Ah yeah….hopey changey: (h/t Hugh Hewitt)
Two firms that received $343.3 million to handle advertising for Barack Obama’s White House run last year have profited from his top priority as president by taking on his push for health-care overhaul.
One is AKPD Message and Media, the Chicago-based firm headed by David Axelrod until he left last Dec. 31 to serve as a senior adviser to the president. Axelrod was Obama’s top campaign strategist and is now helping sell the health-care plan. The other firm is Washington-based GMMB Campaign Group, where partner Jim Margolis was also an Obama strategist.
This year, AKPD and GMMB received $12 million in advertising business from Healthy Economy Now, a coalition that includes the Washington-based Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, known as PhRMA, that is seeking to build support for a health-care overhaul, said the coalition’s spokesman, Jeremy Van Ess.
~~~Axelrod was president and sole shareholder of AKPD from 1985 until he sold his interest after Obama’s victory, government records show. The firm owes Axelrod $2 million, which it’s due to pay in installments beginning Dec. 31. Axelrod’s son, Michael, still works there. He didn’t return a phone call. The firm’s Web site continues to feature David Axelrod’s work on the Obama campaign.
Ok, so let me get this straight. Axelrod’s former firm is receiving lots of money from “Healthy Economy Now” which is a coalition that includes PhRMA, AARP, SEIU and all the other players that are defining Obama’s health care Socialist plans AND Axelrod is still owed 2 million bucks from the firm.
Hmmmmm….ya think Axelrod had any hand in negotiating any little piece of the deals these groups made with his former firm…especially since the money his firm gets from these groups help to pay his severance package?
Remember the left went bats&%t crazy over Cheney’s Halliburton ties….this eclipses those ties.
But I’m guessing the left won’t go so crazy over THIS story. I wonder why?
More here.
See author page
Criminal, and no less than just that. The Libs thought Nixon was a Crook.
Nixon was a piker compared to the Kenyan Pretenders “Chicago Administration”
You are right Old Trooper! Now where is the Marxist Media covering this interesting piece of “conflict of interest”…Imagine if W. had something like that, what would these “professional journalists” be saying and doing.
Just imagine if the exact same conditions were in place and the perp was Karl Rove! He would have to resign immediately and then a special prosecuter would go after him. Pelosi and Reid would call for DOJ to go after Bush and all of his records. Oh wait, they did.
This is too funny. I doubt that President O’Dumbo knows one honest person, at least no honest person will ever associate with him. Even M.O. ripped the taxpayers off for millions. Now we know how a man without a job (ever) became worth in excess of $10 million.
This is just the latest scam to enrich Obama’s friends. There are so many others I have lost count.
Hey, maybe we should use the left’s Rove hate tactics and demand to see Axelrod’s email, ya think? Also, most seem to missing the part in the article that Axelrod admits to working directly with the firm on “strategy and research” for the DNC — like the DNC’s “strategy and research” of Gov. Healthcare Takeover.
Will be curious to see if the very UN-curious state-run media picks up this story. I’m gonna e-mail this to Rush, and I’m waiting for Drudge to pick this up. If Mark Levin was going to be on the air today, I’m sure he would pick this up.
http://www.redstate.com/moe_lane/2009/08/19/how-to-legally-personally-profit-from-your-position-as-a-presidential-senior-advisor/
How to (legally*) personally profit from your position as a Presidential Senior Advisor.
Posted by Moe Lane (Profile)
Wednesday, August 19th at 7:30AM EDT
2 Comments
Just follow these easy steps!
1. Create AKPD Message & Media, a public relations company that specializes in astroturfing.
2. Attach yourself to the campaign of the candidate that eventually wins the 2008 Presidential election.
3. Disengage yourself from AKPD Media, but under circumstances where the company ‘owes’ you 2 million dollars, which it will then pay back over time (we call this ‘income’).
4. Become a Senior Advisor to the President.
5. Have the President negotiate a tone-deaf deal between the White House and lobbyist group PhRMA to get the pharmaceutical industry to support health care rationing.
6. ‘Discover’ one fine summer day that AKPD Media, the company that you created and which is still paying you money, has been given a fat advertising contract by PhRMA to astroturf health care rationing.
7. Profit!
See The Conservatives, Michelle Malkin, Protein Wisdom, Bloomberg, & Hugh Hewitt for more.
Speaking objectively, it’s a great scam: all Axelrod has to do is shrug and there’s no immediately obvious way to prove that PhRMA hired AKPD to eventually put money in Axelrod’s pocket. Ah, for the days when they merely had private Swiss bank accounts…
Moe Lane
*Many things that are unethical, immoral, or just plain wrong are also ‘legal.’
***************************************************************************88
OK $2 million bucks, deferred compensation?
Axlerod should be indicted for this crap. There should be sufficient evidence and reasonable cause for DOJ to subpoena his records pertaining to this deal.
If something like this had surfaced about Karl Rove during the Bush administration Democrats would be clamoring about a special prosecutor right about now.
And as an “oh by the way”…
as I understand it, he sold his company to his son… so you also have a situation where he’s doing business with a direct close family member in addition to the fact that if his former company doesn’t make a healthy profit, he doesn’t get what’s owed him.