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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2008-09-22

The Whole Story: Udall's Sweatshop Connection 

How many different stories have run in Colorado papers, breathlessly reporting on Bob Schaffer's dubious connection to a "sweatshop" in the Northern Mariana Islands. More than a couple.


So, where's the "professional journalists" when Mark Udall shows up with a sweatshop issue of his own?


kudos to Ben for unearthing this one:


Susie Tompkins-Buell and her husband Mark Buell each gave $2,300 to Mark Udall's campaign on June 19, 2007. Both Tompkins-Buell and her husband list San Francisco as their residence. Also on June 19, the Udall campaign took in nearly $50,000 from a series of San Francisco area contributors - his largest one-day California take in all of 2007. On May 31, 2007 - 19 days before all the funds poured in - the Udall campaign reported paying Tompkins-Buell $972.50 for "event personnel." . . .


Tompkins-Buell's company] Esprit de Corp. was found by the National Labor Relations Board to have illegally interrogated and intimidated $2-an-hour Chinese workers, and then to have shut down a factory to keep them from unionizing. The Department of Labor found that an Esprit contractor doctored payroll records and refused to pay overtime.


How does a candidate whose whole schtick is "championing the little guy" and whose best friends are unions square his rhetoric with the fact that one of his biggest donors/fundraisers made living off the sweat of the little guy? Is that really a relationship Mark Udall can just sweep under the rug?


Or will the "professional journalists" simply perform the same service for him that they've done for Barack Obama vis-a-vis Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, and Jim Johnson?
Posted by: Michael / 9/22/2008 12:27:00 AM

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