HILL'S $$ FLOOD FUELING DEMS

July 17, 2002 -- WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is spreading campaign cash across New York, helping Attorney General Eliot Spitzer build his war chest and aiding Democratic legislative candidates, according to reports released yesterday.

Clinton's political action committee, called HILLPAC-NY, raised $157,100 in the first six months of this year, records show.

Parmigiano-Reggiano Consorzio and Rienzi and Sons Settle Lawsuit

JUNE 27, 2002 -- The Consorzio del Formaggio Parmigiano-Reggiano, the international association that oversees the production, certification, and marketing of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and Rienzi and Sons, Inc., a distributor of Italian food products based in Astoria, N.Y., have settled a lawsuit that was initiated in 1999 by the Consorzio. Allegations were that Rienzi's sale of grated cheese under the term "Parmigiano" infringed the Consorzio's registered certification mark "Parmigiano-Reggiano."

In the settlement, it was agreed that the Consorzio would drop the suit and its claim for damages in exchange for Rienzi's agreement to discontinue marketing its grated cheese under the name Parmigiano, or any colorable imitation of that term.

Target of union's ire withdraws from Democrats' event

By Frank Phillips, Globe Staff, 11/14/2001

Elaine Schuster, the wealthy Newton woman who has raised millions of dollars for Democrats, withdrew from a big-ticket party fund-raiser yesterday after unions threatened to throw picket lines around the event to protest her involvement.

Schuster said she decided to back out of the Nov. 20 event to avoid a politically embarrassing situation for former President Bill Clinton, the featured speaker.

''I will not allow outdated, aggressive union tactics to embarrass President Clinton or the Democratic National Committee,'' she said in a statement. The event, with tickets going for between $10,000 and $50,000 a couple, is expected to raise at least $500,000.

Her husband, Gerald Schuster, is in a bitter, 21/2-year-old battle with the Service Employees International Union, which is trying to negotiate a contract for low-wage workers at a Wilbraham nursing home he owns.

Last week, SEIU's president, Celia Wcislo, told the Globe her union planned to picket at the entrances of the Park Plaza Hotel event if Elaine Schuster remained a co-sponsor.

The protest, backed by the state AFL-CIO, presented a political problem for leading Democrats, who are friendly with the Schusters but loath to cross a picket line. US Senator John F. Kerry said he would not cross the picket line. President Clinton had not said what he would do.

Elaine Schuster broke with the state Democratic Party last spring after it sided with the unions in the dispute. That split has generated ongoing tensions between state party leaders and the chairman of the Democratic National Committee,Terrence R. McAuliffe, well-placed party sources said. The Schusters, during the Clinton presidency, were major donors and fund-raisers for the DNC and Democratic candidates.

Despite her withdrawal from the DNC's big money event in Boston next week, Elaine Schuster said that she will continue to work for the national party.

''Intimidation and threats by the SEIU will not change my resolve to support and participate in the Democratic Party,'' she said in a statement.

Alan Eisner, a Schuster family spokesman, accused the union leaders of putting the Democrats' efforts at regaining control of the US House in next year's elections at risk.

''This is a Pyrrhic victory for the SEIU, which has sabotaged its own party by targeting one of the DNC's most loyal and effective fund-raisers,'' Eisner said, reflecting the anger felt by the Schusters and their allies. ''If the SEIU was more interested in taking back the House, and less inclined to engage in political blackmail and extortion to expand its own power base, everybody would be better off.''

Informed of Schuster's decision to withdraw, Wcislo, the SEIU president, said her union will cancel the picket. She also defended the union tactics.

''They can call us any name they want to, but we stand for the right of workers to speak up for themselves and win a living wage and decent working conditions,'' Wcislo said. If that upsets others, she said, ''so be it.''

Eisner also defended Gerald Schuster's labor record, saying his real estate business has worked well with unions for years.

This story ran on page E8 of the Boston Globe on 11/14/2001.

The bitter personal dispute between Massachusetts unions and a wealthy Newton couple, Gerald and Elaine Schuster, who have raised millions of dollars for Democrats, has tripped up party leaders, including Senator John F. Kerry and national chairman Terence R. McAuliffe, who are trying to broker peace.

They say Gerald Schuster's refusal to allow workers - who they say make $7 or $8 an hour and have no health insurance - to organize violates a fundamental party value.

''The national Democratic Party doesn't get it yet,'' said Robert J. Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. ''It's beyond me why the Democratic Party would side with someone who has such contempt for unions. It is illogical.''

________________________________________________

§ Gerald and Elaine Schuster ($100,000 in 1996) are real estate tycoons who control the Massachusetts firm Continental Wingate. In 1999, Continental retained for contract negotiations the law firm of Jackson, Lewis, Schnitzler & Krupman, which runs nationwide workshops called "How to Stay Union-Free Into the 21st Century." That led the Massachusetts state AFL-CIO to pass a resolution that calls for a boycott of any fundraiser at which Gerald Schuster is present. The bureaucrats at the Housing and Urban Development Department are no fans of the Schusters either. According to the Village Voice, HUD was forced to assume a caretaker role at a South Bronx apartment building owned by Continental Wingate when the company defaulted on $27.4 million in US loans. One HUD memo cited "major life-threatening health and safety conditions" at the property. In addition to the Schusters' personal efforts for Gore, Continental Wingate donated $10,000 in soft money to the Democrats this year.

