posted October 10, 2004 06:22 PM            

Sunday, Oct. 10, 2004 11:15 a.m. EDT
Kerry in Weird Heinz Ketchup Initiation Rite

When he married billionaire ketchup mogul Teresa Heinz in 1995, John Kerry was initiated into his eccentric wife's family with a bizarre ritual that included baptizing him with a daub of Heinz ketchup on his forehead.

The bizarre christening took place at the Heinz-Kerry wedding reception at a tony Nantucket restaurant, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

"The wedding party took over a highly regarded island restaurant, the Chanticleer Inn, where every place setting was decorated with a tiny bottle of Heinz ketchup," the paper revealed.

According to a witness interviewed by the Times, Heinz Kerry's son Chris opened one of the ketchup bottles and "daubed Mr. Kerry on the forehead with ketchup, to welcome him into the family and its tomato-based fortune."

In another bizarre twist that would foreshadow some of presidential candidate Kerry's image problems nine years later, the entertainment for the evening featured a band called "The French Millionaires."

In its Sunday report, the Times explored other never-before-reported aspects of Kerry's opulent lifestyle.

The walls of the Heinz Kerrys' mansions in Boston and Washington, for instance, feature a collection of paintings from the 17th century that are "so precious that the insurance company asks that the artwork not be photographed."

At least two of the would-be first family's homes were decorated by Mark Hampton, designer to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Estée Lauder and the late Democrat doyenne Pamela Harriman.

When the Heinz Kerrys reside at their Idaho mansion - one of five the two can choose from - they count as their next door neighbor fellow billionaire George Soros, who has helped bankroll Kerry's presidential campaign with a $15 million donation to the pro-Kerry 527 group MoveOn.org.
***Note, I call that trying to buy an American Election...and by one of the most unscrupulous men in the world, George Soros.

His wife's fortune has enabled the presidential candidate to indulge his jet-set tastes, buying "a number of boats over the years," including a 42-foot Little Harbor power yacht, purchased for about $500,000.

The Times says the Kerry cruiser sleeps only two, though cabin cruisers half that size routinely sleep four.

When he's on the water, Kerry sometimes likes to relive his days as a Swift Boat commander in Vietnam.

According to a guest on one Kerry cruise, the Massachusetts Democrat "took the throttle up to full speed" and turned up the boat's stereo system, shouting, "Check it out!"

Suddenly Richard Wagner's "The Ride of the Valkyries" was blasting from the boat's speakers - the same sequence played by Robert Duvall's character in the Vietnam War movie "Apocalypse Now."

"A broad grin" lit up Kerry's face as he relived the wartime scene, the guest said.

The Heinz Kerrys have taken great pains to keep revelations like that one out of the press, going so far as to require the household staffs at their five homes to promise in writing to stay silent.

The Times reports:

"Some of the people who work for Ms. Heinz Kerry, including a caterer who often cooks for her and the caretaker of her Idaho house, said they had signed confidentiality agreements barring them from disclosing details about their employer."

The media ban apparently extends to family friends, who, the Times said, "declined to answer questions about the way Ms. Heinz Kerry and her husband live, saying they feared the details could give the wrong impression."
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/10/10/111715.shtml

Right, the wrong impression, hahahaha

posted October 11, 2004 12:48 AM            

Bush Backers Spurn Heinz Ketchup, Kerry Loyalists Ditch Verizon
Aug. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Raj Narendran canceled his phone service. Michael Bates no longer buys his wife's favorite spiral ham. Michael Dobbins won't go near an interstate bank to do business.

The three are among a group of political partisans who are tailoring their shopping habits to their party affiliations. They use the Internet to track the donations of companies such as Wal- Mart Stores Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and H.J. Heinz Co.

Web sites including opensecrets.org have made it easier for consumers to track big donors to candidates they don't like --and to yank their business. The wildcat boycotts, which companies say haven't affected their profit, reflect the growing divisions among U.S. voters, campaign-finance experts say.

``The boycotters are being much more partisan than the companies are,'' said Larry Noble, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group whose opensecrets.org site is visited by Narendran, Bates and Dobbins. ``You look at our site -- most of these companies support both candidates and support both Republicans and Democrats because the companies tend to be very pragmatic.''

The phenomenon of partisan activists using the public information on the Internet to promote boycotts is a testament to the ``very partisan and very heated nature'' of the campaign between Republican President George W. Bush and Democratic Senator John Kerry, he said.

