ME GOP to Rep. Pingree: Stop Voting Against Maine Jobs

Chellie Pingree is no friend to defense industry workers in Maine. She cares more about hippy peacefarms than Maine jobs.

Didn't she vote against BIW spending also?

Chellie Pingree is a dirtbag when it comes to our soldiers. President Obama has decided to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pingree voted against providing funding to support those troops while they are in harms way. Here is the statement she released to defend her loathesome vote:

May 14, 2009 4:30 PM
Congresswoman Chellie Pingree voted against a supplemental appropriation today that would provide additional funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Without a clear strategy for bringing our servicemen and servicewomen home, I could not vote for this request for additional war funding,” Pingree said.

“I am not comfortable sending billions of dollars more to Afghanistan without a clear mission and without a clear exit strategy,” Pingree said. “We have so many critical needs here at home. It’s not fair to the American people and it’s not fair to troops serving in Afghanistan to give the President a blank check for the war.”

“My colleague, Congressman Jim McGovern, put it this way: ‘We are sick and tired of wars that have no exits, deadlines or an end. We owe our troops and their families much better.’”

Pingree was an original cosponsor of a bill McGovern introduced today that requires the Secretary of Defense to outline for Congress by the end of the year the exit strategy for military forces in Afghanistan.

What did the Speaker want? That’s what Pingree votes. Mainers are not in that equation folks...

Mike couldn't agree more Pinhead and Michaud are just part of the Pelosi echochamber..............She's another proud Maine moment.......

Mike couldn't agree more Pinhead and Michaud are just part of the Pelosi echochamber.........

The Senate, in their Defense Appropriations Bill, stripped funding for the alterntive engine. This made sense from a number of perspectives including the fact the Pres. and Secretary of Defense have made clear the fiscal demands to control costs, and, after all the down-select, see no need to spend billions on an unneeded second engine still under development. It was also great news for the workforce at North Berwick's Pratt & Whitney plant. The F-135 engine, built in Maine, was selected by decision-makers after extensive competetion and testing to power the Joint Strike Fighter meaning Maine's workforce would be producing nearly 3,000 of these engines. It is a follow on engine of the F-119 - the powerplant for the F-22 Raptor - also an engine built at Pratt & Whitney. Unfortunatley, the House reinserted the extra funding for Pratt & Whitney rival General Electric. This is a double whamy for the workers there as the F-22 has been truncated. If the House decison prevails at reconciliation, Pratt & Whitney North Berwick will loose work to GE plants in other states and to Rolls Royce (GE's partner in their version of the powerplant for the Joint Strike Fighter) in England.

AWESOME to see the Maine GOP hitting Pingree like this. Great work Christy and Charlie.
I think people are starting to get the 'working people vote republican' theme now, keep it coming!

I got the same email from the Maine GOP. Good job!

From: Willy Ritch
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2009

The press release from Christie-Lee McNally is misleading and overlooks some important facts — and is just plain wrong.

Congresswoman Pingree does not support development of an alternative engine for the F35. She believes the current engine—built in part by the skilled workers at Pratt & Whitney—is the best engine for the Joint Strike Fighter. She agrees with the President that developing another engine would be wasteful.

This year, the House voted on two major defense bills---the Defense Appropriations Act and the Defense Authorization Act. As I’m sure AMG readers know, spending has to be authorized and appropriated—it’s a two step process.

HR 3326, the Defense Appropriations bill, passed the House by a vote of 400-30 with the help of 170 Republicans. HR 2646, the Defense Authorization Bill, passed by a vote of 389-22 with the support of 168 Republicans. Let’s be clear here: virtually every Republican in the House voted for these two bills.

Both bills contained the provision for an alternative engine, while the corresponding bills in the Senate did not. Now a compromise will have to be reached between the two bills.

Congresswoman Pingree could have voted against the entire defense budget—including the millions of dollars in funding for projects at BIW, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Pratt Whitney and numerous other defense contractors around the state. But voting against the entire budget truly would be voting against Maine jobs.

Instead, Congresswoman Pingree has joined colleagues in the House in signing a letter urging the House Senate conferees to cut the authorization for an alternative engine for the F35—because without the authorization there can be no appropriation.

