Why Is Disney Bashing America?: Pork Investigation

In follow-up to my post of November 2, “Tourism Industry Trashes U.S.”, the Examiner has followed up with a 1-2 punch of columns exposing the back-room machinations. It tells us much about how Washington operates, to fleece taxpayers, to enrich its denizens, dole out pork, and the image of the U.S. be darned.

In my earlier post I wrote,

The tourism industry is in search of more promotional funds and easier entry requirements for foreign visitors….That’s what associations do, promote their industry. But, what is despicable is that this one does so by trashing, incorrectly, the United States, which it is supposed to promote!

Last Saturday, the Examiner published my follow-up, "Why is Disney Bashing America?." (The column is below, with the links of the draft and a paragraph that was omitted for space.) The column addresses the PR technique used by Discover America, an association of the U.S.’s premier companies benefiting from tourism. To garner Democrat support for subsidizing their tourism pork, they disparage U.S. Customs enforcing the border defenses of the Patriot Act.

Today, Examiner columnist Timothy Carney adds valuable inside-D.C. detail to this cozy porky travesty. A rich industry, proven capable of its own promotion, works with Congress to subsidize the tourism industry, and a Congressional staffer gets a plum paycheck. An excerpt (with the entire column below mine, so there will be a one-place record for future researchers.)

The case of the Travel Promotion Act (TPA), however, shows how lawmakers often directly spur the lobbying industry with which they confer over how to distribute taxpayer dollars…. A few months after Delahunt's call on the tourism industry to intensify its lobbying, executives at Disney, Intercontinental Hotels, Loews Hotels, and other industry giants launched the “Discover America Partnership,” with offices just off of K St. in downtown Washington. The Partnership described itself as “an aggressive, Washington, D.C.-based advocacy campaign.” In short, it was a new lobbying powerhouse.

Schwadron, Delahunt’s longtime chief of staff, soon left Congress and joined as a lobbyist for Sher & Blackwell. This year, the Discover America Partnership hired Sher & Blackwell, and deployed Schwadron to Capitol Hill to lobby for them….

The ultimate cost to each taxpayer may be small, but this corporate welfare for the tourism industry piles one more industry subsidy onto the back of the American worker.

The Columns:
Why Is Disney Bashing America?
By Bruce Kesler

Commerce Department officials say more foreigners visited America this summer than ever before, so why would a domestic tourism industry group of major U.S. corporations issue erroneous releases to try to make people think the opposite?

The answer may have something to do with the companies trying to get their hands on $200 million from congressional Democrats who are trying to use tourism promotion against a law national security experts insist is essential to the U.S. effort to prevent terrorist attacks in this country.

The executive director of Discover America, Geoff Freeman, spreads the line that foreigners see US Customs as so onerous that it chases away potential visitors. Discover America says US tourism is depressed since 9/11, and a major cause is America’s poor image. “It's clear what's keeping people away in the post-9/11 environment: it is the perception around the world that travelers aren't welcome.” [The AFP link has expired, but the quote is available at my November 2 post, linked above.]

Discover America calling America an unwelcoming destination, and parroted in the worldwide press, is not boosting tourism, but creating erroneous perceptions harmful to tourism.

The latest example is, “America the Unwelcoming,” by Fareed Zakaria in the November 17 Newsweek. Zakaria cites Discover America to support an argument that foreigners see US customs as so onerous it chases away potential visitors. Discover America says US tourism is depressed since 9/11, and that a major cause is a poor American image abroad.

Discover America misquotes its own polling data when it claimed its poll of “2,011 participants: all non-resident U.S. travelers” said the US was “the worst country in the world” in the way Customs treats foreign visitors. However, the poll was really of “international travelers,” only 29 percent of whom had actually visited the US.

After 9/11 foreign tourism dropped dramatically, but since 2003 it has rebounded and surpassed former levels. The Commerce Department’s latest data: “[T]he summer of 2007 was a record-breaking season for international travel to the United States, with total international visitation and visitor spending surpassing previous records.” Furthermore, “during June, July, and August 14.3 million international travelers visited the United States, delivering the strongest summer on record.”

Discover America says it is, “an effort led by some of America’s foremost business leaders to strengthen America’s image around the globe,” including Disney, Marriott, Anheuser-Busch, American Express, the US Olympic Committee, the National Council of State Tourism Directors, or numerous other sponsors hardly first to mind as America-bashers.

So, it’s curious savvy businesspeople are trying to achieve their goals by issuing erroneous glum statements that reflect negatively upon America, echoed by the global media.

Discover America supports a bill moving through Congress to spend $200 million to support Discover America’s Travel Promotion Act, to establish a fund directed by travel industry leaders, further fed via a fee from all foreign tourists as well as the tourism industry.

The Commerce Department opposes the Travel Promotion Act. Also, an additional fee on foreign travelers’ budgets cannot be encouraging to their travel.