`Wonderful' Internet

Access to campaign-donation figures once necessitated a trip to the Federal Election Commission's reading room in Washington. Now, activist Web sites from both edges of the political spectrum, from Democratic-leaning ReclaimDemocracy.org to Republican-backing alphapatriot.com have links to opensecrets.org and other sites so supporters know what to boycott.

``The Internet is a wonderful thing,'' said Bates, 57, a retired Veterans' Administration employee in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park. ``Plug in a name, and you can find out who they give to.''

Bates let his membership in Issaquah, Washington-based Costco Wholesale Corp. expire after learning in February that the company's top two executives had given a combined $190,000 to Democratic-leaning political groups seeking to oust Bush. He and his wife now shop at Sam's Club, the wholesale club owned by Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc., even though that means they have to pass up the spiral ham sold at Costco that she loves.

Dobbins, 26, a freelance journalist for a Worcester, Massachusetts, television station, said he's boycotting more than 70 companies that donate to the Republican Party.

Avoid Big Banks

``Easy companies to boycott are fast-food chains, airlines, and banks,'' Dobbins said in an e-mail. ``Difficult ones are the drug companies and big retailers like Wal-Mart. Few financial institutions are safe. I put my money in a local bank and credit union.''

Narendran, a 32-year-old researcher at Columbia University in New York and a Democrat, canceled his Verizon long-distance, high-speed Internet and cell phone service after stumbling across opensecrets.org. He discovered that 63 percent of Verizon's combined employee and political action committee donations go to Republicans.

``I was really upset,'' Narendran said. ``I didn't want to support them.''

Narendran switched his phone service to Bedminster, New Jersey-based AT&T Corp. and Redmond, Washington-based AT&T Wireless Services Inc. The AT&T political action committee gave 52 percent of its donations to Democratic candidates in the past year, according to PoliticalMoneyline, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics. The chief executive officers of both companies have given to Bush and not to Kerry this year.

``We have not experienced any significant customer defection because of political support,'' New York-based Verizon Communications spokeswoman Sandy Arnette said in an e-mailed statement. ``We realize that customers have choices, and we respect their opinions.''

`W Ketchup'

The politicization of purchasing led to the creation of at least one upstart company: ``W Ketchup.''

Eagle Bridge, New York-based W Ketchup -- whose name stands for ``Washington,'' according to the company -- is capitalizing on the connection between Pittsburgh-based Heinz Co. and the campaign of Kerry, via his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry. It asks visitors to its Web site: ``You don't support Democrats. Why should your ketchup?''

Heinz Kerry, 65, whose first husband was the late Senator John Heinz, heir to the Heinz ketchup fortune, is chairwoman of the Howard Heinz Endowment and the Heinz Family Philanthropies.

In a month, the W Ketchup company has sold about 70,000 bottles of ketchup at $3 each, said co-founder Bill Zachary.

`Texas is Everything You Want'

``We've been well-represented in the red states,'' Zachary, 39, said referring to the 30 states that voted for Bush in 2000. ``A state like Texas is everything you want if you're a purveyor of ketchup. A lot of people are politically conservative.''

Bill Murphy, 59, from Austin, Texas, read about W Ketchup on the Internet. ``I immediately looked at the Heinz ketchup on our table and Heinz products in the icebox at home and noticed that every single one of them was made outside the country,'' he said. So Murphy ordered five cases -- that's 80 bottles -- of W Ketchup, which he has kept for himself and handed out to friends and family.

Kerry and Edwards ``had represented that they were the party not to export jobs out of the country,'' Murphy said. ``What hypocrites.''

Heinz spokeswoman Debora Foster said the company makes its ketchup in Ohio, Iowa and California factories.

Foster said the company fields 50 to 125 letters a month related to the campaign. Some customers write to ask for Heinz Kerry's position on a particular issue or request that the company relay a message to the Democratic presidential candidate.

Feuding Consumers

Their employee PAC gave $5,000 each to both the Bush and Kerry campaigns, Foster said. Heinz CEO William Johnson supports Republican candidates, including a $1,250 donation to Bush's re- election campaign. He hasn't given to the Democratic Party or Kerry's campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Brian Kelly, the owner of City Beans Coffee Co. in Newark, New Jersey, said he didn't know ketchup had become such a political issue until his customers started refusing the Heinz brand on their sandwiches.

``Someone made a joke that they didn't want to use the ketchup because of the whole Kerry issue,'' then others followed, he said. ``I'm surprised that a ketchup could cause this much of an uproar.'' Now Kelly plans to order W Ketchup, giving his customers another choice during the campaign. ``We could have both. That should make it more interesting, shouldn't it?''

