**Written by Doug Powers The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is underway in Washington, DC. Naturally, OWS protesters are there to greet conference-goers and to roll out a welcome mat made of astroturf. Michelle Fields from the Daily Caller caught up with a demonstrator who claims he’s being paid. Not only does the guy in the video below say that a union local is paying him $60 a day to “Occupy” CPAC, but he also claims everybody in his group is being paid. Some are clueless as to what it is they’re protesting (note: if the video below isn’t loading try this link ) : Does $60 a day meet or exceed Occupy’s “living wage” demand ? If you’re in need of a little cheap afternoon entertainment, check out Jim Treacher’s Occupy CPAC Hippiecam . **Written by Doug Powers Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
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‘Occupy CPAC’ Protester Paid $60 a Day
“To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” – Thomas Jefferson Longtime readers of my work know that I’ve been exposing the compulsory-union dues racket since my days as a columnist at the Seattle Times. Here’s my 1999 column on how public school teachers in Washington state challenged their union over their political dues power grab. Here are your rights as a union worker. Here is a backgrounder on the permissible use of forced dues. As I wrote on Labor Day in 2010, free speech not only means the freedom to voice your political views, but also the freedom from being forced to pay for someone else’s. U.S. Supreme Court precedent established by the D.C.-based National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation guarantees the right to full financial disclosure from a union and a right to challenge the figures in court if they disagree. More and more rank-and-file union members have been speaking up against the confiscation of their dues for political purposes they oppose. Remember this Chicago SEIU member from 2010 ? Or this letter from a Wisconsin teacher last year? As events have unfolded in Wisconsin, I have been reflecting on my nearly 10 years in public education. My parents were both teachers and I greatly admired the work they did with their own students. I began with that same passion for teaching that they instilled in me, but am finding it more and more difficult to keep that flame alive. The hold that unions have over the public educational system is nothing short of toxic. Year after year, I have a lot of money taken out of my paychecks for union dues. What do I get for my money? I am bombarded with emails and flyers “urging” us to vote for candidates that coincidentally always have the letter (D) after them. I get to be lectured to by union reps about the evil Republican candidates are and why they know what is best for me. Now I am being hit with email after email “urging” me to stand with the teachers of Wisconsin. One teacher who is very tight with our union replied to our district making fun of Republicans directly. You might ask why I don’t forward this to human resources, but the repercussions would be brutal. The truth is that any teacher who does not hold down the talking points of the unions, DNC or Obama White House needs to keep quiet to keep their job. The vitriol I heard over the Bush years was deafening but acceptable and expected. I can hardly remember a week that went by where teachers, sometimes in front of students, were not making fun of Republicans. I’ve personally been the subject of much ridicule and scorn from fellow teachers and will continue to be as long as I am in public education. I believe in what I am doing in my own classroom by focusing on educating students, but as time goes by it is becoming more and more likely that I will leave education all together. Not because of students, but because of the unions and the teachers that support them. Frustrated in Minnesota Well, today on Capitol Hill, more brave union members are testifying about the Big Labor money machine forcibly fueled with their hard-earned money. You can watch the proceedings live at 10am at the House Oversight website . You can read the prepared testimony of Mr. Terry Bowman of Ypsilanti, Michigan, Ms. Claire Waites of Daphne, Alabama and Ms. Sally Coomer of Duvall, Washington here . Chairman Darrell Issa’s opening statement: Every worker should have the choice to decide whether their money is taken from their paychecks and used to fund political activity. When this occurs, a worker should also have the right to know how their money is spent. Individual freedom and personal choice are cornerstones of our democratic government—they are also at the heart of union participation in America. Today’s hearing will examine the process by which union dues are collected and how transparent unions are about this process. The Committee’s focus is not an examination of the validity of unions or their right to exist, but rather an effort to ensure that the political activity of unions does not infringe the freedoms of workers. Because of recent court decisions and a systematic effort by the Obama Administration to reduce union transparency and reporting requirements, union workers do not currently know how much of the money from their paycheck dues is being funneled to SuperPACs or used for other political activity. The Administration has also drastically reduced the Department of Labor’s ability to effectively audit labor organizations. These actions will have far-reaching consequences. I welcome the union workers who have agreed to testify today and appreciate their willingness to speak their mind about what they see as unjust restrictions on their freedom of choice in our democracy.
