the media has led people to believe, the Tea Party developed partly as a result of tobacco industry efforts to oppose smoking restrictions and tobacco taxes beginning in the 1980s, according to a new study by researchers at UC San Francisco. In 2002, long before the mainstream media widely discussed tea party politics, Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), a nonprofit funded in part by cigarette companies since 1987 to support a pro-tobacco political agenda, started its “US Tea Party project.” Its website, http://www.usteaparty.com, stated “Our US Tea Party is a national event, hosted continuously online and open to all Americans who feel our taxes are too high and the tax code is too complicated.’’ In 2004, CSE split into the two tea party organizations: Americans for Prosperity (AFP) and FreedomWorks. Those two groups, say the study authors, have since waged campaigns to turn public opinion against tobacco taxes, smoke-free laws and health care reform in general. “If you look at CSE, AFP and Freedom Works, you will see a number of the same key players, strategies and messages going back to the 1980s,” said lead author Amanda Fallin, PhD, RN, also a CTCRE fellow. “The records indicate that the Tea Party has been shaped by the tobacco industry, and is not a spontaneous grassroots movement at all.”
Advertising, Ethics, Health, Health care, Lies, Marketing, Propaganda, Tobacco
American Heart Association Helps Walgreens Profit from Cigarettes
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Cigarettes and toys displayed together in a “trusted” Walgreens Store.
This month, Walgreens’ webpage cheerfully chirps “Celebrate Heart Health Month” as it promotes its long-standing fundraising partnership with the American Heart Association. Until February 28, Walgreens says, customers can “purchase a paper heart at any of our 7,000 Walgreens stores nationwide” to support the American Heart Association’s mission of “building healthier lives, free of cardiovascular diseases and stroke.” It all sounds happy and wonderful, but don’t be fooled. Walgreens’ promotion has a dark underbelly that it would rather you not see.
Advertising, Corporations, Ethics, Health, Marketing, Pop culture, Safety, Violence
The NFL: A Disability Factory for Young Men
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The NFL showcases brutality and player collisions in its promotions, while minimizing the human toll it takes on NFL players’ health and safety
As of January 23, 2013, the National Football League (NFL) is facing 199 lawsuits filed by a total of more than 4,000 retired professional football players who suffered head injuries while playing for the NFL. In June, 2012, the lawsuits of about three thousand of those injured players were consolidated into a single Master Complaint (pdf) which charges that the NFL was negligent and committed fraud because it was “aware of the evidence and risks associated with repetitive traumatic brain injuries…but deliberately ignored and actively concealed the information” from players and others involved in NFL football. The lawsuit says that to promote the game, the NFL glorifies the brutality and ferocity of NFL football by “lauding and mythologizing the most brutal and ferocious of players and collisions,” while simultaneously fraudulently representing that getting hit and putting big hits on others is a badge of courage, and does not seriously threaten one’s health. The suit charges that to heighten this belief and further promote football, NFL Films, a PR instrument of the NFL, creates and markets videos that focus solely on the hardest hits that occur on the fields.
Advertising, Marketing, Pop culture, Tobacco, Tobacco documents
R.J. Reynolds’ Doral Trucker Program: Get a Free Smokin’ Joe Condom
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Trucker drivers have a far higher smoking rate than the general population, making them a prized target for tobacco companies.
In 1996, R.J. Reynolds noted that the smoking incidence among professional truck drivers was a whopping 76%, and sought to capitalize on that fact. The document noted below this post, “Doral Trucker Program Rolling Rolling Rolling,” lists ideas for promoting Doral cigarettes to truckers. Ideas included tying product and service giveaways into frequent fueler programs, providing a truckers with a roadside assistance program and providing purchase incentives like “Buy 1 Carton, Get a Free Truck Wash,” “Buy 2 Packs, Get a Free Hula Girl Air Freshener,” “Buy 2 packs and Get a Free Smokin’ Joe Condom.” Other promotional ideas included arranging for a date with an actress from Hee Haw (a 1960s-1970s TV variety show set a fictional rural southern county called Kornfield Kounty and featuring country music) or giving away a “rubber trucker companion doll.”
