It appears Mark Udall is having second - or is it third? - thoughts about Congressional colleague and admitted tax cheat Charlie Rangel. Even after the revelations of Rangel's dirty dealings, Udall refused to return the $12,000 in campaign contributions from Rangel's PAC.
“My quotes were misreported,” Udall said in a brief interview outside the Capitol Friday morning, where he was to cast his vote on the financial rescue package coming before the House. “I said, in effect, that if I were in Mr. Rangel’s shoes I might step aside. But it’s up to Mr. Rangel. He’s an American hero, he’s an enormous asset to the Congress...” ...
Contrary to media reports, Udall said Friday, it was a mistake to read his comments as a call for Rangel to step aside.
“The headlines suggesting I called on him to resign couldn’t have been more wrong. I was saying if I were in his shoes I might step aside as chair of the committee and let the ethics process play out," Udall said. “But we need him. We need him." [emphases added]
So Charlie Rangel is a "hero" and "an enormous asset to the Congress" who is needed in his post, despite tax fraud. But Mark Udall said if he were the one who committed tax fraud, he would have stepped down. Why the distinction? Because Udall indeed is anything but "an enormous asset to the Congress," and no one else there would say they "need him"? Sounds like a campaign commercial I can believe in.
Either Mark Udall is chronically unable to make up his mind about important ethical issues, or he is working hard to obscure the truth from voters. Whichever it is, do Colorado voters need such (lack of) leadership in the U.S. Senate?
[Mark] Udall, who had been up by as many as 10 percentage points in previous polls, is favored by 43 percent of registered voters surveyed, to [Bob] Schaffer's 38 percent.
But with 14 percent of respondents saying they haven't made up their minds less than a month before the election, it's clear the race is much tighter than it appeared to be over the summer, said Brad Coker, managing director of Mason-Dixon Polling and Research.
Congress must retain oversight of the treasury secretary's buyout and should get regular updates, [Mark] Udall insisted. And while it will be up to the next Congress and president to overhaul the financial regulatory system, this bill must outline a road map on how it will get there, he said.
"Clearly this is a laissez-faire attitude that's run amok and, as somebody quipped to me, now we have laissez-fail," Udall said.
So I wouldn't exactly take Mark Udall to be a trusted expert on this issue. Then again, maybe he's just humbly hanging the laissez-fail label on his own shoulders.
First of all, Mark Udall's campaign manager Mike Melanson is listed on an exclusive CoDA invite list as part of the "strategy group." The same person Udall trusts to craft his strategy is someone affiliated with the strategy of educating racial minorities as "idiots." All right.
Next, the AFL-CIO, the labor union assigned by its role as an "institutional member" in the Colorado Democracy Alliance to "Educate the [minority and dropout] Idiots," has given nearly $50,000 to candidate Mark Udall, according to the Federal Election Commission. It's not like Udall is unfamiliar with the agenda of "increasing union power", after all.
None of these facts puts a lot of confidence in Mark Udall's judgment, integrity, or choice of friends. But then again, Mike Melanson, Maggie Fox, and AFL-CIO leaders could come forward and clear the record, if they wish.
Last week we pointed to Mark Udall's feeble attempt to defend his co-sponsorship (with "serious reservations") of the poorly-named Employee Free Choice Act. The examples of South Carolina materials handler Mike Ivey and Kaiser employee Karen Mayhew demonstrated the destructive consequences of Udall's support for the "card-check" process over the secret ballot in workplace union elections.
As [former ultra-liberal Democratic presidential candidate George] McGovern warned with this system: “there are many documented cases where workers have been pressured, harassed, tricked or intimidated into signing cards that have led to mandatory payment of dues.” In hearings in the House of Representatives in 2002, Bruce Esgar, an employee of MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas described such a case when he testified that union organizers threatened that workers who did not sign union cards would lose their jobs when the union was recognized. In testimony in 2007, Ricardo Torres, a long-time organizer for the United Steelworkers felt compelled to quit his job, according to his testimony, after “a senior Steelworkers union official asked me to threaten migrant workers by telling them they would be reported to federal immigration officials if they refused to sign check-off cards.” Jen Jason, a former organizer for UNITE-HERE also testified in 2007 to the fact that they “rarely showed workers what an actual union contract looked like because we knew that it wouldn’t necessarily reflect what a worker would want to see. We were trained to avoid topics such as dues increases, strike histories, etc. and to constantly move the worker back to what the organizer identified as his or her “issues” during the first part of the housecall. This technique was commonly referred to as “re-agitation” during organizer training sessions.” [emphases added]
What would Mark Udall have to say to Bruce Esgar? What platitudes would Udall have for Ricardo Torres or the threatened migrant workers? How would Udall defend the tactics Jen Jason described? How would he explain his anti-secret ballot stance to Mike Ivey or Karen Mayhew? Even ultra-liberal George McGovern realizes how out of touch Udall is for holding this position.
