Daschle defended telecom immunity while lobbying for AT&T

[snowsman]

Last year, when Obama broke his promise to filibuster any bill calling for immunity for spy Telecomms, Tom Daschle defended Obama in a Washington Post Op-Ed

But what most of you may not yet know is this, as noted at the time by Openleft.com:

The kicker of course, is that Alston and Bird did work lobbying on immunity for telecoms on FISA (they were AT&T's FISA lobbyist), even serving as a recruitment bed for the McCain campaign. And that's what is really going on. Bribery. Tom Daschle goes in the Washington Post and makes the argument that Obama is being pragmatic by caving to big business on a core issue of civil liberties. He preaches the virtues of bipartisanship while working at a firm whose McCain supporting lawyers also support immunity for telecom interests. Meanwhile, Daschle and his wife are and did make enormous sums of money lobbying for the firms benefiting from Obama's so-called pragmatism. It's a sick, perverted, corroded system whereby perpetual political losers like Matt Bennett and affable status quo lobbyists like Tom Daschle push their agenda through journalists like Jonathan Weisman, without any disclosure whatsoever about possible conflicts of interest. And it's bipartisan and flows through the leadership of both parties.

Tom Daschle is going to end up in a powerful position within the Obama administration, either head of HHS or Chief of Staff. He's going to use the millions he and his wife have made to throw parties, give gifts, have a wonderful life, go to important conferences like Davos, and generally preach in favor of "moderation' and 'bipartisanship". What's important here is that we on OpenLeft and in the blogs in general be educated about who these people really are. Tom Daschle's belief is that moderation and moving to the center is pragmatic, and it is. Or at least it is for Tom Daschle. How else would he make a million dollars a year with his friend Bob Dole (who recruited him to join Alston & Byrd)?

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=6651

Credit to Glen Greenwald for bringing this up: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/01/daschle/index.html

[ej510]

1. He should've tapped Howard Dean.

[AtomicKitten]

10. I agree.

[mod mom]

28. What a mistake he made in choosing Daschle. At least Matt Tiabi says he is the biggest corporate

whore for healthcare. He's # 2-right behind that pillar of integrity, Bill Frist.

Tiabbi cracks me up:

"In Washington there are whores and there are whores, and then there is Tom Daschle. Tom Daschle would suck off a corpse for a cheeseburger. True, he is probably only the second-biggest whore for the health care industry in American politics — the biggest being doctor/cat-torturer Bill Frist"

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

29. No dispute here. But I do think Daschle is probably the next best choice, tho not ideal . . .

for some of the reasons statedher. Still not a deal killer in my mind.

[marshall]

2. Anybody with lobbyist connections is going to be dirty to some degree

That's just the nature of the beast.

[Life Long Dem]

3. McCain's involved

Behind the scenes settings perhaps.

[katandmoon]

4. Daschle is a rotten choice and Glenn absolutely spells out why

Obama's nomination of this corrupt hack is absolutely inexplicable and alarming.

[bvar22]

37. Oh, there is an explaination.

Most here just don't want to believe it yet.

[earthside]

5. Daschle was a crappy Majority Leader.

This maybe Obama's worst Cabinet pick ... I hope Tommy "Please don't hit me" Daschle withdraws his nomination.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

34. Certainly not great, but I wouldn't say "crappy." Still better than Reid tho that's not saying much.

[Dr.Phool]

6. Daschle always was an asshole.

Make him the Ambassador to Iceland or Kazakhistan.

[slipslidingaway]

7. k n/t

[Autumn]

8. But Obama is the only one who counts,

he will oversee EVERY little detail and we will all get what we need. He deserves to have his team.

:sarcasm:

[AtomicKitten]

9. Many feel the same about Clinton's appointment.

sarcasm smiley and all

[Autumn]

11. Get over it

you don't know why I have a Hillary avatar so fucking get over it.sarcasm smiley and all

[Occam Bandage]

13. Ironic, given that this thread

is complaining over an entirely unrelated political fight that occurred a year ago.

[Autumn]

15. Well I didn't start the fucking thread

I commented on it. I think that is what DU is for.

[MNDemNY]

19. Your anti-administration tendencies have been noted. Expect a visit , soon.

[Occam Bandage]

21. Your over-it-getting is selective.

[MNDemNY]

17. And, it has no relevance now. Just water under the bridge.

[Name removed]

14. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Cha]

43. Is it because you're

an asshole?

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

33. Obama won so, yes, he DOES deserve to have his team unless. . .

there is some extreme overriding factor that he did not already consider.

Personally, I would have preferred to see Hillary get the nod for the position - for which she is much better suited than SoS - based on her years of experience working on healthcare issues. After seeing Hillary's talents squandered in her appointment as head of the State Department, Howard Dean would have been my second choice.

But now that Daschle has been tagged for the HHS position, I think we all need to band together and give him (and Obama) the benefit of the doubt.

[Occam Bandage]

12. His stance on immunizing phone service providers from prosecution for their

cooperation with Federal requests for information is perhaps the most important thing to consider when evaluating a Health and Human Services secretary.

[MNDemNY]

16. His apparent disdain for the Constitution, may be, though.

[Occam Bandage]

20. What if he WIRETAPS OUR HEALTHCARE!??!!!!

[MNDemNY]

23. Or maybe he allows your medical records to be released to prospective employers. Is that OK with you...

If Obama say's it's ok. then it must be. Right?

[Occam Bandage]

24. And then what if he screens all children for genetic deformaties and aborts the "bad" ones? Huh?

WHERE WILL IT ALL END??! WITH ANOTHER HOLOCAUST?!?! FIRST HE'S WORKING FOR AT&T, THEN HE'S MURDERING UNDESIRABLES!!!

[MadBadger]

18. Daschle is up for Health and Human Services

So I dont really care.

[ProSense]

22. This OP is hilarious: "when Obama broke his promise...Tom Daschle defended Obama"

So does this mean that: A) Obama is rewarding Daschle for defending him or B) Obama should dump Daschle for defending him?

Meanwhile, Daschle and his wife are and did make enormous sums of money lobbying for the firms benefiting from Obama's so-called pragmatism.

Maybe Obama should be investigated. Either that or the spin is out of control.

[Orsino]

25. You had me at "Daschle defended telecom immunity."

:mad:

[slipslidingaway]

26. More at the Greenwald link posted in the OP...

The Daschles: feeding at the Beltway trough

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/01/daschle/index.html


"...The release of the financial statement submitted to the Office of Government Ethics [] details for the first time exactly how, without becoming a registered lobbyist, he made millions of dollars giving public speeches and private counsel to insurers, hospitals, realtors, farmers, energy firms and telecommunications companies with complex regulatory and legislative interests in Washington.

Daschle's expertise and insights, gleaned over 26 years in Congress, earned him more than $5 million over the past two years, including $220,000 from the health-care industry, and perks such as a chauffeured Cadillac, according to the documents.

Other than his ability to know how to swing doors wide open in Congress, what "expertise and insights" worth that level of compensation does Tom Daschle have? It's pure legalized influenced peddling, and -- upon being booted out of the Congress -- he ran right to it as quickly as he could and engorged himself at the trough as hungrily as possible..."

[avaistheone1]

27. This is a Devastating expose on Daschle...

If Obama appoints Daschle, Obama is killing any chance at single-payer health universal coverage.

Obama must know what Daschle is all about. After reading this article I have little doubt that Daschle is a corporate whore.

[leftstreet]

30. Well, Obama never campaigned on single-payer

In spite of what everyone hoped 'HOPE' meant

Of course he knows Daschle's fronting for the insurance industry. Sad.

[slipslidingaway]

31. Well he knows how to work the system....

As Mencimer points out, they know how to stay on the right side of what is strictly legal. There's no evidence they did anything illegal, but it is still blatantly sleazy and corrupt -- exactly the sort of legalized sleaze and corruption that Barack Obama, as a centerpiece of his campaign, vowed to combat...


