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Friday, November 21, 2008

A where are they now look: FORMER GOP MINNESOTA SIXTH DISTRICT CONGRESSIONAL REP. MARK KENNEDY.

After the unsuccessful 2006 run against Klobuchar, there is the information he is employed by Accenture and on the board of ECOM - the Economic Club of Minnesota.

ECOM first, they have an international [global world order] slant, and a board dominated by recycled out-of-office politicians. Whose cash is behind the thing, and what directors get paid, are not publicly disclosed matters for this "tank" [I hesitate to use the term "think tank" for an organization I know little about].

ECOM's executive director Kristin Robbins has a local right wing history of "Minnesotans for School Choice" school voucher "reform" advocacy as a Mitchell Pearlstein co-author, acolyte and fellow traveler. (See also, here, here and here.)

Is that background and the present ECOM thing more astroturf than grassroots? YOU decide.

Accenture has a Wikipedia page that downplays its ties to the Enron crash and burn scandal where Arthur-Andersen was the complicit accounting firm in the hoax and it had been selling itself as auditor and advisor as to how to skirt around accounting niceties.

Accenture was the advisory hand of that one hand washing the other for client Enron, or the successor and/or spin-off of that part of the unholy alliance.

Accenture contributes mainly to GOP politicians, while spending millions annually on lobbying.

As to Accenture, like ECOM, being a haven for recycled politicians, NY Times has reported:

Companies Use Ex-Lawmakers In Fight on Offshore Tax Break
By ALISON MITCHELL - Published: August 10, 2002

It can feel like old home week on Capitol Hill, what with the armada of former lawmakers who are suddenly lobbying against efforts in Congress to crack down on companies that shift their addresses offshore to lower their tax bills.

Dennis DeConcini, a onetime Democratic senator from Arizona, has been dropping in on former colleagues on behalf of the consulting giant Accenture, which incorporated in Bermuda last year.

Bill Archer, a Texas Republican who retired a year and a half ago as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, just registered as a lobbyist on the issue for Noble Drilling Services and Weatherford International, two companies in his home state.

Bob Packwood, a former Republican chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is in the fray, too, though he, by contrast, is cheering Congress on.

''My client is one on the white-hat side of this,'' said Mr. Packwood, working on behalf of MBIA, a municipal-bond insurer that is based in Armonk, N.Y., and wants Congress to close the loophole, which has helped at least one of the company's competitors.

These are not the only former senators and representatives trying to influence Congress on this suddenly red-hot political issue, whose legislative outcome threatens to hit an array of companies hard and has caused lobbying to reach fever pitch. The issue is buoying the electoral hopes of Democrats, who are framing it as one of patriotism.

Congress is considering not only a raft of measures, from both parties, to shut down these corporate tax havens outright, but also a ban or restrictions on federal contracts to companies that have moved their corporate addresses out of the country to reduce their taxes. Federal contracts to companies incorporated in offshore locations like Bermuda topped $1 billion last year, and that was before the heightened emphasis on domestic security created a vast new opportunity to do business with the government.

''It certainly has created a bonanza,'' said Representative Richard E. Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat who has been one of the most aggressive lawmakers trying to block the Bermuda route to tax reduction.

It is not just ex-legislators who are in demand. Former aides of the Congressional tax-writing committees are being hired, too, as are former Treasury Department officials. But it is the onetime lawmakers who are often best at opening doors.

''Their value,'' said Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota, ''is that I don't think anybody in the Senate ever says no to anybody who served. It's just kind of the unwritten rules, out of courtesy.''

Mr. Wellstone, who succeeded in attaching to a defense bill an amendment that would bar military contracts to such companies, recently met with Mr. DeConcini and Accenture officials. He told the company, he said, that his contract ban would not affect it, because Accenture incorporated in Bermuda before his measure's cutoff date, last Dec. 31. But he also said that the company would ultimately lose the broader battle on the issue, that ''we're going after your loophole.''

Accenture, which was called Andersen Consulting before it was spun off from the accounting firm Arthur Andersen last year, argues that it was a global company situated in 47 countries, and had never been an American one, when it incorporated in Bermuda.

Many lawmakers are not convinced. ''I'm not sympathetic to the point,'' Mr. Wellstone said.

Of the businesses lobbying Congress on the issue, Accenture is by all accounts the most aggressive about using every avenue. It has hired a squadron of lobbyists to press its case.

Mr. DeConcini said that both he and another former senator, Steven D. Symms, Republican of Idaho, were helping Accenture make its case that it should not be lumped with companies that were clearly American businesses before they reincorporated in Bermuda.

''Accenture is really a different cat here,'' said Mr. DeConcini, who retired from the Senate eight years ago, after being rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee in 1991 for his efforts on behalf of a corrupt savings and loan executive.

The firm of former Representative Robert L. Livingston, Republican of Louisiana, has also been hired by Accenture. Mr. Livingston, on the verge of becoming House speaker, resigned from Congress in 1998 after confessing to adulterous affairs. Before then he was chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, which has unexpectedly begun tacking on to spending bills a ban on federal contracts for companies with tax-reducing offshore addresses.

Accenture is also using the firm of Baker & Hostetler, where Kathleen M. Kerrigan is listed as an Accenture lobbyist. Before she undertook lobbying work, Ms. Kerrigan worked for years for Congressman Neal, who has made elimination of the offshore tax break his signature issue.

Ms. Taylor, of Accenture, said Ms. Kerrigan had been ''brought on for her strategic guidance and her tax expertise.'' Asked whether she was also valued for her past ties to Mr. Neal, Ms. Taylor said, ''I'm not going to go down that path with you.''


While extensively excerpted, the article includes more detail, and remains online.

So, add this Bermuda-based extended worldwide business presence among those not sad to have seen the Wellstone plane crash in Eveleth.

At least it did not disappear entirely, in the Bermuda Triangle.

And there was wisdom in some of those old black-and-white gangster films, "We'll lay low until the heat cools off" cliche. Despite the concern for offshore tax haven abuse and the proposal to withhold government contracts from abusive firms, Bermuda based Accenture apparently believing the heat's cooled off, touts its recent Air Force contract.

WASHINGTON; Oct. 29, 2008 – The U.S. Air Force’s (USAF) Electronic Systems Center, Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass., has awarded Accenture (NYSE: ACN) a three-year, $22.18 million contract to expand existing services and prototype advanced modeling and simulation technology for the war fighter.

Accenture is the prime contractor for the Air Force Modeling and Simulation Training Toolkit, a suite of simulation systems, game applications and related tools that help train Air Force teams to execute air missions. Under the new research contract, Accenture will expand services and capabilities so that the Air Force can leverage live, virtual and constructive modeling and simulation tools across a variety of domains and environments.


It sounds like twenty-two million of Uncle Sugar's pork for the equivalent of some of the video games advertised retail during NFL game time TV broadcasting. And this paragraph does little to dispel that appearance:

“The need to integrate and leverage information-rich decision support and simulation systems across federal civilian and defense agencies continues to grow,” said Eric Stange, managing director of Accenture’s U.S. Defense practice. “Capitalizing on the experience and leading-edge practices of the commercial marketplace can help government agencies improve the integration and interoperability of joint proprietary systems.”


I expect it was true merit that got the contract, not the few, the loud, the recycled office-holder lobbyist cadre, trading on influence and access. Our government would not be influenced that way at all, would it?