Pizzella, P Cons Action Pjt

promoted 2ndary 7/16

pjt 2025

CAP dunlop, conways, meese usual suspects

sweatshop mariana islands abramoff

beware sim names

of course trump dept of labor

Hours after President Biden declared that "democracy has prevailed" during his inaugural address, longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove urged Republicans to pressure GOP election officials and legislators to create "a model election code" to reconsider the laws surrounding 2020's two voting options that lead to the presidential election's record turnout.

"Republicans should also encourage GOP secretaries of state and state lawmakers to develop a model election code," Rove wrote in a January 20 commentary for the Wall Street Journal entitled, "The Republican Future Starts Now."

"The job of proposing electoral reforms shouldn't be based on the unsupported claims of widespread fraud peddled by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell," Rove continued. "Instead, the goal should be to suggest measures that restore public confidence in our democracy. How do states with extensive mail-in and early voting like Florida and Texas get it right?"

Rove's commentary comes as Republican-majority legislatures in battleground states such as Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona have proposed bills or convened hearings to review the laws that allowed people to vote with mailed-out ballots or early in-person in 2020.

"Whenever Karl Rove writes a piece in the Wall Street Journal, the history of it suggests that Democrats should pay careful attention," said David Daley, author of *Unrigged: How Americans are Battling Back to Save Democracy*. "Because the Wall Street Journal is where Republicans can signal to their donor class their key projects."

In March 2010, Rove penned a Wall Street Journal commentary openly discussing the GOP's REDMAP project,which targeted 107 state legislative seats that "would give them control of drawing district lines for nearly 190 congressional seats." REDMAP succeeded, creating GOP majority legislatures and congressional delegations in the otherwise purple states of Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Alabama.

The website of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which drafts model bills for social conservatives and economic libertarians, did not yet promote election reforms on its website. However, it linked to theConservative Action project,which posted a defense of the GOP lawmakers who opposed certifying the Electoral College slates from Arizona and Pennsylvania. The expanded use of voting via mailed-out ballots and early voting must be examined, it said.

"The 2020 election was conducted in an unprecedented manner: largely by mail, and in a way that overwhelmed the capacities of many states. It is not at all unreasonable to review the manner in which votes were counted," said the Conservative Action Project memo, which was signed by more than 100 activists and organizations. "Indeed, if the goal is to restore faith in future elections, then a comprehensive review and analysis to determine what went wrong, what went right, and what is in need of reform should be a critical next step."

Daley, whose prior book, *Ratf*cked*, profiled REDMAP and its impacts on the past decade's political battles and extreme politics, said Rove's commentary was a warning sign.

"Whenever Rove writes in the Wall Street Journal, it not to be a public intellectual but to put ideas in front of the Republican donor class," he said. "It fits perfectly with much of the Republican strategy on voter suppression."

"So much of it sounds reasonable," Daley continued, referring to the suggestion that a model election code be developed and embraced. "How can you be opposed to a blue-ribbon bipartisan commission that is going to step back and ensure that our elections are free, fair and secure? Except, that's not actually their intention, because we just had an election that was free, fair and secure.And [Sens.] Hawley and Cruz and 130-plus Republicans in the House voted to decertify [the popular vote results and Electoral College slates from] Pennsylvania and Arizona—even after a Republican governor [in Arizona] signed off on certification."

Already, Republican legislators in 2020 battleground states held hearings where they are badgering statewide election officials—some elected Democrats, some career civil servants—about decisions they took last fall that made it easier to vote with absentee ballots.

For example, on Thursday in Pennsylvania, Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, was pressed by Republican representatives advising county election officials to count the returned mailed-out ballots of people who forgot to put their ballots in a secrecy sleeve. The state's supreme court subsequently ruled that the "naked" ballots should be disqualified.

"You disagree with the decision that was rendered by the Supreme Court?" Rep. Ryan McKenzie, a Republican, asked Boockvar.

"It doesn't matter whether I disagree with a decision rendered by the Supreme Court, because the Supreme Court's rule governs," she replied. "But what I would say is, and maybe this is part of your question, do I think that is the right approach for voters for making sure that every eligible voter's vote counts? No, I'd love to see the legislature change that law and say, 'Look, if a voter makes a mistake that does not have anything to do with their eligibility or their qualifications, such as a naked ballot, that vote should still count."

The Thursday legislative hearing was one of 14 that are slated in Pennsylvania to review voting laws and administrative rules that were in effect during the 2020 election. A separate GOP-sponsored proposal would create districts for electing state supreme court judges. If put into effect, it could become a judicial gerrymander to recast Pennsylvania's appellate courts—including the state's supreme court.

These steps and others, such as Republicans in Wisconsin (and Pennsylvania) talking about changing the way their states choose presidential electors, or Georgia possibly turning the secretary of state from an elective to an appointed office filled by the legislature, seek to change the laws so Republicans can win elections, Daley said.

"Republicans talk a lot about following the rule of law, but what they are trying to do is change the law to make it make it easier to do in 2024 what they were unable to do in 2020," he said.

Daley said Rove's push to review ballot access laws after an election where no evidence of fraud was provided by Trump's allies—despite 65 lawsuits—posed a longer-term threat to representative government than the pro-Trump mob that attacked the Capitol.

"In 2020, there were two mobs that attacked the Capitol," he said. "One mob did it with baseball bats, Trump flags and Camp Auschwitz shirts. And they tried to overturn an election through fear and terror and insurrection. And then there was the mob that wore tailored suits and congressional pins that walked in after that [first] mob, while there was still blood in the hallways and bullet holes in the walls, and they voted not to certify free and fair results from Pennsylvania and Arizona. They gave that mob everything that they showed up for."

"We need to be more fearful of that second mob," Daley continued. "Because they remain inside the House. They have been elected to the rules so that if this happens again, with better lawyers making the cases, they will have statutes that they can rely on to press fraudulent claims of election fraud."

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http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/pat-pizella-labor-abramoff-corruption-republican-trump-marianas.html

jon chait

Thursday, President Trump announced that he would nominate labor lawyer Eugene Scalia, son of the former Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, to replace Alexander Acosta as Labor secretary. Until Scalia can be confirmed, Acosta’s deputy, Patrick Pizzella, will serve on an acting basis, working to turn the functions of the agency over to the business lobby. Pizzella is a familiar kind of right-wing apparatchik, but he does have a unique biographical attribute that links him to a now-forgotten period of Republican politics.

Pizzella worked with lobbyist Jack Abramoff. That this is now a relatively unimportant detail on his résumé is a fascinating development if one recalls the importance such links would have held to conservatives just a dozen years ago.

For the first four and a half years of his presidency, George W. Bush developed a cult following on the right comparable to the standing enjoyed by Donald Trump today. Bush signed two tax cuts, appointed scores of conservative judges, slashed regulations, launched two putatively successful wars, and infuriated liberals with his anti-intellectual machismo. Bush’s popular support began spiraling downward in his second term.

Conservatives did not want to blame his ardent campaigning for a failed initiative to privatize Social Security, nor to concede that Bush’s tax cuts and deregulation had failed to yield the promised prosperity. Conservatism never fails, Rick Perlstein archly observed at the time; it is only failed.And so, to insulate their ideology from any blame, they instead cast Bush as a heretic. It was his alleged failure to uphold conservative principles that did him in. Bush’s ideological heresies, which the right had largely ignored before, now suddenly loomed large.

The shorthand that conservatives used to drive home this new message was “corruption.” Bush and his party had sold out true conservatism, especially by spending too much money, out of greed. A series of high-profile corruption cases drove this home. Abramoff’s was the most notorious and became a shorthand for the broader outbreak of sleaze in Dubya’s Washington, but scandals took down several other high-profile Republicans: Bob Ney, Mark Foley, Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, Tom DeLay.

Richard Viguerie’s book Conservatives Betrayed blamed both “illegal corruption” (by Abramoff et al.) and “Legal corruption (in the form of pork-barrel spending) for tempting Republicans away from the Reaganite path. Matthew Continetti’s The K Street Gang argued that Republicans “succumbed to temptations of power” and “ended up as a racket.”

It is almost impossible to overstate how much weight conservatives placed on corruption as their diagnosis of failure. This conviction led straight to their Obama-era posture as a “reformed” party of pure fiscal conservatism. The solution was simple: If Republicans redoubled their commitment to anti-statist purity, they would at once renounce the temptations of spending and corruption. The identity Paul Ryan inhabited on his way to grasping the intellectual leadership of his party had been formed in advance by the corruption critique.

