AT&T's Man in the White House

Saturday, January 8, 2011 by Save the Internet

by Timothy Karr

When President Obama said he was going to "bring change to Washington," no one expected William Daley to be his choice to get the job done. 

Obama's incoming chief of staff is about as corporate friendly as any Democratic insider can be, which is saying a lot. 

For supporters of an open Internet, Daley's appointment raises the prospect that the president will break all promises to defend Net Neutrality at the urging of a chief of staff determined to cozy up with industry and protect the status quo. 

The outlook for any progress under Daley is dim. 

Daley currently serves as a top executive at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co -- concerning those who had hoped to see this president rein in a reckless financial sector.

Daley once told the New York Times that the Obama administration had "miscalculated" by moving too far to the left on health care reform -- concerning those who had hoped the president would fight Republican efforts to repeal the law. 

Daley served as a special counsel to President Clinton in 1993, helping the administration's successful push to ratify NAFTA -- concerning those across the labor movement, who delivered supporters to Obama by the busload. 

It's worse for advocates of open and democratic media. From 2001 through 2004, Daley led lobbying efforts for SBC Communications, Inc. His first assignment was to lock in the company's local monopolies while allowing it to charge extortionate rates for competitors seeking to share SBC's lines, defying a basic communications principle known as "common carriage."

He was a top executive at SBC as the company laid the groundwork for its 2005 takeover of AT&T Corporation, after which it rebranded the merged entity as AT&T Inc. During that time, Daley worked very closely with Randall Stephenson, who has since risen through the ranks to become AT&T CEO and chairman. 

He joined Stephenson and former AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre in a 2002 meeting to lobby the FCC's top brass for industry deregulation. Daley, Stephenson and Whitacre wanted the FCC to declare that high-speed Internet access would no longer be considered a "telecommunications service," but rather an "information service." The regulatory change would give phone and cable companies broad latitude to raise prices, stifle competition and control consumer choice on the Web.

An all-too-compliant FCC obliged later that year, removing high-speed Internet access services from regulation under common carriage. Daley supported this radical move, which reversed the long-held rule establishing nondiscriminatory communications networks as essential to economic opportunity and innovation. (Read Aparna Sridhar's 2010 report for a good history of this deregulatory process). 

In so doing, the FCC undercut its own ability to keep Internet providers from gutting Net Neutrality and interfering with our right to connect to any website, service or application on the Web.

AT&T Stakes Its Claim to the Oval Office

Now companies like Comcast and AT&T are vying to be the Internet's new gatekeepers -- creating special lanes for their own websites and services, or for those of a few big corporate partners, while leaving the rest of us on a digital dirt road.

However you look at it, there are very few degrees that separate Daley from his successor at AT&T, James Cicconi, who now leads lobbying efforts for the communications giant. 

Daley's appointment to the White House brought praise from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where Cicconi serves as a director. The Chamber marches in lockstep with AT&T in opposing Net Neutrality. Working together, the two groups have been very effective in buying up opposition to Net Neutrality among Democrats and Republicans alike. 

AT&T is the largest single corporate contributor to congressional campaigns, since 1989 giving more than $45 million in donations to both Republican and Democratic candidates. It spent nearly $13 million on DC lobbyists just in 2010. 

AT&T has staked out the legislative branch. With Daley to start work in days, it can now make a claim to the White House, too. 

Thus far, AT&T-funded Republicans have introduced one bill, designed to strip the FCC of its power to protect the open Internet. The president was expected to veto this and other anti-Net Neutrality legislation should it make its way to his desk. 

But with Daley at his side, how long will it be before Obama caves?

Center Moves to the Center, Courting the Middle

Friday, January 7, 2011 by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) blog
by Peter Hart 

Obama's selection of conservative Democrat William Daley as his new chief of staff didn't surprise anyone. So reporters were left to explain the political shift behind the move. Some saw little movement at all, since Daley's political views would seem more or less in line with his predecessor Rahm Emanuel. The Washington Post (1/7/11) offered this somewhat confused explanation:

His moderate views and Wall Street credentials make him an unexpected choice for a president who has railed against corporate irresponsibility and tried, with limited success, to appease restive liberals who think he has not been tough enough on bankers.

