Motley Moose – Archive

Who is Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford?

A well-known Washington lobbying firm with links to the financial industry has proposed an $850,000 plan to take on Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the protests, according to a memo obtained by the MSNBC program Up w/ Chris Hayes.

The proposal was written on the letterhead of the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford and addressed to one of CLGC’s clients, the American Bankers Association. CLGC’s memo (PDF) proposes that the ABA pay CLGC $850,000 to conduct “opposition research” on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct “negative narratives” about the protests and allied politicians.

The memo also asserts that Democratic victories in 2012 would be detrimental for Wall Street and targets specific races in which it says Wall Street would benefit by electing Republicans instead.

File that last graf under No Shit, Sherlock. For their part, the American Bankers Association claims that the GLGC proposal was unsolicited, and they have chosen not to act on it. Sure, ok, maybe the American Bankers Association won’t ‘act on it’. Riiiiight, whatever y’all say. I mean, come on, we know what angle is anyway, so nothing surprising there. It’s GLGC I’m interested in.

For teh lulz, let’s see who and what makes up the lobbying firm of Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford, shall we? Per the MSNBC piece:

Two of the memo’s authors, partners Sam Geduldig and Jay Cranford, previously worked for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. Geduldig joined CLGC before Boehner became speaker;  Cranford joined CLGC this year after serving as the speaker’s assistant for policy. A third partner, Steve Clark, is reportedly “tight” with Boehner, according to a story by Roll Call that CLGC features on its website.

{snip}

Boehner spokesman Michael Steel declined to comment on the memo. But he responded to its characterization of Republicans as defenders of Wall Street by saying, “My understanding is that President Obama is the single largest recipient of donations from Wall Street.”

As you probably all know, the Square Mile of the City of London is the world’s second biggest financial centre, and ever since the mid 80s has very much followed suit in the Thatcher Reagan concoction of deregulated markets, fluid global finance, strange derivatives, and the sharp increase in wealth inequality that comes from the ‘Anglo Saxon Model’. Indeed, the problems of the last three years are very much an international problem, with a transatlantic origin. So it’s about time the Occupy London movement took root.

I live on the edge of the City, only a ten minute walk from St Paul’s where the demonstrations began at Noon today, so it hardly showed great radical commitment to head down there, be a witness and a supporter, before heading back to diary what I saw. I would have stayed, but my daughter is not well, and I didn’t want to get ‘kettled’ (contained) by the police, and unable to look after her this evening.

So here are some images. It is a preternaturally warm day here in London, and the crowds were pleasant, well behaved and peaceful. It was a great mix of people

This is partially inspired by a conversation on Labour List, the premier British Left of Centre blog, where a version of the Political Compass Test was taken by several diverse commenters.

Now most people who visit the political blogosphere know the parameters of that test: authoritarian/libertarian, socially interventionist/economically interventionist. Like Myers-Briggs, these are static and almost self fulfilling quadrants which test how much you believe in individual freedom versus social responsibility, whether in crime, foreign affairs, the economy, gun ownership or reproductive rights. We all know the tests, and probably where we come out in them.

I think that the events of the last three years make that compass profoundly irrelevant, an old paradigm which can only provide a direction in an outdated map. Follow me below the fold while I suggest that the old metrics no longer apply and we are in a new world looking for new bearings.