Many of the once-disgraced figures from that era have found their way back to Republican respectability. Reed and Norquist, former Abramoff cronies, are organizing evangelicals and wealthy capitalists to support the Trump agenda. Abramoff is out of prison, whipping up donations as a lobbyist against the Green New Deal. And now the acting secretary of Labor is a former partner in his most notorious scheme.

The scandal, which has been recounted by Franklin Foer and Noah Lanard, was carried out by Abramoff and Pizzella on behalf of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory. The islands built sweatshops that enjoyed an exemption from the minimum wage and other U.S. labor laws, and held their workers in debt peonage and prison-like conditions, but could still label their products “Made in the USA.” Abramoff and Pizzella ferried in members of Congress to take guided tours of the islands, used contacts in the right-wing think-tank world, and sometimes undisclosed payoffs, to maintain favored status for the island’s factories.

Not only has Pizzella’s role in this episode failed to stop him from rising to the position of acting Labor secretary, he is now known as a true defender of the Reaganite faith. “Pat will be great — he is a movement conservative,” Marc Short, Mike Pence’s chief of staff, told the New York Times.

Pizzella may not lead the agency for long, and by Trump-era standards, of course, his offenses barely register as scandals at all. The Trump administration is shot through with corruption, from petty grifts like Cabinet members abusing their expense accounts to legislation written by and for lobbyists. The president himself is taking payoffs from corporate lobbyists and foreign governments through his Washington hotel and other properties.

The party’s whole post-Bush backlash against corruption and deficit spending, and the notion that those values are antithetical to conservatism, has been forgotten. (“Nobody is a fiscal conservative anymore,” Rush Limbaugh casually declared. “All this talk about concern for the deficit and the budget has been bogus for as long as it’s been around.”) Having fulfilled its use by giving Republicans a reason to absolve their ideology of any role in Bush’s failure, they discarded it.

There was a time when conservatives spoke of little else besides corruption and the lessons they had learned from it. Now they never speak of it at all, while their grifter president and his family soak the government for every dollar they can wring from it.

==

ref nyt

july 16, 2019

Congressional Republicans, members of their staffs and conservative activists regularly flew first class to Saipan, an island just north of Guam in the Pacific Ocean. They slept at the beachfront Hyatt Regency, and dined on fresh Japanese cuisine.

The junkets in the late 1990s were organized by Patrick Pizzella. The Northern Mariana Islands, a commonwealth of the United States, had hired him to ensure that Congress did not impose federal minimum wage and immigration laws in a place where some workers earned less than $1 an hour.

Mr. Pizzella, a genial lobbyist and government official who has spent years advocating the interests of businesses, is set to become the top Trump administration official protecting workers’ rights when he takes over as acting labor secretary this week. He will fill the vacancy left when Alex Acosta resigned amid criticism of a plea deal he approved in 2008 with Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who has been accused of sex trafficking.

A longtime free-market evangelist, Mr. Pizzella, 65, has built a four-decade career in the conservative Republican mold, fighting regulation and organized labor.

His appointment is far more consequential than those of the many acting secretaries who have served in President Trump’s patchwork cabinet. The man he succeeds, Mr. Acosta, spent two years battling other White House officials who demanded that he push through a sweeping anti-union agenda and coordinate his actions with the president’s political team.

Mr. Pizzella, who is close to many of the conservatives allied with Mr. Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, and on Vice President Mike Pence’s staff, is expected to be a significantly more cooperative partner in those efforts, according to administration and industry officials.

“Pat will be great — he is a movement conservative,” saidMarc Short, Mr. Pence’s chief of staffand a friend of Mr. Pizzella’s for two decades. “I think it’s fair to say that while he will be focused on issues of workplace safety, he will also work to ensure that the workplace is not overly burdened with regulations.”

When he filled the lone Republican slot at the Federal Labor Relations Authority during the Obama administration, Mr. Pizzella compared union representatives to the mob-connected bosses from the Marlon Brando film “On the Waterfront.” He cheered a federal-court decision that struck down potential restrictions on investigating unions. As a Labor Department official during President George W. Bush’s administration in 2008, he bemoaned the “staggering costs” of paid work time that government employees used to conduct union business, which is authorized by labor law and union contracts.

Mr. Trump has sent mixed messages about his stance on organized labor. He has courted construction and law enforcement unions while taking a harder line against most government employees. But the conservatives who run his West Wing policy shop are less ambivalent, pushing hard to undermine unions’ ability to bargain collectively, raise dues and exert political power.

Those ambitions suffered when Mr. Trump’s first choice for labor secretary, the fast food executive Andrew Puzder, withdrew his nomination early in 2017 amid controversy over domestic abuse allegations. The administration turned instead to Mr. Acosta, a relatively moderate former prosecutor, who essentially inherited Mr. Pizzella as a deputy secretary already slated to work for Mr. Puzder.

Soon after Mr. Acosta took office, his aides were presented with a detailed to-do list by James Sherk, who coordinates labor policy for the White House’s Domestic Policy Council and joined the administration from the conservative Heritage Foundation.

The list, which was provided to The New York Times by a person who had obtained it from a former Trump administration official, included proposals to weaken collective bargaining rights and protections for workers on federally funded construction projects. The list also included a proposal that would have forced male actors in pornographic films to wear condoms.

Mr. Acosta rejected outright or dragged his feet on many of the plans, including the condom regulation, according to a person close to him and administration officials.

“We’re the Department of Labor, we’re not the Department of Commerce,” the secretary complained privately last year, the person close to him recalled.

Mr. Sherk gained a powerful new ally when Mr. Trump named Mr. Mulvaney acting chief of staff in January. Still, Mr. Acosta insisted that pursuing such a hard-line agenda would alienate the president’s blue-collar union supporters and make it more difficult to garner labor support for a new version of the North American Free Trade Agreement that is awaiting a vote by the Democratic-controlled House, according to a current administration official with direct knowledge of the situation.

Mr. Acosta also resisted efforts to involve the Labor Department in broader political fights. In April, the White House sent Mr. Acosta’s office a request from Kellyanne Conway, a counselor to the president, and other White House officials asking him to write an opinion column saying that a so-called Medicare-for-all proposal by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont would hurt employers and workers, according to a copy of the request viewed by The Times.

Alex Acosta, the secretary of labor, defended a plea deal he reached with Jeffrey Epstein in 2008 during a news conference last week.CreditErik S Lesser/EPA, via Shutterstock

Image

Mr. Acosta refused after his legal advisers determined that the request raised “red flags” related to the Hatch Act, a federal law that prohibits the use of government resources for political activity, according to memos provided by a former administration official.

“It should be expected that the White House and cabinet agencies, including the Department of Labor, would have frequent conversations around potential policy ideas particularly as it relates to the president’s priority of deregulation,” said Judd Deere, a White House spokesman.

White House officials have good reason to expect more cooperation from Mr. Pizzella.

As an undergraduate student at the University of South Carolina, he wrote columns for the school newspaper, including one in 1972 in which he criticized Senator George McGovern, the recently defeated Democratic presidential nominee, for sending his daughter to an upscale suburban school near Washington.

“The hypocrisy continues as McGovern expresses the opinion that he represents the working man,” Mr. Pizzella wrote. “That’s similar to Hitler saying he represented the Jewish people in Germany during the 1930s.”

After college, Mr. Pizzella went on to work for Ronald Reagan in the 1976 Republican primaries, according to a 2001 profilein The New Republic. He subsequently held a series of government appointments, building a formidable list of conservative contacts.

In the mid-1990s, Mr. Pizzella joined the lobbying arm of the law firm Preston Gates, where Jack Abramoff, who was later convicted of defrauding clients, had set up a growing lobbying practice. One of the firm’s biggest clients in the late 1990s was the Northern Mariana Islands, which was exempt from federal minimum wage and immigration laws but could sell products under a “Made in the U.S.A.” label.

Large textile manufacturers set up production on the islands. Migrant workers, typically from China and the Philippines, worked long hours for low pay and lived in squalid, crowded dormitories. A 1997 federal government report concluded that nearly the entire private-sector labor force of the commonwealth consisted of “essentially indentured alien workers.”

The report said that foreign women were often coerced into prostitution, and that those who refused were sometimes raped or tortured.

