This Is Going to Be Fun

[NashVegas]

New book coming from Simon & Schuster, FYI:

*Publication date: January 2009*

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez believes that the United States is an evil empire that must be destroyed and has spent years cultivating alliances with Iran, Russia, North Korea and other countries that are hostile to America. The U.S. has yet to acknowledge the serious threat he poses to this country.

In *The Threat Closer to Home – Hugo Chavez and the War Against America* (Free Press; Publication date: January 2009; $25.00), authors Douglas Schoen and Michael Rowan argue that Chavez has both the means and the motivation to harm the United States in a way that few world leaders can. In *The Threat Closer to Home*, the authors contend that Chavez is much more dangerous than Osama bin Laden because he has total control over Venezuela’s military and its oil industry, which is the fourth largest supplier of oil to the U.S.

Drawing on two decades of experience working at the highest level of both Venezuelan and American politics, Schoen and Rowan go behind-the-scenes to examine Chavez’s efforts to subvert both the American economy and his own country’s stability. They can discuss:

* How Chavez sponsored and become increasingly involved in
civilian massacres, drug running, money laundering, nuclear
weapon proliferation, and terrorist training;
* How he helped drive the price of oil from ten dollars a barrel
to well over a hundred dollars a barrel;
* Chavez’s startling reach into American politics;
* The seriousness of his alliances with Russia, Iran, and North
Korea are;
* What the U.S. needs to do to protect itself from this dangerous
threat

Douglas Schoen has been a consultant for the Democratic party for the past 30 years and was President Clinton’s research and strategic consultant during his 1996 re-election campaign. He is the author of five books. Michael Rowan has been a political consultant since 1968 and has worked for candidates in over 35 U.S. states and 15 foreign countries. In 1993, he moved to Venezuela where he served as a consultant and newspaper columnist for 13 years. In the midst of research for the book, Rowan fled Venezuela to escape harassment from Chavez aides.

===========================================

Look for the next push against Chavez to come from the blue side of the aisle, I reckon.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Clintons have been connected to the right-wing Cuban "exiles" in Miami through her brother.

Hugh Rodham is married to a Cuban right-wingading "exile," who helped them both in their political campaigns in Florida. That vile dominating, reactionary, violence-supporting, sponsoring group in Miami has controlled US foreign policy toward Cuba, and has somehow gained the upper hand in political posturing toward Latin American leftists altogether.

They have joined with Venezuelan elite who have second, third, etc. homes in Florida, or keep condos, apartments, etc. and they even have joint events, like anti-Chavez parades with both Cuban reactionaries and Venezuelan right-wingers swarming.

It's not right for the Democratic Party to be controlled by right-wing poltics. No way!

[NashVegas]

2. Just Mentioning

Because I expect the authors will do the rounds of publicity-gathering interviews, and wanted to give you the heads up.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Decided to take a very quick look for anything on Schoen, found this.

It shows he works with the same firm which is one of four contracted by the little fascist President of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe, as part of his move to bombard the Democratic Congress until it relents, overlooks his horrendous human rights record, and endorses the FTA he wants:

From the biography for Douglas Schoen on Penn, Schoen & Berland's website:

Douglas E. Schoen is a founding partner and a principal strategist of Penn, Schoen & Berland. He was named "Pollster of the Year" in 1996 by the American Association of Political Consultants for his work in the Clinton campaign.

He was President William Jefferson Clinton's research and strategic consultant during the 1996 reelection, and has been widely credited with creating and effectively communicating the message that turned around the President's political fortunes between 1994 and 1996.

For more than twenty years Dr. Schoen has created winning messages and provided strategic advice to numerous political clients in the United States and to heads of state in countries around the world, including Greece, Turkey, Israel, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, Bermuda and Yugoslavia.

Political clients in the United States include: Idaho Governor, Cecil Andrus; Indiana Governor, Evan Bayh; Kentucky Governor, Paul Patton; Nevada Governor, Bob Miller; Louisiana Senator, John Breaux; New York Senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan; and West Virginia Senator, John D. Rockefeller.

