Posted by
Board Certified M.D. on Monday, September 22, 2008 7:33:03 PM
I was curious about David Axelrod when he appeared on Fox News Sunday last Sept 7, 2008. I wandered over to Wikipedia and now remembered that I was amazed by this Axelrod's Spider-Web like strategies! I think Jawa's report is spot on for Wikipedia gives enough info about Axelrod that confirms the finger prints Rusty found! I have excerpted the important clues in yellow below! Everything that has happened to Sarah Palin has this "Viral" like Bird Flu take over the Conservative Host while the Liberal Agitator is immunized. Even the Yahoo Email hack by the son of a very Liberal Tennessee Senator's son fits into this Axelrod Model!
Evidence suggests that a YouTube video with false claims about Palin was uploaded and promoted by members of a professional PR firm.
- The family that runs the PR firm has extensive ties to the Democratic Party, the netroots, and are staunch Obama supporters.
- Evidence suggests that the firm engaged in a concerted effort to distribute the video in such a way that it would appear to have gone viral on its own. Yet this effort took place on company time.
- Evidence suggests that these distribution efforts included actions by at least one employee of the firm who is unconnected with the family running the company.
- LINKS TO THE "KING OF ASTROTURFING" -- DAVID AXELROD
- We believe the voice can also be heard on these AKP&D Message and Media produced videos.
- In fact, all of the female voice overs showcased on the AKP&D website seem to belong to the same woman. That's right, all of them. The same voice heard in some Barack Obama ads, and which was used for the "eswinner" slime campaign.
- More importantly, though, what is AKP&D? It's the Chicago based political consulting firm headed by David Axelrod. Yes, that David Axelrod. As in the David Axelrod who is Barack Obama's chief media strategist.
- Axelrod is the senior partner of AKP&D Message and Media
- and was a political writer for the Chicago Tribune.
- He operates ASK Public Strategies, a company that allegedly engages in "astroturfing" [12].
- He is also a supporter of Cook County Commissioner Forrest Claypool , who helped Axelrod found his firm (under the name Axelrod and Associates).
- Axelrod was born to Jewish parents in 1955 in New York City and grew up in Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan.
- He went to P.S. 40.
- Axelrod's father was a psychologist and avid baseball fan.[1]
- His mother worked as a journalist at PM, a left-wing 1940s newspaper.
- Axelrod traces his political involvement back to his childhood.
- he told the Los Angeles Times, "I got into politics because I believe in idealism. Just to be a part of this effort that seems to be rekindling the kind of idealism that I knew when I was a kid, it's a great thing to do. [2]
- So I find myself getting very emotional about it." At just 13 years old, he was selling campaign buttons for Robert F. Kennedy.
- After attending Stuyvesant High School[1] in Manhattan, Axelrod attended the University of Chicago, where he majored in political science.
- As an undergraduate, Axelrod wrote for the Hyde Park Herald , covering politics, and picked up an internship at the Chicago Tribune.
- At the age of 27, Axelrod became the City Hall Bureau Chief and a political columnist for the Chicago Tribune. He worked at the Tribune for eight years, covering national, state and local politics. He became the youngest political writer there in 1981.[3]
- Unhappy with his prospects at the Tribune, in 1984 he joined the campaign of US Senator Paul Simon as communications director; within weeks he was promoted to co-campaign manager.[4]
- He formed a political consultancy, Axelrod & Associates, in 1985.
- In 1987, he worked on the successful reelection campaign of Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor.
- Axelrod is a longtime strategist for Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley and styles himself a "specialist in urban politics."
- In 2004, Axelrod worked for the presidential campaign of John Edwards. During the campaign, he lost responsibility for making ads, but continued as the campaign's spokesman. Regarding Edwards' failed 2004 presidential campaign,
- In 2006, Axelrod consulted for several campaigns, including for the successful campaigns of Eliot Spitzer in New York's gubernatorial election and for Deval Patrick in Massachusetts's gubernatorial election.
- Axelrod also served in 2006 as the chief political adviser for Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair U.S. Representative Rahm Emanuel for the U.S. House of Representatives elections, in which the Democrats gained 31 seats.
- Axelrod and Barack Obama's ties reach back a decade.
- Axelrod met Obama in 1992 when Obama so impressed Betty Lu Saltzmann, a woman from Chicago's "lakefront liberal crowd," during a black voter registration drive he ran that she then introduced the two.
- Obama also consulted Axelrod before he delivered his famed 2002 anti-war speech[8] and asked him to read drafts of his book, The Audacity of Hope.[9]
- Axelrod currently serves as the chief strategist and media adviser for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.
- Axelrod contemplated taking a break from the 2008 presidential campaign, as five of the candidates—Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, and Tom Vilsack—were past clients.
- Personal ties between Axelrod and Hillary Clinton also made it difficult, as she had done significant work on behalf of epilepsy causes for a foundation co-founded by Axelrod's wife, Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE).