Here's a great clip from Sunday's Meet the Press Debate in which Bob Schaffer calls Mark Udall to the carpet for his votes that helped to make the current financial crisis possible:Notice how Mark Udall doesn't answer the charge, but only tries to shift blame with platitudes and campaign talking points. Hardly the kind of leadership Colorado wants or needs in the U.S. Senate.
Better late than never, I say. Last Friday we brought attention to Mark Udall's hypocritical attacks against Bob Schaffer on the repatriation tax issue.
Today both the major Denver dailies have caught on. The Rocky Mountain News notes that Mark Udall not only supported a 2004 bill that contained the same corporate tax cut provision for which he criticized Bob Schaffer, but also gave a speech on the House floor praising the idea:
In a floor speech before the final vote, Udall said the bill was flawed and filled with unnecessary provisions, according to the Congressional Record.
But he also said, "I will vote for it because it includes provisions to encourage American corporations doing business abroad to repatriate their overseas earnings for investment here at home. This has great potential to stimulate investment in new plants and equipment as well as in the research and development that support innovation, job creation and prosperity."
Meanwhile, the Denver Post confronted the Udall campaign with the facts, forcing his spokesperson to admit the falsehood and recant:
His spokeswoman, Tara Trujillo, said last week that Udall had voted to strip that proposal out of the bill, but that turned out to be wrong.
The campaign is now admitting the mistake, but only after Schaffer's campaign manager pointed to Udall's own floor statement on the bill in which he praised the tax-holiday provision.
Mark Udall has to be careful. Sometimes when he makes his infamous U-turns, he ends up crashing his own campaign bus.
When it comes to the current economic crisis, liberal Washington insider Mark Udall once again proves he is more a part of the problem than of the solution. In February 2005, then-Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan warned Congress of letting the bloated institutions Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to grow with low capital and high risk.
On October 26, 2005, Udall voted against amendments that would have added capital to the mortgage lending giants and authorized them to sell off or acquire assets or liabilities, "if an asset or liability is deemed to be a potential systemic risk to the housing market, the capital markets or the financial system."
Let's be honest here. There are Democrats and Republicans in Congress who screwed up by making these votes. Mark Udall is with them on the wrong side of history.
The Darke Blog notes about this morning's Meet The Press debate between Bob Schaffer and Mark Udall:
In response to a question from Tom Brokaw (Meet the Press) about Iraq, Udall goes on a rant about how the war has weakened the miliatry [sic]. Udall blosters his opinion by pointing out his position on the Armed Services Committee. And then he shames the military by declaring (for all the world to know) that we have no capacity to defend the homeland.
Yes, this is the same Mark Udall who has voted many times against military funding, including providing body armor for combat troops.
And we're supposed to believe Mark Udall really thinks it would be a problem for the United States military to be stretched thin? Just more empty talk from Udall.
"I think it would be helpful if Charles Rangel steps down," Udall said of the New York congressman, who is being investigated for failure to pay taxes on a condominium he owns in the Dominican Republic even as he presides over the House's main tax policy committee.
Made almost as an aside, the comment may create problems for Udall after he said last week that he wasn't going to return a $12,000 contribution from Rangel's PAC to his campaign. [emphasis added]
Bob Schaffer campaign manager Dick Wadhams is not always known for the precision of his quotable quips. But sometimes, like yesterday, he delivered a blow square to Boulder liberal Mark Udall's chin. He couldn't have done it so effectively, though, without the help of Udall's big mouth and voting record.
At issue is the repatriation income tax levied on companies that bring their operations back onto United States soil. Mark Udall went after Bob Schaffer for his support of temporarily reducing the repatriation tax.
Then Saccone notes:
Turning the tables on Udall, Schaffer and his campaign quickly pointed out that Udall voted in favor of a 2004 bill to lower the repatriation tax during the 2005 tax year. (Udall voted against the bill in June and for it in October.)
And finally:
Never one to let this sort of faux pas slip, Schaffer’s campaign manager, Dick Wadhams, wrote in a statement: “While trying to shoot down Bob Schaffer, Boulder Liberal Mark Udall turned the gun on himself in a blazing act of hypocrisy and contradiction.”
We have confirmed that Jodie Evans of Code Pink fame did not endorse the slogan "We Support the Murder of American Troops" - as plausible as that may sound.
So what does it say if Mark Udall accepts a Jodie Evans donation at this weekend's Hollywood fundraiser? Or will Udall have the courage to say "Thanks, but no thanks"?
Update: Edited to remove unfounded section originally quoted but later removed from Townhall article.
Townhall columnist Scott Bensing clues readers into a big Hollywood fundraiser this weekend for Mark Udall and some of his Democratic Senate candidate buddies. Of course, the usual out-of-touch, vapid Hollywood Lefties will be there to bolster the Udall campaign.
But Bensing also points out:
Most upsetting of the event attendees is Jodie Evans. Is she a movie star? No. A Hollywood power-player? No. Evans is a hero to the liberals of Hollywood because she is a representative of the dominant wing of the Democrat party – she is the co-founder of Code Pink.
If Reps. Allen, [Mark] Udall and [cousin Tom] Udall along with Kay Hagan, Jeff Merkley, Al Franken, Jeanne Shaheen and Mark Begich don’t agree with these views, why would they take such generous donations?...
Good question. Mark Udall really isn't trying to distance himself from the theme of this Freedom's Watch ad, is he.
Rasmussen Reports, the gold standard of polling, released the latest results in Colorado's U.S. Senate race, showing an ever-tightening trend since June. The last time the showdown between Mark Udall and Bob Schaffer was so close was in February: Udall 48, Schaffer 46. This result confirms the recent but less reliable National Journal survey results that also showed Udall leading within the margin of error, 41-38.
Lefty bloggers have been doing their bazookie dances over two other recent polls showing Mark Udall leading 48-40. One of them, conducted by Democrat-sponsored Public Policy Polling, skewed results by oversampling Democrat voters. Nice try. Quinnipiac has a bit more clout, but hasn't polled as consistently as Rasmussen.
The gold-standard Rasmussen and the less reliable National Journal paint a more nuanced picture of the state of the race than the hallucinating triumphalists on the Left will admit. But that's okay. The hard numbers should have Mark Udall supporters a little more uneasy. Complacency suits them just fine.
This Sunday, September 28, brings the key nationally-televised debate between Bob Schaffer and Mark Udall on Meet the Press, moderated by media dinosaur Tom Brokaw. It is scheduled to air at 9 AM on Denver's Channel 9, the local NBC affiliate. Check local listings, and check back to Schaffer v Udall afterward for coverage and analysis.
Mark Udall has unleashed a new "debunker" page to give his side of the story on issues where he feels his record is being misrepresented. So what does Udall do? You guessed it. He turns around and misrepresents his opponent Bob Schaffer's record -- yeah, that solves the problem.
Mark Udall does not support elimination of the secret ballot-- in union elections or anywhere else. Mark Udall has consistently fought for working families in this country and his support of Employee Free Choice Act confirms this.
In that light, Mark Udall's description of the EFCA reads like he has drunk the Big Labor Kool-Aid:
Right now, employees can form a union by conducting a secret ballot election or by having a majority of workers sign cards asking for union representation. However, right now, employers can reject organization by the card-signing method. This is problematic because employers can then delay the vote and use the time to put pressure on employees not to organize.
EFCA would change this law so that employers can't reject the card-check process if that's how workers choose to organize. This does not mean that EFCA will do away with secret ballot. Instead, it strengthens the rights of employees because it requires employers to respect a card check vote that wins over 50% of the staff.
The problem of course is Mark Udall's ridiculous assumptions: first, that unions are quite adept at pressuring employees, too; and second, that signing a card in a union organizing election indicates an employee's free will.
Employees are told at off-site meetings that signing a card only certifies that they attended the meeting. Employees are also offered a free t-shirt if they sign a card. What they are not told is that these cards are a legally binding document, which states that the employee is pro union -- thus placing the union one step closer to their goal of complete control of the employees’ workplace life without the employee even realizing it.
In the work place, the employees running the organizing campaign for the UAW are relentless in trying to get the employees to sign union cards. This has created a hostile work environment, with employees who once were friends who are now at odds with each other. [emphasis added]
Watch Mike Ivey here:
The United Auto Workers that deceived and harassed Mike Ivey and his colleagues through the card-check process have contributed $50,000 to Mark Udall through the years (Source: Federal Election Commission).
Or, since Mark Udall touts Kaiser as the model for implementing EFCA, the testimony of Kaiser employee Karen Mayhew is especially relevant:
When we were told that 50% + 1 had signed the union’s authorization cards, and that no election would be held, it did not take long for many employees to announce that they would not have signed the cards if they had known that there would be no election. Knowing that the union had just a one-person majority in our department at the time of Kaiser’s recognition, I filed Unfair Labor Practice charges against Kaiser and the SEIU union with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), based in part on the realization that some in our department had signed cards solely due to the union’s misrepresentations....
Throughout this whole ordeal, my colleagues and I were subjected to badgering and immense peer pressure. Some of us even received phone calls at home. While I let my feelings toward this union be known early on, I still was attacked verbally and in e-mail by my pro-union colleagues. I believe this abuse directed towards me was at the request of the union in an effort to intimidate me and have me back down. [emphases added]
The Service Employees International Union that deceived and intimidated Karen Mayhew and her colleagues has given Mark Udall $48,000 in contributions (Source: Federal Election Commission).
Yes, the Employee Free Choice Act technically doesn't outlaw secret ballot elections. But given recorded history, doesn't the EFCA open the door to ensure union leaders will use their "free choice" and organized clout to take the easy route of deceit, intimidation, and abuse of uncooperative workers? A secret ballot protects the integrity of workers' decisions, and Mark Udall is willing to cast the protection aside to appease labor bosses who have loaded his campaign with money--$98,000 from just these two examples alone.
On an ongoing basis, Schaffer v Udall tallies mentions of Rep. Mark Udall in the liberal blogosphere and mainstream media to provide readers a fair and thorough accounting of where the Democratic Senate candidate fits on the political spectrum. Comments by blogs, pundits, and politicians of a conservative persuasion are excluded from the tally.
