Dem Consultants Are Paid to Lose

Posted by Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake at 4:11 AM on December 26, 2007.

The New York Times chose to spend Christmas reminding us of the obscene amounts Democratic consultants have been paid for their services in past Presidential campaigns. As in Bob "don't worry, John, that Swiftboat thing -- it'll all blow over" Shrum:

Behind the scenes, they were fighting over the lucrative fees for handling Mr. Kerry's television advertising. The campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, became so fed up over the squabbling that she told the consultants, led by Robert Shrum, one of the most prominent and highly paid figures in the business, to figure out how to split the money themselves.

Divvy it up they did. Though the final tally has never been publicly disclosed, interviews and records show that the five strategists and their firms ultimately took in nearly $9 million, the richest payday for any Democratic media consultants up to then and roughly what the Bush campaign paid its consultants for a more extensive ad campaign.

Mr. Shrum and his two partners, Tad Devine and Mike Donilon, walked away with $5 million of the total. And that was after Ms. Cahill, in the closing stages of the race that fall, diverted $1 million that would otherwise have gone to the consultants to buying more advertising time in what turned out to be an unsuccessful effort to defeat Mr. Bush.

Goni, who was president from 1991-97 and from 2002-03, was forced out of office by the people of Bolivia for his violations of both human rights and democratic principles.

During his reign, Goni pushed neoliberal, export-oriented economic reforms onto the very poor and largely unwilling population of Bolivia. He privatized many of Bolivia's state-owned enterprises, including the country's national oil company which resulted in losses of $40 million/year in government revenues. He proposed tax increases on the working poor. He tried to further privatize Bolivia's oil and gas sector, which would have led to the resources being sold back to the Bolivian people at much higher rates. Overall, his privatization policies led to higher unemployment, an increase in poverty levels, decreased national income, and a greater economic dependency on international institutions.

Goni's disastrous economic policies led to may civil protests throughout the country. These protests were often met with military force.

* In Feb. 2003, police in La Paz went on strike partly in protest of the proposed tax increases, and the ensuing gun battle with the government troops, followed by civil protests, left 34 Bolivians dead.

* In Oct. 2003, the "Gas War" began in El Alto. Citizens protesting Goni's plan to further privatize gas and oil were fired on by government troops trying to break apart their blockade of La Paz. Twenty-eight people were killed, and during the protests that followed in El Alto and La Paz, the military killed another 39 people.

Goni was forced out of office due to the massive protests he faced after the October massacre. He and two of his ministers fled to the U.S., where they have been living ever since. The Bolivian people have demanded that Goni and his cabinet ministers, who are responsible for these murders, be returned to their country to face the "Trial of Responsibility" that the Bolivian Congress authorized in 2004.

Tagged as: bolivia, kerry, democratic party, shrum, carville

Jane Hamsher is the founder of FireDogLake. Her work has also appeared on the Huffington Post, Alternet and The American Prospect.