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Education Dept. paid commentator to promote; No Child Left Behind Law
Topic Started: Jan 8 2005, 11:24 PM (544 Views)
ImpulseEngine
Admiral
Dwayne
Jan 9 2005, 08:31 PM
ImpulseEngine
Jan 9 2005, 04:22 PM
Dwayne
Jan 9 2005, 12:51 PM
^^^
And if that's the case, isn't Williams the one in the wrong here?

Nothing .... NOTHING Williams has said suggests a condition of him taking the money was that he remain silent about that money.

So what you've suggested is that so far we haven't heard real evidence that the Bush administration has done wrong. And I agree. However, you're awefully quick to conclude that Williams is the only one in the wrong. (Now I realize I put the word "only" in there, but if that isn't what you meant I really don't see the point in your statement at all.) The story just broke. I would rephrase your statement as "Williams is in the wrong. Although there may be others, the jury is still out."

I have no need to rephase my statement, but you need to not put words in my mouth.

Show me where I put words in your mouth. Actually, I deliberately made it quite clear where my additional word was inserted and my rephrasing was. And I didn't ask you to rephrase it, I said I would... You can feel free to agree, disagree, or abstain from commenting on my rephrasing as you see fit.

Since you resorted to petty squabbling instead (as usual I might add), it appears to me that you had no real answer. Either that or you simply prefer trolling. But don't bother clarifying; we both know what the truth is.
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Wichita
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The Adminstrator wRench
Personal Response

Since I don't have adequate time to follow this whole thread, let me just jump in the middle.

What Armstrong did was wrong. What the Bush administration did was profoundly stupid.

Armstrong - as a columnist - sold his integrity cheaply. This will cost him far more than a quarter million dollars in the long run.

The Bush Administration, on the other hand, paid far too much. I can understand a media campaign costing that much - even in just a small target area. Paying one man that much - someone who pretty much supported you anyway - is just money wasted and should be investigated.

End of Personal Response
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ANOVA
Vice Admiral
^^^^

Thank you ma'am.
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Fesarius
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Admiral
It hasn't been denied, has it?
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Dwayne
Profanity deleted by Hoss
Minuet
Jan 10 2005, 09:34 AM
Dwayne
Jan 9 2005, 08:33 PM
24thcenstfan
Jan 9 2005, 06:14 PM
Intrepid2002
Jan 9 2005, 01:00 AM
Lot's of "IF's" in the story 24.  I think Trent Duffy's statement that the "White House is not involved in departments' contracts" pretty much covers the BushCo's rear end IF IF IF IF they were involved at all.

Yeah, I don't doubt the President's butt has been covered with Teflon by now to ensure that this <is it too early to call this a scandal? :lol: > doesn't make Bush look bad.

That is the nature of politics though. All Presidents have people from the average supporter to the Chief of Staff who will rally around to deflect negativity from the president.

None of this is negative ... it's just another example of how low Bush Bashers will stoop in an effort to score political points.

Dwayne - I don't understand your comments here.

Where is anyone "Bush bashing"? Is it now "Bush bashing" to say that this president's supporters are acting in a manner typical of the supporters of past presidents?

I think it is you trying to score political points. You have actually proved an excellent example of what 24 was trying to say.

You don't understand my comments, because you probably don't understand what's going on.

Armstrong Williams, a principle in the PR firm Graham Williams Group, was paid by Ketchum ... another PR firm hired by the Dept. of Education ... to advertise the merits of the No Child Left Behind Act. There is nothing inherently wrong in this business relationship.

Where any wrong comes in is that when Armstrong Williams spoke as an advocate of the NCLB Act on television and radio programs, Williams didn't disclose he and his company were under contract with Ketchum.

As for the supposed 'Publicity and Propaganda Act' which many Bush Bashers claim his administration violated, there are no real clear rules on this.

What can be found is in the GAO publication PRINCIPLES OF FEDERAL APPROPRIATIONS LAW: Appropriation Act Restrictions: Chapter 4. C. 11. c.

On page 4-197...
Quote:
 
the courts have indicated that it is not illegal for government agencies to spend money to advocate their positions, even on controversial issues. See Joyner v. Whiting, 477 F.2d 456, 461 (4th Cir. 1973); Arrington v. Taylor, 380 F. Supp. 1348, 1364 (M. D.N.C. 1974).


