Anti Humane Society Ad before Super Bowl

[roscoeroscoe]

Did anyone else see that? Also there was a pro-oil ad. Did you see those in your area?

Expense corporate ads! Disturbing~

[LAS14]

1. What does an anti Humane Society ad look like? (Didn't see it here in MA)

[ebbie15644]

2. Didn't see it but I've heard

Them on the radio.

[Tanuki]

3. I didn't watch the Superbowl, but out of curiosity I just googled and learned

that an agribusiness front group sponsored the ad. Apparently the Humane Society's advocacy on behalf of farm animals hit too close to home. This front group is run by lobbyist Richard Berman, who has several similar front organizations which target unions, regulatory agencies, science in the public interest, etc.


http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/super-bowl-ad-skewers-humane-society/article/2613986

...."The ad, paid for by the Center for Consumer Freedom, says the Humane Society's real goal is to get "government to pass laws that eliminate farms with animals."......

----------------------
According to CREW (the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington):

http://bermanexposed.org/center-for-consumer-freedom

"The Center for Consumer Freedom represents the interests of soda companies, meat producers, fast food restaurants, payday lenders, and more. CCF mounts aggressive public relations campaigns on behalf of its clients against any government intervention or activist campaign that would affect their profits.

Founded with seed money from Philip Morris as the Guest Choice Network, CCF has evolved far beyond its original mission fighting restaurant smoking bans. It seeks to undermine public support for greater food-labeling, food-safety, and anti-obesity proposals, with financial support from many of America’s largest restaurant chains and food producers, including Coca-Cola, Cargill, and Wendy’s.

Claiming to act in the name of consumer freedom and choice, CCF attacks the credibility of public health advocates, academics, and medical experts. CCF frequently compares industry opponents to criminals and terrorists, and unapologetically misrepresents scientific data to support its claims.

One of CCF’s main projects is HumaneWatch, which disparages the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) with the intention of cutting into the group’s fundraising.

..........

Active Projects: ConsumerFreedom.com, ActivistCash.com, HumaneWatch.org, ObesityMyths.com, PhysicianScam.com, AnimalScam.com, SweetScam.com, PetaKillsAnimals.com, Maternity Pens.com, CSPIscam.com, CREWexposed.org, HandsOffMyBacon.com, EnvironmentalPolicyAlliance.org, GreenDecoys.com, LEEDExposed.com, EPAFacts.com, and BigGreenRadicals.com

.............


Charity Navigator, an independent authority on charitable giving, has issued donor advisories against five Berman front groups:

Center for Consumer Freedom
Employment Policies Institute
American Beverage Institute
Center for Union Facts
Enterprise Freedom Action Committee
The advisories note that, unlike most charities, Berman’s groups funnel significant amounts of their funds to a single company, Berman’s for-profit Berman and Company, Inc.

[mucifer]

4. Thanks. so much evil going on. So much pressure to keep people torturing and eating animals.

[roscoeroscoe]

5. Good research

What do you know. Surprise! Big tobacco. Always someone ready to step up and serve big money.

Like I told my wife, when a guy can pay his bills and mortgage working for creeps, there seems to be someone ready...

[Mc Mike]

6. Dr. Evil Berman

Suffragette s-posted a washingtonindependent.com piece in 2011, covering Berman's connections with dead Breitbart, Sarah Longwell, Pimpy O'Keefe. The link is broken, the title was 'campus right unbowed' (by O'Keefe getting busted in the attempted wiretap on Sen. Landrieu's LA office.) Suff may have a preserved copy.

Rick was the original front man in the attacks on ACORN, then he disappeared into the woodwork, and dead Andy B took the point.

2014 Nation article by Lee Fang talked about Berman's earlier attacks, before Breitbart O'Keefe's efforts:

"Although it is now a distant memory, ACORN was once viewed by progressives as the key to empowering vulnerable communities in low-income areas. The organization provided help with housing, job placement, debt counseling and—in a move that attracted vehement Republican opposition—voter registration. But before filmmaker James O’Keefe used undercover videos—some of them deceptively edited—to destroy the group, ACORN faced an ever-increasing barrage of political attacks from the same cast of characters now leading the charge against the worker-center movement.

In 2008, the year before O’Keefe’s videos, the Capital Research Center called on lawmakers to prosecute ACORN for racketeering, voter fraud, money laundering and other alleged sins. None of these allegations stuck, though congressional Republicans embraced the proposed lines of attack, priming the public for a negative perception of ACORN, which became a household name when Sarah Palin used the waning days of the 2008 election to turn the group into a campaign issue.

Berman, the lobbyist who fired the first volley in the national campaign against worker centers last summer, found business in savaging the community organizers associated with ACORN. In 2008, he created the website Rotten ACORN, which he promoted with a full-page advertisement in The New York Times, to cast the group as an extremist organization prone to skirting the law. Berman’s current anti-worker-center campaign follows a similar playbook: full-page ads in major newspapers, a dubbed video depicting worker-center leaders as Nazis, and continual assertions that the centers are merely labor unions in disguise, using a 501(c)(3) designation to bypass labor regulations."

https://www.thenation.com/article/look-who-folks-who-took-down-acorn-are-targeting-now/

Here's an '09 o-post from drm6 that tracked all Berman's different garbage astroturf groups' domains to one ip address:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6625702

Funny how his anti-union attacks always wail away about unions abusing 501 c 3 status, because that's exactly what he does, and he makes a ton of money off of it. Here's a 2010 prwatch (from sourcewatch) piece showing him and his wife raking the cash in, with his for-profit 'non-profit' work:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/9175