Until mid-September, the measure led with overwhelming margins. Then the billionaires came to the state. In the case of Proposition 37, they at least did their evil in the sunlight. The same can't be said of other billionaire efforts.

But for Proposition 37, they gave, and they gave, and they gave. And when they weren't sure they were going to win, they called out their US Chamber of Commerce friends to give, and then whipped up some grassroots support from local farmers and grocers.

All in all, $40 million was spent to defeat a measure which would have expanded food labels. Food labels! Here is the million-dollar plus Hall of Shame, much of it reported after the election:

• Monsanto: $8,100,000
• DuPont: $5,400,000
• Dow Agroscience: $2,000,000
• PepsiCo: $2,055,180
• Kraft Foods Global: $1,916,095
• Bayer CropScience: $2,000,000
• Sygenta Corp: $1,936,700
• BASF Plant Sciences: $ 2,000,000
• NestleUSA: $ 1,754,129
• Coca-Cola: $1,394,191
• Conagra Foods: $1,020,102
• General Mills: $1,115,899

The total from those twelve donors was over $34 million of the $40 million spent to defeat the initiative. For food labels.

Evidently food labels step on right wing treasured tropes, like "frivolous lawsuits" and disclosure, because in their opinions, the science proves GMO foods to be perfectly safe. Of course, there might be a problem with that thought pattern, since corporations often buy their own scientists to keep doing what they're doing.

Whether or not there's a safety issue, labeling food seems like a no-brainer. Those who want to read labels, do. Those who don't want to read them, don't. It's really that simple, unless you're Monsanto and don't want any negative PR or suggestions that what you're doing might really not be good for people.

Despite the transparency of Proposition 37's opposition in 2012, it may be the last time we see it. I noticed a $375,000 contribution to the effort made by the Council for Biotechnology Information. It sounds all think-tanky and stuff, doesn't it? But it's really just a 501(c)(6) organization whose board represents the top six or so donors on that giving list. It's possible that between now and the next effort to try and get disclosure on food labels, that organization will have a companion organization that's a 501(c)(4) -- civic interest organization -- through which all opposition dollars flow into California.

As it was, money given to defeat Proposition 37 found its way to candidates, the California Republican Party, organizations with names like the Coalition for Senior Citizen Security, Continuing the Republican Revolution, and the Council of Concerned Women Voters, ostensibly to pay to include the "No" recommendation on their slate mailings. Really, it was just a way use targeted mailing lists to remind voters that good Republicans oppose food labeling because Wall Street and their corporate masters would prefer not to spend the miniscule amount necessary to make sure consumers know what they're buying.

And so you have it. Prop 37 went down in flames and with it, common sense, along with the simple idea of actually knowing what we're eating before we eat it.

Success on Main St depends on success in the classroom. Take a stand for #edreform. #breakthemonopoly bit.ly/SchMg5

— U.S. Chamber's ICW (@USChamberICW) September 28, 2012

"Won't Back Down" is a huge flop at the box office. No surprise there, given that it's an insubstantial view of what the issues in education reform are really about. But it seems that the film probably wasn't made for general viewing anyway, given how it's currently being used.

The US Chamber of Commerce has launched a nationwide tour they call "Breaking the Monopoly of Mediocrity" in education. They should have just called it "Break Teachers and Bash the Unions," because that's really what the purpose is. From their recently-launched website:

The 'Breaking the Monopoly of Mediocrity' tour will include:

• An interactive forum of local business leaders, educators, and community leaders facilitated by education reform policy experts and practitioners. Participants will have an opportunity to strategize with other leaders in the community on the best ways to implement change.
• A screening of the film with Won’t Back Down—a story of a single mother’s struggle to create meaningful change in her daughter’s chronically failing school.
• Key resources, including a customized fact sheet detailing relevant education and workforce data of the community.

I'm sure it's not a coincidence that the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post came out yesterday with an editorial saying that Won't Back Down should be nominated for an Academy Award. Rupert has no shame in promoting his own prospects for big profits in privatized education through his own publications and non-profits like Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst outfit, but this editorial is particularly shameless:

‘Won’t Back Down” for Best Picture?

