June 10, 2011

How the World Works, 2011 Version

From Politico:
AT&T Gave Cash to Merger Backers 
By Eliza Krigman 
AT&T is lining up support for its acquisition of T-Mobile from a slew of liberal groups with no obvious interest in telecom deals — except that they’ve received big piles of AT&T’s cash. 
In recent weeks, the NAACP, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the National Education Association have each issued public statements in support of the deal. 
The groups all say their public positions have nothing to do with the money they received from AT&T. And AT&T says it supports nonprofit groups because it’s the right thing to do — and not because of any quid pro quo. 
“For decades, AT&T has proudly supported numerous diverse groups and organizations,” a company spokesperson told POLITICO.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sierra Club's statement ("the BlueGreen Alliance") was particularly rich in vacuity.

Everyone saw how well Wal-Mart worked it out with that Podesta outfit, I guess.

Anonymous said...

That clinking clanking sound.

Whores for Eleusis, as Pound might say.

An old bitch gone in the teeth.
A botched civilization.

Anonymous said...

Guess Politico didn't get any green.

Anonymous said...

Since the Gay and Lesbian Alliance is going to endorse the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, it's only natural to ask who's the top and who's the bottom in the two companies' relationship. Well, not only is T-Mobile being acquired, it also uses a lot of magenta in its signage.

Anonymous said...

It's like they don't even care enough anymore to bother lying convincingly.

Anonymous said...

Money talks, bullshit walks. Values change, but value of money remains the same.

So, now it's Gay T and T.

none of the above said...

Because when there's a thorny antitrust issue involving communications company mergers that could drive progress in communications for the next several decades,whose opinion would be more valuable than that of GLAD? Unless it was possibly the NAACP or the Sierra Club.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I would love for this to be a primarily liberal phenomenon, 'cause then I could feel self-righteous, but I suspect there are equivalences on the other end(s) of the spectrum.

Whiskey said...

So if you want to stop stuff like that, you need to blow apart regulated monopolies where Government chooses winners and losers with help from Gay pressure groups, the NAACP, and Sierra Club.

Do love the Gay T&T crack, btw.

jerry said...

Tribute payed to power, not GLAAD or the NAACP, but the media-based velvet dictatorship of the left that really controls this country, despite the babble about democracy or the power of capitalism. The ones who get paid off are the ones who have power. Most, virtually all, charity from business goes either to left-wing groups, their non-white proxies, or carefully selected neutral causes. These capitalists give virtually nothing to the right. Certainly they would never give anything to any white group that is as overtly racist as La Raza or the NAACP. It's odd that the National Review and American Heritage crowd never makes any real waves over Big Business funding the left. Actually it's not odd at all, the NR and AH crowd are crooks with no real social and political views at all except those they can fit in their wallets. If Big Business helps fund the destruction of conservatism and traditional America, the destruction of Western Civilization, well so what? It's more important they they make a buck today, all that history stuff is just bunk. What's Western Civ compared to yet one more beach house, or Mercedes? One must prioritize.

Chief Seattle said...

In related news, Drudge had a headline that a regional Federal reserve bank was flying the rainbow flag. Now why would the Federal Reserve, a banking institution, deliberately align themselves with gay rights? The only thing that makes sense is that they see support for the Fed dropping across the country, largely as a result of dishing out trillions of dollars to prop up banks that made stupid investments and should go out of business. So what's the last ditch survival plan? Align themselves with liberal issues, which is a natural fit at the core. The Federal Reserve keeps the dollars flowing into Treasury debt, which keeps the social service dollars flowing, which makes Democrats happy. Only the big bad Republicans would want to stop such a natural state of affairs. Expect more alignment of the Fed with liberal social issues in an attempt to stay alive in the era of endless banker bailouts.

Anonymous said...

"It's odd that the National Review and American Heritage crowd never makes any real waves over Big Business funding the left."

They don't?

Since when?

josh said...

Well sir,if the NAACP is for it,its got to be the right thing!!!

ATBOTL said...

The people who run large corporations have views on "social issues" that are not much different from sociology professors. It's not a case of them being strong armed or blackmailed into supporting these leftist groups, as establishment conservatives used to argue when they still mentioned such things, they are true believers.

The National Review is a totally irrelevant joke. Does anyone read it anymore?

NOTA said...

ATBOTL:

{Citation needed.}

Seriously, do you have any evidence of that? My impression is that the management class of the country are probably somewhat politically different from the general population, but I don't think they're enormously socially liberal. Where would we find evidence to decide which of us is right? I poked around Opensecrets, which has all kinds of information from lobbying and campaign contributions, but I didn't see an easy way (without pulling down data and doing some analysis) to work out what the partisan split from donations from top executives or companies looks like.

It's pretty damned clear in this case, however, that the donations were entirely tactical. AT&T's commitment to GLAD was very much like Countrywide's commitment to ACORN.