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Berman, Rick

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see CCF and bermn sic tag 6/15

also BERMAN 2 for later (2nd berman tag fail?)

NO MERRI

SEE CRC

SEE NOT THE EPA ADVOCACY HIT SQUAD ~ NRDC SIERRA CLUB

sw LAST EDIT 2018

CAPT 3 22

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7/16 i have no text on him

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WIKI EDIT WAR 5 25

Richard B. Berman (born 1942) is an American lawyer, public relations executive, and former lobbyist.[1] Through his public affairs firm, Berman and Company, he ran several industry-funded, non-profit organizations such as the Center for Consumer Freedom,[2] the Center for Union Facts, and the Employment Policies Institute.[3]

Berman's organizations have run numerous media campaigns concerning obesity, soda taxation, smoking, cruelty to animals, mad cow disease, taxes, the national debt, drinking and driving, as well as the minimum wage. Through the courts and media campaigns, Berman and Company challenges regulations sought by consumer, safety and environmental groups.[4][5][6][7]

:{Berman’s mantra is to “win ugly or lose pretty.”[8] He argues, “I believe in offense. Public relations firms mainly deal with crisis management. That is defensive in nature.”[9]

According to The New Yorker, “Richard Berman is something of a legend, often credited with taking the art of negative campaigning on behalf of undisclosed corporate clients to the next level.”[10] He devised an acronym to summarize his approach to public relations messaging (“FLAGS,” or fear, love, anger, greed, and sympathy), claiming that anger and fear are the most effective emotions to convey.[11]}:

Berman has appeared on 60 Minutes, The Rachel Maddow Show,[12] The Colbert Report,[13] and CNN[14] in support of Berman and Company-affiliated organizations. He claims he is “never afraid of an interview, even from a hostile source.”[15] 60 Minutes has called Berman "the booze and food industries' weapon of mass destruction," labor union activist Richard Bensinger gave him the nickname "Dr. Evil," and Michael Kranish of the Boston Globe dubbed him a "pioneer" in the "realm of opinion molding."[16] The “Dr. Evil” nickname comes from a 2006 USA Today story, which claims “Berman is the best, and apparently most hated, example of a third party hired by companies to be their public face as they take on unpopular battles.”[17][18]

On Berman's criticism of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) in 2009, Rachel Maddow claimed, "The people who are paying Rick Berman for his work, those people who think that their profits are threatened by what ACORN does, they‘re getting way more than their money‘s worth."[19] In 2013, The Huffington Post included Berman on its list of "America's Ruling Class Hall of Shame," describing him as a "sleazy corporate front man."[20] In a 2015 article, Salon criticized Berman as a propagandist, calling him "a gifted translator of biz-think into the common sense of the millions."[21] He was criticized in a 2018 episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on astroturfing.[22] Berman has responded to such criticism by stating that the groups he managed have acted as "watchdogs who question the motivation, tactics, and fundraising efforts of these powerful groups" and that targets "throw mud" instead of "debating the actual issues."[23]

Berman's son was songwriter and poet David Berman, who strongly disapproved of his father's work; this disapproval led to the two becoming estranged for around 13 years before David's death in 2019.

Early life

Berman grew up in the Bronx borough of New York City. His father ran a gas station. Berman did general labor at the business on weekends and summers while growing up. He attended Transylvania University in Kentucky.[24] After graduating from college in 1964, Berman went on to William and Mary School of Law and finished in 1967.[25]

Career

After law school, Berman worked as a labor law attorney for Bethlehem Steel, and from 1969 to 1972 he served as a corporate lawyer for Dana, an automotive parts company in Toledo, Ohio. From 1972 to 1974, he was employed as labor law director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C.

He moved into the food and beverage industry in 1975 under the mentorship of Norman Brinker, founder and owner of the Steak & Ale chain of restaurants. Considering Brinker his "hero," Berman started a government affairs program, launched his first PAC for Brinker, and worked there until 1984.[26] He served as executive vice president of Pillsbury Restaurant Group from 1984 to 1986. In 1987, he formed Berman and Company, a Washington, D.C.-based public affairs firm specializing in research, communications, and advertising. The company is known for placing opinion editorials in over 100 top newspapers every year.[27][28][29]

In 1991, Berman created the Employment Policies Institute to research entry-level work issues and argue "the importance of minimum wage jobs for the poor and uneducated." In practice, this translated to opposing minimum wage hikes that reduce employment, as determined by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and other sources.[30][31][32][33]

  1. Richard B. Berman (1995). Barbara Trach (ed.). "RICHARD B. BERMAN (quk06c00)" (PDF). Philip Morris (résumé). UCSF Library, Legacy Tobacco Documents Library. Retrieved 2012-10-15.
  2. "The Effects of a Minimum-Wage Increase on Employment and Family Income | Congressional Budget Office". www.cbo.gov. 2014-02-18. Retrieved 2023-07-21.
  3. Selyukh, Alina. "$15 Minimum Wage Would Reduce Poverty But Cost Jobs, CBO Says". NPR.
  4. "UW study finds Seattle's minimum wage is costing jobs". The Seattle Times. 2017-06-26. Retrieved 2023-07-21.

Michael Reich, a UC Berkeley economics professor who was lead author on the Berkeley report, said he found the UW team’s report not credible for a number of reasons.

In the 1990s, Berman was the president of Beverage Retailers Against Drunk Driving (BRADD), an organization formed to combat the alleged overreach of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.[34] As president, he argued for "tolerance of social drinking."[35] Berman also worked as a consultant for the Minimum Wage Coalition to Save Jobs.[36]

In a document released by The New York Times on October 30, 2014, from a talk that Berman gave to the Western Energy Alliance, he reassured potential donors about the concern that they might be found out as a supporter of one of his organizations: "We run all of this stuff through nonprofit organizations that are insulated from having to disclose donors. There is total anonymity."[37] He also touted his "win ugly" method of personal attacks on labor union leaders, environmentalists, and others who opposed him.[38]

Berman left Berman and Company and started his own consulting firm, RBB Strategies, in January 2023.[39] He is the Executive Director of the RAM Veterans Foundation, which operates the website CharitiesForVets.com, helping potential donors recognize the veteran charities most worthy of their support.[40][41] Berman’s goal is to “call out veteran charity scams,” grading thousands of American charities with military missions.[42][43]

Organizations

As of May 2009, Berman was the sole owner and executive director of Berman and Company, a for-profit management firm that ran fifteen corporate-funded groups, including the Center for Consumer Freedom. He has held at least 16 positions within these interlocking organizations.[44] As of 2010, just six of these nonprofits provided as much as 70% of Berman and Company's revenue.[45] Bloomberg News reported that, from 2008 to 2010, Berman and Company was paid $15 million from donations to his five nonprofit organizations.[46] The tax returns for the Berman-affiliated organizations are publicly available.[47][48]

Through these organizations, Berman and Company has received more than 60 "POLLIE Awards" since 2002 from the American Association of Political Consultants.[49][50] The company has also been featured in college textbooks for its issue advocacy campaigns.[51][52] Organizations founded by Berman include:

The Center for Organization Research and Education

The Center for Organizational Research and Education (CORE), formerly the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) and Guest Choice Network (GCN), is a non-profit advocate for the food industry and was formed in 1995 with funding from tobacco giant Phillip Morris.[53][54] The organization underwent a name change to become The Center for Organization Research and Education in 2017.[55] CORE generally promotes de-regulation in the marketplace against what it believes is encroachment by government or scare tactics promulgated by activist groups. CCF also runs the organizations HumaneWatch[56] and PETA Kills Animals, which criticize the practices of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), respectively.[57] The group also launched the Environmental Policy Alliance, or EPA for short, with a focus on exposing the financial support and undisclosed motivations of environmental advocacy groups.[55]

In 2011, the Los Angeles Times called CCF a “feisty and unapologetic warrior against what it sees as over-regulation of consumers’ habits.”[58] Berman smear campaigns allege that HSUS "gives less than one percent of the money it raises to local pet shelters,"[59] and that "PETA kills 89% of the adoptable dogs and cats in its care.[60] Berman's attacks on animal rights organizations have gained support from many individuals and organizations working in the agriculture and agribusiness sector, with The Intercept describing him as “skilled in engineering campaigns against public interest groups.[61][62]

In 2013, Charity Navigator issued a Donor Advisory stating that "the majority of the Center for Consumer Freedom's program expenses are being directed to its CEO Richard Berman's for-profit management company, Berman and Company."[63] The Chicago Tribune depicted CCF as an organization that "employs razor-sharp wit and unconventional tactics."[64]

Berman and Company does not publicly name its clients. 60 Minutes obtained a list of companies that received Center for Consumer Freedom marketing materials in 2002.[65] Among the parties named were The Coca-Cola Company, Tyson Foods, Outback Steakhouse, Wendy's International, Inc., Brinker International (parent company of Chili's and Macaroni Grill), Arby's, Hooters, and Red Lobster.[66]

HSUS and the Restaurant Opportunities Center have criticized Berman. HSUS has carried out its own investigations of CCF and Berman, and filed complaints about CCF with the IRS.[67][68] CCF has responded by filing its own complaint with the IRS against HSUS.[69] As of July 2023, the IRS has not taken action against either group.

American Beverage Institute

The American Beverage Institute (ABI) is a trade association opposed to laws intended to criminalize alcohol consumption, including the push to further lower existing blood-alcohol arrest thresholds. In 2017, ABI criticized Utah legislators’ decision to lower the state’s legal blood-alcohol limit from .08 to .05, running an advertising campaign that poked fun at the low legal BAC limit.[70] One advertisement read, “‘UTAH: Come for vacation, leave on probation.”[71]

Employment Policies Institute

The Employment Policies Institute (EPI) is a nonprofit research center opposed to raising the minimum wage, particularly in the labor-intensive restaurant industry. Time described EPI's work as helping to "lay the groundwork for the minimum-wage fight in 2014."[72] According to Time, “The voice that may matter most [in the minimum wage fight] is one many Americans have never heard of: Richard ‘Rick’ Berman, a public relations guru and former lobbyist who claims to speak for the small-business owners who run the nation’s diners and corner stores.”[73]

The Restaurant Opportunities Center has taken an aggressive approach in its campaigns against Berman's base of support within the National Restaurant Association and related enterprises.[74]

Center for Union Facts

The Center for Union Facts (CUF) fights against unions, which it argues are corrupt and bad for workers.[75] It has run full-page ads in major print media outlets (including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post), blaming corrupt trade unions for the bankruptcies of certain American industries. The CUF website purports that it is the largest online database of labor-union reporting on salaries, budgets, and political spending. CUF has produced TV ads alleging intimidation by trade unions. CUF is a non-profit; 2007 federal tax returns showed revenues of $2.5 million, with $840,000 being paid to Berman and Company for management services.[76]

Enterprise Freedom Action Committee

The Enterprise Freedom Action Committee is a political action committee.[77] The group spent $315,000 on a campaign against Donald Trump during the 2016 Republican primaries.[78]

In 2016, the Committee also launched “China Owns Us,” a public awareness campaign that is critical of the Chinese Communist Party’s increased involvement in American mass media.[79][80] After Dalian Wanda acquired AMC Theatres, the China Owns Us campaign drummed up opposition to Chinese acquisitions in Hollywood, warning federal lawmakers that Chinese-owned theater screens and production assets would influence people’s views about U.S.-China relations.[81][82] Berman claimed, “What I’m trying to do is stop somebody else from managing the culture here.”[83]

Personal life

Berman divorced his first wife in 1974.

Berman's son was songwriter and poet David Berman, who fronted the bands Silver Jews and Purple Mountains. David strongly disapproved of his father's work. The two had been estranged for around 13 years prior to David's death by suicide on August 7, 2019, at age 52.[84] David demanded that Berman cease his lobbying work or their relationship would cease; Berman refused. David described Berman in 2009 as "a despicable man", an "exploiter" and a "scoundrel."[85][86] After his son’s death, Berman wrote, “Despite his difficulties, he always remained my special son. I will miss him more than he was able to realize.”[87] In 2010 he said that his daughter is the person who has impressed him the most of anyone he has met.[88]

References

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sw 2018 EXCERPT (SEE BELOW)

Berman behind Movement to Sell off Public Lands

The U.S. Senate passed Amendment 838, "a non-binding amendment that called for the transfer of public lands, including National Forests, wildlife refuges and wilderness areas, to state control," on March 26, 2015.[15]

The 51-to-49 vote was mainly along party lines, with Senators Corey Gardner (R-CO), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) joining the Democrats in opposition.[16]

During the week of the vote, Will Coggins, a senior research analyst at Berman and Company, took out four nearly identical opinion pieces in Montana, Nevada, and Utah arguing strongly in favor of the transfer of public lands to the states while also attacking hunting and fishing groups as "green decoys."[17][18][19][20]

This coordinated public relations campaign suggests that Berman and Company is behind the movement to sell off public lands, AllGov reports.[15]

In response to the amendment's passage and the opinion pieces written by Berman and Company, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Executive Director Land Tawney wrote, "Nationally, an organized, concerted movement is underway to sell off and limit access to America's public lands and waters. These are not merely the actions of a lunatic fringe. Now is the time to double down and fight back against this ill-conceived idea."[21]

Think Progress reports that "[l]egal scholars have noted that these so-called 'land transfer' schemes are unconstitutional, economic analyses have found them to be fiscally reckless, and sportsmen's groups argue that they would result in diminished public access for hunting and fishing."[22]

Berman Pushes Congress to Pass Employee Rights Act

Toward the end of 2014 and into 2015, Berman, Newt Gingrich, and various Berman front groups began pushing Congress to pass the so-called "Employee Rights Act," a bill whose seven provisions are designed to further weaken unions and make it even harder for workers to organize. For example, on March 9, 2015, LaborPains.org, the joint blog of Berman front groups the Center for Union Facts and the Enterprise Freedom Action Committee, published a post encouraging Congress to pass the "Employee Rights Act," claiming a connection with Scott Walker's signing of a bill to make Wisconsin a so-called "Right to Work" state.[23]

The post followed months of opinion pieces taken out in major newspapers across the United States by Berman, Gingrich, Michael Saltsman, or various combinations of the three in support of the legislation.[24][25][26][27][28][29]

Although the "Employee Rights Act" claims to protect workers' rights, it does the opposite. San Francisco State University Professor John A. Logan noted:

"In a recent Washington Post op-ed, right-wing lobbyists Rick Berman and Newt Gingrich urged the new Republican Congress to enact the ludicrously mistitled "Employee Rights Act" (ERA), a bill so reactionary it could have been penned by the Koch brothers themselves. In the name of 'protecting' employee rights, the ERA would make it extraordinarily difficult for workers to choose unions and would give a virtual pass to unscrupulous corporations that coerce and intimidate employees. While it won't become law while the Democrats control the White House, the ERA provides an illustration of the draconian legislation that Republicans will unleash on workers if they win control of both the presidency and the Congress in 2016."[30]

Berman Using Front Groups to Attack Barack Obama's New Power Plant Rules

The Guardian uncovered in February 2015 that "Berman has secretly routed funding for at least 16 studies and launched at least five front groups attacking Environmental Protection Agency rules cutting carbon dioxide from power plants."[31] The Berman front Employment Policies Institute funded the reports, which were carried out by the Beacon Hill Institute, an ALEC-allied member of the right-wing State Policy Network (SPN) headquartered on the campus of Suffolk University.[31] The Beacon Hill Institute received $41,500 from the Employment Policies Institute to research the effects of the EPA rules.[31] According to The Guardian, "The reports, claiming the power plant rules would lead to rolling blackouts, send electricity prices skyrocketing, and devastate local economies, are being published in 16 states by a network of pro-corporate and ultra-conservative thinktanks."[31]

The Guardian quoted Jay Duffy of Clean Air Task Force when it reported that the Beacon Hill Institute's research and analysis are not academically rigorous: "BHI's interpretation of EPA's analysis just doesn’t hold up... BHI has skewed timelines, underestimated the social cost of carbon, and overestimated the effect on electricity prices. As a result, their study badly inflates the costs and minimises the benefits of EPA’s draft rules."[31]

Berman Exposed in Unguarded Advice to Fossil Fuel Execs

CMD posted new audio exposing Rick Berman's corporate PR spin machine in October 2014. Listen to the audio here:

<player>Berman_presentation.mp3</player>

Read more about this story on CMD's PRWatch here.

On October 30, 2014, the New York Times broke the news that a speech Rick Berman had given to oil and gas executives at an event sponsored by the Western Energy Alliance in Colorado Springs in June 2014 had been secretly taped, and that Berman told those gathered that "if the oil and gas industry wants to prevent its opponents from slowing its efforts to drill in more places, it must be prepared to employ tactics like digging up embarrassing tidbits about environmentalists and liberal celebrities."[8]

Attendees included representatives from Anadarko Petroleum,[8] Halliburton Company, ExxonMobil, Devon Energy, and Noble Energy.[32]

Berman told the executives they "must be willing to exploit emotions like fear, greed and anger and turn them against the environmental groups. And major corporations secretly financing such a campaign should not worry about offending the general public because 'you can either win ugly or lose pretty,' he said. 'Think of this as an endless war,' Mr. Berman told the crowd... 'And you have to budget for it,'" according to the Times.[8]

Bloomberg also reported on the leaked audio, noting that "Berman offered companies a way to anonymously target their environmental foes -- at a cost of as much as $3 million."[32]

Bloomberg spoke to Pennsylvania’s former top natural-gas regulator Michael Krancer, who said that industry supporters have no choice but to take Berman's advice and play dirty: "There is an anti-fossil fuel movement, and a very well-funded lobbying campaign is behind it," he told Bloomberg. "These are people who want to live in a dream world."[32]

Berman Explains his Playbook

Berman's remarks to his audience revealed a kind of Ten Commandments from his playbook:[33]

Other Quotes

According to a transcript of his talk, Berman also said:[34]

Rick Berman, Dubbed "Dr. Evil" by 60 Minutes...

Attack on Food & Water Watch, Sierra Club, and NRDC

On March 6, 2014, the Berman-run Environmental Policy Alliance ran a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal attacking Food & Water Watch, the Sierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) as "big green radicals" and announced its new website, BigGreenRadicals.com[64] Food & Water Watch responded with a blog post saying:

"He's been called an 'arch-enemy of do-gooders' by 60 Minutes. Thanks to his orchestration of massive corporate PR campaigns using 'deceptive corporate front groups' to discredit public interest efforts, he's earned the nickname 'Dr. Evil.'"

And now, thanks to our outsized effectiveness in relation to our relatively small budget, he's targeting us."We're honored to be called one of the 'Big Green Radicals' by notorious corporate lobbyist Rick Berman through his apparent latest astroturf operation, the Environmental Policy Alliance, a 'project of the Center for Organizational Research Education.' Ever heard of it? We hadn't either. After doing a bit of digging, we found out that the Center for Organizational Research Education was recently known as the Center for Consumer Freedom led by the head of Berman & Co. -- Rick Berman."[65]

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2008? HU SOC REPORT

richard-berman-ccf

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cattle network

:{Shortly after my interview with Wayne Pacelle appeared, I received an email message from Allison Miller, Senior Media associate for theCenter for Consumer Freedom (CCF).  She wrote, :{“I read your 5 minutes piece with Wayne Pacelle today. I was hoping you might be interested in speaking with Rick Berman, the Center for Consumer Freedom’s Executive Director. There were several charges unfairly leveled against our organization and Rick personally by Pacelle. Rick would like the chance to set the record straight for your readers and directly respond to Pacelle’s false statements.}:

}:

Mr. Pacelle did indeed say some harsh things about CCF and Mr. Berman. To fully understand the reasons behind Miller’s request, click here to read my interview with Mr. Pacelle.

The Center for Consumer Freedom is an interesting non-profit organization.  To understand it, here is some background information, courtesy of Wikipedia: “The Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), formerly the Guest Choice Network, is an American non-profit firm that lobbies on behalf of the fast food, meat, alcohol and tobacco industries. It describes itself as "dedicated to protecting consumer choices and promoting common sense," and defending "the right of adults and parents to choose how they live their lives, what they eat and drink, how they manage their finances, and how they enjoy themselves.

“CCF was set up in 1995 by Richard Berman, executive director of the public affairs firm Berman and Company, with $600,000 from the Philip Morris tobacco company to fight smoking curbs in restaurants. Berman told The Washington Post that CCF is now funded by a coalition of restaurant and food companies as well as some individuals;[2] according to the group's website it is supported by over 100 companies and thousands of individual consumers.[1] Sponsors are reported to include Brinker International, RTM Restaurant Group (the owner of Arby's), Tyson Foods, HMS Host Corp, and Wendy's.”

In the interest of fairness, I thought it was important to offer Berman equal time and we conducted the interview using the same format.  I emailed the questions to him and I’m reproducing his answers exactly as he wrote them.  No editing on my part.  I’ll leave the decision about the validity of any statement made by Pacelle or Berman up to you.

I encourage you to read both interviews carefully and then leave your comments at the end of either column.