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On Capitol Hill today: Union members testify against forced dues racket
Well, I can’t imagine when a teacher would have time to sleep, although one semester when I had a night class, after I held my office hours in the afternoon, I’d lie down on the floor to rest before going back out to teach. But that’s not what this is about, at Blazing Cat Fur and Jawa Report :
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Students May Not Take Pictures of Sleeping Teachers
Jeez, that’s just great. Way to go Baracky! At Business Week , ” Canada Pledges to Sell Oil to Asia After Obama Keystone Denial .” Also, at Los Angeles Times , ” Energy: Activists wring blood from a Keystone .” BONUS : At Labor Union Report, ” Obama Kills 20,000 Keystone XL Jobs, Laborers’ Union Vows Not To Forget Betrayal .”
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Canada Looks to Asia After Obama Rejects Keystone XL
My column follows up on Monday’s blog coverage of the West Coast Port Shutdown by the Occupy Wall Street movement (the D12 primer is here if you missed it) — and exposes how the so-called Big Labor progressives and their propaganda tools are the nation’s biggest enemies of economic and technological progress. It’s no coincidence that businesses using cutting-edge technology and automation are now being targeted and demonized while a man who blames ATMs (which have been around for four decades) and automation for his skyrocketing unemployment rate is sitting in the White House. Chaos is the progressive Luddites’ goal. Chaos is the reality — and enablers like left-wing Oakland Mayor Jean Quan are reaping what they sow: In Seattle, police used “flash-bang” percussion grenades to break-up demonstrators and made arrests. Police Detective Jeff Kappel said protesters hurled flares, bags of paint and debris at officers and police horses, injuring one officer. Two others were arrested in Oakland for ignoring orders to unblock a gate where trucks were entering the port, reported interim Police Chief Howard Jordan. Oakland Mayor Jean Quan is concerned about how the protesters will affect the people of the city this holiday season. “People have to think about the consequences,” she said. People have to think about who they are hurting. They are saying, ‘We want to get the attention of the ruling class.’ Well I think the ruling class is probably laughing, and people in this city will be crying this Christmas. It’s really got to stop”… They’re not getting the message. Neither are the clueless elites at Time Magazine, who celebrated “The Protester” as their “person of the year.” But it looks like more on the left side of the aisle are getting tired of the mob. The liberal Los Angeles Times editorial board pans Occupy’s second act: “The shipping industry didn’t get America into this economic mess, and there is little it could do to get us out. In times of rising joblessness, it’s common to blame foreign competition for the losses at home. But blaming ports or shippers for the changes wrought by an increasingly global economy is sort of like fingering automakers for urban traffic congestion. In its search for a new direction, Occupy Wall Street would probably do better to occupy the National Mall than San Pedro.” So did the Portland Oregonian: As the picketers meandered from one terminal to the next, they took a day’s pay away from almost 400 International Longshore and Warehouse Union workers who were told to avoid the protests and stay home on Monday. It’s doubtful that large exporters and ship-owning companies such as Goldman Sachs were affected in any way by Monday’s protest — but hundreds of Oregon families took a holiday hit to their paychecks. Moreover, the picketers interfered with the deliveries of dozens of locally based companies trying to get their products to the port — and to markets beyond — costing them and their Oregon employees many thousands of dollars. That probably didn’t win a lot of new converts to the Occupy movement. Still, if you glanced at the news coverage of the protests you got an unusual peek at a typical day of economic activity at the port — workers managing loads of animal feed and straw from Willamette Valley ryegrass fields, aircraft parts from Aurora and shipments from Oregon’s