Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Hack lobbyist ACU chief Al Cardenas forms group to pressure Beltway Tea Party conservatives to funnel more US taxpayer cash to nat. infrastructure pork, cites clout of chump grassroots and CPAC conference-NY Times

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4/9/13, "Lobbyists Fighting Spending Cuts Find Ally in Group That Often Backs Them," NY Times, by Nicholas Confessore

"As one of the country’s largest and oldest conservative advocacy groups, the American Conservative Union has long fought to rein in federal spending and limit the size of government.

But behind the scenes, the group has formed a partnership with business lobbyists to tame the activists who have pushed Republican leaders in Congress to adopt some of the most austere spending limits in decades. 

In a draft proposal circulated to defense and transportation industry executives in recent weeks, the union is offering to use its grass-roots organization, annual conference and movement clout to lobby against cuts to federal military and infrastructure spending. 

The group is also proposing to incorporate favorable votes on military and infrastructure spending into its widely cited Congressional voting scorecard, “the ‘gold standard’ for elected officials,” according to the proposal, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. The documents shed light on a rarely public corner of Washington lobbying, where industry lobbyists join with grass-roots groups that offer ideological credibility and deep mailing lists of sympathetic activists — sometimes for a price. 

“Constitutional conservatives recognize that not all government expenditures are equal,” the proposal says. “These investments are core, constitutional federal responsibilities and should be so treated in the allocation of federal resources.” 

The proposed new effort, called the American Strength Program, would be financed by contributions from the defense and transportation businesses, which have struggled to defend the federal appropriations that benefit them as Congressional Republicans seek further spending cuts. 

In recent weeks, the American Road and Transportation Builders Association has urged transportation lobbyists and business executives to make contributions to the American Strength Program. The association, which sometimes works with Democratic-leaning labor unions to advance federal road and bridge projects, suggested it was critical to persuade conservative lawmakers to bend on some areas of spending. 

As you know, in recent times, we have often had trouble convincing our conservative friends that transportation infrastructure is a valuable investment and should not be subject to the spending cuts being discussed,” wrote Richard Juliano, the association’s senior vice president for strategic initiatives, in an e-mail to colleagues this month. “We would appreciate your considering a major contribution to this program in support of the A.C.U. effort and encouraging others to do so.” 

Officials at the union, who declined to say how much they were seeking to raise for the new program, described the proposal as a draft. The group’s tax returns indicate it raised about $3.8 million in 2010, but as a tax-exempt “social welfare” organization, the union is not required to disclose its donors. 

In an interview, Alberto R. Cardenas, the chairman of the conservative union, said all money raised from the program’s partners would go into a Beltway-focused media campaign. 

“My thought was that we were taking an uneven amount of resources from the two elements that are the most basic responsibilities of the federal government, which are national defense and the development of a national transportation infrastructure,” Mr. Cardenas said. 

The American Strength Program also hints at some fundamental tensions within conservatism. The movement’s establishment, including the conservative union, took root in Washington in an when era military spending was sacrosanct and transportation bills regularly marched through Congress with bipartisan support. 

But the movement’s vanguard today is a new generation of Tea Party-inspired lawmakers and activists, many of whom arrived in Washington denouncing the infrastructure spending in President Obama’s stimulus program. They are more comfortable with cuts to the Pentagon budget and actively hostile to the earmark spending through which so many road and bridge projects have been financed in the past.

John F. Tate, president of Campaign for Liberty, a grass-roots organization that grew out of the 2008 presidential campaign of Representative Ron Paul of Texas, said the American Strength Program “smacks to a lot of people as taking big money to do the bidding of big business.” 

We’re of the opinion that at this time, with the nation going bankrupt, everything has to be looked at for cuts,” Mr. Tate added.
The American Conservative Union has long opposed cuts to the military budget while attacking what it deems wasteful government spending. Its popular annual conference, the Conservative Political Action Conference, draws thousands of grass-roots activists and conservative stars, like Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. 

