Public Affairs

Today is the deadline for 11 government agencies to submit information about contracts they have with PR and advertising firms to the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management.

Democratic Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill and Republican Sen. Rob Portman (OH) have launched an investigation into how the White House has spent federal dollars on PR and advertising. Leaders of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Housing and Urban Development, and the Departments of Energy and Labor were among the agency heads who received the request for details. They’ve been asked for information going back to October 2008.

According to Roll Call, there is precedent for this sort of investigation but the the two Senators here “concede that what the administration is doing likely is legal.” Makes sense right?

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Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

TGIF world! The SOPA and PIPA bills have been put on hold because legislators say they want a do-over.

“It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products,” said Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), who also serves as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Damn it, foreigners!

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Wikipedia is back! Oh how we missed you.

Hollywood faced off with Silicon Valley and lost lost LOST.

So says TheWrap: “It seems that Hollywood still does not realize that it is in the information age… But with lightning speed, the leviathans of the Internet, including Google and Facebook and Wikipedia, managed to brand this battle as Bad and mobilize millions of followers.” The day before the blackouts, the MPAA [Motion Picture Association of America] had characterized the pending blackouts as “stunts.” Well, sometimes stunts work.

By afternoon (ET), Mark Zuckerberg had expressed his opposition to the bills. “We can’t let poorly thought out laws get in the way of the internet’s development. Facebook opposes SOPA and PIPA, and we will continue to oppose any laws that will hurt the internet,” he wrote. During the course of the day, lawmakers were rethinking the bills. And President Obama has come out against the proposals. Forbes says 4.5 million signed Google’s petition and millions more were in touch with their Congressional reps.

Many in the PR industry were also pointing out how the bills could impact their businesses.

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GQ has published a list of its 50 most powerful people in Washington and a few spots are occupied by PR pros. At number 23 are Heather and Tony Podesta, who each run lobbying and government relations firms, Heather Podesta + Partners and Podesta Group respectively. Their blurb says they’ve raised $90 million during the Obama administration.

In at number 42 are Jayne Sandman and Barbara Martin from BrandlinkDC (technically two people, which raises the number of people on the list, but OK GQ). They’re joined in that slot by Brightest Young Things blogger Svetlana Legetic. Which raises the number one more, but who’s counting.

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Are you tired of having your pitches ignored by the producers for Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh? The conservative media will have a new outlet soon in the Washington Free Beacon, , Politico reports. The website is brought to you by the Center for American Freedom, an advocacy group founded by conservative journalists, including Michael Goldfarb, former Weekly Standard writer and now a partner at lobbying firm Orion Strategies. As the Republican version of the liberal Center for American Progress — whose motto is “Progressive ideas for a strong, just, and free America” — this new group is making an attempt to compete in the fast-paced world of online news.

Matthew Continetti, Sarah Palin fan and former editor at The Weekly Standard, are among those reported to be on the editorial staff. Others are Bill Gertz from the Washington Times and Washington Jewish Week’s Adam Kredo.

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Alibaba Group, a Chinese e-commerce company that is partially owned by Yahoo, has hired Washington D.C. lobbying firm Duberstein Group, a step that many believe is the set-up to purchase Yahoo.

Yahoo owns 40 percent of Alibaba. That relationship, which also extends to Yahoo Japan, is considered Yahoo’s greatest asset. Those two companies along with Japan’s Softbank are in the middle of untangling their business relationships.

Alibaba founder Jack Ma has expressed an interest in buying all of Yahoo. However, there will likely be an issue with a Chinese company trying to buy a U.S. Internet business.

“Hiring a Washington lobbying firm could help Alibaba address any U.S. political opposition to a complete takeover of Yahoo by a company from a country that controls and censors the Internet,” Reuters reports.

The relationship was revealed in a government filing that was effective December 1.

[via Reuters, BusinessWeek]

GoDaddy has been busting the boundaries of good taste with its advertising for years. This year, CEO Bob Parsons went a step further by adding animal cruelty to the list of offenses. But none of that has compared to the backlash against the company over its support for Stop Online Piracy Act.

The two sides of SOPA have been going at it since October, with tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter staunchly against it and entertainment companies among the biggest supporters. CNET has got an FAQ on the issue and we’ve covered the outreach from both sides here.

GoDaddy had been on the list of SOPA supporters before it released this statement saying it changed its mind. GoDaddy supported SOPA? That is something people simply will not allow.

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The Cold War is back on bitches! First we have ballet dancers acting as double agents. Now, we have allegations from frequently shirtless Russian PM Vladimir Putin that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton encouraged this week’s post-election protests in Moscow.

Russians voted on Sunday, with Putin’s party, United Russia, showing a loss of support and facing accusations of fraud. Even former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has called for a new election. Thousands took to the streets in protest. Shouts of “Putin is a thief” and “Russia without Putin” could be heard.

Secretary Clinton’s comments expressing concern over manipulation of election results were in line with what election monitors had already reported. “And we are supportive of the rights and aspirations of the Russian people to be able to make progress and to realize a better future for themselves, and we hope to see that unfold in the years ahead,” she said.

“She set the tone for some activists in our country and gave them a signal,” Putin responded. He also expressed concern over “interference” from foreign governments. Add to that the breakdown of relations between the two governments over a variety of foreign policy issues and the fears in the Russian government about the influence of the Arab Spring.

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Edelman‘s 2011 Capital Staffers Index finds an increase in Twitter use and influence in policymaking here and overseas. According to the research, 53 percent of lawmakers are using Twitter, up from 38 percent last year. Sixty percent of staffers are using Twitter. All of this coincides with the increase in Twitter use among constituents.

The Internet at large is also playing a bigger role in the policy process, with 60 percent of staffers saying they learned about an issue online and one-third saying they’ve changed their minds based on what they’ve seen online.

Still, grassroots efforts are still important, with a failure in that area thought to be a big contributor to a failure of the larger campaign.

The research is based on interviews with 542 senior staffers across 11 countries. Click here for the press release about the study. And after the jump, we have an infographic.

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Falling in line with lobbyists, Congress has fought against a Department of Agriculture proposal that would have reduced the amount of pizza and french fries kids are eating for lunch.

The proposal would have reduced the amount of starchy foods, like potatoes, and sodium in school lunches, and would’ve stopped calling tomato paste, like that found on pizzas, a vegetable. Members of Congress said the new regulations would be too costly, with some Republicans adding that changes to the proposal would give school districts the “flexibility” to improve nutrition. The New York Daily News sums up the opposition thusly:

Food companies that produce frozen pizzas for schools, the salt industry and potato growers requested the changes, and some conservatives in Congress say the federal government shouldn’t be telling children what to eat.

Indeed. The government should actually allow children to choose the menu because this is America. It would probably look like this: microwave pizza, chicken nuggets, Lucky Charms swimming in grape soda, tater tots (with tomato paste!), and banana splits. You can hold the banana since we already got the healthy part out of the way with the tomato paste. That’s some cheap eatin’!

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