Republicans: Cut everything, cut nothing
Absolutely hilarious. Republicans can’t name a single program they would cut to balance the budget:
October 7th, 2010
Archive for October 7th, 2010
Deficit Commission member and former union leader Andy Stern now serves biowarfare industry
Andy Stern, former head of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is on the Deficit Commission, allegedly representing organized labor. But, it turns out that he’s now on the management side through serving on the board of a biowarfare defense company, SIGA as Ryan Grim reports at Huffington Post:
Former SEIU head Andy Stern has gone from leading one of the nation’s largest unions to working on behalf of organized labor’s historic enemy, private equity.
The Service Employees International Union and its affiliated unions waged an intense war against private equity when Stern was its leader. Today, he sits on the board of SIGA Technologies. Ron Perelman, a high-profile corporate raider ranked by Forbes as one of the richest men in the world, and his private-equity firm MacAndrews & Forbes, are the largest shareholders in SIGA Technologies. Perelman is the sole owner of MacAndrews & Forbes.
Perelman is able to exercise a fair degree of control over the company. Eric Rose, who works under Perelman at MacAndrews, is the CEO of SIGA, a publicly owned company. Rose named Stern to SIGA’s board, according to the company’s website. Stern was awarded 25,000 stock options in June, according to SEC filings.
Stern’s new alliance with a private-equity baron undermines the purpose of his appointment to President Obama’s deficit commission; he was named to the panel in order to represent the interests of workers, but SIGA Technologies, a biowarfare defense company, is in direct competition with other public priorities for federal dollars.
Savings from cuts the panel recommends to social programs could be used to fund defense and homeland security spending, which would benefit SIGA. David Cote, another panel member, is CEO of Honeywell, which also relies heavily on federal dollars, and has a similar conflict. But Cote is not presumed to be representing a progressive base. (Indeed, he’s currently locking out striking workers at a uranium enrichment plant.)
Though Grim only hints, this development raises the question if the SIGA appointment was payback for service Stern rendered as union leader when the union we4nt easy on several industries at workers’ expense.
In any case, the Deficit Commission, which was already totally stacked against ordinary people in favor of pro-industry so-called “deficit hawks.” ["So-called" because their only for cutting "entitlements," not warfare or corporate welfare, much less, in most cases, for raising taxes on the wealthy.] Stern’s conflict-of-interest, when combined with the remarks of the co-chair, have led the Commission to lose any tiny shred of credibility it ever may have had. The Commission should be disbanded. Progressives in Congress should take a strong stand against any recommended cuts in social services coming from this tainted group.
October 7th, 2010