There’s lots of speculation out there about the effect on the 2012 elections of all the money that the Citizens United Supreme Court decision has unleashed  – all the so-called issue ads paid for by big corporate stake-holders. Add to the corporate money, the fact that we know that negative ads work – we saw what several million dollars of televised trash-talk can accomplish a few weeks ago when the Romney greenback machine mowed down Newt Gingrich. Now add the final fillip – folks are free to lie themselves silly in these ads, and you end up with a situation where it’ll be difficult for anyone to withstand the big money boys who are out to buy them some gubment.

And guess what? The whole ugly shebang’s coming to a theatre near you. In fact, it’s already arrived. Last week the Chamber of Commerce debuted an attack ad aimed at Claire McCaskill:

As you noticed if you watched the video, the argument is simple, easy to digest and completely false:

Tell Claire McCaskill that Missouri doesn’t need government-run health care, we need jobs!

Obamacare will kill jobs. So why did Claire McCaskill cast a deciding vote for Obamacare in Washington, DC?

Missouri has overwhelmingly rejected government run healthcare. But McCaskill continues to support Obamacare.

Call Claire McCaskill and tell her Missouri doesn’t need government-run healthcare – 314-367-1364.

Fib number one is that Obamacare will “kill” jobs. This claim was debunked ages ago. It essentially rests on a creative misrepresentation of a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis in a report prepared by GOP House leadership over a year ago:

What follows is a story of how statistics get used and abused in Washington.

What CBO actually said is that the impact of the health care law on supply and demand for labor would be small. Most of it would come from people who no longer have to work, or can downshift to less demanding employment, because insurance will be available outside the job.

“The legislation, on net, will reduce the amount of labor used in the economy by a small amount – roughly half a percent – primarily by reducing the amount of labor that workers choose to supply,” budget office number crunchers said in a report from last year.

In fact, the Center for American Progress contends that repealing Obamacare will be the real job killer:

A successful repeal of health care reform would revert us back to the old system for financing and delivering health care and lead to substantial increases in total medical spending. The consequences of this spending increase would be far reaching. It would hurt family incomes, jobs, and economic growth.

Repealing health reform would:

— Increase medical spending by $125 billion by the end of this decade and add nearly $2,000 annually to family insurance premiums

— Destroy 250,000 to 400,000 jobs annually over the next decade

— Reduce the share of workers who start new businesses, move to new jobs, or otherwise invest in themselves and the economy

The second, implicit, fib is that Obamacare is “government run health care.”  It is, sadly, no such thing. It’s no more than an effort to impose some accountability on a deeply flawed and unnecessarily expensive private system of health care delivery, while ensuring that most Americans have some type of access to good health care. Less than 20% of Missourians voted in the 2010 election in which the anti-Obamacare Proposition C was “overwhelmingly” endorsed. We’ll see just what happens when, as will be the case in 2012, the rest of us go out to the polls.

I would, though, echo one sentiment expressed in the Chamber’s terse little ad. Do, by all means, call Claire McCaskill – and thank her for standing firm and voting for the Affordable Care Act. No matter how she waffles and bobs and weaves in order to deflect political sticks and stones, that vote should be something that she can always point to and feel proud of what she did in Washington.  

I came across some interesting nuggets tonight while reading Think Progress. According to a report from a nonpartisan group, Campaign Money Watch:

— Missouri has lost 102,608 jobs due to trade policies that encourage outsourcing since 1994.

— So far, during this election cycle, the Chamber of Commerce, a leading proponent of outsourcing, has spent $259,375 on attack ads targeting Robin Carnahan.

A Connecticut Post blogger who summarized several GOP candidates’ records on outsourcing noted that Blunt “voted five times to protect loopholes that reward companies that ship American jobs overseas and voted against providing extra assistance to Missouri workers who lost jobs due to outsourcing.”

Do you see a pattern emerging? One that perhaps explains Blunt’s failure to even mention outsourcing in that “Jobs Plan” he is always ballyhooing. Instead, he promises to:

— Repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) which will not go into effect until 2014 and which has had no appreciable effect on our current employment problems – although, since repealing the ACA will, according to the CBO, exacerbate the deficit problem, it might well make unemployment worse long-term.

— Fight against energy legislation that has the potential to create new clean-energy jobs.

— Cancel the stimulus funding that has not been paid out – although most of the remaining funds have been committed and projects have commenced; canceling these projects would do little but contribute to even more unemployment and misery.

— Cut taxes and cut them again – which has an arguable stimulative effect on the economy, but which would definitely zoom the deficit into the stratosphere.

— Cut spending to reduce the deficit – and given the effect on the deficit of his proposed tax-cutting spree, those cuts would have to be mighty indeed to have any effect, gutting essential programs like Social Security, Medicare and defense.

As you see, there’s lots of questionable verbiage about jobs, but not one mention of outsourcing. Does anyone need to be reminded that a similar formula didn’t perform that well during the Bush years?  Nor is there any reason to think it will be more effective the second time around, when conditions are worse and the need greater.

There are many factors that make outsourcing jobs attractive. Labor is defenseless in many countries and can be exploited for next to nothing; some favored locations are more than willing to degrade their natural environment, offering a regulation-free environment; and currency issues can be exploited to make the already lowered costs even more appealing.

There’s also plenty that Congress could do to make outsourcing less attractive and keep good paying jobs here in America, where workers would spend their surplus wages on American-made goods, creating even more jobs. Of course, that probably wouldn’t work so well for Blunt’s Chamber constituency, nor for their foreign donors who might just stand to gain when American workers lose.

