About No Labels:
This is an old piece but worth the read.
<snip>
But what does No Labels represent? Its three co-founders are a Republican Party operative named Mark McKinnon, a right-leaning Democratic Party operative named Nancy Jacobson, and a billionaire-funded operative named David Walker. These three Washington insiders say they'll represent ordinary Americans against ... Washington insiders.
Who are they?
McKinnon worked on George W. Bush's campaign before becoming a senior executive at Hill & Knowlton, the Beltway PR firm whose clients prior to his joining included the tobacco industry as it tried to suppress proof that cigarettes cause cancer, and Bank of Commerce and Credit International after it was hit with faced drug-money laundering charges. It continues to represent a variety of dictatorships around the world, and is currently helping the oil and gas industry confuse the public about the health implications of fracking.
Jacobson worked for Bill Clinton, conservative Democrat turned Chamber of Commerce lobbyist Evan Bayh, and and the right-leaning Democratic Leadership Council, and has a raised large sums of money for "centrist" (right-leaning) Democratic candidates. She also reportedly worked as a de facto industry lobbyist, as a PAC Director raising money for Congressional candidates sympathetic to her industry's interests.[1] She is married to another Washington insider, Mark Penn, who is the CEO of Burson-Marsteller.
Walker is a longtime associate of right-wing billionaire Pete Peterson (who, as his press staff never fails to reminds me, sometimes also funds less political areas of economic research through his Foundation.) Walker's work with Peterson, however, has been dedicated for many many years to the single-minded pursuit of a policy package that would cut Social Security and Medicare benefits while simultaneously lowering the top tax rate for the wealthiest Americans.
That agenda forms the basis of an American austerity program similar to that which is currently devastating Europe's economy, and which has been packaged for domestic US consumption as the "Simpson Bowles plan."
Bait and Switch
No Labels has a clever two-fold strategy: First, it packages far-right ideas as those of the "political mainstream" by ignoring polling data and instead finding members of the Washington elite in both parties - righwing Clintonian Democrats, plus Republicans - willing to present them as a "consensus" view.
<snip>
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/the-slick-no-labels-effor_b_1678389.html