Posts Tagged ‘White House’
MSNBC Host Admits Working With White House on Talking Points
Monday, June 21st, 2010White House Won’t Rule Out Using ‘Nuclear Option’ to Pass Health Bill
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
WH Pressed on Report Claiming Democratic Donors Rewarded
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
White House’s ‘Demonization’ of Critics Could Backfire
Friday, October 23rd, 2009
Media Wars: White House Crosses the Line
Monday, October 19th, 2009By: Tom Bevan
Every White House complains about its press coverage. A contentious relationship between the Executive Branch and a free and independent media is part of America’s DNA. Always has been.
But this White House seems to feel they’re different. It’s not just that the current occupant of the Oval Office has a particularly thin skin when it comes to criticism – which is especially ironic given that he’s been the recipient of more glowing press coverage than possibly any candidate or president in modern American history. But not since Nixon conjured up an “enemies list” have we seen the full weight of the Office of the Presidency brought to bear in such a targeted and deliberate effort to delegitimize a media organization critical of the President.
When Communications Director Anita Dunn first announced the White House’s war against FOX News last week, many people from across the political spectrum dismissed it as silly. But two of the administration’s heaviest hitters, Senior Advisor David Axelrod and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, went on the Sunday talk shows and made clear that the White House’s attempt to delegitimize FOX News is deadly serious.
On This Week, Axelrod told George Stephanopoulos: “[FOX News] is not really a news station. It’s not just their commentators but a lot of their news programming it’s really not news it’s pushing a point of view. ”
Emanuel echoed the line to John King on CNN’s State of the Union: “The way the president looks at it – we look at it – it’s not a news organization so much as it has a perspective.”
And MSNBC doesn’t push a certain “perspective?” What about the New York Times? The idea that FOX News’s perspective disqualifies it as a “legitimate” news operation lays bare the manipulation and hypocrisy at work here. The White House is all for news organizations taking certain “perspectives” – so long as they’re favorable to the administration’s agenda.
The current presidency, as much perhaps as any in history, is built upon the foundation of the President’s personal popularity. President Obama has, out of necessity, become the Salesman-in-Chief for his progressive agenda. But as the White House continues to struggle adjusting to the reality of governing versus campaigning, it is either unwilling or unable to brook criticism of the President or his policies. Thus FOX News is targeted as the enemy.
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Beck Installs ‘Hotline’ for White House to Call Him to Correct Any Mistakes
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
Obama’s Team Is Lacking Most of Its Top Players
Monday, August 24th, 2009By PETER BAKER
WASHINGTON — As President Obama tries to turn around a summer of setbacks, he finds himself still without most of his own team. Seven months into his presidency, fewer than half of his top appointees are in place advancing his agenda.
The latest on President Obama, the new administration and other news from Washington and around the nation. Join the discussion.
Of more than 500 senior policymaking positions requiring Senate confirmation, just 43 percent have been filled — a reflection of a White House that grew more cautious after several nominations blew up last spring, a Senate that is intensively investigating nominees and a legislative agenda that has consumed both.
While career employees or holdovers fill many posts on a temporary basis, Mr. Obama does not have his own people enacting programs central to his mission. He is trying to fix the financial markets but does not have an assistant treasury secretary for financial markets. He is spending more money on transportation than anyone since Dwight D. Eisenhower but does not have his own inspector general watching how the dollars are used. He is fighting two wars but does not have an Army secretary.
He sent Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to Africa to talk about international development but does not have anyone running the Agency for International Development. He has invited major powers to a summit on nuclear nonproliferation but does not have an assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation.
“If you’re running G.M. without half your senior executives in place, are you worried? I’d say your stockholders would be going nuts,” said Terry Sullivan, a professor at the University of North Carolina and executive director of the White House Transition Project, a scholarly program that tracks appointments. “The notion of the American will — it’s not being thwarted, but it’s slow to come to fruition.”
Mrs. Clinton expressed the exasperation of many in the administration last month when she was asked by A.I.D. employees why they did not have a chief. “The clearance and vetting process is a nightmare,” she told them. “And it takes far longer than any of us would want to see. It is frustrating beyond words.”
