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| I'm David Azbell and I want to thank the public for the cigar and the Texas trip. |
*Breaking update: 10/26 9:10 CST--Martin republishes his article and a lot more: "State Agencies Bow to Speaker" (Link broken, story pulled. ???)
If you blinked you missed it--a really good story from The Montgomery Independent that is.
For a brief time on October 21, 2011, a potentially explosive story ran on Al.com entitled “Researcher For Hubbard Book Paid By House.” The Montgomery Independent authored the story, based on information from Inside Alabama Politics, that revealed David Azbell of Swatek, Azbell, Howe & Ross had collected $136,000 of public money via an authorization from the Alabama House of Representatives and presumably green-lighted from the likely source of Mike Hubbard.
Azbell had been (and may still be) acting as a consultant with Hubbard on the book and assigned the duties of “research, editing and writing.” From 2007 until March of this year, Azbell was collecting $2,000 per month for “public relations work for the House Republican Caucus ." In March of 2011, the sum jumped four fold to $8,000 per month for duties unclear to the Montgomery Independent before deadline of the story prior to the October 21st publication.
As suddenly as the story appeared, it quickly disappeared.
Here’s what *originally ran:
Researcher for Hubbard book paid by House
Published: Friday, October 21, 2011, 12:27 PM Updated: Friday, October 21, 2011, 12:37 PM
By Alabama’s State Capital News Source (The Montgomery Independent)
Last month the political newsletter Inside Alabama Politics reported that Speaker of the House Mike Hubbard of Auburn had turned his attention earlier this year to writing a book on the rise of the Republican Party in Alabama.
The planned title is “Storm in the State House” and will be published by New South Books of Montgomery. Hubbard said the planned publication date is next January.
The speaker was quoted as saying that the book would document the Republican takeover of the State Legislature in the 2010 elections. That ended a 136-year by Democrats in control of the lawmaking process in Alabama.
“It (the book) starts when I became party chairman in 2007 and goes through the 2010 election, the 2011 legislative session and the passage of our Handshake with Alabama package of legislation,” Hubbard said.
Former Riley administration Press Secretary David Azbell is helping Hubbard with research, writing and editing. Azbell is a founding partner of Swatek, Azbell, Howe & Ross (SAHR), a governmental and political affairs firm located in Montgomery. He also worked in the press office of former Gov. Fob James and has worked for the late Gov. George Wallace. His father, the late Joe Azbell, was a longtime columnist for The Montgomery Independent.
Since about the time of Hubbard’s rise as GOP chairman in Alabama in 2007 through this past February, an LLC by the name of Azbell Communications and incorporated by David Azbell, has been paid $2,000 per month by the House of Representatives to do public relations work for the House Republican Caucus. That amount totaled $80,000, according to state records. In January of this year that job moved to someone else.
Then suddenly, this past March, the payment by the House of Representatives to Azbell Communications increased to $8,000 per month. Through August of this year state records show that Azbell Communications had been paid $56,000.
The Independent was unable to confirm by deadline this week the nature of the services Azbell Communications performs for the public body over which Rep. Hubbard presides.
But the book is on the way.
*(Google cached link. Bing.com cached link no longer works. Google's may also go inactive.)
This story has all the smarmy factor of the arrangement that Representative Barry Mask-R had with lobbyist Steve Windom in which Mask received $10,000-$50,000 annually from Windom for “client referrals.” Mask was excused for his 'transgression' by the Alabama Ethics Commission because the deal “was in place before he was a member of the legislature.”
The public response to the Mask revelation was not kind and we suspect Hubbard was (and is) not willing to submit himself to the same type of criticism. The question in our minds is: Did he have anything to do with the rapid disappearance of the story? Someone made the call to pull it from the Al.com website, who was it? And why?
Azbell’s deal with Hubbard seems to suggest that cronyism is alive and well in the republican controlled state house despite Mike Hubbard himself lambasting the democrats for the same sins the ‘shakedown Alabama’ crowd, led by the virtuous as a pole cat Hubbard, are perpetrating against the public:
“For the past 136 years, Alabama Democrats have held the majority in both the Alabama House and Senate. And what have we gotten in return? They have given us a substandard education system, rampant government corruption, wasteful spending…” "If you believe… our public officials are honest and squeaky clean and all of your hard-earned tax dollars are being spent wisely, nothing I can write in this column can convince you we need a change."
The winds of change Mr. Hubbard and the republicans promised Alabamians aren't the cleansing breezes heralding a "new day of ethics and accountability in Alabama." What they really are are the same old ill winds that have blown unabated through Alabama politics for decades.
Hubbard was right about one thing--we do need a change, but we got shorted on our investment by putting our faith in Hubbard and Co. Perhaps he has a good explanation for using taxpayer money to publish his rah rah propaganda book, but we're hard pressed to imagine one no matter how you look at it.
