From the Restore Fairness blog.

It seems fitting that New York City, the crux of the U.S.’s rich immigrant history is leading a new direction in the movement for immigration reform.

In what promises to be an important step towards re-framing the immigration debate in this country, New York City Mayor Bloomberg has formed a coalition of top executives and city mayors to put pressure on Congress and steer the nation towards immigration reform. On Thursday the 24th, Mayor Bloomberg announced the Partnership for a New American Economy, a coalition that includes the chief executives of major corporations such as News Corp., Hewlett-Packard, Disney, Boeing, Morgan Stanley, Marriott International and the NY Mets, and the mayors of Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Antonio and Phoenix.

The coalition argues that immigration reform is the key solution to repairing and rejuvenating the economy. By conducting polls, funding public educational campaigns, convening forums and publishing studies that demonstrate the ways in which a healthy economy thrives on immigrant workers, the coalition aims to “break the legislative stalemate that has taken over Congress.” Rupert Murdoch, a central member of the partnership and chairman of the News Corporation, who is also a naturalized immigrant from Australia, summed up the argument for the New York Times-

This country can and must enact new immigration policies that fulfill our employment needs, provide a careful pathway to legal status for undocumented residents, and end illegal immigration….American ingenuity is a product of the openness and diversity of this society.

The CEO’s who have signed on to the partnership released statements about how their companies rely on immigrants. They mentioned the constant challenge they face in acquiring visas for professional workers whom they want to hire. Walt Disney chairman and CEO, Robert Iger said that the country’s immigrant population was “our great strength as a nation, and …critical for continued economic growth.” His statement went on to say, “To remain competitive in the 21st century, we need effective immigration reform that invites people to contribute to our shared success by building their own American dream.”

While stressing the importance of securing the national borders and preventing further entry of undocumented immigrants, the coalition urges Congress to create a path to legalization for the 12 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S. According to Mayor Bloomberg, in addition to the fact that deporting the existing undocumented immigrants was an impossible task, doing so would ruin the economy as these immigrants are a crucial part of the workforce.

On Thursday morning, Mayor Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch appeared on Fox News to talk about the ways in which immigration reform would benefit the economy. Bloomberg made his case for a reformed immigration policy which creates a system that allots green cards to those that have been education in the country rather than preventing them from staying on. Bluntly referring to the current system as “national suicide,” the NYC Mayor warned against the pitfalls of the present system in which prohibitive laws, bureaucracy and stiff enforcement prevent hundreds of potential entrepreneurs from staying on and leading to the creation of more jobs. He reiterated that the people who seek to the immigrate to the U.S. were hard working, dynamic, innovative people who want the opportunity to strive for better lives for themselves and their families, and that those are the people that build America in the first place. He said-

I can’t think of any ways to destroy this country quite as direct and impactful as our immigration policy. We educate the best and the brightest, and then we don’t give them a green card.

The business leaders in the coalition that have taken it upon themselves to lead the country towards immigration reform employ more than 650,000 people and make more than $220 billion in annual sales, combined. However it is yet to be announced as to whether the partnership will be a non-profit organization, a political action committee, or a non-standard non-profit. Either way, this bipartisan group’s decision to take on an issue that is of national importance and has been stuck in politics for so long, is deeply encouraging. Let’s get behind them and add to the pressure on President Obama and Congress to pass immigration reform now!

At 0:40 in the Fox News interview Mayor Bloomberg says, “We need to create jobs in this country….and immigrants can come here and create jobs. There’s this belief that immigrants take jobs away and that’s not true.”

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Max Blumenthal at the Nation has an important scoop.

On Friday, September 8, just forty-eight hours before ABC planned to air its so-called "docudrama," The Path to 9/11, Robert Iger, CEO of ABC's corporate parent, the Walt Disney Company, was presented with incontrovertible evidence outlining the involvement of that film's screenwriter and director in a concerted right-wing effort to blame former President Bill Clinton for allowing the 9/11 attacks to take place. Iger told a source close to ABC that he was "deeply troubled" by the information and claimed he had no previous knowledge of the institutional right-wing ties of The Path to 9/11's creators. He reportedly said that he has commenced an internal investigation to verify the role of the film's creators in deliberately advancing disinformation through ABC.

ABC aired the documentary with the CEO knowing it was based on false right-wing propaganda.  Iger needs to publicly apologize, and when the investigation is done, make its findings known.  At this point, Disney can no longer be considered a responsible steward of the public trust.

There's more...

 Well it looks to me like we've got a full blown wingnut as EVP of Corporate Communications for Disney, a woman by the name of Zenia Mucha.  Mucha has a long and impressive history in media, and is in charge of

claims that Miramax hid the funding for Fahrenheit 9/11

George Pataki nickamed Mucha 'the Director of Revenge.'

Razor-sharp and acid-tongued, Mucha, 47, was named Disney's chief communications officer less than two years ago, after starting with the company's troubled ABC unit. In short order, she has carved out a place as one of Chief Executive Michael Eisner's closest advisors in a brutal battle with those who would unseat him...

Under Mucha (pronounced MOO-ka), Disney scrapped a posture in which queries were often dismissed with a flat "no comment." Executives now are pushed to challenge all comers -- although few are a match for the frequently profane chief communicator, who is quick to unleash her inner pit bull on critics and the reporters who give them voice.