Obama: Republican conspiracy out to kill health reform
Friday, August 21st, 2009
By Joseph Curl
President Obama took to the conservative airwaves Thursday to charge that Republican leaders are engaged in a vast right-wing conspiracy to kill health care reform in order to repeat the 1994 mid-term takeover of Congress, which followed the defeat of President Clinton’s reform plan.
“I think early on, a decision was made by the Republican leadership that said, ‘Look, let’s not give him a victory, maybe we can have a replay of 1993, ‘94, when Clinton came in, he failed on health care and then we won in the mid-term elections and we got the majority. And I think there are some folks who are taking a page out that playbook,” the president said.
Appearing on the Michael Smerconish radio show, Mr. Obama said he would “love to have more Republicans engaged and involved in this process,” but he vowed to win the battle, with or without support from the minority party in Congress.
“I guarantee you, Joe, we are going to get health care reform done,” he said to one caller. “I know there are a lot of people out there who’ve been handwringing, and folks in the press are following every little twist and turn of the legislative process, but having a big bill like this is always messy.”
Consulting Firm Tied to White House Given Millions for Health Care Ad Campaign
Thursday, August 20th, 2009
A media consulting firm with ties to White House senior strategist David Axelrod has been hired to produce a multi-million dollar ad campaign touting the Obama administration’s health care overhaul.
But while lobbying analysts say the move is logical, some Republicans are questioning whether Axelrod stands to gain from the profits.
AKPD Message and Media, founded by Axelrod, along with firm GMMB, were paid $12 million by Health Economy Now and Americans for Stable Quality Care, a coalition that includes Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, to produce ads promoting President Obama’s health care reform.
The firms received over $300 million to manage ads for Obama’s presidential campaign.
“GMMB and AKPD are among the best in the business so it was a no-brainer to hire them to help this new effort to explain what health care reform means for Americans,” Americans for Stable Quality Care spokesman Phil Singer told FOXNews.com on Wednesday.
Obama announced an agreement with PhRMA on June 22 to achieve $80 billion in savings as part of his reform agenda. On August 8, a coalition of interest groups including PhRMA pledged to spend $150 million to help Obama’s overhaul health care this fall.
Axelrod left the firm on Dec. 31, 2008, with the agreement that it owed him $2 million — and some Republican critics now question whether the firm was hired to indirectly fund his severance package.
The House Republican Conference issued a one-page memo Tuesday, questioning the sincerity of the administration’s calls for change and transparency. “As the pharmaceutical industry spends hundreds of millions supporting a government takeover of health care, some may wonder whether White House senior advisors earning millions of dollars paid for in part by the pharmaceutical industry represents the kind of change American can believe in?”
White House Drops Health-Care Tip Line
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009E-Mail Effort Raised Privacy Concerns
By Garance Franke-Ruta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
After complaints from Republicans, the White House has shut down a two-week-old e-mail tip line where people could report “disinformation about health insurance reform.”
“An ironic development is that the launch of an online program meant to provide facts about health insurance reform has itself become the target of fear-mongering and online rumors that are the tactics of choice for the defenders of the status quo,” the White House’s new media director, Macon Phillips, wrote in announcing the change.
“The White House takes online privacy very seriously,” he added.
The e-mail tip line, flag@whitehouse.gov, was launched Aug. 4 as part of the White House’s Health Insurance Reform Reality Check, a rapid-response effort reminiscent of the war room that the Obama campaign began last summer to fight online rumors about Obama’s patriotism and religion.
But the new effort quickly sparked concern among Republicans about the government collecting information on private citizens’ political speech.
“I am not aware of any precedent for a president asking American citizens to report their fellow citizens to the White House for pure political speech that is deemed ‘fishy’ or otherwise inimical to the White House’s political interests,” Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.) wrote in an Aug. 5 letter to the White House that called for an end to the program.
“By requesting that citizens send ‘fishy’ emails to the White House, it is inevitable that the names, email addresses, IP addresses, and private speech of U.S. citizens will be reported to the White House. You should not be surprised that these actions taken by your White House staff raise the specter of a data collection program,” wrote Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
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