The Executive Director of Discover America is a public relations professional, Geoff Freeman. His biography offers an insight to his approach: he is “an expert in managing complex issue campaigns and developing innovative outreach strategies to increase support among unlikely allies.”

At the Travel Industry Association board meeting in July, Freeman outlined his strategy: “We need to flip the table and change the environment – create a new environment where our industry can thrive.”

The environment Freeman refers to is the Democratic takeover of Congress, most hostile toward the Patriot Act’s added protections against the entry of potentially dangerous foreigners. Thus, a PR campaign emerged of bemoaning such restrictions as a reason to garner congressional funding for Discover America’s wealthy members getting tax funds to add to their profits from tourism.

A $1 trillion industry using tax dollars to fund its promotion, even though already wealthy and able promoters, is blatant “hoggism” at the public trough.

The Government Accountability Office found that last year about 21,000 people whose entry to the US should have been prevented were permitted to enter the US through border checkpoints, while 200,000 others were caught. Some of the 9/11 hijackers entered the US similarly using falsified documents.

That number is small next to the tens of millions who annually enter through legal checkpoints, but it only took a few terrorists to pull off 9/11.

Discover America may have discovered how some PR campaigns work with Congress, but it needs to re-Discover America.

Commentary
Timothy P. Carney: Congress pushes subsidies for tourism industry
2007-11-30

WASHINGTON - Congress moved forward this week on legislation creating a federal program to promote international tourism. Tourism industry leaders are pleased, but perhaps not as pleased as the lawmakers and lobbyists who pushed the industry to call for such a program.

With their rapid rush to pass “lobbying reform” and their regular complaints about “corporate influence” you would think congressmen find lobbyists annoying—or at least you wouldn't expect lawmakers to try and multiply the number of Capitol Hill lobbyists. The case of the Travel Promotion Act (TPA), however, shows how lawmakers often directly spur the lobbying industry with which they confer over how to distribute taxpayer dollars.

This week, senators advanced TPA to create a quasi-governmental agency called the Corporation for Travel Promotion (CTP) - funded partly by tax dollars, partly by new fees on foreign visitors, and partly by a new tax on the tourism industry. The CTP would basically be an overseas advertising firm for tourism in America.

Adherents of the free market and skeptics of big business might ask “why should the government be involved at all in advertising for the tourism industry?” A first glance at federal lobbying records suggests a case of corporate lobbyists shaking down Washington for cash. The story behind this legislation, however, shows a more interesting tale and reveals a more subtle dynamic between Capitol Hill and K St.

On April 20, 2005, Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-MA., spoke at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce before 500 executives in the tourism industry. Delahunt's chief of staff, Steve Schwadron, issued a press release afterwards reporting that the congressman had “called on the industry to wage a more aggressive, bipartisan campaign.”

In short, Delahunt was saying, “lobby me.” This is often how lawmakers push their agenda, they ask business groups to lobby their colleagues. When a congressman asks business executives to do something, it usually gets done.

A few months after Delahunt's call on the tourism industry to intensify its lobbying, executives at Disney, Intercontinental Hotels, Loews Hotels, and other industry giants launched the “Discover America Partnership,” with offices just off of K St. in downtown Washington. The Partnership described itself as “an aggressive, Washington, D.C.-based advocacy campaign.” In short, it was a new lobbying powerhouse.

Schwadron, Delahunt’s longtime chief of staff, soon left Congress and joined as a lobbyist for Sher & Blackwell. This year, the Discover America Partnership hired Sher & Blackwell, and deployed Schwadron to Capitol Hill to lobby for them.

Schwadron already knew the industry well, having been the guest of the Association of Travel-Related Industry Professionals (a predecessor to the Discover America Partnership), in Cancun Mexico, as a Delahunt staffer in 2003.

This year, Delahunt sponsored TPA, which would involve the federal government in an enterprise Americans have typically left to industry, namely, encouraging foreigners to visit the U.S. and spend their money here.

The industry and its Capitol Hill allies argue that TPA imposes no costs on taxpayers, but that’s misleading. The CTP will initially be financed by an interest-free loan from taxpayers, but after that it will be funded through assessments on firms in the travel industry and a new government fee on foreign travelers.

The “assessments” must be approved by a referendum of the industry, with bigger companies receiving more weighted votes, so they amount to a new tax on hotels, car rental agencies, and other companies who would benefit from a tourism surge. Because these assessments are industry-wide and not specific to foreign visitors, Americans who stay in hotels or rent cars domestically will foot most of the bill.

The bill also creates new government offices and jobs in the Department of Commerce, whose salaries and benefits will come from taxpayer wallets. The ultimate cost to each taxpayer may be small, but this corporate welfare for the tourism industry piles one more industry subsidy onto the back of the American worker.
Examiner columnist Timothy P. Carney is senior reporter for the Evans & Novak Political Report.