Stevens Lobbyist Bailout Needed
It makes sense when you think about it, but apparently Ted Stevens’ existence in the US Senate was supporting a pretty vast network of staffers-turned-lobbyists and a whole cottage industry for whom ties to Stevens were bread and butter. Now he’s gone, and his office isn’t in such good repute. And that means trouble for his cronies:
So when Alaskan voters narrowly rejected Mr. Stevens’s bid for re-election last month, just days after a jury convicted him of federal ethics violations, it was in some ways like the closing of the plant in a company town.
“It is sort of a miasma of ‘Wow, no Ted Stevens tomorrow?’ ” said Ronald G. Birch, his first chief of staff and the informal dean of what might be called the Stevens lobby.
Mr. Birch was the first person to open a Washington office specializing in lobbying the senator, and one of his partners is the senator’s brother-in-law, William H. Bittner, who has shared a series of profitable real estate investments with Mr. Stevens as well.
And on and on like that. Good riddance, I say.
More generally, you’ve got to figure that the lobbying industry is one of the few sectors of the economy that’s currently poised for strong growth. With business investment and consumer spending tanking, public sector expenditures are going to rise as a share of the economy even faster than they rise in absolute terms. And lots of firms are going to be cutting back, but already you can see that the hard-hit financial services and auto sectors are going to be counting on their government relations departments as key to their business models. Beyond that, I think big business trying to get its way in a Democratic-controlled Washington becomes more of a nakedly transactional affair — old-school influence peddling reigns supreme — with less ideological encrustment and profession of principle.
51 Responses to “Stevens Lobbyist Bailout Needed”
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December 22nd, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Will you make a post about Jennifer Palmieri, and how independent you are already?
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:26 pm
MY: Elephant, what elephant?!
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Matt you are being a coward (and insulting your loyal readers) by pretending to be what you are not: someone who does not directly address the issue at hand but uses British understatement and omissions to respond to the elephant in the room.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Folks, any chance we can get back to discussing policy? If you’re so incensed about the Palmieri situation, the best way to show your ire is to stop visiting Matt’s blog and let his traffic drop (not saying I want this to happen to Matt’s blog, of course). Yeah, it was weird. Yeah, it was creepy. BUT IT’S NOT MATT’S FAULT. You really think he should quit because his publisher disagrees with him about one of his posts? WHO GIVES A FLYING FUCK ABOUT CAP OR THIRD WAY’S OPINIONS? Again, if you feel his independence is compromised (I see no evidence of that whatsoever) don’t read the blog, and stop screwing up comments threads.
Yeah, this won’t be a popular comment, but whatever.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Wow. Our own Jennifer is on a short list for assistant secretary of defense for public affairs.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Address the issue, god damn it! It simply won’t die unless you address it! It probably won’t die anyway, but still. Otherwise you have no more balls than Marty Peretz.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Here’s the problem, Matt.
We’re about to embark upon a new Presidential administration. One that closely is linked to CAP. Your readers are looking for balanced journalism, and based on yesterday’s post, there are legitimate questions as to whether you’re in a position to do that. The longer you don’t address this issue, the more your readers will come to the conclusion that you are censored in some ways.
Unfortunately for you, we all have many choices of blogs and limited time to read them. You need to address this in some fashion.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Seconding 4 above.
Everyone needs to relax. It’s just a blog. If this incident suddenly calls into question your trust for a blog, maybe you’ve been taking blogs too seriously. Blogs have taken off because a bunch of office workers with internet access want to kill time on the company dime. Blogs aren’t holy sanctuaries of credibility.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:34 pm
@Jasper your comment is popular with me. Really people just need to calm down. It was one post. Yikes
And I couldn’t be more happy that people who profited from Ted Stevens being in power are heading for the unemployment line.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:34 pm
I still like your writing, Matt. Even thought what’s-her-name just made you her bitch.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:36 pm
I hope to Jebus that Ted Stevens has a cell mate. Would he go to prison in AK or in a Federal Pen somewhere?
I remember seeing a lockup special on AK’s prisons, and from what I remember unfortunately they were very forgiving for prisoners, and the sex offenders were walking around just fine, and the view was spectacular. Hopefully Ted will wind up at a USP, and not at a FPC.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Methinks that, given the association of the owners of this blog with the new Administration, this is a part of the larger agenda on the part of the President elect’s team to make sure that the base does not have voice or platform to criticize the things to come: all promises watered down to appeal to the base — the base of the GOP, that is.
Bullshit indeed.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Even thought what’s-her-name just made you her bitch.
No she didn’t. Did Matt post a retraction of his “incrementalist bullshit” comment? AFAIK he has not. So his opinion is a matter of record — an opinion his publisher is on record as disagreeing with. Again, who cares whether they agree with him on every post or not? Yeah, it was handled poorly — and Gawd knows there are a lot of foolish, insensitive people about (who apparently don’t realize such a bone-headed move draws infinitely more attention to Matt’s original criticism that it would have gotten otherwise). But that’s on them.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:41 pm
I agree with everything Frank said. I will add: yes I am a liberal, and yes I vote for Democrats. But when I read the media (and that includes blogs), what matters most is independence. Speak Truth to Power and so on.
I have no interest in reading propaganda, however well disguised. Now that Democrats are in power, CAP and ThinkProgress are already suspect. This blog is one of my favorites but if during the Obama years it becomes a party-line echo chamber, I will stick to TPM and the NY Times.
