If you don’t think that a little ‘ol blogger like me can take on and win against a trillion-dollar industry’s corporate welfare scheme and its political allies, then read on. I won through careful research and persistence. Then I lost once the allies of the giants of the tourism industry came to power in 2008. But, this tale displays that individual bloggers can have major impacts on legislation, now more than ever as the alternative media has grown and the 2012 elections may turn the tide in Washington.
Unless you are a foreign tourist entering the US, paying $14 to enter, you probably haven’t heard of Brand USA. Today, the Washington Free Beacon describes “The Cronyism Board” of this public-private partnership to promote tourism to the US: “It is governed by an 11-member board. John Connor, director of the Office of White House Liaison at the United States Department of Commerce, appointed the board members….All of the board members Connor has appointed have donated to Democrats and Democratic organizations almost exclusively, if they have donated at all.”
Briefly, the impetus for Brand USA came from the giants of US corporations, immensely profitable already from tourism. Rather than use their own deep pockets to promote tourism, they sought additional taxpayer and tourist funding for their advertising.
In 2007, I caught on to the scheme...
, its false supporting statistics and theme in “Why Is Disney Bashing America?: Pork Investigation”. I wrote several more posts plus op-eds at The Washington Examiner. This led to the Washington Post running a 6,746-word expose that shook this boondoggle from the Congressional agenda. The links and update are in this 2008 post, “Blog Success:D-P Stirs Up WaPo Expose of Discover America”. However, once the Obama administration and its lopsided Democrat Congressional majorities came to power, Brand USA was back on track. I spoke out again, in this June 2009 Washington Examiner op-ed:
A former Freddie Mac public relations guru who helped generate the mortgage meltdown that sent the U.S. economy into a tailspin last year is behind this year's campaign by Walt Disney, Anheuser Busch, American Express, Orbitz and other corporate heavyweights to charge foreign travelers and U.S. taxpayers to subsidize advertising for their already immensely profitable industry.
Nonetheless, in 2010, the Travel Promotion Act was enacted. Expected revenues of $200-million.
What do we have to show for it? The April 25, 2012 Forbes, for example, critiqued Brand USA’s TV ad to be shown abroad: “Unfortunately, the new campaign misses the mark.” Others, like Frommers are also critical. Advertising Age asked its readers "Will This Campaign Designed to Attract Tourists to the U.S. Actually Work?": Eighteen of twenty commenters were critical of the ad. Ah, but Brand USA hits the mark for cronyism and corporate welfare.
