It's getting ugly out there. Right-wing business lobby outfit National Association of Manufacturer's laid off 10% of their staff about a month ago, the Family Research Council axes a bunch of staffers post-election, and now I'm hearing rumors that the big Daddy of the right-wing, the US Chamber of Commerce, is going to engage in mass layoffs. This is reflective of the trade association world in general, which is preparing for an abysmal 2009 While we often concentrate on the decline of union membership versus unorganized or disorganized workers, I've never heard anyone try to quantify the amount of 'organized business' versus 'unorganized business'. Newer ascendant lobbying outfits, like the tech lobby, are still ideologically conservative, but you can tell they just don't have it in their hearts yet to truly crush everyone in their path and steal everything in sight.
Regardless, the budget of the right-wing is going to take a serious hit. That's going to have an impact on the culture of these outfits, who will become more risk averse. For instance, it is not a good year for these kinds of meaningless but irritating scandals to break out.
Roughly 100 employees of the [US Chamber of Commerce] ran up an $8,204 tab this week at The Exchange, a sports bar just blocks away from its prime real estate opposite the White House.
The party was to celebrate the end of the "Chamber Bowl," the association's internal softball tournament.
It was certainly not a victory for the Chamber's top brass.
Chamber COO David Chavern sent out an email chiding the partiers for their spending spree.
"Fundamentally, this shows a lack of responsibility on a number of people's part including Chamber personnel and management at The Exchange," Chavern wrote in an e-mail to more 50 employees, including softball players and top managers. "I will have to reevaluate a post-Chamber Bowl celebration next year."
Chavern detailed where the money went: One-hundred-and-fifty-five pitchers of beer, 37 bottles of beer, 208 mixed drinks, 111 shots, 43 margaritas and 11 open bottles of liquor.
Sources who attended the party described it as something akin to a Cancun booze cruise. They reported that drinkers ordered multiple pitchers of vodka and Red Bull and full bottles that they drunkenly left behind at the end of the night.
The Chamber, they said, had set no limits on the open bar.
The bill, attached to Chavern's e-mail, was reportedly several pages long.
Party-goers put some of the blame on the bar, saying that the waiters who served them had - among other things - slapped an 18 percent gratuity on the bill.
Member organizations do not like the prospect of trade association employees partying on their hard earned dime. Not in 2009, though to be fair, it was the bar's fault, since the bar forced them to tip their serving staff.
Despite promising an "open and transparent program with appropriate oversight', Neel Kashkari's Treasury Department program has blacked out the compensation section of its contract with Bank of New York Mellon.
This follows an earlier blackout of the contract rate for its deal with a high powered law firm. One of the little noticed parts of the bailout is that the legislation allows Kashkari to sidestep standard Federal government hiring procedures. As Robert Dugger says, "This bill does not provide the institutional infrastructure to manage $700 billion in distressed assets." That was only one out of many reasons to oppose this deal, but it alone
No one could have predicted a Bush administration official would ask for enormous power, Congressional Democrats would grant it, and the administration would use that power unwisely and with enormous secrecy. The election can't come soon enough.
So Paulson puts 35 year old tech investment banker from Goldman Sachs, Neel Kashkar, in charge of the $700 billion fund. I'm trying to find out more, this guy was a donor to George Bush and a tech banker in San Francisco that worked on 'advising public and private companies on mergers, acquisitions and financial transactions.' He's a senior advisor to Paulson at Treasury and he's also in charge of Treasury's website.
In general, I'm not a huge fan of 2004 Bush max out donors. Goldman people are extremely tight, and it looks like Kashkari is one of Paulson's key lieutenants, and he negotiated the bailout deal itself.
And a new Villager arrives.
... Watching his confirmation hearings, his responsibilities at Treasury were to increase free trade, reduce our dependence on oil through conservation and alternative energy deployment, and respond to the Housing crisis by working to ensure a flow of capital through the private sector to the housing sector while minimizing the spillover of the housing deflation to the rest of the economy.
STATE BLOGS
Powered by: SoapBlox