Why not? The school-based drama, which opened last weekend, boasts a sterling cast, including Academy Award nominees Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal.

More important, it sends a valuable message about US schools — and unions.

Indeed, that it’s drawn the acid-laced enmity of American Federation of Teachers boss Randi Weingarten tells you all you need to know: Give this flick an Oscar now.

Joel Klein, former chancellor of New York Department of Education, loves Won't Back Down, too. Gosh, I wonder if that has anything to do with his gig running Murdoch's corporate education division? Klein's recent interview with Techcrunch echoes all of the US Chamber's talking points:

Our own Gregory Ferenstein asked Klein about why he thought that the education space isn’t being disrupted by the Internet as quickly as other markets. In Klein’s view, it’s the fact that education is still, for the most part, a “state-run monopoly” that resists change as much as possible.

Despite this assessment, Klein still said that he is more enthusiastic about online education than ever before. In his view, now is the time for those who are developing education apps to engage. “Nothing comes easy in K-12,” though, he noted. There is, after all, very little incentive for the incumbents in this space to change.

[...]

Analytics and assessment, is seems, is really what Klein is focusing on. The biggest mistake we’ve made so far, he thinks, is that we have focused so much on technology but not enough on assessment. Different kids, after all, learn in different ways and at different speeds. But with enough analytics, we should be able to better personalize the education experience.

Oh, look! It's more Bill Gates argle-bargle! Yes, there's certainly space in K-12 education for the Internet and technology, but this notion that assessments can be microtargeted down to the differences between the kid with ADHD and the kid with a reading disability is just nonsense. Yes! That's what we need, more testing.

Those "assessments" obviously bring a very large revenue stream into corporate balance sheets, which is why they're relentlessly pimped at every opportunity. What they do not do is give provable data as to how children learn or why they are not meeting arbitrary standards that are not necessarily accurate reflections of what a child knows or does not know.

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Eric Schneiderman noticed. Via The New York Times:

Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman of New York has begun investigating contributions to tax-exempt groups that are heavily involved in political campaigns, focusing on a case involving the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has been one of the largest outside groups seeking to influence recent elections but is not required to disclose its donors.

Mr. Schneiderman issued a wide-ranging subpoena on Tuesday to executives at a foundation affiliated with the chamber, seeking e-mails, bank records and other documents to determine whether the foundation illegally funneled $18 million to the chamber for political and lobbying activities, according to people with knowledge of the investigation.

The investigation is also looking at connections between the chamber’s foundation, the National Chamber Foundation, and another philanthropy, the Starr Foundation, which made large grants to the chamber foundation in 2003 and 2004. During the same period, the National Chamber Foundation lent the chamber $18 million, most of it for what was described as a capital campaign.

When Mr. Schneiderman has received the documents he seeks with regard to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, perhaps similar subpoenas could be issued to Freedomworks, Americans for Prosperity, and the 60+ Association?

Here's one question I have, though. Why does it have to be the New York Attorney General opening these investigations? Why isn't this a matter for the IRS to address?

Are we surprised? I'm not, but I'm pretty annoyed that these organizations use the lag time in reporting donations along with the anonymity to subvert legislation and democracy with absolutely zero accountability for it until it's far too late to do anything about it.

Via National Journal:

The backchannel spending allowed insurers to publicly stake out a pro-reform position while privately funding the leading anti-reform lobbying group in Washington. The chamber spent tens of millions of dollars bankrolling efforts to kill health care reform.

The behind-the-scenes transfers were particularly hard to track because the law does not require groups to publicly disclose where they are sending the money or who they are receiving it from.

Right. The only way you find out for sure (and even then it's not absolutely etched in stone) is to actually go and match up money going out of one of these TAX-EXEMPT organizations with money going in from another. The only way to do that is to examine their 990 returns, which are filed months and sometimes even years after the fact, as the article explains:

For example, in its 2009 IRS filing, AHIP reported giving almost $87 million to unnamed advocacy organizations for "grassroots outreach, education and mobilization, print, online, and broadcast advertising and coalition building efforts" on health care reform. That same year, the chamber reported receiving $86.2 million from an undisclosed group. Bloomberg's Drew Armstrong first reported the AHIP-chamber link. The $86 million accounted for about 42 percent of the total contributions and grants the chamber received.

