Lobbyist Michael Goldfarb leads the Free Beacon blog

(Cross-posted from The Nation)

The Washington Free Beacon, a new website on the right, has a particular fascination with promoting weapon sales to Taiwan. In addition to daily hits on the Obama administration and Democrats, the Free Beacon has multiple posts calling for more F-16 fighter jet sales to the island nation, and has branded skeptics of militarization as “pro-China” activists.

The site, however, fails to disclose the fact that its sponsor is a lobbyist for a firm dedicated to helping Taiwan advance its policy agenda.

Michael Goldfarb, a former Republican staffer and writer, founded the Free Beacon with “several million dollars” in January of this year. Listed as the chairman of the 501(c) group that sponsors the Free Beaconwebsite, Goldfarb is also a partner at the lobbying and public relations firm Orion Strategies, LLC.

The contract between the Taiwanese ambassador and Goldfarb’s firm, renewed last year for a period that ends on September 30, 2012, stipulates that Orion will be paid $180,000 a year to “provide advice and consulting services concerning Taiwan’s strategic goals.”

Orion’s advocacy, according to disclosures filed with the Justice Department, has centered on promoting US authorization to sell Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan. Mike Mitchell, Goldfarb’s partner at Orion, makes weekly calls to Congress to press lawmakers and their staff on the issue, from arranging Congressional visits to Taiwan to prepping for Senate hearings.

As Goldfarb’s firm quietly peddles influence for Taiwan’s arms agenda in Congress, his site provides a megaphone. A Free Beacon article from earlier this year quotes an anonymous “industry representative” to demand that the Obama Administration “release the 66 new Lockheed Martin F-16C/D Block 52+ fighter aircraft that Taiwan [has] requested to purchase.” Another Free Beacon piece promoting increased arms sales calls National Security Council member Evan Medeiros, a policy expert the Free Beacon claims played a “key figure in killing the planned sale of new F-16 jets to Taiwan,” a “key pro-China activist.”

There is no disclosure on the Free Beacon website that its chairman is paid to lobby for Taiwan and other interest groups.

Senator John Cornyn’s (R-TX) efforts on behalf of Taiwan have been guided, and publicized, by Goldfarb-related organizations. Orion has met with Cornyn or his staff more than fifty times in the last year on Taiwan-related issues, including “congressional strategy to promote F-16 sale[s] to Taiwan,” legislation to force new F-16 sales, and travel to the country.

The effort has paid off. On November 18, 2011, Cornyn placed a hold—a privilege given to Senators to unilaterally block almost any presidential appointee—against Mark Lippert to become an assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs. Cornyn said he would block the nomination until the administration reconsidered the sale of 66 new F-16 jets to Taiwan. A week prior to the hold, Orion discussed Lippert-related strategy with Cornyn’s office, according to disclosures.

The hold, of course, was celebrated by the Free Beacon, which posted a digitized copy of Cornyn’s letter. Cornyn lifted his hold in April, after the White House pledged to give serious consideration to his Taiwan-related demands.

The extent to which Orion uses the Free Beacon as a front for its clients is unclear. A mandatory disclosure form for its foreign lobbying that was due in May of this year has still not been filed. A representative from the Justice Department confirmed to The Nation that Goldfarb’s firm has failed to file its 2012 Supplemental Statement.

Goldfarb has leveraged his relationship with conservative media to promote his clients’ concerns. On behalf of the Democratic Republic of Georgia, a country that currently has a $270,000 contract with Orion, Goldfarbarranged for an interview between Ambassador Temuri Yakobashvili and a Washington Jewish Weekreporter named Adam Kredo last year. In December of 2010, he arranged for multiple journalists, includingThe Weekly Standard’s Matt Continetti, to have dinner with Georgian Vice Prime Minister Giorgi Baramidze. And last year, Goldfarb was hired by Koch Industries as part of the company’s “crisis communication” team. At the time, Goldfarb was still affiliated with The Weekly Standard, and the magazine’s writers, like Continetti, began publishing pieces defending the billionaire owners of Koch Industries, David and Charles Koch.

