Thursday, November 1, 2012

'Big Trouble'

Well, it is nice to see that at least one local entity ‘ponied’ up to support Education Voters of Idaho’s pro Prop 1, 2 and 3 advertising budget–Hagadone Hospitality, $15,000. File that under– at (or below) minimum wage hospitality workers who have to rely on ‘tips’, indirectly funding another anti-union battle.
Most of the rest of the major ‘Idaho community minded contributors’ revealed by the disclosure as reported by the S-R– not including the $1.3 million from Vandersloot– came from such Idaho ‘stakeholders’ and places as…the Mayor of NY; Lake Oswego, Oregon; Jackson Hole, Wyoming; the “Republican Governors Public Policy Committee ($50,000–wonder what the names of the contributors to that one are–certainly the Govs themselves don’t have that amount of cash to throw around, in Idaho, on their meager public servant salaries) and St. Thomas, Virgin Islands.
This disclosure, combined with a re-reading of Big Trouble by J. Anthony Lukas that documents the out of state mine owners funding the anti-union efforts in Idaho and the party line vote by the Republican members of the U.S. Congress finding that it was reasonable to imprison mine workers in the Silver Valley without any criminal charge against them, reveal that some things just don’t ever change. Idaho continues to be a fertile ground (e.g. patsy) for national political agendas, directed at the working class, to be battled out.

After the names of the contributors were disclosed yesterday I would have thought that the Coeur d'Alene Press, as a news source, would have run a story about it today. Nope. Of course when the Press endorsed Props 1, 2, and 3, in the interest of fair disclosure I would have thought that it would have pointed out that Hagadone Hospitality contributed $15,000 to the Education Voters of Idaho group. Nope.

Big Trouble.

No comments: