Obama's broken pledge over lobbying

Obama soared into office promising to reduce the impact of lobbyists in the government. Ironically, the president's own insistence on health care reform left that pledge in tatters.

Special interest spending on Capitol Hill broke records in 2009, topping $3.47 billion. And almost half of the president's recess appointments last weekend were tied to or work for so-called special interests.

Finance figures show those interests are giving huge sums to Democrats and Republicans alike -- but while the influence game is hardly the problem of one party, the legislative frenzy on Capitol Hill has only inflated it over the past year.

And those figures don't reflect free face-to-face time that lobbyists got with the president. During the health care debate, Obama spent untold hours with representatives from PHRMA, the pharmaceutical company lobbying group, hammering out a deal. The numbers also don't include people who aren't lobbyists but really should be. Andy Stern, president of the SEIU, is the most frequent guest at the White House, having visited 22 times in six months. Things got so bad that Americans for Tax Reform filed a complaint that Stern was lobbying the president illegally. The Secretary of the Senate later reprimanded Stern and requested that he follow the law.

And while both Democrats and Republicans play the lobbying game, they can't be equally implicated.

The biggest increase in spending last year -- 3,000 percent -- came from the food and beverage industry, which spent $18 million on lobbying and more on campaign donations to kill a national soda tax.

While each party likes to claim the other is in the pocket of special interests, both parties are guilty and, in many cases, corporations favor the party in power.

Sixty percent of Wall Street campaign money last year went to Democrats. Eighty-three percent of the food and beverage spending also went to Democrats.

Obama has spent a good part of his president bashing Wall Street for alleged greed and corruption. But he's more than happy to take their money and spend it on political campaigns where he bashes Wall Street for alleged greed and corruption.

Obama pulls the SEIU's strings in Pennsylvania

The SEIU endorsed Arlen Specter over Joe Sestak in the Pennsylvania Senate Democratic primary today.

"SEIU fights for its members so we have a natural kinship with Senator Specter who is well known as a fighter for Pennsylvania," said Eileen Connelly, Executive Director for the SEIU PA State Council. "He's been there for us and now we are proud to be here for him. We have close to 100,000 SEIU members in PA and we are ready to play our part in making sure Senator Specter stays in the US Senate so he can keep working on behalf of Pennsylvania families".

Neal Bisno, President of SEIU Healthcare PA representing 22,000 healthcare workers across the State said: "Senator Specter's key vote for the Economic Recovery Act has provided billions for Pennsylvania. Those funds have helped keep thousands of our members on the job and thus able to help our communities care for those in need."

Specter did vote for the stimulus, but the SEIU doesn't have a "natural kinship" with him. Specter is opposed to Card Check, the Holy Grail of union legislation. His position didn't go unnoticed. Last year SEIU president Andy Stern met with Sestak to test the waters. And yet the mega-union still endorsed Specter, the former Republican. Sestak, meanwhile, was a co-sponsor of Card Check legislation in the House of Representatives and is more progressive on almost every issue than Specter.

The White House has been vociferous in its support of Specter, to the point that Sestak has accused them of trying to bribe him out of the primary race. Even though Sestak was by far a more natural ally for the SEIU, Obama likely leaned on Andy Stern to throw his support to Specter. It's getting to the point where the SEIU seems like little more than an activist political arm of the Obama Administration.

Obama puts his inside man Andy Stern on the deficit commission

Yesterday ObamaWatchNews reported that the deficit commission the president is planning is a total sham. As if we needed any more proof, now comes word that the president is considering appointing Andy Stern, SEIU president and his favorite crony, to the commission.

Stern is the last person qualified to help take down the country's debt. His entire mission has been to enact regulations that cost businesses and taxpayers billions of dollars. He has wholeheartedly supported every one of Obama's wasteful spending schemes, including health care reform and cap-and-trade. He is less of an advocate for working people than a left-wing activist demanding that the government do more. Meanwhile unions have cost state governments, which can't fire organized public employees, millions.

More likely, Obama is appointing Stern to his fraud of a commission as another kickback. Stern and the unions have been kicked around a lot lately. Congress has abandoned card check and the president is now supporting an excise tax on expensive health care plans, which would cost Big Labor millions. Looks like the president wanted to soothe Stern's nerves. And with Stern's close relationship to the president, Obama can now control the "independent" commission from the inside.

Big Labor throws a temper tantrum

Oops, the SEIU and the AFL-CIO are pissed off. We all know that BHO has spent much of his first year sucking up to his union cronies. He nominated a radical Secretary of Labor, reduced transparency requirements for labor unions, kicked back huge amounts of stimulus money to the unions, rewrote the laws governing government contracts to give labor ultimate control, tried to ram Card Check legislation through Congress, invited SEIU president Andy Stern to the White House every other week, called off Bush administration-era investigations into union officials, and practically let labor write a compromise on health care reform.

But it's just not enough. After Craig Becker, Obama's nutty nominee for the National Labor Relations Board was rejected by the Senate this week, the unions are blind with rage. John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, bleated, “Here’s labor getting thrown under the bus again. It’s really frustrating for labor, and a lot of union people are thinking: We put out big time in money and volunteers and support. And it seems like the little things that could have been aren’t being done.”