But all of this came before Goldfarb created his own conservative website. Now, Continetti and Kredo work for the Free Beacon, where both writers have written pieces in defense of Goldfarb clients.

Requests for comment to the Free Beacon, Orion Strategies and the Taiwan embassy have not been returned.

The following is a joint investigation of In These Times and Republic Report.

By Mike Elk and Lee Fang

As labor seeks to communicate its message in the media and influence policy, many unions are looking to outside consultant firms. These groups sometimes provide the technical expertise, media suaveness, and necessary connections for unions to get their message out to the right audience. However, a recent joint investigation by In These Times and Republic Report reveals that several millions dollars of union members’ dues have been going to firms that are actively working against labor’s top priorities on behalf of business interests. In some cases, unions are paying consultants who are simultaneously working on behalf of union-busting causes.

SKDKnickerbocker (SKD) is one of the top firms providing outside assistance to labor coalitions while raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars for work to undermine organized labor, particularly teachers unions. Led by Anita Dunn, a former White House communications director and current Democratic Party advisor, SKD has spearheaded state-based campaigns for Students First, the anti-teacher’s union charter and school privatization group founded by former Chancellor of DC Public Schools Michelle Rhee.

In Ohio, Rhee’s group and state groups funded by Students First pushed Senate Bill 5, Gov. John Kasich’s attempt to end collective bargaining for most public sector employees. (The bill was later repealed by labor-led ballot initiative.) In Michigan, a leaked Power Point presentation shows that Students First promoted a bill to weaken collective bargaining for teachers. And in New York, according to a presentation obtained by In These Times, a SKD executive named Stefan Friedman worked on a team to produce education reform ads to demonize teacher unions. SKD ads cast teachers’ unions as special interests that cost the state millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

The strategy of using unions as a foil apparently worked by making it difficult for the unions to pressure lawmakers to support. “As a result,” notes the presentation, “rather than targeting specific [lawmakers] in a negative way, we placed all the pressure on the unions.” SKD was paid over $4.1 million for the ad campaign, which ran two years ago.

For fiscal year 2011, during the same period in which SKD conducted much of its work for clients antagonizing labor, labor unions, led by the SEIU, provided $799,458 in consulting fees to the firm, according to disclosures filed with the Labor Department. Although SKD employs several former union members as consultants, most prominently Jennifer Cunningham, who was a top staffer at New York-based affiliate SEIU 1199, it’s not clear if the conflict of interest was ever revealed during negotiations.

Asked if her firm’s labor clients were informed of the work her company does for groups like Students First, SKD spokesperson Rachel Racusen responded, “Why don’t you ask the SEIU?,” before hanging up the phone. She later e-mailed a clarification, noting SKDK’s contract with Students First “in no way conflicts with the work we do with other clients.”

Both SEIU and SEIU 1199 failed to respond to repeated requests for comment. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) paid SKD $75,000 for help with producing ads in 2011. While CWA declined to comment for this story, it has since dropped its contract with SKD after it was revealed they were also working for anti-teacher union proponent Michelle Rhee.

Other labor unions have decried the practice of paying firms that work for the opposition. The 150,000-member United Federation of Teachers (UFT) in New York City in the past has denounced SKD’s history of working with Rhee and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Asked about the effectiveness of these “mercenary” public relations firms that work for both unions and anti-worker groups, UFT President Michael Mulgrew said, “In my experience, the work of one passionate volunteer is worth much more than 10 people who are only in it for the money.”

Dewey Square Group, a prominent Democratic lobbying firm founded in 1993, is another case in point. Like SKD, Dewey regularly receives significant labor contracts. As recently as 2009, the labor-funded American Rights at Work gave $1.2 million to SKD and $414,429 to Dewey for “research, advocacy and media.”

The year 2009 provides a window into Dewey’s work on both sides of the business-labor divide. As unions geared up to pass sweeping labor reforms, the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, and the NEA provided sizable contracts to Dewey for political work. Collectively, labor provided Dewey with over $78,000 worth of contracts that year, mostly for help with telemarketing.

