It's not quite on the same scale as accepting Karl Rove's lies about Iraq, but the much of the Washington press corps seems unwilling and unable to report on the shady campaign spending practices of Karl Rove and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. If Rove and the Chamber say something, it must be so.
I've heard and read many reporters just regurgitate Rove and the Chamber's talking points about not spending foreign money -- even though the Chamber does take in lots of foreign money and doesn't segregate it Then, the Washington Post's post op-ed writer, Marc Theissen (who used to work with Rove) pulled a vintage Rovian tactic. He accused the Democratic allied groups of doing what the GOP's supporters are doing. He claimed there is an equivalency between what the Chamber is doing and what unions do. It's not true, but what the hell. Rove and his crew learned that the Washington press corps will gobble up anything they say. See, unions actually have to report their spending. The Chamber doesn't. Not that complicated for most of us. But, it is way too complicated for the Post and its op-ed page writers.
SEIU's Political Director tried to explain this to the Washington Post, not that the Post is interested in facts:
And if Mr. Thiessen had looked at public disclosures, he would know that money from SEIU's Canadian members pays for Canadian programs for workers. It is not used on U.S. political campaigns.
Here's the irony: Anyone who wants to know where SEIU political dollars come from can go on the Internet and check out the detailed public reports all unions and their political action committees are required to file with the Federal Election Commission and the U.S. Labor Department. But just try to find out where the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Crossroads and other right-wing front groups are getting the hundreds of millions of dollars they are spending to try to cut people's health-care coverage, privatize Social Security and let Wall Street make its own rules. (Hint: It's not possible because they don't disclose the sources of their big checks.)
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the shadowy 527 and 501 (c)(4) groups that have sprung up in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, are conduits for vast sums of undisclosed corporate money that threaten our democracy. We are a union of working people, and the money we spend on politics is money donated by workers.
