Just a Bunch of Coinkydinks

When Hillary Clinton's top strategist Mark Penn was revealed to be the head of Burson-Marsteller, a PR firm that has union-busters as clients, I figured, "Hey, he's the head of the company, maybe a couple of the clients got by him." When it turned out that the firm did public relations work for Blackwater leading up to Erik Prince's Congressional testimony, I thought, "Look, he's distracted, he's running Hillary's campaign, he can't be on top of everything." When I saw the firm working for corrupt Pakistani pols, I said "Hmm..."

I'm beginning to think that the world's worst client list is not an accident.

Burson Marsteller, the PR/lobbying firm run by Hillary Clinton's chief strategist, Mark Penn, is handling crisis management for the owner of Aqua Dots, the bead toys with an adhesive coating that too easily turns into the date-rape drug, GHB.

A source directly familiar with the arrangement confirms that Aqua Dots' manufacturer, SpinMaster, based in Canada, has turned to Burson Marsteller for help.

An official of the company said that Penn has no role in the Aqua Dots contract.

"There are over 2000 clients," a company official said. "Mark had no contact with them in any way."

Far too many of these clients are shady or downright harmful. If the directive from the top is to "spin whatever you can get paid to spin" without thought of ethics or principle, then this is what you get. Mark Penn is absolutely culpable. And by extension, so is Hillary, honestly.

No more corporate Democrats.

It's On Like Donkey Kong

John Edwards saw an opening today and he took it.

In a scathing attack, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards went after front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Friday, calling her a "corporate Democrat," comparing top Clinton campaign strategist Mark Penn to former Bush aide Karl Rove and assailing Penn's ties to Blackwater USA, the embattled private firm of military contractors accused by the Iraqi government of firing upon and killing 11 unarmed Iraqi civilians last month.

"Bush has been a perfect example of cronyism because Blackwater has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republicans and to President Bush," Edwards said in an interview with the Associated Press while campaigning in Iowa. "I also saw this morning that Sen. Clinton's primary adviser, Mark Penn, who is like her Karl Rove -- his firm is representing Blackwater."

Edwards said that he thinks "it is important for Iowa caucus-goers to understand the choices they have in this election. And it is the reason I continue to say we don't want to replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats. I think it is important for caucus-goers to see this choice."

The Clinton camp is going to call this dirty pool, but it's really not. It's completely fair game to note the public affairs of advisors to a Presidential campaign, particularly top advisors. And the face that Hillary Clinton's top advisor not only represents union-busting firms but also Blackwater USA is significant. The union folks who have declined hitting Clinton for this missed a huge opportunity, not to take her down, but to stop Burson-Marsteller's union-busting clients, or at least get B-M to drop them. John Edwards is not making the same mistake.

Mark Penn just became a HUGE issue in this campaign.

An official with a rival Democratic campaign added to Edwards' remarks, saying that "when people are asking themselves who can better change the way things are going, Penn is a massive liability. How can you fight for change when you've got someone fighting to keep things exactly as they are on health care, with subprime lenders, and even in Iraq?"

Penn has often come under fire for his company's clients, whose goals are often at odds with liberal politics. Burson has also represented oil and tobacco companies, and worked for corporations to impede union organizing events, about which labor leaders expressed "distress" in a letter to Clinton. Penn said he played no role in any of the anti-union activities. Burson has also represented Countrywide Financial, a subprime loan company also under fire.

Frankly this should have been an issue long before. But now it's exploding into the open at a time when the primary season is in full swing.

Blackwater: Military Hates Them, Hillary's Pollster Loves Them

The biggest argument you can make against Blackwater USA is that they harm the military effort in Iraq through their recklessness, which ends up boomeranging back on our troops. Now the military is agreeing with that assessment publicly:

U.S. military reports from the scene of the Sept. 16 shooting incident involving the security firm Blackwater USA indicate that its guards opened fire without provocation and used excessive force against Iraqi civilians, according to a senior U.S. military official.

The reports came to light as an Interior Ministry official and five eyewitnesses described a second deadly shooting minutes after the incident in Nisoor Square. The same Blackwater security guards, after driving about 150 yards away from the square, fired into a crush of cars, killing one person and injuring two, the Iraqi official said.

The U.S. military reports appear to corroborate the Iraqi government's contention that Blackwater was at fault in the shooting incident in Nisoor Square, in which hospital records say at least 14 people were killed and 18 were wounded.

"It was obviously excessive, it was obviously wrong," said the U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident remains the subject of several investigations. "The civilians that were fired upon, they didn't have any weapons to fire back at them. And none of the IP or any of the local security forces fired back at them," he added, using a military abbreviation for the Iraqi police. The Blackwater guards appeared to have fired grenade launchers in addition to machine guns, the official said.

Only the State Department's initial report has failed to corroborate this explanation of the attack, and that one was written by a Blackwater contractor.

Despite the initial report, the State Department is coming around to the reality that changes are needed to the private contractor security situation in Iraq. They are recommending major changes aimed at increasing oversight on security personnel, essentially guarding the guards. Boy, that's good value for our taxpayer money.

Of course, Blackwater isn't taking this news lying down. They're fighting back, particularly on the PR front, by hiring the powerful and connected firm Burson-Marsteller to do their crisis management. Burson-Marsteller, by the way, is run by Mark Penn, who is pretty much in charge of the Hillary Clinton campaign.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Public relations giant Burson-Marsteller has vast experience steering companies through tough times. But there's a limit to how much it can help Blackwater USA, a new client that's been battered by negative publicity.

The State Department, which pays Blackwater hundreds of millions of dollars to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq, has stringent rules barring the private security contractor from discussing with the media the details of its work, according to those familiar with the arrangement.

Under those limitations, it's difficult to repair a corporate image, said one official close to Blackwater [...]

Burson-Marsteller was brought aboard by the Washington law firms representing Blackwater — McDermott Will & Emery and Crowell & Moring.

One of the executives on the Blackwater account is Robert Tappan, a former State Department official. Tappan is a managing director of BKSH & Associates Worldwide, a Burson-Marsteller subsidiary.

The company claims that the relationship was temporary and has now ended. But if the braindead media wanted to push a story on Hillary, I don't think her laugh would be the one. How about the fact that her strategist is running a company that does business with the thuggish mercenary army that is destroying our reputation in Iraq single-handedly?