major international companies, including Columbia Sportswear, Intel and Nike. By coincidence, on Tuesday a South Korea trade officer, Juseong Lim, was in Portland to speak to Oregon business and government leaders about the recently approved Korean free trade agreement. Lim said the agreement will erase high tariffs in his country and clear the way for more Northwest products — everything from beef, blueberries and other Oregon agricultural products to knives, backpacks and other equipment produced by this state’s cluster of outdoor equipment-makers. “Oregon should be a big supporter of this agreement,” Lim said. So should everyone on the West Coast. Every day, on average, seaports from Seattle to Portland to Los Angeles and San Diego generate more than $700 million a day in economy activity creating more than 260,000 employment hours and more than $9 million in wages. Every day. The Korean free trade agreement will spur still more economic activity. So will efforts such as Gov. John Kitzhaber’s recent trade mission to Korea, China and Japan. Oregon already exports nearly $1 billion in goods to Korea and has even larger trading relationships with China and Japan. The Occupy movement shut down the port on Monday apparently to make some kind of garbled statement about big financial companies that contributed to the global economic meltdown. What they demonstrated, instead, is that if you’re looking for the beating heart of Portland’s and Oregon’s economy, you’ll find it down on the docks. In related news, GOP Rep. Darrell Issa is challenging the White House on whether it is allowing Occupy DC to camp illegally in McPherson Square for political purposes. In NYC, Occupy Wall Street chief flack and former public school teacher Justin Wedes was caught attempting to commit Americorps fraud and refuses to answer questions about the ripoff. And following up on my reporting last week about the Scholastic News Occupy whitewash , Susanne Hiller at Hot Air illuminates Scholastic’s hypocrisy problem. A NYC eatery closes down as a result of the Occupy blockades. And in case you missed it, here’s Neil Cavuto schooling an Occupy Portland tool. *** Port Whine: Big Labor’s Occu-punks by Michelle Malkin Creators Syndicate Copyright 2011 Scruffy progressive protesters locked themselves together across railroad tracks, blocked traffic and shouted profanities at police on Tuesday in a coordinated “West Coast Port Shutdown.” Truckers lost wages. Shippers lost business. This is what the Occupy Wall Street movement calls “victory.” Aging Big Labor bosses toasted one another from the sidelines as they declared the “ rebirth of the labor movement .” What’s really going on? It’s an old-school power grab by a decrepit union wrapped in self-deluded social media do-goodism. Peace-loving agitators wielding guitars and iPhones may earnestly believe they stood up to corruption and stood up for workers this week. A socialist website promoted the port shutdown as an expression of “solidarity” for the workers’ “struggle.” One Oakland, Calif., agitator decried “exploitation by capitalism” as the shiftless busily divided their work blockages into what they called — chortle — “shifts.” In reality, it’s the young Occupiers who are being exploited as human shields for the economy-strangling agenda of the violence-prone International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). These ignorant punks are putting the “front” in “waterfront.” Few remember now that the left’s three-month-long “Day of Rage” festivities kicked off in September at the Port of Longview, Wash . — a far cry from Goldman Sachs and the rest of New York’s financial district. Unionized longshoremen stormed the port there and took a half-dozen guards hostage. They damaged railroad cars, dumped grain, smashed windows, cut rail brake lines and blocked a train for hours while the ILWU and AFL-CIO cheered them on. The violence followed a similar outburst in July, when longshoremen tore down a chain link fence on EGT’s private property and blocked railroad tracks to prevent a grain delivery — a clear violation of the 1946 Hobbs Act , which makes it a crime to employ robbery or extortion to impede interstate commerce. Despite breaking federal law, violating a judicial restraining order and committing