Disapproval of Obama’s job as president has now reached a majority. As a Democrat, that disappoints me. But I also find myself frustrated with the American public. Through my admitted Koolaid-tinted lens, I see in Obama a president who has fulfilled his campaign promised to a degree unprecedented in my lifetime. [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Politics'
Here, The People Rule
Reconciliation Sent Back to the House
Republicans scored a victory last night by slowing Democrat’s momentum after passing healthcare reform this week.
As reported by POLITICO:
Senate Republicans have succeeded in forcing Democrats to send the health reform reconciliation bill back to the House for another vote, after Senate parliamentarian Alan Frumin ruled early Thursday morning that two minor provisions violated the chamber’s [...]
The Future of Paid Search in Politics and Public Affairs
Just to reinforce the point I made in my last post about how digital communications tools are powering public affairs campaigns, check out this item that ran last week on Marketplace, the public-radio program on business. It’s focused on how political and public affairs campaigns are increasingly using search engine marketing — that is, those [...]
A Guide to the U.K.’s Conservative Party
For months now, we’ve been hearing that the Conservative Party is on track to defeat the ruling Labour Party in the United Kingdom’s coming elections this spring. With that in mind, Fleishman-Hillard’s London office has created “Conservative Insight,” a handy Web site that provides everything you want to know (and probably more about the Tory [...]
Early Readings of Citizens United v. FEC
Here’s a dispatch from Bill Black, who oversees Fleishman-Hillard’s global public affairs practice (and who is traveling as I write this), on what the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday on Citizens United v. FEC might mean for companies’ and unions’ public affairs activities. He writes:
I am just returning from the annual National Grassroots Conference of [...]
Online Spending Low in 2009 New Jersey Gubernatorial Election
I came across an interesting article that examined online advertisement spending levels for both candidates in the recent New Jersey gubernatorial election, and the results are somewhat surprising. Neither candidate spent a significant portion of their budget on online advertisement, even though both ran online ads on state political Web sites for the bulk on [...]
More Background on Copenhagen Climate Conference
Heres’s the third in a series of background briefs from Fleishman-Hillard’s Brussels office on issues that delegates from around the world will grapple with at the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December. This brief focuses on reform of the Clean Development Mechanism, which will be negotiated in Copenhagen.
“The CDM is one of three flexible market-based mechanisms [...]
The Idea Vs. The Reality of Health Care Reform
A November 4 article in the New England Journal of Medicine compared U.S. public opinion about the health care overhaul effort during the Clinton Administration and the current one that the Obama Administration has championed. The results are that the pattern of public opinion is similiar today to what it was in the early ’90s, [...]
GOP Healthcare Plan: DOA?
As I mentioned in my previous post on this week’s healthcare debate in Congress, House Republicans indicated they would offer their own bill as an alternative. It looks like they have come through on this promise.
The Associated Press, which was provided a draft of the bill, reported that the plan is “much shorter and focuses [...]
Where’d All The Lobbyists Go?
According to a just-released study by watchdog groups OMB Watch and the Center for Responsive Politics, there was an unusually high surge of lobbyists who terminated their legal status as lobbyists during the second quarter of 2009. The question everyone will be asking, of course, is why? The second question will be: did President Obama, [...]