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| photo by LadyForward1 |
If you rely on the mainstream media for news you are
forgiven if you missed the promotion of a well-connected political operative
into Scott Walker’s inner circle last week.
Unfortunately the highly-trained reporters at the "Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel" and "Wisconsin State Journal," members of the government-approved
Wisconsin Capitol Correspondents Association – WCCA, couldn’t be bothered to write
more than one paragraph about this Karl Rove protégé.
In a breathtaking example of brevity in reporting, readers were
provided only name, rank, and salary information for this political appointee.
Here is the result of the backbreaking toil of our state’s journalistic
elite:
Jocelyn Webster was promoted from
Department of Administration spokeswoman to Scott Walker’s Director of
Communications at the annual salary of $95,000.
Stunning, isn’t it?
After recovering from the impact of that in-depth report,
one begins to wonder why the crème de la crème of political journalists are unable
to venture beyond their taxpayer-provided Capitol press room to conduct the odd
interview or two.
Perhaps, unknown to the general public, Scott Walker has
placed transit restrictions on the Capitol correspondents, limiting them to press
purgatory within the four walls of their Capitol clubhouse.
All too often these journalists don’t attend legislative
committee meetings held within a few short strides of their office, instead choosing
the news-free confines of the press room. How do we know that they’re missing
from these and other meetings? Because citizen
journalists are attending and reporting
on these vital government processes.
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| WCCA reporters daring to venture from their press room. - photo by Thid |
Even if the lot of our government reporters is to
be confined to their office, couldn't they at least use the Google machine
to do a bit of research – and report their findings to us?
Jocelyn Webster: What the Capitol Reporters Missed
Webster’s connection to the major political ills of the last
decade far surpasses any Walker
administration politico: the insidious alliance of corporate lobbying and
government that is the American Legislative Exchange Council - ALEC; the lies,
deception and immorality of the Iraq War; and the pervasive corruption of Karl
Rove’s Office of Political Affairs in the Bush White House – all before she
achieved the age of twenty-eight.
Webster immigrated to America’s Dairyland last December after
high-profile campaign PR gigs with Chris Christie, Rudy Guliani, and John
McCain/Sarah Palin, followed by a Governmental Affairs position – read lobbyist
– at 7-Eleven’s corporate headquarters in Dallas.
The Walker administration provided Webster $10,000 to move
to Wisconsin, as apparently there were no Wisconsinites qualified to be
spokesperson for his Department of Administration.
Webster’s debut coincided with the DOA’s introduction of the
highly controversial Capitol Access Policies and was extensively reported by
citizen journalists here.
Perhaps Webster was hired because of her hyper-partisan
background. After all, the new Capitol Rules
included un-democratic language, stating in part: four or more people
congregating in or around the Capitol was a protest; protestors could be billed
for Capitol Police services; and the State could not be held liable for injury
or death to protestors caused by Law Enforcement employees.
At the first public question and answer period for these new
rules, held in the Capitol basement, Webster distanced herself from the public while
her boss, DOA second-in-command Chris Schoenherr, answered questions from
concerned citizens, legislators, and civil-rights advocates.
Even though Webster had no active role in the meeting she quickly
made a spectacle of herself.
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| Jocelyn Webster - by Lisa Wells |
As people asked questions and raised concerns about the new
rules and how they might impact Wisconsin’s culture of accessible and open government,
the new spokesperson gasped in dismay, demonstrably rolled her eyes, and shook
her head in horror.
One citizen was so offended by Webster’s condescending histrionics,
behavior which even Anne Romney would have found offensive, that he demanded to
know who this interloper was. Go to 9:14 on the video to see Webster's reaction.
After the citizen scolded Webster for her lack of Midwestern
manners, the Capitol beat reporter for the Journal Sentinel, Jason Stein, also the
WCCA President, made his way across the crowded room, slid in next to Webster and
commiserated with her about her cold Wisconsin welcome.
Had Stein reported on Webster instead of offering his
argyle-clad shoulder for her to cry on, he might have provided a valuable service
to his newspaper’s readers, and to the public-at-large, offering unique insights
into the values Scott Walker deems important in his governance of Wisconsin.
Instead, the WCCA media abdicated their role as leaders of
the Fourth Estate, leaving citizen journalists, sans taxpayer-provided press
rooms and corporate-backed research teams, to take up the mantle of a a free and
independent press.
At Her Daddy’s Lobbying Knee
While most college students are grateful to scrape together a
few bucks to go out for pizza and beer with friends, Jocelyn, on summer break
from Delta Gamma sorority, attended lobbying functions at exclusive Seattle
waterfront grills with her high-powered lawyer/lobbyist father, Clifford
Webster.