This is why Matt needs to make a post about the influence people like Jennifer Palmieri (possibly going to… the Pentagon!) have over him.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:43 pm
I’m pretty sure that Matt doesn’t read his comments. I’d say that the chances of a clarification from him vis-a-vis Palmierigate are pretty slim. It would take a DDoS attack from half the web to get him to acknowledge what his readers are saying at this point.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Don’t ignore this matt…
The sooner you get it over with the better.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Not saying, mind you, that frequent intrusions would be welcome, or that it wouldn’t be in Matt’s interest to quit if this became standard M.O. for CAP. If he decides eventually to quit good for him — I’m sure he’ll be online again soon. But that could take a while to play out, and in the interim I need my fix of policy discussion and debate — and would just as soon this blog remain readable and enjoyable. The fairest way for those who think the single Palmieri post is unacceptably bad is to write letters to CAP or Matt, or arrange boycotts of their advertisers, or stop reading, or whatever. Infecting comments threads about other issues just ruins it for those who don’t share your outrage about this situation.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:52 pm
But I highly doubt he cares about what his commentators are saying, since that would be a first time for him.
Maybe so. And no doubt his traffic is spiking. Way to go outraged Yglesias readers.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Gawd knows there are a lot of foolish, insensitive people about…
That should have read “overly sensitive” if anybody cares…
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Stay strong, Matt! Don’t let your readers force transparency and community on you. Just get through today. You were on many important panels and participated in extremely relevant seminars. Never forget that!
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Ditto Hoi Polloi @ 22! They don’t give away Scandinavian junkets to just any old bloggers! You are the man. Don’t let the fact that JP publicly cut off your balls force you into admitting anything you don’t want to admit.
Just keep pretending like your balls are in the same place they always were, and everything will be fine. You will be back to ranting about inexpensive downtown parking in no time, and everyone will have forgotten the way JP made you her bitch while your readers laughed about it.
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Re: Stevens
I suppose I’m wondering, who will the lobbyists gravitate around now? It’s not as if they’ll all retire, or all the other senators will become paragons of virtue.
Maybe something to watch.
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Look Jasper, what you don’t seem to be able to wrap your head around is that we want an explanation because we like Iglesias and want to continue reading him
So saying how we should just stop reading and chuckling about how we outraged readers are spiking his traffic is really besides the point, we’re not outraged, we’re concerned. We don’t care about spiking his traffic for the same reason we don’t want to stop reading; we like Iglesias.
All we’re asking is that he explains the what, how and why so we know in what kind of context we can place his posts.
If you don’t like us calling for that, tough luck, and I advice you to take your own medicine and simple wait reading these comment treads untill he has addressed the issue. It’s that simple.
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:06 pm
@Jasper – no doubt his traffic is spiking today. Really pissing off your commenters will do that for you, if they hang around refreshing to see if/when you’ll apologize. But I don’t think it’s a good long-term traffic building strategy.
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Josh Marshall has a good post at TPM about the controversy du jour.
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Blogs have taken off because a bunch of office workers with internet access want to kill time on the company dime.
Oh *that’s* why blogs are popular! Thanks for clearing that up for us, Del.
I think we should just lay off this Palmieri crap. She made a really stupid (and categorical) mistake. What do you guys expect MY to do about it? Have an online ’showdown’ with JP? C’mon. Easy for you to say, kibbutzers.
BTW, of course MY reads his comments and has always done, although some of you have been giving him a great excuse not to, lately.
I think big business trying to get its way in a Democratic-controlled Washington becomes more of a nakedly transactional affair — old-school influence peddling reigns supreme — with less ideological encrustment and profession of principle.
I think this is basically right, although the influence peddling was already pretty naked – renderings of clothing painted onto naked bodies quite a bit of the time.
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Matt probably hopes that the people filling up every comment section with this stuff will get bored and go away. He may be underestimating the single-minded narcissism of the commenters who have apparently decided that a one paragraph disclaimer post is the most important issue of our time.
Calling this a tempest in a teapot would be somewhat demeaning to teapots.
A couple points:
1. The little “thinkprogress.org” at the end of the web address means that, in practice, this isn’t entirely a personal blog. Disclaimers or not, everything here is written on company letterhead.
2. Institutions and actors who are concerned with having a genuine influence on policy (and have a genuine opportunity to do so) tend to operate a little differently from the rest of us.
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Beyond that, I think big business trying to get its way in a Democratic-controlled Washington becomes more of a nakedly transactional affair — old-school influence peddling reigns supreme — with less ideological encrustment and profession of principle.
Is this MY’s response to the Third Way fiasco?
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:18 pm
I think the damage is already done. A response by Matt now would look more like a response to blogger/commenter pressure and not a response to his castration.
He’s already decided to roll with the Greater Obama Posse (GOP?)
and he’s decided to take whatever heat may come with that.
December 22nd, 2008 at 2:32 pm
I too wish people would move past the big brother post. I like to read the comments to get some counters to the post itself, and this’d be a great place for people with a feel for how lobbying works to chime in and say “no, this isn’t going to turn into the ending of an Ayn Rand book” because with all the lobbying and the anything-goes-to-get-us-through-the-recession mindsight looks like we’re really being primed for a business model dependent upon government largesse failing and taking the government with it, leading to destabilization of society and order.
December 22nd, 2008 at 3:28 pm
I’m not a regular reader – I just came to watch the train wreck – but surely obstructing regular discussion and debate until an explanation is forth coming is a feature rather than a bug.
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