Source: Doral Trucker Program Rolling Rolling Rolling, 1996, R.J. Reynolds document collection, Legacy Tobacco Documents Library
Advertising, Ethics, Marketing, Tobacco, Tobacco documents
R.J. Reynolds Brainstorming Document Targets Younger Smokers
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Teen smokers light up
A 7-page, 1985 brainstorming document from the R.J. Reynolds collection lists ideas about how to market RJR’s flagship brand Camel cigarettes to young people who usually smoke the rival brand Marlboro. A cautionary note on the front page warns, “PLEASE NOTE: the following ideas were generated in an unstructured idea generation session. They have not been evaluated with regard to legal issues, marketing feasibility or cost considerations.” And how. Some of the ideas listed are pretty wacky, and include having coupons for on-pack contests for the following items thought to appeal to younger smokers:
— Beer
— Clearasil
— Dinner with Eddie Murphy
— Trip won by parents of FUBYAS [“First Usual Brand Younger Adult Smokers”] that gets parents out of town for FUBYAS party (includes cleaning crew and extra refrigerator).
— Catchy, slightly lewd T-shirts (“Wanna hump?”)
— Late show admission with week’s worth of CAMEL packs.
— CAMEL courtesy bus at beach – to and from bars.
— Survival kit (what to do when arrested, etc.)
–“Pay” peer leaders to smoke brand.
— Free nose rings
— Free car insurance
Other ideas include developing a new dance called The Hump, and putting on concerts that have specially-reserved seating for Camel smokers or where Camel packs can be used as an entrance fees.
See the document for yourself here.
Source: FUBYAS Idea Generation Output, 1985, R.J. Reynolds document collection, Legacy Tobacco Documents Library.
Advertising, Consumer advocacy, Corporations, Corruption, Ethics, Food, Lies, Marketing
Subway Finds Size Really Does Matter
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Subway’s trademark “Footlong™” subs are coming up short all over
Subway stores are in big PR trouble. It all started when earlier this month an Australian man posted a photo on Subway Australia’s Facebook page of a Footlong™ sandwich he had just bought, and asked why it was only 11 inches long. Soon, other Subway sandwich buyers started making similar posts and uploading images of their too-short “footlong” sandwiches. Then two men from New Jersey filed a lawsuit against Subway accusing the stores of selling trademark Footlong™ sandwiches that were really just 11 inches. Stephen DeNettis, the lawyer who represents the plaintiffs, said he measured sandwiches from 17 different Subway stores and they all came up short. He says Subway should either make sure its Footlong™ sandwiches are really a foot long, or stop advertising them as such. For its part, Subway issued a statement apologizing for it’s short sandwiches, saying “With regards to the size of the bread and calling it a footlong, ‘SUBWAY FOOTLONG’ is a registered trademark as a descriptive name for the sub sold in Subway Restaurants and not intended to be a measurement of length.” For good measure, Subway added that the length of each bread cannot be assured every time because the “proofing” process may vary. Buzzfeed called that answer “amazingly stupid.” One commenter on Buzzfeed wrote, “So…when I pay them with my TWENTY DOLLAR BILL™, and it turns out to be nothing more than an envelope of grass shavings, there will be no hard feelings, right?” Another wrote, “After closer measurement, I’m returning those inch worms I bought at a yard sale.” Who knows? Maybe Subway is shorting people as part of their sponsorship of NBC’s reality show “The Biggest Loser.” After all, shorter Footlong™ sandwiches will help people lose more weight and shorting patrons like this makes Subway customers the Biggest Losers.