It was Mr. Pizzella’s job to present a kinder, gentler image of the commonwealth to Republicans in Congress and their staffs, who controlled the House and Senate at the time. Allen Stayman, an Interior Department official involved in investigating conditions on the islands, said Mr. Pizzella “was in charge of showing the Potemkin village.”

One person on a trip to the commonwealth organized by Mr. Pizzella recalled meetings with senior officials of the local government in which the officials discussed their interest in making the commonwealth a laboratory for conservative policies like school vouchers. Mr. Pizzella also showed visitors factories and dormitories that were crowded but clean.

The lobbying efforts were effective. Legislation that would have applied the minimum wage and immigration laws to the commonwealth went nowhere in the House in the 1990s. At his 2017 confirmation hearings to become deputy labor secretary, Mr. Pizzella dismissed the reported abuses as “allegations” and said his job was strictly to lobby against the minimum wage.

Mr. Pizzella joined Mr. Bush’s administration in 2001, serving for nearly eight years as an assistant labor secretary for administration and management, but the Obama era gave him an even higher profile. As conservatives mobilized against Democratic policies, Mr. Pizzella joined the Conservative Action Project, which worked to establish alliances between socially and fiscally conservative organizations.

Mr. Pizzella convened meetings where conservative groups coordinated campaigns against Mr. Obama’s health care, climate change and labor policies, said Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, one such organization.

Among other things, Mr. Pizzella spread the word about bus tours meant to build opposition to the Affordable Care Act. “We would say: ‘Hey, Pat, we’re doing these bus tours in these states on these days. Could you let the rest of the movement know?’” Mr. Phillips recalled. “And they would.”

In 2013, Mr. Pizzella was nominated by the Obama administration to be the only Republican on the three-member Federal Labor Relations Authority, which adjudicates disputes between federal workers and the agencies that employ them.

In several cases, Mr. Pizzella used cutting language to describe employees and identified them by name in his opinions, breaking with the agency’s traditional approach of withholding names. The naming and disparaging of workers risked exposing them to harassment, said Carol Waller Pope, the agency’s chairwoman for most of Mr. Pizzella’s tenure. (The authority typically named only the union bringing the grievance.)

“It could discourage people from using the process to resolve disputes — that was our mission,” Ms. Pope said. “I viewed it as having an effect.”

==

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/08/trump-pick-to-run-labor-department-promoted-sweatshops-on-remote-us-islands/

no lnx many

POLITICS

PUBLISHED ON AUGUST 22, 2017; UPDATED ON JULY 12, 2019

Trump’s Pick to Run the Labor Department Promoted Sweatshops on Remote US Islands

Patrick Pizzella worked with Jack Abramoff to organize congressional junkets to this “laboratory of liberty.”

NOAH LANARD

Reporter

Update: On July 12, President Donald Trump announced on Twitter that Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta will be replaced on an acting basis by Deputy Secretary of Labor Patrick Pizzella. As Mother Jones reported after reviewing hundreds of pages of billing records and emails, Pizzella worked in the late 1990s with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff to promote a sweatshop economy in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory.

This story originally ran on August 22, 2017:

There’s lobbying, and then there’s working with Jack Abramoff to promote the sweatshop economy on remote Pacific islands. If you want to know about that kind of lobbying, you can ask Patrick Pizzella, President Donald Trump’s pick to be deputy labor secretary. Or maybe you can’t.

At a July Senate confirmation hearing, Pizzella said he didn’t remember much about the work he did in the late 1990s to help the Northern Mariana Islands—a US commonwealth 1,500 miles from Japan—defeat a bipartisan effort to rein in a guest worker program that the Labor Department found relied on indentured workers. WhenSen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) asked Pizzella whether he knew about reports of forced abortions and routine beatings at the time, Pizzella replied, “I was not aware of any such thing.” Pressed further, he said reports of abuse by multiple government agencies and newspapers were mere “allegations.”

What Pizzella didn’t say was that he helped lead a public relations campaign to rebrand the islands as a paragon of free-market principles. Between 1996 and 2000, emails and billing records reviewed by Mother Jones show that Pizzella and colleagues organized all-expenses-paid trips to the islands for more than 100 members of Congress, their staffers, and conservative thought leaders. When they got back, Pizzella helped them convince colleagues that the Northern Mariana Islands were, as his old boss Abramoff liked to put it, a “laboratory of liberty.”

Now Pizzella is poised to become America’s second-highest labor enforcer. If confirmed by the Senate, he’ll be responsible for holding employers accountable in the Northern Mariana Islands and across the country. (Pizzella, currently the acting chairman of the Federal Labor Relations Authority, a federal agency that handles government employees’ labor disputes, declined to comment for this story.)

Pizzella arrived at the law firm Preston Gates in 1996 as Abramoff’s second hire.“Smart, likeable, clever, and hardworking, Pat was a perfect addition to the quickly emerging ‘Team Abramoff,’” Abramoff wrote in his 2011 memoir, Capitol Punishment. Pizzella immediately started reading up on Abramoff’s new lobbying client: the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), a string of 14 tropical islands just north of Guam with a population of about 53,000.

The year before, Abramoff had learned that the CNMI was looking for a lobbyist to fend off increased federal control. During World War II, the islands were under Japanese control until the United States won the Battle of Saipan (the CNMI’s main island) in 1944. After a few decades in limbo as part of a United Nations trust, the Northern Mariana Islands opted to join the United States in 1975 as a commonwealth instead of pursuing independence.

The agreement between the islands and the United States granted two exemptions. First, the CNMI could set its own minimum wage. Second, the commonwealth would be allowed to make its own immigration laws. CNMI officials initially requested control of immigration to ensure that the indigenous population would not be overwhelmed by newcomers. But a decade later, garment manufacturers and the CNMI’s government decided to use the exemption to import unlimited guest workers to make clothes for companies like Brooks Brothers and Banana Republic. The clothes they produced were stamped “Made in the USA” and exported to the United States tariff-free. Between 1985 and 1998, CNMI garment exports grew from almost nothing to more than $1 billion annually—over a third of total CNMI business revenue.

“Things were just completely out of control,” says Allen Stayman, the top Interior Department official assigned to the CNMI from 1993 to 1999. Recruiters illegally required many foreign workers to pay fees in order to land jobs in the CNMI, causing them to go into debt that they’d have to work to pay off. Others signed “shadow contracts” in which they promised their employers not to unionize, date, or practice a religion while working in the CNMI. Some were made to sleep a dozen to a room, with barbed wire surrounding their barracks. If workers complained, the CNMI government, which had close ties to the garment industry, could deport them immediately. In 1992, Willie Tan, a top garment industry baron, paid a $9 million settlement in a Labor Department suit alleging he’d failed to pay workers overtime and the CNMI’s minimum wage of $2.15 an hour—compared with $4.25 elsewhere in the United States. The settlement was the largest in Labor Department history at the time.

When Abramoff signed the CNMI government as a client in July 1995, the US Senate had already unanimously passed a bill to strip the islands of its minimum-wage exemption, setting up what looked to be an uncontentious vote in the House. The year before, representatives from the Interior and Labor departments and the US Immigration and Naturalization Service had testified at a Senate hearing about mistreatment of foreign workers. CNMI Gov. Froilan Tenorio joined them to say he was “disgusted” and “ashamed” by the stories of human rights abuses. “Unfortunately,” he added at the hearing, “they are generally accurate.” Still, the workers kept coming. According to a 1998 federal government report, “indentured alien workers,” mostly from Bangladesh, China, and the Philippines, made up 91 percent of the CNMI’s private-sector workforce. The majority of citizens, on the other hand, worked in better-paid government jobs. Immigration laws that were supposed to protect the CNMI’s indigenous population had made many citizens into overlords who were outnumbered by their guest workers.

But Tenorio argued that the CNMI could fix the problems without eliminating the exemptions. Other lobbyists, Abramoff wrote in his memoir, told Tenorio that preserving them was a lost cause. Abramoff disagreed. To save them, Abramoff wrote, he told the governor’s chief of staff that the CNMI just needed to convince the conservatives running Congress that the fight was about defending a free market.

