Whether participating in glittery dinners with heads of state, or tête-à-têtes in the Oval Office, Andrew Liveris, the chief executive of Dow Chemical, has regularly visited the White House.
He served as co-chairman of President Obama’s Advanced Manufacturing Partnership. He stood beside the president onstage at events.
Many of these Washington appearances by Mr. Liveris — which have totaled more than two dozen since 2009 — were arranged with the help of Teneo, an advisory firm with close ties to the Democratic establishment. Dow is Teneo’s biggest and most lucrative account, paying millions of dollars a year in fees, according to a 2014 lawsuit filed against Dow and interviews with two Teneo employees.
Other prominent employees have included former President Bill Clinton and Huma Abedin, who, starting in 2012, briefly worked at Teneo while employed at the State Department under Secretary Hillary Clinton. At the same time, Ms. Abedin held a paid position at the Clinton Foundation, the family-founded charitable organization. Last year, Teneo declined to answer questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding Ms. Abedin’s employment…
Heather Bresch, the chief executive of the pharmaceutical company Mylan, was given two salons by Teneo in 2011 — one in a New York City apartment and a second at a private home in Washington that attracted a mix of media, finance and political elite. Then, in 2012, a Teneo employee and Ms. Bresch met with President Obama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett at the White House, according to White House records.
This year Ms. Bresch was thrust into the spotlight after Mylan increased the price of its EpiPen, a lifesaving allergy treatment, sixfold. A Mylan spokeswoman, Nina Devlin, confirmed that the company had been a client of Teneo, saying the relationship ended in 2012. She declined to address specific questions about the dinners.
In Washington, Teneo salons — often home-cooked dinners that occasionally include homemade ice cream — are sometimes held in the home of Margaret Carlson, a columnist for Bloomberg View. Guests have included United States Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, and Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, according to several former Teneo employees.
In a statement, Teneo said the salon dinners were an “extremely small part” of its operations and that they were “information thought leadership events” that were typically attended by heads of leading think tanks and nonprofit organizations, public officials and members of the media, including journalists from The New York Times. An individual inside the firm also said that all appropriate disclosures to participants were made.
– From the recent New York Times article: A Constellation of Influencers: Behind the Curtain at Teneo
If you haven’t read the recent New York Times article on “advisory firm” Teneo, you should really take the time. It adds yet another piece to the disturbing puzzle of how the “real axis of evil;” government, media and big business, collude behind closed doors to concentrate money and power in an increasingly small number of hands. This is a very well oiled machine — sophisticated, unethical, organized and incredibly destructive. It’s what really runs this country, and it doesn’t care in the least about the suffering and despair of the American people.
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