Dr. Schoen has also provided pre-eminent strategic research to an extensive list of corporate clients, including Procter & Gamble, Major League Baseball, AT&T, Frito Lay, and Citibank.

Dr. Schoen has published a book on British politics, Enoch Powell and the Powellites, as well as a biography of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Pat: A Biography of Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, and a graduate of Harvard Law School, Dr. Schoen has his doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University in England.

An earlier biographical note states that Schoen "wrote his honours thesis on New York City politics ... At Penn + Schoen Associates, Dr. Schoen has been primarily responsible for clients such as Mayor Ed Koch of New York City, the New York Stock Exchange, Control Data Corporation, General Foods, and Proctor and Gamble."<1>

Tobacco industry documents
A 1994 market research proposal prepared for Philip Morris reveals that Penn & Schoen proposed performing "research" for PM designed to bolster implementation of PM's Accommodation Program, PM's national program to stave off legislated smoking bans by promoting smoking areas. Penn & Schoen proposed performing "credible opinion research" including conducting opnion polls with results that would reinforce claims that smoking restrictions result in lost jobs and income. Penn & Schoen also proposed helping portray efforts to eliminate public smoking as "pleasure revenge" by the state. The document states,

Direct Role of Dr. Schoen: Dr. Schoen is an Oxford-trained political sociologist. His direct role in the design of each part of this project, as well as his previous National Consumer League experience, underscores our unique ability to provide strategic research to the Accommodations Program in particular, and to Philip Morris...in general.

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

More:

Thursday Sept. 27, 2007 11:04 EDT
Douglas Schoen and Hillary's slimy pollsters



~snip~
Penn has the perfect long-time (now former) partner in Douglas Schoen, whose purpose in life is to argue that Democrats must accommodate George Bush and his radicalism (by, among other things, embracing Joe Lieberman) -- and repudiate their embarrassing and rabid base -- as much as possible if they want to succeed. One of the most disturbing aspects of a Clinton presidency is that individuals such as Penn and Schoen -- along with the likes of telecom lobbyist Jamie Gorelick and Iraq War cheerleader Mike O'Hanlon -- are highly likely to occupy critical positions of power in a Clinton administration, just as they did in the last Clinton administration.

But Schoen's problems go beyond mere establishment-perpetuating ideology. In light of the importance of perceptions of polling success for the Clinton campaign, Schoen -- ever since he left the Penn firm -- has been holding himself out as an independent polling analyst for Rasmussen Reports and other media venues, concealing his long-standing ties to the Clintons and writing one ostensibly objective analysis after the next which has no purpose other than to depict Clinton's candidacy as an inevitability.

~snip~
Nothing in Schoen's listed biography indicates he is in any way tied to the Clintons: "Douglas Schoen is a founding and former partner of Penn Schoen & Berland, and a Fox News Contributor." By design, anyone unaware of the role played in the Clinton campaign by the Penn, Schoen firm would read this and believe they are reading the analysis of an independent expert.

More:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/09/27/schoen/

Gotta run, will look for Rowan later.

Thanks for the heads up, for sure. It will be interesting finding out for whom they're working now!

[struggle4progress]

5. ... Doug Schoen is .. a paid commentator for Fox News ...

Democrats, Fox News and the Internet
WED MAR 14, 2007
Host: Warren Olney
Produced by: Dan Konecky, Christian Bordal, Frances Anderton
http://www.kcrw.com/news/programs/tp/tp070314democrats_fox_news_a

[Judi Lynn]

4. Found comments on Michael Rowan. He writes for the Venezuelan opposition paper,

"El Universal," which participated fully in creating the coup against Hugo Chavez.