Actually, the opposite would seem more accurate; the choice of a right-leaning banker with deep ties to corporate America would suggest that Obama doesn't really "rail" against corporations, and certainly has done little to "appease restive liberals." Daley's selection is more evidence of this general trend. Tell that to USA Today, which headlines its piece "Daley Choice Puts a Moderate in Play"--as if there weren't many "moderates" around to begin with. The piece leads with this:

President Obama's choice of Chicago business executive William Daley to run his White House operation is the clearest sign yet that he intends to move toward the political center as he approaches a likely 2012 re-election campaign, members of both parties say.

And over at the L.A. Times, "Obama Chooses Former Clinton Staffers in a Move to the Center" is the headline; readers are told that these moves are "a signal to business leaders and independent voters that he is resolved to steer a more centrist course after two years of intense partisan clashes."

The obvious point here is that Obama "intends to move" towards the center--meaning that he's not there already. The media preference for a Democrat is one who continuously moves to the right. In order to convince readers that Obama isn't already there, reporters magnify certain political disputes in order to prove this point. Today's Wall Street Journal headline, "President Revs Up Campaign to Make Peace With Business," is a perfect example: Obama's been too tough on corporate America, and now he's moving the other direction by hiring a businessman to run the White House.

Obama Picks Bank, Telecom, & Pharma Lobbyist to Be Chief of Staff

Here We Go Again: Obama ushers a telecom lobbyist, chief architect of NAFTA and current Midwest chairman of JP Morgan Chase into the #2 job in the White House.
By Ari Berman, The Nation
on January 7, 2011

Rahm Emanuel is off running for mayor of Chicago, but his ghost will soon be making a return to the White House in the form of fellow Chicagoan Bill Daley, who President Obama is naming as Rahm’s replacement today. The post is currently filled by low-key Obama aide Pete Rouse.

Daley, brother of outgoing Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, was Commerce Secretary under Bill Clinton, the chief architect of NAFTA, chairman of Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, a top adviser/fundraiser for the Obama campaign and, most recently, Midwest chairman of JP Morgan Chase. He shares the corporate centrism of Emanuel and, when it comes to economic issues, may be worse. AFL-CIO head John Sweeney once said that Daley stood “squarely on the opposite side of working families.”

Daley lobbied for telecommunications giant SBC, publicly chided the Obama administration for pursuing healthcare reform (he serves on the board of drugmaker Merck), advised the Chamber of Commerce on Wall Street regulation (they wanted less of it) and reportedly urged Obama’s team to drop the most popular provision of the financial reform bill—the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. When Daley joined the board of the corporate-aligned Democratic group Third Way in July 2010, board chairman John Vogelstein said that Daley’s tasks would include “reforming entitlements”—a clever code word for cutting Social Security and Medicare. Yet, despite all this, Obama is making Daley the focal point of his White House in year three. Didn’t the president learn anything from Rahm’s disastrous tenure at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

This week Politico reported that Republican House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa brazenly asked over 150 companies and trade associations to specify which regulations and consumer protections they’d like to gut in the new Congress. It was precisely the type of story Democrats should pounce on to paint the GOP as a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate American. Instead, the Obama administration is close to appointing a JP Morgan exec to burnish its “pro-business” credentials. Talk about mixed messaging!

In fact, the Obama administration has tried its damndest to plot the “moderate, centrist course” that Daley accuses them of forsaking—abandoning the public option in healthcare reform, loading up the stimulus with tax cuts, extending the Bush tax cuts, escalating the war in Afghanistan, and stepping away from potentially divisive fights over immigration reform and cap and trade. Indeed, it’s amazing that the administration doesn’t get more credit from the business community for saving the banks, rescuing the auto industry, stabilizing the economy and preventing another great depression. Americans want jobs and relief from the federal government and Obama administration, not another banker running the show.

"Another Mistake" is Consensus on Obama's new Chief of Staff

"A Real Mistake": Progressives on Obama's Choice of Chief of Staff
by Carol E. Lee - Thursday, January 6, 2011 by Politico
Adam Green, one of the most prominent progressive voices, was quick to criticize President Obama's decision on Thursday to make William Daley his next chief of staff.

