Marriot
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Corrections Corporation of America (CCA, the nation’s largest private jailer), GEO Group (the nation’s second largest private jailer), Sodexho Marriott (the nation’s leading food services provider to private correctional institutions) also MIC
---</p><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/gop-pollster-hilariously-mocked-after-blaming-broken-elevator-in-his-european-hotel-on-socialism/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/gop-pollster-hilariously-mocked-after-blaming-broken-elevator-in-his-european-hotel-on-socialism/</a></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;">R<span style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">epublican pollster Frank Luntz drew hackles from across the internet on Tuesday after he blamed a broken elevator at a hotel in Austria on “socialism.”</span></p><div class="p1_52" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;">Writing on Twitter, Luntz complained that the elevator at the Hotel Imperial in Vienna, Austria has not been functioning for three straight days — and said that the European social welfare state was responsible for this purportedly dire situation.</p><div class="p2_52" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="alt_ad_block story-page-in-content-graph-2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><b>“Please don’t bring European-style socialism to America,” Luntz pleaded.</b></p><div class="p3_52" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In fact, the Hotel Imperial is actually owned by<b> hotel giant Marriott, which is based in Bethesda, Maryland.</b></span></p><div class="p4_52" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;">Additionally, there is no evidence that the presence of universal health care in Austria or any other European country has ever been an impediment to elevator repairs.</p><div class="p5_52" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;">Given this, Luntz was quickly buried in mockery by other Twitter users — check out the top reactions below.</p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p>
important to break unions?
UNITE-HERE's "Hotel Workers Rising" sought to build on its past experience with citywide contract campaigns -- by linking these efforts, for the first time, in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and eight other urban centers. Between June and November 2006, 60,000 workers in 400 hotels -- 2/3 of the union's hotel membership -- had the ability to strike for a new contract. Among them were thousands of San Francisco hotel employees who worked without a contract for nearly two years, after they were locked out in 2004 and then returned to work without a new agreement.
As California labor journalist David Bacon wrote after that preliminary skirmish, if hotel workers succeed in getting industry-wide bargaining, "they can begin to challenge one of the most basic assumptions about the U.S. workplace: that service workers, and immigrants, are destined by nature to get wages at the bottom."<a id="R39" name="R39" href="http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/113#N39">(39)</a> While carefully framing its coordinated campaign as a fight to make "America work for the working poor," HERE's key demand was the same issue that triggered the Bay Area lockout: company-wide card check and neutrality agreements applying to giants in the industry like the Hilton, Starwoods, and Marriott hotel chains.
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http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2012/06/romney-spending-big-at-top-benefactors-hotel-chain.html
Like all presidential candidates, <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/candidate.php?id=N00000286">Mitt Romney</a> is perpetually on the road; trans-American speechmaking, fundraising and all-around stumping are requirements of any campaign for the White House. Tiring stuff.
When it's time for a few hours' sleep, Romney may not pull out his very own down pillow -- as <a target="_blank" href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,998235,00.html">George W. Bush did</a> when he was on the trail -- but he does appear to have a preference in hotel chains: <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00284810&cycle=2012">Marriott International</a>, a company with deep personal, political and financial ties to the candidate.
Romney's campaign has spent more than $475,000 in travel expenses at Marriott-owned hotels during the 2012 campaign -- more than three-and-a-half times what he's spent at second-place Hilton Hotels and 39 percent of the campaign's total lodging expenditures, according to <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2012/06/www.opensecrets.org">Center for Responsive Politics</a> research.
The money, however, doesn't flow one way: current Marriott International Chairman <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/donor_detail.php?cycle=2012&id=U0000003939&type=I&super=N">J.W. Marriott, Jr.</a> and brother <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/donor_detail.php?cycle=2012&id=U0000003947&type=I&super=N">Richard Marriott</a> -- the chairman of a Marriott International offshoot, Host Hotels and Resorts -- each have maxed out in contributions to Romney's campaign. More significanly, they've donated $1,000,000 apiece to pro-Romney Super PAC <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/detail.php?cmte=Restore%20Our%20Future">Restore Our Future</a>.
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<div id="more" class="asset-more">Romney was literally born into his connections with Marriott. His was given his first name, Willard, as a <a target="blank" href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-22/romney-as-auditing-chairman-saw-marriott-son-of-boss-tax-shelter-defy-irs.html">tribute to J. Willard Marriott</a> -- the hotel chain's founder and a friend of Romney's father. Romney's business affiliations with the hotel giant were built in the 1990s and continue, to a lesser extent, to this day. He served 10 years on Marriott's board of directors prior to his successful 2002 run to be governor of Massachusetts. Romney rejoined the board in 2009 before <a target="blank" href="http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2011/01/romney_resigns.html">announcing his resignation in January 2011</a>, three months before forming a presidential exploratory committee.
According to <a target="_blank" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/95602925/Mitt-Romney-2012">personal financial statements</a> released this month, Romney has between $101,000 and $250,000 invested in Marriott International.
"[Romney] was on our board for twelve years, and so I've gotten to know him and watch him in action and been very impressed with him," J.W. Marriott, Jr., told Bloomberg Television in a June 5 <a target="_blank" href="http://www.bloomberg.com/video/94087917-marriott-plans-to-add-hotels-chairman-says.html">interview</a>.
Romney is not alone in his links to the resort industry. <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/candidate.php?id=N00009638">President Obama</a> also has a hotel connection: <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/search.php?cid=&name=pritzker%2C+penny&employ=%28any+employer%29&state=%28all%29&zip=%28any+zip%29&submit=OK&amt=a&sort=A">Penny Pritzker</a>, who's a billionaire Hyatt executive and a <a target="_blank" href="http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/02/obama-campaign-announces-cochairs-115161.html">co-chair of President Obama's 2012 reelection campaign</a>, has donated the legal maximums of $5,000 to his reelection campaign and $30,800 to the Democratic National Committee.
One member of Hyatt's ruling family has strayed from the clan's Democratic leanings, though: <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/search.php?name=pritzker%2C+thomas&state=&zip=&employ=&cand=&c2012=Y&sort=N&capcode=x7cct&submit=Submit+your+Donor+Query">Thomas Pritzker</a> -- Penny Pritzker's cousin and executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels-- has contributed thousands to Republican candidates during this election cycle.
While the Marriott brothers' $2 million in gifts to Restore Our Future is the biggest political funding effort linked to the company, the company's PAC and employee contributions also trend Republican. Workers at the corporation have given $107,880 to Romney's campaign in the 2012 race, according to <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/search.php?cid=N00000286&name=&employ=marriott%20intern&cycle=2012&state=&zip=&amt=a&sort=A&page=2">CRP research</a>; by comparison, Obama's campaign has <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/search.php?cid=N00009638&name=%28all%29&employ=marriott+intern&state=%28all%29&zip=%28any+zip%29&submit=OK&amt=a&sort=A">received just $15,170</a> from Marriott International employees. <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00284810&cycle=2012">Marriott's corporate PAC</a> has sent 63 percent of its nearly $175,000 in 2012 donations to Republicans.</div>
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