‘Off With Their Heads’ Says Queen Meg in Attack on California Nurses

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/07/14/off-with-their-heads-says-queen-meg-in-attack-on-california-nurses/

by Mike Hall, Jul 14, 2010



Meg Whitman, Republican candidate for California governor and billionaire former CEO of eBay has picked a fight with the California Nurses Association (CNA) that political observers think may backfire and energize nurses across the Golden State to work even harder to defeat Whitman in November. Meanwhile, the California Labor Federation launched a new online video and video game (left) that highlights Whitman’s job-slashing corporate history.

The Associated Press (AP) reports that Whitman, who spent $90 million of her $1 billion-plus fortune to win the Republican primary, dipped into her pocket to buy a list of all the state’s 370,000 registered nurses, complete with home addresses and is now bombarding them with anti-union propaganda. According to the AP:

Whitman hopes to drive a wedge between union leaders and their rank-and-file—a tactic only a multimillionaire candidate could afford to try, because of the expensive micro-targeting it requires.

It’s no secret the CNA is vigorously opposing Whitman who espouses a Wall Street/corporate agenda as the answer to the state’s fiscal problems and blames the state’s public employee unions as the cause of the budget crisis. That agenda, says the AP,

includes cutting 40,000 state government jobs, dramatically reducing public employee pensions, deregulating industry and cutting welfare benefits.

Geri Jenkins, RN, CNA co-president, says:

For whatever reason, billionaire Whitman has made the decision to attack nurses. She’s calling us at our homes with push polls, putting out false information to the media, posting deceitful Web sites.

FULL story at link.

[OrwellwasRight]

1. I'd like to move home just to vote against her. nt.