Dewey sells itself, in part, through its connections to the world of Democratic and labor politics. The website for the firm touts former AFL-CIO, SEIU, and AFSCME leaders, along with former top staffers to President Bill Clinton and Sen. John Kerry, as lobbyists-for-hire.

At the same time as Dewey was consulting for labor, the firm won a contract with the National Restaurant Association. The association, a lobbying group that represents McDonald’s and dozens of other low-wage businesses, led a coalition to defeat labor’s marquee goal that year, the Employee Free Choice Act. The restaurant lobby, notorious for its work in killing the minimum-wage increase for tipped workers in 1996, paid Dewey $772,110 as its “public affairs counsel” in 2009.

Also in 2009, Dewey continued work for another industry group often at odds with labor, the Private Equity Council, a lobbying group for major private equity firms that was co-founded by Bain Capital. According to records filed with the Senate, the council spent much of that year influencing Congress on tax and pension issues, but also on matters relating to financial reform. Tax returns obtained by In These Times confirm that Dewey was compensated with a $188,544 contract.

Dewey only discloses a small portion of its lobbying revenue. The Private Equity Council compensation, along with the National Restaurant Association lobbying, isn’t registered as ordinary federal lobbying, so these relationships are obscured from public view.

The firm continues to nurture a financial relationship with organized labor. Last December, Dewey served on the host committee for a Working America fundraiser honoring former AFSCME President Gerry McEntee. In May, Jill Alper, Dewey’s head of campaigns, was named the chief strategist of the Protect Our Jobs Campaign, which is seeking to enshrine collective bargaining rights in the Michigan state Constitution. The total cost of the campaign is expected to exceed $10 million, according to the Detroit Free Press.

The question, though, is whether the firm discloses the potential for a conflict of interest when it solicits business with organized labor. On their website Dewey Square proudly claims that it works on behalf of “Fortune 100 companies, national trade and professional organizations.” In a statement, Dewey Square spokewoman Ginny Terzano said, “We adhere to strict confidentiality in our business and will not address matters related to specific clients.”

While Dewey refuses to disclose its client list, Dewey’s parent company, the WPP Group, owns several public-affairs firms that work for companies that run counter to union values. Burson-Marsteller, a WPP Group firm like Dewey, manages the public relations in America for Foxconn, the Asian electronics manufacturer widely condemned for its labor practices. Public Opinion Strategies, also part of the same corporation as Dewey, represents the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Dewey Square spokesman Ginny Terzano insisted that “Like most public affairs firm, Dewey Square has a diverse set of clients. We have a long working relationship with Democratic Administrations, elected officials, and organized labor and have consistently supported their policies. To suggest otherwise is not accurate. We have not and will not work on matters that are anti-labor.”

However, the consulting group has attracted criticism for using so-called “astroturf” tactics to manufacture fake public outrage on behalf of corporate clients in opposition to labor’s stated position. In 2009, Dewey Square represented the health insurance lobby, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) in fight against a key provision of Obama’s proposed health care reform. Working for the health insurance lobby association, Dewey fabricated letters to the editor as senior citizens – without their permission – to protest the a provision Obama health reform plan that would cut back on Medicare Advantage, a privately managed alternative to traditional Medicare. The union backed Health Care for America Now coalition denounced these tactics saying ” The Dewey Square Group has been using some extremely deceptive tactics to get AHIP’s message out.”

Asked why the NEA works with a firm like Dewey Square, NEA spokesperson Anitra Speight said, “We have a standard practice of working with organizations and firms that share our common beliefs. Our understanding is that [Dewey Square's] relationship with these groups is not inconsistent with our beliefs.” Speight added that Dewey Square informed the NEA when it worked on nutritional labeling campaigns with the National Restaurant Association and Walmart, but that the NEA was unaware of Dewey Square’s work with private equity firms and groups trying to dilute financial regulations, rules that the NEA supports.