In a 1995 pitch letter to Tenorio, Abramoff argued that personal tours could help sway public officials. Pizzella led this effort. By his second month on the job, Pizzella was spending more than 100 billable hours per month on the CNMI account, about as much as Abramoff. The centerpiece of Pizzella’s work was organizing all-inclusive junkets for members of Congress and their wives, congressional staffers, and conservative influencers such as pollster Kellyanne Fitzpatrick—who now goes by her married name, Kellyanne Conway, and advises President Donald Trump—with first-class airfare and lodging at the beachfront Hyatt Regency on Saipan. “Pat’s very effective,” a former consultant to the CNMI told The New Republic in 2001. “Visitors to the island seemed to get all the right information.”

Pizzella’s first trip, in 1996, included meetings with the governor and the Saipan Garment Manufacturers Association and a tour of a garment factory; some later trips included meetings with human rights activists. Later that year, Abramoff wrote in an email to Herman Guerrero, a CNMI official, that “the recent Congressional staff trips have done more good for the CNMI than almost anything we have done in the past.”

The leisurely aspect of the trips seemed to help. “[S]ome of the group plans to play golf at LaoLao on monday afternoon and Kingfisher on Tuesday afternoon,” Pizzella emailed Guerrero, “please arrange for that authorization letter to the managers at each course indicating we will be renting clubs etc…that worked very, very well last visit.” Another trip included a weekend layover in Hawaii on the way back, according to an email from Pizzella. The New York Times summed up the trips with the headline “They Came. They Saw. They Golfed.”

After they got back, they wrote. Clint Bolick,a co-founder of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm, reported shortly after returning that the CNMI boasted “perhaps the most vibrant economy in the United States.The secret: largely unregulated marketsthat in two decades have created out of almost nothing head-spinning economic growth, productivity, and prosperity.”

Bolick, who is now a state Supreme Court justice in Arizona,and others were particularly impressed that Gov. Tenorio supported conservative priorities like school vouchers. That wasn’t an accident. The year before, Pizzella had discussed vouchers and a flat tax with the conservative Heritage Foundation and the libertarian Cato Institute on behalf of the CNMI’s government. “Our travelers ate this up,” Abramoff wrote in his memoir. “The conservative groups in Washington had found a new hero in this Democratic governor of our least populated territory.”

Another Abramoff tactic, according to a Senate Finance Committee investigation, was to have the CNMI funnel money to a front group, which helped the trips appear independent. Before a 1996 junket, Preston Gates billing records show, Pizzella met with Amy Moritz, president of the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), a conservative group that funded several trips for Abramoff, to discuss a “CNMI trip and possible funding arrangements.” After he got back, Pizzella explained in an email to Abramoff how a report by Cato fellow Doug Bandow would be paid for. “[T]hat leaves basically the fees for Bandow’s services and report; and the reimbursement for the bills he accumulated,” Pizzella wrote to Abramoff. “…That should come to about $10,000. That is the amount CNMI should provide as a grant to NCPPR. Then they can cut check to Bandow.” Preston Gates billing records include an $8,000 invoice for Bandow’s trip expenses that lists NCPPR as the vendor.

After the trip, Bandow started writing a report for the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute. Pizzella had about a dozen discussions with Bandow and Marlo Lewis, a CEI executive, about the report, according to billing records. As the publication date got closer, Pizzella, Abramoff, and Michael Soussan, a junior Preston Gates lobbyist, also edited and provided comments on drafts. The final report called the CNMI a “center of policy innovation” and “laboratory of liberty” that could serve as a model for the rest of the country. (Bandow would later lose his position at Cato for accepting money from Abramoff to write favorable op-eds about the CNMI and other clients; he subsequently returned to the think tank and is now a senior fellow there. Bandow did not respond to requests for comment.)

The next year, Soussan traveled to the CNMI with Pizzella, according to his memoir and billing records. As usual, the guests toured a garment factory. “The point of my presence at the scene,” Sousann wrote in the memoir, “was to help these factory owners get away with exploitation.” Without specifically naming Pizzella, he wrote that “Pat, the team leader of the Congressional delegation,” put a different spin on it, saying, “See? Working conditions are not as horrible as the press would have us believe.” On the way out, he recalled, they got a “special treat”: discounted clothes. “The pride I felt for my job at that moment made me want to put a bullet through my head,” Soussan wrote. (Soussan did not respond to requests for comment.)

When Stayman, the Interior Department official, went to the CNMI with Sens. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) and Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) in the mid-1990s, he says, they attended the usual meetings arranged by local government officials, before feigning jet lag and returning to their hotel. Then, in the evening, they left the hotel and got a different tour from Labor Department investigators and Christian human rights activists. “They were quickly persuaded,” Stayman says. “Like I said, it was all Potemkin village.” Murkowski later told PBS that calling the conditions “unacceptable” was “putting it mildly.”

But Abramoff’s close relationship with House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, who visited the CNMI for New Year’s in 1997, ensured that Murkowski and Akaka’s attempts to revoke the CNMI’s immigration and minimum-wage exemptions met a certain death in the House. DeLay called the islands “a perfect petri dish of capitalism,” adding, “It’s like my Galapagos Island.” (Abramoff could not be reached for comment.)

As Abramoff’s clout expanded, Preston Gates’ payments from the islands rose from $100,000 in 1995 to more than $3 million in 1997. (In 2001, The New Republic reported that Pizzella made $175,000 per year.) Then Tenorio’s uncle ousted him from the governorship as the islands’ tourism industry tanked during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. The next year, Preston Gates’ CNMI income dropped by more than half. To cover the shortfall, Abramoff turned to Willie Tan, the garment magnate. In a 1998 memo to a Tan Holdings official, Abramoff laid out a six-part strategy for representing Tan and the government. Pizzella was tasked with running the trips program—the importance of which “cannot be overstated,” Abramoff wrote.

[pix Jack Abramoff leaves a federal courthouse after entering a plea agreement on three felony charges. CQ Roll Call/AP

In 2001, Abramoff moved on to the lobbying firm Greenberg Traurig, where he continued to work on behalf of the CNMI. Instead of following him, Pizzella joined the George W. Bush administration as the chief of staff in the Office of Personnel Management. But Pizzella had made his mark as a lobbyist for the CNMI. By 2001, more than 100 thought leaders and lawmakers had made the journey to the CNMI, according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal and other outlets. “If you were a conservative intellectual and you didn’t get invited, you just knew you weren’t cool,” a source told The New Republic’s Franklin Foer in 2001. In 2007 and 2008, after Abramoff and Pizzella had stopped lobbying for the CNMI government, Congress overwhelmingly passed bills revoking the islands’ wage and immigration exemptions. Following a World Trade Organization agreement eliminating tariffs on US apparel imports from abroad in 2005, the CNMI’s garment industry all but disappeared.

Hardly anyone seemed to notice when Pizzella was unanimously confirmed by the Senate to be an assistant labor secretary a few months into the Bush administration. “Wait, exactly who is this guy again?” the textile union’s legislative director asked Foer at the time. Six months removed from lobbying, Pizzella was already calling his CNMI work “ancient history.” “I don’t want to go down memory lane,” he said in the June 2001 story. (President Barack Obama’s nomination of Pizzella to the Federal Labor Relations Authority in 2013 was similarly uncontroversial.)

At Greenberg Traurig, Abramoff took his influencing to new, and frequently illegal, levels. In 2008, he received a four-year prison sentence for charges including corrupting public officials, tax evasion, and conspiracy. The fraud Abramoff perpetrated against Native American clients got most of the attention, but in Abramoff’s plea deal, a January 2000 trip to the CNMI was included as one of many examples of how Abramoff provided golf and other “things of value” in exchange for “official acts and influence.” Twenty-one people were ultimately found guilty in the Abramoff scandal. Pizzella was not charged.

At Pizzella’s July confirmation hearing, Franken mentioned the people convicted in the Abramoff scandal. Pizzella was careful to point out, “I was not one of them.” Franken didn’t seem particularly impressed. “I understand that,” he deadpanned. “Congratulations.”

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/03/interest-groups-lobby-for-democrats-hr1-ahead-of-friday-house-vote/

On Friday, the House will vote on H.R. 1 or the “For the People Act,” a massive overhaul of transparency, campaign finance and lobbying rules. The 571-page bill, backed by Democrats, tackles a variety of issues from requiring “dark money” groups to release their donors and presidents to release their tax returns to tightening FARA registration to making Election Day a federal holiday. Like any major legislative effort, this one has attracted a number of groups to lobby on its behalf.

As the House prepares to vote on H.R. 1, a group of 71 predominantly liberal groups are working to convince lawmakers to support the measure. Notable names backing the legislation include End Citizens United Action Fund, the Center for American Progress and Planned Parenthood.