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| Clifford Webster |
In 2004, when many astute political observers had not yet
heard of, or comprehended the reach of the American Legislative Exchange
Council, Jocelyn was already attending their legislative events and
establishing political contacts.
Jocelyn’s name can be found one of her father’s 2004 expense
reports, filed five months late with the Washington Public Disclosure
Commission, as a guest at a “Northwest PhRMA Task Forces” event “during ALEC.” PhRMA is one of the largest lobbying groups in
Washington, representing almost fifty pharmaceutical companies.
And Webster’s firm picked up the dinner tab to the tune of $5,200. Not exactly Pizza Hut.
Clifford Webster’s influence, and therefore his daughter’s professional
network, extends far beyond his lobbying efforts in the Pacific Northwest. His law firm, Carney Badley Spellman is a
member of the State Capitol Group, a mega-association of independent law firms
founded as specialists in business law in all fifty state capitols.
Clifford Webster has served as chairman of this lobbying
powerhouse, which boasts 17 former Governors and their law firms among its
members, including Delaware’s Pierre DuPont, and Wisconsin’s Tony Earl, of Quarles
and Brady.
This national lobbying association claims to be
non-partisan. However, a fairly recent quote from Clifford Webster highlights
his clients’ partisan legislative concerns when he rails against “the usual
Democratic themes - health care, environmental policy, public education, etc."
From Delta Gamma to the White House
Based on Clifford Webster’s extensive political network it
is no surprise that his daughter landed a job in the Bush administration upon
graduation from college.
Jocelyn Webster’s tainted tenure in Karl Rove’s Office of
Political Affairs was thoroughly reported by my fellow citizen journalists
within days of her eye rolling performance in the Wisconsin Capitol basement
and can be read here.
The credentialed Wisconsin Capitol journalists
offered no reports about Webster’s appearance in a House Congressional investigation
that highlighted her role in the illegal use of Republican National Committee
email accounts.
What was the problem with using RNC email accounts for
official White House work?
First, emails on RNC accounts could be destroyed with
impunity – covering up illegal activity – like Rove’s outing of CIA agent
Valerie Plame. Government email is subject
to Federal recordkeeping laws and therefore must be archived. The emails of political organizations are not
subject to these same laws and therefore may be destroyed.
Second, the use of the RNC email accounts, with direct evidence from Congressman Harry Waxman’s investigation pointing directly to
Jocelyn, were used to plan and organize purely political meetings with civil
service employees on government time.
Rove’s OPA repeatedly and willfully
violated the 1939 Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees or taxpayer
dollars to be used for partisan political reasons, and was investigated and reported on seperately by the Office of Special Counsel.
Sound like the activity of any former Milwaukee County Executive, now Governor?
The Pentagon Spin Unit – Cheerleaders for Death
After the debacle in Rove’s office, Webster was fortunate to
land at the Pentagon’s Office of Public Affairs, although one observer did label
the group “a dumping ground for administration cronies.”
Webster’s role at the Department of Defense is key to
understanding her as a fully realized partisan - a political propagandist who
needed no knowledge, experience, or particular expertise - other than the
skills necessary to shape a message, and feed that message, regardless of its
relationship to the truth, to an incurious and sycophantic press corps – and
ultimately to an unsuspecting and largely trusting electorate.
Have you ever wondered how the media, especially right-wing
pundits and bloggers, talk and write about the exact same topics at the same
time? Is this a coincidence, like the proverbial one-hundred
monkeys left in front of one-hundred typewriters for one-hundred years who eventually
manage to pound out “Hamlet”?
In 2007 the Pentagon couldn’t wait one-hundred years for a
consistent, positive message about the Iraq War from the media monkeys. An election hovered around the corner and the growth
of social media demanded a rapid, content-laden response from the DoD.
Webster and her fellow war hawks at the aptly named “SurrogatesOperation” fed Iraq War talking points to selected media who could be trusted
to ape the administration line.
The “Surrogates” coached active and former military officers
prior to their appearances on the talk news circuit, providing insider
information to keep them on message about the Bush/Cheney war effort.
A few officers did not appreciate Webster’s coaching, and described
her as “very young with no background in national security or foreign affairs.”
Some military experts were “put off to say the least by
these neophyte political appointees telling retired and active personnel in
uniform what to say and what to think.”
But regardless of Webster’s inexperience, the partisan media
monkeys banged out the message.
After a media briefing on Guantanamo in June 2007 with J.
Alan Liotta, principle director for the Pentagon’s Office of Detainee Affairs, Deroy
Murdock, a nationally syndicated columnist, wrote a passionate column entitled
“Expand Gitmo!”