Q.  A few weeks ago, I interviewed Wayne Pacelle and one of the major issues we discussed was a HumaneWatch news release about some alleged discrepancies in the HSUS tax return.  He dismissed HumaneWatch as a project of the “discredited Center for Consumer Freedom,” stating the Washington Post and USA Today had called you out as a shill for industry groups and 60 Minutes had called you ‘Dr. Evil.’

Would you talk about your business as well as respond to Pacelle’s charges?

A. It’s always amusing listening to Wayne Pacelle struggle to twist the truth to fit his warped reality. 60 Minutes never dubbed me “Dr. Evil,” but simply reported that it’s a moniker my labor union detractors employed (my friends also use it jokingly). Wayne also claims we “oppose anti-drunk driving campaigns” when in fact we support tougher drunk-driving laws—just not as draconian as some of the laws being pushed by MADD or others. In fact, MADD’s founder worked with our public affairs firm after she left the group.

The difference between Pacelle and a campaign like HumaneWatch is that all we do is shine a bright light on what’s already out there but not well known—like the fact that Pacelle has said “I don’t want to see another cat or dog born,” the fact that a number of his senior staffers were contributors to a terrorist-cheerleading magazine,

404 not wayback, all:

https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.humanewatch.org/site/post/*

or the fact that so little of the money raised by HSUS goes to pet shelters, where Pacelle’s donors think it is going.

Pacelle would lose an immense amount of support if his donors knew that HSUS was just PETA with a suit and tie, and he is desperate to tear down anyone who challenges his façade.

As for my business, Berman and Co., we manage several free-market non-profits and a trade association and provide traditional advertising and public-relation services to outside clients. It’s not an unusual structure, and Berman and Company’s ability to secure good ad rates is one reason that on paper it looks like a lot of money goes from these non-profits to my company. It does, but it doesn’t stay there—it then largely goes out the door to newspapers and other media companies or to pay a staff of 30 people.

Pacelle regularly acts as if money coming through my company like this is some kind of personal enrichment scheme. He bizarrely has obsessed on the fact that—after 45 years of working in the business world— I have a nicer house than he does. He even hired a man to take pictures of my home and videotape my car. It’s erratic behavior, especially since Pacelle himself pulls in $300,000 a year in compensation (that we can trace). Wayne often makes these claims while at the same time complaining that we run millions in advertising against his organization—he can’t have it both ways.

Q. What can you tell me about the funding of HumaneWatch?

A. HumaneWatch is a project of the Center for Consumer Freedom, which openly discloses support from foundations, restaurants, the food industry, and individual consumers. Like most non-profit groups, we don’t disclose individual donors. Melanie Sloan of CREW, a left-wing group that opposes us, attacks us for not disclosing our supporters Yet she herself says “I wouldn't have any donors if I revealed all my donors.”In fact we have a long list of anti-business groups that refuse to disclose donors. And you certainly won’t catch Wayne Pacelle revealing any sugar daddies of HSUS.

Q. About that tax return - talking about their donations to local animal shelters, Pacelle said “Let me underscore that HSUS is not a grant-making group or a foundation, just like the American Farm Bureau Federation or the National Rifle Association are not grant-making groups. Does the NRA just fund gun ranges, or the Farm Bureau fund farms, or the AARP fund senior citizen centers?”

Does he have a valid defense?

A. As usual, it’s more flimflam from Wayne. This time he is comparing apples and oranges. There are hundreds if not thousands of groups with “humane society” in their name, whereas that’s not true about “rifle associations.” And the AFBF is indeedaffiliated with state-level Farm Bureaus. That’s not true for HSUS and local humane societies.

Confusion among the public is vast and Pacelle surely knows it. He can try to talk around it, but that won’t change reality. We hired Opinion Research Corporation (CNN’s pollster) to survey the general public and found that 71 percent mistakenly believe that HSUS is an umbrella group for pet shelters. Even HSUS’s own donors are confused. We surveyed 1,000 self-identified donors and found that the vast majority gave to HSUS to support shelters or to reduce the pet euthanasia rate. A whopping 90 percent had no idea that HSUS gives only 1 percent of their donations to shelters, and 80 percent agreed that HSUS misleads people. And if they knew that Wayne was funding the executive pension plan at HSUS with millions more than the group has given to shelters, more than a few donors would be screaming for his head.

Q. The less than 1% donation to local animal shelters notwithstanding, would you go discuss the other items in the tax return that troubled you?

A. HSUS devoted nearly 40 percent of its budget to fundraising-related expenses. That’s nearly $50 million, and it’s one reason HSUS is known in some circles as a “factory fundraiser.”

Further, a good chunk of that money went into the pockets of a questionable organization called Quadriga Art. CNN exposed Quadriga recently for bilking veterans charitiesand Quadriga is reportedly under investigation in two states.

We’re not the only one taking note of this massive HSUS overhead. The nationally respected American Institute of Philanthropy gives HSUS an unflattering “D” grade and calculates that up to 50 percent of HSUS’s expenses are overhead. AIP’s executive director recently said of HSUS: “If you like getting those mailings and want to pay for more of them, support [HSUS]. If you want to give more for programs or services that benefit animals and advocate better rules and protections for animals, they are not a good target.”

HSUS says that it is “approved” by the Better Business Bureau, but readers should know that this is more Wayne Pacelle misdirection. Last week, USA Today reported that the BBB’s charity rating system is under fire from experts for taking money from the very groups it rates, raising serious questions about conflict of interest. HSUS pays the BBB thousands of dollars a year. U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) says this system “unquestionably” has implications regarding “credibility and possible conflicts of interest.”

Lastly, HSUS spent almost half its budget in 2011 on “advocacy and public policy.” This has caught the attention of U.S. Congressmen. In 2010, six Members of Congress wrote the IRS Inspector General citing this spending on advocacy and public policy as reason to believe HSUS may be violating its tax-exempt status.

We challenged Pacelle nearly three years ago to take the “50 percent pledge” and spend half of HSUS’s budget on pet shelters. We offered to close down HumaneWatch if he made good on that challenge. So far, we’ve heard nothing but silence from him.

Q. Pacelle also defended the size of his organization, claiming it was close to 11,000,000 and shouldn’t be limited to the slightly more than half a million who subscribe to their magazine, “All Animals.”  There is no doubt that regardless of membership size, HSUS wields considerable political and social clout.  Given their influence, does its actual size matter?

A. If HSUS is inflating its membership by 2,000 percent, then that certainly speaks to the lack of credibility of Wayne Pacelle and his minions. The difference between 500,000 and 11 million is considerable when it comes to walking into a legislator’s office.

Semantics aside, what does HSUS mean when it says its “constituency” is 11 million? We surfaced internal HSUS documents from the late 80s that show that about 34 percent of this figure was “prospects.”

HSUS’s actual size only matters because it shows how large this scam has gotten. Given the well documented gap between what Wayne Pacelle wants—a vegan world—and what his donors think they’re funding, it’s a big education opportunity.

Q. I asked Pacelle about the HSUS relationship with Quadriga Art and Infocision Management, two organizations accused of questionable practices.  I was disappointed that he didn’t answer the question directly.  Let’s go into some detail here – what are the accusations leveled at these two companies and what is the impact HSUS?

A. Wayne Pacelle didn’t respond directly to a question? I’m shocked.In all seriousness, this is yet another strike against the “factory fundraising” culture at HSUS.

Bloomberg exposed InfoCision this fall. Essentially, charities apparently entered into telemarketing contracts whereby InfoCision would build donor lists for them but in the short term keep most or all of the money raised. However, authorities figured out that the donors were being misled about where their money was going.

HSUS appears to have engaged in this deception. According to government filings, one California telemarketer working for HSUS was only sending 2 percent of the money it raised to HSUS, yet according to the script was telling donors that it was 40-50 percent. (Since charities sign off on these scripts, they should be considered complicit.)

As for Quadriga, CNN’s Anderson Cooper exposed this consulting and direct-mail firm for taking in the vast majority of money raised by two veterans charities and ananimal organization. The Senate Finance Committee is apparently looking into this, as are the attorneys general of two states. HSUS paid Quadriga about $25 million in 2009-2011.

We combed through HSUS’s direct mail, telemarketing scripts, and TV ads and compiled what we found into a report titled “Deceptive Fundraising Practices of the Humane Society of the United States.” Read it and learn more examples of how HSUS deceives Americans.

Q. Thousands of people read CattleNetwork.com.  What would you like to say to them?

A. To the farmers and ranchers: Keep doing what you’re doing. You’re vital to this country, and I doubt Wayne Pacelle has ever milked a cow or braved the Midwest winter at 5 a.m. to care for farm animals.

To all: HSUS may seem tough, but remember that it’s a defendant in a federal racketeering lawsuit, has drawn the ire of Congressmen and state political leaders, and in 2011 the amount of money HSUS raised decreased almost 7 percent.

Stand strong, stand together, and stay on offense. These campaigns take time but as long as you don’t tire prematurely you will prevail.

*Chuck Jolley is a free lance writer, based in Kansas City, who covers a wide range of ag industry topics for Vance Publishing.

---

NBCC's Op-Ed Campaign Follows Similar Attacks On The Clean Power Plan From Fossil Fuel Front Groups

Americans For Prosperity State DirectorsAreRunning Op-Ed Campaign Attacking Clean Power Plan.At least 16 newspapers across the country have published nearly identical op-eds from state leaders of Americans for Prosperity (AFP), which misleadingly cite statistics on electricity prices while calling for state legislatures to fight back against the Clean Power Plan. Every newspaper Media Matters reviewed except one failed to disclose the group's ties to the oil industry: AFP was founded, and continues to be largely funded, by the oil billionaire Koch brothers. *Media Matters*, [3/25/15]

Beacon Hill Institute And State Policy Network Also Seeking To Undermine EPA Climate Plan With Op-Ed Campaign.The Beacon Hill Institute (BHI) partnered with members of the State Policy Network (SPN) to jointly produce sham studies and op-eds that dramatically inflate the Clean Power Plan's projected cost without even analyzing the EPA's actual proposal. As of April 13, 11 newspapers in four states had published op-eds written mostly by executives from SPN groups or state legislators, but none of the op-eds disclosed the fossil fuel industry funding behind them. Both BHI and SPN have financial ties to the Koch brothers, and the reports themselves were funded by a group run by Richard Berman, a corporate PR executive who has solicited millions in funding from the oil and gas industry. *Media Matters*, [4/13/15]

The values and voices of America's diverse communities are too often excluded from the news media.

==

good news is that he's scared enough of tactic to steal it?

guessing just provided stats?

berman incmd hitclaim tobacco $;  30K in over $2 mil 1994? aclu AND wash legal

explicit strategy to support liberal farm groups, presumably as a front (small family farms hurt vs giant agribiz)

http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/tka13a00/pdf?search=%22economic%20policy%20institute%20dollar%22}:

==

To Washington insiders he is Dr Evil: [3] the hidden orchestrator of industry campaigns against the Humane Society, Mothers against Drunk Driving, and other seemingly uncontroversial groups.

Now Richard Berman, a one-time lobbyist turned industry strategist, has zeroed in on another target: Barack Obama’s new power plant rules [4].

Over the last year, Berman has secretly routed funding for at least 16 studies and launched at least five front groups attacking Environmental Protection Agency rules cutting carbon dioxide from power plants, the Guardian has learned.

The rules, the centre-piece of Obama’s climate agenda, are due to be finalised in mid-summer. They have come under sustained assault from industry and Republican-controlled Congress – and Berman is right at the heart of it.

The attacks may be gaining traction. The EPA chief, Gina McCarthy, suggested in a speech this week the rules were likely to change in response to public comment.

From the offices of Berman’s PR firm in Washington, at least five new front groups have launched attack ads against the EPA, environmental groups, fishermen and sportsmen, and green building organisations. The groups all use Berman’s address.

Meanwhile, theEmployment Policies Institute [5], a tax-exempt organisation headed by Berman and operating out of his office according to tax filings, funded a series of reports by an ultra-conservative thinktank, the Beacon Hill Institute [6].

The reports, claiming the power plant rules would lead to rolling blackouts, send electricity prices skyrocketing, and devastate local economies, are being published in 16 states by a network of pro-corporate and ultra-conservative thinktanks.

All of the reports were funded by EPI, according to Suffolk University, the host institution for Beacon Hill. Suffolk released a list of such grants. [7]

Berman did not respond to requests for comment. However, a spokesman, Jordan Bruneau, confirmed that EPI was funding the analyses of the EPA regulations.

“Currently IPA is working with economists [who?] to determine the effects of certain EPA regulations on particular states,” he said in an email. He said the research was entirely funded by foundations but refused to identify those funders.

Those familiar with Berman say he is a prime example of a new industry strategy of bypassing traditional lobbying organisations, and using thinktanks, foundations, experts, and social media to shape the public conversation and – ultimately – legislation.

“Richard Berman is very well known for certain front groups and for taking money from anonymous sources to fund aggressive campaigns in the interests of the individuals and the corporations who fund him with the understanding that that funding will be kept secret,” said Nick Surgey, research director of the Center for Media and Democracy.

Indeed, Berman claims his ability to hide the funding sources for such campaigns as a particular expertise.

“People always ask me one question all the time: ‘How do I know that I won’t be found out as a supporter of what you’re doing?’” Berman told a conference of energy executives last year. The talk was secretly recorded [8] and leaked to the New York Times.

“We run all of this stuff through non-profit organisations that are insulated from having to disclose donors. There is total anonymity. People don’t know who supports us,” Berman told the energy executives.

He claimed at the time to have already collected six-figure sums from some of the companies in the room – and solicited $3m more to defeat opponents of fracking.

On such a scale, the funding for an economic study taking down the EPA rules appears relatively economical. Beacon Hillreceived $41,500 from the Employment Policies Institute for a study of the EPA rules, according to the grants list maintained by Suffolk University.

The funds were allocated to produce reports on the impact of the EPA rules in 16 states including: Iowa, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Virginia, Louisiana, Rhode Island, Washington Ohio, Alaska and Utah, a spokesman for Suffolk University said.

The university spokesman said in an email that the grants followed university protocol. “Suffolk does not accept research funds from unknown sources,” the spokesman said in an email.

Beacon Hill is associated with a network of ultra-conservative groups working with the American Legislative Exchange Council and funded by patrons of anti-government causes such as the Koch brothers and Searle Freedom Trust.

Its director,David Tuerck, appears on the roster of experts at the Heartland Institute, which adopts an extreme-sceptic position on the existence of human-caused climate change. Tuerck has also featured as a keynote speaker at Heartland’s climate conferences.

He told the Guardian he had mixed views on climate change. “I am not certain that those emissions are significant enough to offset other factor changing the climate,” he said. But he was categorical that efforts to cut emissions were “a waste of time”.

“We are just heaping unnecessary costs on the American economy,” he said. “It’s as obvious as the nose on anybody’s face these EPA regulations are inevitably going to drive up electricity rates.”

Over the years, BHI has been accused of using discredited economic models to exaggerate the costs and downplay the benefits of government regulations.

“I think what is dangerous about BHI is that on the face of it appears to be an academic institute producing independent reports but when you peel back the first layer of the onion you find that Beacon Hill often skews reports in favour of their funders,” Surgey said.

In 2013, Suffolk University publicly repudiated Beacon Hill [9]after the Guardian reported the organisation told prospective funders its studies could undermine a regional climate change initiative. The claim did not follow Suffolk University rules for grant proposals, the university said.

Jay Duffy, a legal fellow at the Clean Air Task Force, said the current BHI analysis of the EPA rules did not meet the usual academic standards. “BHI’s interpretation of EPA’s analysis just doesn’t hold up,” he said. “BHI has skewed timelines, underestimated the social cost of carbon, and overestimated the effect on electricity prices. As a result, their study badly inflates the costs and minimises the benefits of EPA’s draft rules.”

BHI defended the study. “Our costs are within the broad range of costs that the EPA produces,” said Paul Bachman, who directly oversaw the study. “It’s just that we don’t include – we exclude – what they call the co-benefits of the proposal.”

Berman’s other forays into the environmental arena this year have been hard-hitting.

One prime example was the Environmental Policy Alliance– a mirror image of the government agency – which, according to the website, is “devoted to uncovering the funding and hidden agendas behind environmental activist groups and exploring the intersection between activists and government agencies”.

The group oversees four projects aimed at discrediting the government agency and environmental and conservation groups.

In a full page ad in Politico last year, one of the projects, EPA Facts [10], asked: “What would you call a radical organisation that threatens to shut down 25% of our electrical grid?” The ad crossed off responses including anarchist, terrorist and militia before coming to Obama’s EPA.

COI:]

Another Berman creation Big Green Radicals [11] claims environmental groups are funded by Russian oil interests close to Vladimir Putin, put up billboards on the Pennsylvania turnpike attacking Lady Gaga, Robert Redford and other celebrities who oppose fracking [12], and sent a poison Valentine to the fossil fuel divestment campaign. [13]

404

https://350.org/breaking-up-with-fossil-fuels-is-easy-to-do/

...The Environmental Policy Allianceis a front group for Big Oil that pushes out specious and inaccurate opposition research on individuals and organizations who fight climate change. The group is led by Rick Berman, who was taped by the New York Times as saying in a talk to oil executives that“you have to play dirty to win.”

After we watched it we laughed, then we laughed some more – then we had an idea.

Aaron Packard, our Oceania Region Coordinator, used his own narration skills to do a remix of the video.

*UPDATE* Looks like Big Oil didn’t like our parody and made YouTube take it down, but you can still listen to Aaron’s narration here – if Big Oil was honest, this is what they would actually say:

(if you mute the above video and start at same time – it’s the same hilarious effect)

Green Decoys [14]takes on sportsmen and fishermen who support the power plant rules. Leed Exposed [15] opposes green building codes.

The outrageous claims are a key part of the strategy, Berman has claimed. “Berman and Company isn’t your average PR firm,” his company website said. “We don’t just change the debate. If necessary, we start the debate.”

==-

1/15

anti union zones http://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/01/12720/ALEC-Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Two suburban Wisconsin lawmakers have unveiled an economic development plan for the lowest-income neighborhoods of Milwaukee, and their "solutions" for the Wisconsin communities hit hardest by deindustrialization come directly from a national right-wing playbook.

Rep. Dale Kooyenga (R-Brookfield) and Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) represent two of the wealthiest districts in Wisconsin and have no background in economic development, yet have proposed at 23-page plan targeting the majority-minority communities with the highest unemployment rates in the state -- and have done so without consulting any of the elected officials who actually represent the area.

"I don't understand how two suburban legislators can tell Milwaukee what they need without talking to Milwaukee legislators," said Sen. Nikiya Harris Dodd, a Democrat who represents Milwaukee. "It's really hurtful."

The plan promotes anti-union "right to work" zones, zero-corporate tax zones, and measures to turn public schools into for-profit charters, ideas promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

The proposals come against the backdrop of four years of failed economic policies. The harsh prescription of tax breaks for the rich and cuts in services for the poor that Governor Walker promised would revitalize Wisconsin's economy and balance the budget have failed to do either. Wisconsin remains 32nd in the nation in new job growth and the state faces a $2.2 billion dollar deficit. In January 2014, Rep. Kooyenga promised the Wisconsin State Journal that Wisconsin's structural deficit would be gone by 2015.

These policies have contributed to record inequality in the state, according to the Wisconsin Budget Project. As members of the Joint Finance Committee, Sen. Darling and Rep. Kooyenga have been key architects of this agenda.

"It's Breathtaking to Hear the Double Talk from Sen. Darling"

The "New Opportunities for Milwaukee" plan isn't the first time that Sen. Darling has felt comfortable deciding what's best for the state's largest and most diverse city, without regard for what its residents think.

In 2011, after Scott Walker became governor and Republicans took control of the legislature, Darling was one of the principal sponsors of a bill to ban local governments from guaranteeing workers paid sick days in the name of "uniformity." The law was aimed squarely at Milwaukee, where voters had overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure allowing workers to earn paid sick days to take care of themselves or a family member who is ill. (The law was then shared at an ALEC meeting and similar bills subsequently spread across the country.)

"It's breathtaking to hear the double talk from Sen. Darling," said Ellen Bravo, Executive Director of Family Values @ Work, a coalition of groups advocating paid sick days and other family-friendly policies. "A local policy of paid sick days in Milwaukee, democratically enacted by 70% of the voters, was not OK because the state allegedly needs a uniform standard. Yet a local policy of so-called right-to-work in Milwaukee, undemocratically imposed by the state, is just fine," Bravo said.

"Seems contradictory," Bravo added, "until you realize both positions undermine local control, hurt workers and serve the interests of corporate lobbyists."

Local Anti-Labor Zones Likely to Prompt Costly Lawsuit

...

berman superbowl ad ~ union

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/01/12721/union-busting-front-group-run-super-bowl-ad

in  what has become a local tradition, the front group Center for Union Facts will air an ad in Washington D.C. during the Super Bowl, *The New York Times* reports. When the union-busting organization did the same thing three years ago, Working America took to Twitter to point out the irony of running an anti-union ad during a “celebration of unionized players,” referring to the NFL Players’ Association, which is one of the most well-known unions in America.

