a fungus among us?

[welshTerrier2]

you buying this?

source: http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/9/14/19349/4940

New 527 Ripoff Schemes from 'Top Democratic Strategists'

by Matt Stoller, Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 07:34:09 PM EST

Ok, so Harold Ickes is trying to raise $25 million for a new 527 to focus on field and advertising. Rahm Emanuel is hiring the Bob Shrum of field operations, Michael Whouley, to run his DCCC field plan. And another 527 with a presumed budget of $8-10 million is being run by former DNC bigwigs Martin Frost, Tony Coehlo, Joe Andrew, and Don Fowler.

Ok, let's look at what's going on here.

Ickes is tied into the Hillary Clinton axis and the Glover Park Group, which was busted today lobbying for the Dubai Ports deal. Ickes is behind the disastrous Datamart voterfile project, which is project managed by Laura Quinn, the person who screwed up Demzilla in 2004 under Terry McAuliffe and was somehow hired again to screw up another voterfile.

Whouley has a massive telecom contract through his firm Dewey Square, which is tasked with passing the Stevens bill eviscerating net neutrality. He's been all over losing Presidential campaigns, most recently Kerry's in 2004. And he's not only in charge of the DCCC field plan, but he's also managed to convince donors to give him $3 million to map out yet another losing Presidential field strategy in 2008.

And of course, Tony Coehlo really takes the cake. Coehlo more than any individual is responsible for the decline of the Democratic Party - he literally has his fingerprints all over every moral and political debacle of the last twenty five years, from the introduction of rivers of business PAC money into the party in 1982 to the Congressional loss of 1994 to Gore's snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory in 2000. In the process, Coehlo had to leave Congress under a cloud of scandal, and became a millionaire almost instantly after he left. Hmm.

Seriously, donors need to be retrained. Why are they giving money to the people responsible for putting the party in the awful shape it is in? These people are not as famous as Bob Shrum, but they should be. These are the people that are anonymous senior strategists leaking to the New York Times about how worried they are about Democrats taking a stand on this issue or that one (often with undisclosed financial conflicts of interest), or getting Adam Nagourney to write process pieces about Howard Dean's questionable stewardship of the DNC. These are the people that buy broadcast and waste buckets of cash paying off their media buyer and pollster friends/business partners. This is the all white mostly male circuit that is alienating minority Democratic influentials through their insular arrogance.

This is the establishment. And they are not winners, unless you consider getting Bob Shrum a new boat a victory for the Democratic Party.

Just so you know.

[Greyhound]

1. Thanks, I can always count on you to find the truly relevant stories

out there, even if they are mostly ignored.

:toast: :kick: & R

[mntleo2]

2. Yeah I Buy It ...

The DCCC goons are no better nor is there much difference between them and the "right". This is the crux of the problem with these people. Money greases the wheels ~ or so they think unless you don't count hundreds of grassroots campaigns that are proving otherwise.

With Repulican Lite why would anyone want to vote for their candidates when they can vote for the real Republican? They are elitists and almost as bad as the other side (whomever that is). This is why grassroots are rising up and taking over ~ because these people are living in a DC bubble and they are clueless about who the American people are ~ both sides.

My 2 cents
Cat In Seattle

[PassingFair]

3. K & R

Dean has his hands full with these goons.