The practice of hiring business-oriented public affairs firms can lead to situations in which labor helps to finance ugly tactics used against fellow workers. Last month, Mercury Public Affairs, a lobbying firm working on behalf of Wal-Mart, snuck one of its associates into an event hosted by Warehouse Workers United. The warehouse workers are currently engaged in a bitter dispute over a number of abuses, including claims that sub-contractors for Wal-Mart have cut corners over safety and failed to provide proper wage information. The associate, who posed as a “student reporter” from the University of Southern California, was discovered and later forced to resign from her job.

Lost in the story, which received headlines from the Los Angeles Times to Gawker, was the fact that Mercury simultaneously works for several labor unions, including Teamsters Joint Council 16 of New York, which paid them $52,000 in 2011 and the SEIU Leadership Council in California, which paid them $110,000 in 2011, according to Department of Labor Records. Both SEIU and Teamsters are members of the Change to Win coaltion, which is attempting to prevent Wal-Mart from entering Los Angeles.

Not all PR firms and political consulting firms work both sides of the aisle. Labor-friendly public relations firms like New York City-based Berlin Rosen and D.C.-based Tricom Associates do not work for any client that is working in opposition to union causes.

“I have a political point of view that is one of the telling a worker’s story,” says Scott Treibitz, president of Tricom Associates. “It’s very difficult for me to help a labor union one day to tell a workers’ story in a contract struggle or organizing campaign and then the next day sitting down with a corporation and try to sell their position against a labor union. It’s too difficult of a proposition to bounce from one side to the other.”

Labor’s use of public relations and political consulting firms that also work for anti-worker groups raises questions if union members’ dues are inadvertently helping finance union-busting efforts. As unions outsource their political strategy to firms with corporate clients, how are they certain important labor-related information isn’t shared with groups working counter to union goals? Furthermore, aren’t unions helping keep in business firms that then go and assist in the destruction of unions?

“I am speechless,” says Al Hart, director of United Electrical Workers News and Communication Program. “Unions should learn to speak for themselves and let their members speak instead of hiring enemies of labor to speak for them.”

But Google’s green PR campaign doesn’t seem to be coordinating its message with Google’s DC advocacy and campaign office, which is known for courting influence by partnering with other lobbying shops with specialized Google products.

The National Journal is reporting that Google recently paired with a coal industry front group called the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. Google, for some reason, chose ACCCE as a client to test out new voter-targeting software and demonstrate the results:

Google brought what it calls its click-to-call technology to the table. ACCCE brought its 241,000 Facebook likes and what resulted, according to ACCCE’s senior VP for communications Evan Tracey, was a grass-roots lobbying campaign that generated 3,000 phone calls to senators.

That kind of response to a campaign, Tracey said, produced a quarter of ACCCE’s total advocacy on the effort, but for a fraction of the cost of traditional advocacy tools like TV ads and letter-writing campaigns.

Why is ACCCE targeting Congress? Despite the “clean coal” name, ACCCE is mostly focused on killing climate change policies, as well as other goals of the coal industry, including efforts to push back against the EPA’s new regulations curbing mercury and cross-state pollution, which would save thousands of lives. In fact, of the many polluter-funded fronts, ACCCE is one of the worst. During the Waxman Markey debate, the group forged letters of seniors and veterans to try to manipulate members of Congress against taking action to cap greenhouse gases.

Nonetheless, Google is bragging about its new partner.

“ACCCE’s campaign to do this is groundbreaking because they’re the first to use click-to-call advertising to connect Americans with their senators,” gushed Rob Saliterman, Google’s head of political ads in an interview with National Journal.

A Republic Report investigation found that many of Reed’s targeted tariffs benefit Reed’s top donors.