Consumer advocacy, Corruption, Ethics, Health care, Lies, Religion, Religious hypocrisy, Secularism
In Wrongful Death Suit, Colorado Catholic Hospital Argues Fetuses are Not Viable Persons
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On New Year’s Day in 2006, 31 year old Lori Stodghill went to the emergency room at St. Thomas More Hospital in Cañon City, Colorado, short of breath, vomiting, and seven months pregnant with twins. As they wheeled her into the examining room, she passed out. The ER staff tried to resuscitate her, but a blockage in the main artery going to Lori’s lungs caused her to have a massive heart attack, killing her and her twins less than an hour after she arrived at the ER. Her obstetrician, who was supposed to be on call for emergencies that night, never answered a page. Stodghill’s husband subsequently filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the owner of the hospital, Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI) based in Englewood, Colorado. Catholic hospitals do not offer abortion services or even contraception based on their belief that legal personhood starts at contraception, not at birth, and that fetuses are viable people. CHI even has an advocacy website that implores visitors to help them oppose the provision in Obamacare that requires employers to pay for contraceptives, because “Our mission and our ethical standards in health care are rooted in the Catholic Church’s teachings about the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death.” But to get its client out of this wrongful death suit, CHI’s lawyers are arguing the opposite — that Lori’s fetuses weren’t really viable persons. In a brief the defense filed with the court, CHI’s lawyers say the court “should not overturn the long-standing rule in Colorado that the term ‘person,’ as used in the Wrongful Death Act, encompasses only individuals born alive. Colorado state courts define a ‘person’ under the Act to include only those born alive. Therefore Plaintiffs cannot maintain wrongful death claims based on the two unborn fetuses.”
Source: Colorado Independent, January 23, 2013
Updated Jan. 26, 2013
Corporations, Corruption, Front groups, politics, Tobacco
Dick Armey’s Tobacco Ties
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Dick Armey in his younger days
Former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey, who recently left his job with the astroturf group Freedomworks, has a history of taking tobacco money and doing Big Tobacco’s bidding. The tobacco industry was a friend to Armey throughout his career on Capitol Hill, but Armey, who was an uneven ally to the industry while in the House, arguably became a more reliable ally when, under his guidance, FreedomWorks reflexively opposed higher cigarette taxes in states all across the union. Despite this, we found that some in the industry has less-than-complimentary things to say about Armey. We also found Armey engaged in dubious and dishonest tactics get new members an increase his group’s muscle while at FreedomWorks. Read all about Dick Armey’s tobacco ties and how he used FreedomWorks in a three-part series on my new blog at DeSmogBlog.com.
Corruption, Elections, Ethnic/Minority, politics
Virginia Republicans Rush Through Redistricting Vote While Key Democrat Attends Obama’s Inauguration
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Virginia State Senator Henry Marsh
While Virginia State Senator Henry Marsh, a 79 year old African-American civil rights advocate and a Democrat, was out of the state attending President Barack Obama’s inaugural ceremonies, Virginia’s Republican legislators seized the opportunity afforded by his absence to rush through a vote on a new Congressional redistricting map that maximizes the number of seats safe for Republicans. Virginia’s legislature is evenly split with 20 Republican members and 20 Democratic members, but while Marsh was out of town, there were 20 Republicans and 19 Democrats present to vote. Republicans seized upon that short window of time when they had a voting advantage to take a vote on the redistricting measure. It passed by a single vote, 19-20 with 19 Democrats voting against it, and handed an electoral advantage to Republicans. Virginia Democrats said they would challenge the measure in court.
Main Source: Talking Points Memo, January 21, 2013
Advertising, Atheism, Education, Equal rights, Ethics, Ethnic/Minority, Lies, Magical thinking, Propaganda, Religion, Secularism, Women
Christian Group Distributes Bibles at Public Schools, Gets Pushback
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The book secularists plan to give away at Orange County, Florida high schools when they get their date to distribute literature from the school district
An Orange County, Florida school district allowed the Christian group World Changers of Central Florida to distribute Bibles to high school students at eleven area high schools on January 16, 2012, by placing the books on tables near the school’s lunchroom. Orange County secularists who were offended by the overt advertisement for Christianity on public school grounds has asked the school district to change its policy to disallow distribution of religious materials on school grounds. If the school district refuses to change the policy, members of American Atheists and Central Florida Freethought Community say they will ask the school district for a date on which they can distribute information to students about atheism and humanism in the same manner. World Changers’ mission is to promote prayer in public schools and push to have creationism taught in public schools.