US President George W. Bush speaks during a meeting with former Cabinet secretaries and senior government officials, including Bill Daley, former Secretary of Commerce, on free trade agreements at the White House in Washington, DC, February 26, 2008. "This was a real mistake by the White House," Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said in a statement. "Bill Daley consistently urges the Democratic Party to pursue a corporate agenda that alienates both Independent and Democratic voters. If President Obama listens to that kind of political advice from Bill Daley, Democrats will suffer a disastrous 2012."

Green says a big concern for progressives is Daley's opposition to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau being overseen by Elizabeth Warren, in addition to his opposition to the "public option" during the health care debate.

Daley has argued that Democrats should seek a more moderate stance, a position that has angered liberals who were already upset with some of the compromises brokered by Obama's previous chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.

The liberal blogger Jane Hamsher, a frequent White House critic, described the pick as "an interesting choice, considering [House oversight committee Chairman Darrell] Issa is going to be investigating Fannie and Freddie, and Daley was a Fannie Mae board member. Fannie is the third most hated company in America. It's sort of like painting a sign on your back that says ‘Kick me.' "

Ezra Klein, a liberal writer for The Washington Post, said: "The Daley pick seems like a bad idea to me. The particular theory of politics he espouses seems woefully detached from the realities of the modern partisan environment -- as Jon Chait says, it effectively means 'allowing extreme positions to redefine the parameters of the debate.' But you can certainly read this post as evidence that Daley is a singular political talent, and the Obama administration would be well served by hiring someone able to sustain these sorts of contradictions."

In a statement, MoveOn.org Executive Director Justin Ruben said Daley has "close ties to the Big Banks and Big Business" and that the announcement is "troubling and sends the wrong message to the American people." He added: "Americans are looking to the White House for economic plans that will create jobs and reign in Wall Street's excesses, and it's up to Daley to prove that he's not carrying water in the White House for the big banks that took our economy over the cliff. As the President continues to reshuffle his staff, particularly his economic team, it is now more important than ever that he focuses on rebuilding a middle class and developing policies that create more jobs on Main Street, not on Wall Street."

Obama chooses JPMorgan exec. William Daley as new chief of staff

(So Obama still knows who holds his reins. bad deal. he's all the way up the bankers' asses.--jef)

By Eric W. Dolan  --  Thursday, January 6th, 2011

JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive and former commerce secretary William Daley was chosen Thursday to be President Obama's new White House chief of staff, according to published reports.

Sixty-two year old Daley is brother of outgoing Chicago major Richard Daley and has close ties to former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and outgoing White House senior adviser David Axelrod. He will be replacing interim chief of staff Peter Rouse.

Rouse stepped in when Obama's first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, decided to run for mayor of Chicago.

"Bill Daley is a man of stature and extraordinary experience in government, business, trade negotiations, and global affairs," Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue said. "He's an accomplished manager and strong leader. We look forward to working with him to accelerate our recovery, grow the economy, create jobs, and tackle America's global challenges."

Daley serves on JPMorgan's Executive Committee in charge of Corporate Responsibility and is a board member of the pharmaceutical company Merck.

He was also US Secretary of Commerce during the Clinton administration, where he helped shape the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and worked on trade relations with China. He's currently a board member at the centrist Democratic think tank "Third Way."

Daley joined JPMorgan in 2004 as Midwest Chairman, and in 2007 began to lead the firm's efforts in corporate social responsibility.

Tapping a corporate executive for the key position at a time when the nation is focused on the economy would cast the president as a business-friendly centrist, serving as an olive branch to conservative critics while inevitably irritating his progressive base.

Some liberal Democrats complain that the White House is too cozy with business, arguing that corporate special interests have held undue influence over the outcomes of key initiatives such as health care and financial reform.

"This was a real mistake by the White House," Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said. "Bill Daley consistently urges the Democratic Party to pursue a corporate agenda that alienates both Independent and Democratic voters. If President Obama listens to that kind of political advice from Bill Daley, Democrats will suffer a disastrous 2012."

The Obama administration has been in the midst of a staff shake-up in recent weeks.

President Obama's new senior adviser David Plouffe starts work Monday, replacing David Axelrod. Press secretary Robert Gibbs also announced Wednesday that he would be leaving his position in early February.

Despite leaving the White House, Axelrod and Gibbs said they both plan to help with Obama's re-election campaign in 2012.