SHOCKER: Solis' labor of love

02.17.2014

Put on your shocked faces, everyone: Former Obama administration official Hilda Solis, who is now running for yet another government position in Los Angeles, is embroiled in yet another union corruptocracy scandal.

Solis served as President Obama's first secretary of Labor. Well before Solis' confirmation, it was already clear that she was a poster child for left-wing sleazeball politics:

• Solis' husband's businesses failed to pay thousands of dollars in tax liens, which were 16 years old, until she was nominated.

• While she was in Congress, Solis served as director and treasurer of a union-promoting lobbying group, American Rights at Work, which was pushing her Big Labor “card check” legislation to eliminate the secret ballot, undermine worker choice and obliterate privacy protections.

• Upon winning confirmation, Solis quickly went to work doling out plum political appointments at the Labor Department and fat pay raises to a half-dozen of her former Capitol Hill staffers.

Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that her resignation coincided with an FBI inquiry into her role at an Obama re-election campaign fundraiser in 2012. When the paper asked the Solis camp whether she had informed Obama of the FBI probe, a spokesman responded tersely: “It is inappropriate for a Cabinet official to (discuss) private communications with the president.”

It also turns out that for the entire last year she served as Obama's Labor secretary, Solis had retained a high-priced Washington, D.C., law firm “to address legal issues” involving the fundraiser and possible violations of the federal Hatch Act — which prevents Cabinet members from directly grubbing for campaign cash. Solis had incurred a debt of between $50,000 and $100,000 for the legal bills. Her campaign says it's almost “all” paid off, but won't specify by how much.

Last week, the latest eruption of corruptocracy shook the Solis machine. Hews Media Group-Community News obtained a lawsuit filed in California's Central U.S. District Court claiming that Solis “was provided thousands of dollars worth of free private jet travel without declaring the trips on the federal government required forms, paid for by the powerful International Union of Operating Engineers based in Pasadena during the same period she was undergoing confirmation hearings to become part of Obama's Cabinet.”

IUOE Local 12 owns a Cessna jet, which ferried Solis back and forth between the coasts. IUOE First Vice President William Waggoner, a defendant in the suit, reportedly bragged to fellow union officials that he was providing her transportation.

Waggoner and his fellow IUOE brass have been accused by rank-and-file union members of systemic embezzlement, kickbacks, shakedowns, nepotism and intimidation.

Courthouse News reported on another lawsuit exposing how Waggoner's alleged “nepotism and a bad investment vehicle led to the evaporation of $50 million in IUOE pension funds.”

Jet-setting union crony Solis has the gall to brag about her record fighting income inequality and defending Big Labor rights. Maybe she should focus less on closing the wage gap and more on closing her truth and ethics gap.

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