Center for Union Facts is a $3.5 million-a-year organization, and part of a vast web of front groups funded and controlled by PR spinmeister Rick Berman. Once dubbed Dr. Evil by CBS’s 60 Minutes, Berman has launched a plethora of “deceptive campaigns against industry foes, including labor unions; public-health advocates; and consumer safety, animal welfare, and environmental groups,” according to watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

CMD has tracked Berman and his phony front groups for years and his deep ties to corporations and trade associations fighting better pay and benefits for working families.

In October 2014, Berman was caught on tape as he met with energy company executives and pitched his tactics to undermine grassroots environmental and labor organizations. "Think of it as an endless war," he told the deep pocketed executives. “I get up every morning and I try to figure out how to screw with the labor unions; that’s my offense,” says Berman, who has been a reliable waterboy for some of the worst wage-crushing institutions in America. Berman has had a long-standing relationship with the National Restaurant Association which has fought to keep the tipped minimum wage at $2.13 an hour for decades.

This weekend, Green Bay Packers quarterback and NFL Players Association union member Aaron Rodgers was named the NFL's Most Valuable Player. As someone who has stepped up to serve as a union representative, he knows that unions are not just for the elites, but everyone who wants better wages and working conditions.

==

see tag on NYT bust 

audio:  http://www.nofrackingway.us/2014/10/30/beyond-fracking-psyops-frackers-study-how-to-play-dirty/

WASHINGTON — If the oil and gas industry wants to prevent its opponents from slowing its efforts to drill in more places, it must be prepared to employ tactics like digging up embarrassing tidbits about environmentalists and liberal celebrities, a veteran Washington political consultant told a room full of industry executives in a speech that was secretly recorded.

The blunt advice from the consultant, Richard Berman, the founder and chief executive of the Washington-based Berman & Company consulting firm, came as Mr. Berman solicited up to $3 million from oil and gas industry executives to finance an advertising and public relations campaign called Big Green Radicals.

The company executives, Mr. Berman said in his speech, must be willing to exploit emotions like fear, greed and anger and turn them against the environmental groups. And major corporations secretly financing such a campaign should not worry about offending the general public because “you can either win ugly or lose pretty,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/us/politics/pr-executives-western-energy-alliance-speech-taped.html?_r=1

The audio of the talk to the frackers:

Background of Berman’s advice to the frackers:

“Endless War” Against the Environment and Other Rallying Points

This transcript of the speech made by Richard Berman in June in Colorado Springs to a group of energy executives, as well as other documents, provides a unguarded glimpse of Mr. Berman’s lobbying tactics.

“Think of this as an endless war,” Mr. Berman told the crowd at the June event in Colorado Springs, sponsored by the Western Energy Alliance, a group whose members include Devon Energy, Halliburton and Anadarko Petroleum, which specialize in extracting oil and gas through hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking. “And you have to budget for it.”

What Mr. Berman did not know — and what could now complicate his task of marginalizing environmental groups that want to impose limits on fracking — is that one of the energy industry executives recorded his remarks and was offended by them.

“That you have to play dirty to win,” said the executive, who provided a copy of the recording and the meeting agenda to The New York Times under the condition that his identity not be revealed. “It just left a bad taste in my mouth.”

Mr. Berman had flown to Colorado with Jack Hubbard, a vice president at Berman & Company, to discuss their newest public relations campaign, Big Green Radicals, which has already placed a series of intentionally controversial advertisementsin Pennsylvania and Colorado, two states where the debate over fracking has been intense. It has also paid to place the media campaign on websites serving national and Washington audiences.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Berman confirmed that he gave the speech, but said he would have no comment on its contents.

Mr. Berman is well known in Washington for his technique of creating nonprofit groups like the Center for Consumer Freedom that secretly collect corporate donations to finance the aggressive, often satirical media campaigns his team conceives. They are intended to undermine his opponents, like labor unions or animal rights groups that have tried to spotlight the treatment of animals at meatpacking plants.

“I get up every morning and I try to figure out how to screw with the labor unions — that’s my offense,” Mr. Berman said in his speech to the Western Energy Alliance. “I am just trying to figure out how I am going to reduce their brand.”

Mr. Berman offered several pointers from his playbook.

“If you want a video to go viral, have kids or animals,” he said, and then he showed a spot his company had prepared using schoolchildren as participants in a mock union election — to suggest that union bosses do not have real elections.

“Use humor to minimize or marginalize the people on the other side,” he added.

“There is nothing the public likes more than tearing down celebrities and playing up the hypocrisy angle,” his colleague Mr. Hubbard said, citing billboard advertisements planned for Pennsylvania that featured Robert Redford. “Demands green living,” they read. “Flies on private jets.”

But the speech, given in June at the Broadmoor Hotel and Resort, where the Western Energy Allianceheld its 2014 annual meeting, could end up bringing a new round of scrutiny to Mr. Berman and the vast network of nonprofit groups and think tanks he runs out of his downtown Washington office.Mr. Hubbard also discussed how he had done detailed research on the personal histories of members of the boards of the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council to try to find information that could be used to embarrass them.

Mr. Berman repeatedly boasted about how he could take checks from the oil and gas industry executives — he said he had already collected six-figure contributions from some of the executives in the room — and then hide their role in funding his campaigns.

“People always ask me one question all the time: ‘How do I know that I won’t be found out as a supporter of what you’re doing?’ ” Mr. Berman told the crowd. “We run all of this stuff through nonprofit organizations that are insulated from having to disclose donors. There is total anonymity. People don’t know who supports us.”

But Mr. Berman probably appreciated the criticism. As he explained in his remarks, what matters is increasing the number of people who see his work, which is part of the reason he intentionally tries to offend people in his media campaigns.What is unclear is if the hardball tactics that Mr. Berman has pitched will succeed in places like Colorado.

Already, The Denver Post editorial page, generally supportive of the oil and gas industry, has criticized Mr. Berman’s tactics, calling one video spot — featuring fictitious environmentalists who debate if the moon is made of cheese before calling for a ban on fracking — “a cheap shot at fracking foes.”

“They characterize us in a campaign as being the guys with the black helicopters,” he explained. “And to some degree, that’s true. We’re doing stuff to diminish the other sides’ ability to operate.”

==

http://www.prwatch.org/node/12543

On an almost daily basis, Miley Cyrus can be seen in grocery store lines on the cover of entertainment magazines and gossip rags. But now Cyrus is appearing in one place you might not have expected – on a billboard in Los Angeles denouncing higher wages.

The Employment Policies Institute (EPI), whose president is Richard Berman, the infamous PR flak dubbed "Dr. Evil" by 60 Minutes, reportedly purchased the image of Cyrus for a billboard attacking California's $9 minimum wage. Apparently, Berman's clients think that nine bucks an hour is just too much money for folks in Los Angeles, where the cost of living is skyrocketing.

The 72-year-old Berman may not know what twerking means, but he certainly knows how to exploit young people to advance his corporate agenda. Through the years, Berman has launched PR campaigns to convince people that smoking bans are bad, fast food is good, and tanning beds pose no risk of cancer.

Now, through his phony EPI think tank, he is working to convince America that a fair minimum wagewill harm teens and the economy, when the opposite is true.

Phony Think Tank Attacks "Raise the Wage" Campaigns

In recent months, the 501 (c)(3) tax exempt Employment Policies Institute (not to be confused with the Economic Policy Institute, a legitimate think tank packed with economists and PhDs) appears to have become supercharged, writing opeds in newspapers across the country and spending big bucks on high-dollar PR tactics, such as full page New York Times ads and TV commercials that warn America of the dangers of higher wages (not to mention the invasion of "commie" economists who back them).

The fact is that EPI doesn't know what it is talking about. A growing body of evidence, including a study of wage hikes during recent high periods of unemployment, shows that minimum wage increases do not cause job loss or slow rehiring. But that doesn't stop newspaper editors from accepting Berman's spin.

A recent review by CMD showed that only 3 percent of the time did newspapers correctly identify EPI as tied to Berman & Co. It isn't hard. As a front page *New York Times* story pointed out earlier this year, EPI shares an address with Berman & Co. and the PR firm "bills" the tax-exempt nonprofit for services, making it a highly questionable money making venture.

Even $2.13 Is Too Much for Berman

Not only is Berman's EPI fighting against rate hikes for general hourly employees, but it also fights tooth and nail against any effort to raise the wage for tipped workers. For 22 years, the federal tipped minimum wage has been stuck at $2.13 an hour, and the gap between the minimum wage and the tipped minimum has never been higher. While Berman likes to portray restaurant workers as young teens, the facts are that two-thirds of food workers are over 21 and 66 percent are women, many of whom are mothers. Some 3.3 million workers get this "subminimum" wage, and many need to rely on foodstamps and other public services to make ends meet. At the same time, restaurant industry profits and CEO pay are soaring, documents the Institute for Policy Studies.

Recently, Berman's EPI ran a wraparound ad in the Washington Post promoting another one of its proliferating websites, Tipped Wage. The ad shows a well-dressed white guy being erased and pleads, "Don't erase my job -- or my tips," as if tips would disappear if workers are given an increase in their $2.13 salary. In the ad, EPI claims to cite the "best economic research," which purports to show that restaurant employment will "dramatically" fall if wages rise. In fact, the best economic research shows that the states with the highest tipped wage have a booming restaurant sector and that raising the wage floor helps workers at the bottom as well as at the top of the wage scale.

But Berman's PR campaigns aren't limited to the economics. He seeks to distort the images of the groups fighting to raise wages.

One of the websites tied to Berman by an electronic "paper trail" isROCexposed.org, dedicated to tearing down the New York-based non-profit Restaurant Opportunities Center. Founded in memory of the restaurant workers who died on 9-11, ROC advocates for higher wages and fair treatment for restaurant workers. As CMD reported, Berman appears to have tag-teamed with an old client and tipped-wage foe: the National Restaurant Association. Dubbed the "Other NRA", the behemoth food industry lobby shop has apparently earmarked more than $600,000to attack the Restaurant Opportunities Center and lists ROCexposed.org as a key ally in those efforts. Similarly, Berman's attack website Activistcash.org spins tall tales about his critics, including the Center for Media and Democracy.

Berman's Anti-Environment Front Group Compares Obama to a Terrorist

Another of Berman's most recent PR campaigns involves the Environmental Policy Alliance (EPA), a front group created in the spring of 2014. "EPA" sounds like a ringing endorsement for all things green, and it uses a symbol that looks a heck of a lot like the symbol used by the actual EPA, but a closer look reveals an agenda that only the fossil fuel industry would love.

In June 2014, as a response to the Obama administration's announcement of new federal rules that will dramatically slash emissions from existing power plants, Berman's EPA Facts unleashed a full-page ad in both Politico and USA Today condemning the move as a radical threat to the country's energy resources. The ad compared the administration to a terrorist organization and trumpeted unsubstantiated claims that the rules threatened "to shut down about 25 percent of the energy that powers America's electric grid."

Berman's "EPA" frontgroup operates a number of websites, including Big Green Radicals, EPA Facts, Green Decoys, and LEED Exposed, each taking on a different issue within the environmental movement. Big Green Radicals spends a lot of time attempting to tear down groups like the Sierra Club and Food and Water Watch, an effective DC-based consumer group that fights to protect water and campaigns against fracking. FWW views the Berman attacks as a badge of honor and uses them to raise funds for their campaigns, not the result Berman would hope for.

Berman Group Alleges Animal Rights Group Abuses Animals

Berman is also fond of attacking people seeking to protect animals; he does this via his Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) front group.

In July 2014, CCF relaunched the attack site PETA Kills Animals. The site berates PETA for "dirty tactics," features graphic images of dead dogs, and calls for PETA to be "put down." Berman clients may be upset about PETA's effective campaigns against abusive factory farmingpractices that underpin cheap eats and the fast food industry. It should come as no surprise that sick and abused animals that are brought to PETA shelters often have to be euthanized. PETA discloses its data on these cases, and then Berman exploits those records to tarnish the organization.

In May 2014, another CCF website, Humane Watch, launched new ads, including one in USA Todaycharging the Humane Society of the United States with being corrupt and mismanaged. HSUS spokesperson Alan Heymann speculated that industry interests, like factory farms and puppy mills, are fearful of HSUS's work and were fueling the attacks to discredit the organization. He added that if Berman and his front groups really cared about animal welfare, they would choose to invest directly in other animal rights groups rather than slandering a reputable charity.

According to a report in LA Weekly, the use of Cyrus' image could land the Berman team in hot water: "Most celebrities are very litigious, and if [Cyrus] doesn't stand behind it they could end up being in a legal mess," said Steven M. Weinberg, an intellectual property and branding attorney. "It's okay to use something in an informational, First Amendment way, but if you look like she's endorsing it you could run into problems. If, in fact, this is not her position, then it may transcend First Amendment protection."

If Cyrus doesn't take action, next we will hear that she was spotted with President Obama shooting cats and dogs at an HSUS fundraiser. Nothing seems beneath the Berman spin machine.

---

Check out the Center for Media and Democracy's profiles of Berman front groups and attack websites in our SourceWatch wiki:

==

http://stophumanewatch.org/blog/web-of-lies

Organizations

Berman & Company, Inc.

Center for Consumer Freedom

Environmental Policy Alliance

HumaneWatch

ActivistCash

Humane Society for Shelter Pets

American Beverage Institute

Employment Policies Institute

Center for Union Facts

Employee Freedom Action Committee

First Jobs Institute

Center for Economic and Entrepreneurial Literacy

Miscellaneous

---

omg: http://bermanexposed.org/

AsStop HumaneWatchers, we have long followed the anti-animal attacks of Rick Berman and the Center for Consumer Freedom.  But we are also aware of his many other front groups http://bermanexposed.org/ campaigning on issues such as teachers unions, the minimum wage, drunk driving, high-fructose corn syrup, and tanning beds.

That’s why we figured it was only a matter of time before Berman moved into the anti-environment arena.  With large corporations and foundations plowing over $1 billion in untraceable dark money each year into front groups thatdeny climate change, we knew Berman would want a piece of that pie. 

Last week our suspicions were confirmed with the appearance of a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal targeting three environmental nonprofits: Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, and Food and Water Watch. 

Just who was behind the ad?  The ad itself pointed readers to a new website: BigGreenRadicals.com, a project of the “Environmental Policy Alliance” – not to be confused with the Environmental Protection Agency even though it had a similar name with the same initials, a classic Berman ploy. 

The website of Environmental Policy Alliance held another clue: its address of1090 Vermont Ave., NW Suite 800, Washington, DC 20005.  If that address sounds familiar, it’s likely you have seen the tax returns for Center for Consumer Freedom, which list the exact same address. 

Berman’s fingerprints

So what exactly is the Environmental Policy Alliance?  This new Berman front group has four campaigns:

All of these sites have Berman’s fingerprints all over them.  Never one for self-reflection, Berman takes the criticisms that opponents have made of his clients and tries to turn them around on his targets. 

For example, where environmentalists have charged that the oil-friendly Bush White House muzzled science to fit its politics, Berman’s EPA Facts claims the EPA uses “agenda-driven science.”

Where critics have pointed to right-wing foundation funding for climate-denial front groups like the Heartland Institute, Berman’s Green Decoys claims conservation groups likeTrout Unlimited receive funding from what it calls “environmentalist foundations.”

And just as HumaneWatch paints the Humane Society of the United States as having a gigantic budget – never mind that the HSUS’s net worth is 4.6 percent that of Cargill – so Big Green Radicals paintsFood and Water Watch as “among the most powerful … voices pushing the green agenda” – despite the fact its budget is*0.0026 percent of Exxon’s.

Who’s footing the bill?

Obviously someone has hired Berman to go after these environmental organizations.  The question is, who?  Berman does not list who funds his smear campaigns on any of his websites, but it’s not hard to figure out which industries are footing the bill, even if we don’t know specifically which corporations. 

Green Decoys, for example, seems particularly offended that Trout Unlimited has come out in favor of regulations on hydraulic fracturing,or fracking.  TU isn’t against fracking altogether, just against unregulated fracking – but that’s enough to merit a smear campaign from Berman. 

Big Green Radicals attacks not just Food and Water Watch’s opposition to fracking, but its campaign to label genetically modified food.  The Sierra Club is also attacked for its campaigns against fossil fuels and GMO foods, as well as its defense of the Endangered Species Act. 

And LEED Exposed turns what ought to be a no-brainer – energy efficient construction of new buildings – into a political issue.  Who could possibly be against energy efficient buildings?  As it turns out, plastics, vinyl, and chemical companies that supply inefficient and sometimes toxic building materials don’t like LEED very much — they are behind a push for federal agencies and state governments to ban use of LEED certification. 

Just this month, LEED Exposed released a new report claiming that LEED-certified buildings are not as energy efficient as traditional buildings.  That report was covered by Berman’s old friend the Daily Caller in a story made available for free to other outlets, and by the National Review, which is currently being sued for defamation after comparing climate scientist Michael Mann to child molester Jerry Sandusky. 

While both outlets happily quoted Berman employee Anastasia Swearingen, neither bothered to mention who her boss is, nor that the Environmental Policy Alliance occupies the same Washington, D.C., offices as the Center for Consumer Freedom.  Fortunately these facts did not escape the U.S. Green Building Council, which refuted the report and linked it back to Berman. 

Rebranding

Amidst all of our questions about the new territory Berman is venturing into, one thing caught our eye.  While Big Green Radicals, LEED Exposed and the other new smear campaigns are all projects of the Environmental Policy Alliance, which lists the same address as Center for Consumer Freedom, the Environmental Policy Alliance is itself a project of something we had never heard of called the Center for Organizational Research and Education. 

The Center for Organizational Research and Education has no web footprint whatsoever.  Google it, and you will not find a website, or even a mention of it on a parent company site. 

That’s because, as noted by Architect Magazine, Center for Organizational Research and Education is the new name ofCenter for Consumer Freedom.  CCF formally changed its name in a filing with the West Virginia secretary of state on January 30. 

Why has Rick Berman taken the extreme step of changing the name of Center for Consumer Freedom?  A couple of possibilities come to mind. 

First, Center for Consumer Freedom has been thoroughly exposed as a front group for Big Food and Big Ag by Stop HumaneWatch and others, including pretty much every major media outlet in the country. 

When companies’ reputations are damaged beyond repair, they often respond by simply changing their name, such as when tobacco company Philip Morris changed its name to Altria shortly after settling the landmark case over health care costs related to smoking with a group of state attorneys general. 

A new direction?

Perhaps Berman plans to take his Center for Organizational Research and Education in a new direction, making the attacks on environmental organizations front and center while pushing the attacks on animal welfare groups to one side.  After all, most major food producers including Smithfield and McDonald’s have already agreed to adopt more humane practices such as phasing out gestation crates. 

The National Pork Producers Council may still hate HSUS, but let’s face it: Their budget pales in comparison to Big Oil, Big Coal, and Big Gas, who have a lot of money and a lot of reason to spend it with all the climate change regulations likely to start coming down the pike. 

Still, we don’t think HumaneWatch is going anywhere.  As long as someone is paying Berman, he will keep running it, even as he creates new campaigns and hires more Washington operatives willing to sell their souls for profit.  And some players in the Big Ag community seem happy to keep throwing their money at Berman, even though not a single one of his campaigns against the HSUS has had an effect. 

Despite all of Berman’s efforts, HSUS donations continue to grow and its programs continue to expand.  The fact is, most people support policies to treat animals with kindness, and the HSUS is the most effective organization in the country at getting these policies put into place. 

People also generally like clean air and clean water.  So if Berman truly is changing his emphasis from anti-animal campaigns to anti-environment, we don’t expect him to be any more successful there either. 

 ==

huffpo

W YORK -- A front group for Washington, D.C.-based public relations firm Berman & Company is back with new targets: green buildings, green groups and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Berman & Co., helmed by Rick Berman (who was once called "Dr. Evil" by CBS' "60 Minutes"), has a long history of running campaigns on behalf of the food and beverage industry under the banner of the Center for Consumer Freedom. Earlier this year, CCF changed its name to the Center for Organizational Research & Education, according to documents filed with the Government of the District of Columbia and the North Carolina Secretary of State's Office, which were obtained by The Huffington Post. The group also recently launched the cleverly named Environmental Policy Alliance, or EPA for short, a group "devoted to uncovering the funding and hidden agendas behind environmental activist groups."

An Environmental Policy Alliance spokesperson told HuffPost that the name change is part of a "restructuring" to "broaden the work that we're doing." The CCF will continue to exist, but alongside the "EPA" under the umbrella of the Center for Organizational Research & Education.

Thenew Environmental Policy Allianceappears to be one of Berman's first major forays into energy and environmental policy. The new "EPA" targets the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which it deems "America's most powerful environmental activist."

Berman's "EPA Facts" site suggests that the connection between rising greenhouse gas emissions and warming temperatures is "still unclear," despite the fact that scientists have a solid understanding of the correlation. The group also argues that there are flaws in the work of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, citing reports from two well-known climate change-denying groups, the Heartland Institute and the George C. Marshall Institute.