(How much of the total amount paid to Azbell that's directly tied to Hubbard's book is indeterminable at this time.)
(How much of the total amount paid to Azbell that's directly tied to Hubbard's book is indeterminable at this time.)
Hubbard's choice of Azbell and the timeline of his 'contract' with the House is interesting to ponder. According to the Montgomery Independent story, Hubbard's book has been in the works since 2007. Swatek, Azbell, Howe & Ross formed their political powerhouse group that same year touting itself as an organization of "credibility, integrity and ethics that we think is important in this new day in Montgomery" and who think they are "better" than anyone else at "tackling this thing" known as Alabama politics:
The head of this group, Dax Swatek, has some issues with ethics and integrity that Legal Schnauzer covered in a recent article on his blog:
A group called the Council for Leaders in Alabama Schools (CLAS) has received $13.1 million from an "at-risk fund" controlled by State Superintendent Joe Morton. And who handles lobbying efforts for CLAS? Why, it's the new Montgomery outfit called Swatek Azebll Howe and Ross (SAHR), whose members have held prominent roles in Alabama Republican politics.Schnauzer referenced a story by the seasoned journalist, Bob Lowry, formerly of the Huntsville Times, who uncovered the $13.1 million dollar "wasteful spending" that also had lingering ties to House Speaker Hubbard through his former partner, Brian Schulman, Auburn Network, Inc. and Learning Through Sports:
The software company, Learning Through Sports Inc., was formerly a partnership between Brian Shulman, a former Auburn football player, and Auburn Network Inc., a multimedia company owned by House Speaker Mike Hubbard, R-Auburn.
While we're on the subject of Bob Lowry, something odd happened on the way to his abrupt dismissal--Mike Hubbard rolled through the area right before it occurred. Schnauzer has some thoughts on what may have happened that ended the Alabama career of this talented investigative journalist:
"...Lowry was perhaps the only mainstream journalist in Alabama who reported seriously and wrote critically about the Bob Riley administration. It has been reported in several venues that Riley contacted higher ups at the Huntsville paper in an effort to get Lowry off his back."Perusing a list of some of the stories from Mr. Lowry's tenure at the Huntsville Times shows he was hounding our politicians antics, and holding them up to public accountability with the well-honed nose of an experienced journalist who knows how to sniff out the facts. He was on to some hot trails in 2011 and the republican hypocrisy was a frequent target of his keen senses.
"...Lowry has written critically about state representative Mike Hubbard, a staunch Riley ally and now speaker of the Alabama House. In early August, Hubbard made a well-publicized trip to Huntsville for a speech and a tour of high-tech facilities. Not long after that, word leaked about the Times' plans to close the Montgomery bureau and send Bob Lowry packing."
Then, just like the Montgomery Independent story, he disappeared. There was no announcement by the former employers he helped lend credibility to despite the fact that Lowry was among the reasons the Huntsville Times received 24 AP awards in 2008 and 4 top writing awards in 2009.
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| An oddly prophetic picture of Lowry sitting in Alabama's infamous electric chair "Yellow Mama" |
What's going on in Alabama journalism? Have our news outlets become proof that the Propoganda Model (i.e Fifth Estate) Herman and Chomsky wrote about is alive and well?
What about our self-professed virtuous, conservative politicians? Haven't they shown us that there isn't one thin dimes' worth of difference between republicans and democrats in Alabama? And why is the state media, more often than not these days, such willing accomplices in covering for their misdeeds?The Propoganda Model traces the route by which money and power and able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalise dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their message across to the public. The essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news "filters" fall under the following headings: (1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business and "exports" funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) "flak" as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) "anti-communism" as a national religion and control mechanism. These elements interact with and reinforce one another. The raw material of news must pass through successive filters, leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print. They fix the premises of discourse and interpretation, and the definition of what is newsworthy in the first place, and they explain the basis and operations of what amounts to propaganda campaigns.'
This move by Al.com strikes yet another body blow to public interest media.
"All the news that's fit" to print is clearly a subjective stance. One that's based more in corporate and political interests ideas of what the public needs to know, not necessarily what they should know and have a right to know, about those who hold so much power over their lives through governance and political influence.
*CrooksandLiars.com 10/26--"Alabama Republicans Put Taxpayers Dollars to Work for Alabama Republicans"
*Update 10/25--Legal Schnauzer adds legs to the MI story
*2nd Update 5:47 pm--Bob Sims, Director of Al.com forum 'defends' deletion:
From: Robert Sims <rsims@al.com>
Date: Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 12:20 PM
Date: Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 12:20 PM
We are/were working on some of the backend structure of the web site and made changes to our structure in news, entertainment, sports and lifestyle sections late Friday.
The story was a casualty of this backend work.As an aside, The Independent’s blog is among 26 that will be retired in coming days.
Bob Sims
Director of content205-380-2460
*photo credits: Lowry from his UPI related image files
Azbell from his own egotistical proclivities