...(and this is to say nothing of the fact that Daschle was Senate Majority Leader from 2001-2004 when the Democrats perfected the art of submission to the Bush agenda, including the 2002 vote for the Iraq War, which Daschle supported).

Other than his being more extreme than most, and the fact that he and his wife work in tandem as a public-private team, there isn't anything particularly unusual about how Tom Daschle functions. He's quite emblematic of the Beltway syndrome..."

[Occam Bandage]

32. He'd be killing any chance at something he's never been in favor of?

Uh-oh.

[avaistheone1]

40. Well shame on him if he wasn't.

Single-payer universal health care is the only alternative that is going to fix the system and help most if not all Americans.

No one should be proud if they do not support single-payer, especially with the condition our country and most families are in right now.

[snowsman]

35. I want to issue a minor correction

In the original post I said that Daschle wrote an Op-ed in the Washington Post, but it was in fact an opinion he gave to Johnathan Weisman, who wrote the piece.

Now it's too late to edit the message.

[slipslidingaway]

36. Welcome to DU....

and thanks for the correction.

:hi:

[Clear Blue Sky]

38. Daschle represents politics as usual.

I thought we were moving beyond that? Time to get rid of him.

[laugle]

41. Amen to that! One tax cheat was enough--two is

totally unacceptable!

Hell, his own constituency voted him out of office, when he had power, that says a lot................

We would all be in jail if we pulled the same thing as Daschle, power does have it's priviledge and this is getting old.

I think he will be confirmed, since other's in the congress don't want to touch this with a 10 ft. pole, as they are probably guilty of the same/similar actions.........

[Clear Blue Sky]

42. They will confirm him as he is part of "the club".

Bunch of pompous oligarchs.

[ClarkUSA]

39. Hillary voted for IWR & Kyl-Lieberman, wanted to "Obliterate Iran" and now she's SoS...

....praising Obama foreign policy ideas she used to call "naive".

Conclusion: Both Daschle and Hillary will obey President Obama's policy commands if they want to serve in his Cabinet.

[laugle]

44. And Biden voted for the IWR and is now VP!

Biden also said Barack was not ready to be president!

Selective memory there kiddo.........

Time to get over the primaries, don't you think?

Daschle is corrupt and we don't need any scandals, he's not worth it!

[ClarkUSA]

45. He fucked up, too, but he's not a Cabinet appointee, so the example isn't very relevant.

But since you brought it up, both he and Hillary showed incompetent decision-making capabilities at best
(Hillary didn't even both to read the NIE) and political opportunism at worst, though Biden apologized
and showed he learned something by voting "No" on Kyl-Lieberman. Thankfully, both of them will have
to obey and support President Obama's decisions on matters of war and peace from now on, which is a
good thing from my perspective, given their different collective track records on this issue.

Selective memory there kiddo.........

Time to get over the primaries, don't you think?

You're full of quick bullshit conclusions about people, don't you? There's nothing selective about my memory.
You're the one comparing apples to oranges. Unlike you, I am over the primaries because I can discuss these
matters like an adult without being a thin-skinned paranoid. Not only that, my candidate won it all, so I'm a
happy camper. Others here, not so much, apparently. :eyes:

Daschle is corrupt and we don't need any scandals, he's not worth it!

Daschle is not corrupt unless you have some concrete evidence other than your opinion, which I already consider
flawed. He was a big part of Team O and he'll be the architect and prime mover for national healthcare. With his
contacts in the Senate and House, he'll be able to build consensus better than anyone else. I trust Barack's
judgment more than yours, that's for damn sure.

At least Daschle apologized for his mistake which was less aggregious than ones others have made. Not paying
his driver's taxes because he thought the driver was doing it is perfectly understandable. At least no one died
on a far-off battlefield because of it.

[laugle]

46. No,

I'm 56 and have seen a lot. I guess my conclusions were correct, since Daschle withdrew today.

BTW, Biden is VP and the second in line for the presidency, so I think he is quite relevant!

No need to reply, as I can't have a discussion with someone who fully supports and defends corrupt people and insults someone with a different point of view.