Corruption, Education, Environment, Lies, Magical thinking, politics, Propaganda, Religion, Secularism
Stealth Anti-Science Bills Disguised as “Academic Freedom” Bills
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The National Center for Science Education is warning that a bill introduced in the Colorado House of Representatives on January 16, HB13-1089 (pdf), called the “Academic Freedom Act,” is really a trojan horse anti-science bill. The bill directs teachers “to create an environment that encourages students to intelligently and respectfully explore scientific questions and learn about scientific evidence related to biological and chemical evolution, global warming, and human cloning.” It sounds innocent enough, but such bills use an “academic freedom” guise to tacitly permit teachers to misinform students by allowing the teaching of creationism as a scientifically valid alternative to evolution, or by allowing teachers to misrepresent evolution as being scientifically controversial. The last time such an anti-evolution bill was introduced in Colorado was in 1972, when a lawmakers tried to put a measure on the ballot that would have allowed “all students and teachers academic freedom of choice as to which of these two theories, creation of evolution, they wish to choose.” That measure never made it onto the ballot. All of the primary sponsors and co-sponsors of Colorado’s 2013 “Academic Freedom Act” in both the House and the Senate are Republicans. These tricky, shifting strategies state and local school boards, state legislatures and teachers are using to undermine the teaching of scientific subjects like evolution, climate change and cloning are described in depth an article published in a September, 2010 article in the Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics titled Dispatches from the Evolution Wars: Shifting Tactics and Expanding Battlefields.
Corruption, Elections, Equal rights, Ethnic/Minority, politics
Republicans’ REDMAP Strategy to Skew Future Elections in Their Favor
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Voter ID wasn’t enough; Republicans still tinkering with election processes to disadvantage voters on the other side
Republicans, finding themselves less able to win elections on the merits of their candidates and policy positions, are continuing to tinker with election processes at the state level to disadvantage voters who disagree with their policies and dislike their candidates. In 2010 and 2011, Republicans worked frenetically in state legislatures to pass so-called “voter ID” laws, which, just prior to the election, were officially outed as a strategy to make voting harder for the people most likely to vote against their candidates: African Americans, the elderly, the poor, students and those with disabilities. As voter ID laws were increasingly discredited and blocked by the courts, Republicans started working on a new strategy: REDMAP, short for “Redistricting Majority Project,” an effort to skew the redistricting process to assure Republicans maintain their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives even though more Democrats than Republicans are now casting ballots across the country. The GOP’s REDMAP strategy involves a plan to win control of state legislatures. Once they achieve that, they initiate an aggressive gerrymandering campaign to redraw the states’ electoral maps and create districts that are completely safe for Republicans. But beyond eliminating competitive elections in Congressional races, a new part of the GOP’s strategy is to change the rules about how the states apportion their electoral college votes. The new strategy will magnify the effect of Republican votes in the Electoral College in future elections. The GOP wants to change the current winner-take-all rule for apportioning electoral college votes to instead apportioning electoral votes based on the winner in each individual Congressional district within the state. The change would hand beleaguered Republicans a huge process advantage over Democrats. As an example, if the GOP’s hoped-for rule had been in place in Pennsylvania in the November, 2012 election, for example, Mitt Romney would have won 13 of that state’s 20 electoral college votes, even though Obama won the state with 52 percent of the popular vote.
Main Source: Huffington Post, January 17, 2012
Corporations, Economics, Energy, Environment, Grassroots advocacy
Grassroots Group Succeeds in Peeling Away Heartland Institute’s Funding
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A group called Forecast the Facts is leading a campaign to peel away corporate funders who give money the Heartland Institute, a prominent think tank that has been a leader in the effort to deny climate science. Heartland is known for its harsh and divisive anti-climate change PR tactics, like running cringe-inducing billboards along major highways that liken people who believe in climate change to mass murderers like Charles Manson and the Unabomber, Ted Kaczyinski. The Heartland Institute has flourished through funding from large corporations and industries that have a stake in climate change denial, including ExxonMobil, The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Murray Energy Corporation, Altria/Philip Morris, Microsoft, General Motors and biotech companies like Amgen and Bayer. Forecast the Facts’ grassroots effort to peel away funders looks like it’s paying off, too. The group calculated Heartland’s corporate and trade association funding for 2012 based on the amounts Heartland projected they would take in in their 2012 fundraising plan. Of $2.3 million in projected funding, Forecast the Facts has succeeded in getting corporations to withdraw $1.3 million, leaving about $990,000 remaining. More than 150,000 people have weighed in with various corporations through the project and urged them to pull their funding from Heartland. On its website, Forecast the Facts lists Heartland’s remaining corporate funders, the approximate amount the companies donate to the think tank, and phone numbers at each corporation that people can call to ask the company to stop funding Heartland.