While voting with one's wallet is a smart way to protest, boycotts attempting to sway an election almost never work, said 31-year-old Jarret Lovell, a political science and criminal justice professor at California State University at Fullerton who teaches a course on effective protesting.

`Good Luck'

``Boycott Microsoft -- good luck! Boycott AOL -- well then don't watch CNN, don't go to the movies, don't watch television,'' Lovell said after looking through a list of the top 25 Bush donors on the site www.boycottbush.net operated by the U.K.'s Ethical Consumer Magazine.

``UPS, Pfizer -- Bristol Meyers, Wal-Mart -- how do you do these things? Citibank or Citicorp -- we could cancel our credit cards but how many of us are in a position to cancel our credit cards without debt left over?''

``These things usually don't work because people don't want to be told what to buy and not to buy,'' said Michael Kazin, a history professor at Georgetown University in Washington. Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Co., hated labor unions, and in 1949 some Democrats called on consumers to boycott Ford.

``But it didn't really work,'' Kazin said.

Muddled Message

Lovell also said most of the companies on boycott lists donate to both parties. ``You don't have a very clear message if you're saying shame on AOL for donating to Bush when AOL Time- Warner is the number one contributor to John Kerry,'' he said.

Time Warner, AOL's parent, is the biggest financial backer of Kerry among companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, according to figures from the Center for Responsive Politics. The center ranks companies, universities and law firms by employee donations, and Time Warner employees and immediate family members had given Kerry $177,006 in donations through the end of May.

``It's playing both colors in Vegas,'' when corporations donate to both campaigns, Lovell said, referring to the black and red colors of the roulette gambling wheel. ``The groups are misguided if they think only the Republicans are accepting money from corporations.''

Party loyalists seeking harmony between shopping habits and political leanings might want to look beyond ketchup. If you're a Democrat who shops at Safeway, Safeway Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steven Burd was one of the very first Bush ``Rangers,'' raising at least $200,000 last year for the president's re- election effort.

For Republicans seeking an Internet search engine, Mountain View, California-based Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt backs Kerry for president. Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel supports Bush.

Easy Choice

Choosing a broker is easy if you're a loyal Republican. The CEOs of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co. and Bear Stearns Cos. are top Bush fund-raisers. Morgan Stanley is the top corporate supporter of the Bush campaign among all U.S. companies based on employee donations.

For Democrats, the executive committee chairman of Citigroup Inc., parent of Salomon Smith Barney, is former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, a Kerry backer.

``In general, people who run big financial institutions are Republicans,'' said Richard Fisher, chairman emeritus of Morgan Stanley who backed Democrat Bill Clinton in 1992.

Democrats have an equally easy time picking car insurance. Geico Inc. is owned by Berkshire Hathaway Inc., headed by Kerry backer Warren Buffett. Progressive Corp.'s chairman is Peter Lewis, who gives more money to Democratic-leaning groups than any other person, according to the Center for Public Integrity. For Republicans, there's USAA, whose executives overwhelmingly back Bush over Kerry.

Vegas

Republicans in Las Vegas for the weekend can stay at Caesar's Palace, owned by Caesar's Entertainment Inc., whose CEO, Wallace Barr, gave to the Bush campaign.

Democrats need to cross the Strip, Las Vegas Boulevard, to Harrah's, whose CEO backs Kerry. Mandalay Resort Group's Mandalay Bay is run by Bush backer Michael Ensign -- although Kerry's staff stayed at the resort during a February campaign trip to Vegas.

Below is a list of companies, whose executives or political action committees support Bush or Kerry or their political parties, either through donations or in public statements. Some give almost equally to both. The companies themselves don't give corporate money directly to the candidates, only their executives or PACs do.

Bush Supporter Kerry Supporter

Search Engine Yahoo! Google Grocery Store Safeway/Wal-Mart Costco Broker Morgan Stanley Salomon Smith Barney Bank Wachovia Citigroup Car Insurance USAA Geico/Progressive Beer Budweiser Budweiser TV Network Fox CBS Computer Hewlett-Packard Apple ED Remedy Viagra(Pfizer) Vasomax (Schering-Plough) Vegas Casino Caesars/Mandalay Bay Harrah's Phone Service Verizon AT&T

To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Forsythe in
Washington mforsythe@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: August 2, 2004 01:35 EDT
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a2pst2jk_0io&refer=us

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posted October 11, 2004 02:25 AM              

Pass the Heinz please.