Among the many lies told by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently, chief Chamber lobbyist Bruce Josten said that his organization’s foreign affiliates, called AmChams, are only “comprised of American companies doing business abroad in those countries.” In fact, the Chinese AmCham is comprised of Chinese firms like Northern Light Venture Capital; the AmCham in Russia is comprised of Russian state-run companies like VTB Bank; and, the AmCham of Abu Dhabi is comprised of UAE state-run oil companies.

The ties between the AmChams and the U.S. Chamber are deep. In addition to sharing staff members, the Chinese AmCham has worked closely with the U.S. Chamber and the Chinese government to sponsor a series of seminars in America to teach American businesses how to outsource jobs to China (called the China Grassroots Program). Below is an invite to an event sponsored by the right-wing billionaire Sheldon Adelson, inviting local businesses in Florida to come to Jacksonville and learn about outsourcing from Chinese government officials like Li Haiyan, the Counselor for Economic Affairs for the People’s Republic of China, U.S. Chamber lobbyist Joseph Fawkner, and BChinaB, a firm that specializes in helping American firms outsource their manufacturing jobs to China. Click the screenshot below for the invitation:

Similar events like the one above continued into 2009 and beyond.

The Chamber’s CEO, Tom Donohue, frequently defends outsourcing: for example, in 2004, he said “there are legitimate values in outsourcing — not only jobs, but work.” Recently, the Chamber came out against a Senate bill that would have discouraged outsourcing. As Campaign Money Watch report found that more than 1.4 million jobs were outsourced since 1994 in the nine states in which the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is spending significant money.

Separately from their relationship with the AmCham affiliates, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce receives direct foreign donations to the same 501(c)(6) political account the Chamber is using to run an unprecedented $75 million attack ad campaign against progressives. In an exclusive investigation, ThinkProgress documented over 80 foreign firms donating at least $885,000 to the Chamber’s 501(c)(6) account. As ThinkProgress’ Brad Johnson noted, many of these foreign supporters of the Chamber financing its 501(c)(6) are also some of the world’s largest outsourcing companies.

According to the Financial Times, some multinational corporations have been lobbying the Obama administration to undergo a new round of tax repatriation, a process that allows corporations to bring money they hold overseas back to the U.S. at a very low tax rate. The companies are arguing that such a move will boost investment and job creation here at home:

US multinational companies are clamouring for a tax holiday to repatriate billions of dollars “trapped” overseas but are being rebuffed by Barack Obama’s administration…“We do have overseas cash and we would be very supportive of a repatriation holiday,” said Keith Sherin, chief financial officer of General Electric. “If you think about it, there is a lot of cash trapped overseas. If companies could bring that back at more competitive tax rates, I think it would be good for the US economy.“

When corporations bring foreign earnings back to the U.S., they pay the full statutory corporate tax rate, so of course they would jump at the opportunity to pay a lower rate. And a good way to convince policymakers that this is a winning idea is to promise that the money will be used to invest in job creation.

But left out of the story is the fact that we’ve tried this before: it turned into a windfall for shareholders and corporate executives, while not spurring job creation or investment. In 2004, Congress passed the Homeland Investment Act, allowing companies to bring back offshore profits in 2005 and pay a tax rate of just 5.25 percent, far below the 35 percent corporate tax rate.

As the New York Times Floyd Norris wrote, the bill “was sold to Congress as a way to spur investment in America, building plants, increasing research and development and creating jobs.” However, according to work done by the National Bureau of Economic Research, 92 percent of the nearly $300 billion that companies brought back went to share buybacks and increased dividend payments. Plus, Kristin Forbes, one of the authors of the NBER study, said that restrictions regarding how repatriated money could be spent “seem to have been completely ineffective”:

“Dell was a great example,” she added, referring to Dell Computer. “They lobbied very hard for the tax holiday. They said part of the money would be brought back to build a new plant in Winston-Salem, N.C. They did bring back $4 billion, and spent $100 million on the plant, which they admitted would have been built anyway. About two months after that, they used $2 billion for a share buyback.”

This turned into a tax boondoggle the first time. There’s no reason to give it another chance.

For months after the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) — the Obama administration’s signature foreclosure prevention program — was launched, Bank of America lagged behind the other servicers in the percentage of eligible borrowers that it was successfully navigating into a permanent mortgage modification. Part of the problem was that BofA was utterly incapable, by its own admission, of keeping track of paperwork and working constructively with borrowers.

