 |
| Kevin McCarthy |
Big Business trashes Constitution. Boeing ($346K), Koch Industries ($308K), American Crystal Sugar ($285K), General Dynamics ($234K) and Valero Energy ($207K) head the dishonor role of corporations which contributed to the members of the Sedition Congress who voted to overturn America’s democracy, according to a report from Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington.
Since the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol Hill insurrection, CREW found that 717 companies and industry groups forked over $18M to 143 of the 147 members of Congress who voted against certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The DC watchdog also tracked funds given to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Other companies on the dishonor roll include General Electric, Raytheon, Johnson & Johnson, FedEx, CVS Health, Humana, Marathon Petroleum, Dow Chemical, Booz Allen Hamilton, Rocket Mortgage and Pfizer.
 |
CREW found that companies that pledged to either stop or pause giving to the Sedition Caucus kicked in $4.8M to insurrectionist political groups or directly to their political campaigns.
Aflac, Ford Motor and Valero are among those that pledged to re-evaluate their contributions to supporters of the Big Lie but then soon returned to business-as-usual.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is the top fundraiser of the Sedition Caucus. He hauled in $688K from 105 companies and trade group donors. Chevron, Ford, UPS, Anheuser-Busch, Merck and Valero gave money to McCarthy.
CREW did find companies who suspended donations to the Sedition Caucus.
It found that 134 of the 248 companies who vowed not to contribute to the Sedition Caucus have so far kept their word.
That corporate honor roll includes Hewlett Packard, Hallmark Cards, Toyota, Facebook/Meta, Citibank, McDonald’s, Hilton Worldwide, BP America, Clorox, Coca-Cola, Charles Schwab, ViacomCBS, Deloitte, Blackrock, General Mills, Salesforce, Amazon and Smithfield Foods.
Americans are “worn out” with mask-wearing and vaccine mandates put into place to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a Monmouth University poll. Tough.
They are fed up with shifting guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ignoring the fact that the health agency must adapt to evolving science related to the Omicrom variant. What worked yesterday may not work today.
Many Americans also want to “move on” from the Jan. 6 insurrection, recasting that horrible day as a protest from patriots expressing their First Amendment rights. Get real.
 |
If American democracy is to survive, people have to shed their sense of instant gratification. A global pandemic does not bow to the widespread desire to return to the good old pre-COVID-19 days.
We also need to hold Donald Trump, his enablers and his cultish followers responsible for their effort to trash the Constitution so that it doesn’t happen again.
It’s time for America to put on its Big Boy/Girl pants and deal with the world as it is, not as we want it to be.
Momentum is building for nuclear power but public support is not guaranteed, according to a survey conducted by Ruder Finn... America First PR founder admits to assaulting a woman in a London tube station... If they knew their presence would disrupt the lives of thousands of people, neither Barack Obama nor George W. Bush would have attended the NBA Finals. They were not narcissists-in-chief. 
Ukraine struck PR gold as its launches drone attack on St. Petersburg oil depot ahead of 'Putin's Davos' designed to put a positive spin on Russia's economy that is reeling under the 'special military operation' that has cost the lives of more than 500K soldiers... Defense Secretary Hegseth ups war against reporters... Extremist government ministers marching in NYC Israel Day Parade further hurts the country's image. 
Cuba will make or break Secretary of State Marco Rubio's bid for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination... Ballard Partners and BGR Group push for justice for the family of Robert Levinson, who was abducted and vanished in Iran 19 years ago... Robert Daley, the pistol-packing larger-than-life PR guy who was PA chief for the NYPD, dies at 96.
Pope Leo's encyclical on dangers of AI has JD Vance rethinking his justification for Trump's war with Iran... Software tools remove guardrails on Google, Meta AI models that aim to protect against biological war, child sex abuse, stealing credit card info, reports the Financial Times... US tech sector drops nearly 100K jobs during first four months of the year.
The audacious autocrat who occupies the White House has achieved what was thought to be impossible. He has united the Hatfields and McCoys of the editorial world in opposition to his $1.776B slush fund... Sign of these sorry times: George Soros' Open Society Foundations plans to spend $300M to promote democracy and economic security in the US... PR play of the week goes to Steven Rosenbaum, author of “The Future of Truth."
