Hillary Rodham Clinton

In a half hour Hillary Clinton will take to the stage at Soldier Field, as part of the AFL-CIO's presidential forum. Somehow I doubt that her chief strategist, Mark Penn will be in attendance. Penn is the chief executive of Burson-Marsteller, which offers up strategic consulting for companies looking to bust up a union or prevent one from being formed. They used to brag on their website about their prowess in beating back Cintas worker's attempts to unionize. The story has now leapt from the Nation and the blogs to the pages of the Los Angeles Times.

"Companies cannot be caught unprepared by organized labor's coordinated campaigns," the section read, "whether they are in conjunction with organizing or contract negotiating…. That is why we have developed a comprehensive communications approach for clients when they face any type of labor situation."

Penn has said that his own public relations work does not involve anti-union activity, but union leaders said they were troubled that a Democratic candidate who cast herself as a labor ally had chosen him as a campaign partner.

"Learning that Mark Penn was CEO of a company that in fact conducts some of its business busting unions was very, very problematic to the AFL-CIO, as well as to many other unions, and we made that clear" to the Clinton campaign, said Karen Ackerman, AFL-CIO political director. "This is an issue that continues."

Teamsters General President James P. Hoffa said in a statement: "We have expressed our concerns to Sen. Clinton about Mark Penn and his firm's work for anti-union companies. We value Sen. Clinton's commitment to strengthen America's middle class. But as long as Mark Penn continues to profit from his company's involvement with anti-union companies, this issue will not go away."

This issue has been reverberating for two months now and Mark Penn refuses to disassociate himself from his company. Nor has he taken action to get his company out of the business of union busting. He has simply said he has walled himself away from those business practices. Of course, he is still profiting from those clients. I certainly hope that Clinton gets a question about Mark Penn's business. Thus far union officials have participated in discussions with the Clinton campaign and has released statements, but have declined to really blow this up as a major issue. Perhaps Keith Olberman will be bold enough to push this to the forefront.

For more on the back story see the Mark Penn tag.

Yesterday, when I was watching the CNN/YouTube Democratic debate I noticed that there was a significant number of Californian's questions that were selected to be asked of the candidates. Out of the 38 questions that were asked, eight came from Californians. No other state even came close to matching that total. Minnesota, Michigan, South Carolina and Pennsylvania had two each. The rest were single digits and two came from unknown locations.

Everyone in the country was eligible to submit a question. A state by state breakdown of the origin of all of the 2,000+ questioners is impossible to find, since we only know user names. However, during the debate they listed the hometown of almost all. So we can't know if this was a representative sample of the questions asked. Regardless, it is great to see so many Californians get a chance to ask the candidates questions during the debate. Wouldn't it be ironic if there were more CA questions asked during this debate than the one in LA?

Below the fold are the Californian questions and the name and hometown of the questioner.

The LA office was already opened a few weeks ago. Next Monday is the official opening/debate watching event in San Francisco. The two hour YouTube/CNN debate is on Monday night and they are opening up their offices for up to 500 supporters. It must be a pretty big place.

Here are the details:

What: Hillary for President San Francisco Campaign Office Opening

When: Monday, July 23
Come Early to Watch the Debate: 4 p.m.
Official Party Kick-Off: 6 p.m.

Where: 1122 Howard Street - Top Floor
San Francisco, California, 94103
(Between 7th and 8th Streets)

Who: Local elected officials, fellow supporters and you

RSVP: Via email mmartin@hillaryclinton.com
(RSVP today as we only have room for 500)

Man I wouldn't want to be mmartin, dealing with all of those RSVP emails and random questions. This thing would have been better dealt with by an online response form.

Over the weekend, MoveOn hosted one of a series of virtual townhalls, where the presidential candidates answer questions of concern to MoveOn members. This one was on the climate and timed to coincide with Live Earth.

All of the Democratic contenders participated and were asked three questions:

1. How does your plan on climate crisis differ from other candidates?
2. Do you support the use of an subsidies for liquid coal?
3. How will Americans, not just corporations, benefit from new energy economy?

The responses were video taped and put up on YouTube. Nobody really made any real news in their comments, but it is an easy way to compare the candidates in a non-traditional format. The candidates often use the initial questions to address their broader environmental and energy policies.

Here is the highlights video.

Perhaps the most interesting tidbit was that while Senators Edwards and Obama stated their support for a carbon emissions market (cap-and-trade variation), Clinton said that it would be one of several things she would consider.