The package includes legislation to establish automatic voter registration, the creation of an independent redistricting commission, legislation restricting the use of straw companies for donations, and stricter rules on super PAC-candidate coordination, among many other new proposals.

Like most large-scale reform bills, interest groups have been involved with H.R. 1 since the beginning. Public Citizen assisted in writing parts of the legislation which dealt with ethics and conflict of interest issues. The Brennan Center for Justice helped develop aspects of the bill that address voting registration and small-donor public financing of elections.

End Citizens United is an organization which advocates for stricter campaign finance rules and a reversal of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. It boasts an impressive fundraising apparatus raising almost $33.1 million in the 2018 cycle and spending nearly $32.9 million from the FEC disclosed committee. A significant amount of that, more than $12.3 million, was used on independent expenditures in the cycle.

The group also contributed directly to a wide variety of Democratic candidates in the cycle. Rep. Conor Lamb (D-Pa.) and unsuccessful candidate Gina Ortiz Jones (D-Texas) received $15,000 each from the organization — the most among House members and candidates. It also contributed heavily to the DCCC and the DSCC, handing each organization $150,000.

In a letter sent on March 4 to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and sponsor of the legislation Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.), End Citizens United President Tiffany Muller called H.R. 1 a “once-in-a-generation government reform bill that will restore the promise of our democracy.” The letter notes that the organization and its four million members “enthusiastically support” the legislation.

The Center for American Progress, one of the leading liberal think tanks, is a regular campaign contributor and lobbying presence. In 2018, the group spent $90,000 on lobbying Capitol Hill. Individuals from the think tank contributed $309,415 during the midterm cycle. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and 2020 presidential candidate was the leading recipient with $10,800.

Another liberal interest group, People for the American Way, is pushing for the H.R. 1 legislation. People for the American Way includes a lobbying arm, which dropped $170,000 in 2018 focusing on bills like the Voter Rights Amendment Act and legislation introduced to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The group also has an independent expenditure wing and a separate PAC. During the 2018 cycle, the group spent $515,590 on independent expenditures, the biggest race it spent on was for the Texas Senate.

Marge Baker, executive vice president of People for the American Way, applauded the legislation. “HR1 takes dead aim at some of the most pressing issues threatening our democracy,” she said in a statement to The Center for Responsive Politics. “Our members have been working on these issues for years, and now they’re focused on pushing hard on Congress to pass HR1, with calls, emails, digital and on the ground organizing.”

Public Citizen, the liberal consumer rights group founded by Ralph Nader, is another outside source pressuring Congress to support the sweeping legislation. The organization maintains a fairly robust lobbying apparatus, spending $250,000 in 2018.

All 235 members of the House Democratic caucus have co-sponsored H.R. 1. Even members who receive a significant amount of campaign contributions from business PAC sources, like Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) who got more than $1 million in the recent cycle, have signed on.

While there is essentially universal Democratic support in the House, the measures have been staunchly opposed by Republicans and other interest groups. Opponents include the National Association of Business Political Action Committees (NABPAC), an organization that represents and lobbies for business PACs, the Conservative Action Project and FreedomWorks.

In January, NABPAC hosted a luncheon which looked to address H.R. 1. The event description notes that “many of the provisions, if enacted, could severely restrict the role of the business community and their PACs” and calls it “potentially onerous.”

FreedomWorks, a conservative and libertarian-leaning organization, has recently become a major lobbying player. In 2018, it spent the most it ever had on influence with almost $1.9 million.

Peter Vicenzi, press secretary for FreedomWorks, said in a statement to The Center for Responsive Politics, “The main issues we have with HR 1 are that it would have a chilling effect on political speech, take power from individual states in how they conduct elections and fund political campaigns with taxpayer dollars.”   

While the package of bills will likely pass the House on a party-line vote, there is essentially no chance of it passing the Senate or even being brought up for a vote. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell(R-Ky.) wrote an op-ed in which he called the legislation the “Democrat Politician Protection Act.”

==

obama:

• Patrick Pizzella– Member, Federal Labor Relations Authority

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Patrick_Pizzella

Patrick Pizzella was nominated March 6, 2001, for Assistant Secretary for Administration and Management at the Department of Labor by President George W. Bush. His nomination was sent to the Senate on April 25, 2001, and he was confirmed on May 9, 2001.

A piece from the June 18, 2001, New Republic "wonders why unions failed to organize against Patrick Pizzella's appointment as an assistant secretary of labor. Now responsible for protecting workers' rights, Pizzella spent four years as a lobbyist on behalf of the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, 'a notorious haven for foreign-owned sweatshops'."

"Team Abramoff"

Pizzella was one of at least three people who had worked on Jack Abramoff's team at the Preston Gates and Ellis law firm who "wound up withBush administration jobs. The second, David Safavian, was "chosen by Bush to oversee federal procurement policy in the Office of Management and Budget." The third is Susan B. Ralston, Abramoff's former assistant and most recently special assistant to White House chief of staff Karl Rove. [1][2]

"We know about Ralston, we know about Safavian, what is Patrick Pizzella up to?," Laura Rozen asked September 22, 2005.

Profiles

"Pizzella has served in various posts since his arrival in Washington, DC in 1980 including serving as the Policy Coordinator for the Bush-Cheney General Services Administration Transition Team. From January 22, 2001 to March 25, 2001, Pizzella served as the Chief of Staff to the Director at the U. S. Office of Personnel Management. Pizzella was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as a Member of the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) - a position he held from January 18, 2004 to April 26, 2005.

"From 1996 to 2001, Pizzella was a member of Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds, L.L.P. policy practice group and served as a Government Affairs Counselor with responsibility for the coordination of the firm's grassroots and coalitions management practice. The cornerstones of the firm's practice in Washington D.C. are legislative policy, Executive branch representation and administrative law.

"Prior to his work at the law firm, Pizzella served for five years at the Federal Housing Finance Board, an independent regulatory agency with responsibility for overseeing the Federal Home Loan Bank system, a Government Sponsored Enterprise. There he was the agency's Chief Administrative Officer, serving as the Director, Office of Administration.

"From 1986 to 1989, Pizzella served at the Department of Education as Administrator for Management Services, and in 1988 was nominated and recess appointed byPresident Reagan as Deputy Under Secretary for Management. In March 2005 Mr. Pizzella was selected as one of the Top 25 'Doers, Dreamers and Drivers' for 2004 by Government Technology Magazine. In addition, in March 1987 he was selected as one of America's top forty performers under 40 years of age by Management Magazine, a publication of the U. S. Office of Personnel Management.

"Pizzella also served as the Special Assistant to the Administrator of the General Services Administration (1981-1984); the Director of Intergovernmental and Regional Affairs at the U. S. Small Business Administration (1985-1986); as a member of the Office of Personnel Management Senior Executive Service Advisory Committee (1987-1988) and as a member of the President's Council on Management Improvement (1988-1989).

"Pizzella is a native of New Rochelle, New York, and a graduate of Iona Preparatory School. He received a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of South Carolina."

Source: Pizzell'as Department of Labor Biography.

Related SourceWatch Resources

• Bush administration cronyism and incompetence
• Bush administration scandals

External links

Documents

• Federal Energy Management Program, U.S. Department of Energy - Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Senior Energy Officials: Patrick Pizzella.

Articles & Commentary

• Tod Newcombe, "U.S. Department of Labor CIO Patrick Pizzella, One of Government Technology's 25 'Doers Dreamers and Drivers',"GovTech.net, March 4, 2005.
• Sharon Theimer, "Lobbyist had close contact with Bush team," Associated Press (Boston Globe), May 6, 2005: "two of Abramoff's lobbying colleagues on the Marianas won political appointments to federal agencies." (Pizzella and Safavian)
• "White House Admits President Met with Abramoff. Bush Should Return Funds to Ensure Unbiased Abramoff Inquiry," BuzzFlash, May 6, 2005.
• Jonathan D. Salant, "Abramoff Probe May Threaten Leading Republicans as It Expands," Bloomberg News, September 22, 2005.

Categories: 

• Scandals
• Corruption

==

Two weeks ago, the Washington Post sketched out a blueprint of the movement's leadership, naming the players and the organizations who have made the right's resurgence possible. It focused in particular on a shadowy but influential new outfit called the Conservative Action Project, which reportedly works to coordinate the movement's far-flung organizations, bloggers and publishers.