CCF's Environmental Policy Alliance also launched a campaign called "LEED Exposed" last week, which critiques the usefulness of the U.S. Green Building Council's rating system for sustainability and efficiency of buildings. The group's "research" purports to show that "LEED-certified buildings use more energy and are more expensive" than uncertified buildings.

"This latest data release only confirms what we already knew: LEED certification is little more than a fancy plaque displayed by these 'green' buildings," Berman staffer Anastasia Swearingen said in a press release announcing the launch of the campaign on Feb. 28.

Swearingen also wrote an anti-LEED op-ed for Forbes in December 2013, arguing, "we're clearly not spending that money wisely."

A closer look at LEED Exposed's methodology reveals a significant omission. The report concludes that, as a whole, LEED-certified buildings in Washington, D.C., use more energy than buildings without the certification. But the analysis only looks at the energy use of buildings relative to size, or what is known asenergy use intensity.

EUI is only one of several recognized benchmarks used by building professionals to assess a building's efficiency, and looking at it in isolation ignores the importance of building density. Thus a large, abandoned building would score well for EUI, because its energy use is quite low relative to size.

"Their goal is just to confuse you," Scot Horst, the senior vice president of LEED at the U.S. Green Building Council, told HuffPost. Most Americans are unfamiliar with terms like energy use intensity, he explained, and may not fully grasp the complexities of assessing efficiency. EUI is "only a very partial snapshot of what's happening," according to Horst, and ignoring other measurements "leads to very unfair comparisons."

Groups like the American Chemistry Council and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represent the wood, plastics and vinyl industries, have bashed LEED in the past.

Swearingen told HuffPost that the alliance doesn't solely represent business interests, arguing that all Americans have a vested interest in affordable energy.

"Berman makes his money as a corporate hired gun, setting up front groups to denigrate public interest organizations that threaten his clients' bottom lines," Melanie Sloan, executive director for the nonprofit watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington told HuffPost. "I'm not surprised he's attacking groups and agencies focused on the environment, given the deep pockets of those interested in paying to stop climate change legislation and regulation."

"These methods of attack rely on the way people read media," Horst added. "They rely on creating confusion."

Manufacturing doubt around scientific issues and sowing confusion through the media is a well-documented industry strategy -- one that Berman has often employed.

Berman & Co. has previously attacked organizations like the Humane Society of the United States and Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and campaigned against minimum-wage increases and unionization.

The Environmental Policy Alliance also ran a full-page ad in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, claiming that the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Food & Water Watch "are using scare tactics and junk science to push policies that increase the cost of energy."

"This feeble attempt at a smear campaign is a good reminder to always consider the source," an NRDC spokesperson told HuffPost. "As opposed to this newly re-named front group, we've been around for decades. We cite our research. We sign our names on our materials. And we don't lurk in the shadows because there's no reason to hide our good work to protect our air, our water and our communities."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/07/environmental-policy-alliance-berman_n_4913303.html?ir=Green&utm_campaign=030714&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Alert-green&utm_content=Title

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Scholars at UC Berkeley recently released a study finding that low wages in the fast food industry cost taxpayers $7 billion every year [3] in a raft of social supports that subsidize the salaries of these low-income workers. The professors argue that the minimum wage should be increased to relieve the burden on taxpayers who underwrite super-sized restaurant industry profits.

PUNKED

Richard Berman

But as the bona fide academic study rolled out, multiple media outlets ran comments criticizing the report’s numbers and methodology from the scholarly sounding “Employment Policies Institute (EPI).” The Austin Business Journal [4] characterized EPI as a think tank “which studies employment growth,” while theMiami Herald [5] ran a quote from Michael Saltsman, who the paper named as EPI’s “research director.”

For his part, Mr. Saltsman ran aggressive op-eds against any minimum wage increase in papers such as the The Missoulian [6], where he was described as EPI’s “research fellow.” In an op-ed he wrote for the Washington Post [7], his title was listed as EPI’s “research director” but with a notation that EPI “receives funding from restaurants, among other sources.” But even this partial disclosure provides a disservice to readers in the nation’s capital.

In fact, the Employment Policies Institute operates from the same office suite [8] as Berman and Company, a public relations firm owned by Richard Berman [8]. This is not an opinion; it’s a fact anyone can verify by viewing EPI and Berman and Company’s websites. The 990 for the Employment Policies Institute Foundation (EPIF)lists Rick Berman as the CEO; in 2011 his for-profit firm was paid $1.5 million of EPIF's total $2.1 million budget. If you’re wondering how a PR company could so easily fool newspapers across the country—including the Post, which regularly pats itself on the back for breaking Watergate—then you haven’t woken up to the crisis of American journalism.

According to Pew Research Center [9], newspaper newsrooms have shrunk 30% since 2000, leaving fewer than 40,000 newspaper employees across the country, the lowest number since 1978. In such a depressed media environment — where there are four public relations flacks for every reporter, compared to a 1-to-1 ratio in the 1960s – it is not surprising that a P.R. company could successfully rebrand itself as a think tank and capitalize on an acronym held by an actual think tank, the Economic Policy Institute, with 20 staff and 36 respected research associates. Unilke the Berman group, the Economic Policy Institute lists its staff, its raft of experts, its board, its annual report and its annual audit, which shows its funders, right on its website[10].

At theCenter for Media and Democracy [8], we have spent twenty years tracking disinformation and spin, and Richard Berman has long been one of our favorite research subjects. Berman came out of the restaurant industry, spending several years as a top executive at Steak and Ale before launching Berman and Company to help advocate for corporate America. His clients have included tobacco companies (for which he formed an entity he called the Center for Consumer Freedom) and the alcohol industry (for which he created the American Beverage Institute). He was once profiled on a 60 Minutes piece titled “Dr. Evil.” But one of his most successful products has been the Employment Policies Institute.

EPI regularly opines in the press on a host of topics. Recently EPI has been working to show that restaurant workers don’t need higher wages or paid sick days, but few Americans are informed by the press that this “think tank” is just one or two working for spinmeister Berman, likely on a contract for the restaurant industry.

We recently analyzed three years of newspaper stories from across the country that quoted from EPI or Michael Saltsman.

In 83% of the stories we examined, reporters provided readers with no information about EPI’s relationship with Berman and Company. In most cases, journalists stated that EPI is a “Washington DC nonprofit” and called Saltsman a “research director.” In some instances, reporters took tentative steps in the right direction and called EPI “conservative” or “pro business.” Only about 3% of the time did they correctly link EPI to Berman and Company.

Failing to note EPI’s role as an arm of Berman and Company fools readers into thinking they are a legitimate and independent voice in national politics.In 37% of stories we found reporters tapped EPI to counter positions by government experts or politicians; in 39% EPI was used to counter policy experts at nonprofits; and 22% of the time, EPI was used as a counterpoint to academics at American universities.

Certainly corporations have a right to have their voice heard, but that voice should be their own; not that of phony experts on retainer.

This article originally appeared in Salon.  [11]

Topics: Corporate Social Responsibility [12]  Economy [13]

News Types: Op-Ed [14]

Attachment Size

rick_berman_empi_990_filed_11-9-12.pdf [15] 1.67 MB

PR Watch is published by the Center for Media and Democracy. © Center for Media and Democracy 2013.

Source URL: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/11/12306/don%E2%80%99t-be-hoodwinked-pr-firm-posing-think-tank

Links:

[1] http://www.prwatch.org/users/35268/lisa-graves

[2] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/11/12306/don%E2%80%99t-be-hoodwinked-pr-firm-posing-think-tank

[3] http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-worst-minumum-wage-bill-before-the-dc-council/2013/10/18/77cc1dc8-34f3-11e3-80c6-7e6dd8d22d8f_story.html

[4] http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2013/10/16/most-texas-fast-food-employees-use.html

[5] http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/10/15/3691189/report-burger-king-workers-collecting.html

[6] http://http://missoulian.com/news/opinion/columnists/how-a--cent-wage-increase-hurts-montana/article_75ce8f3e-37fe-11e3-b963-0019bb2963f4.html

[7] http://http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-worst-minumum-wage-bill-before-the-dc-council/2013/10/18/77cc1dc8-34f3-11e3-80c6-7e6dd8d22d8f_story.html

[8] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Berman_%26_Co.

[9] http://stateofthemedia.org

[10] http://www.epi.org/about/

[11] http://www.salon.com/2013/11/13/corporate_americas_new_scam_industry_p_r_firm_poses_as_think_tank/

[12] http://www.prwatch.org/topics/corporations/corporate-social-responsibility

[13] http://www.prwatch.org/topics/economy

[14] http://www.prwatch.org/news-types/op-ed

[15] http://www.prwatch.org/files/rick_berman_empi_990_filed_11-9-12.pdf

==

fake animal rights orgs crypto

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Michael Saltsman's Overview

Education

Connections

169 connections

Michael Saltsman's Volunteer Experience & Causes

Neutral Zone Ann Arbor

2004 – 2005 (1 year)

Camp Fa Ho Lo

2003 – 2004 (1 year)

Michael Saltsman's Languages

 (Elementary proficiency)

Michael Saltsman's Education

University of Michigan

Bachelor of Arts, Economics; Political Science

2001 – 2005

Activities and Societies: Resident Advisor, Campus Crusade for Christ, Writer for The Michigan Daily, Writer for The Michigan Review

Lake Orion High School

High School Diploma

1997 – 2001

---

fish: Sarah Longwell 

 Eric Schlecht Eric Schlecht 

 Rick Berman Rick Berman

Owner, Berman and Company and...

 James Bowers James Bowers 

SVP | Creative Director

 Will Coggin Will Coggin http://www.consumerdeception.com/minion.asp**

Senior Research Analyst at Berman and...

 Jacob Abrams Jacob Abrams 

Government Affairs Associate at Berman...

 J. Wilson J. Wilson 

Director of Communications at Institute...

 Ryan Mills Ryan Mills 

---

sercwtch:

Richard B. (Rick) Bermanis a former labor management attorney and restaurant industry executive who currently works as a lobbyist for the food, alcoholic beverage and tobacco industries. He is the sole owner of Berman & Co., which sponsors many non-profit front groups that defend his corporate clients' interests by attacking their critics, allowing his paying clients to remain out of public view.

He is the President, Executive Director and Director of theCenter for Consumer Freedom(CCF). CCF's 2005 IRS return states that Berman works 23 hours a week for the group for which he is paid $18,000. [1] In spite of its name, CCF is more concerned about industry than the consumer. He is also the Executive Director and President of the Employment Policies Institute Foundation the American Beverage Institute and the Center for Union Facts. [2]

According to a July 31, 2006, profile of Berman in USA Today, his company has28 employees and takes in $10 million[hmn]dollars a year, but "only Berman and his bookkeeper wife" know how much of the $10 million ends up in their own pockets. [2]

Rick Berman has earned the nicknames "Dr. Evil," the "Conservatives' Weapon of Mass Destruction" and the "Astroturf Kingpin"for his repeated use of the strategy of forming non-profit front groups that advocate for the interests big business while shielding those same businesses from disclosing financial support for these efforts.[3][4]

Contents

   * 1 Work history

   * 2 Tobacco industry involvement

   * 3 Pro-Alcohol industry activity

   * 4 Anti-ACORN activity

   * 5 Advocating for Food Industry

   * 6 Alar

   * 7 Americans with Disabilities Act

   * 8 Ethics violations

   * 9 Court ruling against Berman

   * 10 People to call concerning their experiences with Richard Berman

   * 11 Contact

   * 12 Articles and resources

         o 12.1 Related SourceWatch articles

         o 12.2 References

         o 12.3 External resources

         o 12.4 External articles

Work history

   * 1967-1969: Labor Law attorney, Bethlehem Steel

   * 1969-1972: Corporate law attorney, Dana Corp. (automotive parts)

   * 1972-1974: Labor law director, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

   * 1975-1984: Senior Vice President, Steak and Ale (restaurant chain)

   * 1984-1986: Executive Vice President, Pillsbury RestaurantGroup

   * 1986-present: President, Berman &Co. (lobbying group)

Source: interview with Berman in Chainleader.com[3]

Tobacco industry involvement

Rick Berman conceived the idea of the Guest Choice Network, a front group to help advance the goals of Philip Morris' Accommodation Program while appearing to be more of a grass-roots-led effort. [5] Berman became head of the Guest Choice Network. Berman cites an Oak Ridge National Laboratory/Roger Jenkins study that downplays the effects of secondhand smoke. Berman is also counsel for the American Beverage Institute, which also fronts for the tobacco industry.

Philip Morris funded Guest Choice Network, also known in PM's files as "Vendor #340875." Evidence of PM funding is a check for $200,000 dated May 29, 1996, to fund "Guest Choice Network and its activities."[6] and a check for $600,000 dated December 15, 1995.[7] A March 28, 1996 PM "privileged and confidential" email from Marty Barrington to Denise F. Keane, both of PM, states,

   You'll remember that PM USA Corp. Affairs contributed $600,000 in '95 to get this Network, organized by Rick Berman, up and running. Berman is now looking for another $300,000, principally for an educational newsletter, and Corp. Affairs wants to contribute. As of this writing, PM USA is still the only contributor, though Berman continues to promise others any day now ...[8]

Philip Morris saw Berman as a "hospitality industry insider as well as a legislatively astute individual" who could help them achieve their goal of preserving smoking in restaurants. Barbara Trach at PM wrote in an October 1995 memo that "Berman's current client list is a virtual who's who in the chain restaurant industry." Berman was introduced to Philip Morris through employees of Miller Beer, who were familiar with him and his work. Berman originated PM's strategy of broadening the focus of the "smoking issue," and "expanding it into the bigger picture of over-regulation."[9]

Pro-Alcohol industry activity

Berman formed a group called Beverage Retailers Against Drunk Driving" (BRADD), a pro-social drinking group, in response to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).[10]

Anti-ACORN activity

For several years, Berman has been fighting efforts by the voter registration/community organizing groupACORN(Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to raise theminimum wage at the state and federal levels. To assist with his efforts, Berman created a Web site, www.rottenacorn.com, slamming the group. Contact information on RottenACORN.com directs readers to the Employment Policies Institute,[11] a Berman front group which shares the same address as Berman's lobbying business, Berman & Company.[12]

In the fall of 2008, prior to the general election, a full-page, anti-ACORN ad appeared in the New York Times that accused ACORN of a list of abuses that would make the group appear hypocritical: intimidating and firing its own employees when they try to unionize, misappropriating millions of dollars from taxpayer-funded government grants and advocating minimum wage hikes while paying its own employees less than minimum wage. The ad did not indicate what person or organization had funded it.[13]In an October 29, 2008 article, the investigative journalism group ProPublica revealed that the ad and the Web site "RottenACORN.com" are funded by Rick Berman's Employment Policies Institute, which has among its clients, the American Beverage Institute, a trade group for bars and restaurants.[14] youtube aMSVnTiw97U

Advocating for Food Industry

As head of the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), a front group for the restaurant, tobacco, and alcohol industries, Berman has specialized in the no-holds-barred intimidation tactics pioneered by Big Tobacco. Berman confirms that organizations like his,by keeping their corporate sponsors anonymous, can engage in edgier PR by providing safe shelter for individual corporations: "There's no doubt about that. Most trade associations try to insulate individual companies and brand names from cutting-edge rhetoric."[15] In 2000, the Center for Media and Democracy found that Berman and Co., Inc. was paid $256,077 by CCF for "management services," although CCF did not report paying any income to any of its employees.[16]

Berman has written a number of strategically placed op-ed articles in leading newspapers on behalf of CCF. On August 26, 2004, for example, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution printed "Soft Drink Hysteria Hard to Swallow," in which Berman trashed a study published that week in the Journal of the American Medical Association that showed a clear connection between soda consumption and diabetes: "Frankly, the contortions that the authors went through to demonize soda would make our own gold medal gymnasts proud."[17]

Alar

An article in the December 15,1999 copy of the Cleveland Plain Dealer describes Berman's support for Uniroyal, the company that produces Alar(tm), slow-ripening chemical (deminozide) used on apples to delay ripening until the markets paid higher prices. Through his Guest Choice Network (currently the Center for Consumer Freedom) Berman published a newsletter that minimized the risks of Alar to children.The newsletter stated, "According to the Environmental Protection Agency, one would have to eat 50,000 pounds of apples a day over a lifetime to contract cancer from Alar." In response, EPA spokeswoman Denise Kearns said, "To my knowledge, EPA never issued that kind of statement." In the end Berman admitted that the source of his information was a statement made by Uniroyal.Alar has since been banned due to cancer risks. In 1989, the EPA decided to ban Alar on the grounds that "long-term exposure" posed "unacceptable risks to public health." However, in June 1989, before the EPA's preliminary decision to ban all food uses of Alar went into effect, Uniroyal agreed to voluntarily halt all domestic sales of Alar for food uses. [18]

Americans with Disabilities Act

In an October 9, 1989 commentary for Nation's Restaurant News, Berman opposed the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA"). He wrote, "The ADA in its present form will cost our industry untold millions in added construction and labor costs" He begins the article with a reference to the ADA and AIDS. He stated, "Congress ... is seriously considering passage of a new law that would require employers to ignore AIDS infections among cooks and servers[4].

Ethics violations

In the early 1990s, Berman was tied to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich through possible ethics violations involving Gingrich's PAC (GOPAC). In 1993, Berman made a $25,000 contribution to Kennesaw State College for Gingrich's classon "Renewing American Civilization" on condition that Gingrich teach ideas supported by Berman's Employment_Policies_Institute_Foundation. House Ethics Committee reports revealed that Berman's contribution was solicited by GOPAC and that Berman had already helped GOPAC in recruiting big donors. In the cover letter to the check, Berman thanked Gingrich for his "help" in enabling Berman to testify at a Congressional hearing on another matter of interest to the industry.[citation needed]

Court ruling against Berman

In the fall of 2009, the American College of Surgeons filed a legal complaint in Illinois' Northern District alleging that the Berman-formed Employee Freedom Action Committee had violated trademark law and defamed the group when it included the organization's name on a scrolling list headed "Doctors Against the Plan" in an anti-health care reform television advertisement. The court granted a temporary restraining order to the surgeons, finding the group would likely prevail on the merits in a trial. The court order enjoined Berman's front group from placing ads citing the American College of Surgeons on television or the Internet. The ad was run by a group called Committee to Rethink Reform, which is a 501(c)4 not required to disclose its donors -- one of the hallmarks of a Berman-operated group. The ad has been removed from TV and the Internet. [19]

People to call concerning their experiences with Richard Berman

   * Naomi Seligman, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington www.citizensforethics.org 202.408.5565

   * Simon Chaitowitz, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine: 202-686-2210, ext. 309

* Sheldon Rampton, Center for Media and Democracy: (cell) 608-206-2745 or (office) 608-260-9713

   * Theresa Hart, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD): 800-438-6233

   * Jeff Nelson, VegSource Interactive, Inc: 818-349-5600 and see: http://www.vegsource.com/articles2/berman_cspi.htm and http://www.vegsource.com/articles/berman_release.htm

   * Michael Jacobson, Center for Science in the Public Interest (202) 332-9110

Contact

Berman & Company

1090 Vermont Avenue, NW

Suite 800

Washington, DC 20005

Telephone: 202.463.7100

Fax: 202.463.7107

Email: info@bermanco.com

Articles and resources

Related SourceWatch articles

   * ActivistCash.com

   * American Beverage Institute

   * A Visit to the ActivistCash.Com Web Site

   * Berman & Co.

   * Center for Consumer Freedom

   * Center for Economic and Entrepreneurial Literacy

   * Employment Policies Institute

   * Employment Roundtable

   * FishScam.com

   * The Center for Union Facts

   * Richard Berman cares about animals: clients exposed

   * Front Group King Rick Berman Gets Blasted by his Son David Berman

References

  1. ↑ "The Center for Consumer Freedom", Form 990, p.5

  2. ↑ "The Center for Consumer Freedom", Form 990, Statement 11.