Via No More Mister Nice Blog:

Karl Rove. Ed Gillespie. They’re Bush cronies. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, they’re shills for big business. And they’re stealing our democracy, spending millions from secret donors to elect Republicans to do their bidding in Congress. It appears they even taken secret foreign money to influence our elections. It’s incredible, Republicans benefiting from secret foreign money. Tell the Bush crowd and the Chamber of Commerce, stop stealing our democracy.

The Democratic National Committee is responsible for the content of this advertising.

Cue republican cries of victimhood in three, two, one…

“Have these people no shame?” Rove said of the attacks leveled at him and the Chamber. “Does the president of the United States have such little regard for the office he holds that he goes out there and makes these kind of baseless charges against his political enemies? This is just beyond the pale. How dare the president do this?”

“This is a desperate and I think disturbing trend by the president of the United States to tar his political adversaries with some kind of enemies list, with being unrestrained by any facts or evidence whatsoever.”

Fascist putz – the lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Following up on an earlier report that connected money from foreign sources to Chamber of Commerce spending on behalf of GOP candidates in target states like Missouri, Think Progess today explores possible coordination between the ad buys of the Chamber and Carl Rove’s Crossroads GPS:

At every turn, from the operatives running the two organizations to their targeted races to their media firms, American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are bound to one another.

In Missouri, for instance, the seemingly “uncanny” coordination between their scheduling of ad buys insures that there will be always be a Chamber or Grossroads anti-Carnahan attack ad running:

Missouri

Crossroads GPS ads: 8/18-9/3

Chamber of Commerce ads: 9/3-9/8

American Crossroads ads begin: 09/15

Bear in mind that these two groups go to great lengths to conceal their donors, and that they account for over a fourth of the money that will be spent in this election by conservative interest groups. And it isn’t just TV ad buys. I’m sitting here as I write this looking at a glossy brochure put out by Crossroads proclaiming Robin Carnahan’s support for a “national energy tax.”

Sadly, if Congress magically decided to close the Pandora’s box opened by the Citizens United ruling, which now permits the GOP to launder donations through organizations like Chamber of Commerce; if a DOJ investigation found the Chamber guilty of violating laws that prohibit foreign entities from attempting to influence American elections; if if the (501(c)(4) tax status of organizations like Crossroads GPS were to be changed to that of a 527 political PAC (which it almost indisputably is) so that it would have to disclose its donors, all of this would happen too late to offset the unfair advantage these groups are giving the GOP in the upcoming election. For the time being we’ve got to suck it up and get on with it, no matter how badly the opposition is bending the law while working hand in hidden glove with each other and with the GOP.

It doesn’t bode well for the future – particularly if that future is is sullied by elephant crap in a GOP-controlled congress – that the Disclose Act, which would have insured some degree of transparency, couldn’t even make it though the Senate when that body has been, nominally at least, under the control of Democrats.

At any rate, there’s probably nothing to be done right now but get out and hustle our you-know-whats off. If we don’t, we’ll surely get’em handed to us on election day. We may anyway – and then it’s good bye to the good life in the old U.S. of A. for a good long while, at least for those of us who haven’t already got ours bigtime, like the richest 2% whom the GOP struggles to protect.

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Via Think Progress, Roy Blunt refuses to comment on the Chamber of Commerce’s alleged illegal fundraising from foreign corporations:

Think Progress also provides the following transcript of the video:

TP: Congressman Blunt? We reported at ThinkProgress yesterday that the Chamber of Commerce is accepting money from foreign corporations and using that same bank account for buying attack ads. If you’re elected to the Senate will you investigate this? Excuse me, Roy Blunt? Sir, the Chamber of Commerce has admitted that it’s accepting foreign money from businesses like the Bahrain Petroleum Company and they’re using that same bank account to run attack ads. Will you investigate the use of foreign money in our election[s]?

TP: Congressman Blunt? Pardon me, Congressman Blunt? Congressman Blunt? [BLUNT takes out cellphone] We reported yesterday at ThinkProgress that the Chamber of Commerce is fundraising from foreign companies, in India and Bahrain and many other places, uh, they’re using that same bank account run attack ads. Are you going to investigate this? […]

STAFFER: Sure you can call the office […] Let me give you a card and you’re welcome to call and uh, we’ll get you what you need. He’s on the phone but we’ll get you what he needs.

TP: Who’s he talking to? He’s not saying anything. Congressman Blunt? Are you sure he’s on the phone – I don’t hear him saying anything.

BLUNT: …And the event went fine. Good. Good. Really? Okay.

TP: Excuse me, Congressman Blunt? I have a membership application that the Chamber of Commerce is distributing in Bahrain asking for funds for the same bank account – the same campaign account – used to run campaign advertisements here in America. Do you have any comment on that?

Background on the illegal contributions allegedly collected by the Chamber can be found here. Think Progress notes that Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) has requested that the FEC launch an investigation into the matter that would require foreign companies to certify the uses to which their contributions have been put. May I just add that I am not at all surprised by the esteemed Rep. Blunt’s non-response?

Update:  Do you think Blunt’s skittishness could have anything to do with fears of exciting the same type of donor response described by FiredUp! here?

Update 2:  The Huffington Post picks up the foreign donations story and adds an outsourcing angle, while the New York Times brings on the moral opprobrium.

Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill happens to mention the Chamber of Commerce in a couple of Twitter posts today:

Missouri road projects with stimulus $ will start almost immediately. Weird that Chamber of Commerce endorsed it & all but 3 Rs rejected it. about 1 hour ago from TinyTwitter

That’s not “weird” that’s how they do business.

And then a little later:

Last time I checked Chamber spent millions trying to elect only Rs last year. Wonder if they’ll score this vote on their record of members? about 1 hour ago from TinyTwitter

Heh. Like a republican front organization would do anything mean to any republican? Still, it’s interesting to see that Senator McCaskill is attempting to point out the Chamber’s possible future dilemma.