Been doing a little more digging and reading about Mark Penn, Hillary's chief campaign strategist, and think some more of this deserves exposure. He's really like Hillary's Karl Rove.
According to the article "Spinning Hilary Centrist" from The Nation I linked to last night, his first firm Penn, Schoen & Berland:
...defended Procter and Gamble's Olestra from charges that it caused anal leakage, blamed Texaco's bankruptcy on greedy jurors and market-tested genetically modified foods for Monsanto. Penn invented the concept of "inoculation," in which corporations are shielded from scandal through clever advertising and marketing. Selling an image, companies realized, was as important as winning a legislative favor...
The company he is now CEO of, Burson-Marstellar:
The firm has represented everyone from the Argentine military junta to Union Carbide after the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India, in which thousands were killed when toxic fumes were released by one of its plants, to Royal Dutch Shell, which has been accused of massive human rights violations in Nigeria. B-M pioneered the use of pseudo-grassroots front groups, known as "astroturfing," to wage stealth corporate attacks against environmental and consumer organizations. It set up the National Smokers Alliance on behalf of Philip Morris to fight tobacco regulation in the early 1990s. Its current clients include major players in the finance, pharmaceutical and energy industries...
...Yet despite occupying such a divisive place in the Democratic Party and outsized role in the corporate world--and despite his company's close ties to Republican political operatives and the Bush White House--Penn remains a leading figure in Hillary's campaign, pitching the inevitability of her nomination to donors and party bigwigs...Politically, his presence means that triangulation is alive and well inside the campaign and that despite her populist forays, Hillary won't stray too far from the center. "Penn has a lot of influence on her, no doubt about it," says New York political consultant Hank Sheinkopf, who worked with Penn in '96. "He's not going to let her drift too far left."An article online at Bloomberg.com inquires whether these corporate ties might be a conflict of interest:
Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson said Penn is currently working only with Microsoft Corp., a longtime client, and on the election campaign, although he's free to handle and solicit other clients. "The real question from the campaign perspective is whether Senator Clinton is comfortable with what Mark is doing, and the answer to that is yes, unequivocally,'' Wolfson said. Penn's internal blog -- several months of which were obtained by Bloomberg News -- suggests that all along he has been working with multiple clients. He downplayed his role in Clinton's presidential campaign, saying he is "not a policy adviser, I'm a communications adviser.'' Others say he's the most powerful figure in the campaign, and an April 30 Washington Post profile said he "has become involved in virtually every move that Clinton makes.''
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