The Obama administration has finally found an area in which it is
for less regulation -- not surprisingly, it involves monitoring
big labor. One of the quiet successes in the Bush administration
was Elaine Chao's leadership of the Department of Labor, because
she recognized that the function of the agency was to police
abuses by unions as well as businesses. Under Chao's leadership,
the Office of Labor Management Standards helped uncover fraud by
union officials, leading
to 1,004 indictments with 929 convictions, and recovering
more than $93 million on behalf of union members. Now, Obama
Labor Secretary Hilda Solis -- who as I have documented
elsewhere is in the pocket of big labor -- has decided to
roll back disclosure requirements of unions, increasing the
likelyhood that they'll be able to defraud their members. So much
for Obama's new era of transparency.
