Why is Microsoft paying Ralph Reed $20,000 a month?

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Microsoft paying Religious Right leader Ralph Reed $20,000 a month retainer
by John in DC - 4/26/2005 09:00:00 AM

AMERICAblog.com has learned that Microsoft is currently paying a $20,000 a month retainer to former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed's consulting firm Century Strategies. Which now begs the question of whether Reed was in any way involved with Microsoft's recent decision to abandon its decades long support for gay civil rights in order to curry favor with anti-gay bigots of the radical right.

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Interestingly, Microsoft had Reed on retainer during the presidential election of 2000 to apparently help lobby then-candidate Bush on their anti-trust suit (he was actually first hired in the fall of 1998). The contract was terminated after Reed was criticized for a conflict of interest - Reed was working on Bush's campaign. The question arises when Microsoft and Reed revived their work relationship (most observers I've spoken to thought the contract ended five years ago), and what exactly Reed is working on now that the anti-trust issue is over.

Now, just think a minute. Microsoft finds itself under criticism from the local evangelical leader, religious right shareholders, bigoted employees and who knows who else. They don't know what to do. Who do they turn to? Well, if I'm in a religious right pickle, I'd turn to my $20,000 a month retainered religious right consultant, the former leader of the religious right, Ralph Reed.

More:
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/04/microsoft-paying-religious-right.html

I'm sure that didn't come cheap. :evilgrin:

that would put the final bill's tally at $20,000,000
thats a more expensive legal bill than OJ

To my eyes, it looks to be 1.000 not 1,000.

the 1980s entity started by Pat Robertson; but Reed dismayed his evangelical colleagues by "going native", becoming a political consultant, lobbyist and campaign director. He has had a poor track record of getting his candidates elected, but he's connected enough to keep in business.

Perhaps the retainer is just to keep Reed off Microsoft's back. Extortion, in other words. I'm sure Microsoft doesn't care about glbt issues one way or the other; in the past, they've made positive noises about these issues because they rely on highly talented people who are tolerant if not glbt themselves. But they must be nervous in a mature industry, when their market share can only go down, when confronted with the possibility of a national boycott. (The thought of all the fundies trying to learn Linux amuses me.) So they try take a 'neutral' stance on human rights, and the bill in Washington fails by a single vote.

I hope the glbt community finds an effective way of getting their attention: no matter what stand they take on glbt issues, there might be a cost, so I hope they take the morally correct stand. A similar choice was made about 10 years ago by the national mathematical scientific organizations. They have their convention in January every year, and they had one scheduled in Denver. But Colorado voters passed an anti-gay ballot measure. So the directors of the organizations had to make a choice as to whether to join the boycott of Colorado. They chose, at considerable expense, to move the convention (to San Francisco). They reasoned, they would be excoriated by one faction of the membership or the other, depending on what they chose to do, so they decided to do what they felt was right. I attended the San Francisco convention, where the very first reception for glbt mathematicians was held. There were some 100 people at the reception, including prominent mathematicians.

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