These wingtips are made for walking over the 99%

The US Chamber of Commerce held a lavish Christmas party last night, and activists formed a human red carpet for attendees to walk on. Reports ThinkProgress:

The Chamber is the nation’s largest corporate lobby group. As guests entered, protesters shouted, “You walk on our rights, now walk on us!” encouraging attendees to trample on the activists laying underneath the red carpet painted with “99%.” No one did, sadly, at least while ThinkProgress was in attendance. 

Chamber Executive Vice President Bruce Josten stood at the foot of the carpet most of the time, welcoming his frightened, amused, and befuddled guests, easily distinguishable from the activists by their business attire.

The "O" in the giant "Jobs" banner pictured in the video stands for "Overseas."

Fact check on Koch-whore ads finds they are LYYYIIIIINNG!!!

The Koch-whore group FreedomWorks says it's spending $5.6 million on ads to smear unions. We took a little time to figure out just how they're lying. It didn't take long. 

The first thing they lie about is the palm trees. As ThinkProgress points out,

The advertisement tries to paint union protesters in Ohio as violent thugs. One problem: the ad uses footage from an old union protest in California.

How do we know? This is the same footage from California, which features palm trees, that was used by Bill O’Reilly just days ago. He used it to argue that the protesters in Wisconsin were violent thugs.

Here's the second thing: The ad starts out with the statement, "How do government unions plan to get Ohio out of debt?" Then it shows an angry man yelling "every once in a while you need to get out in the street and get a little bloody." Who is that man? An Ohio union member? Hardly. It's a Massachusetts congressman, Rep. Michael Capuano.

And remember this -- their statement that the ad campaign was to target

“the rampant abuse of power that organized labor has engaged at the state and federal level to impact elections and the public policymaking process”????

Check out this list of the top 20 spenders on lobbying the U.S. government between 1998-2010. Not a union in the list. All multinational corporations that spend billions bending the federal government to their own needs. (That money, by the way, came out of your phone bill, health care bill, utility bill, gas money and federal income taxes.)

(NOTE: All lobbying expenditures on this page come from the Senate Office of Public Records. Data for the most recent year was downloaded on January 31, 2010.)

Top Spenders (1998-2010)

US Chamber of Commerce  $738,825,680
American Medical Assn  $243,277,500
General Electric  $236,580,000
AARP  $197,752,064
Pharmaceutical Rsrch & Mfrs of America  $195,143,920
American Hospital Assn   $194,316,789
AT&T Inc  $161,557,725
Blue Cross/Blue Shield  $159,178,718
Northrop Grumman  $159,175,253
National Assn of Realtors  $155,997,380
Exxon Mobil  $151,336,942
Verizon Communications  $148,974,841
Edison Electric Institute  $147,075,999
Business Roundtable  $142,824,000
Boeing Co   $139,424,310
Lockheed Martin  $135,124,293
Southern Co  $117,840,694
PG&E Corp  $117,680,000
General Motors   $116,379,170
Pfizer Inc  $107,267,268

Just makes you sick, doesn't it?

Has Chamber proved it hasn't funneled foreign money to political campaigns?

White House adviser David Axelrod says the U.S. Chamber has some 'splaining to do. He appeared on "Face the Nation" yesterday and told Bob Schieffer that the U.S. Chamber hasn't proven that the foreign money it funneled to U.S. campaigns is "peanuts":

The fact is the Chamber has asserted that, but they won't release any information about where their money is coming from. And that's the core of the problem.

The U.S. Chamber is probably the single biggest contributor to U.S. political campaigns, and it has long championed NAFTA, CAFTA and all the trade deals that give workers the SHAFTA (as my boss, Jim Hoffa, likes to say).

The Washington Post and the New York Times, both ardent supporters of job-killing trade deals, dismiss the story about the U.S> Chamber's practice of funneling money to pro-free-trade candidates from countries like Bahrain, Egypt and India.

But ThinkProgress, the blog that originally reported the story, produced the chart above that shows how the U.S. Chamber does it.

And ThinkProgress asks two very good questions that neither the Times nor the Post thought to get answered:

How many foreign sources of funding does the U.S. Chamber have? and

Are the foreign funds being directed to the same general account that is being used to pay for partisan attack ads?

Stay tuned.

Today's Teamster Links 10/05/10

Veolia Locks Out Teamsters Local 104 Members IBT ...More than 60 Phoenix-based Teamsters Local 104 Veolia fuelers, cleaners, parts clerks and tire service workers were escorted off Veolia property early Monday morning by security...

Cities in Debt Turn to States, Adding Strain New York Times ...a growing number of towns, cities and other local governments are seeking refuge in similar (state distressed cities programs) .... as alternatives to federal bankruptcy court...

U.S. Chamber of Commerce turns on past allies Associated Press ...The chamber is now spending millions of dollars on ads trying to elect candidates whose campaigns are based on opposing the very bank rescue and stimulus law it once supported...

California Supreme Court upholds unpaid furloughs for more than 200,000 state workers Los Angeles Times ...Unions hail part of the ruling that said the governor lacks unilateral authority to cut work weeks and pay. The governor says it upholds 'the state's actions to protect taxpayers.'...

Tidal wave of outside money floods congressional campaign coffers McClatchy ... From Aug. 1 to Sept. 20, the study found, Republican-leaning interests outspent Democrats by about 5 to 1 on ads...