Obviously as far as Obama is concerned “transparency” is one of those things that only enemies should be forced to observe. If you are an Obama friend, no transparency is required.

It is interesting to note the language that Democrats used to excuse their newest roll back of transparency requirements, too (my bold).

“The [Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act’s] various reporting provisions are designed to empower labor organizations, their members, and the public by providing certain information about the finances of labor organizations and union officers and employees. A fair and transparent government regulatory regime must consider and balance the interests of labor organizations, their members, and the public, including the benefits served by disclosure, the burden placed on reporting entities, and preserving the independence of unions and their officials from unnecessary government regulation.”

Federal Register, Vol. 75, No. 153; Tuesday, August 10, 2010; Proposed Rules, P. 48416

So how does allowing unions to misuse, abuse, and hide expenditures from their own membership, the public and the government by skipping transparency requirements help anyone but the union chiefs that want to hide what they are doing from the prying eyes of reformers?

Nonetheless, that is what Obama and his Party is doing. This newest rollback of reporting requirements is yet another pay off to unions that have pumped millions into the campaign coffers of Democrats and the president.

But this is nothing new. This is the third time since Obama took office as president that he and the Democrats have weakened rules meant to hold unions accountable for their spending, their salaries, their political activities, and their investments.

Upon entering office one of the very first things that Obama did in the arena of labor relations was direct his Dept. of Labor chief to ease reporting requirements on union finances. Since then it has been discovered that unions have been violating disclosure rules for decades and Obama is making that even easier for them to do.

Then a few months later the Dept. of Labor announced plans to rescind changes made to the reporting rules (the LM-2 reporting form) that were put in place to force unions toward more transparency in their finances.

And what has Sec. of Labor Hilda Solis been more worried about since she took the position? Aside from making the lives of union scammers easier, she’s been trying to make sure that illegal immigrants get “paid fairly” for their labor!

This is all of a piece for the Obama administration. Obama was put in Washington by the millions of dollars given him by left-wing unions and he’s been paying them back since day one even if it means harming the economy and making the lie to his claims that transparency was an important goal for his administration.

Ilyse Schuman has a pretty good run down of what those rules changes are at Lexology.

Specifically, the proposed changes would accomplish the following:

• Return to the pre-2007 practice whereby union officers and employees were not required to report compensation they received under union leave and “no docking” policies established under collective bargaining agreements or by custom and practice of the workplace.
• Exclude union stewards and similar union representatives, such as a member of a safety committee or a bargaining committee, from having to file Form LM-30.
• Create an administrative exemption whereby union officials would generally need to report only loans – such as home mortgages – from bona fide credit institutions if the terms of such loans are on terms more favorable than those available to the public.
• Limit the reporting obligation with respect to interests in and payments from employers that compete against employers represented by the official’s union or that the union actively seeks to represent, modify the scope of reporting with respect to payments from certain trusts and unions, and exempt union officials from reporting payments they receive from trusts or, as a general rule, from unions.
• Hold union officers and employees to the same reporting obligations under the LMRDA.

Faced with the daunting prospect of being significantly outspent by his Republican opponent, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown spoke to a labor group Tuesday and urged them to go on the offensive.

“We’re going to attack whenever we can, but I’d rather have you attack,” Brown said at a gathering of the California delegation of the Laborers’ International Union of North America in Sacramento. “I’d rather be the nice guy in this race. We’ll leave [the attacks] to … the Democratic Party and others.”

Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for GOP candidate Meg Whitman, said Brown’s pitch was unseemly and perhaps even illegal.

“I think this is pretty clear evidence that Jerry Brown is actively seeking independent support to prop up his campaign from the unions attacking Meg Whitman,” Bounds said. “And more importantly, I think, it’s Jerry Brown in his own words laying out a very cynical campaign strategy that’s playing fast and loose with the campaign rules in California.”

Read the whole thing here.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting:

The AFL-CIO plans to roll out its biggest political campaign ever, surpassing the $53 million spent in 2008 to help elect President Barack Obama, to try to avert a repeat of the 1994 midterm election when Democrats lost a majority in Congress.

If that sounds a bit aggressive, that’s nothing compared to the powerful head of the AFSCME public employee union, who is saying “The time has come to draw a line in the sand…Regardless of your party affiliation, if you’re not with us, you are against us.”

(We’re pretty sure we’ve seen other people get hammered for using the same language, but we digress…)

It’s certainly interesting that unions are doubling down on their failed bet. But anything can happen when you wish upon a star…

As 2009 fades away, President Obama has decided to let disclosure of hundreds of millions of dollars in forced-union-dues disclosure fade away too. Under current law and regulations valid until December 30th, union bosses were supposed to carefully document the billions of dollars they extract from workers as a condition of employment that they in turn pour into front groups and other “funds” each year.

A large part of the billions were about to be made public and reported on a Department of Labor disclosure form known as the Form T-1 Annual Report. But, that won’t happen now!

According to Bureau of National Affairs, Inc, “The Labor Department is issuing a final rule that extends for one year the deadlines for unions to file Form T-1 Trust Annual Report Reports.”

After allowing only 11 days of comments from the public, the Obama Administration postponed requiring reports for another year. During 2010, the Obama Administration states that it intends to completely eliminate the financial disclosure.

Again, the Obama Administration is blatantly paying back union bosses at the expense of rank-and-file workers.