systematically planned sabotage and trespassing, most of the union thugs got away with wrist slaps. The ILWU received a $250,000 fine to cover damages from the vandalism — a fine that will be paid with rank-and-file workers’ hard-earned dues money. So, what’s their beef? No, it’s not about the “right” of unions to “organize.” It’s not about the welfare of the “99 percent.” It’s about one union losing its seven-decade-old grip on West Coast port operations. It’s about six-figure-salaried union suits at the ILWU , established by bloody radical Marxist Harry Bridges , throwing a lawless tantrum against economic efficiency and technological progress. The ILWU is trying to break the will of EGT Development, a multinational agribusiness that recently built a $200 million grain terminal in Longview. It’s a state-of-the-art facility with unprecedented automation features that will speed unloading, increase shipping capacity and bring in tens of millions of dollars in lease and tax payments alone to the region. EGT needs a nimble 21st-century workforce. The entitled overlords of the ILWU, who have ruled West Coast ports since the 1930s, are demanding a monopoly on the company’s master control system, control over the work hour structure, excessive mandatory breaks and extortionist man-hour “premiums” to bail out the union’s underfunded pension. “ We’ve worked these elevators since 1934, and we’ve always been in that master console ,” local ILWU President Dan Coffman told public radio. EGT refused and instead brought in an outside contractor with a different union to fill about 50 jobs. But the ILWU water-carriers in the Occupy movement don’t care about those workers. Or the American farmers who have been hurt by the port saboteurs. Or the independent non-union truckers who were forced to forgo work in the name of worker empowerment. Trucker Hai Ngo of San Leandro, Calif., told the San Francisco Chronicle: “The Occupy people handed out flyers to us, but never asked what we thought before they planned this. I will lose about $350, and at holiday time that hurts . It’s just a waste of our time and money, and won’t accomplish anything.” Unfortunately, Ngo and blue-collar workers like him are collateral damage in the ILWU’s ruthless battle for Big Labor survival. Coffman, who has stoked violence for months, vowed earlier this year that “we will fight to the end to secure what is rightfully our turf.” And now the gasping longshoremen’s union has a whole new set of Occu-tools to do the dirty work for them.
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Port Whine: Big Labor’s Occu-punks
Here we go again. You remember where the “Day of Rage” 2011 festivities first broke out earlier this fall, don’t you? If you were paying attention, you know the answer: The port of Longview, Washington. Unionized longshoremen stormed the port there and took a half-dozen guards hostage in early September. They damaged railroad cars and dumped grain, smashed windows, cut brake lines, and blocked a train for hours while the ILWU and AFL-CIO cheered them on. Despite violating a judicial restraining order and committing systematically planned sabotage and trespassing, most of the thugs got away with wrist slaps. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union received a $250,000 fine to cover damages from the vandalism. One of the mobsters arrested was this unhinged ILWU guy , who threatened to beat up KGW reporters: After the fine was dealt, longshoremen’s union bosses threatened to “do what we have to do” and ILWU vowed that “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.” All because a grain importer, EGT, chose a different union for 50 construction jobs on a $200 million grain terminal. If you were paying attention, you also remember that this initial outbreak of violence and property destruction came right after the Labor Day incitement of Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa Jr., who agitated the crowd in Detroit for President Obama. “President Obama, this is your army,” Hoffa bellowed. “We are ready to march. Let’s take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.” Obama stood by the violence-prone Teamsters and vice versa. It’s a brass-knuckle bromance sealed with boodle . On November 2 , the Occupiers led by the Oakland