What struck me about the Post's story was the familiarity of it all. In particular, I kept being reminded of that ultimate conservative insider, the now-imprisoned superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, and the work he did on behalf of the Northern Marianas Islands, where garment factories churned out "Made in the USA" clothing under re-education camp conditions.

The object of Mr. Abramoff's lobbying, you will recall, was to protect that peculiar economic arrangement from federal meddling, a task his firm accomplished by bringing politicians, staffers and media types on trips to the tropical Marianas and urging them to understand the situation as a matter of "liberty" versus big government tyranny.

Today, as Washington conservatives scramble to stay atop the growing grass-roots right, the cast of characters is remarkably similar. For example, the "Team Abramoff" lobbyist who ran the Marianas trips program in the 1990s, Patrick Pizzella, is reported by the Post to be the "only paid staff member" of the Conservative Action Project. According to the Washington Times, Mr. Pizzella has also been "involved" in the drafting of the Mount Vernon Statement, a conservative manifesto that is meant to rally the tea-partying base. tom franks wsj

==

What Happens When The Right Buys Its Own Lies

SUBMITTED BY Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 7/1/2010 3:19 pm

Since the establishment conservative movement never stops trying to co-opt the Tea Party mantle for itself, I guess that means I have to keep covering their efforts as well.

I've written about the Conservative Action Project before, noting that it is one of the many right-wing coalitions that exist to establish the party line of the issue of the day, often though "Memo for the Movement" statements that it releases. These memos tend to be mostly meaningless collections of bullet points and links, but apparently members of the coalition feel they serve some purpose, which is why they keep issuing them.

The latest memo carries the names of a wide variety of right-wing leaders - including Ed Meese, Wendy Wright, Grover Norquist, Gary Bauer, Mat Staver, Curt Levey, Andrea Lafferty, and Louis Sheldon - who have joined together to commend the Tea Party Movement for its "fidelity to the Constitution."

And after the memo's standard pointless bullet points, this paragraph appears:

Earlier this year, many Tea Party Movement leaders and conservative leaders found common ground at a meeting and ceremony at the Collingwood Library & Museum in Alexandria, VA-- part of the original Mount Vernon Estate owned by President George Washington. The Mount Vernon Statement, issued on February 17, 2010, restates the ideas of the American founding as articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It was signed by over 100 leaders-including Tea Party Movement leaders--representing tens of millions of conservative activists nationwide and re-enforced the principles of Constitutional Conservatism for the 21st Century.

Do you remember the Mount Vernon Statement?  It was the attempt earlier this year by these very same activists to co-opt the Tea Party movement by merging it with the establishment conservative movement.

But it was all for naught, as a short time later the Tea Party movement released its own "Contract From America" manifesto which explicitly excluded any and all social issues.

The Tea Party movement's consistent refusal to adopt the Religious Right's agenda as part of the Tea Party agenda has infuriated establishment conservatives to no end, which is why they have continuously worked to co-opt the movement for their own ends ... leading to situations like this where the conservative establishment drafts and signs a document proclaiming its own agenda while unilaterally claiming that it represents the Tea Party movement - and then later, using that same document as an excuse to commend itself for its "fidelity to the Constitution."

FILED UNDER

:{

ORGANIZATIONS:

Conservative Action Project, Religious Right}:

:{

PEOPLE:

Gary Bauer}:

:{

TOPICS:

Constitution, Media, mount vernon statement, Religious Right}:

- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/what-happens-when-right-buys-its-own-lies#sthash.kpWLdy4D.dpuf

==

Conservative Action Project: A New Name For the Same Old Right-Wing Agenda

SUBMITTED BY Kyle Mantyla on Monday, 2/1/2010 1:13 pm

Several months ago, I wrote a post noting the emergence of the new right-wing coalition calling itself that Conservative Action Project. At the time, all that I could figure out about it was that its membership included several Religious Right leaders and it seemed to operate out of the Council for National Policy.

Today, the Washington Post examines the role that new media is playing in shaping and disseminating conservative messaging throughout the right-wing echo chamber and reports that the Conservative Action Project is playing a a key role in that effort through the weekly meetings hosted by theFamily Research Council:

Inside the Beltway, much of it is fueled by the Conservative Action Project (CAP), a new group of conservative leaders chaired by Reagan-era attorney general Edwin Meese III. CAP, whose influential memos "for the movement" circulate on Capitol Hill, is an offshoot of the Council for National Policy, a highly secretive organization of conservative leaders and donors.

...

At 7:30 a.m., members of the Conservative Action Project gather at the Family Research Council, a social conservative group.

CAP grew out of a series of meetings of conservatives, determined to engineer a political comeback, in the weeks after Obama's election. One took place during a Council for National Policy meeting at a D.C. hotel, conservatives said. The secretive council was formed in the early 1980s to coordinate what was then called the "New Right."

Key players in CAP, members said, include Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway; Greg Mueller, president of CRC Public Relations; and former congressman David M. McIntosh (R-Ind.). Its only paid staff member is Patrick Pizzella, an official in the George W. Bush administration, who works out of the Council for National Policy offices.

Among CAP's projects was supporting the Health Care Freedom Coalition, whose more than 50 economic and social conservative groups quietly built health-care opposition, CAP members said. The coalition is a spinoff of FreedomWorks, the D.C.-based group that works extensively with tea-party activists.

CAP also worked unsuccessfully to defeat David F. Hamilton, Obama's first appellate judicial nominee. A Nov. 9 CAP memo calling Hamilton "an ideologue first and a jurist second" helped trigger blog blasts from Erickson and an anti-Hamilton speech at the conservative Federalist Society by Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Judiciary Committee Republican.

FILED UNDER

:{

ORGANIZATIONS:

Religious Right, FreedomWorks, Federalist Society, Family Research Council, Council for National Policy, Conservative Action Project}:

:{

PEOPLE:

Ed Meese, Kellyanne Conway, Jeff Sessions, George W. Bush}:

:{

TOPICS:

Media, Judiciary, health care, George W. Bush, Bush Administration, Attorney General, Religious Right}:

- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/conservative-action-project-new-name-same-old-right-wing-agenda#sthash.UqZMFtAQ.dpuf

==

Two weeks ago, the Washington Post sketched out a blueprint of the movement's leadership, naming the players and the organizations who have made the right's resurgence possible. It focused in particular on a shadowy but influential new outfit called the Conservative Action Project,which reportedly works to coordinate the movement's far-flung organizations, bloggers and publishers.

What struck me about the Post's story was the familiarity of it all. In particular, I kept being reminded of that ultimate conservative insider, the now-imprisoned superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, and the work he did on behalf of the Northern Marianas Islands, where garment factories churned out "Made in the USA" clothing under re-education camp conditions.

The object of Mr. Abramoff's lobbying, you will recall, was to protect that peculiar economic arrangement from federal meddling, a task his firm accomplished by bringing politicians, staffers and media types on trips to the tropical Marianas and urging them to understand the situation as a matter of "liberty" versus big government tyranny.

Today, as Washington conservatives scramble to stay atop the growing grass-roots right, the cast of characters is remarkably similar. For example, the "Team Abramoff" lobbyist who ran the Marianas trips program in the 1990s, Patrick Pizzella, is reported by the Post to be the "only paid staff member" of the Conservative Action Project. According to the Washington Times, Mr. Pizzella has also been "involved" in the drafting of the Mount Vernon Statement, a conservative manifesto that is meant to rally the tea-partying base. tom franks wsj

rww

Conservative Action Project

Conservative Action Project Posts Archive

Religious Right Groups And Chamber of Commerce Fail To Block District Court Nominee

SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Wednesday 05/04/2011, 3:20pm

Religious Right and pro-corporate groups failed today to block President Obama’s nominee for U.S. District Court in Rhode Island, John McConnell, from receiving an up-or-down vote in the Senate. The Senate invoked cloture on McConnell’s nomination in a 63-33 vote, defeating the filibuster against McConnell. Filibusters against district court judges are extremely rare—only a handful of District Court nominees have ever faced cloture votes, and none have ever been blocked—and many Republicans previously vowed they would never filibuster a judicial nominee. Today’... MORE >

What Happens When The Right Buys Its Own Lies

SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Thursday 07/01/2010, 3:19pm