The next year followed a similar pattern. In 2010, AHIP reported giving $16.5 million to unnamed advocacy organizations working on health care reform and the chamber reported receiving about $16.2 million from an undisclosed source, which the Alley has learned was AHIP. The $16.2 million accounted for about 8.6 percent of the total contributions and grants the chamber received that year.

Chamber spokeswoman Blair Latoff would not provide the providence of the $16.2 million donation saying only, "We filed our tax returns for calendar year 2010 in November. Schedule B lists all of our contributions, one of which is $16 million dollars from one entity."

That's right. They filed their tax returns for calendar year 2010 in November, 2011. The Affordable Care Act was signed in March, 2010. That means the US Chamber and AHIP had no obligation to disclose their funding or their expenditures until one year and eight months later, when the world has moved on to the next adventure, "Repeal and Replace."

This spending is far more harmful to democracy than political ads, in my opinion. One hundred million dollars was spent to lobby Congress, create astroturf groups to convince people it was a bad thing to get health insurance coverage without being excluded for pre-existing conditions, to gin up all sorts of opposition to it, and many other activities, I'm sure.

Honestly, I'm not sure how our economy could withstand the blow of all those jobs lost in the lobbying, public relations, and astroturf industries if we actually managed to force these insane people to disclose how they work against the interests of people in this country in real time. Because the one thing billionaires hate? Having to own their evil.

If you don't know what ipecac is, it's stuff that makes you vomit. These three news items came in one right after the other, and the combination had the same effect as a dose of the nasty stuff.

First, the chart above, courtesy of Talking Points Memo. It illustrates the share of corporate profits workers aren't getting. On the other hand, (and offered as the second item) the corporations are doing quite well, but of course, there are no jobs being created.

Finally, we have US Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donahoe, who is arguably one of the most evil men to ever be in a position of power saying this to the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce:

“Major corporations are sitting on $2 trillion,” Donohue said, adding that they are cautious about investing those dollars because of the uncertainty of new rules and regulations. “People are holding onto their money.”

With the potential “explosion” of regulations, Donohue said the U.S. Chamber has its own law firm that regularly sues the federal government in an effort to protect the nation’s business interests.

What baloney. This notion that regulations are causing uncertainty is another Big Lie that gets told routinely to justify the efforts of corporations to sit on investment and expansion until they get their way. Turn blue, corporations, go ahead.

But Donohue didn't stop there. He took aim at the ultra-conservatives who think holding the debt ceiling hostage is a problem. However, I don't view what he said as something to celebrate. It's pretty sickening, actually.

Yes, it will be raised, Donohue answered, mainly because the country can not afford to not pay its bills. To those newly-elected representatives who say they aren’t going to raise the debt ceiling and will shut down government, Donohue said the U.S. Chamber has its own message: “We’ll get rid of you.”

He then went on to praise U.S. House Speaker John Boehner for his Congressional leadership.

“He’s growing into his shorts,” Donohue said. “He’s put on his big boy pants.”

That message -- the "we'll get rid of you" threat -- should turn the stomach of every American regardless of their political ideology. This notion that elected representatives must do the bidding of the US Chamber of Commerce and their contingents or they'll be "offed" politically is the most thuggish, overt exercise of corporatism in politics I've ever seen.

Well, now! I hope someone brings this to the attention of the Justice Department (I know, I know, only kidding!). No, I hope someone files a RICO case against the Chamber of Commerce:

Earlier this month, Richard Clarke, who served for both Democratic and Republican Presidents, including a stint as the cyber security czar for the Bush administration, denounced the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for plottingwith a group of military contractors to hack into progressive groups. Clarke was in DC speaking at a cyber security conference hosted by Symantec. Although Clarke focused his remarks about the growing threat of global cyber terrorism, ThinkProgress spoke to the longtime public servant about the ChamberLeaks story we originally broke.

