MR. KERRY GET OUT OF THE WAY….THE TEA PARTY COMETH TO YOUR STATE
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=518035
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=518035
Labor’s Power Play
Posted 01/13/2010 07:03 PM ET
Politics: With the Massachusetts Senate race in a dead heat, the Service Employees International Union makes a massive ad buy for a Democrat raising money from lobbyists. Sorry, Sen. Kerry, but the tea party’s coming.
Having received a tsunami warning, the purple shirts of the SEIU have sprung into action with a major ad buy trying to pull the Senate candidacy of Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley from the jaws of defeat.
The buy size of $685,000, extracted from the union dues of not-always-willing workers, is one of the biggest of the election.
The ads note that Republican Scott Brown is pro-life and that he “expresses skepticism that climate change is caused by humans.”
In an interesting twist, the narrator of the 30-second spot solemnly intones: “No wonder Brown’s campaign is being supported by the same extremist group that backs Sarah Palin.”
That would be the Tea Party. Palin, who recently joined the equally despised Fox News as a contributor, is set to headline the first-ever Tea Party Convention next month in Nashville, Tenn. Some would call this good old-fashioned community organizing.
SEIU head Andy Stern, who we have noted is the most frequent visitor to the White House, has led his union’s furious fight for government-run health care.
In an interview last year, Stern said: “We try to use the power of persuasion first. If it doesn’t work, we use the persuasion of power.”
Kenneth Gladney came face to face with that power. He was beaten by people wearing the purple shirts of the Service Employees International Union outside a Missouri health care town hall meeting last year. His crime was trying to sell T-shirts affixed with the yellow and green “Don’t Tread On Me” flag of the American Revolution.
Stern has also said: “What we’re working toward is building a global organization. Because workers of the world unite (is) not just a slogan anymore; it’s a way we are going to have to do our work.”
In SEIU’s worldview, there is no room for dissent. Karl Marx, call your office.
Democrat Coakley stands to benefit from the SEIU’s power of persuasion.
She’s also had other interesting supporters. She was one of only six attorneys general to receive an A+ from Acorn in 2008, and she boasted in a news release, “I am honored to received this recognition from Acorn.”
She was most recently honored at a fundraiser in Washington, D.C., at Pennsylvania Avenue’s Sonoma Restaurant. As first reported by Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner, of the 22 names on the host committee, meaning they raised $10,000 or more, 17 are federally registered lobbyists and 15 have health care clients.
All the leading drug companies, including Pfizer, Merck and Eli Lilly, had lobbyists on Coakley’s host committee. Two were from America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and two from the Pharmaceutical Researchers & Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows.
Despite all these big guns, Coakley is in trouble in the bluest of blue states. Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, in a desperate fundraising letter, admitted the race was a dead heat, and warned “Kennedy’s seat” might go to “Republican Scott Brown, whose allies in the right wing dream of holding a ‘tea party’ in Kennedy country.”
Yes, they do. They dream of freedom from government’s heavy hand just as those in the first Tea Party did in Boston long before it was “Kennedy country.”
Massachusetts has had its own problems with what has been dubbed RomneyCare, named after former Republican Gov. Mitt Romney, who signed it into law. The Boston Globe recently claimed Massachusetts has the highest insurance costs in the country. Program spending is about 85% higher than first projected. What a surprise! And Coakley wants to repeat this on a national scale?
The natives are restless, and the only power that may be felt on Tuesday, Mr. Stern, is the power of the people.
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