Corruption, Education, Equal rights, Ethics, Human rights, Religion
Praise Jesus and Pass the Taxpayer-Funded Football
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Logo of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, whose mission is to use school athletics as a platform to spread Christian evangelism
Christian evangelicals are hard at work recruiting young athletes into Christianity in publicly-funded schools all across the country, and taxpayers are footing the bill. The injection of Jesus into school athletics is being carried out by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), a Christian group that encourages and rewards school sports coaches for using their influential positions to spread Christianity among youth.
For those who are unfamiliar with FCA, it is a Christian religious group whose existence is dedicated to turning school athletic departments into missionaries for Christ. FCA’s website states, “The purpose of [FCA’s] Campus Ministry…has been to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the lost and to seek and grow a mature follower of Jesus Christ. The ‘win’ of Campus Ministry is to see campuses impacted for Jesus Christ through the influence of coaches and athletes.” An answer to the question of “What is FCA?” on the group’s website states, “Since 1954, FCA has been challenging coaches and athletes on the professional, college, high school, junior high and youth levels to use the powerful medium of athletics to impact the world for Jesus Christ.” FCA also encourages coaches to conduct Bible studies on campus. The group is open about its use of the platform of athletics to spread Christian “evangelism, discipleship, outreach and fellowship.” One of FCA’s corporate sponsors is Chick-Fil-A, the fast-food restaurant chain whose president, Dan Cathy, expressed strong views against same-sex marriage in a July, 2012 interview in the Biblical Recorder.
Advertising, Consumer advocacy, Health, Marketing, Media, Propaganda, Tobacco, Women
How “Breast Cancer Awareness” Campaigns Hurt
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Breast Cancer Awareness month comes around every October, a now-familiar time when pink ribbons adorn department stores, grocery stores, gas stations, shopping malls and many other places. But this particular big “awareness” push may have reached its peak and maxed out its usefulness. By now most everyone is aware of breasts and breast cancer, but ignorance still abounds in other cancer areas. For example, people are still woefully unaware that lung cancer kills twice as many women each year than breast cancer. More women every year in the U.S. die from lung cancer than from breast, uterine, and ovarian cancers combined. In 2009 alone, 31,000 more women died of lung cancer than breast cancer. So why aren’t there aren’t any ribbons, rubber bracelets, theme-colored products, corporate promotions, colored car magnets, festivals or fundraisers to make people aware of lung cancer’s devastating toll, or to support lung cancer victims or raise money for a cure?
Because lungs just aren’t as effective as selling crap for marketers, that’s why.
Grassroots advocacy, Gun violence, Lobbying, Safety, Security, Violence
They Said It Couldn’t Be Done: NY State Passes Comprehensive Gun Safety Bill
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Sandy Hook victims
With lightening speed for a state legislature, New York became the first state to pass a comprehensive gun safety bill since the massacre December 14, 2012 at Newtown, Connecticut. New York’s gun control bill, passed and signed today, is the toughest in the nation. It expands the definition of “assault weapon” to include semiautomatic weapons to include those with just one feature commonly associated with military weapons, like a bayonet mount, flash suppressor or pistol grip. Previously the definition required two features. New York’s bill also revokes or suspends gun licenses held by people whom mental health experts determine to be a danger to society. The new law limits magazines to just seven rounds of ammunition instead of ten, and provides for enhanced monitoring of ammunition purchases to flag high-volume buyers. Gun licenses must be re-certified every five years. (They used to never expire.) The law increases penalties for illegal gun possession and for using a gun against emergency responders. “Common sense can win,” said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as he signed the bill, less than an hour the New York State Assembly passed it by a vote of 104 to 43 . “You can overpower extremists with intelligence and with reason and common sense,” Cuomo said. The National Rifle Association called the law “draconian,” and said it was passed “under a veil of secrecy in the dark of night.” The bill passed on the second day of New York state’s 2013 legislative session.
Main source: Los Angeles Times, August 15, 2012