Here's what the Huffington Post" has to say about this guy:

Michael Rowan was a political consultant for Democrats from 30 states from 1970 to 1990 including Senators Gravel of Alaska, Metzenbaum of Ohio, Riegle of Michigan, Moss of Utah, Cranston of California, Pell of Rhode Island and Moynihan of New York; and Representatives Lantos of California, Swett of New Hampshire, Skelton of Missouri, Carr of Michigan and Manton of New York. Since 1980 he has worked primarily overseas in presidential campaigns and government development programs in Sudan, Mauritius, Israel, Venezuela, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Trinidad & Tobago and Ecuador. He is a former president of the International Association of Political Consultants, the author of Como Salir de Chavez y de la Pobreza, Los Libros de El Nacional, 2006, and with Douglas Schoen Chavez: The Threat Closer to Home, Free Press, January 2009, and a regular columnist for El Universal and Veneconomia of Venezuela, where he lived from 1993 to 2006. He now lives in Bohemia, New York where he consults and writes about Latin America's political economy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-rowan#

Don't know about the past Democrats listed, but I do know that Tom Lantos and Ike Skelton have both been very atypical Democrats, far, far more conservative than anyone would have expected to find in Congress.

Here's something just posted in a thread above in this forum by Subsuelo, regarding "El Universal":

~snip~
The report's overwhelming reliance for factual material on opposition sources of dubious reliability also undermines its credibility and makes it difficult for most readers to know which parts of the report are true and which aren't. The most cited source with regard to political discrimination is the newspaper El Universal.<5> This is not only a stridently opposition newspaper, it has also, for the years during which it is cited, repeatedly fabricated news stories. For example, in a typical fabrication of the type deployed to libel government officials, El Universal reported that then Interior Minister Jesse Chacón had purchased a painting for $140,000.<6> This turned out to be completely false. There are many examples of fabrications in El Universal, as well as other opposition sources cited by the report.<7>

More:
http://nacla.org/node/5334

[struggle4progress]

6. An excerpt from a 2007 Schoen-Rowan article in the now-defunct wingnut NY Sun

... What is it about Mr. Chavez that they don't get? What does Mr. Chavez have to do to make them see him as he really is? If calling Mr. Bush "the Devil" and America "the Evil Empire" is all someone has to do to gain acceptance from those who oppose American policy, why didn't Pol Pot, Muammar Gadhafi, and Robert Mugabe qualify? President Carter endorsed the Chavez counts without any verifiable paper ballot count or audit. Why? And why does he continue to support Mr. Chavez? Why do members of Congress from 17 states look the other way as Mr. Chavez delivers subsidized oil to households in their districts? ...
Ignoring Chavez's Plan
By MICHAEL ROWAN AND DOUG SCHOEN | February 20, 2007
http://www.nysun.com/opinion/ignoring-chavezs-plan/48925/

The shrill hysterical tone is quite informative about the authors. Of course, that should be no surprise, given the paper's reliably wingnut editorial line, as illustrated by the following:

Cheney's Chance
Editorial of The New York Sun | April 4, 2007
For all the talk about potential candidates who haven't entered the 2008 presidential race ... the one that who would bring the most to the race is Vice President Cheney ... http://www.nysun.com/editorials/cheneys-chance/51783/

From a 2007 article in The Nation:

... Although it is funded by a coterie of wealthy individuals, published on a shoestring and edited by a tenacious journalist, Seth Lipsky, the paper is not a financial success: Last year Lipsky told journalism students at Columbia that the Sun lost $1 million a month. But those losses amount to pocket change for the proprietors, whose investment and ongoing commitment have yielded something else: a broadsheet that injects conservative ideology into the country's most influential philanthropic, intellectual and media hub; a paper whose day-to-day coverage of New York City emphasizes lower taxes, school vouchers and free-market solutions to urban problems ...
Sun-rise in New York
By Scott Sherman
This article appeared in the April 30, 2007 edition of The Nation.
April 18, 2007
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070430/sherman

I am glad, however, to note:

... The paper published its last edition on 2008-09-30. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Sun

[Peace Patriot]