[UPDATE] 5:30 pm Check out this quick and snarky overview of the top five Democrat's plans on the environment by Grist. It is well worth a read.

The presidential campaign seems to have settled down in to a groove. Candidates traipse across the country rarely going a day without fundraising and calling at least one press conference. The early primary states are lavished with much more attention than the February 5th states. Every few weeks there is a debate or an event where they all get to make their stump speeches. This week it is the Take Back America conference in DC. The ratio of campaign events to campaign events is shifting as the quarterly deadline approaches and the need to feed the media beast with a large figure drives decisions. Hillary Clinton had a pretty classic campaign day today, which the AP details.

She was in her now home state of New York, but was upstate most of the day, going from appearance to appearance. She started off in Buffalo at the Eero Saarinenn designed Kleinhan Music hall for a $500 plate breakfast fundraiser. A neat space actually, if you happen to find yourself in Buffalo. It's right on the Frederick Law Olmsted park. Clinton left from there to plant trees with Buffalo's mayor at the City Honors High School. She had brought along seeds from a white ash tree from Eleanor Roosevelt's Hyde Park estate Val-Kill. The trees were meant to replace the ones that were lost in an enormous (even for Buffalo) snow storm. That one forced my grandmother to evacuate her home for a few days. The planting appearance gave Hillary a chance to promote her energy and environmental policy positions.

After planting trees and raising cash Clinton headed East to Rochester for a meeting on the city's crime rate and an opportunity to talk about her national anti-violence initiatives. Oh and she has another fundraiser scheduled in Rochester later today.

In that way, Clinton said, she sees her presidential run as a positive for New York.

"There's a linkage between everything I do in and for New York and what I'm trying to do on the campaign trail and what I want to do as president," Clinton said at City Honors High School, where a lawn full of children awaited her arrival for more than an hour.

"You can talk about global warming right here in Buffalo while we're planting trees that are going to benefit the people of Buffalo, and I want to make those connections," she said.

It is an effective approach that is employed by all of the major candidates. They smoothly transition from event, to press conference, to fundraiser. I am simply amazed that they don't screw up the name of the town more often, as they plant trees to harvest voters and cash.

Hillary Clinton elected to appear in Detroit, as part of the AFL-CIO's endorsement decision-making process. She is the latest in a series of candidate appearances at local union halls. The AFL-CIO blog has the report from the event.

When I was asked where I wanted to go, I said one place: Detroit.

One reason Clinton chose Detroit is to highlight the nation’s need for a strong manufacturing sector. As Clinton put it:

If we don’t have a strong manufacturing sector, it won’t be long before we don’t have a strong economy.

She specifically called for the rejection of the Korea-US (KORUS) trade deal.

Clinton also heard from several workers who spoke about their personal experiences with the outsourcing of good American jobs, the difficulties workers face today when trying to form a union and this country’s health care crisis.

Janine Berry and her co-workers told Clinton about their experiences in seeking to form a union to bargain for a better life with AFT, a teachers union. After a long and difficult struggle to form a union, Berry and her co-workers won recognition. However, they remain without a union contract because the company continues to use intimidation and stall tactics to avoid an agreement.

Clinton pledged to sign the Employee Free Choice Act if she became president, legislation that will defend workers’ freedom to join and form unions and require arbitration if workers and a company can’t come to a first contract.

“When I’m president, we will have an Employee Free Choice Act, and I will sign it and I will work for it,” promised Clinton.

Hillary continues to be dogged by her advisor's ties to anti-worker campaigns. Ari Berman has an update to the story I blogged about earlier this week. The heads of the AFL-CIO and SEIU have joined their counterparts from the Teamsters and UNITE-HERE in discussing Mark Penn's PR firm's campaign to blog union organizing drives directly with Hillary's campaign.

In response, Penn told Marc Ambinder that he will "he will cede all oversight responsibilities for his company's labor relations clients to other managers." But...

A few weeks back Penn told The Nation that he had "never personally participated in any antiunion activity." He said today, via email, that he is "sending a clear message that I have no role in this and as a matter of conscience will not."

Penn's statements raise the question: how does one recuse themselves from work they claim not to be doing?

Good question. Even recusing himself does not go far enough.

Yet some labor officials hoped Penn would go much further, taking steps toward terminating B-M's "labor relations" division or at least ending the contract with Cintas. Neither will occur, nor is Penn taking a formal leave of absence from the company. He's also not distancing himself from the money the "labor relations" wing brings in and the other controversial clients B-M represents in the defense, pharmaceutical and energy industries and the Republican lobbyists he oversees.