Senator Rob Portman (R-OH), a leading contender for Mitt Romney’s running mate, is joining a bipartisan set of lawmakers, including Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Jim DeMint (R-SC), in an effort to provide oversight — and likely kill large parts — of the tariff-earmark bill:

Although relatively obscure, it’s a top priority of the business lobby. But the bill is in limbo because many critics of Congressional earmarks say the limited tariff benefits that make up the law are banned under House and Senate rules.
Portman, a veteran of both Bush administrations and the House, has joined Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) in introducing legislation that would give the International Trade Commission the first look at the proposals, rather than vetting what Congress sends to the ITC, transcending the problem with the earmark ban.

Reed, who dismissed criticism about his earmarks in an interview with Republic Report, would suffer a blow if the bill is subject to greater scrutiny by the International Trade Commission.

Indeed, either one of Maine’s senate delegation — Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins — both Republicans, could have been the deciding vote to break the GOP filibuster of the DISCLOSE Act, when it was blocked two years ago. The bill failed 59-39. Earlier this week, with Senate GOP numbers boosted since the midterm elections, the bill failed by an even larger margin.

Just a decade prior, Snowe was the Senate’s champion of disclosure. In passionate speech on the Senate floor protecting her amendment to McCain-Feingold (called Snowe-Jeffords), she argued: “I hope that the Senate will stand four square behind disclosure and sunlight and against the uncheck process of these [outside] electioneering ads that have certainly I think transformed the political landscape in ways that we could not possibly desire or embrace.” The video is posted above.

Snowe’s bill, which Collins voted for in 1998 along with several other Republicans, forced outside money groups, like the National Rifle Association and the Sierra Club, to disclose contributions if they were to run ads near an election. Thus, fake “issue advocacy” groups would be forced to play by the same rules as any other campaign committee active in an election. Back then, it was perfectly normal for Republicans — from Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN) to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) — to support simple disclosure of campaign funds. As the American Enterprise Institute’s Norm Ornstein noted at the time, the disclosure requirements of Snowe’s amendment perfectly passed constitutional muster.

Why did these champions of disclosure and good government completely change their minds? Snowe and Collins have been mum on the subject.

The change, of course, coincides with increasing demands from the big business lobby. As I’ve noted for The Nation, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, among other corporate lobbying groups, have ruthlessly exploited the Citizens United decision to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars in corporate money into the election system. Since businesses are fearful of engaging directly and endangering their brand to public scorn, the Chamber has provided multiple 501(c) fronts as channels to launder money into the system with no identification at all. The anonymity granted to these companies is the reason they keep spending more and more every year.

And the Chamber, among other lobby groups, has taken an increasingly violent tone to defend their secret spending. Last year, the Chamber’s lobbyists were so concerned about mandatory disclosure, that one even compared going to war with the Obama administration on the issue to killing Qaddafi. “We will fight it through all available means,” the Chamber’s Bruce Josten told the New York Times. Referencing the effort to depose Libya’s leader, Muammar Qaddafi, Josten said, “To quote what they say every day on Libya, all options are on the table.”

Who knows what kind of threats they made to Snowe and Collins.

A review of the roll call vote for the Wellstone amendment shows a surprising list of supporters, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the leader of the opposition to campaign finance reform and the sworn enemy of disclosure. Even modest reforms, like the DISCLOSE Act, are a “threat … [to] the First Amendment,” in McConnell’s eyes.

So why’d he support a bill that goes far beyond the DISCLOSE Act, which would have simply required transparency for outside money groups rather than spending restrictions, like the Wellstone amendment?

It goes to show how cynical Washington politics can be. As the New York Times and Slate noted at the time, McConnell and a group of pro-outside spending senators voted for the Wellstone amendment as a “poison pill” — hoping its inclusion into the bill would deem the larger McCain-Feingold legislation as unconstitutional:

A number of Senate Republicans who usually oppose any restrictions on issue advertising as an encroachment on free-speech protections voted for the amendment. Their ranks included such party leaders as the majority leader, Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, Senator Don Nickles of Oklahoma and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Senator Strom Thurmond, Republican of South Carolina, also changed his vote at the last minute to support the amendment. As Mr. Thurmond stood and voted, Mr. McConnell, the chief opponent of the McCain-Feingold effort, was standing at his side.