7. Doug Schoen is the one who did the false poll in Venezuela, in 2006, which was supposed to

precipitate rightwing riots and disruption and another fascist coup attempt, and possibly an assassination of Chavez (might have been linked to the Colombian plot that was exposed). Schoen's poll said Chavez lost, when in fact he had won with 63% of the vote, in an election system that puts our own to shame for its transparency. Schoen's collusion with the rightwing opposition in Venezuela was so scandalous that his partner Mark Penn (no angel himself) had to go down to Venezuela and disentangle Penn, Schoen and Berland from Schoen's nefarious activities. Soon after, the firm broke up, and Penn went off on his own in political consulting and polling. Penn is a paid agent of the Colombian government--their lobbyist to get the Democrats to overlook the murders of thousands of union leaders and other advocates of the people in Colombia, and indeed reward them for their murderous corruption by giving them a "free trade" deal. Penn was Hillary Clinton's chief campaign adviser, and got backbenched when his connection to the Colombian government became known. (She said she opposes the Colombian "free trade" deal, but I never believed her.)

Doug Schoen is a total and complete, unmitigated scumbag, and Marc Penn isn't much better (just a little smarter perhaps).

[Judi Lynn]

8. I remember that Venezuelan poll, too. He colluded with Sumate, the virulent anti-Chavez, Bush-

bankrolled (with U.S. taxpayers' dollars, that is) opposition group throughout the fiasco. This leaves very little room for doubt about how dependable these people are. What a horror learning they are connected to a Democratic President-elect.

From Sourcewatch:

According to Washington Business Forward, PSB's "reputation is largely as a Democratic political polling firm, closely associated with both President Bill Clinton's administration as well as the Senate campaign of his wife Hillary. But the firm also worked for Republican Michael Bloomberg in his mayoral bid in New York City, generating huge fees from the multi-millionaire self-financed candidate that caught some press attention during the campaign. ... Major corporate clients over the years have included AT&T, Coca-Cola, American Express, BP, Novartis and Microsoft."<5><6>

Makes you wonder just who the hell they are really working for!

PSB and the Serbian elections in 2000

Interestingly, PSB was involved in similar charges of "American political interference in Serbia, locus of a $77 million U.S. effort to do with ballots what NATO bombs could not--get rid of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. In the run-up to national elections on Sept. 24, U.S. aid officials and contractors are working to strengthen Serbia's famously fractured democratic opposition. They have helped train its organizers, equipped their offices with computers and fax machines and provided opposition parties with sophisticated voter surveys compiled by the same New York firm that conducts polls for President Clinton" -- PSB.<10>

Jonathan Mowat has a more incisive appraisal of PSB as follows:

Penn, Schoen and Berland (PSB) has played a pioneering role in the use of polling operations, especially "exit polls," in facilitating coups. Its primary mission is to shape the perception that the group installed into power in a targeted country has broad popular support. The group began work in Serbia during the period that its principle, Mark Penn, was President Clinton's top political advisor.

PSB and the expected Italian elections in 2006

At the beginning of 2006, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi ordered PBS (via his party Forza Italia) to conduct a survey on the next Italian elections (of April 9, 2006). The results showed Berlusconi's coalition winning, while all other surveys by Italian pollsters showed the opposition winning. The Penn, Shoen & Berland Italian survey results can be seen here:

More:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Penn%2C_Schoen_%26_Berland

~~~~~~~~~~~

U.S. polling firm lands in middle of Venezuelan referendum dispute
By ANDREW SELSKY
Associated Press
August 19, 2004

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- A U.S. firm's exit poll that said President Hugo Chavez would lose a recall referendum has landed in the center of a controversy following his resounding victory.

"Exit Poll Results Show Major Defeat for Chavez,'' the survey, conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, asserted even as Sunday's voting was still on. But in fact, the opposite was true -- Chavez ended up trouncing his enemies and capturing 59 percent of the vote.

Any casual observer of the 2000 U.S. presidential elections knows exit polls can at times be unreliable. But the poll has become an issue here because the opposition, which mounted the drive to force the leftist leader from office, insists it shows the results from the vote itself were fraudulent. The opposition also claims electronic voting machines were rigged, but has provided no evidence.

Election officials banned publication or broadcast of any exit polls during the historic vote on whether to oust Chavez, a populist who has sought to help the poor and is reviled by the wealthy, who accuse him of stoking class divisions.

~snip~
Cesar Gaviria, secretary general of the Organization of American States who monitored the referendum, said the poll must have had a tremendous impact on Chavez's opponents, who felt they were about to complete their two-year drive to oust him.

"They were told they had a lead of 20 points and then when the results came, they lost by 20 points,'' Gaviria said. "It's very difficult to deal with that.''

Both Gaviria and former President Jimmy Carter, another election monitor, endorsed the vote, saying the results coincided with their own independent samplings.

~snip~
Critics of the exit poll have questioned how it was conducted because officials have said Penn, Schoen & Berland worked with a U.S.-funded Venezuela group that the Chavez government considers hostile.

Penn, Schoen & Berland had members of Sumate, a Venezuelan group that helped organize the recall initiative, do the fieldwork for the poll, election observers said.

~snip~
Venezuelan Minister of Communications Jesse Chacon said it was a mistake for Sumate to be involved in the exit poll because it might have skewed the results.

"If you use an activist as a pollster, he will eventually begin to act like an activist,'' Chacon told The Associated Press.

http://www.rethinkvenezuela.com/news/08-19-04ap.html

[Judi Lynn]

9. More on their Venezuelan election work: Penn & Schoen's Inaccurate and Dishonest "Exit Poll" on Cháv

Penn & Schoen's Inaccurate and Dishonest "Exit Poll" on Chávez Vote
Maneuver by U.S. Political Consultants Violated Venezuelan Law and Professional Ethics Codes

By Al Giordano
Special to The Narco News Bulletin

August 19, 2004

CARACAS, VENEZUELA AND SOMEWHERE IN AMÉRICA: The United States-based, British-owned, political consulting firm bearing the names of pollsters Mark Penn, Doug Schoen, and Michael Berland, committed a crime under Venezuelan election law on Sunday: It violated the law against releasing “exit poll” data before polls had closed.

In the firm’s own press release, Penn, Schoen & Berland admitted that they knew they were releasing the supposed “exit poll” information while voting was still underway:

“New York, August 15, 2004, 7:30pm EST – With Venezuela’s voting set to end at 8:00pm EST according to election officials, final exit poll results from Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, an independent New York-based polling firm, show a major victory for the ‘Yes’ movement, defeating Chavez in the Venezuelan presidential recall referendum.”

The careless and malicious approach that Penn, Schoen & Berland displayed with the Venezuela referendum on the continued tenure of President Hugo Chávez can be seen by the hour when the firm put out its press release: Voting in Venezuela had already been extended another two-and-a-half hours, until 10 p.m. (it would later be extended past midnight) so that all the millions of Venezuelan citizens still waiting on line to vote would be able to cast their ballots.

Thus, the gringo-British polling firm played fast and loose with the facts, and the law, in ways that it would never have been able to get away with in the United States on an election day. Justice demands that it not get away with this unethical behavior in Latin America either. To wit: If the pollsters and Penn, Schoen & Berland knew that polling hours had already been extended when they released their poll, then the pollsters clearly intended to deceive. But if the pollsters did not know what had already been announced in the news media in Venezuela, that would indicate a level of reckless disregard for the truth and incompetence as pollsters, as well as laziness at the hour the pollsters were supposedly tracking the vote, that will seriously stain the firm’s ability to meddle credibly in Latin American elections – or any elections anywhere – ever again.

More:
http://www.narconews.com/Issue34/article1046.html

[EFerrari]

10. He has control of the military! Oh, no!

lol

Thanks for the heads up, Crisco. It's amazing how many jobs there are for scambags, when you think about it. Their market always seems to be just fine.