- (Axelrod's daughter suffers from developmental disabilities associated with chronic epileptic seizures.) Axelrod's wife even said that a 1999 conference Clinton convened on finding a cure for the condition was "one of the most important things anyone has done for epilepsy."[10]
- Ultimately, however, he viewed Obama's potential candidacy as inspirational and historic.
- He often likens Obama to Robert F. Kennedy and told The Washington Post, "I thought that if I could help Barack Obama get to Washington, then I would have accomplished something great in my life."[1]
- Axelrod contributed to the initial announcement of Obama's campaign by creating a five-minute Internet video released January 16, 2007. [13] He continued to use 'man on the street' style biographical videos to create intimacy and authenticity in the political ads.
- Axelrod helped to craft the Obama campaign's main theme of "change
- The change message played a factor in Obama's victory in the Iowa caucuses. "Just over half of [Iowa's] Democratic caucus-goers said change was the No. 1 factor they were looking for in a candidate, and 51 percent of those voters chose Barack Obama...
- Axelrod also believed that the Clinton campaign underestimated the importance of the caucus states. "For all the talent and the money they had over there," says Axelrod, "they - bewilderingly - seemed to have little understanding for the caucuses and how important they would become."[12] In the 2008 primary season, Obama won a majority of the states that use the caucus format.
- Axelrod is credited with implementing a strategy that encourages the participation of people, a lesson drawn partly from the effectiveness of Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign as well as a personal goal of Barack Obama.
- Axelrod explained to Rolling Stone magazine, "When we started this race, Barack told us that he wanted the campaign to be a vehicle for involving people and giving them a stake in the kind of organizing he believed in."[13]
- This includes drawing on "Web 2.0" technology and viral media to support a grassroots strategy.
- Obama's web platform allows supporters to blog, create their own personal page, and even phonebank from home.
- Axelrod's elaborate use of the Internet has helped Obama to organize under-30 voters and build over 475,000 donors in 2007, most of whom were Internet donors contributing less than $100 each.[14]
- The Obama strategy stood in contrast to Hillary Clinton's campaign, which benefited from high name recognition, large donors and strong support among established Democratic leaders.
- The Politico described Axelrod as 'soft-spoken' and 'mild-mannered'[15] and it quoted one Obama aide in Chicago as saying, "Do you know how lucky we are that he is our Mark Penn?"[16]
- Democratic consultant and former colleague Dan Fee said of Axelrod, "He's a calming presence."[17] "He's not a screamer, like some of these guys," political advisor Bill Daley said of Axelrod in the Chicago Tribune.
- "In late April and early May, Barack Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright criticized Axelrod's influence on Obama.
- Axelrod operates a second business from the same office, ASK Public Strategies, that discreetly plots strategy and advertising campaigns for corporate clients to tilt public opinion their way.[20]
- He and his partners are secretive about operations and won't reveal the client roster or revenue. [21]
- Customers and public records confirm agency has run campaigns for the Chicago Children's Museum, ComEd, Cablevision, and AT&T.[22]
- The firm helped set up front organizations that were listed as sponsors of public-issue ads, a practice that industry insiders call such practices "Astroturfing" (manufacturing grassroots support). [23]
- Eric Sedler, 39, a former public relations director at AT&T and corporate-reputation specialist at PR giant Edelman, is the "S" in ASK and the company's managing partner. The "K" is John Kupper, 51, a former congressional press secretary and ad-industry consultant, while the "A," of course, is Axelrod.[24] One TV commercial, penned by ASK, warned of a ComEd bankruptcy and blackouts without a rate hike and was sponsored by a group known as CORE, which describes itself on its Web site as "a coalition of individuals, businesses and organizations," but after a complaint was filed with state regulators, ComEd acknowledged that it had bankrolled the entire $15 million effort.[25] Employees of the utility and its parent, Exelon, have contributed $181,711 to Obama's presidential bid, more than workers at any other company in the state.[26] When Illinois utility Commonwealth Edison wanted state lawmakers to back a hefty rate hike two years ago, it took a creative lobbying approach, concocting a new outfit that seemed devoted to the public interest.[27] The firm also worked on behalf of Madison Square Garden's to stop plans for the contructions of a football stadium for the Jets on New York's Westside. [28] ASK's $1.1 million fee was listed as the "largest lobbying contract" of the year in the annual report of the state's lobbying commission.[29]
- ASK last year proposed another "front" group campaign to help Illinois hospitals block a state proposal that would have forced them to provide more medical care to the indigent.
- One part of its plan: create a "grassroots" group of medical experts "capable of contacting policymakers to advocate for our position," according to a copy of the proposal. (ASK didn't get the contract.) Public-interest watchdogs say these grassroots campaigns are state of the art in the lobbying world.
- "There's no way with a straight face to say that's not lobbying," says Ellen Miller, director of the Sunlight Foundation, which promotes government transparency.[30] The firm's work has also involved Michelle Obama's employer, the University of Chicago Hospital. She helped create a program, called the Urban Health Initiative, that hired ASK Public Strategies in 2007 to assist in marketing the plan to the community as a better alternative for poor patients. The plan has critics in the community, however, who see at as a way to dump costly patients and increase the hospital's bottom line. [31][32