Mark Penn and Conflicts of Interest

The NYT, Huffington Post and others have been writing about how folks have been "Piling on" after Mark Penn's demotion.

The thing that stands out to me in all of this is how dumb it was for the Clinton campaign to give this guy the title "Chief Strategist" in the first place! After all, as CEO of a huge PR firm it his job to pursue revenue wherever it comes from, and whose going to pay more for PR than entities that truly need it :-). Seems like it was only a matter of time before his actions as an executive would look extremely screwed up when viewed by supporters of Clinton's positions.

Anyway, if you want to know more about Mark Penn and the stuff he and his firm have been up to click on the flowgram widget...It also has a BW article about how David Axelrod's firm is an expert at "astroturfing", i.e. the art of faking a grassroots movement. Ugh!