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| Home Front: Politix |
| The Nominee Who Lobbied Herself |
| 2009-02-04 |
| A seemingly innocuous letter sent to the Clerk of the House of Representatives last Thursday by President Obama's Secretary of Labor nominee Hilda Solis raises serious and troubling legal questions about her nomination and apparent violation of House ethics rules. Not only was she involved with a private organization that was lobbying her fellow legislators on a bill that she has cosponsored, but she apparently kept her involvement secret and failed to reveal a clear conflict of interest. I see BHO's nominees are consistently loose with ethics. Solis was a co-sponsor in 2007 of the so-called "Employee Free Choice Act," the card check legislation that would effectively eliminate the secret ballot and destroy the ability of employees to make an anonymous decision (without fear of retribution) on whether they want to join a union. She was also a co-sponsor of the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act, legislation that would force states to allow public safety officers to form unions. At the same time, however, Solis was a board member of a pro-union organization, American Rights at Work, that has been lobbying Congress on both of these bills. According to a letter filed by Solis with the House Clerk on January 29, 2009, she was not just a director of the ARW, along with fellow travelers like David Bonior, Julian Bond, and John Sweeney, she was actually the treasurer. In other words, she is the official legally charged with the fiduciary duty of approving and signing off on all spending by the organization. And to make matters worse, she did not reveal to her colleagues in the House of Representatives that membership on her financial disclosure forms, which may constitute a separate ethical violation. |
| Posted by:tipover |
| #4 Wonder if she pays her taxes. Not that it really matters to the Obama administration. |
| Posted by: DMFD 2009-02-04 18:29 |
| #3 This is a bit like an unpaid member of the board for the Sierra Club pushing a bill on Wilderness without mentioning the conflict of interest. Or a senior member of ACORN legislating on voting regulations with no notice of conflict... It is the secrecy and no declaration of recusal that is the problem, not the membership in the organization. |
| Posted by: tipover 2009-02-04 17:09 |
| #2 She claims the position in the ARW was unpaid so that is why she forgot to declared it. BTW, if what she was doing violates ethics rules, then it will bite a lot of folks. |
| Posted by: mhw 2009-02-04 11:52 |
| #1 and she wasn't a member of CPUSA (yet)? guess she wanted to get her Fed. Govt ticket punched first before entering the big league. |
| Posted by: HammerHead 2009-02-04 09:41 |