It's almost tempting to defend Barack Obama here. What more does he have to do to satisfy these people? Fortunately, if Big Labor remains petulant and whiny every time they don't get their way, Obama could lose his most potent and evil allies. Without Big Labor's big pockets, Obama would be just another Chicago pol.

Obama disowns another radical with a wink and a nudge

Barack Obama has become the master of a political two-step. Disown radical friends and business partners to the public while soothing their nerves in private.

Last week, SEIU union boss Andy Stern said that opponents of health care reform and card check like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson were "terrorists". Obviously Stern has been feeling the pressure as majorities of the American people turn against his radical liberal agenda. Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs firmly repudiated Stern's comments and said they "make no sense."

It's a pattern with this president. When his friendship with Bill Ayers surfaced during the campaign, he condemned Ayers. When his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright came to light, he gave an entire speech distancing himself. Then several months into his presidency, the White House guest list came out. Ayers and Wright were both on there. The newest offender, Stern, was the most frequent guest.

So the president may pretend to regret Stern's radical comments through his press flack. But no doubt the two of them will remain attached at the hip going forward.

Obama Wines and Dines with his SEIU Cronies

The White House held its first state dinner last night in honor of Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh. America’s and India’s first families dined on a feast of meatless Indian cuisine along with 335 other guests – very few Republicans among them. House Minority Leader John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were both invited, though neither attended. Governor Bobby Jindal made the guest list, presumably because he’s an Indian-American. But the political names at the dinner consisted almost entirely of Democrats. Journalists also showed up from all five of the major television networks…except for Fox News.

Obama wasn’t gracious enough to invite his former presidential rival, John McCain, but he did find room on the guest list for two SEIU hacks: Andy Stern, president of the organization, and Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer who is often described as the “Queen of Labor.” Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO was also in attendance. Andy Stern is no stranger to the White House, where he has been Obama’s most frequent guest since new president moved in.

It looks like that $31 million that the SEIU donated to Obama’s campaign really paid off.

In contrast, George W. Bush wasn’t throwing around state dinner invitations to NRA board members or Family Research Council spokesmen. The guest list for Bush’s last state dinner, honoring the Queen of England in 2007, was generally unremarkable, including mostly government officials and a small handful of prominent businessmen.

Rewarding prominent cronies and donors with prestigious White House invitations usually reserved for honorable and decent people? Sounds like classic Chicago politics to me.

And speaking of classic Chicago politics, the most awkward attendee at the dinner had to be former White House attorney Greg Craig. Craig was in charge of developing the legal framework for shutting down the Guantanamo Bay prison. As soon as the political winds began shifting on that issue, Obama unceremoniously kicked Craig to the curb.

Obama Administration hands the unions another gift, this time erasing 75 years of labor law

It’s fitting that our first post on Obama Watch News should be about Big Labor. After all, the unions bankrolled his campaign and there is no constituency to which Obama is more beholden.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The National Mediation Board, which oversees labor relations in the air and rail industry, this month moved to overturn 75 years of labor policy.
The board plans to stack the deck for organized labor in union elections. Under a proposed rule, unions would no longer have to get the approval of a majority of airline workers to achieve certification. Not even close. Instead, a union could win just by getting a majority of the employees who vote. Thus, if only 1,000 of 10,000 flight attendants vote in a union election, and 501 vote for certification, the other 9,499 become unionized.
This radical break with precedent is the handiwork of President Obama's appointees to the three-member board: Harry Hoglander, once president of a pilots union, and Linda Puchala, former president of the Association of Flight Attendants.
The board got a request to adopt the jerry-rigged voting standard from the AFL-CIO in September. Without a hearing or invitation for preliminary views, the Obama duo drafted the AFL-CIO demand and published it in the Federal Register. It's now subject to a 60-day comment period, after which Ms. Puchala and Mr. Hoglander will no doubt vote to inflict it on all the nation's airline and rail carriers.

In other words, it’s Card Check without the congressional approval. It’s also the latest product of Obama’s labor strategy, which has been working furiously to cut the regulatory ropes that hold unions down. (Deregulation of businesses wrecks the economy, but deregulation of shadowy labor bosses is okay, apparently.) The NMB is an independent government agency established in 1934, which is when the original certification rules were established. Obama’s appointees, at the behest of their cronies in the AFL-CIO, are the only ones since who have made such a radical change. This swings a wrecking ball at 75 years of labor regulation.

It’s no shocking development. The AFL-CIO was one of Obama’s earliest fans in 2008. A quick scan of independent expenditure donations to Obama’s campaign on Opensecrets.org reveals a campaign with coffers stuffed with union money. (Independent expenditures are made without the candidate’s coordination and aren’t privy to restrictive campaign finance laws.) The labor colossus Service Employees International Union donated close to $31 million alone. Their main claims to fame recently have been threatening legal action against a Boy Scout for cleaning up a union-controlled park and deploying hulking thugs to town hall meetings to bloody up conservative protesters.

Obama’s politics are nothing fresh and new. He’s engaging in the same political trick that’s been in play since ancient times: know who your friends are and pay them back once you’re in power. The top visitor to the White House during Obama’s tenure? Andy Stern, the president of SEIU. Big Labor created Barack Obama and now they want to be a loud voice in his ear.

You have to wonder how Amtrak Joe Biden will react to this. Then again Amtrak workers are already unionized, so ten bucks says he’ll be dancing down Pennsylvania Avenue.