Earlier in her career Ms. Mucha served first as director of communications and then as senior policy advisor to Governor George Pataki of New York State, where she earned a national reputation for her expert communications and political skills. She joined Governor Pataki in 1994 and is widely credited with helping the former State Senator achieve the recognition necessary to win the gubernatorial election. Ms. Mucha counseled Governor Pataki on a broad range of public policy and other issues. She also successfully positioned him for his first re-election campaign as Governor.

The New York Times observed: "Ms. Mucha's official responsibilities were defined as press relations, scheduling and correspondence. But her portfolio has expanded to include virtually every major decision made by the Governor." Upon her departure from New York State government to join ABC, The New York Times added that Ms. Mucha's absence "deprives Mr. Pataki of someone who was not only the most influential member of his inner circle, but also his most forceful advocate before the press and with leaders of the State Legislature, as well as other politicians."

Prior to joining the Pataki administration, Ms. Mucha served as press representative and then communications director to former United States Senator Alfonse D'Amato. Ms. Mucha managed Senator D'Amato's two successful re-election campaigns, in 1986 and 1992.

Wow, she was his 'most forceful advocate before the press and with leaders of the State Legislature, as well as other politicians.'  And she was the communications director for D'Amato?  

Innocently tuckd into her resume is her work for George Pataki and Alfonse D'Amato, two tough politicians from New York.  D'Amato was known as an utterly ruthless operator,

Read these quotes from Zenia Mucha and tell me she wasn't enjoying axing Michael Moore's film from distribution and going after him personally.  This is a cold-blooded vicious PR expert speaking.  

There's more...

So I've been trying to figure out what's going on at Disney.  I'm still not sure why they are sticking with this right-wing propaganda piece, but it's becoming a little clearer who has been ordering everyone to lie about it.  Zenia Mucha is the EVP of Corporate Communications for Disney Corporation, in charge of all media relations, financial communications, employee communications, and corporate positioning.  She is clearly a big part of how Disney handles sticky corporate situations, including the fights with Miramax over Fahrenheit 911, where she sparred with the Democratic Weinstein's for six months in the press.

What possible incentive could she have for trashing Disney's brand and losing money on an ad-free propaganda piece that helps the conservative movement?  Maybe this incentive.

Governor George Pataki insists he's not thinking about the 2008 presidential race, but his denials seemed a little hard to believe with the sudden reappearance by his side this week of Zenia Mucha, the tough-talking political operative who left Albany in 2001 to become the top flack for Disney's Michael Eisner. As a longtime aide to Senator Al D'Amato known for colorful rows with the press, Mucha was dispatched to shore up Pataki's faltering 1994 campaign against Mario Cuomo and was widely credited with engineering his surprise victory. Her ability to keep Pataki--and everyone else--on message is thought to have helped spur his rise from unknown Peekskill state senator to governor and onto George W. Bush's short list for vice-president in 2000. (Dick Cheney, head of the selection committee, selected himself instead.) When Eisner lured Mucha to the Mouse with an extravagant salary, many of her associates nevertheless were certain she'd return to politics; her reemergence is viewed as a sign the governor is getting serious about 2008. Tight-lipped as ever, Mucha insists she's merely taking a week off from her day job to "help out." But friends say she's planning a return to New York as head of Pataki's national campaign.

Mucha was Eisner's protege, not Iger's.  She came into Disney's empire in 2001, recruited out of New York politics, where she had enormous power as advisor to a very detached Governor Pataki, who nicknamed her the 'the Director of Revenge'.  Before that, she was Communications Director for a very nasty and effective conservative Senator, Al D'Amato.

Eisner was a terrible CEO of the Magic kingdom, and he left behind a real mess.  Wow.

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One thing that's striking to me this week is how the right-wing was utterly destroyed this week.  They lost HUGE on Bolton.  They lost badly on Specter's dishonorable FISA bill.  And the kickoff of the war on terror campaign, the ABC movie 'Path to 9/11', has been seriously derailed as a fraudulent piece of propaganda.

The right-wing has thrived on making it painful to oppose them, and profitable to be with them.  Though Disney's executives are probably mostly pro-business Democrats, you can see how the company's tax rate dropped from 2001-2003 every year under Bush.  By 2003 the company was paying no taxes at all - Democratic supporter or not, it's nice to be an executive where your company is paying less and less in taxes.

By contrast, this week, Disney's brand took a massive hit because the company got sloppy and its internal controls were revealed as weak to non-existent.  Not only is the film openly fraudulent, but it's apparently really really bad.  Like, loser, expensive afterschool special schlock bad, the kind of bad that makes me kind of glad I couldn't get an advance copy.  Right-wing death cultists make shitty directors, apparently.  And more significantly, Disney's executives were personally embarrassed, their happy little spa-drenched personas chided by no less than Bill Clinton.

That's new.  What's also new is how Disney got no backup at all from the right-wing.  No Republicans in office came to the company's defense, the RNC offered no online petition, and there was little to no internet organizing on behalf of ABC's film.  Virtually no right-wing pundits defended the network, or the film in any meaningful way.  The open disloyalty to right-wing allies is a really bad decision on the part of the right, since it means that if you back the right-wing, it's not clear that they will back you.  In such a situation, talented people considering a movement career will simply say 'I don't need this shit, I'm going to go make money in the private sector'.  

This kind of incentive system is how movements are destroyed.

So anyway, to recap, the right-wing suffered three big defeats today, on wiretapping, the ABC film, and Bolton.  And their new kickoff advertising campaign from shill group Progress for America doesn't have the regular echo chamber backup.  The networks aren't even cutting away to Bush's stupid speechifying.  

Losers.

Update: This is interesting. The right-wing punditocracy is turning on Disney. That's loyalty.

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