Talk:Preston Gates & Ellis

Content

I have removed the following content:

Preston Gates also apparently helped lobby the Bush Administration for favorable DOJ actions towards Microsoft by having Ralph E. Reed, Jr., former Christian Coalition leader, serve as a subcontractor for Preston Gates Ellis. [1]

In a March 2006 edition of Vanity Fair, Abramoff alludes to Preston Gates & Ellis as the angry competitor who first introduced scandal involving his practices to the Washington Post. Melinda Gates is the daugheter-in-law of the Preston Gates & Ellis founder and is a member of the board of directors at the Washington Post. The Gates in Preston Gates is the father of Bill Gates of Microsoft and Melinda Gates is the Texas cofounder of the influential Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation . The foundation at one time funded Abramoff charities. Microsoft and the Gates Foundation are two of Preston Gates most important clients. The company was founded in 1990 to help Microsoft with its permatemp and antitrust issues.

The first paragraph has an incorrect conclusion. Abramoff at Preston Gates hired Reed as a subcontractor for lobbying against the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act. Reed's firm was simultaneously on retainer with Microsoft, but the two are not ipso facto related.

The second paragraph is disputed at Talk:Jack Abramoff. The Abramoff quote in Vanity Fair alludes to competing Republican lobbyists, and does not focus on PG in any way. Also, it has been pointed out that Melinda Gates joined the board of the Washington Post nearly 8 months after the article exposing Abramoff was published. The choice of words seems to try to draw some false correlation between these two events which does not make sense. The remainder is not topical to this article, although the fact that the Gates Foundation and Microsoft are clients might be added in a section. KWH 17:50, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Response to original removal

The above removal is misguided. The roll of Preston Gates and its powerful lobby efforts has been well documented in all of the Seattle Papers and the connection to the Washington Post is undenighable. Abramoff's credibility is not an issue and his comments in Vanity Fair and the reference to Preston Gates is one of the most significant journalistic points to be made about Preston Gates and Ellis. Mellinda Gates board position is secondary to Warren Buffet's position on the Post. Warren Buffet is a long time Gates family friend. The following was added:

Preston Gates reimbursed Abramoff for trips he funded to Saipan; the firm was later reimbursed by Marianas officials. When Abramoff left Preston Gates for Greenberg Traurig in 2001, he took with him a team of lobbyists that formed the core of "Team Abramoff".

He also took with him trade secretes the firm had developed for influence peddling such as those developed through Slate [3] an online political magazine established by Microsoft that was later sold to the Washington Post, the news source Abramoff credits in Vanity Fair with innitially discrediting him in the eys of his clients, possibly in retaliation for Team Abramoff. Today adversaries at his old firm continue scapegoating Abramoff for practices that under the leadership of Bill Neukom, continue even today. Those practices involve lobbying Seattle Business Journals [4] to put the firm in the best possible perception. Bill Neukom will become the next president of the American Bar Association unless more individuals become aware of his roll in developing and encouraging Abramoff and the Preston Gates way which has been characterized as a culture of corruption spread throughout the Bush administration.

This page takes on special significance as the Chairman of Preston Gates and Ellis, Bill Neukom seeks to take his ethical standards to the American Bar Association. Neukom likely will become the next President of the ABA and further degrade the legal profession in that roll.

Reply to response

I have removed the unsigned additions added by the user above. None of the user's statements were correctly sourced. None of the sources provided by the user above discussed Preston Gates & Ellis' connection to the Abramoff scandal, which appears to involve lobbying at Greenberg Traurig. In addition, the user has attempted to link unrelated events (such as Seattle Weekly's turnover) to Preston's former lobbying. These allegations appear to be unfounded, and not supported by the source material. Likewise, the allegations that Abramoff stole trade secrets from Preston Gates & Ellis are not supported by any source material. As KWH discussed, these edits appear to be an attempt to draw conclusions from false correlations. CopaceticYawp (talk) 22:24, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

References

Merging

PG&E just merged with Kirkpatrick & Lockhart. Should the articles be merged?

Abramoff

Everything in this section needs a reference, since it currently appears to be almost entirely unsourced propaganda. Anything that can't be sourced will be removed per NPOV. Thanks, Cumulus Clouds (talk) 18:42, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV

I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:

This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:

1. There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
2. It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
3. In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 12:49, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

External links modified

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