Since the establishment conservative movement never stops trying to co-opt the Tea Party mantle for itself, I guess that means I have to keep covering their efforts as well. I've written about the Conservative Action Project before, noting that it is one of the many right-wing coalitions that exist to establish the party line of the issue of the day, often though "Memo for the Movement" statements that it releases. These memos tend to be mostly meaningless collections of bullet points and links, but apparently members of the coalition feel they serve some purpose, which... MORE >

Right Wing Leftovers

SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Monday 05/24/2010, 5:35pm

The Judicial Crisis Network calls Elena Kagan an "inexperienced rubber stamp." The Conservative Action Project issues a "memo to the movement" on Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Coral Ridge Ministries also supports maintaining DADT. Joseph Farah warns people not to be fooled by Newt Gingrich. You know what is ruining "America Idol"? Ellen DeGeneres and her lesbianism. Focus on the Family Action is now officially known as CitizenLink. Finally, "Christian Financial Expert Releases Do-It-Yourself Mortgage Modification Kit."... MORE >

The Right Wing's Meaningless Manifesto

SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Tuesday 02/16/2010, 11:52am

Last week it was reported that, on Wednesday, a large group of conservative leaders were going to unveil what they call "definitive statement" regarding the central principles of the conservative movement, to be known as "The Mount Vernon Statement." And apparently it is a pretty big deal, as it is already getting all sorts of media coverage ... most of which makes it pretty clear that, despite all the hype, this new manifesto is really going to say anything at all:  The "Mount Vernon Statement,'' to be signed on an Alexandria estate once owned by George... MORE >

Conservative Action Project: A New Name For the Same Old Right-Wing Agenda

SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Monday 02/01/2010, 1:13pm

Several months ago, I wrote a post noting the emergence of the new right-wing coalition calling itself that Conservative Action Project. At the time, all that I could figure out about it was that its membership included several Religious Right leaders and it seemed to operate out of the Council for National Policy. Today, the Washington Post examines the role that new media is playing in shaping and disseminating conservative messaging throughout the right-wing echo chamber and reports that the Conservative Action Project is playing a a key role in that effort through the weekly...MORE >

Staver Available For Everything ... Except Lisa Miller Coverage

SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Monday 01/11/2010, 3:15pm

I have been keeping track of how long it takes Mat Staver or anyone at Liberty Counsel to make any comment about their star-client Lisa Miller's disappearance with her daughter (it has been ten days, now).   While Miller and Liberty Counsel continually insist that Staver is "unavailable to comment" on the case, the fact is that he appears readily available for all sorts of other things, like appearing on Janet Porter's radio program last week or joining Lou Engle and other Religious Right leaders in Houston next week to protest a new Planned Parenthood facility... MORE >

Remember Back When the Right Hated The Filibuster?

SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Tuesday 11/10/2009, 4:55pm

Once upon a time, activists on the Right were vehemently opposed to the use of the filibuster against judicial nominees, declaring on principle that its use was flagrantly unconstitutional and calling on Senate Republicans to do away with the Democratic minority's ability to use them against President Bush's nominees. But then President Obama took office and made a Supreme Court nomination and those "principles" went right out the window and suddenly those who had been, just a few years earlier, decrying the filibuster as downright evil were championing it. Which brings us to this... MORE >

How Many Coalitions Does The Religious Right Need?

SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Wednesday 10/07/2009, 3:02pm

Over the last several months, we've been chronicling the seemingly endless emergence of new Religious Right groups and coalitions.  In recent months we've witnessed the arrival of the American Principles Project and the Faith and Freedom Institute, which was followed by Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom Coalition, while Newt Gingrich was unveiling his Renewing American Leadership effort, and Lou Engle was announcing his Call to Action.  And then a bunch of Religious Right leaders came together under the banner of the Freedom Federation, but apparently the Freedom Federation wasn'... MORE >

tpm

RYAN J. REILLY NOVEMBER 11, 2010

Another indicator of the changing of the guard in Washington came yesterday as dozens of representatives and leaders from conservative groups convened for a private meeting in the suburbs of Virginia. Representatives of a wide variety of Tea Party groups, mainstream conservative think tanks and right-wing media outlets came together to talk about the future of the conservative movement, TPMmuckraker has learned.

The agenda indicates that they attempted to hash out some of their priorities for the legislative agenda in the upcoming Congress, which will feature a GOP-controlled House for the first time in four years.

The hush-hush meeting was sponsored by theConservative Action Project (CAP), an offshoot of the Council for National Policy.

Reagan-era Attorney General Ed Meese, the head of the CAP (not to be confused with the liberal Center for American Progress), was scheduled to address the summit, which drew attendees with speeches from Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Rep. Tom Price (R-GA). Press secretaries for both members did not respond to requests for comment about their remarks.

Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway was also on the Conservative Leadership Summit agenda, along with Edwin Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation, and former Rep. David McIntosh (R-Ind.). Press representatives for Conway and Feulner did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment, but a secretary for McIntosh confirmed that he was speaking at the summit.

A group discussion was to focus on the outcome of the election and the future of the conservative movement. Attendees were also invited to discuss economic, social and national security issues, judicial nominations and state elections and issues.

Organizations scheduled to be represented at the meeting included the National Organization for Marriage, theMedia Research Center, Susan B. Anthony List, the Heritage Foundation, 60 Plus Association, the Federalist Society, the Family Research Council, Americans for Tax Reform, Concerned Women for America and the Tea Party Patriots.

Employees of theAmerican Spectator, the Washington Examiner and Human Events were also invited, as were John Fund of the Wall Street Journal and Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review Online (Lopez told TPMmuckraker she did not end up attending).

Republican House and Senate staffers from the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Republican Conference made the guest list alongside conservative luminaries like Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Republican super-lawyer Cleta Mitchell, ATR’s Grover Norquist, the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, RNC chair candidate Ken Blackwell, American Values President Gary Bauer and David Keene, the chairman of the American Conservative Union.

Frank Gaffney, the president of the right-wing Center for Security Policy who has raised fears over the imposition of Sharia law in America, attended the meeting, his secretary confirmed.

Kevin Gentry of Koch Industries — the oil and gas company which has funded Tea Party groups — was also invited, but declined to tell TPMmuckraker whether he attended, instead referring calls to Koch’s PR shop.

Patrick Pizzella, a former Bush administration official who is the only paid member of the Conservative Action Project, was out of the office and at a CAP event, according to the individual who picked up his phone. An e-mail to Pizzella was not immediately returned.

LI bs

urrent

• Principal at Patrick Pizzella, LLC

Past

• Assistant Secretary for Administration and Management & Chief Information Officer at U.S. Department of Labor
• Member, Board of Directors at Overseas Private Investment Corporation
• Chief of Staff at U.S. Office of Personnel Management

see all

Education

• University of South Carolina - The Moore School of Business

Connections

500+ connections

Patrick Pizzella's Experience

:{Principal:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px none;outline:none 0px;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}:

Patrick Pizzella, LLC

March 2009 – Present (4 years 6 months) Alexandria, VA

A management consulting organization focusing on government, administrative and public policy issues.

:{Assistant Secretary for Administration and Management & Chief Information Officer:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px none;outline:none 0px;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}:

U.S. Department of Labor

Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; Government Administration industry

March 2001 – January 2009 (7 years 11 months) Washington D.C.

Nominated by President Bush on April 25, 2001 and confirmed by the Senate on May 9, 2001 and served until January 2009. The Assistant Secretary served as principal advisor to the Secretary of Labor in the administration and management programs of the DOL and as Chief Human Capital Officer. While there the DOL's workforce declined by 7% and its discretionary budget authority fell from $12 billion in FY2001 to $11.8 billion in 2008--the largest decline in discretionary budget authority of the 15 Cabinet Departments from 2001-2008.

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Overseas Private Investment Corporation

Government Agency; 51-200 employees; International Trade and Development industry

January 2004 – April 2005 (1 year 4 months) Washington, D.C.

Designated by President George W. Bush to serve as a member of the Board of Directors of OPIC whose mission is to mobilize and facilitate the participation of United States private capital and skills in the economic and social development of less developed countries and areas, and countries in transition from non-market to market economies

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U.S. Office of Personnel Management

Government Agency; 5001-10,000 employees; Government Administration industry

2001 – 2001 (less than a year) Washington, DC

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is the federal agency responsible for upholding and providing oversight and compliance with federal Merit Systems principles, the formulation and implementation of policies and procedures relating to human resources management government-wide, and for administering health, retirement, and insurance benefit programs to more than nine million current federal employees, retired employees, and their survivors. As Chief of Staff, for the first eight weeks of the new Administration, I served in a confidential advisory role on substantive policy, organization and internal management matters.