  3. ↑ Morley Safer Meet Rick Berman, A.K.A. "Dr. Evil" CBSnews.com 60 Minutes, July 22, 2007

  4. ↑ Tim McCown Richard Berman coming to Astro-turf your rights away Examiner.com, Philadelphia Progressive Examiner, September 24, 2009

  5. ↑ Richard B. Berman, Berman and Company Untitled letter to Barbara Trach at Philip Morris 3 pp. September 5, 1995. Bates No. 2072148834/8836

  6. ↑ S,J, Philip Morris Invoice/Pay request May 29, 1996. Bates No. 2072395885

  7. ↑ Barbara Trach, Philip Morris 333754 Pay request/Invoice. December 15, 1995. Bates No. 2072148756/8757

  8. ↑ M. Barrington, Philip Morris Guest Choice Network Email. March 28, 1996. Bates No. 2048257603

  9. ↑ Barbara Trach, Philip Morris N921 Memorandum, resume'. October 19, 1995. 2 pages. Philip Morris Bates No. 2072395887/5888

 10. ↑ Richard B. Berman Richard B. Berman Resume'. 1991. Philip Morris Bates No. 2072148764

 11. ↑ Employment Policies Institute Employment Policies Institute Web page, "About" (description, contact information), accessed October 7, 2009

 12. ↑ Berman & Co. Berman & Co. Web page, "Contact Us", accessed October 7, 2009

 13. ↑ ProPublica Image of Anti-ACORN ad, undated, accessed October 7, 2009

 14. ↑ Mosi Secret “Rotten” ACORN Ad Funded by Anti-Minimum Wage Group, ProPublica, Elections section. October 29, 2008

 15. ↑ Caroline E. Mayer and Amy Jones, "The Escalating Obesity Wars," Washington Post April 27, 2005

 16. ↑ [1]

 17. ↑ Rick Berman, "Soft Drink Hysteria Hard to Swallow," Atlanta Journal-Constitution August 26, 2004

 18. ↑ Percival et al., Environmental Regulation: Law, Science & Policy (4th ed.), p.391

 19. ↑ Ben Smith Court forces health care foes' ad off air Politico.com, blog. December 17, 2009

External resources

   * BermanExposed.org, website by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

External articles

   * Richard Berman, "Disability Act Threatens to Cripple Hospitality Industry," Nation's Restaurant News, October 9, 1989, p. F4.

   * Richard Berman, "Animal Groups Callous, Not Cute," USA Today, April 15, 2003.

   * Greg Sargent, "Berman's Battle," The American Prospect, January 3, 2004.

   * John N. Frank, "ABL ups efforts slamming GM for its support of MADD", PR Week, February 28, 2005. (Sub req'd).

   * Nancy Goldstein, "Biting the Hand that Spins You," PageOne, March 17, 2005.

   * Caroline E. Mayer and Amy Joyce, "Nonprofit's Tactics, Funding Sources Spark Controversy", Washington Post, April 27, 2005.

   * Melanie Warner, "Striking Back at the Food Police", New York Times, June 12, 2005.

   * Seth Lubove, "Food Fight," Forbes, September 23, 2005.

   * Aina Hunter, "Mercury in Fish? Baloney!: Lobbyist tells pregnant women to eat more tuna", Village Voice, January 17th, 2006.

   * Harold Meyerson, "Our Pious Babylon", Washington Post, April 6, 2006; A29.

   * Mark Matthews, Lobbyists Hide Behind Non-Profit Fronts, KGO TV, San Francisco, CA, May 3, 2006.

   * Jayne O'Donnell, "Got a nasty fight? Here's your man", USA Today, July 31, 2006.

   * Meet Rick Berman, A.K.A. "Dr. Evil", CBSnew.com, April 5, 2007

   * Sam Stein, "Bailout Recipients Hosted Call To Defeat Key Labor Bill", Huffington Post, January 27, 2009.

This article may include information from Tobacco Documents Online.

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

srcwtch:

Richard Berman Cares About Animals: Clients Exposed. Richard Berman dedicates funding from clients in the tobacco, processed food, meat & dairy, pharmaceutical and animal testing industries to 'exposing inconsistencies' of 'malicious animal rights activists'.

Contents

Overview & clients

PetaKillsAnimals.com was created in July of 2004 by the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF). According to it's website, they also "stand up to the food police, environmental scaremongers, neo-prohibitionists, meddling bureaucrats, and other self-anointed saints who claim to know what's best for you". They even feature a "Daily Headlines" service which provides "valuable information" about "these activists, and analysis of their activities." They "welcome your support" and "financial contribution".[1]

PETA has since created a response site, PETA Saves, which discusses Richard Berman and the CCF’s smear campaign.

CCF is an industry-funded organization and front group for the restaurant, alcohol, tobacco and other industries. It is registered as a tax-exempt, non-profit organization under the IRS code 501(c)(3). Over 40% of the group's 2005 expenditure was paid to Rick Berman's public relations company, Berman & Co. for "management services". ^[2]

CCF provides virtually no referencing, yet their statements are circulated by other industry groups, animal breeders and brokers, news wires and even some media outlets. CCF does not link back to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), nor any sites of groups or individuals purportedly being "exposed". Richard Berman and CCF clients have included Phillip Morris, Monsanto, Tyson Foods, Dean Foods and Coca Cola. Tyson is also a major supplier of restaurant chains, including Kentucky Fried Chicken ^[3] and McDonalds. ^[4] Monsanto contracts product toxicity testing on animals out to Huntingdon Life Sciences. ^[5] All of these corporations, as well as Phillip Morris contract laboratory Covance Laboratories, have subjects of campaigns and investigations by PETA and/or other groups.

Clients & investigations

PETA has convinced numerous corporations to cease cruel product testing on animals, including Coca-Cola. It has conducted investigations on some of the worst offenders for animal welfare violations.

See also PETA, section 2.

Over 90% of the animals used in experimentation are excluded from the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), the only federal law which over sees animal testing. Rats, mice, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish are expressly eliminated from all safeguards. Species not covered under the AWA do not even have to be reported. ^[6] Thousands of rats, mice, rabbits, dogs, and primates are killed in "pre-clinical" tests for new drugs (including all ingredients and even minor differences in formulas). Following an extensive battery of animal testing, drugs generally undergo three phases of clinical trials. The fact that months or years of human studies are also required suggests health authorities do not trust the results. ^[7] In 2004, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported that 92 out of every 100 drugs that successfully pass animal trials, subsequently fail human trials. ^[8], ^[9]

See also animal testing, sections 1 through 3.

Altria (Phillip Morris)

PETA investigation of Covance Laboratories, Vienna, VA. - April 2004 - March 2005

In 2005, PETA filed a shareholder resolution at Altria requesting they cease animal testing of of tobacco products. PETA pointed out that animals respond very differently from humans to exposure to tobacco smoke. After decades of of testing, animals do not develop lung cancer; even when hooked up around-the-clock to smoke ventilation machines. Claiming ownership of 114 shares of common stock, PETA submitted a shareholder proposal to eliminate animal testing for the company's tobacco products. Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom have placed limits or bans on the testing of tobacco products on animals. A PETA representative attended Altria]´s April 28, 2005, annual meeting in East Hanover, New Jersey on April 28, 2005 to present the resolution, which failed to pass.[10] The Altria Group is a client of Covance Laboratories. ^[11]

Covance Laboratories

Covance Laboratories is an international contract research organization (CRO) and laboratory animal breeding company. Firms hire CROs to conduct animal toxicity tests for agrochemicals, petrochemicals, household products, pharmaceutical drugs and toxins. Covance is the largest importer of primates in the United States and the world's largest breeder of laboratory dogs. Under its former name of Hazleton Laboratories, Covance provided animal data favorable to the tobacco industry and contributed to the continued marketing of cigarettes. In the 1990s, Covance performed studies sponsored by the tobacco industry claiming that even extreme exposure to secondhand smoke was safe for humans. ^[12]

For a 6 month period from April 26, 2004, to March 11, 2005, an undercover investigator from PETA videotaped systematic abuse of animals at Covance Laboratories' facility in Vienna, Virginia. ^[13] Covance has amassed a history of gross animal welfare violations in the United States and Europe.

See also Covance Laboratories.

Huntingdon Life Sciences

U.S. & European investigations of Huntingdon Life Sciences.

Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) is the 3rd largest contract research organization (CRO) in the world and the largest animal testing facility in Europe. HLS provides full programs for agrochemicals like pesticides, herbicides, weed-killers and fertilizers. They also test detergents, tanning lotions, diet pills, food wrapping plastic, food additives, cosmetics and some pharmaceuticals. Viagra was tested at HLS. Olestra was a "fat free oil" that was found to be safe in animal tests but caused anal leakage in humans. HLS also tests controversial genetically modified organisms and has performed Xenotransplantation experiments. ^[14] An estimated 12,800 animals were killed in the process of testing Splenda. ^[15]

:{See also :{Splenda::(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}: Sadistically Sweet.}:

In September of 1996, undercover PETA investigator Michelle Rokke, was hired as a lab technician at Huntingdon's New Jersey lab. Wearing glasses with a pinpoint video camera in the bridge, she taped some 50 hours of laboratory activities in her 8 months of employment. She also made six hours of audiotapes and copied 8,000 pages of documents, including a client list. ^[16] HLS has a long history of gross animal welfare violations.

See also Huntingdon Life Sciences.

Senate hearings focusing on HLS issues

According to Dr. Jerry Vlasik's October 10th, 2005 address to theU.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works:  INHOFE?

"Huntingdon Life Sciences has been infiltrated and exposed 5 times in recent years by journalists, animal rights campaigners and members of the public; each time evidence of animal abuse and staff incompetence has been uncovered. A 1999 inspection of their Occold (UK) facility by the Good Laboratory Practice Monitoring Authority revealed 41 deficiencies, including errors in standard operating procedures, training issues, record keeping, quality assurance, equipment, labeling and facilities.520 violations of the UK Good Laboratory Practices Act were documented in an expose by the Daily Press (UK) in 2000. They are the only UK laboratory to ever have their license revoked by the government. ...Each of the witnesses that have testified before me have their own financial interests at stake in the continued oppression, torture and murder of non-human animals by HLS." ^[17]

Dr. Vlasik is a trauma surgeon, former vivisector and Press Officer for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office. He was the only activist invited to attend these hearings. A previous hearing in May featured statements from David **Martoskoof CCF. ^[18]

Martosko  daiy callerhttps://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/David_Martosko

Martosko is Executive Editor of The Daily Caller, a news organization in Washington, D.C.

He was previously director of research for Berman & Company. He has testified before the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee and the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy & Poultry. He has also spoken before FDA and USDA panels on seafood, obesity and animal agriculture, and addressed foreign police agencies on the topic of criminality in the animal rights movement.

CCF is an industry-funded organization and front group for the restaurant, and other industries. It is registered as a tax-exempt, non-profit organization under the IRS code 501(c)(3). Over 40% of the group's 2005 expenditure was paid to Rick Berman's public relations company, Berman & Co. for "management service

Tyson Foods

PETA investigation of Tyson Foods. - 2007

In separate investigations in 2007, PETA documented Tyson Foods workers urinating in the "live hang" area and on the conveyor belt that carried birds to slaughter. Other abuses included breaking legs and wings, throwing birds against shackles, breaking a chickens back by beating it on a rail, stabbing birds in the neck and shackling birds by the neck instead of the legs. The investigation also documented supervisors who were either directly involved or refused to enforce animal welfare policies. For example, a supervisor was recorded telling the investigator that ripping the heads off live birds was acceptable. Another refused to intervene when after birds became trapped at the end of the conveyor belt and when birds were cut at the body (instead of the throat). Abuse was was documented at both the Georgia and Tennessee plants. ^[19] Tyson is also a major supplier of restaurant chains, including McDonalds ^[20] and Kentucky Fried Chicken. [21] Tyson also has a history of human rights abuses which include safety violations, workplace fatalities, substandard wages and benefits and harassment and physical assaults on striking workers.

See also Tyson Foods.

Dean Foods

In September of 2009, PETA revealed footage from a five-month undercover investigation of a Pennsylvania dairy CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operation) that supplies milk to Dean Foods label, Land O' Lakes. Land O' Lakes is the largest seller of branded butter in the U.S. The footage documented abuse and neglect of cows and calves at the facility. Cows in pain and unable to stand were electro-shocked and stabbed with a pocket knife. Sick and injured cows were left to languish in their own waste for days and even weeks, without veterinary care. In one case, workers were told to wrap an elastic band around a cow's gangrenous, infected teat to "amputate" it. The cow deteriorated for 11 days before she died. ^[22]

See also Land O' Lakes.

CCF & puppy mills

See also Missouri puppy mills & Prop B.

Corporate concern

According to CCF:

"PETA has repeatedly attacked research foundations like the March of Dimes, the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and the American Cancer Society, solely because they support animal-based research aimed at curing life-threatening diseases and birth defects." ^[23]

PETA campaigns against charities which fund animal testing, such as the March of Dimes, American Cancer Society and Muscular Dystrophy Association. ^[24]

American Cancer Society

The American Cancer Society (ACS) is the largest non-religious charity in the world. As of the fiscal year ending in August of 2007, the ACS had a net revenue 1.17 billion dollars. ^[25] ACS's daily expenditures exceed one million dollars with 16% going into patient cancer programs. The rest is funneled into expensive research and bureaucratic overhead. Meager prevention programs are designed not to offend the industry. The average American diagnosed with cancer spend upwards of $25,000 of their savings on cures. Claims of progress include people with benign diseases. Those in remission longer than 5 years are declared cured, although many will die from either cancer or treatment after five years. ^[26] More is spent on cancer than any other medical problem. There are more people living off of cancer than cancer sufferers. Millions of laboratory animals, including rats, mice, monkeys, guinea pigs, cats and dogs have been injected with cancerous material or implanted with malignancies. ^[27], ^[28] According to leading cancer researcher, Robert Weinberg:

"The preclinical (animal) models of human cancer, in large part, stink… Hundreds of millions of dollars are being wasted every year by drug companies using these models." ^[29]

See also War on Cancer.

March of Dimes

Human studies have clearly demonstrated the negative effects of tobacco, alcohol and drug abuse on pregnancy. Never-the less, the March of Dimes continues to fund cruel, painful studies on animals and their infants. They have funneled millions into nicotine, alcohol and cocaine addiction experiments, sensory deprivation and transplanting organs from one species to another. ^[30]

See also March of Dimes

In 1990, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) conducted a study on 38 types of birth defects from 1979-80 through 1986-87. During this period, 29 birth defects increased, two decreased and seven remained stable. ^[31] Approximately 25% of all infant deaths could be eliminated with better pre-natal services and infant deaths would decrease by 10 to 25% if women gave up smoking during pregnancy. Alcohol abuse during pregnancy is the leading cause of preventable birth defects. ^[32]

It is easy decipher CCF's position on "life saving research". Cutting down or eliminating alcohol, tobacco and dangerous, animal tested pharmaceuticals and toxins, is bad for business.

PETA Kids

According to CCF:

"PETA brags that its messages reach over 1.2 million minor children, including 30,000 kids between the ages of 6 and 12, all contacted by e-mail without parental supervision." ^[33]

PETA's departments include Peta Kids, which is geared to children and contains age appropriate material.

PETA, ALF & ELF

In October of 2000, Ingrid Newkirk, the director and co-founder of PETA, published a book about the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) entitled "Free the Animals: The Story of the Animal Liberation Front". ^[34] According to an interview with David Shankbone in an HBO documentary about her life, she understands but does not support arson.

"I do support getting animals out in the same way I would have supported getting human slaves out, child labor, sex slaves, the whole lot. But I don’t support burning. I don’t support arson." ^[35]

During the 1995 trial of Rodney Coronado for the arson of Michigan State University (MSU), U.S. Attorney Michael Dettmer [BC appt replaced by Chaira who was in the purge? replaced by FedSoc Lam]) "alleged" that Ingrid Newkirk arranged to have Coronado send her stolen documents and a videotape. ^[36], ^[37] According to David Martosko's written testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works in May of 2005, pages from PETA's IRS documents from 1994 show "disbursements to the Rodney Coronado Support Committee" and a loan to his father. According to the same testimony, their IRS documents from 2000 show a disbursement to Earth Liberation Front (ELF). ^[38] ELF is an organization with no official membership and is similar to that of ALF. ^[39]

So, a lawyer for the prosecution "alleged" prior knowledge. Donations were public record and included in IRS statements (independently audited and available upon request). There was even a committee set up for donations to Rodney Coronado. Ms. Newkirk's book about ALF was published in 2000 and sells on Amazon. She has also discussed ALF in an HBO documentary and an episode of 20/20.According to David Martosko's testimony, PETA has published interviews with ALF activists. This is hardly the clandestine arrangement characterized by CCF.

CCF & green baiting

Lobbyistshave taken out full page, anonymous ads in theNew York Timesand theWashington Post, labeling animal rights activists as "terrorists" for being a little too successful and knocking Huntingdon Life Sciences(HLS) from theNew York Stock Exchange. HLS is a contract research facility (CRO) with a long history of gross animal welfare violations.

See alsoHuntingdon Life Sciences.

Even children's movies are subject to relentless green baiting and guilt by association. For example, the best selling book and popular movie "Hoot", was labeled "soft-core eco-terrorism" because teenage protagonists tried to save an endangered owl from developers. According to CCF, the movie remake of Charlotte’s Web also promoted "animal rights extremism".[40]

The only attempted murder in the history of the U.S. animal rights movement was coordinated by corporate provocateurs.[41]

Between 1977 and January 2007, there were over 13,000 incidents targeting abortion clinics and doctors, including 7 murders. There have been over 2,100 acts of union violence between 1991 and 2001, including bombings, shootings and near fatal injuries. In 2004 alone, there were over 4,500 racially motivated incidents in the U.S. There were 1,480 incidents based on religious bias and another 1,460 based on sexual orientation. Animal and environmental groups have committed far fewer acts, yet are labeled "terrorists", while those who shoot abortion doctors or burn down synagogues are perceived only as felons.[42]

See alsoAETA, section 7.

Animal activists who have been injured or killed

However, there have been a number of incidents involving victimized animal activists who have been injured or killed.

PETA's local programs in Virginia & North Carolina

According to CCF:

"Hypocrisy is the mother of all credibility problems, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has it in spades. While loudly complaining about the "unethical" treatment of animals by restaurant owners, grocers, farmers, scientists, anglers, and countless other Americans, the group has its own dirty little secret. PETA kills animals. By the thousands. "[43]

CCF does not advocate for "restaurant owners, grocers, farmers, scientists, anglers, and countless other Americans", but large corporations with histories of gross animal welfare violations, human rights, health and environmental abuses as well as puppy mills.

PETA administers humane euthanasia services for at least four shelters (where animals might otherwise by shot or gassed). Also, due to lack of facility space from area "no-kill" shelters; other "unadoptable", homeless and/ or owner surrenders are often dumped on the premises or into the care of staff members. However, the fact that VA and NC permit this organization to take responsibility for animals (who would otherwise be left to fend for themselves or killed inhumanely) does not alter the fact that PETA is an advocacy organization, not a shelter. They make no such claim to their members or anyone else. For complete statistics, see also Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) On-line Animal Reporting.[44]

According to CCF:

"PETA holds absolutely no open-adoption shelter hours at its Norfolk, VA headquarters." ^[45]

National organizations conduct research, public education, outreach and assist local shelters. However, PETA also answers emergency calls for strays, abused, neglected and homeless animals and animals turned away from shelters. For example, the local branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) in Norfolk, Virginia has a "selective admission" policy. In 2004, it took in only 1.7 percent of all homeless animals, or 765 out of 45,450. ^[46] They do not operate an animal shelter other than two small, cageless rooms set aside for animals surrendered to their organization.

NC shelters & gas chambers

In 2000, PETA was contacted by a police officer who was appalled by the terrible suffering of animals in local North Carolina shelters. Some "shelters" were nothing more than exposed, unheated or cooled shacks that left animals to either drown or freeze, depending on the weather. PETA became involved in assisting shelters with cleaning, adoptions, training, staff, providing supplies, conducting cruelty investigations and providing adequate shelter to animals. PETA has spent over $300,000 on services to NC shelters in the last few years. Many pounds in the area had no adoption programs or even operating hours. Unwanted animals were either shot, gassed in windowless metal boxes or injected with a paralytic agent that caused them to slowly die of suffocation. These practices were carried out for decades until PETA began providing humane euthanasia. Although veterinary services for lethal injection were secured for one of the four pounds they discovered, animals at the other shelters would have been gassed, shot or died of suffocation had they not been picked up by PETA staff for euthanasia.

Although some of the animals have been adopted out, most of the dogs and cats from NC shelters have suffered from various debilitating conditions. These include Parvo, heart worms, mange, Lyme disease, untreated injuries, embedded collars, broken and exposed bones and severe parasitic infestations. ^[47], ^[48]

NC gas chambers, stats & local services

Over 250,000 homeless animals are killed in North Carolina shelters annually. In NC, over 20 county shelters still use gas chambers and other inhumane methods. Animals gasp for breath while they slowly suffocate. Witnesses have seen animals struggling and wailing for up to ten minutes before succumbing to carbon monoxide poisoning. In their panic, some bite themselves and each other and beat their heads against the walls while they choke and vomit. Groups of up to 25 animals are gassed together and some will not die the first time. At least 3 NC gas chambers have exploded and four government employees who operate gas chambers have died from heart and lung problems in recent years.[49]

PETA provides free services to local animal shelters, constructs shelters and provides free local spay/neuter services. They also advocate for chained and "backyard dogs. ^[50] They have spent over $300,000 on services to NC shelters in the past few years. ^[51]

See also PETA, sections 2 & 4.

