[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Sign-in] [Mail] [Setup] [Help]
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
|
(s)Elections See other (s)Elections Articles Title: Obama's fundraising collides with his rhetoric --Union says senator did little to save jobs GALESBURG, Ill. Maytag workers whose jobs were shipped to Mexico serve as consistent characters in Barack Obama's stump speech. He employs their stories in railing against corporations that use trade pacts to replace well-paid union workers with low-cost foreign ones. It is a ready applause line for the Illinois presidential hopeful, one that he has been reciting almost verbatim since he was a candidate for U.S. Senate in 2004, when appliance giant Maytag was in the process of shutting a refrigerator plant here, putting 1,600 people out of work. But the union that represented most of those Galesburg workers isn't impressed with Obama's advocacy. It has endorsed his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. Its leaders say they wish he had done more about their members' plight. What rankles some is what Obama didn't do even as he expressed solidarity four years ago with workers mounting a desperate fight to save their jobs. Obama had a special connection to Maytag: Lester Crown, one of the company's directors and biggest investors whose family, records show, has raised tens of thousands of dollars for Obama's campaigns since 2003. But Crown says Obama never raised the fate of the Galesburg plant with him, and the billionaire industrialist insists any jawboning would have been futile. Obama's chief political strategist, David Axelrod, said late Thursday that the senator did not know Crown sat on Maytag's board until the Tribune noted it last September in a story about the closing of the Maytag headquarters in Newton, Iowa. As Illinois readies for its part in next week's Super Tuesday primaries, the high-profile treatment given the Maytag situation by the state's homegrown candidate is a reminder of the often awkward intersection of populist rhetoric, complex issues and the financial realities of presidential campaigning. Obama's rhetoric on Maytag has been unswerving and underscored by the closure of other U.S. appliance plants by Whirlpool Corp., which bought Maytag in 2006. In his victory speech after Saturday's South Carolina primary, Obama spoke yet again of "the Maytag worker who is now competing with his own teenager for a $7-an-hour job at Wal-Mart because the factory he gave his life to shut its doors." Beyond such talk, there is little evidence that Obama went to any lengths to fight the Galesburg shutdown. Some analysts say his ties to the Crowns--Lester's son, James, is the Illinois finance chairman of Obama's presidential run--leave him open to criticism. Charles Lewis, founder of the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity, said in the era of big money politics there's often a disconnect between the passionate words of a politician and the financial interests of the wealthy benefactors who help bankroll their campaigns. "It is hypocritical," said Lewis. "Democrats are often in a tricky position because they are close to labor and talk about the homeless and poor, but they need money and have to turn to the captains of industry to get it." The Obama campaign said the Maytag workers' union never asked him to intervene with Crown and that he would have done so if they had. Union officials said they were unaware of the Crowns' ties to Maytag or to Obama. In his campaign, Obama has not shied from condemning rivals for straying from their own populist images. Locked in an increasingly personal war of words with Clinton, Obama has attacked her for long-ago service on the board of Wal-Mart, which has frosty relations with organized labor. Before John Edwards dropped out of the race this week, Obama hit him for financial ties to a hedge fund with investments in Whirlpool. The Obama critique stressed Whirlpool's role in closing U.S. factories, including Maytag's longtime headquarters in Newton, Iowa. Crown family members are major Democratic Party donors. Some have given to Clinton's campaigns for the U.S. Senate in New York. But in the presidential run, their money is behind Obama, campaign records show. The Crowns and employees of their family-run holding company have given at least $195,000 to Obama's U.S. Senate and presidential campaigns. Lester Crown made his first contribution to Obama, $2,100, last February and hosted a fundraiser for him last fall. But Crown's wife has pumped $16,100 into Obama' coffers, beginning with a $12,000 gift to his U.S. Senate campaign in 2003.The economic viability of Maytag's Galesburg operation is still in dispute. Obama wrote extensively about the plant in his 2006 best seller, "The Audacity of Hope," and clearly sided with frustrated union workers who insisted their plant was profitable and productive but was being sacrificed to corporate greed. Maytag management announced plans in 2002 to shutter the Galesburg factory. In an interview, Lester Crown said the plant hadn't been competitive for years and that Maytag gave two years' notice of the shutdown to minimize the pain. "Barack can say whatever he wants, but this was not an example of corporate indifference. That's absolutely inaccurate," Crown said, though he stressed that his support for Obama is still unwavering. In a statement issued late Thursday, the Obama campaign defended his record on standing up