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Bush-Cheney Presidential Transition

November 2000 – January 2001 (3 months) Washington, DC

Responsible for recruiting and coordinating a four person team to review GSA policies and make recommendations to the new Administration.

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Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds

March 1996 – January 2001 (4 years 11 months) Washington, DC

From 1996 to 2001, Pizzella was a member of Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds, L.L.P. policy practice group and served as a Government Affairs Counselor with responsibility for the coordination of the firm's grassroots and coalition's management practice.

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Federal Housing Finance Board

Government Agency; 51-200 employees; Banking industry

May 1990 – June 1995 (5 years 2 months) Washington, DC

The Federal Housing Finance Board oversaw the Federal Home Loan Bank System----a Government Sponsored Enterprise. As Director, Office of Administration, I served as the Agency's Chief Administrative Officer, with responsibility for supervision of the agency's $16 million budget, personnel functions, information systems, contracting and procurement, financial management, and general administrative services.

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U.S. Department of Education

Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; Government Administration industry

August 1988 – March 1989 (8 months) Washington D.C.

Responsible for the Department's personnel management, labor relations, training, procurement activity and administrative services. Other duties included being Audit Follow-up Official, Equal Employment Opportunity Official and representing Department on the President's Council on Management Improvement.

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U.S. Department of Education

Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; Government Administration industry

September 1986 – August 1988 (2 years) Washington, DC

Reported to the Deputy Under Secretary for Management and directed activities relating to personnel, management improvement, administrative services and the Federal Real Property Assistance Program

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U.S. Small Business Administration

Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; Government Administration industry

May 1986 – September 1986 (5 months) Washington D.C.

I helped coordinate support for the President's budget initiative to reduce the size and reorganize the SBA. I also assisted the Acting Administrator in putting together a team of SBA regional administrators who supported the Reagan Administration's cost-cutting policies

:{Special Assistant to the Associate Deputy Administrator:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px none;outline:none 0px;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}:

U.S. Small Business Administration

Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; Government Administration industry

July 1985 – May 1986 (11 months) Washington, DC

I worked closely with top-level management officials on matters concerning the Office of the Associate Deputy Administrator, particularly those issues pertaining to agency personnel and budget.

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U.S. General Services Administration

Government Agency; 10,001+ employees; Government Administration industry

1981 – 1985 (4 years) Washington, DC

I served as GSA liaison to the White House Office of Presidential Personnel. I handled many confidential matters involving agency personnel for the Administrator, particularly related to the hiring of 10 Regional Administrators and Schedule C and non-career Senior Executive Service appointments. I also assisted in the transition period and Senate confirmation process for Gerald P. Carmen to become Administrator of GSA.

Patrick Pizzella's Courses

• ### Director, Office of Administration

Federal Housing Finance Board

• • Managing Multiple Projects, Objectives & Deadlines
  • Stephen Covey Seminars
  • GSA Information Technology Forum
• ### Administrator for Management Services

U.S. Department of Education

• • Seminar for Senior Executives
  • Managing the Federal Real Estate Portfolio
  • Worker's Compensation
  • The Heritage Foundation: Improving Management Decisions through a Better Understanding of Public Policy
• ### Deputy Under Secretary for Management

U.S. Department of Education

• • Northeastern University Data Communications Buzzwords for Executives

Patrick Pizzella's Honors and Awards

• ### Top Doers, Dreamers and Drivers Award

Government Technology (GT) Magazine & Center for Digital Government

• • March 2005
• ### Outstanding Leadership Award in Support of Federal Government Management

President's Council on Management Improvement

• • September 1988
• ### America's Top Forty Performers in Public Service--40 years of age and younger

Management Magazine, a publication of OPM

• • March 1987
• ### Administrator's Public Service Award

U.S. General Services Administration

• • February 1984
• ### OPM Senior Executive Service Advisory Board

Director, U.S. Office of Personnel Management

• • March 1987

Appointed by OPM Director Constance Horner

Patrick Pizzella's Publications

• ### How to cut the budget, for real

• • Washington Examiner
  • September 1, 2011

Authors: Patrick Pizzella, James Carter

How the DOL actually cut spending during Secretary Chao's tenure.

Discretionary budget authority fell from $12 billion in fiscal year 2001 to $11.8 billion in 2008.

• ### 'Card Check'--A Time to Reflect, But Not Rest

• • The American Spectator
  • April 7, 2011

Authors: Patrick Pizzella

A brief summary of the eight year legislative history of the Employee Free Choice Act--from birth to burial.....but reminder to be vigilant.

• ### It's still Ronald Reagan's world

• • Washington Examiner
  • February 5, 2011

Authors: Patrick Pizzella

A look at the continuing impact of President Ronald Reagan on the 100th anniversary of his birth.

• ### Guest Commentary--Another View: GovBenefits.gov: E-Government vision realized

• • GCN
  • February 11, 2009

Authors: Patrick Pizzella

Since its inception nearly seven years ago, GovBenefits.gov has grown into what many consider to be one of the most successful e-government initiatives, serving as a resource for millions of the nation’s citizens. It has also revealed lessons on the expectations citizens have of their government and the challenges of making government resources readily available.

• ### Commentary: Staying Power: Continuity Led to Successes at Labor

• • Federal Times
  • February 1, 2009

Authors: Patrick Pizzella

Personnel is Policy--and continuity of Secretay of Labor Elaine L. Chao's appointees from 2001-2009 contributed to DOL's many successes.

• ### Department of Labor CIO Patrick Pizzella Talks Federal E-Government

• • Public CIO
  • December 22, 2008

Authors: Patrick Pizzella

The longest-serving cabinet-level CIO in the federal government, looks back over nearly eight years and reflects on the many e-government successes achieved at the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) under the leadership of Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao.

• ### MANAGING to GREEN at the DEPARTMENT of LABOR

• • The Public Manager
  • December 2008

Authors: Patrick Pizzella

Winter 2008-2009 publication...Successful implementation of the President's Management Agenda at DOL

• ### Good Management, Good Policy

• • American Society for Public Administration
  • December 2008

Authors: Patrick Pizzella

A review of eight years (2001-2009) of management and policy successes at Department of Labor published in PA Times Special Section on Success Stories.

• ### A Beneficial Union

• • Government Executive Magazine
  • October 1, 2008

Authors: Patrick Pizzella

Better technology combined with open labor relations can cut the cost of official time. 

Since 2004, Labor has reduced official time usage by 37,000 hours, or 40 percent, an average of three hours per bargaining unit employee. The department has been at the vanguard of official time management, decreasing those hours 16 percent from fiscal 2006 to fiscal 2007. According to OPM data for the same...more

• ### Employees Aid One Another

• • Federal Times
  • August 18, 2008

Authors: Patrick Pizzella

HR Executive's Viewpoint: Leave bank programs benefit Labor employees in need

• ### The Business of Government Hour

• • IBM Center for The Business of Government
  • January 12, 2008

Authors: Patrick Pizzella

Radio interview with Albert Morales and Steve Sieke

• ### Bringing New Skills to Labor

• • Federal Times
  • July 30, 2007

Authors: Patrick Pizzella

HR Executive's Viewpoint: MBA Fellows Program bolsters workforce

• ### Labor models getting 'green'

• • FCW: The Business of Federal Technology
  • December 12, 2004

Authors: Patrick Pizzella

DOL upgraded to a "green" score for e-government on the President's Management Agenda.

• ### Cutting Costs on Workers' Comp

• • Federal Times
  • October 11, 2004

Authors: Patrick Pizzella

The HR Executive's Viewpoint: Labor reduces injuries, illnesses, returns employees to work

• ### Top Score for Human Capital

• • Federal Times
  • June 7, 2004

Authors: Patrick Pizzella

The HR Executive's Viewpoint: Planning, coordination brought Labor to green

• ### Ask the CHCO (Chief Human Capital Officer)

• • FederalNewsRadio.com
  • January 20, 2004

Authors: Patrick Pizzella

Radio interview discussing: Talent development; Succession planning; and Recruiting

• ### The Business of Government Hour

• • IBM Center for The Business of Government
  • November 16, 2002

Authors: Patrick Pizzella

Radio interview with Paul Lawrence & Morgan Kinghorn