contingent went after ports again. My column on the planned riots reminded you of the Bay Area Left’s violent Oakland port shutdown in 2003 and the ignominious Oakland agitator and strike leader Boots Riley — and connected the dots between Riley, Oakland’s Van Jones, Occupy Oakland, and the violent ILWU thugs and their supporters who kicked off the Day of Rage warm-up show in Longview, Washington in September. The Oakland shutdown was: …an expression of “solidarity with longshore workers in their struggle” against grain importer EGT. In Longview, Washington, wildcat union workers cut train brake lines, smashed windows, dumped grain, and took hostages earlier this fall to protest the company’s decision to employ not non-union workers, but workers from a competing shop. A federal judge fined the ILWU $250,000 after it defied a court restraining order; even Obama’s National Labor Relations Board was forced to issue a complaint against the union’s “violent and aggressive” actions. Here’s a refresher on how that protest turned “peaceful” protest turned out: Source: Twitpic Source: Twitpic Big Labor has sent mixed public signals over whether it supports today’s coordinated shutdown. See this San Francisco Chronicle article for union leaders playing Hamlet for political viability’s sake. But the Worker’s World website is crystal-clear on who inspired it, who’s behind it, and who’s providing the muscle: Battle lines have formed as the West Coast Occupy movements, from San Diego to Alaska, flex their collective muscle against the federally coordinated, brutal attacks targeting the pro-Occupy Wall Street movements across the country. They are organizing for blockades of West Coast ports on Dec. 12 in San Diego; Los Angeles/Long Beach; Port Hueneme, Calif. (central coast); Oakland; Portland, Ore.; Seattle; Tacoma, Wash.; and possibly more. Solidarity actions have been called by OWS in New York and inland locations, as well. The pro-OWS movement is aligning itself with labor and the working class, as the West Coast Occupy movements organize to support the struggle of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in Longview, Wash. Longshore workers there are waging a ferocious battle against transnational EGT, controlled by Bunge Ltd., of the grain cartel that controls most of the world’s trade in food products. EGT is trying to break the ILWU in an attempt to drive down wages and destroy the union. (Read “Longshore workers call for anti-racist unity in their ranks” at www.workers.org/2011/us/ilwu_0922) The West Coast Occupy movements are also aligning with the struggle of port truckers, who are fighting for the right to organize for union representation. Twenty-six of them were fired in Los Angeles for wearing Teamster jackets to work. Occupy LA and Long Beach are targeting SSA, an anti-union port terminal operator, majority owned by Goldman Sachs, the notorious Wall Street investment bank. Teamster president, Jimmy Hoffa Jr., has publicly expressed support for the Occupy movement. Michael Novick of Anti-Racist Action, one of the main organizers at Occupy LA working on the port shutdown action in Los Angeles, told WW that the strategy will be to shut down three main targets. Novick states, “When we put the resolution through at the General Assembly in support of the port shutdown, it was tied to building a general strike on May 1st of 2012 and building relations to the migrant rights movement.” Finally, the West Coast Occupy movements are targeting the ports as major commercial centers, showing that they can strike at the institutions which help to aggregate the wealth of the 1 percent by disrupting Wall Street on the waterfront. It’s the history of the militant ILWU which enables this attack to have teeth. The ILWU rank and file have historically supported political struggles such as the anti-apartheid movement, the anti-war movement, in defense of Palestine in the face of attacks on Gaza, in support of the Wisconsin struggle against union busting, etc. The 1 percent, under the banner of the Port of Oakland, launched the first volley of their assault on Dec. 4, with full-page ads in the San Francisco Chronicle and Oakland Tribune against the planned Occupy port blockade. They know all too well how powerful this movement has become, evidenced