A major provision of the “Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002″, aka McCain-Feingold, was largely dismissed by the Supreme Court on January 21, 2010. President Obama’s reaction was swift and almost comically over the top.

With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans. This ruling gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington–while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates. That’s why I am instructing my Administration to get to work immediately with Congress on this issue. We are going to talk with bipartisan Congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision. The public interest requires nothing less.

Uh-oh! Whenever they use the term “bipartisan” you know they’re trying to sucker us. It’s become as transparent as their disingenuous names for bills like the so called “Stimulus” which was supposed to fund “shovel ready jobs” and instead went to non-existent zip codes. Our unemployment rate went up dramatically.

But why is Obama so upset about the decision? He’s upset by unions and special interests donating large sums of money to candidates? This is the president who took $60 million from SEIU members and was visited by its head, Andy Stern, more than any other person last year. Obama’s “outrage” deserves a closer look. (more…)

While the mainstream media swarmed all over Bernie Madoff, AIG and corporate billionaires, the gentlemen of the press, who are so proud of fighting for the Little Guy, were mostly out to an expense-account lunch when Melissa King allegedly made off with $42 million rightfully belonging to members of the Laborers International Union of North American (LIUNA).

In what is being called the largest union embezzlement in American history, the LIUNA Local 147 (New York) office administration was apparently unsatisfied with her meager $500,000 a year paycheck.

According to watchdog Carl Horowitz:

LIUNA Local 147 is an elite underground construction unit known as the “Sandhogs.” With roots going back well over 100 years, the heavily Irish-ethnic 1,000-member union represents the workers who dig New York City’s subway, sewer and water tunnels, often at hundreds of feet beneath the ground. It was the sandhogs who did the excavation work for such engineering marvels as the Lincoln, Holland, Queens-Midtown and Brooklyn-Battery Tunnels. Their massive ongoing main project, the Third Water Tunnel, when completed in 2020 at a projected cost of roughly $6 billion, will carry 1.3 billion gallons of water per day for 9 million area residents and ensure that water keeps running should either of the first two tunnels fails. It’s grueling and dangerous work. And the workers are paid well. They also expect to collect their full retirement benefits. But thanks to the alleged actions of Melissa King, there’s a distinct possibility they won’t.

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