This is nothing more than power being bought and sold.
The Democrats talk out of both sides of their mouth and are adept at political blackmail.
They speak of Republicans and corporations and then put out their hands for corporate welfare to them.Just like all of them crawling on corporate jets to go to Nantucket last week after giving corporations hell in the news.This is a form of coercion.
I dont know if they taught Jesse Jackson this trick or he taught them but it goes like this,squeal and raise all the hell you can and the powers will bring forth the money. The 'Mainstream Media" is in the back pocket of the Democrat Party because they aide and abet them in doing this by giving them both the Democrats and Jesse Jackson all of the positive news space they want.Then when they,Jesse or the Democrats screw up the 'Mainstream Press" downplays it.They pay each other back and dont have to work as hard this way.The Dems leak to the press and the press covers the Dems backs.They have a good thing going.
I have come to believe the press is just as corrupt as the politicans and they are all in bed together.

Fed up with sporadic heat, backed-up sewage, infestations of rats, piles of trash in the hallways, crumbling ceilings and unlit and unsafe hallways, Allen and dozens of fellow tenants organized in the mid 1990s and convinced HUD to investigate Continental Wingate, a billion-dollar company owned by Gerald Schuster, a major Democratic party contributor. It all began when a few women, tired of covering broken windows with plastic sheets, knocked on their neighbors’ doors and, with the help of a tenant organizer, began meeting and agitating until they couldn’t be ignored.

As City Limits reported in an award-winning series [“Anatomy of a Sweetheart Deal,” November 1997, and “Reversal of Fortune,” December 1997], the feds’ probe uncovered negligence, fraud and buildings run like a bank machine. Critics of the Clinton Administration also found ammunition to accuse then-HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo of giving a major break to a politically connected developer.

But the agreement, and the tenants’ ambitions, were sidetracked from the start. Continental Wingate was not just a financial liability for HUD, but a political one, too: General partner Gerald Schuster and his wife, Elaine, were devoted Democratic Party fundraisers, raising millions for President Clinton’s campaigns and the Democratic National Committee. When details of the deal were made public by City Limits in late 1997, it looked an awful lot like a $40 million bailout of a wealthy and politically connected slumlord. HUD’s inspector general concluded at the time that the deal “rewards a landlord who may bear responsibility for the deplorable conditions of the projects.”

The IG had worse in store for Continental Wingate. In early 1998, the office found that the company had done more than run Beekman into the ground--it also may have misappropriated $1.4 million of federal money intended for the buildings. For HUD to go ahead with the original plan could have meant more bad press and more embarrassing investigations into Schuster’s company. HUD put the Beekman deal on hold.

That June, it asked Continental Wingate to increase its contribution to the bailout, to $6.4 million. Wingate refused, and HUD, eager to get Continental Wingate out of the picture, seized the Beekman deeds in May 1999. Continental Wingate, which did not return calls from City Limits , has yet to pay a cent toward the rehabilitation of the buildings it bled.

Democratic donors split with state party over union support

By Leslie Miller, Associated Press writer

BOSTON -- Elaine and Gerald Schuster, multimillionaires whose fund-raising prowess on behalf of Democrats earned them invitations to the White House, parted ways with the state party after it sided with a union seeking higher wages at a nursing home the couple owns.

The Schusters decided they would no longer contribute to the Massachusetts Democratic party after its chairman, Philip Johnston, sent a letter to the 325 state committee members asking them to urge her husband to quit fighting with union workers at the Wingate at Wilbraham Nursing
Home.

Johnston said yesterday he's been deluged with supportive telephone calls.

"It's clear the Schusters do not believe in one important party principle, which is that workers have the right to organize," Johnston said.

The spat underscores how an affluent elite has severed the Democratic Party from its working-class base, said Lou DiNatale, senior fellow at the McCormick Institute at the University of Massachusetts.

"Since television has begun to dominate major races, fund-raisers have replaced organizers, community activists and party workers," said DiNatale. "You have to reduce the influence of contributors in order to regain public trust in the political process."

A family spokesman and friend said the Schusters have long upheld causes that benefit unions, as well as the Franciscan Children's Hospital, the Boston Public Library, Brandeis University and others.

"He (Johnston) is denying the Schusters a basic right of being able to negotiate in good faith in a private business matter with the unions without political interference," said Alan Eisner.

Johnson also sacrificed one of the party's best friends because he'd been having trouble raising money and needs union support, Eisner said.

"That's the biggest garbage I've ever heard out of anyone's spokesman's mouth in all my years at the AFL-CIO," said Robert Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO.

"Phil Johnston is a hero to working people in the commonwealth and the nation for standing up to these monied fund-raisers," Haynes said.

The Schusters know what it's like to work for a living, Eisner said. Gerald Schuster only had a quarter in his pocket when he married Elaine, but managed to buy a building in Lynn that he leveraged into a national real estate and health care conglomerate, Needham-based Continental Wingate, Eisner said.