by the historic general strike call and blockade of the Port of Oakland on Nov. 2, when the Occupy movement, with the support of the ILWU rank and file and port truckers, shut down the entire port. Who bears the costs? Small business owners, independent truck drivers, and taxpayers trying to make ends meet, of course: The mobilization of over 60,000 people that shut down the Port of Oakland on Nov. 2 is being used by organizers as the model for the West Coast efforts this Monday. However, some independent truckers at the Port of Oakland told the Huffington Post they were dismayed by the plan. “It’s going to have a snowball negative effect. I depend on the port to feed my family. Why should I have to be put in a predicament because these people lack the skills to get a job?” said Vladimir Torres, an independent trucker who is based out of Long Beach, CA, and comes to the port of Oakland on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Torres is an owner-operator who said he would be dually affected because he works at two West Coast ports. Josh Thomas, a spokesman for the Port of Portland, told the Columbian that 88% of the exporters who call the port home are small and medium-size businesses. “We see this as hurting working people,” Thomas said of the Occupy movement’s port initiative. “We consider it no laughing matter when there’s a large group of people threatening to either block or enter the terminal,” Thomas said, “and we’d have to work closely with local law enforcement agencies and our own marine security officers and potentially (the U.S) Coast Guard, if it came to that.” Way to go, Occupiers: The Alameda County Building and Construction Trades Council’s secretary-treasurer, Andreas Cluver, said many of his union’s workers were recently hired at port building projects after long stretches on unemployment. Given that, a port shutdown aimed at punishing the 1 percent “makes no sense,” he said. …Nearby, changing a tire on his rig before he also left with a load of paper, Hai Ngo 0f San Leandro said he resented the loss of income. “The Occupy people handed out flyers to us, but never asked what we thought before they planned this,” Ngo said. “I will lose about $350, and at holiday time that hurts. It’s just a waste of our time and money, and won’t accomplish anything.” The “battle” over power at the ports has been building for months. And the progressives are only going to escalate from here. From the socialists’ website: EGT is planning to bring a huge grain ship to the Port of Longview, sometime in December or early January, to unload the grain piled up there with the use of scab labor. That isn’t going to happen without a major fight. Plans are in the works for phase two of this struggle. Caravans will be heading up to Longview to support the ILWU’s fight to keep their jobs and maintain their union…The battle is on! Like they said: “It’s going to get worse before it gets better”… …and it’s all being brought to you with explicit support from teachers’ unions , Democrats , and the White House. Remember in November.
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Your guide to D12: Occupiers return to ports for West Coast shutdown
I was thinking about this when Pepperdine’s Professor Gregory McNeal sent me the link to his essay on drone warfare. There are a lot of conservatives in American higher education, and not just professors. I’ve been reading my students’ term papers and most of them are so full of common sense and reasonable analysis. I sometimes wonder how instead that college campuses have becomes such intellectually violent places, inhospitable to the robust exchange of ideas. I think conservatives on campus often aren’t as mobilized as are partisans on the left, and of course given the radical left orientation of the unions, there’s good incentive not to be. In any case, take a look at the piece from Ed Driscoll, ” Dropping the A-Bomb on History ” (via Instapundit ): If conservatives ever want to recapture the high ground of culture, just creating an alternative news media is nowhere near sufficient. they have to — somehow — recapture academia, where culture is ultimately created. And destroyed as well. RELATED : From Bruce Kessler, at Maggie’s Farm, ” Jews Confront The Gentlemen’s Agreement On Campuses .”
