Geez, you’d think that the Main Stream Media might have discovered that Pious Joe’s equally-pious wife has returned to her roots–as a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical and health care industries with conservative lobbying shop Hill & Knowlton, which also numbers AIG among its clients. She had previously worked for APCO Associates, a lobbying shop that included Pfizer Pharmaceutical and other drug companies as clients; and, before that, as director of Policy, Planning, and Communications (aka ‘lobbying’) at Pfizer from 1982-85.

You may or may not remember Hill & Knowlton as the firm that lied about the links between cigarettes and cancer for the tobacco industry from 1953-1968(PDF file).

They propagandized for the first Iraqi invasion illegally as the Bush Justice Department (the first one) chose not to enforce the law:

Hill & Knowlton, then the world’s largest PR firm, served as mastermind for the Kuwaiti campaign. Its activities alone would have constituted the largest foreign-funded campaign ever aimed at manipulating American public opinion. By law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act should have exposed this propaganda campaign to the American people, but the Justice Department chose not to enforce it. Nine days after Saddam’s army marched into Kuwait, the Emir’s government agreed to fund a contract under which Hill & Knowlton would represent “Citizens for a Free Kuwait,” a classic PR front group designed to hide the real role of the Kuwaiti government and its collusion with the Bush administration. Over the next six months, the Kuwaiti government channeled $11.9 million dollars to Citizens for a Free Kuwait, whose only other funding totalled $17,861 from 78 individuals. Virtually all of CFK’s budget – $10.8 million – went to Hill & Knowlton in the form of fees.

They also helped firm up support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the one that Pious Joe so strongly supported.

How did Pious Joe repay Hill & Knowlton when they rehired Hadassah Lieberman in 2005? Here’s how:

Mrs. Lieberman signed up with Hill & Knowlton in March 2005. The firm’s clients included GlaxoSmithKline, the British pharmaceutical giant that manufactures flu vaccines along with many other drugs. In April 2005, Sen. Lieberman introduced a bill that would award an array of new government “incentives” to companies like GSK to produce more vaccines—notably patent extensions on other products, at a cost of billions to governments and consumers.

That legislation provoked irritated comment by his hometown newspaper, the New Haven Register. In an editorial headlined “Lieberman Crafts Drug Company Perk,” the Register noted that his bill was even more generous to the pharmaceutical industry than a similar proposal by the Senate Republican leadership. “The government can offer incentives and guarantees for needed public health measures,” said the editorial. “But it should not write a blank check, as these bills do, to the pharmaceutical industry that has such a large cost to the public with what may be an uncertain or dubious return.”

Any lingering questions as to the real motivations of the Lieberman clan?

Finally, a note about my pejorative use of the word ‘pious’. If there is one thing I can’t stand (and indeed there are many), it’s public officials who wear their religious beliefs on their public sleeve in order to give them a pass from what otherwise would be deemed unethical or immoral behavior. As if worshipping gives you a ‘Get Out of Hell Free’ card.

Whether it’s a hate-mongering Christian fundamentalist living a debauched lifestyle that real libertines can only fantasize about, a Catholic legislator using the cloak of religiosity to deny justice to victims of abuse by his/her church, or a Jew who makes a public display about never campaigning on the Sabbath while being a prevaricating corporate whore, they are all people without any morality or ethical compass whatsoever, in my eyes. I find it ironic that  agnostics and atheists who live ethical and moral lives that truly make the world better are somehow deemed unqualified for public office while moral degenerates who make a big deal about their ‘relationships with God’ (Dubya, anyone?) are not. Truly decent people do not need the fear of retribution from some alleged Supreme Being to keep themselves in line or to dedicate their lives to people and society as a whole.

More on this screed to come. For now, I’m calling out Lie-berman and his wife for the corporate whores that they are.