A new report, prepared by the Center for Responsive Politics and the National Institute on Money in State Politics, does a good job of dispelling that myth.

As it turns out, the National Education Association was by far the nation’s biggest political contributor during the 2008 election cycle. The NEA dropped a cool $56.3 million on its list of favored liberal candidates at various levels of government, which was about $12 million more than the runner-up contributor spent.

The American Federation of Teachers was also busy writing contribution checks, to the tune of $13.8 million. And the two unions joined forces to contribute about $3.3 million to various campaigns in a handful of states.

What was that again? Our government has been bought and paid for by Corporate America?

The Education Intelligence Agency summed up the true situation this way: “America’s two teachers unions outspent AT & T, Goldman Sachs, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, General Electric, Chevron, Pfizer, Morgan Stanley, Lockheed Martin, FedEx, Boeing, Merrill Lynch, Exxon Mobil, Lehman Brothers and the Walt Disney Corporation combined.”

That’s ironic when you consider what the unions got in return for their huge investment. We’re certain they were excited on election night last November, with a Democrat headed to the White House, big Democratic majorities taking over Congress, and Democrats controlling statehouses across the nation.

But alas, Democratic officeholders at every level have turned on the unions, despite their generous campaign gifts. The President is demanding Republican-style education reforms through his “Race to the Top” initiative, and state officials across the map are scrambling to cooperate and quality for federal money.

So I guess we can’t say that the teachers unions are dictating public policy with huge campaign expenditures. They certainly tried, but their pet politicians ate up all the treats, then turned around a bit their masters.

At least they are consistent!  Just as they did for union conflict-of-interest disclosure reporting that SEIU’s Andy Stern may be ignoring and just as it rescinded union-boss perk disclosures, the Obama Administration continues to rollback union financial disclosures.

It is not surprising that Obama’s Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis would rescind these financial disclosure rules since she is the former treasurer of the Big Labor funded American Rights at Work (ARAW) lobbying and political group.   These disclosures would reveal much about the group’s expenditures on behalf Big Labor’s agenda; the very types of expenditures Solis would have signed-off on as ARAW Treasurer.

Union officials have fought these financial disclosures since 2003.  One of the AFL-CIO lawyers involved in opposing these disclosure requirements was Deborah Greenfield.   Now, Greenfield is the Obama Administration’s Acting Deputy Solicitor of Labor and Director of the Office of the Secretariat.  As Deputy Solicitor, Greenfield oversees these regulations.

This looks like the same old Washington insider influence that Presidential Candidate Obama, President-Elect Obama, and President Obama promised that he would not allow.

But, there is more.  Not only are Solis and lawyer Greenfield potentially violating President Obama’s declared prohibition against conflicts-of-interest, there are many more union insiders at the Department.   The Senior Advisor to Department of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, Mary Beth Maxwell, greatly benefits from this rescission because she was the Executive Director of ARAW.  ARAW’s financial activities while Maxwell was in charge are currently due to be disclosed.  However, in eleven days these ARAW financial disclosures will be lost forever.

If you want to take action, you have eleven days to make your comments and to demand that the DOL stop this nonsense.

To comment on these regulations at the official site, click here, your comments should be identified by RIN 1215-AB75 (Document ID LMSO-2009-0004-0001).  Click Submit Comment next to the pencil and paper image.

ACT NOW, if you want to be heard.  And, please feel free to comment on BigGovernment.com comments section below and share with us your actions.

AFT10809letter –

On Friday, October 9, we received a threatening letter from the AFT’s general counsel (which was carbon copied to AFT President Randi Weingarten), demanding we immediately stop using the acronym ‘AFT’ anywhere on the site, effectively neutering it, and turn over the domain registration to the union. [See the letter here.] How can we have a website completely dedicated to analyzing the AFT and its agenda if we aren’t allowed to use the acronym ‘AFT?’

It was an outrageous attempt to squelch our First Amendment rights to voice our opinions, which are based in fact.

For example, the site breaks down the financial reports, known as LM-2 filings, that the AFT is required to submit to the federal Department of Labor. The reports detail union income and expenditures, including staff and leadership compensation, lobbying expenses, and political advocacy donations.

We’re sure the AFT, the country’s second-largest teachers’ union, is not thrilled that we’re bringing attention to the fact that earlier this year, it gave nearly $50,000 to the embattled radical group ACORN, which has been accused of offenses ranging from voter registration fraud, questionable use of tax dollars and aiding a presumed pimp and prostitute to secure a home for apparently illegal purposes. That information came from the LM-2 report, found on the site.

Prior to 2009, AFTexposed.com has been able to account for nearly $1.3 million in teacher dues dollars going to support ACORN’s activities.

The American Federation of Teachers apparently will stop at nothing to squash dissent. We will stand up to its attempt to silence us and neuter our website.

The AFT will have to figure out a way to put a website in cement shoes to make it disappear. But maybe we shouldn’t be giving them any ideas.

It’s not as if we can’t take what we dish out. A different teachers union, in our home state of Michigan, has already launched an “exposed”-type site focusing on attacking us personally, as well as our work. We would never seek to stomp on that union’s First Amendment rights to critique us and our small organization, because that’s the American way. Yet that’s precisely what the AFT is attempting to do to us.

For being so well known for bullying school administrators and school boards at bargaining time, it turns out the elephant really is afraid of the mouse.

A response letter, written by Clark M. Neily III of the Institute for Justice, can be viewed here.