How corporations manipulate US politics

[the_future_modernes]

Behind The Forged Letters: Jack Bonner's "White-Collar Sweatshop"

Last week, Jack Bonner blamed a "bad employee" for the fact that his lobbying firm had sent forged letters, purporting to be from local minority groups, urging a member of Congress to oppose climate change legislation. (It's since been revealed that Bonner's firm was working on behalf of the coal industry.)
But a closer look suggests a culture at Bonner and Associates that makes such deception all but inevitable. As one former employee put it, at Bonner, distortion "was the norm rather than the exception."
Internal Bonner documents obtained by TPMmuckraker, and interviews with former employees, shed light on the modus operandi of a firm that's known as the pioneer of astroturf lobbying -- that is, creating the illusion of grassroots support for corporate-backed positions, just as corporate-backed groups like Freedom Works are currently doing in their fight against health-care reform. Bonner's business model involves using both carrots and sticks in spurring low-paid and poorly-trained employees to convince local groups or individual voters to agree to offer nominal expressions of support for the campaigns of the firm's corporate clients, which have included Philip Morris, the health insurance industry, and the pharmaceutical industry, among others. Often the voters or local groups know little about the legislation at hand, which is typically obscure to all but the industries affected by it -- medical liability reform, say. But the resulting form letters, faxes, or phone calls are then represented to a list of targeted lawmakers -- generally drawn up by the client -- as genuine expressions of grassroots concern. Bonner then satisfies its client by reporting back to it on the number of communications it's generated.MORE