On page 4-201...
Quote:
 
Some agencies have authority to disseminate material that is promotional rather than purely informational. For example, the Commerce Department is charged with promoting commerce. In so doing, it entered into a contract with the Advertising Council to undertake a national multimedia campaign to enhance public understanding of the American economic system. Finding that this was a reasonable means of implementing its function and that the campaign did not “aggrandize” the Commerce Department, GAO found nothing illegal. B-184648, Dec. 3, 1975.


What the Bush Bashers are focusing on specifically is what is called covert propaganda.

On page 4-201...
Quote:
 
Another type of activity that GAO has construed as prohibited by the “publicity or propaganda not authorized by Congress” statute is “covert propaganda,” defined as “materials such as editorials or other articles prepared by an agency or its contractors at the behest of the agency and circulated as the ostensible position of parties outside the agency.” B-229257, June 10, 1988. A critical element of the violation is concealment of the agency’s role in sponsoring the material.


Now the problem in weeding through this issue is that Armstrong Williams did run advertisements touting the NCLB Act, where the ad made clear that the ad was paid for by the DoE, but being a natural supporter of the NCLB Act, Mr. Williams would also speak in favor of the Act in the capacity of a commentator.

Ketchum never hide the fact that it was paid by the DoE, and in adverts produced by the Graham Williams Group, the fact it was paid for by the DoE was also clear, so ultimately I think the real issue here is disclosure by Armstrong Williams a a pundit; should he have announced he was under contract with Ketchum who was under contract with the DoE everytime he spoke as a pundit in favor of NCLB? That's hard to say.

And as for the Bush Bashers, all they want is to spin this as an issue where the administration has done wrong, but the fact as the facts are known right now, shows that the administration never once dictated to Ketchum or to the Graham Williams Group that the contract must be kept secret.
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ANOVA
Vice Admiral
Dwayne:

The whole deal was poorly thought out and executed. Juan Williams who is a friend of Armstrong Williams (Armstrong is the godfather of Juan's children) siad he never heard of the disclosure even though they work together on a radio show.

Regardless of the number of PR firms involved, the government retains certain rights and responsibilities and is THE responsible party in the contract since they initiated the campaign.

I voted for Bush, I don't blame Bush. I do believe that an investigation is proper to determine if we need better disclosure laws when someone is hired as a government spokesperson. The SEC has strict disclosure rules, when an analyst or broker talks up a stock thay must dosclose if they own it. Maybe such disclosure is needed for pundits on the payroll.

Spin it any way you want it but I find it funny that your bombast....

People against aspect of the war are favoring the terrorists
People who think that this needs investigation are "Bush Basshers"...

Is somehow above my bombast. Too close to see it ,Dwayne?

ANOVA
The 1812 Overture...now thats bombast.
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Dwayne
Profanity deleted by Hoss
First off, I heard Juan Williams claim and I really don't care what he had to say, I stick with what Armstrong Williams has had to say...
Quote:
 
BEGALA: You're a stand-up guy. As I was saying off the air, you're in the soup today, but you're willing to come into the CROSSFIRE. That makes you a stand-up guy in my book.

Someone who's not a stand-up guy is our current education secretary, soon to be replaced, Rod Paige, who was asked about this today and ran from the podium, rather than answer tough questions about it. So, that puts you higher on my list than Secretary Paige.

But let me start, did you disclose this payment relationship to your listeners and viewers when you talked about the No Child Left Behind law that you were paid to promote?

WILLIAMS: Yes, consistently on our syndicated television show.

BEGALA: There's been reporting that you haven't done so. Can you tell me how you disclosed it?

WILLIAMS: Well, we're associated with many different media outlets.

We were subcontracting with Ketchum Communications. And they subcontract...

BEGALA: Which is a P.R. agency, for people who don't know.

WILLIAMS: Yes. Right.

And they subcontracted with us to promote No Child Left Behind as part of an advertising campaign, where we gave them two one-minute commercials within our syndicated television show. And we made it clear to our audience oftentimes that, even though that we're being paid by Ketchum as an advertising to promote this, we promoted this long before there ever was a Ketchum contract.

Now, are you calling Armstrong Williams a liar?

Next, if I contract someone to build a house and the contractor uses illegal practices without my knowledge, it is the contractor responsible for breaking the law and not me. The same logic applies here; for you to even suggest what was done was illegal, you'll have to prove that the DoE knowingly allowed the Graham Williams Group to air those commercials without attribution. And that is something no one has done.