Elaine Schuster found she was good at raising money and began holding fund-raisers for such candidates as U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino. She helped raise $900,000 for U.S. Rep. Joseph Moakley of Boston at a single event. She raised $450,000 for Hillary Clinton's successful U.S. Senate bid, earning her an invitation to the White House. One of her favorite venues, the Park Plaza Hotel, was jokingly called "the Democrats ATM."

Two years ago, union picketers began showing up at her fund-raisers. They said Gerald Schuster was trying to break the newly formed union at the Wilbraham nursing home by refusing to negotiate a contract and replacing full-time workers, who start at $8 an hour, with temporary workers.

"Caring for the residents -- that should be the first priority, not bankrolling politicians," said Rand Wilson, spokesman for Service Employees International Union Local 285 in Boston.

After Schuster berated Johnston last week, union members passed out "No Schuster" stickers at the state party's annual Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt dinner. About two-thirds of the Democrats stuck the stickers onto their clothing, Johnston said.

For their part, the Schusters still plan to give to Democrats -- but not the state party.

Much as it pains us to horn a U.S. senator who has done so much to clean up worldwide dirty money networks and expose shady doings by the CIA, John Kerry (D-Mass.) is on our naughty list this year for failing to end his association with Donors from Hell Elaine and Gerry Schuster, the union-busting owners of the Wingate at Wilbraham nursing home.

Millionaire fundraisers Gerry and Elaine Schuster give big bucks to the Democrat Party and its candidates. Their contributions are made to protect the huge profits they earn from their extensive housing and nursing home businesses.

While Gerry and Elaine give away millions, they shortchange their tenants, elderly residents and employees by skimping on staffing and maintenance. In just the last two years, their nursing home in Wilbraham Massachusetts has been charged with:

·Fifty nine major deficiencies in the quality of care (Mass. Department of Public Health),

·Two serious violations of federal safety and health laws (OSHA),

·Racial discrimination in their marketing program (Fair Housing Act),

·Threatening employees with physical violence (NLRB),

·Firing, harassing, and discriminating against employees for supporting a union (NLRB).

Nursing home workers, residents, community leaders and many elected officials are taking a stand to pressure the Schusters to improve the quality of care…

·The Massachusetts State Democratic Party has condemned the Schusters’ union busting.

·The Massachusetts AFL-CIO has called for a boycott of all political fundraisers hosted or sponsored by the Schusters.

·Two hundred concerned citizens from the community attended a forum on the staffing crisis.

·Forty state legislators have called on the Schusters to stop wasting health care resources on union busting.

·Over twenty members of the clergy in the Wilbraham/Springfield-area have called on the Schusters to end the union busting that has caused workers, residents and their families to suffer

Caregivers challenge Wingate nursing home owners to make fair treatment and quality care their top priorities
SEIU Local 285 Press Release Florida Council of Senior Citizens, local health care workers crash elite Palm Beach fundraiser to demand better staffing.

Caregivers from the Wingate nursing home have been struggling for two years to improve the quality of care and staffing levels at their facility in Wilbraham, Massachusetts. But the home’s owners, Gerald and Elaine Schuster say that they can’t afford it.

So, when workers found out that the Schuster’s were hosting an elite bash on March 1 in Palm Beach to raise money for Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, (a very well endowed and prestigious teaching hospital) it made them furious.

"Instead of raising money for a rich hospital, Gerry and Elaine Schuster should be working to find money to improve conditions for residents and employees at Wingate," said Frieda Post, a LPN at Wingate who made the trip to Palm Beach. "That should be their first priority."

The Massachusetts Wingate employees were joined by many Floridians who share their concerns. "We don’t really care who Schuster is raising money for. Our only concern is the staffing levels in his nursing home and the care those residents are receiving," said Tony Fransetta, President of Florida State Council of Senior Citizens. Fransetta spoke to supporters outside the party at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Manalapan.

"Whether it’s Massachusetts or Florida, we’re all in the same struggle to improve conditions in health care today," said Dody Farley, a respiratory therapist from St. Mary’s Hospital in West Palm Beach. Farley was one of many local health care employees who also protested to show their support for improved staffing and fair treatment of residents and caregivers.

Caregivers at the Wingate at Wilbraham nursing home in Massachusetts formed a union more than two years ago to improve the quality of care. The Schuster’s -- top Democratic Party fundraisers and prominent liberal socialites -- have stubbornly refused to improve the quality of care or respect their employees.

Wingate at Wilbraham is on a Massachusetts Department of Public Health "watch list" because of a past history of serious problems with the quality of care. The National Labor Relations Board has also cited Wingate for multiple and repeated violations of labor law, including replacing experienced dedicated staff with temp agency workers and harassing and firing workers for supporting their union.

Caregivers who could not make the trip are hoping that it will send the Schuster’s a message. "We back our co-workers who are going there 100 percent. We want to let Gerald Schuster know that we are very serious. We wouldn't have gone all the way to Florida if we didn't think that this is a very serious situation," said Mary Candido, an LPN at Wingate.

For Immediate Release: Thursday, March 1, 2001

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