Every day Congresswoman Chellie Pingree fights to preserve and protect Maine jobs. The partisan charge that she somehow wants to send jobs out of state and overseas is just plain wrong.

Willy Ritch
Communications Director
Congresswoman Chellie Pingree

Well, Let's make Willy's job a little more interesting shall we?

Article on F22 funding

Representative Chellie Pingree, Democrat of Maine, represents North Berwick, where Pratt & Whitney builds the F-22’s engines. Even so, she voted no on adding funding for the plane in the House Armed Services Committee last month.

Pingree, says her spokesman, Willy Ritch, “is confident that the men and women at the Pratt & Whitney facility in Maine will continue working on other contracts.’’

Simply put, if you're going to kill a large chunk of work, the extra F22 jets, you better do more than sign letters to ensure there will be other contracts, the F-135 engine, to work on. Once is an anomaly of process, twice is the start of a pattern. Given Rep. Pingree's anti-military spending credentials, it's hard to reach a conclusion other than she's willing to sacrifice those jobs at Pratt & Whitney.

Do I really have to go through her statements and votes to prove the strong anti-military bias or can we just accept it on face value? Oh, to be sure, Rep. Pingree supports our men and women in uniform when they are not fighting but when it comes to making sure they can fight effectively...not so much.

Pratt & Whitney and the people of North Berwick might be upset about Pingree's vote against the F22, so why would she do it?

Well her friends at Womens Action for New Directions (formerly Womens Action for Nuclear Disarmament) are cheering her on. From their 'Women. Power. Peace.' blog:
"WAND public policy director Marie Rietmann reports from the Hill:

"It gives me great pleasure to report that on the amendment to the defense authorization during committee consideration very early yesterday morning to add funds for the F-22 -- all four WAND/WiLL Women on the House Armed Services Committee voted no. Hooray for Susan Davis, Carol Shea-Porter, Niki Tsongas, and Chellie Pingree. I have passed on WAND appreciation to their defense aides. The vote was 31-30 to add the money -- so now we will hopefully have a floor amendment next Thursday to reverse the decision."

SOURCE

Now this is good stuff. Where's Willy?

Pingree has certainly demonstrated plenty of anti-military prejudice in the past, but because of her negative vote on the F-22 she had to find a way to appease her union backers. Sadly, unions are among her top supporters. Here are the top 2009-2010 contributors to Pingree's political war chest:

Paloma Partners - $52,800
Act Blue - $20,200
Plumbers-Pipefitters Union - $10,000
Carpenters and Joiners Union - $5.000
Machinest/Aerospace Workers Union - $5, 000

(Source: Open Secrets.org)

So Pingree makes up (somewhat) for her vote against the F-22s -- each of which is powered by two Pratt and Whitney engines -- by signing a letter urging the government not to buy the GE backup engines for the F-35. Not much of a payback for the aerospace workers' contribution.

What's really more interesting in this financial report, however, is the continuing flow of money from Paloma Partners into the Pingree coffers. Paloma, a Connecticut-based investment firm, makes much of its money by financing new industries in China through several ventures including its New China Capital Management unit.

Here is a Business Week description of the New China operation:

New China Capital Management, LLC is a private investment firm specializing in growth capital investments. The firm provides restructuring including restructuring offshore, if needed to its portfolio companies. It seeks to invest in consumer products, financial services, media and advertising, infrastructure, transportation, natural resources, chemicals, technology, pharmaceuticals, property development, light manufacturing, and heavy industry sectors. The firm targets Chinese companies...New China Capital Management, LLC was co-founded by Mr. Mr. S. Donald Sussman and Mr. Paul Steven Wolansky in 1992 and is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut with additional offices in Hong Kong and Beijing, China.

Pingree's very good friend Donald Sussman, who is also founder and a top officer of Paloma, has done rather well pumping money into the Chinese economy. And a hefty portion of that appears to be coming back to empower Maine's Congresswoman.

It will be interesting to see how Pingree's union supporters (if they can see beyond their noses) will look upon her close friend's efforts to boost the future of China, America's most potent economic and military rival.

