Naughty Nancy: Friend to Unions and the Environment? Sure, But Not With HER Money

You know how Dems condemn Wal-Mart for not being unionized. Well you would think that senior leaders in the Democrat Party in their own business dealings would be out front supporting union rights as well as environmentally sound business practices.

Well, that's what Democrats want YOU and ME to do... But as usual, they exempt themselves from the rules and standards, not to mention ethics, that they apply to the rest of us.

And you won't find a better example of Dem hypocrisy on these issues than Nancy Pelosi:

Do As I Say....
By Peter Schweizer
FrontPageMagazine.com April 26, 2006

...We also have people like Hillary Clinton, Barbara Streisand or Nancy Pelosi. Some of these people on the liberal left actually are in positions of power and authority. When it comes to debating them and arguing with them, you probably have had the same experience I have, and that is that oftentimes people on the liberal left pose as our moral superiors.

In other words, when you end up debating an issue, the issue no longer becomes whether the policy makes sense. The issue becomes, Who is more morally clean? Who is superior in moral terms? For example, if you oppose their economic agenda, you’re greedy! It’s the end of the debate. If it is a question of their environmental agenda, and you oppose it, you are a polluter. When it comes to the issue of labor unions, if you don’t support the agenda of labor unions, you are heartless—end of discussion. And of course, if you oppose affirmative action quotas, you are a racist and a bigot.
...
I have another section I like to call, “Workers of the World Unite Somewhere Else.” This is where we find Nancy Pelosi—Democrat leader in the House, the best friend of labor unions you can imagine. She says that labor unions are vital to negotiating good wages and working conditions. She won the Cesar Chavez award from the United Farmworkers Union in 2003. Remember that, the United Farmworkers Union. She is the top recipient of PAC contributions from the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union.

What’s interesting about that is, there were several strikes a few years ago in San Francisco, where she came down strongly on the side of the hotel employees and restaurant employees union and campaigned aggressively for them against other hotels. Of course she is the most reliable vote in Congress for organized labor.

What’s interesting about Nancy Pelosi is that she and her husband not only are very influential in the Democrat Party, they’re very wealthy. With Nancy Pelosi, her commitment to organized labor essentially ends when it comes to her own businesses. Nancy Pelosi and her husband own a Napa Valley vineyard that’s worth about $25 million. They grow very expensive grapes for very expensive wines, and they don’t use members of the United Farm Workers to pick their grapes. This winner of the Cesar Chavez award hires only hire non-union contractors.

There are plenty of union contractors in Napa Valley and there are other wineries that use them, its’ just that the Pelosis don’t have happen to among them. They also sell their grapes to non-union wineries. They recently held investments in two other wine businesses that were also strictly non-union.

But it gets even worse than that. Nancy Pelosi and her husband also own a chain of restaurants and a hotel in Napa Valley, California. Despite her public commitment to the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees Union, you better not join that union and work for the Pelosis, because you will end up getting fired. For example, they are partners in a hotel with 250 employees, which is strictly non-union. They are among the very few owners of Piati, a chain of Italian restaurants with 900 employees. Again, if you try to join the union when you work for the Pelosis in their restaurant, you will be fired.

One other issue for Nancy Pelosi. I hate to pick on her, but it’s just so inviting. As they say in the military, it’s a target-rich environment. With Nancy Pelosi, another big issue is the environment. She always makes statements that, with us, the environment is not an issue, it’s an ethic, it’s a value. Which is a nice way of saying, “I love the environment, but not when it comes to our own businesses.” A lot of people don’t realize that, in 1996, Nancy Pelosi and her husband and fewer than 10 other partners wanted to build a golf course and country club outside of San Jose, California, called the CordeValle Country Club. In order to get approval to build on these 275 acres, they had to comply with some very stringent county environmental regulations. Now the California tiger salamander and the Western pond turtle are apparently endangered species and they’re very, very common on these 275 acres that the Pelosis wanted to develop.

So the agreement they struck with local regulators was, we’ll build the golf course, we’ll set up some holding ponds and we’ll create a natural habitat to make sure that these environmental endangered species survive.

Of course, they built the golf course. It opened in 2000. If you want to join, the membership is $250,000. But they never followed the environmental regulations. The ponds were never built for these endangered species. For seven years, they also failed to file any of the environmental reports required by the California Fish and Wildlife Commission. A 2004 County Environmental Compliance Report found all kinds of environmental problems on the Pelosis’ golf course.

Remember with Nancy her commitment to the environment is not just an issue, it’s an ethic and a value. What does that actually mean in practical terms? Did they turn around and build this habitat and comply? No, they solved the problem the old-fashioned way: they hired lobbyists and they got the environmental regulations changed. So if you go to the CordeValle Country Club today and play golf, it’s a wonderful course, but there will be no holding ponds. There will be no endangered species and the Pelosis seem to be quite happy with that.

And let's not forget that Tom Delay was indicted for alleged campaign fundraising and driven out of Congress. Yet,Pelosi is fined $21,000 as part of a plea deal with the Federal Election Commission for setting up a dummy political action committee (PAC) to skirt the law on donation limits. Was she ever asked to step down from her Leadership position while the investigation unfolded? Hell no! As usual, standards of behavior and ethics are ONLY applied to Republicans.