In his celebratory pro-war piece, Murdock, a media
fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institute, described Guantanamo prison as a
word-class resort, albeit one that needed to escalate the use of torture. His excitement was especially palpable on the
benefits of waterboarding and blasting rock music at prisoners at deafening
volumes.
Not surprisingly, Webster and her fellow neo-con
cheerleaders for death and destruction did not lead any pro-Geneva Convention
discussions for the media.
This disdain for the rule of law would become evident in Webster’s
first month as spokesperson in the Walker administration.
From Waterboarding to “The Idle Rich”
After Obama took the White House the Republican diaspora
took Webster in a number of directions before she found her way to Rove’s home
state of Texas.
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| Webster, front-center, with the "Idle Rich" |
Webster’s lengthy political résumé appeared to bode well for her
role in corporate political affairs at 7-Eleven’s Dallas headquarters. But Jocelyn’s primary focus in the “Big D” was
not necessarily on Slurpee’s, but the oh- so-trendy club scene, partying with
her well-heeled peers at “The Idle Rich Pub.”
Why did Jocelyn decide to move to the frozen tundra of
Wisconsin? Was Dallas too boring - or
was Scott Walker’s rise to national prominence too enticing for a politically
ambitious true believer?
A Hardy Handful of Activists
By the end of 2011, Webster’s allies at ALEC had decimated
one century of open and transparent legislative practices in the state to which
she brought her Gucci carpetbags.
No longer did the GOP majority legislate based on Wisconsin’s
unique circumstances. Instead, they yielded
the tiresome task of writing laws to the corporate controlled ALEC lobbyists. The only effort that the business-backed legislators
needed to undertake was to switch the proposed bills from ALEC letterhead to Wisconsin
stationary before introducing them.
The Center for Media and Democracy exhaustively researched
and reported on the pervasive influence of ALEC, including Scott Walker’s union-busting
Act 10, “the bomb” that he dropped on an unsuspecting Wisconsin.
This ALEC legislation, which was never discussed during
Walker’s gubernatorial campaign, initiated the pro-democracy Capitol Uprising
in February 2011 in Madison in which hundreds of thousands demonstrated in
favor of collective bargaining.
By late 2011 a disparate group of about three hundred
activists, what the New York Times called “a hardy handful,” remained active in and around the
Capitol, advocating daily for the recall of Walker and the restoration of
collective bargaining via the songs of the Solidarity Sing Along and other free
speech activities – such as holding signs and banners under the soaring dome of
the Wisconsin Rotunda.
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| Solidarity Sing Along - photo Lisa Wells |
It was on these activists that Walker dropped a second bomb
- a bomb with which he tried to stifle free speech and assembly in the Capitol.
Cue Jocelyn Webster – Lie #1
Jocelyn steered the assembled WCCA reporters, all of whom had
remained mute during the Capitol Rules meeting, away from the frustrated
Wisconsinites, into a narrow vending room.
The new DOA spokeswoman told the assembled reporters that “the
rules are nothing new,” and the "updated policy is meant to remove confusion
and create consistency for law enforcement officers and the public.”
This was the first time, to my knowledge, that Webster
briefed the WCCA press - and she used the briefing to tell a blatant lie. She lied that the rules were not new when the ink was barely dry on the copies distributed at the meeting.
The policies that I outlined
above couldn't be found anywhere on any State website - because they did not
exist.
Jocelyn Gets Comfortable – Lie #2
During the first rules meeting Capitol Police Chief Charles
Tubbs stated to the activists:
"I don't
think that decision needs to be to challenge us (the Administration)… whether
or not we're gonna make an arrest. I
told each and every one of you, you don't want it on your record. If it goes that route you don't want to be
involved in that (having an arrest record)."
The assembled citizens understood
the message loud and clear. Show up at
the Capitol with four or more people and you could face arrest. This was no idle threat, as many of those in
attendance had already been arrested for free speech activities – such as
quietly holding copies of the Constitution in the public Capitol Rotunda.
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| Tubbs and Schoenherr - photo by Lisa Wells |
But after an uproar from citizens
and legal scholars the administration was forced to backtrack on these odious
rules – allowing Webster her first opportunity to lie to the Wisconsin
public.
"There's a
fundamental misunderstanding of this policy if there was a belief arrests were
going to stem from this policy."
There was no misunderstanding. Wisconsin First Amendment activists had been
arrested throughout 2011, and had been threatened with arrest by Capitol Police
Chief Tubbs, at a meeting which Jocelyn attended.
And on December 16, 2011, the day
the rules were scheduled to go into effect, Webster condescendingly said this
about the potential for arrests:
"It's
kind of funny that anybody even thinks that they would be."