And last, you apparently have no clue what the word bombast means, but you scream bombast from the arguments you choose, to the words you use, and to the closing sentences you always provide. You're style is pretentious and overbearing ... in a word, bombastic.
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Fesarius
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Admiral
We may need a bombastic thread soon. ;)
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ANOVA
Vice Admiral
Quote:
 
Now, are you calling Armstrong Williams a liar?


No just calling you a @#%$**!!!!

The apearance of impropiety could have been avoided with some forthought.

The disclosure should have been more transparent (especially given that a good friend and cohost had no idea).

The use of the money is questionable.

I read the cut and paste the first time.

I'm gald you stick with people you don't know becuase of thier political affiliation.

An investigation would determine, as I stated earlier, if
Quote:
 
such disclosure (as required by the SEC) is needed for pundits on the payroll.


I was able to come to this determination without calling anyone a "Bush Basher" or "liar" or of accusing the opposition of not understanding the situation. Very patronizing of you, by the way.

ANOVA



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Dwayne
Profanity deleted by Hoss
ANOVA
Jan 12 2005, 04:40 PM
Quote:
 
Now, are you calling Armstrong Williams a liar?


No just calling you a @#%$**!!!!

Definately touched a nerve. Do you have a history of falsely implying people are liars or do you get touchy when someone calls you out.

ANOVA
Jan 12 2005, 04:40 PM
The apearance of impropiety could have been avoided with some forthought.

The disclosure should have been more transparent (especially given that a good friend and cohost had no idea).

Nothing appears or even verges on being improper.

There is no law that states or suggests that Armstrong Williams must remind everyone his PR company performed work for another PR company everytime he spoke out in favor of the law in question. And I feel it doesn't even come close to violating the "covert propaganda" restrictions either, because Armstrong Williams was speaking out in favor for the NCLB Act long before Graham Williams Group earned the contract to produce commercials and commentary that touted NCLB for Ketchum.

Additionally, Juan Williams not knowing about the contract, means nothing. There's probably lots of contracts the Graham Williams Group has earned that Juan Williams knows nothing about.

ANOVA
Jan 12 2005, 04:40 PM
The use of the money is questionable.

You comment is non-sensical. Advertising campaigns are not done for free, and with production costs and all, are actually quite expensive.

I can just see it now, "Yes Mr. Williams, we at Ketchum would like to hire the Graham Williams Group to produce some commercials and write some commentary for NCLB, but because you personally believe in it, we must pay you below market value."

ANOVA
Jan 12 2005, 04:40 PM
I read the cut and paste the first time.

Then read it again, because you really didn't absorb it the first time. Mr. Williams clearly states that the commercials his company created state that the ads were paid for by the DoE.

ANOVA
Jan 12 2005, 04:40 PM
I'm gald you stick with people you don't know becuase of thier political affiliation.

:lol:
:rotfl:
:loling:

ANOVA
Jan 12 2005, 04:40 PM
An investigation would determine, as I stated earlier, if
Quote:
 
such disclosure (as required by the SEC) is needed for pundits on the payroll.

Oh yes, just what we need, a multi-million dollar investigation, because someone made about $250 K in manner you don't like.

ANOVA
Jan 12 2005, 04:40 PM
I was able to come to this determination without calling anyone a "Bush Basher" or "liar" or of accusing the opposition of not understanding the situation. Very patronizing of you, by the way.

ANOVA

Actually, I never called anyone 'Bush Basher' nor did I call anyone 'liar'. What I did say about Bush Bashers could be summed up in this sentence, "as for the Bush Bashers, all they want is to spin this as an issue where the administration has done wrong".

As well, the closest I've ever come to saying anyone didn't understand something was this comment to Minuet, "You don't understand my comments, because you probably [emphasis added] don't understand what's going on."

One thing for certain, it really seems you took my bombastic comment to heart, because your sentences are far more simplistic than usual and you've gone without your trademark catch phrases.
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Fesarius
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Admiral
Dwayne,

Hi. I think you may have misunderstood Anova. He's quite intelligent, and a very interesting person with whom to discuss issues. I think you'll find that the sum of both of your posts will be greater than either one individually. Here's hoping that that occurs. :)
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Admiralbill_gomec
UberAdmiral
It turns out that the Dean campaign paid two blogs to say nice things about Howard.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/0,,SB...Ffree%5Ffeature

I wonder if anything will come of this? Probably not... even though Armstrong Williams is NOT a journalist.
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24thcenstfan
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Something Wicked This Fae Comes
Writer Backing Bush Plan Had Gotten Federal Contract (need to register to view)


Quote:
 
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 26, 2005; Page C01


In 2002, syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher repeatedly defended President Bush's push for a $300 million initiative encouraging marriage as a way of strengthening families.

