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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.

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.

Gerald Schuster, of Boston/New York. In 1999 the Village Voice publicly wondered why Hillary Clinton attended a $500,000 fundraiser hosted by Schuster's wife, Elaine. "Real estate tycoon" Schuster inherited his Wingate Construction Company from his father-in-law, Bert Siegel. As early as 1977 a Boston newspaper has called Schuster one of that city's worst slumlords with 1,200 housing code violations in a two-year span. Schuster's company took over the management of the Beekman Housing Project in the South Bronx in 1996, a complex that has been since subject to “at Least” 1,600 housing violations. [VEST, J., 12-21-99, p. 31]