PETA overview, financial statement & salaries

According to CCF:

"PETA kills animals. Because it has other financial priorities. PETA rakes in nearly $30 million each year in income, much of it raised from pet owners who think their donations actually help animals." ^[52]

PETA is an international animal advocacy organization. Members are not under the false impression that they are an animal shelter. They are kept informed via email and member publications and may participate in campaigns. According to PETA's (independently audited and available upon request) statement for the fiscal year ending July 31 2008: 83.66% of funding went directly into programs. 12.16% was spent on fund raising and 4.18% on administration and operations. 29% of PETA's staff earn $19,000 to to $29,999; 45% earn $30,000 to $39,999 and 26% earn over $39,999. President Ingrid Newkirk earned 35,462 dollars in 2008. ^[53]

Organizations like CCF not only represent multi-billion dollar corporations, but industries which are heavily subsidized by tax payers.

See also U.S. Government's War on Animals.

Other targeted organizations

According to CCF:

"(PETA)'s 'Holocaust on Your Plate' campaign crassly compared the Jewish victims of Nazi genocide to farm animals." ^[54]

Groups like Farm Sanctuary and United Poultry Concerns (who do run sanctuaries) are also CCF targets. Another CCF target is Farm Animal Reform Movement (FARM). FARM was founded by Dr. Alex Hershaft, a child survivor of the Warsaw ghetto. ^[55] According to Isaac Bashevis Singer:

"As a son of Holocaust survivors and grandson of nonsurvivors, to me such 'moral equivalence' is neither a diminishment of nor an insult to the memory of the Holocaust’s human victims. ...the dehumanization and persecution by the Nazis of their victims should (to quote Einstein) 'widen our circle of compassion' to include the dreadfully analogous mass objectification and brutalization of our fellow animals." ^[56]

See also A Visit to the ActivistCash.Com Web Site.

Articles & sources

SourceWatch articles

References

  1. ↑ About, PetaKillsAnimals.com, accessed May 2009
  2. ↑ The Center for Consumer Freedom, Form 990, 2005, p.3.
  3. ↑ Tortured by Tyson, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, accessed June 2009
  4. ↑ Steve Hannaford Oligopoly profile: Tyson Foods, Oligopoly Watch, updated September 2007
  5. ↑ Inside Customers, SHAC.net, accessed December 2009
  6. ↑ The Animal Care Program and the USDA's Authority Under the AWA: Q & A, U.S. Department of Agriculture, APHIS Fact Sheet, July 2005, page 2
  7. ↑ U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Stopanimaltests.com, accessed February 2009
  8. ↑ Harding, A. More compounds failing phase I. FDA chief warns that high drug attrition rate is pushing up the cost of drug development. The Scientist, August 6th 2004
  9. ↑ NHP Study: Evidence from Europeans for Medical Progress and Antidote-Europe, Safer Medicines Campaign, pg 1, accessed February 2009
  10. ↑ Altria Stock Holder Proposals: Proposal 1 – Eliminate Animal Testing for Tobacco Products, pdf, pg, 44, 45, 2005
  11. ↑ Proposal 5 — Animal Welfare Policy, Altria Group, Notice of Annual Meeting of Stockholders, April 2007
  12. ↑ John J. Pippin, M.D. Covance Gets an 'F' in Social Responsibility Test, Chandler Republic', August 2006
  13. ↑ Inside Covance U.S., PETA.org, accessed February 2009
  14. ↑ PETA Names the 10 Worst CEOs for Animals in Laboratories, PETA.org, accessed December 2009
  15. ↑ Mike Hamilton Sweetener Slaughter: 12,800 animals die for no-calorie pills, Daily Mirror, August 2001
  16. ↑ Huntingdon Life Sciences Group Plc Business Information, Profile, and History, Jrank.org, accessed June 2009
  17. ↑ Dr. Jerry Vlasik Testimony of Jerry Vlasik, M.D.: Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (“SHAC”) Eco-terrorism, U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, October 2005
  18. ↑ David Martosko Testimony of David Martosko: Environmental and Animal-Rights Terrorism and Its Above-Ground Support System, U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, May 2005
  19. ↑ Tyson Workers Caught Torturing Birds, Urinating on Slaughter Line, PETA.org, accessed February 2009
  20. ↑ Steve Hannaford Oligopoly profile: Tyson Foods, Oligopoly Watch, updated September 2007
  21. ↑ Tortured by Tyson, PETA.org, accessed June 2009
  22. ↑ Alisa Mullins Land O'Lakes Supplier's Owners Charged With Cruelty, PETA files, September 2009
  23. ↑ 7 Things You Didn't Know About PETA, PetaKillsAnimals.com, accessed May 2009
  24. ↑ Animal Rights Uncompromised: Life-Taking Charities, PETA.org, accessed February 2009
  25. ↑ American Cancer Society, Inc., Hoovers, accessed February 2009
  26. ↑ Katy Schiel The war on cancer is a fraud: The 'Cancer Establishment' is lying to you., Disinformation, July 2002
  27. ↑ Cancer, Information for Transformation, accessed February 2009
  28. ↑ Patricia Haight, Ph.D., Shaynie Aero The Failed Research of Micheal Berens, Liberation Magazine, accessed February 2009
  29. ↑ A Critical Look at Animal Experimentation: A. Selected Diseases: 1. Cancer, Medical Research Modernization Committee, 2006
  30. ↑ March of Crimes: March of Dimes, PETA.org, accessed June 2009
  31. ↑ Peter Montaque Birth Defects: Part 1, Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly, #410, October 1994
  32. ↑ The March Of Dimes' Crimes Against Animals, PETA.org, accessed June 2009
  33. ↑ 7 Things You Didn't Know About PETA, PetaKillsAnimals.com, accessed May 2009
  34. ↑ Ingrid Newkirk Free the Animals: The Story of the Animal Liberation Front, Lantern Books, October 2000, ISBN 978-1930051225
  35. ↑ Ingrid Newkirk, co-founder of PETA, on animal rights and the film about her life, WikiNews.org, November 2007
  36. ↑ Government sentencing memorandum of U.S. Attorney Michael Dettmer in USA v. Rodney Coronado, July 31, 1995, pp. 8-10
  37. ↑ Ingrid Newkirk, Wikipedia, accessed June 2009
  38. ↑ David Martosko Testimony of David Martosko: Environmental and Animal-Rights Terrorism and Its Above-Ground Support System, U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, May 2005
  39. ↑ The Earth Liberation Front, Animal Liberation Front, accessed June 2009
  40. ↑ Will Potter What is the Green Scare?, Greenisthenewred.com, September 2008
  41. ↑ Will Potter How Corporate Provacateurs Made Fran Trutt an “Animal Rights Terrorist”, Mar 25th, 2009
  42. ↑ Charlotte Laws, PhD, AETA and the New Green Scare: Are You the Terrorist Next Door?, Counterpunch, January 2007
  43. ↑ PETA's Dirty Secret, PetaKillsAnimals.com, accessed May 2009
  44. ↑ Virginia Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services On-line Animal Reporting, PETA, 2008
  45. ↑ Things You Didn't Know About PETA, PetaKillsAnimals.com, accessed May 2009
  46. ↑ Behind the Numbers: ‘Turn-Away Shelters’, helping animals.com, February 2009
  47. ↑ PETA’s Work Helping Animals in North Carolina, helpinganimals.com, accessed February 2009
  48. ↑ PETA’s Work Helping Animals in NC: Adopted animals, helpinganimals.com, accessed January 2010
  49. ↑ Cruel Killing, Funded By Your Taxes, NC Commission for Humane Euthanasia, accessed February 2010
  50. ↑ The Cruel, Dangerous Practice of Chaining Dogs, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, accessed February 2009
  51. ↑ PETA’s Work Helping Animals in North Carolina, PETA.org, accessed February 2009
  52. ↑ PETA's Dirty Secret, PetaKillsAnimals.com, accessed May 2009
  53. ↑ About: Financial Reports, PETA.org, accessed June 2009
  54. ↑ 7 Things You Didn't Know About PETA, PetaKillsAnimals.com, accessed May 2009
  55. ↑ Alex Hershaft, Founder, FARM, Farm Animal Reform Movement, Animals Voice, accessed June 2009
  56. ↑ Syd Baumel Book Review of Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust by Charles Patterson, Winnipeg Vegetarian, 2002

External resources

Categories: Tobaccowiki | Front groups portal | Global corporations | Front groups | United States | Web fronts | Industry-funded organizations | Industry lobby groups | Animal rights | Gross Animal Welfare Violations | Huntingdon Life Sciences | Animal testing | Food | Pharmaceutical industry | Corporations

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The funny thing is, I'm a "fairly" informed individual....I read incessantly and watch every political talk show on TV and listen to "most" on the radio, and yet, until President Obama started running for office, I had never even heard of ACORN. So the "first" I ever heard of ACORN, was that they were taking part in voter fraud in an effort to help the Obama Campaign...Of course, I've learned "since then" that that was all your "Typical Made Up Bullshit" from the Screaming Mimis on The Right!.....But NOW, I've had an opportunity to look into ACORN and the People (Person) out to destroy them, and WHY! This is quite an interesting read...Plus, go to the internet and just Google "Richard Berman" and see all the crap you get on this Well Paid Front Guy for the Rabid Right:

Richard Berman is a Washington, D.C.-based hired gun who uses front groups to defend his corporate clients against the public interest. Using his lobbying and consulting firm, Berman and Company, as a revenue vehicle for his activities, Berman runs at least 15 industry-funded projects, such as the Center for Union Facts, and holds 16 "positions" within these various entities.

President, Berman and Company • Executive Director, Activist Cash • Executive Director, FishScam.com • Executive Director, Center for Consumer Freedom • Executive Director, American Beverage Institute • Executive Director, CSPIscam • Executive Director, Employment Policies Institute • Executive Director, Interlock Facts • Executive Director, Mecuryfacts • Executive Director, SunLightScam • Executive Director, TeacherUnionFacts • Executive Director, The Center for Union Facts • Executive Director, The Employee Freedom Action Committee • Executive Director, Econ4U.org • Executive Director, IncomeTaxFacts.org • Executive Director, Rotten Acorn • General Counsel, Employment Policies Institute

Short Bio: Richard Berman is the executive director and founder of several big-industry funded front organizations, including the Center for Consumer Freedom, the American Beverage Institute, the Employment Policy Institute, the Center for Economic and Entrepreneurial Literacy, Activist Cash, Interlock Facts, the Center for Union Facts, and Teachers Unions Exposed. Berman runs these organizations via his consulting firm, Berman & Company.

A former lawyer for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Berman struck out on his own in the early 90s. In 1995 he used Phillip Morris seed money to fight the move to put non-smoking sections in restaurants in through his first front organization, the Guest Choice Network (GCN). Berman’s other front groups were founded soon after, and GCN became the Center for Consumer Freedom in 2001. Berman represents the interests of the food & beverage industry, the anti-union lobby, the tanning industry, and anti-minimum wage activists.

Richard Berman has been a regular front man for business and industry in campaigns against consumer safety and environmental groups. Through his public affairs firm, Berman and Company, Berman has fought unions, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, PETA and other watchdog groups in their efforts to raise awareness about obesity, the minimum wage, the dangers of smoking, mad cow disease, drunk driving, and other causes. Berman runs at least 15 industry-funded front groups and projects, such as the Center for Union Facts and holds 16 "positions" in those organizations.

Each year, Berman, using his front groups to spread misinformation, spends millions of dollars distracting the public with misleading ads.

As a result of his largesse, in 2006, Richard Berman used $2,000,000 in cash to buy a $3.3 million house.

More to Come later....

http://www.bermanexposed.org/associate/richard-berman

http://forum.boiseweekly.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4234

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The New York Times ran a full page advertisement [1] today in the front section of the paper featuring an attack onACORN, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, whose voter registration practices have come under fire this election season. Directing readers to the Web site www.rottenacorn.com [2], the ad accuses ACORN [3] of a list of abuses that suggest hypocrisy on some of the group’s signature issues: intimidating and firing its own employees if they try to unionize, misappropriating millions of dollars from taxpayer-funded government grants and advocating minimum wage hikes while paying its own employees less than minimum wage.

The ad does not indicate who or what organization paid for it, but a click to the Rotten Acorn Web site reveals the source—the Employment Policies Institute [4].

The Institute, not to be confused with the *Economic Policy* Institute [5], a liberal think tank, is connected with Rick Berman, a Washington lobbyist who for several years has been fighting ACORN’s efforts to increase the minimum wage at the state and federal levels. The nonprofit Employment Policies Institute styles itself as a research organization, but recent IRS filings show a combined $1.4 million in payments from the nonprofit to Berman and Company [6], Berman’s lobbying firm, in 2005 and 2006.

The Institute, which reported spending $4.5 million during those two years, has produced numerous reports arguing that boosting the minimum wage hurts teen workers and frustrates job creation. Other recent studies assert that increasing the minimum wage would not reduce poverty rates and would benefit two-income families that aren’t actually poor.

Berman could not be reached for comment. Among clients listed on his firm’s web site are the American Beverage Institute, a trade group of bars and restaurants, and the Center for Union Facts, which opposes “check card” organizing drives by labor.  A USA Today profile [7] compared Berman to a hard-boiled lobbyist lampooned in the movie “Thank You for Smoking,” and the news show “60 Minutes” profiled Berman under the title “Dr. Evil.” [8]

Tim Miller, spokesman for the Employment Policies Institute, said his group timed the ad to take advantage of the flurry of negative publicity about ACORN thanks to attacks from GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain [9], running mate Sarah Palin and the Republican National Committee.

...

http://www.propublica.org/article/rotten-acorn-ad-funded-by-anti-minimum-wage-group

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LA Times: Disclosure Failure

December 23rd, 2008 

In today’s Los Angeles Times a man named Bret Jacobson writes a virulently anti-union screed attacking Labor Secretary nominee, Congresswoman Hilda Solis.  Here’s how the LA Times describes Jacobson at the bottom of his op-ed:

Bret Jacobson is founder and president of Maverick Strategies LLC, a research and communications firm serving business and free-market think tanks.

We’ve seen a lot of anti-union, anti-Obama, anti-worker, and anti-Free Choice op-eds penned by business consultants and “free-market think tank” types of late, so this isn’t a terribly shocking biography for drivel like this. Of course, this isn’t all Jacobson is. Here’s what the highly-informative BretJacobson.com has to say:

Prior to founding Maverick Strategies, Bret co-founded the Center for Union Facts, overseeing that organization’s research activities, guiding its communications, launching its new-media capabilities, and helping plan its strategic national advertising and earned-media campaigns.

And just for those not paying attention at home, here’s Sourcewatch:

The Center for Union Facts is a secretive front group for individuals and industries opposed to union activities. It is part of lobbyist Rick Berman‘s family of front groups including the Employment Policies Institute. The domain name www.unionfacts.com was registered to Berman & Co. in May 2005.

American Rights At Work is a bit more hard hitting in their assessment of the Center for Union Facts:

The Center is the latest public relations campaign and front group devised by “notorious D.C. lobbyist”1 and veteran spin doctor Richard “Rick” Berman with his firm, Berman and Company.

The Center for Union Facts is a front group focused on damaging the public image of unions, depressing workers’ rights, pushing legislation that would make it more difficult for workers to join unions, and furthering an anti-union business climate.

Berman earned his status as one of The Hill’s top lobbyists, along with Jack Abramoff,2 by working on behalf of unpopular clients like the tobacco, alcohol, and fast food industries. Berman’s campaigns have attempted to relax drunk driving laws, argue obesity is not a public health issue, prevent increases in the federal or state minimum wage, and attack advocacy groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

…

  • The Center for Union Facts’ legislative agenda is strikingly similar to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s.   The big business lobbying group both adamantly opposes the Employee Free Choice Act, and is in strong support of the Secret Ballot Protection Act.  Berman formerly devised union avoidance strategies for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,18 and he still has strong ties to the Chamber through Randel Johnson, Vice President for Labor at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.19  Berman told The New York Times that he asked Chamber of Commerce officials at a state conference to recommend that businesses in their states donate to his anti-union campaign.20  Randel Johnson has repeatedly denied any Chamber funding of the Center, yet admitted “he had served as an adviser to the Center.”21
  • On its website, the Center claims it is “supported by foundations, businesses, union members, and the general public.”22  Berman will only divulge that several companies and a foundation fund the Center, but will not release the names of his donors.23
  • No individuals, foundations, or corporations have come forward to admit any sponsorship of the Center.  Why wouldn’t they want to distance themselves from Berman’s hyperbolic and unsupported rhetoric?  Berman gets paid to say what responsible business leaders don’t want attributed to them.  The Washington Post reported that food industry officials, who would only be interviewed about Berman, “on the condition that they not be identified by name or by where they work, said that by keeping the sponsors anonymous, Berman’s group can be more vociferous, provocative and irreverent in its criticisms.24

In short, the Center for Union Facts is the key organization in Big Business efforts to stop the progress of labor in America, most notably through fighting against the Employee Free Choice Act. One of their co-founders, Bret Jacobson, was given license to push the Center’s anti-union, anti-worker agenda in an op-ed against the nominee for Labor Secretary, while the Times failed to disclose the only informative part of his biography. He’s the founder of a research firm? What is that supposed to tell the Times’ readers? Pretty much every person I know who works in politics does some level of consulting. The most important piece of Jacobson’s biography – his professional connection to one of the biggest anti-union groups in America – is left out of a column that specifically pushes the Center’s agenda. In an AP article three days ago, a spokesman for the Center attacked President-elect Obama’s pick of Solis for Labor Secretary (though, amazingly, the AP cited the Center as “a group critical of organized labor”).

There has been a heavy, persistent trend in the mainstream press of anti-union articles and op-eds. The business lobby has been very good about getting their surrogates’ op-eds placed in big papers like the LA Times, NY Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. There is a major fight going on between big business and America’s workers about the future of organizing to increase worker rights in America.The fight is centered around the Employee Free Choice Act, but clearly the Secretary of Labor is now another front in this fight.

As frustrating as it is to repeatedly read columns, like Jacobson’s, which include outright lies about what the Employee Free Choice Act is and does, I am 100% willing to take part in a national debate about how our country relates to working families. There are obviously different sides in this debate and there is nothing wrong with the debate being played out in the press. But in this atmosphere of daily volleys back and forth between big business front groups like the Center for Union Facts and the Obama administration and the American labor movement, it behooves the press to be honest about who is taking part in the debate. The LA Times was brutally negligent to not disclose Bret Jacobson’s employment at the Center for Union Facts, the only piece of his biography that had any bearing on his column. By not disclosing Jacobson’s ties to this anti-worker group, the LA Times succeeded in giving their pages over to a press release from a big business front group, with no means for their reader to discern it from a non-partisan piece on President-elect Obama’s pick to chair the Department of Labor.

So editors of the Los Angeles Times, let me show you how this is done:

Disclosure: I’m proud to work for the Service Employees International Union…so proud that I disclose it when I write about issues that relate to my employer. That said, this post was not approved by nor written with the knowledge of SEIU. It is representative of my views alone.

Now that wasn’t hard, was it?

http://holdfastblog.com/2008/12/23/somone-call-a-blogger-ethics-panel/

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The Employment Policies Institute (EPI) is one of several front groups created by Berman & Co., a Washington, DC public affairs firm owned by Rick Berman, who lobbies for the restaurant, hotel, alcoholic beverage and tobacco industries. While most commonly referred to as EPI, it is registered as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization under the name of "Employment Policies Institute Foundation." In its annual Internal Revenue Service return, EPI states that it "shares office space with Berman & Company on a cost pass through basis". ^[1]

Contents [hide]

Berman Non-Profit Groups

A November 1, 2012 article inBloombergshows CCF in the following chart of non-profits created by Berman & Co. at the center of an IRS complaint filed in 2012 (used with permission)

Creation of "Rethink Reform"

In 2009, EPI created a group called Committee to Rethink Reform and started running television, print, and radio advertisements to mobilize opposition to the Democrats' health care reform legislation. The group is a 501 (c)4 organization and subsequently not required to disclose its donors--one of the hallmarks of a Rick Berman-operated group. The group has its own Web site and Facebook page. Here, among other things, are some of their claims, which have been repeated in anti-reform politicians' talking points:

"When it comes to reforming the health care system, Congress is trying to do too much, too fast. Not everyone agrees that we need reform of America’s health care system. Unfortunately, Congressional leaders are cutting backroom deals with special interest groups and writing bills that will lead to higher taxes, higher insurance premiums and fewer health care choices. The solution is not more government intrusion into the health care system, but less. It’s time for Congress to rethink health care reform, focusing on: Increasing health care choices;Reining in health care costs; and Controlling the growth of government to avoid escalating the national debt."

Committee to Rethink Reform

ad

In 2010, they launched another print and TV advertising campaign against health care reform. The group faced controversy in March 2010 when it ran an advertisement in The Cincinnati Enquirer featuring a large picture of Representative Steven Driehaus (D-OH) and his two daughters. According to his spokesman, Driehaus was upset by the ad: "Rep. Driehaus thought the ad was outrageous, said the spokesman, Tim Mulvey. "He can take more than his fair share of political attacks, but this one crossed the line" [1]. Committee spokeswomanSarah Longwell [IHS]said showing the children was a mistake and that the group was taking out another ad to apologize: "...Politicians' children should bot be involved in public political debates and we deeply regret this mistake." Longwell said the committee already apologized directly to Driehaus. The Committee to Rethink Reform reported its apology on its Web site, while stating it would continue to urge Driehaus to oppose the bill [2].