Penn's "recusal" must thus be seen as a classic case of PR spin; a phony gesture that fails to address the underlying problems or the reasons prominent labor leaders are upset with Clinton's campaign.

Mark Penn continues to benefit directly from union busting campaigns. He is still one of Hillary's closest advisors. Penn has never repudiated the behavior of his firm, nor taken steps to halt their anti-labor activities. This story is not going away any time soon.

Slow news day, given the Republican debate yesterday, so here are a few interesting links, that aren't exactly our usual topics here, but related.

• Go dig around Open Secret's new presidential money site. I especially liked the industry donations breakdown and the California donations chart. You can look at the top zip codes and metro areas.
• Univision has announced two presidential debates, one for each party. Bill Richardson was the first one to indicate his attendance. They will be held in September and it will be interesting to see who decides to participate, especially on the Republican side.
• The SacBee looks at Hillary's attempts, but not fully successful efforts to woo Sacramento.

I don't believe I have put up Obama's full address to the CDP Convention. Here you go.

Oh a couple more videos, just for fun. For a bit of a laugh go watch Joe Trippi have issues baking a pecan pie. And check out Dodd on a plane. (h/t to CMR) Pie is better than plane, I have to say.

One of Hillary Clinton's closest strategists is a guy named Mark Penn. Penn is a big pumbah at a huge PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, that offers union busting services. They are part of the large industry of firms who run anti-organizing campaigns. Their current client is Cintas, who has successfully blocked efforts to unionize their nearly 20,00 garment workers and truck drivers. Ari Berman at The Nation disclosed all of this a few weeks ago.

The Teamsters and UNITE-HERE have written a letter to Clinton, noting their "distress" about Penn's ties to "anti-union/anti-worker campaigns". The letter is the subject of a NYT article today.

In interviews, Mr. Hoffa and Mr. Raynor stopped short of calling on Mrs. Clinton to disassociate herself from Mr. Penn.

Mr. Raynor said, “She ought to send a clear message to this guy Penn that she is unhappy about this union-busting stuff and that he shouldn’t be associated with it.”

Mr. Penn, speaking for himself and for the Clinton presidential campaign, said: “Senator Clinton’s well-documented support for pro-union causes would not in any way be affected by some clients in a firm related to the corporate network of one of her advisers. There is no connection whatsoever with her pro-union record.”

It was not exactly the most strongly worded letter to Clinton, but it is having its intended effect. Ari has the full letter up and says today:

A labor official told me that he expects Hillary to sit down with the two union heads and "placate us a little bit. But I don't think she'll cut Penn lose. He's her Rove."

Penn may eventually be forced take a formal leave of absence from Burson-Marsteller, a step he has thus far resisted. That might erase the political liability Penn has become for Hillary's campaign, but it hardly diminishes the underlying implications of his presence as her top strategist, the anti-union work Burson-Marsteller continues to do and the likelihood that if Hillary is elected Penn and his clients will greatly benefit, further blurring the distinction between the corporate and political world.

Perhaps in their private meeting Raynor and Hoffa will ask Senator Clinton why she elevated someone like Penn in the first place and chose to ignore his anti-labor ties.

During last night's debate the Democrats had an in-depth back and forth discussion on health care reform. You can watch the video below, but I would like to focus on two specific sub-topics, universality and how we pay for the needed reforms.

John Edwards directly addressed the lack of an individual mandate in Barack Obama's plan and Obama responded.

On this issue of mandatory and non-mandatory. People are not going around trying to avoid buying health care coverage. And in fact if you look at auto insurance, in California there is mandatory auto insurance. 25% of the folks don't have it. The reason is because they can't afford it.

So, John and I we are not that different in this sense that I am committed to starting the process. Everybody who want it can buy it and it is affordable. If we have some gaps that are remaining, we will work on that. You take it from the opposite direction, but you are still going to have some folks who are not insured under your plan John. Because some of them will not be able to some of them will simply not be able to be able to afford to buy the coverage that they are offered.

Obama is correct. No matter what we do, short of passing a single payer plan there will be people who will not be covered. There will be a percentage of the population that subject themselves to the punitive effects of Edward's proposal. It certainly should be much smaller than 25%, given that it is the less well off who often go without car insurance. That same population would have access to care in both Edwards and Obama's plans.