So Verizon Wireless is one of sponsors of the Friends of America Rally this Labor Day weekend, an anti-environment, pro-coal event. Most of the other sponsors are in the coal industry and there is even a link to the National Mining Association’s anti-Waxman-Markey petition on the home page.

Credo Action wanted to know why Verizon would sponsor such a reactionary event with such polarizing figures--especially ones that have gone out of their way to foment violence. From their email:

Before we launched our campaign, CREDO Action reached out to Verizon Wireless to confirm its sponsorship of the pro-coal "Friends of America" rally. Becky Bond, our Political Director, then sent a cordial follow-up to give Verizon Wireless a heads-up that our campaign had launched. Verizon replied as follows:

"This is how our response is going over with the activists. Becky once lived in a tree for a while. At least now I know where the emails are coming from."
— James Gerace, VP of Corporate Communications at Verizon Wireless

You got that?

If you don't think that Verizon Wireless should support global warming deniers and practitioners of mountaintop removal mining, then Verizon Wireless thinks it's okay to dismiss your concerns because you must have "lived in a tree for a while."

If they're going to try to mock us for opposing right wing demagoguery, then we'll just have to make more noise.

So please take a minute to ask your friends and family to join this campaign, especially if they are Verizon Wireless customers.

Let's remember how this campaign started. Verizon Wireless apparently sees nothing wrong with co-sponsoring a rally put on by Massey Energy, the biggest violator of the Clean Water Act in history; sees nothing wrong with giving a platform to people who deny global warming; sees nothing wrong with giving the emcee microphone to Ted Nugent who famously said:

Obama, he's a piece of sh — . I told him to suck on my machine gun...Hey Hillary [Clinton] you might want to ride one of these [machine guns] into the sunset, you worthless b — ch.

Apparently these are the values and sentiments Verizon Wireless feels comfortable associating itself with. You can violate the law, pillage the Earth and publicly insult Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the most vulgar way. Verizon Wireless is fine with that. But when we express common sense concerns about environmental stewardship, Verizon Wireless thinks we're tree-hugging nuts.

You know you want to give Verizon a piece of your mind. Remember, be polite. Show more class than they have.

The Atlantic:

(T)he Washington Post’s James Grimaldi published a fairly damning piece suggesting, with a good deal of evidence, that John and Cindy McCain were beneficiaries of special treatment from Verizon and AT&T—the implication being that the companies had sought to curry favor with the former Senate Commerce committee chairman by erecting cell phone towers at the McCains’ remote Arizona ranch.

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers responded that the towers were temporary, the result of a Secret Service request and, while conceding that Cindy McCain had made a separate, earlier request for the towers that predated her husband’s status as Republican presidential nominee, added, “Mrs. McCain's staff went through the Website as any member of the general public would—no string pulling, no phone calls, no involvement of Senate staff.” Today, a Verizon spokesman, Jeffrey Nelson, took greater umbrage, attacking the Post story as “wrong” and stating that the company, after studying McCain’s request, decided in August not to install a permanent tower at the ranch. “It doesn’t make business sense for us to do that,” Nelson told the Post.

So is this an innocent mix-up, or did McCain get special treatment from Verizon? The Post piece points out that Verizon’s CEO Ivan G. Seidenberg is a McCain bundler who has raised more than $1.3 million, and the company’s head Washington lobbyist, Robert Fisher, is a former McCain staffer. That alone is intriguing, but not, of course, evidence of any wrongdoing. But putting up a cell phone tower is a process that entails many legal and regulatory hurdles that create a lengthy public record (some of which Grimaldi draws on for his piece). And the closer you look, the less satisfying McCain’s—and especially Verizon’s—account of the towers turns out to be. Whatever its motivation, Verizon plainly went to considerable effort and expense to pursue building a permanent tower on the McCains’ ranch.

The Huffington Post has a letter from the contractor, contradicting McCain's spin on the controversy. I could be wrong, but it seems like a gift like this should be reported (according to sources, it is not, but there's an awful lot of donations from telecoms as well as former telecom lobbyists on staff).