The Center for Media and Democracy, which publishes SourceWatch.org, is looking into the nature of the claims they are making and their funding.

They have also spent substantial funds on ads in other right-wing campaigns, as described below.

Advertising against ACORN

In October 2008, as Republicans were accusing ACORN, which organizes in low-income communities, of "voter fraud," EPI took out a full-page ad in the New York Times that directed readers to www.RottenAcorn.com. The ad accused "ACORN of a list of abuses that suggest hypocrisy on some of the group's signature issues: intimidating and firing its own employees if they try to unionize, misappropriating millions of dollars from taxpayer-funded government grants and advocating minimum wage hides while paying its own employees less than minimum wage," reported ProPublica. EPI and Center for Consumer Freedom spokesperson Tim Miller said they placed the ad because after the election, "a lot of the coverage of ACORN is going to go away, but they are going to continue the same corrupt and fraudulent practices." [2]

For years, EPI had fought "ACORN's efforts to increase the minimum wage at the state and federal levels." ACORN says the charges in EPI's are untrue. For example, the group "pledged complete neutrality" when one of its offices "wanted to form a union," explained ACORN's Steve Kest. The employees eventually "decided not to pursue [the union], so nothing came of it." [2]

Against raising the minimum wage

Rick Berman created EPI in 1991 to "argue the importance of minimum wage jobs for the poor and uneducated."[3]

EPI has has been widely quoted in news stories regarding minimum wage issues, and although a few of those stories have correctly described it as a "think tank financed by business," most stories fail to provide any identification that would enable readers to identify the vested interests behind its pronouncements. Instead, it is usually described exactly the way it describes itself, as a "non-profit research organization dedicated to studying public policy issues surrounding employment growth" that "focuses on issues that affect entry-level employment." In reality, EPI's mission is to keep the minimum wage low so Berman's clients can continue to pay their workers as little as possible.

EPI also owns the internet domain names to MinimumWage.com and LivingWage.com, a website that attempts to portray the idea of a living wage for workers as some kind of insidious conspiracy. "Living wage activists want nothing less than a national livingwage," it warns (as though there is something wrong with paying employees enough that they can afford to eat and pay rent).

History

The Employment Policies Institute was launched in 1991, around the time of the economic recession that led to the electoral defeat of then-president George Bush. EPI deliberately attempted to create confusion in the eyes of journalists and the general public by adopting a name which closely resembles the Economic Policy Institute, a much older, progressive think tank with ties to organized labor. In addition to imitating the name and acronym of the Economic Policy Institute, Berman's outfit even used the same typeface for its logo. In reality, the two groups have dramatically different public policy agendas. The Economic Policy supports a living wage and mandated health benefits for workers. Berman's organization opposes both and in fact opposes any minimum wage whatsoever.

In 1992, Los Angeles Times business columnist Harry Bernstein noted that EPI was using "misleading studies" to help put a positive spin on rising unemployment. "The conservative EPI, financed mostly by low-wage companies such as hotels and restaurants, is issuing reports the titles of which alone could help put a bright face on the miserable job scene," Bernstein wrote. "The latest one is 'The Value of Part-Time Workers to the American Economy.' It hails as a great thing the distressing growth of part-time jobs because they offer 'flexibility' in economic planning for both workers and companies, and say that flexibility is vital 'in the growing and increasingly competitive global economy.' Tell that nonsense to the more than 6.5 million workers forced to take part-time jobs because nothing else is available. That is an increase of more than 1.5 million involuntary part-timers since 1990, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says." EPI has been doing more or less the same thing ever since, sponsoring cooked studies and issuing tendentious sound bytes whenever attempts are made to establish healthcare or better wages for workers.

Then, as now, fast-food employees were the largest group of low-paid workers in the United States. One-quarter of the workers in the restaurant industry are estimated to earn the minimum wage--a higher proportion than in any other U.S. industry. This is the real reason why EPI appears on the scene whenever federal or local governments consider a proposal to increase the minimum wage. Its standard tactic is to trot out a study using contrived statistics designed to show that hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost if the wage is raised. (In reality, studies by labor economists show that the job-loss effect of increasing the minimum wage is either small or nonexistent and that its benefits to low-wage workers and their families far outweigh the costs.Even the Food Institute Report, an industry trade publication, admitted in 1995 that "the weight of the empirical evidence suggests that the effects [on the number of available jobs] of a moderate raise from its current level are likely to be negligible.")

Berman continued to fight against mandated insurance in 1992 and 1993, when president-elect Bill Clinton attempted to makehealth carereform one of his first legislative priorities. Berman created yet another front group, called the Partnership on Health Care and Employment, representing mostly large companies known for paying low wages and high worker turnover.It sponsored a study in 1992 claiming that compulsory insurance for business would wipe out nine million jobs. During the health reform debate in 1994, the Employment Policies Institute issued its own "study," claiming that the Clinton plan would wipe out 3.1 million jobs. The EPI study was cited in TV commercials sponsored by the :{Republican National Committee:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}:, which continued to air even after Berman admitted that his study had actually been produced before the Clinton administration even formulated the details of its health plan.

In 1995, EPI lashed out at Princeton University professors David Card and Alan Krueger, after they published a survey of fast-food restaurants which found no loss in the number of jobs in New Jersey after implementing an increase in the state's minimum wage. Berman accused Card and Krueger of using bad data, citing contrary figures that his own institute had collected from some of the same restaurants. But whereas Card and Krueger had surveyed 410 restaurants, Berman's outfit only collected data from 71 restaurants and has refused to make its data publicly available so that other researchers can assess whether it "cherry-picked" restaurants to create a sample that would support its predetermined conclusions.

In September 1999, Berman launched another group, the Employment Roundtable, to "build on the successes" of the EPI and to "find solutions for problems such as social security and health care." However, the Employment Roundtable has done nothing public of note.

The Employment Policies Institute in tobacco industry documents

The Employment Policies Institute, in a 1994 R.J. Reynolds-drafted press release, predicted the loss of 2-3 million jobs if the Clinton Healthcare plan was enacted. The Clinton plan was to be funded through an additional federal tax on cigarettes.[4]

A 1997 internal Philip Morris presentation called indicates PM planned to "sponsor and participate" in the Employment Policies Institute to gain the organization's help in promoting PM's Accommodation Program, a strategy the company designed to fight smoking bans and preserve smoking in public places.[5]

Personnel

Staff

Directors and Officers

The EPI's 2011 return to the IRS lists the groups officers and directors as comprising:

Former Directors and Staff

Other individuals previously associated with EPI include:

Funding

EPI reported $1,629,930 in total revenue for 2011, and $2,103,896 in total expenses.[8] This is a significant drop from the previous year, when it reported $5,910,092 in total revenue and $7,054,260 in 2010.[9]

It paid Richard Berman & Company, Inc. $1,165,601 in compensation in 2011,[10] for "daily monitoring/analysis on a worldwide basis on issues important to the organization, advertising, public and media relations, program management and promotion of information to the public," amongst others. Richard Berman and Company was paid $1,630,104 in 2010 by EPI.

In 2010, EPI gave $257,548 to the Center For Union Facts[11] for "educational issues regarding unionization of employees."

Previous Funding:

The IRS Form 990 for the year for the 2005 calendar year for the Employment Policies Institute Foundation states that its total revenue was $1,801,371. Of this $870,616 went to Berman & Company for "management services". The bulk of the group's expenses in 2005 were for PR related activities. $699,572 was spent on "media and message promotion", $229,069 on "marketing" and $324,618 on "issue research". [12] The same year, EPI gave $307,995 by way of grants to the FirstJobs Institute, which it describes as an "economic literacy program". [13]

The group's 2000 IRS return stated that the group received $1,163,248 in income for the year, most of which ($940,593) came from 17 anonymous donors. Of that amount, $717,812 went to Berman & Co. for "management services," and another $165,766 in salary and benefits went personally to Rick Berman. Comparable figures appear in EPI's Form 990 for previous years.

According to the Right Guide, funders of EPI have included the John M. Olin Foundation and the Claude R. Lamb Charitable Foundation.

Affiliated organizations

In its 2005 IRS return, EPI lists the FirstJobs Institute as an organisation it is directly or indirectly affiliated with. (FirstJobs is designated as a 501(c)(6) organization by the IRS). In statement 15 of its IRS return, EPI describes the relationship as being for a "joint educational project, 'Econ4u'". Elsewhere it states that that EPI and the 'Institute' "shared free common office space and overhead expenses provided under the management agreement with Berman and Company". It also states that the Institute "solicited funds for the educational portion of the joint project on employment Policies Institute Foundation's behalf." [14]

Contact information

Like other Berman & Co. front groups, EPI is headquartered at the following address:

Berman & Co.

1775 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Suite 1200

Washington, DC 20006

Phone: 202 463 7650

FAX: (202) 463-7107

Email: rberman AT new-reality.com

Main website: http://www.epionline.org

Other websites

In its 2011 IRS return, EPI lists these websites as including:

In its 2005 IRS return EPI lists other websites other than its main website as including (see statement 1):

Articles and Resources

Related PRWatch Articles

Related SourceWatch Articles

External Resources

External Articles

References

  1. ↑ Employment Policies Institute Foundation, "Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax", 2005, Statement 12.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Mosi Secret, "[http://www.propublica.org/article/rotten-acorn-ad-funded-by-anti-minimum-wage-group/ 'Rotten' ACORN Ad Funded by Anti-Minimum Wage Group]," ProPublica, October 29, 2008.
  3. ↑ Richard B. Berman Richard B. Berman Resume'. January 1995. Philip Morris Bates No. 2072148764
  4. ↑ Peaceful Times. Local smoking bans backfire, hurt restaurants R.J. Reynolds. July 15, 1994. Bates No. 511413918/3923
  5. ↑ Our Presentation is About: A A Philip Morris internal presentation; January 1997. Bates No. 2070258088/8114
  6. ↑ http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/letter/269278
  7. ↑ http://dispatch.com/live/content/editorials/stories/2008/02/05/Kreutzer_ART_02-05-08_A8_9697TN1.html?sid=101
  8. ↑ Employment Policy Institute, 2011 Form 990, company document on file with IRS, accessed April 11, 2013
  9. ↑ Employment Policy Institute, 2010 Form 990, company document on file with IRS, accessed April 11, 2013
  10. ↑ Employment Policy Institute, 2011 Form 990, company document on file with IRS, accessed April 11, 2013
  11. ↑ Employment Policy Institute, 2010 Form 990, company document on file with IRS, accessed April 11, 2013
  12. ↑ Employment Policies Institute Foundation, "Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax", 2005, Statement 2.
  13. ↑ Employment Policies Institute Foundation, "Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax", 2005, Statement 4.
  14. ↑ Employment Policies Institute Foundation, "Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax", 2005, Statement 14.

Categories:

AlterNet [1] / By Steven Rosenfeld [2]

The Corporate Bully Whose Front Groups, Willful Distortions and Hate-Mongering Has Poisoned U.S. Politics
: Meet Richard Berman

November 24, 2013 |

“Why don’t we know who one of the most powerful people in America is? What he has done? Why '60 Minutes' called him Dr. Evil?” asks Saru Jayaraman [3], a leader in a growing national movement of restaurant workers demanding better pay and working conditions.

Dr. Evil is Richard Berman, a Washington-based lawyer-turned-hitman for Big Food who pioneered and still deploys many of the most intentionally deceptive, inflammatory and anti-democratic tactics used in corporate propaganda campaigns today. For nearly four decades, Berman’s attacks have tried to smear, discredit and destroy public-interest causes and groups by a toxic brew of industry front groups, distortion-filled attacks, ridicule and bullying to stoke prejudice and hatred as a means of turning the public’s attention and regulators away from his paymasters’ business practices.

Take his effort to cripple the Humane Society [4] of the United States (HSUS) and defame the character of its CEO, Wayne Pacelle. He ran a television ad during the 2013 Academy Awards telling people not to give to HSUS. He created a YouTube video viewed 1.7 million times calling Pacelle “the Bernie Madoff of the charity world.” He set up a non-profit front group called Humane Watch to undermine donations intended for the HSUS and a website attacking its funding. He even threatened [5] the Better Business Bureau to drop HSUS' accreditation under the business group's Wise Giving Alliance, and then attacked [6] BBB when it refused to do so.

Astute observers have concluded that Berman is guilty of the sins he regularly accuses others of. Legitimate watchdog groups, such as CharityNavigator.org, have characterized [7] his web [8] of non-profit front groups, which take in millions [9] in tax-deductible corporate donations, as the fake charities. Tax law experts contacted by Bloomberg.com said [10] his operation was comparable to Madoff’s, a shell game of financial transfers enriching Berman that likely violated tax laws. Investigative reporters have even traced [11] e-mails from front groups who deny they’re working with him back to his office.   

Can one man really be held responsible for large slices of any era’s excesses, especially in a city as dominated by opportunists as Washington, D.C.? The answer is yes, there are people who are emblematic of political eras. Ronald Reagan was the “Teflon president,” evading [12] criticism that stuck. Lee Atwater was the dark political operator who revived [13] the GOP’s racist attack machinery for George H.W. Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign. In Berman’s case, there is a decades-long record of gleefully [5] taking fights into the gutter.

Why would Berman and his backers go after a group like the Humane Society of the U.S., the nation's most effective animal protection group? Or enviromentalists concerned [8] about mercury in tuna? Or nutritionists concerned [8] about trans fat? Or physicians worried [8] about the effect ofhigh-fructose corn syrup on obesity? Or restaurant workers seeking [11] a higher minimum wage and paid sick days? Or liberal foundations funding [8] public-interest advocates? Because in every one of these examples, their warnings and advocacy threaten how Big Food—the corporate-dominated food and beverage industry paying Berman—makes its fortune.

Berman and his agribusiness allies didn’t just target the Humane Society of the U.S. They’ve gone after People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, creating websites and videossaying that PETA kills pets when they can’t find homes. They mock almost all public health efforts as a totalitarian nanny state nightmare. Their bottom line is always the same: protect profits by stifling debate and government regulation. And Berman's methods usually involve playing dirty to intimidate and win on emotion.

In May, the Boston Globe’s deputy Washington bureau chief Michael Kranish [14] wrote a magazine-length report [15] on Washington’s “industry of distortion,” citing Berman’s attack on the Humane Society of the U.S. as Exhibit A. It ended by quoting a 2010 article [16] by the Nebraska Farm Bureau News where Berman boasted about winning on emotion—not truth.

“Emotional understanding is very different; it stays with you,” Berman said. “Intellectual understanding is a fact and facts trump other facts. When I understand something in my gut, you’ve got me in a very different way.” Speaking to Minnesota’s Agri-Growth Council in 2012 about animal rights activists, he was blunter [17]. “We should attack their credibility using ridicule and humor; not for what they’ve said but for who they are.”

Now 70, he has used front groups and exaggerated facts flung with a disregard for public consequences for decades. He created the American Beverage Institutein 1991, which attacked [18] Mothers Against Drunk Driving, saying it was not run by women and that using a cellphone in a car is more dangerous than driving slightly drunk. Like fists on a punching bag, Berman unleashed a series of distorted claims [19] to derail any effort that might alter the booze industry’s business model—such as lowering the legal blood alcohol level.His institute’s experts, on his payroll, blare [20] that new cars will soon have breathalyzers, and that people won’t be able to have a “beer at a ballgame.”

It is stunning how many fights have been picked by Berman's corporate protection racket. He’s also gone after [8]teachers' unions, food processing industry union drives, Obamacare and Obama’s tax policies, and groups such as Center for Science in the Public Interest. He’s defended the tanning salon and payday lending industries. His Employment Policies Institute exists to keep [21] minimum wages as low as possible. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) in Washington, which created BermanExposed.org [8] in 2009, tracks his efforts [22]—the front groups, attack websites and propaganda. “Berman runs at least 23 industry-funded projects, such as the Center for Union Facts [23], and holds 24 ‘positions’ within these various entities,” BermanExposed said.

Real public-interest groups such as CREW and the Humane Society of the U.S. have tried [24] to hold Berman accountable [25] for years. But they have been thwarted by playing by Washington’s murky rules. In 2004, CREW filed an Internal Revenue Service complaintto revoke his non-profits’ tax status,which let dozens of corporations funnel [26] millions into a political attack machine. The HSUS filed [27] a similar complaint last year. But the IRS does not want to say when campaigns without candidates—like Karl Rove’s 2012 non-profit [28]—cross the line from “educational” to “political,” which would be illegal.Just this week, for example, it approved [29] non-profit applications for dozens of Tea Party chapters, taking their word that they will limit political work to 40 percent of overall activities. Berman’s aides, when they talk to the press, say [27] that his non-profits are educational.

With little legal recourse, Berman’s targets have worked with the media to try to expose his dark tactics. In 2007, CBS’ "60 Minutes" produced a Berman profile [30], “Meet Dr. Evil,” which was the name union officials gave him. This spring, the Boston Globe profiled [15] the Humane Society attacks, dissecting his methodology, profiteering, refuting his attacks, and concluded that no responsible official or media should heed him. But these more civil tactics—seeking IRS review, being upbraided in the mainstream media—don’t derail a street fighter who enjoys bullying. As a smug Berman told "60 Minutes," “I grew up in the Bronx. Name-calling is not the worst thing that I’ve been subjected to.”

If anything, Washington’s political culture has been embracing [31] Berman’s thuggery. October’s federal government shutdown, the ongoing Obamacare and budget wars, and the routine vilification of critics are all signs of increasingly poisoned politics.

The fights that Berman and his allies are picking today are not the same as a few years ago when their message was based around a “personal freedom” mantra and their target was the “nanny state” and its advocates, who called for regulation of their unhealthy or addictive products. Today, Berman and allies like the National Restaurant Association are ramping [32] up attacks on groups such as Restaurant Opportunities Centers United—a powerful nationwide movement of low-wage workers. Why? Because ROC United is challenging the business model of an industry that pays poorly, has few benefits, is rife [33] with sexual discrimination, and has escaped anti-trust regulation for decades.

“They don’t just weigh in on minimum wage and paid sick days,” said Jayaraman, ROC United co-founder. “They’re the ones that got pizza declared a vegetable in Congress. They’re the ones that fight the soda tax bills. They’re the ones that fight the trans fat bills.They have some connection to these groups that set FDA policy…. They all come together in the body of Richard Berman.”

From Big Tobacco to Big Exploitation

When CBS’ Morley Safer talked to Berman, he had been working to stop regulation of addictive substances and unhealthy foods for decades [34]. He grew up in working-class New York where his father ran gas stations and car washes. He went to law school in the 1960s and began his career as a labor lawyer for management at Bethlehem Steel—opposing unions. In the early 1970s, he moved to Washington as director of labor law at theU.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he filed [35] a brief opposing granting healthcare to pregnant women. In 1975, he moved into food and beverages, working for the Steal and Ale restaurant chain. In 1986, he created his firm, Berman and Co. [36], where within a decade cigarette-maker Philip Morris became a multi-million-dollar account.

ConsumerDeception.com, one of the first websites tracking Berman, posts “inter-office correspondence” and other memos documenting [37] his tobacco-defending tactics. Berman proposed [38] creating “The Guest Choice Network… to educate members of the hospitality industry on all the issues that affect their business.” Its goal was to stop second-hand smoke regulations and smoking bans, that day’s anti-smoking efforts. Philip Morris executive Barbara Trach, writing on the margin of a 1995 memo [39] suggesting an initial $600,000 payment, listed the rules that would come to define a Berman operation.

“We can’t tell him what to do—he knows what to do and what’s going on,” she wrote [39]. “We don’t want reportable activities… No direction in grassroots by us… Minimize written correspondence… Check payable to Berman & Co.” 

The Guest Choice Network became the Center for Consumer Freedom, which Berman used to attack nearly 60 [40] public interest groups and government agencies, according to ConsumerDeception.com’s count a dozen years ago: health departments; medical and scientific associations; public health, farming and environmental groups.The funders were a who’s who [26] of agribusiness giants, food producers and processors, and fast food and restaurant chains. CREW’s BermanExposed.org has since updated the list [22].

In the "60 Minutes" profile, Berman described himself as a fighter for corporations in an era dominated by do-gooders. “Businesses themselves don’t find it convenient to take on causes that might seem politically incorrect,” he said. “And I am not afraid to do that.”

Berman says he isn’t in interested in policy debates and position papers, but gut punches that people will remember. In one anti-union drive effort, his television ad begins with a smirking cashier, saying, “You know what I love, paying union dues just so I can keep my job.” A smiling black construction worker followed, saying, “I really like how the union discriminated against minorities.”Then a busy waitress, “Nothing makes me feel better than knowing I’m supporting their fat-cat lifestyles.” It ended, in unison, “Thank you union bosses,” with an on-air credit to the “Center for Union Facts.” In another television ad, a trial lawyer interrogates a Girl Scout on a witness stand because her cookies do not have nutrition labeling.