Interesting that Webster, an
English major, and political spinmeister of the highest order, would choose to
use the word “funny” when describing citizens’ fears over potentially being
arrested for exercising their First Amendment rights.
Did Webster think it was “funny”
when her Pentagon “Surrogates Group” advocated torture of American detainees at
Guantanamo? Does Webster believe the US
signature on the Geneva Convention is “funny”?
Jocelyn Entrenched – Lie #3
At the same time that Webster attempted
to sell the destruction of the First Amendment, her Department of
Administration was mandated by state statute to report the fiscal 2011 results
of the “Contractual Services Purchasing Report”.
This report was eagerly
anticipated after a year of union busting as it would highlight the state
spending that Walker had shifted from public employees to private contractors.
Eight months passed before
Webster reported the results.
Bill Lueders of the Wisconsin
Center for Investigative Journalism said that Webster blamed the University of
Wisconsin System, which she claimed, “was late in turning their submission for
this report and the DOA did not receive it until May 2012, which delayed the
report.”
Lueders followed up with David
Giroux, spokesman for the UW System, whose account differs:
“It looks like DOA requested the
contractual services data from UW System in early December 2011, and we
responded right away.” Subsequently, “we
discovered some formatting errors in our report that were affecting the final
results. Those errors were corrected and the reformatted data was submitted to
DOA in early March.”
Based on our knowledge of Webster, it’s not surprising,
according to Lueders that “Webster did not respond to a request to explain the
discrepancies in these accounts.”
The previous year’s report, the last year of the Doyle
administration, was released in November 2010 – on time and a full seven months
earlier than the comparable report released by Webster.
What were Webster, and her boss,
Scott Walker hiding?
Money. Lots of money.
$363.8 million dollars was paid
to private contractors instead of state agencies – agencies which are staffed
with public employees – Walker’s political enemies. This outlay represented a
26 percent increase in spending on outside contractors over the previous year.
Strike 3 and You’re Out Promoted
One value that Webster and Walker hold in high regard is
consistency. They tell their story the way they want to tell it – facts be
damned. If a bit - or a lot of
dishonesty is required to tell a tale – so be it.
Just after Walker’s recall victory it was announced that the
recently created Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation - WEDC, Walker’s
quasi-governmental agency, designed to shift taxpayer dollars to corporations,
had offered tax incentives to Skyward, a Stevens Point educational data development
company.
Skyward had been promised an $11.7 million tax break from
the Walker administration contingent on winning a state contract.
Interestingly, even though public records show that the
multi-million offer was made by the State to Skyward, Jocelyn Webster stated:
"To be clear, Skyward did not
receive any firm commitment, monetary awards, or tax incentives from
WEDC."
Webster also claimed that a March 2012 letter to Walker
informing him of the deal was never received by the Governor.
Webster’s third lie did not lead to her dismissal from the
Walker Administration and an ignominious exit from Wisconsin, for in Walker’s world
mendacity leads to the brass ring.
Within weeks of maintaining that Walker never received the communication
confirming Skyward’s tax break, Webster was promoted to his very own Director of
Communications.
Now Webster resides in Walker’s inner sanctum, where she will
be able to utilize the dark arts of political communication, which she has
learned from her variety of experiences - with her ALEC-connected lobbyist
father, from her one year and two investigations in Karl Rove’s
White House, to her time as a “Surrogate” at the Pentagon where she manipulated
the media in support of torture and the Iraq War.
And the journalists who sit on their asses - day in and day
out at the Wisconsin State Capitol reported nothing about this political
operative’s background.
Why don't reporters pursue stories that touch on the ethics of our political leaders?
Jason
Stein, the WCCA President, in an exchange with a colleague of mine about the relationship of the WCCA to those in power, said that the
Capitol reporters wished to do nothing that would damage their privileged
relationship with the government.
The Capitol reporters have elevated their relationships
with public servants above their relationships with their readers, the voters of the state, and the Constitution.
But the ultimate relationship of the press is with money.
Stein’s employer saw revenues soar during the recall campaign. Steven Smith, Chairman of the Board and CEO of
Journal Communications, the parent of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, WTMJ
620AM, and TMJ4, reported increased operating earnings driven in large part by
political advertising.
Smith also sits on the executive board of the Metropolitan
Milwaukee Association of Commerce, which gave $437,000 to Walker’s during the
recall race, via the Republican Governor’s Association.
With all this money invested in the Walker, and the stream
of millions in political advertising revenue, it’s no surprise that Stein’s boss,
and his newspaper endorsed Scott Walker.
Did all those millions influence Stein and the Capitol reporters
to sit on their hands when they should have been researching and writing about Walker’s
latest political appointee - Jocelyn Webster - and made them miss the story – again?