Chellie Pingree's very good friend S. Donald Sussman turns up in a list of high-powered contributors to the Obama campaign. Well, not-quite contributors, since their money actually went to a sleazy "527 organization" funded by Democratic bigwigs and union bosses.

The 527's campaign was built around labeling John McCain the "McSame" as President Bush. Sussman, described here as a hedge fund manager, is listed as contributing $1 million to this effort. The notorious George Soros kicked in $2.5 million and the far-left SEIU public employees' union (yep, the one that has an outpost in Augusta) chipped in a similar amount.

This is old news now, of course, but this nugget from the "Truthdig" website does serve as an ongoing reminder of the league that Pingree's good friend, Sussman, plays in.

The F-22 funding that died in committee....the vote was 31 to kill it and 30 to keep it....I know that if she had voted to keep it that in the end it probably wouldn't have made a whole lot of difference as both the administration and the Pentagon didn't want it but it would have been one more bargaining chip on the table for other matters.

With the F-136 engine she is less likely to be successful. The Joint Fighter program is supported, in part, by the English who want the F-136 to be built since part of that contract will go to English companies.

Voting for the F-22 and then bargaining that away for something else would seem to be the most political thing to do. Trying to kill the F-136 when our ally, who is supporting the Joint Fighter program, wants it is a bit of a tougher task.

What will be interesting is when health insurance reform comes up in the House again. If things play out the way the stage is being set she may end up being part of the intractable progressive caucus that kills it. I haven't seen anything from her that suggest she'll be able to completely sidestep fallout over health insurance reform votes she'll have to make.

Willy's hiding under some rock somewhere.

Willy's hiding under some rock somewhere.

Buried deep in column of briefs far inside last Sunday's Telegram was a short report on the resignation of Van Jones, the so-called "green energy czar" in the Obama administration.

This may have puzzled many Telegram readers because they had not heard of this Jones character. That's because no story on Jones had ever appeared in the paper.

Jones was no stranger, however, to those who follow Fox News, talk radio, the Drudge report or many internet blogs. They all knew how Jones believed that the George Bush knew in advance of the 9/11 attacks and that the Republicans were,as he put it in front of a TV camera, "a--holes." They knew Jones also believed that immigrant workers in the U.S. were being systematically and deliberately poisoned.

It was all wild and scary stuff. but it was real. Jones was caught on tape saying all of it. However, almost all of the mainstream media including the Portland newspapers did not touch it -- even after Fox and the others had made it a national issue. Only after Jones's obviously-forced resignation did stories appear. Even though some, like the Telegram, buried them.

But this is just the latest instance in which important elements in the Maine media have been silent on an issue that could become very touchy for the Democrats.

A few weeks ago, Rep. Chellie Pingree voted in favor of a proposal to discontinue production of the F-22 fighter. That would be expected of Pingree, who has been a longtime opponent of almost all defense spending. But this time her vote clashed with the future of workers at the Pratt and Whitney plant in North Berwick where 1,300 workers have been building jet engines for the F-22.

Most of the Maine media, including the Portland newspapers, refused to touch this story, too, even after it was pointed out to them.

Now some people might agree with Pingree. We suspect more, especially those who earn their paychecks at the P&W plant, would not. But by any journalistic standard her vote against the F-22 was an important news story.

Not as important to the Press Herald, though, as Pingree's recent gig on a late night comic's TV program. Or her appearance at a very-closed local session on healthcare (no opposing voices allowed). Both of those stories received embarrassingly gushing coverage in that newspaper.

If the media expects to regain public support (which every poll shows it lacks) it must recommit to covering all the news without political favoritism. Readers have a right to know.

As always, mediadog, your insights on all things media are invaluable.

I just had a thought that we are being served very well by the media practices you chronicle here on AMG.

It's probably all wrong, but if you assume that the people hewing closest to the Truth eventually win, then I wonder if it does not help us that the media lies (by omission) to the leftists.

If the leftists don't actually know what is going on, they cannot possibly act in ways that make sense. If they do not make sense, people eventually realize it and turn away from them.