According to documents first reported by ThinkProgress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s attorneys began working with three military contractors — Berico, HB Gary, and Palantir — to come up with a proposal to discredit groups like ThinkProgress, the SEIU, StopTheChamber.com, MoveOn.org, and others. The tactics proposed included spying on families, using malware computer viruses to steal private information, using fake documents to embarrass liberals, and creating fake identities to infiltrate their targets.

Clarke denounced the scandal in no uncertain terms. Noting accurately that the Chamber “took foreign money in the last election,” a story also uncovered by ThinkProgress, Clarke said the Chamber’s attorneys had conspired to commit a “felony”:

FANG: Hi. You talked a lot about classifying and recognizing cyber security threats, but you mostly focused on foreign threats. I’m curious about a story that broke last month, that the US Chamber of Commerce, the world’s largest trade association, based here in DC, had contracted or attempted to contract military defense firms like HB Gary Federal, Palantir, and Berico, to develop proposals to use the same type of cyber warfare tactics normally reserved for Jihadi websites against left-wing activists, trade — labor unions, and left of center think tanks here in America. What do you think about that type of threat from a lobbyist or a corporation targeting political enemies, or perceived enemies here in the US?

CLARKE: I think it’s a violation of 10USC. I think it’s a felony, and I think they should go to jail. You call them a large trade association, I call them a large political action group that took foreign money in the last election. But be that as it may, if you in the United States, if any American citizen anywhere in the world, because this is an extraterritorial law, so don’t think you can go to Bermuda and do it, if any American citizen anywhere in the world engages in unauthorized penetration, or identity theft, accessing a number through identity theft purposes, that’s a felony and if the Chamber of Commerce wants to try that, that’s fine with me because the FBI will be on their doorstep in a matter of hours.

The next time you hear some lofty conservative twaddle about our freedoms, please point them to this Think Progress post and ask for an explanation. Ask them why they think they're threatened by government when we have large corporations funding private investigations and smear campaigns against people who speak against them.

According to e-mails obtained by ThinkProgress, the Chamber hired the lobbying firm Hunton and Williams to spearhead this effort. Hunton And Williams’ attorney Richard Wyatt, who once represented Food Lion in its infamous lawsuit against ABC News, was hired by the Chamber in October of last year. To assist the Chamber, Wyatt and his associates, John Woods and Bob Quackenboss, hired a set of private security firms — HB Gary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies (collectively called Team Themis) — to develop tactics for damaging progressive groups and labor unions, in particular ThinkProgress, the labor coalition called Change to Win, the SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com.

Tread carefully here. The US Chamber left themselves a layer of plausible deniability, as Marcy Wheeler carefully explains. Bottom line: The Chamber of Commerce hired an attorney, who then farmed out assignments on spec to dig up dirt on their "enemies" and smear them.

Here are some of the proposals (PDF). One that caught my eye was this one:

Create a false document, perhaps highlighting periodical financial information, and monitor to see if USChamber Watch acquires it. Afterward, present explicit evidence proving that such transactions never occurred. Also, create a fake insider persona and generate communications with CtW. Afterward, release the actual documents at a specified time and explain the activity as a CtW contrived operation. Both
instances will prove that US Chamber Watch cannot be trusted with information and/or tell the truth.

Got it. Plant a false document with financial information, wait for USChamberWatch to "acquire it", and when they use the information, nail them for lying. Lie to them and then get them for lying.

But there's much, much more. Not only did these hired thugs go after ThinkProgress, SEIU and others, they also went after bloggers like Brad Friedman, family members of people they were after, including children. They hacked social media accounts and compiled personal information (dossiers) on everyone.

New emails reveal that the private spy company investigated the families and children of the Chamber’s political opponents. The apparent spearhead of this project was Aaron Barr, an executive at HB Gary. Barr circulated numerous emails and documents detailing information about political opponents’ children, spouses, and personal lives.

One of the targets was Mike Gehrke, a former staffer with Change to Win. Among the information circulated about Gehrke was the specific “Jewish church” he attended and a link to pictures of his wife and two children (sensitive information was redacted by ThinkProgress):

Here it is:

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And wouldn't you know, the Egyptian arm of the US Chamber of Commerce (AmCham Egypt) has gone to bat for the Mubarak regime.