Mr. Cardenas said the group lobbied to pass last year’s transportation bill after Representative John L. Mica, a Florida Republican who led the House Transportation Committee, persuaded him that the legislation made important reforms to road and bridge programs. 

When the bill stalled in Congress — in part because of objections by conservative Republicans over its cost — Mr. Cardenas wrote an opinion article in The Washington Examiner urging conservatives to help break the logjam. The bill, Mr. Cardenas wrote, streamlined the environmental review process for new projects and contained no earmarks. 

But while the American Strength proposal portrays military and transportation spending as consistent with principled conservatism, some conservative leaders disagreed, saying it would put the interests of particular businesses ahead of the interest of the taxpayers. 

“From a policy point of view, we would challenge that argument,” said Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks, a conservative organization that has aligned itself with the Tea Party movement. “We would argue that from a balanced-budget point of view, you need to put everything on the table, including military spending. And certainly the transportation bill is full of earmarks and wasteful spending.” 

The new proposal also echoes an earlier effort that dragged the conservative union into controversy. In 2009, officials at the group sought more than $2 million from FedEx in exchange for helping the shipping company oppose a bill that would have permitted FedEx drivers to unionize. 

When FedEx declined the offer — which included a promise to mobilize conservative union members with direct mail and phone calls — the chairman of the group then, David A. Keene, signed onto an open letter criticizing FedEx. The flip-flop drew sharp criticism from some other conservatives, who accused the conservative union of offering for sale its allegiance and imprimatur. 

Mr. Keene left the group in 2011 and is now president of the National Rifle Association. He was replaced by Mr. Cardenas, a former chairman of the Florida Republican Party who also runs a Washington lobbying firm, Cardenas Partners. 

Mr. Cardenas’s position at the conservative union is unpaid. But several of his firm’s clients have lobbied on infrastructure or military-related matters in the past two years. Other members of the conservative union’s board also work at lobbying or public affairs firms, representing clients like Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and other military contractors. 

The group’s most recent scorecard, covering lawmakers’ voting records in 2012, says it tracks a wide range of issues with the mission of “informing grass-roots conservatives and the public — in an unbiased, transparent manner — on where individual members of Congress fall on the ideological spectrum.”" via Mark Levin twitter

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4/14/11,"ACU’s Cardenas Questions Tea Party’s Grasp Of Principles," RedState.com, Tom in Florida 

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2/9/12, "The American Conservative Union: now neutralizing the conservative movement," by James Lampe, "Corruption at the ACU" (American Conservative Union)

"While Chairman of ACU, Mr. Cardenas even registered as a lobbyist for the High Speed Rail project in Florida, despite that fact that Republican Governor Rick Scott opposed the project. This lobbying appears to be outside the limits of the ACU’s first principle, i.e., “It is our belief that the Constitution is designed to guarantee the free exercise of the inherent rights of the individual through strictly limiting the power of government.” How much commitment and fidelity to a cause can you have when you are representing both sides of an issue?

In addition, Mr. Cardenas is a Senior Partner at Tew Cardenas, a law firm that does lobbying for business and government entities, under the brand name The Advocacy Group."...

(Also posted at RedState.com, 2/11/12, "The American Conservative Union: neutralizing the conservative movement," Jim Lampe, RedState.com) 

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Feb. 2011, CPAC not happy with Tea Party-Rush Limbaugh

2/14/11, "Rush: 'Tea party was under assault at CPAC'," World Net Daily, Drew Zahn
 

 "“But at CPAC, you didn’t get the impression here that there was a conservative ascendancy going on.

You had a lot of people saying, ‘We gotta do something about that faction,’” Limbaugh said on his program today. The tea party was under assault in its own way at CPAC. And you in the tea party understand full well

the ruling class is not happy with you.

And it was clearly obvious.”"...


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2/7/12, "CPAC for Sissies: Self-Censoring for Sharia," Pamela Geller, American Thinker


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