Leftist "caring" is just hypocrisy

Consider the case of Nancy Pelosi, the ultimate San Francisco big-government liberal, and leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives. She is the daughter of Big Tommy D'Alesandro, boss of the Baltimore Democrat political machine. She grew up in a household built around the use of political power for personal gain, under the banner of compassion. In her career in Congress, she has garnered the highest praise from the AFL-CIO, the Americans for Democratic Action, and the League of Conservation Voters. She is grotesquely pro-union and pro-regulation, and a fierce "environmentalist," of course. Her favorite pastime is attacking people on her political right - which is everyone to the right of, say, Mao Zedong - as enemies of clean air, clean water, the working man, or whatever. To her, we're all greedy, vile exploiters of the poor.

Actually, to be fair, her favorite pastime is enacting laws to increase the power of unions, trial lawyers, and the federal government. But Pelosi's private life is all capitalist. She and her husband have a net worth of over $50 million - not bad for champions of the poor. Much of their wealth comes from real estate ventures, such as the development of the Corde Valle Golf Club and Resort in Silicon Valley. Schweizer documents how the Pelosis' private partnership (Lions Gate Limited) managed to get approval to develop some raw land over the objections of environmentalists and other local groups, by contractually promising that the club would be primarily a public course and that the development would be ecologically friendly. But the developers stiffed the public. The golf course turned out to be primarily for the use of the ultrawealthy: the hoi polloi have to reserve three days in advance and pay $275 for a round of golf. A membership at the club costs $250,000! And Lions Gate failed to live up to the promised environmental guarantees. When the San Jose Planning Commission started thinking about looking into whether Lions Gate had made fraudulent representations to get the development approvals, the Pelosis simply hired some local, well-connected lobbyists, and the Planning Commission backed away like frightened kittens.

In a similar manner, Schweizer shows that Pelosi, winner of the Cesar Chavez Legacy Award, uses companies without United Farm Workers contracts to harvest grapes on her vineyard, and she sells those grapes to nonunion wineries. Again, this darling of the AFL-CIO (and recipient of a huge amount of its money for her campaigns) owns a big chunk of two lavish hotels and a chain of chi-chi restaurants that are all resolutely non-union shops.

Next consider Ralph Nader, the ultimate corporation basher and perennial candidate for the presidency (not to mention sainthood). Nader's persona is that of the Spartan lefty, the "walk the walk not just talk the talk" opponent of the hideous corporate greed that dirties the soul of America. When he visited the Soviet Union back in the 1960s, he admired the lack of consumer products, and when he returned to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet system he was dismayed to hear people praising free market economics. To Nader, corporations are evil: they dominate governments, rig prices, sell dangerous and useless products, and generally hurt our standard of living.

But in his personal life, about which St. Ralph is very secretive, things are different. He lives well, using a D.C. mansion that he apparently owns (though the title is in his sister's name), earns millions from speaking and writing, and invests in - big, multinational corporations! He has net assets of about $4 million, most of it in corporate stock, such as the $1 million he owns in Cisco Systems, not to mention his stocks in major defense contractors such as GE and IBM. He controls nonprofit organizations and trusts, all secretly run, with his family members on the governing boards. His charitable foundations give away 4% of their assets every year, the lowest amount possible to keep their IRS tax-exempt status. The remaining assets are also in corporate stock, including telecom monopolies such as Verizon, BellSouth, and Qwest.

More here. And yet more here

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and DISSECTING LEFTISM. My Home Page. Email me (John Ray) here.)

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