Berman calls this approach “shooting the messenger,” and told CBS it “means people getting that this messenger is not as credible as their name would suggest.” His staff goes through government reports, activist press releases, policy papers and books by anyone who might stand in the way of unfettered corporate profits. They take aim by seizing on small points—a research methodology, size of a poll, minority opinion—and blow up that trifle to smear a reputation, organization or agenda. They create websites parodying the points, write and air ads attacking groups, their leadership, their funding, and even push GOP officeholders to join in the bullying.

The methodology is twisting the truth, exaggerating facts that are totally acceptable to make them sound corrupt, and fanning cliches or prejudice to evoke emotional reactions that take the public’s eye away from real scrutiny of, or accountability for, his clients’ exploitive business practices.

So Berman launches a website shouting that PETA kills animals. He accuses the Humane Society of the U.S. of giving less than 1 percent of its funds to local shelters, but he omits that HSUS runs five of its own animal care centers and sanctuaries, supports countless rescue groups, operates disaster response teams for animal victims of natural disasters, investigates animal cruelty and carries out countless other initiatives for animal welfare and protection.

Front groups traced [11] back to Berman's office accuse ROC United of a litany of supposed sins in cities considering higher minimum wage and paid sick leave laws, while other websites mock Jayaraman’s new book [41] while she’s on a speaking tour. Meanwhile, Berman writing [42] on the National Restaurant Association (NRA) website, says thatraising minimum wages are “a politician-made disaster” leading to “the death of the entry-level job.” On theWall Street Journalopinion page, the anti-regulator argues [43] without a trace of hypocrisy that groups like ROC United should be regulated under federal labor law.

**Marion Nestle** [44], a longtime healthy food expert and author who also has been attacked [45] by Berman, says she tries to ignore him. Nestle said she met Berman once, when they were on a panel at a NRA conference. That appearance gave her the chance to meet with a handful of national restaurant chain CEOs, Nestle said, where she went in armed with three demands—including one about ceasing to bankroll Berman.

“I wanted these restaurant chains to give a price break for smaller portions, to have the default meals for kids be healthy, and I wanted them to stop funding the Center for Consumer Freedom,” she said of meeting with the CEOs of Applebees [46] and Darden [47], the nation’s largest restaurant group.“They just went ballistic. Absolutely ballistic. It was truly amazing. I thought they were three completely reasonable asks. And they said that Berman was the only person who understood their problems.”

Nestle’s sit-down with Berman’s sponsors reveals why he has had a four-decade run as a corporate hit man. With the backing of tobacco, booze and then Big Food, he has created industry front groups, kept his sponsors’ identities largely hidden, developed a political playbook based on smears, distortions and hate-mongering, and seen the campaign and lobbying profession embrace his poisonous and destructive methodology.

America’s political culture has become uglier and more hate-filled in recent decades, and Richard Berman has played a singular roll in that descent into the gutter.

See more stories tagged with:

richard berman [48],

Berman and Co. [49],

corporate propaganda [50],

negative campaigning [51],

attack ads [52],

union-busting [53],

Big Food lobbyist [54],

Humane Society of America [55],

CharityNavigator.org [56],

peta [57],

Mothers Against Drunk Driving [58],

Center for Science in the Public Interest [59],

Saru Jayaraman [60],

Restaurant Opportunities Centers United [61],

Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington [62],

crew [63],

non-profit tax law [64],

marion nestle [65],

National Restaurant Association [66],

center for union facts [67],

Center for Consumer freedom [68],

corporate front groups [69],

astrotufr lobbying [70],

BermanExposed.org [71],

ConsumerDeception.com [72],

philip morris [73],

The Guest Choice Network [74]

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/richard-bermans-propaganda-wars-take-us-politics-gutter

Links:

[1] http://alternet.org

[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/steven-rosenfeld

[3] http://workercenters.com/

[4] http://www.humanesociety.org/

[5] http://www.citizensforethics.org/blog/entry/corporate-bully-richard-berman

[6] http://www.humanewatch.org/hsuss_terrible_horrible_no_good_very_bad_day/

[7] http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=11842#.UoqxBY2E7Z3

[8] http://bermanexposed.org/

[9] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/File:11022012_Berman-kr-01.png

[10] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-02/union-busting-by-profiting-from-non-profit-may-breach-irs.html

[11] http://articles.philly.com/2013-03-08/news/37564041_1_berman-sick-days-front-group

[12] http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3234744?uid=16887128&uid=2129&uid=16886816&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=67&uid=62&sid=21103004293033

[13] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/opinion/20sat3.html

[14] http://www.michaelkranish.com/Michael_Kranish/Michael_Kranish.html

[15] http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2013/05/18/corporations-anonymously-fund-attacks-and-influence-washington-policy-through-nonprofit-groups/qyaJIFcv7yYOsQvya6ykAK/story.html

[16] http://www.nefb.org/public/401/news/nebraska_farm_bureau_news

[17] http://www.agrigrowth.org/Newsletters/Dec2012.pdf

[18] http://abionline.org/

[19] http://abionline.org/newsroom/

[20] http://abionline.org/press_release/602/

[21] http://www.epionline.org/news/

[22] http://bermanexposed.org/press

[23] http://www.unionfacts.com/

[24] http://www.citizensforethics.org/pages/category-results/c/richard-berman

[25] http://consumerdeception.com/index.asp

[26] http://consumerdeception.com/append3.asp

[27] http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-11-02/union-busting-by-profiting-from-non-profit-may-breach-irs

[28] http://www.propublica.org/article/what-karl-roves-dark-money-nonprofit-told-the-irs

[29] http://electionlawblog.org/?p=56897

[30] http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=2661990n

[31] http://www.bradblog.com/?p=10384

[32] http://www.alternet.org/labor/other-nra-how-insidiously-powerful-restaurant-lobby-makes-sure-fast-food-workers-get-poverty

[33] http://www.fordharrison.com/9113

[34] http://www.bermanco.com/rick-berman/

[35] http://consumerdeception.com/history.asp

[36] http://www.bermanco.com/

[37] http://consumerdeception.com/append5.asp

[38] http://consumerdeception.com/pdf/2047824004_4032.pdf

[39] http://consumerdeception.com/pdf/2072148761.pdf

[40] http://consumerdeception.com/append4.asp

[41] https://www.facebook.com/behindthekitchendoorbook

[42] http://nrn.com/print/corporate/minimum-wage-hikes-hurt-foodservice-endanger-entry-level-jobs

[43] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324549004579066724265410410

[44] http://www.eatdrinkvote.com/tag/marion-nestle/

[45] http://www.foodpolitics.com/tag/ccfcenter-for-consumer-freedom/

[46] http://www.applebees.com/

[47] http://www.darden.com/

[48] http://www.alternet.org/tags/richard-berman

[49] http://www.alternet.org/tags/berman-and-co

[50] http://www.alternet.org/tags/corporate-propaganda

[51] http://www.alternet.org/tags/negative-campaigning

[52] http://www.alternet.org/tags/attack-ads-0

[53] http://www.alternet.org/tags/union-busting

[54] http://www.alternet.org/tags/big-food-lobbyist

[55] http://www.alternet.org/tags/humane-society-america

[56] http://www.alternet.org/tags/charitynavigatororg

[57] http://www.alternet.org/tags/peta

[58] http://www.alternet.org/tags/mothers-against-drunk-driving

[59] http://www.alternet.org/tags/center-science-public-interest

[60] http://www.alternet.org/tags/saru-jayaraman

[61] http://www.alternet.org/tags/restaurant-opportunities-centers-united

[62] http://www.alternet.org/tags/citizens-responsible-ethics-washington

[63] http://www.alternet.org/tags/crew

[64] http://www.alternet.org/tags/non-profit-tax-law

[65] http://www.alternet.org/tags/marion-nestle

[66] http://www.alternet.org/tags/national-restaurant-association

[67] http://www.alternet.org/tags/center-union-facts

[68] http://www.alternet.org/tags/center-consumer-freedom

[69] http://www.alternet.org/tags/corporate-front-groups

[70] http://www.alternet.org/tags/astrotufr-lobbying

[71] http://www.alternet.org/tags/bermanexposedorg

[72] http://www.alternet.org/tags/consumerdeceptioncom

[73] http://www.alternet.org/tags/philip-morris-0

[74] http://www.alternet.org/tags/guest-choice-network

[75] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

The Center for Consumer Freedom is a nonprofit corporation run by lobbyist Richard Berman through his Washington, D.C.-based for-profit public relations company, Berman & Co. The Center for Consumer Freedom, formerly known as the Guest Choice Network, was set up by Berman with a $600,000 “donation” from tobacco company Philip Morris.

Berman arranges for large sums of corporate money to find its way into nonprofit societies of which he is the executive director. He then hires his own company as a consultant to these nonprofit groups. Of the millions of dollars “donated” by Philip Morris between the years 1995 and 1998, 49 percent to 79 percent went directly to Berman or Berman & Co.

Richard Berman is an influence peddler. He has worked out a scheme to funnel charitable donations from wealthy corporations into his own pocket. In exchange, he provides aflurry of disinformation, flawed studies, op-ed pieces, letters to the editor, and trade-industry articles, as well as access to his high-level government contacts, who are servants of the industries he represents.

Berman’s name might sound familiar. In 1995, Berman and Norm Brinker, his former boss at Steak and Ale Restaurants, were identified as the special-interest lobbyists who donated the $25,000 that disgraced then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who was hauled before the House Ethics Committee for influence-peddling over the money. Berman and Brinker were lobbying against raising the minimum wage.

Richard Berman is a spin doctor. For example, he has argued against a Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) initiative to lower the blood alcohol content (BAC) limit for drivers by claiming that the stricter limits would punish responsible social drinkers. He has claimed that U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warnings about salmonella-related food poisoning are just “whipping up fear over food.”

Here’s how an internal Philip Morris memo described Berman’s spin: “His proposed solution would broaden the focus of the ‘smoking issue,’ and expand into the bigger picture of over-regulation.” Smoking won’t kill you; over-regulation will.

Berman is “a one-man wrecking crew on important issues.” His approach has been described as “misleading” and “despicable.”  Berman has been called “a tobacco company whore,” but he’s branched out since then.

Using “freedom of choice” as his battle cry, Berman has now taken on PETA and a number of other groups and organizations whose points of view could have an impact on the profits of his clients by waking consumers up. Berman’s Guest Choice Network has an “advisory panel” whose members in 1998 included officials representing companies ranging from Cargill Processed Meat Products and Outback Steakhouse to Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association andSutter Home Winery. Berman’s clients are companies with vested interests in low employee wages; cheap, unhealthy restaurant-chain food, particularly meat; and tobacco, soft drink, and alcohol consumption—companies like Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, Armour Swift, and Philip Morris, whose product line includes Kraft Foods and everything from Marlboro cigarettes to Oscar Meyer wieners and which is a major shareholder in its former subsidiary Miller Brewing, now known as SABMiller.

PETA’s recent successes in gaining fast-food industry concessions for more humane conditions for farm animals have sent ripples of fear through the food and beverage service industry. About the same time that McDonald’s buckled to PETA’s demands, Richard Berman changed his front group’s name and stepped up his attacks.

The key to Berman’s aggressive strategy is, in his own words, “to shoot the messenger... we’ve got to attack their credibility as spokespersons,”—an interesting remark from someone whose background and funding so severely challenge his own credibility.

PETA has since created a response site, PETA Saves, which discusses Richard Berman and the CCF's smear campaign.

Appendices

  1. Individuals Who Have Been Associated with Berman
  2. Businesses That Have Been Associated With Berman
  3. Contributions to Berman - Dollar Amounts by Company and Year
  4. Organizations That Have Been Attacked by Berman
  5. Documented Donations of $2,950,000 from Philip Morris to Rick Berman/CCF

F.A.Q. on Richard Berman

Who is Richard Berman, and why he is attacking The HSUS?

 Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Richard Berman, and why is he attacking animal welfare organizations?

Richard Berman is a corporate front-man, a Washington, D.C., lobbyist and PR operative. Over the years, he has created a spider web of organizations whose aim is to attack established charities, nonprofits and public interest groups—from Mothers Against Drunk Driving to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the Institute of Medicine to The Humane Society of the United States. He refuses to divulge specific companies financing his dirty work, but it is known that Berman launched this line of work by taking money from tobacco companies to battle those seeking restrictions on smoking—a template that has defined his career.

Recently, he has aligned himself with the agribusiness lobby and appealed to factory farming interests for support, telling them that he will try and slow down The HSUS’s advances in improving the treatment of farm animals. By attacking The HSUS, Berman and his organizations have given encouragement to others who profit from the status quo cruelty to animals—whether large-scale puppy mill operators, criminal cockfighters, the seal slaughter industry, horse slaughter profiteers, or others.

Berman’s shadowy dealings have been exposed again and again by respected news organizations, including The Boston Globe, Bloomberg News, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, CBS, Harper’s, The San Francisco Chronicle. The investigative program “60 Minutes” reported that Berman's nickname is “Dr. Evil.”

Ultimately, those who finance Berman’s dirty tricks will be publicly revealed. America is not a nation of secrets. When that occurs, as it did with the tobacco apologists, Berman and his paymasters will recede further onto the fringes of America’s civic conversation.

What is Berman’s goal?

From what can be seen, Berman is in it for the money. Certainly, he has enriched himself handsomely over the years by being the mouthpiece for corporations too ashamed to stand up and speak for themselves. 

He exploits America’s charitable tax laws, but public documents show that Berman and his privately held PR firm are the financial beneficiaries of his efforts. In one recent tax filing, Berman and his private, for-profit company received 92 cents of every dollar reported by his primary nonprofit, the misnamed “Center for Consumer Freedom.” His corporate funders get anonymity and tax benefits, and Berman gets a million-dollar mansion with a Bentley in the driveway.

Berman is falsely trying to define animal welfare work as just one narrow category of giving grants to local dog and cat shelters, which take in 6 to 8 million animals each year. The HSUS helps local shelters in a number of ways but also helps the billions of other animals at risk in society, too. Berman attacks The HSUS not because we do too little, but because we do too much—and we are the greatest threat to animal abusers and Berman's industry paymasters.

What is the so-called “Humane Society for Shelter Pets”?

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}:

Berman was party to the launch of a wildly misnamed “charity” called the Humane Society for Shelter Pets. In hijacking the proud name “Humane Society” from groups at the local and national level—groups that have worked honorably to help animals for decades—Berman cynically sought to fool people into thinking that he had the interests of pets in mind, when indeed the real point of the group was to attack The Humane Society of the United States.

Although he claims to be interested in pets in peril, the money trail tells the opposite story: Berman has purchased advertising valued in the millions attacking The HSUS, which by contrast has a proud record of fighting pet homelessness.

He has sent threatening letters to local animal shelter leaders, harassing those who have spoken out about the real agenda of Berman and HSSP. That’s hardly a practice that makes him a friend of shelters.

If pickpocketing the name “Humane Society” wasn’t shameful enough, Berman and his undisclosed backers lifted the words “Shelter Pets” straight from the established “Shelter Pet Project” of The HSUS, The Ad Council and Maddie’s Fund. This ongoing national campaign to promote pet adoptions has resulted in more than $100 million of public service advertising and engagement on behalf of shelter pet adoption.

A review of HSSP’s most recent tax filings reveals an organization in deep financial distress. HSSP reported $1,208,700 in revenue in 2010, but only $55,000 in 2011, a decrease of 95.6 percent. HSSP is deeply indebted to its management firm, Berman & Company. In 2011, the nonprofit paid Rick Berman’s for profit PR agency $245,483, or four times the revenue the group took in, for “management, advertising, research and accounting fees.”

Zero percent of HSSP’s revenue went to animal shelters in 2011, though its stated mission is to “assist local pet shelters.” The only beneficiaries of HSSP’s revenue were the Center for Consumer Freedom, which is one of thetax exempt entities controlled by Rick Berman, and Rick Berman’s PR firm. Combined, they received $814,617 from the tax-exempt entity, while local shelters received nothing. HSSP’s other major expense in 2011 was a $520,000 pass-through grant to the Center for Consumer Freedom. The purpose of the grant as stated on the tax filing was “research and program development.” According to CCF’s tax filing, contributions totaling $577,050 “were temporarily restricted to be used on the Center’s Humane Watch campaign.” 

What do animal shelters and other animal welfare groups say about Berman and his various corporate fronts?

Dr. Gary Weitzman, former CEO of Washington Animal Rescue League, wrote this:

Thanks to HSUS, there is cohesion in our struggle to protect animals and move the nation forward on humane issues: shutting down puppy mills, promoting spay/neuter, encouraging shelter pet adoption, and other issues that are crucial to our joint success … Groups such as the CCF and HSSP hurt not only us, but the animals we are all trying to help.Read Washington Animal Rescue League's blog.

Robin Robertson Starr, CEO of Richmond SPCA, wrote:

CCF has recently created a new entity … called Humane Society for Shelter Pets. It took out huge full-page ads in major newspapers like the New York Times last week—ads that cost about $100,000 each—claiming to be deeply concerned about shelter pets.

… They have never supported animal shelters, never been a part of the effort to save the lives of animals and, in fact, could not care less about shelter pets. They just want to drive a wedge between the organizations in our field … for the protection of their own business interests. This is nothing but shameless opportunism tarted up as concern for animal welfare. Read Richmond SPCA's blog.

Karel Minor, executive director of Berks County Humane Society, said this about CCF:

CCF is trying to turn local animal shelters against the HSUS. They are trying to pit one group of animal advocates against another group and are hoping that no one will notice who is paying them to do it. No single animal shelter can really make much of a difference nationwide. But one huge organization like HSUS, which can improve legislation across the nation, can help make animal shelters more effective, and can respond in meaningful ways to natural disasters, can make a difference, and that difference isn’t always in the best interests of the food processors and their stockholders. That’s why CCF attacks HSUS. Read Berks County Humane Society's blog.

Jennifer Scarlett, Co-President of San Francisco SPCA wrote:

[CCF] has sought to minimize public concern regarding smoking, obesity, drunken driving and even mercury in tuna. Now Mr. Berman has set up several “humane” charities like Humane Watch and Humane Society for Shelter Pets that bash HSUS’s work and encourage the public to divert funds from HSUS.

[The HSUS] operates on the national stage, so it’s no surprise that as an advocate of the big issues, HSUS doesn’t run local shelters or fund the hundreds of independent humane societies, which Berman claims to find so outrageous. In fact, there is no national umbrella group for shelters … [s]o it’s easy money for sleek imposters to try to exploit public confusion. ... It would be tragic if donations for animal welfare were shunted into the coffers of a cynical fundraising machine that damages those very interests. Read SF Gate's blog.

Janice Brown, Founder & Chief Strategy Officer of TAILS Pet Media Group, Inc. wrote:

“To me, the HSSP is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I could not agree more that we need to “help shelter pets by donating locally …” as the ads state. But their message does not end there. The full plea says, “Please help shelter pets by donating locally, not to the HSUS.” Why? People routinely donate money to many different charities, because each one takes on a unique role in being part of the solution. […] If people are fooled, buy into what the HSSP is saying, and decide to stop donating to a national animal welfare organization … the state of animal welfare will be negatively impacted.”Read TAILS blog.

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2x?

TABLE

Berman grew up in New York City. His father ran gas stations and car washes, and Berman did general labor on weekends and summers while he was growing up.}:}: 

From 1967 to 1969, Berman worked as a labor law attorney for Bethlehem Steel. From 1969 to 1972, he served as a corporate lawyer for Dana Corporation, an automotive parts company in Toledo, Ohio. 

From 1972 to 1974, Berman was employed as labor law director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C. In this role, Berman claimed that he “argued against unnecessary regulation of [the] hospitality industry.” However, he is known to have submitted an amici curiae brief opposing a decision to grant health care coverage to pregnant women. 

Berman moved into the food and beverage industry in 1975 under the mentorship of Norman Brinker, founder and owner of the Steak & Ale chain of restaurants. Berman started a government affairs program, launched his first PAC for Brinker, and worked there until 1984. In 1995, Berman and Brinker were identified as the special-interest lobbyists who donated the $25,000 that caused House Speaker Newt Gingrich to be hauled before the House Ethics Committee for influence peddling.

Berman served as executive vice president of Pillsbury Restaurant Group from 1984 to 1986. In 1986, he formed Berman and Company.

Berman’s résumé also includes his work for Beverage Retailers Against Drunk Driving (BRADD), where he argued for “tolerance of social drinking;” the Minimum Wage Coalition to Save Jobs; and the Employment Policies Institute (EPI), created in 1991 to argue “the importance of minimum wage jobs for the poor and uneducated.”

Today, Berman describes himself as a social liberal and an economic conservative. He is media savvy and is reported to be clever, “aggressive,

and polished—a real street fightER...

http://www.consumerdeception.com/history.asp

Attachments