July 2011

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is questioning the legality of a video associated with a raffle to raise money for President Obama’s reelection campaign, Politico reports.

Priebus suggests in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder that Obama may have violated the Hatch Act by allegedly filming the video in the White House’s Map Room.

But Richard Painter, who was chief ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, is calling the letter “an embarrassment to the Republican Party, of which I count myself a part.”

“The small donors get nothing in return for their donation except a chance to support a candidate they believe in — until this raffle,” Painter tells Politico. “Now they get a raffle ticket entitling them [to] a very small chance of getting the type of meeting that a big donor has for the asking. To call this a crime yet ignore the larger problem is absurd. Writing this kind of letter — after standing in the way of campaign finance reform — is laughable.”

In a related blog post, Painter adds to his analysis, noting that while “there are serious problems with political activity in the White House,” none of them are raised by this letter.

He writes:

The question I have for the author of this letter, and for everyone else in a position of responsibility in this government, is what measures do you support that will put ordinary citizens on the same footing as big donors? A raffle is not one of them, but neither is an absurd criminal investigation of a raffle while politicians auction off public policy to the highest bidder.

by Jeremy Leaming

Earlier today the House Education & the Workforce Committee approved a bill aimed at limiting the ability of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to enforce federal law protecting workers’ rights.

As noted here, the House measure is being pushed by right-wing policymakers bent on punishing the NLRB for its complaint against Boeing Corp., which alleges that the giant aerospace company moved jobs from its Washington State facility to punish workers there for striking, an activity protected by federal law.

On the state level, governors in Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio have enacted laws greatly undermining the ability of public sector workers to engage in activity to protect their rights. Kerry Korpi, director of research and collective bargaining services for AFSCME, talked with ACSblog about the Right’s efforts to advance corporate interests, while hobbling the rights of workers.

The governors of those states say they are facing out-of-control deficits and therefore public sector workers’ benefits and rights must be slashed. Korpi said that’s a smokescreen for an ideological agenda.

“There are budget problems in all of these states,” Korpi said. “All the governors you mention are making them worse by cutting taxes further on corporations and the rich, and then using that as justification for cutting middle-class jobs, cutting programs to the elderly and the poor. In Wisconsin, for example, Scott Walker said he had to cut collective bargaining rights to get costs in control … he wanted to increase our members’ contributions to pensions and health insurance. Our union there agreed to both of these things, but we are not going to give up our right to bargain, and he said ‘thanks, but no thanks;’ he has not sat down with us once.

“So it is not about the budget,” Korpi continued. “It’s about an ideological effort to get rid of folks who oppose them. And it’s not just unions they are going after, it’s young voters, it’s minority voters, it’s an effort to crystallize power in a way that other people can never take it back again.”

Watch Korpi’s full interview below or by visiting blip.tv here. The interview is also available as a video podcast.