for American workers against special interests. "Because of Obama's history of working with Democrats and Republicans to get things done, our campaign has generated the support of voters and contributors with a wide range of policy beliefs," the statement read. Most of the Galesburg workers were members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, whose national president has complained loudly this campaign season that Obama's support for Maytag workers was more show than substance. IAM spokesman Rick Sloan, said the union's problems with Obama go beyond Galesburg. Sloan complained that Obama has not used his position in the Senate to help Illinois IAMAW members hurt in other plant shutdowns as well as the United Airlines bankruptcy. Obama also spurned the union's endorsement interview last summer, Sloan said. Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn and former U.S. Rep. Lane Evans, who represented Galesburg, aggressively lobbied Maytag to change its mind in 2004, Sloan said. Obama did not, Sloan said, adding: "He could easily have said, Lester my friend, there are folks hurting in Galesburg, you're on the board, what can you do?"Obama first took up the Maytag workers' cause in mid-2004 as they mounted a futile effort to save the Galesburg plant. Obama met with the workers and rallied with them there to fight the closing, but did not broach the subject with Crown. "I have never had a conversation with State Sen. Obama or U.S. Sen. Obama regarding the Maytag Corporation," Crown told the Tribune. Maytag shut the Galesburg plant after Labor Day 2004. At the time, Crown owned nearly 4 percent of Maytag's common stock, according to company filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Another 5 percent of Maytag stock was owned by an investment group that included Crown's children and relatives, the filings show.A year later, when the company announced its sale to Whirlpool, the combined Maytag stakes of Crown and an investment group including his children and relatives were worth around $150 million. Supporters of Obama note that he was still serving in the Illinois Senate in 2004 and was only a candidate for the U.S. Senate with no power beyond the bully pulpit to fight the closing. Since his election, he has backed legislation to combat the overseas export of American jobs. In May 2006, Obama wrote to the Secretary of Labor asking for assistance for displaced Maytag workers. There still is little awareness of Obama's ties to the Crowns in Galesburg, a blue-collar town of 37,000 in western Illinois, and much admiration toward him. "I like Obama," said Mary Ann Armstrong, who lost her job inspecting refrigerator parts for defects when the plant closed. "He was new back then and probably did all he could do." The factory's shutdown was a blow to Galesburg, but the withering of its manufacturing base began well before NAFTA's 1993 ratification. Galesburg has endured a slow bleeding of factories and blue collar job since the 1970s. Maytag's closing caused undeniable pain in Galesburg. The tax base is down, as is school enrollment. But it wasn't cataclysmic. Obama has suggested former Maytag workers have been forced to scrounge for minimum-wage pay. Still, many have landed new factory jobs 45 minutes away in the Quad Cities and Peoria.Perhaps the most lasting blow from Maytag's departure is to the reputation of Galesburg, the birthplace of poet Carl Sandburg. At Dr. Mike's computer repair shop on Main Street, owner Mike Kroll sees Obama's frequent focus on Galesburg and Maytag as welcome but also counterproductive. "It would be nice," he said, "to see Galesburg as the feature of some other story than the death knell of manufacturing in Middle America." Return to ObamaTruth.Org
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Peppa (#0)
Uh-oh, there you go again.
"has raised tens of thousands of dollars for Obama's campaigns since 2003." This cant be true, the money is coming from blacks and white guilters in sums of five dollars or less, from their food budget. This says one man raised THOUSANDS, must be an error here.
I'm really sorry. This time, for sure.
This cant be true, the money is coming from blacks and white guilters in sums of five dollars or less, from their food budget. This says one man raised THOUSANDS, must be an error here. I was sure it was a smear too, but I guess this could be easily verified by the WhiteGuilt Hunters for Truth.
Yes, the error is that he raised tens of thousands.
Stop piling on. You will hurt the feelings of our resident white guilters, they are sensitive, you know. I was trying to spare them further guilt, knowing Mom and Pop are not the big donaters. Now you go spill beans that a white guy billionaire raised a kaboodle of loot, how is that gonna look???? Do be more circumspect.
Your propaganda won't fly unless you first convince us that this drop in the bucket, i.e., "tens of thousands of dollars", is somehow significant in comparison to the millions and millions of dollars that must be raised. What are we talking about here? Maybe 0.0001%? I still think you should shriek and jump up and down about the size of Obama's flag pin. That's subjective. So no matter how big of a flag pin he wears, you can still scream that it's too small. You don't have to worry about facts that way.
.
LOL!
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. ;)
|
||
|
[Home]
[Headlines]
[Latest Articles]
[Latest Comments]
[Post]
[Sign-in]
[Mail]
[Setup]
[Help]
|
||