"The Bush marriage initiative would emphasize the importance of marriage to poor couples" and "educate teens on the value of delaying childbearing until marriage," she wrote in National Review Online, for example, adding that this could "carry big payoffs down the road for taxpayers and children."

But Gallagher failed to mention that she had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help promote the president's proposal. Her work under the contract, which ran from January through October 2002, included drafting a magazine article for the HHS official overseeing the initiative, writing brochures for the program and conducting a briefing for department officials.

"Did I violate journalistic ethics by not disclosing it?" Gallagher said yesterday. "I don't know. You tell me." She said she would have "been happy to tell anyone who called me" about the contract but that "frankly, it never occurred to me" to disclose it.

Later in the day, Gallagher filed a column in which she said that "I should have disclosed a government contract when I later wrote about the Bush marriage initiative. I would have, if I had remembered it. My apologies to my readers."

In the interview, Gallagher said her situation was "not really anything near" the recent controversy involving conservative commentator Armstrong Williams. Earlier this month Williams apologized for not disclosing a $241,000 contract with the Education Department, awarded through the Ketchum public relations firm, to promote Bush's No Child Left Behind law through advertising on his cable TV and syndicated radio shows and other efforts.

Gallagher received an additional $20,000 from the Bush administration in 2002 and 2003 for writing a report, titled "Can Government Strengthen Marriage?", for a private organization called the National Fatherhood Initiative. That report, published last year, was funded by a Justice Department grant, said NFI spokesman Vincent DiCaro. Gallagher said she was "aware vaguely" that her work was federally funded.

In columns, television appearances and interviews with such newspapers as The Washington Post, Gallagher last year defended Bush's proposal for a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage.

Wade Horn, HHS assistant secretary for children and families, said his division hired Gallagher as "a well-known national expert," along with other specialists in the field, to help devise the president's healthy marriage initiative. "It's not unusual in the federal government to do that," he said.

The essay Gallagher drafted appeared under Horn's byline -- with the headline "Closing the Marriage Gap" -- and ran in Crisis magazine, which promotes humanism rooted in Catholic Church teachings. Horn said most of the brochures written by Gallagher -- such as "The Top Ten Reasons Marriage Matters" -- were not used as the program evolved.

"I don't see any comparison between what has been alleged with Armstrong Williams and what we did with Maggie Gallagher," said Horn, who founded the National Fatherhood Initiative before entering government. "We didn't pay her to write columns. We didn't pay her to promote the president's healthy marriage initiative at all. What we wanted to do was use her expertise." The Education Department is now investigating the Williams contract.

The author of three books on marriage, Gallagher is president of the Washington-based Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, a frequent television guest and has written on the subject for such publications as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Weekly Standard.

While she was being paid by HHS in 2002, Gallagher in her syndicated column dismissed the arguments against "President Bush's modest marriage initiative" as "nonsense," writing: "Bush plans to use a tiny fraction of surplus welfare dollars to fund marriage education services for at-risk couples."

In a column later that year that appeared in the Myrtle Beach (S.C.) Sun News, Gallagher said Bush's welfare-revision bill would, among other things, encourage "stable marriages," and that it was a "scandal" for Democrats to reject the president's plan and fail to offer an alternative.

National Review Editor Rich Lowry said of the HHS contract: "We would have preferred that she told us, and we would have disclosed it in her bio."

Tribune Media Services dropped Williams's column after his administration contract was disclosed. Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes Gallagher's column, plans no such action.

"We did not know about the contract," spokeswoman Kathie Kerr said. "We would have probably liked to have known." But, Kerr said, "this is what we hired Maggie to write about. It probably wouldn't have changed our mind to distribute it."


All policies in regards to contracting out to the private sector to promote government programs needs to be reviewed pronto IMO.
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Fesarius
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Admiral
^^^
Thank you for posting the link. It's somewhat frustrating having to register for some of these. :)
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24thcenstfan
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Something Wicked This Fae Comes
^You're welcome. Having to register for the news is a pain in the butt. I have only registered for a few major newspapers.
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