Think Progress:

However, there is at least one powerful, multinational entity that has continually stood by Mubarak and the Egyptian elite and has continually fought efforts to democratize the country. As ThinkProgress previously reported, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce maintains a network of foreign affiliates known as Amchams, “which are foreign chambers of the Chamber composed of American and foreign companies.” In Egypt, this foreign affiliate is known as the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, known in short as AmCham Egypt.

AmCham Egypt’s relation to the Mubarak dictatorship stretches back decades. In fact, the Egyptian dictator even personally intervened to create the organization. In 1981, Mubarak issued an order to allow for the creation of the AmCham by giving it an exemption from Egypt’s strict NGO laws — which help limit the influence human rights and democracy promotion organizations. Since then, the chamber has grown to have hundreds of members. While roughly 75 percent of the organization’s members are Egyptian businesses, many of them are also large Western multinational corporations, like Coca Cola and BP. The Chamber’s member companies account for nearly 20 percent of Egypt’s GDP.

ThinkProgress goes on to detail how AmCham Egypt intervened to scuttle Russ Feingold's bill calling for an end to crackdowns on pro-democracy advocates, and how just recently, John Negroponte was sent to discourage any uprising or nasty pro-democracy talk.

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What are you gonna do now?

Looks like they're ready to par-tay! And the guest of honor? Wait for it....President Barack Obama. That's right, the man and the office they've tried to undermine with tons of undisclosed donations to Republican races.

After months of all-out political war with the nation's most powerful business lobby, President Obama appears to be on the verge of launching a dramatic peace offering to the president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Tom Donohue.

Two sources familiar with the negotiations tell me that Obama was giving serious consideration to going into the lion's den and delivering a speech at a Dec. 2 jobs summit hosted by Donohue, whose organization just spent tens of millions of dollars trying to bring the President's agenda to a screeching halt by helping to elect more pro-business lawmakers in the midterm election.

"It was my impression they were looking very favorably on the invite," a senior Chamber official told me about the White House, and a senior administration official did not quibble with that account when I checked with the White House on Friday.

I'm told that for logistical reasons, unrelated to Obama, the Chamber of Commerce had to cancel the December jobs summit. But the group is now planning a similar January event and wants Obama to be the headliner.

Nothing like getting rewarded for stealing democracy away from American citizens.

The US Chamber of Commerce is on a mission, and Tom Donohue wastes no time in throwing the gauntlet. The bottom line: There is no upper limit on what they will spend to defeat Democrats and in particular, Barack Obama.

Donohue sat down for an interview with BusinessWeek after Tuesday's elections and laid it on the line:

Now, with his strategy having proven effective, Donohue and the chamber are plotting their post-election agenda. A week before the House flipped, R. Bruce Josten, the chamber's silver-maned, Benson & Hedges-smoking chief lobbyist and Mr. Fixit, said that a lot would be unclear after the election, even if the Republicans triumphed. There would be struggles over congressional committee chairmanships and lame-duck shenanigans. But he was certain of this much: The President's change agenda was history. There would be nothing like the Affordable Health Choices Act, no more Keynesian spending. "He is going to have to operate differently," Josten said.

Josten did offer a consolation prize: He had suggestions about ways the newly humbled White House could cut some deals with the GOP and still find some legislative victories. As he noted, the White House is already working on a trade agreement with South Korea that could be announced as early as next week. That may not endear the President to his union supporters, but the chamber will applaud.

The chamber's chief lobbyist also recommended that the Administration put its support behind a permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts. The White House signaled just before the election that the matter would be considered carefully. Josten would also like to see a corporate tax cut and increased federal spending on infrastructure, which would also be a boon to the private sector. The White House has signaled it will mull these over as well.

Donohue says the chamber intends to challenge many of the regulations in the health-care and financial reform acts. It has already sued to keep the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions and to block a provision that would make it easier for shareholders to get their own candidates on corporate boards. "You may not know we have our own law firm," he says proudly. He is still trying not to gloat. "It's a public-interest law firm. We sue the federal government of the United States 150 times a year on regulatory issues." He adds: "By the way, we win a lot."

And it's entirely personal:

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