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Conservatives Must Recapture American Universities
So, yeah. All that White House demagoguery about prescription drug shortages I wrote about last week was simply smoke and mirrors to cover up rotten crony deals for his Big Pharma/Big Labor friends. I shed more light below on the chumminess between former SEIU thug-in-chief Andy Stern, fat cat Dem donor Ronald Perelman, and Obama health care bureaucrat Nicole Lurie. Related non-shocker: SEIU announced its endorsement of Obama 2012. Pay to play. Corrupt birds of a feather… *** Obama’s Half-Billion-Dollar Crony Drug Deal by Michelle Malkin Creators Syndicate Copyright 2011 What do you get when you mix Democratic fat-cat donations, Big Labor favors, pharmaceutical lobbying and Beltway business as usual? Answer: another toxic half-billion-dollar Barack Obama-approved crony deal. Move over, Solyndra. Here comes Siga-Gate. This latest Chicago-style payoff on your dime involves a dubious smallpox drug backed by a liberal billionaire investor, along with a former union boss who was one of the White House’s most frequent visitors. They’re the “1 percent” with 100 percent immunity from the selectively outraged Occupier mobs that purport to oppose partisan government bailouts and handouts to privileged corporations. Ronald Perelman is the New York City-based leveraged buyout wheeler-dealer who controls Siga Technologies. He has donated nearly $130,000 mostly to Democrats over the past two election cycles alone (history here ), and he forked over $50,000 to pay for the president’s lavish inaugural parties. A Siga affiliate ( MacAndrews and Forbes ) pitched in nearly half a million more in contributions — 65 percent of which went to Democrats — and the firms have spent millions on lobbying . Perelman’s pharma company makes an experimental antiviral pill used by smallpox patients who received diagnoses too late to be treated with the existing smallpox vaccine. Smallpox experts cast doubt on the need for the drug given ample vaccine stockpiles, the remoteness of a mass attack and questions about its efficacy. But over the objections of federal contract negotiators, competitors and scientists, the Obama administration approved a lucrative $433 million no-bid deal for Siga in May. No other manufacturers were able to compete for the “sole source” procurement, according to the Los Angeles Times. The special arrangement was made after a competitor objected to the administration’s violating small-business rules during a first call for bids. That’s right: It’s yet another rigged giveaway from a Hope-and-Change champion who vowed on the 2008 campaign trail to “end the abuse of no-bid contracts once and for all.” Intensifying the culture-of-corruption stench: the critical role of Andy Stern . He’s the profligate, corruption-coddling former head of the powerful Service Employees International Union — the 2.2 million-member public-employee union powerhouse that he left in April 2010 with a mountain of debt and eroding rank-and-file pensions (and looming FBI investigation ). After pouring some $60 million of workers’ dues into Democratic coffers, Stern was rewarded by Obama with a cozy spot on the White House deficit panel and dozens of visits to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — including at least seven with the president, one with Vice President Joe Biden, and meetings with Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Biden Chief of Staff Ron Klain, OMB Director Peter Orszag, health czar aide Jennifer Cannistra and Valerie Jarrett’s former high-powered aide and Chicago fundraiser Tina Tchen. In a classic access-buying maneuver, Siga placed Stern on its board of directors in June 2010. Four months later, Siga nabbed an estimated $3 billion contract. By January of this year, Siga’s stock had skyrocketed . The House GOP has been investigating the deal for months, which comes amid separate allegations of insider trading and political profiteering by investigative journalist Peter Schweizer. Stern and Perelman have been scratching each other’s backs for years. In the fall of 2006, the SEIU backed off organizing protests against AlliedBarton , a security guard firm in Philadelphia owned by a Perelman interest — and then remained quiet when the firm was bought out by a longtime SEIU nemesis , the Blackstone Group. According to the L.A. Times, which exposed the scandal over the weekend, Obama’s top biodefense bureaucrat Nicole Lurie railroaded a key dissenter at the Department of Health and Human Services who ridiculed Siga’s inflated projected profit margins. Lurie soothingly reassured a whiny Siga executive that the “most senior procurement official” would take over and mollified him in a letter: “I trust this will be satisfactory to you.” Lurie falsely told the newspaper that she had never made contact with the official regarding the contract and deemed any such contact improper. When caught with documentation, her department spun the communication with Siga as a “national security” matter. Lurie, it should be noted, is a former Clintonite and Howard Dean health care consultant who was most recently in the headlines for pushing anthrax vaccine testing for children . According to the Labor Union Report , there have been market murmurs of a merger between Siga and the anthrax vaccine manufacturer, PharmAthene. Hard to trust Lurie’s public health moral authority with the taint of pay-for-play wafting over the Siga deal. As always, venture socialism backed by Big Labor muscle and White House wealth redistribution is hazardous to taxpayers’ health.
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Obama’s Half-Billion-Dollar Crony Drug Deal; Related non-shocker: SEIU endorses Obama