To recap, McConnell voted once in support of restricting the speech of outside money groups — funded by unlimited corporate, union, and individual contributions — but now regards any attempt to disclose these group’s donors as an assault on the constitution. But he made the initial vote as part of a legislative ploy to kill a larger reform effort. The moving goal posts are simply part of Washington politics, a system too often gamed by shadowy interest groups bent on killing reform.

Senator Pat Leahy (D-VT), chair of the Judiciary Committee, has made cameos in multiple Batman movies, including the one premiering this month.

Corruption comes in many forms. Sometimes special interests attempt to buy influence through disclosed campaign donations, but too often, influence is purchased through unorthodox giveaways to our politicians, from discounted mortgages, to free yachts, and promises of future jobs.

And in some cases, special interests gain a foothold by exploiting a lawmaker’s childhood fantasies.

Senator Pat Leahy (D-VT) is chair of the powerful Judiciary Committee, which has wide sway over intellectual property law. This Friday, Leahy, a “lifelong fan” of the Batman comic book series, will make his second cameo in a Batman movie when “The Dark Knight Rises” opens in theaters.

As Demand Progress notes, Leahy’s appearance is a clear conflict of interest, given the movie industry’s intense lobbying for stricter intellectual property laws covering their products. Leahy, who has received over $900,000 in campaign contributions from the movie and music industry, attended a special screening of the movie last Sunday.

He was the guest of Warner Brothers Studio CEO Barry Meyer — the same Meyer whose company and its association (called the MPAA) has spent millions lobbying Leahy’s committee. In 2010, Meyer testified in front of Leahy on intellectual property legislation. His company is particularly interested in dual legislation known as SOPA/PIPA, which has attracted widespread criticism for its potential to give new powers to industry and government to broadly censor the Internet.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Leahy has been one of the movie industry’s most loyal proponents on Capitol Hill. In December, he boldly promised to lead a coalition to pass SOPA/PIPA — an effort that failed only because of one of the largest Internet grassroots organizing efforts in history.

We don’t begrudge Members of Congress having fun. But Leahy was not cast in the film because he’s big at the box office, or because there were no struggling actors who could have played the role better. (He’s not, and there are.)  Leahy was cast because Hollywood hopes that making him feel special will lead to more special favors in Washington.

Demand Progress, an advocacy group bringing attention to this issue, launched a petition yesterday evening called “Holy Conflict of Interest!”:

Hollywood is waging an ongoing war against the Internet by pushing bills like SOPA and encouraging the Department of Justice to shut down websites — and even imprison people — just for aggregating links to sites that the movie industry doesn’t like.

Hollywood spends millions of dollars trying to buy off politicians. They’ve even repeatedly let Senator Patrick Leahy — the sponsor of the Senate version of SOPA (called PIPA) and the chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over most bills that Hollywood cares about — appear in their summer blockbusters. He’s in the Dark Knight Rises, and was also in the last Batman movie.

Tell congress members that we need them to stand up for Internet freedom — rather than inflate their egos by shilling for Hollywood and other corporate interests that want to censor the net.

Shouldn’t Americans at least have a right to know?

Yesterday, every single Republican Senator, even several lawmakers who have called for complete campaign transparency in the past, voted to filibuster the DISCLOSE Act, legislation that would force all campaign advocacy groups to disclose equally. The legislation would not limit communications, but simply force 501(c) groups to disclose the same way in which PACs and Super PACs are required. Currently, 501(c) groups — like “American Action Network” — face zero public disclosure, yet are spending hundreds of millions to influence elections this year.

And earlier today, there was another vote on the bill, which met the same result.

Zaid Jilani and I spoke to Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) as he prepared to cast his vote against disclosure today. We raised the issue that in the new post-Citizens United campaign system, critics, including Justice John Paul Stevens, have noted that there is a real threat of secret foreign influence. Blunt ignored the problem, telling us it isn’t “serious” and he regards disclosure votes as “messaging” opportunities for his opposition party:

BLUNT: If we had a Disclose Act, we ought to be disclosing the budget, the appropriations bills, and where members stand on things we can do something about.

FANG: Absolutely. One argument that’s made in support of the Disclose Act is that, let’s say a Chinese corporation has a subsidiary here, and it funds a group, you know, Americans for Puppies or whatever, and that group runs ads for lawmakers who support Chinese trade policies. Do you think Americans have a right to know if a Chinese corporation is doing that sort of thing?

BLUNT: Lee, what I told you was, I think this isn’t a serious legislative issue and they know it and that’s why we voted on it twice in two days and when it’s serious I’ll talk about it like it’s serious.

Watch the video above.

As I’ve noted, many Republicans once supported full campaign disclosure. Over a decade ago, GOP senators, including John McCain (R-AZ), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Olmypia Snowe (R-ME), Thad Cochran (R-MS), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Pat Roberts (R-KS) gave serious speeches in favor of disclosing outside money.

Now that corporations can spend limitless amounts influencing elections, every single member has flipped his or her position.

UPDATE: The Progressive Change Campaign Committee and CREDO Action have announced that over 260,000 people signed the petition to support the DISCLOSE Act by Monday. ”Taking back our democracy is a marathon, not a sprint. Although we haven’t yet gotten big corporate donors out of the shadows, this week we flushed many Republican politicians out of the shadows and exposed them back home as the corrupt politicians they are,” said PCCC co-founder Adam Green.

But the Campaign for Liberty, ostensibly a nonprofit set up to increase freedom, believes that Americans should be left in the dark as special interests buy-out our lawmakers and demand back room deals.

The e-mail nonsensically claims that the DISCLOSE Act would somehow persecute Ron Paul supporters, and hurt the Campaign for Liberty’s efforts against the TSA and for auditing the Federal Reserve. The claims made in the e-mail, are unsubstantiated.

Just imagine the banksters’ bureaucrat pals having the chance to get more information on which donors are helping us take the fight to the Fed.

Or a government already committed to invading every single area of our privacy attempting to learn more about the members who are helping us end the TSA and repeal the so-called “Patriot” Act, if such efforts are deemed to be in non-compliance.

In reality, the big banks anonymously donate to front groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce which in turn spend tens of millions to elect politicians who support bailouts and other taxpayer giveaways. The Chamber faces no disclosure requirements, allowing it to lobby and run ads without ever revealing its financiers. (In 2008, the Chamber, which reportedly received large funds from AIG, threatened lawmakers who were reluctant to vote for the bailouts.) The DISCLOSE Act would not prevent any group from spending or engaging politically. Rather, sunlight would simply provide more information in the marketplace of political ideas.

Campaign for Liberty’s conspiracy theories don’t hold water. The government — via the IRS — already has donor information for secretly funded 501(c) nonprofit political groups. The DISCLOSE Act merely provides that same information to the public when these types of groups decide to air political advertisements. If the bill were to pass into law, then we’d know which crony capitalist companies are hiding behind fronts to elect their favorite politicians.

View a screens shot of the beginning of the e-mail below:

Congressman Jerry Lewis (R-CA)

Later this month, American League of Lobbyists is hosting an event on “Effecitve and Ethical Lobbying.” The lecture is led by none other than Jerry Lewis and his colleague Congressman Norm Dicks (D-WA).

The invitation makes no mention of Lewis’ scandal-plagued history. The website touts him as a top appropriator who has been “active on a wide-ranging set of issues including, among others, defense, NASA, and the environment.” View a screen shot below:

Dicks isn’t the perfect member to lecture on ethics, either. A Washington Times investigation found that defense contractors gave generously to a charitable foundation that aided projects favored by the congressman. Dicks has been a senior appropriations member for defense issues for several years.

Still, Lewis stands out as one of the most ironic choices to keynote an event on ethics.

Although Lewis announced that this term will be his last, he might be staying in Washington. A story earlier this year indicated that Lewis is surveying K Street lobbying firms for a potential gig after he retires.

Rather than lecturing the American League of Lobbyists, maybe he’s interviewing for a job?