When the ongoing foreclosure fraud scandal hit, Bank of America was the first institution to implement a foreclosure freeze, and the only bank to extend its freeze to all fifty states. However, BofA announced yesterday that it has reviewed its foreclosure process and “had not found a single example where a foreclosure proceeding was brought in error.” Therefore, the bank is moving ahead with more than 100,000 foreclosures on Monday in the 23 states that require judicial review to complete a foreclosure.

As the New York Times noted, “consumer advocates and lawyers for homeowners expressed skepticism that Bank of America could complete a review of the paperwork so quickly.” Indeed, let’s put this in perspective. Bank of America has been participating in HAMP for roughly 18 months, during which time it offered 410,000 trial modifications, started 316,000, and turned about 80,000 into permanent modifications. That’s about 760 trial modifications per day and 4,400 permanent modifications per month.

In the last ten days, though, Bank of America managed to plow through 102,000 cases to get them ready to go back to court. That’s more than 10,000 reviews per day. Peter Ticktin, a Florida based lawyer, questioned how BofA could suddenly find the wherewithal to validate so much paperwork so quickly. “This wasn’t just a simple little mistake of forgetting to dot the ‘i,’” he said. “There was a whole system put in place to make false affidavits. How are they going to erect a new system to do 102,000 affidavits unless they are going to use the same old law firms to make a second generation of bad affidavits?”

Now, Bank of America’s modification numbers were likely skewed downward because, as Andrew Jakabovics and I first reported, it was attempting to siphon borrowers off into its own private modification program, in violation of its contract with Treasury. But still, the bank jerked borrowers around for months and couldn’t get them through HAMP, but now that its faced with a mess that could blow a hole in its bottom line, it kicks its operation into high gear. David Dayen added these points:

Two things on this. One, it neglects the clear risk to the rule of law that banks like BofA submitted phony documents to a court. Whether they take them back now or not has no bearing on this attempt to commit fraud. Two, it localizes the issue to the signing of the affidavits and not the impropriety of the documents themselves – the forgeries, the backdating, the failure to inform borrowers of foreclosure actions, all of the horror stories we’ve heard over the past month.

Somewhere along the line, there were fraudulent documents and a breakdown of due process. But the banks are still acting like this is simply a paperwork problem.

On Saturday, the Republican National Committee (RNC) held a large “Victory Rally,” which ThinkProgress attended, just outside Disneyland in Anaheim, CA. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was the highlight of event, while RNC Chairman Michael Steele, several GOP congressmen, and right-wing media tycoon Andrew Breitbart also gave speeches to the excited, mostly-elderly crowd in a hotel ballroom. Notably absent were Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, California’s GOP Senate and governor nominees.

But curiously present was the conservative “grassroots” astroturfing outfit Americans for Prosperity (AFP), which held a “No Jobs Fair” to encourage people to vote yes on Proposition 23, a referendum on the ballot this year that would essentially scrap California’s landmark global warming law. Interestingly, AFP appeared to be the only group aside from the RNC and candidates’ campaigns with any major presence at the event, entirely occupying a large room across the hallway from the rally in the Anaheim Marriott. The only other room being employed, aside from those for the rally itself and AFP, was a small space adjacent where attendees could register to volunteer for GOP campaigns.

Because federal election law would prohibit groups like AFP from coordinating with the RNC, AFP California Communications Director Meridith Turney told ThinkProgress that the two groups did not coordinate. But, she added, AFP had to “ask for their permission to use the room” and paid the RNC for its use. Watch a compliation of AFP’s fair, and ThinkProgress’ interview with Turney and AFP California Chairman David Spady:

Turney couldn’t really explain why, of all the countless ballot initiatives across the country — California alone has 10 — her group had invested so heavily in Prop. 23. But AFP and the Yes on 23 campaign are a natural fit. The campaign pushing Prop. 23 portrays itself as a broad coalition of Californians concerned about jobs, but it is in fact funded almost exclusively by a small handful of out-of-state oil companies concerned about their bottom line if the state’s global warming law is allowed to be fully implemented. Texas-based Valero and Tesoro, along with Kansas-based Koch Industries alone have provided about 80 percent of the financial backing.

Koch, the country’s second largest privately held company, is owned and operated by brothers Charles and David Koch. Coincidentally, David Koch is the chairman of AFP. In corporate documents, Koch Industries has explicitly stated that California’s global warming law would hurt profits and “be very bad news for our industry.” With the AFP fair, and countless other events, the Kochs seem to be using the astroturfing arm they founded and fund to defend the profits of the corporation they own, all the while disguising their effort as an altruistic “jobs initiative” for average Californians.

This is typical of AFP, which has played a central role in incubating the tea party movement to drum up populist support as a smokescreen to push their self-serving interests. The Koch brothers have repeatedly tried to distance themselves from the tea party movement to protect its guise of independence, but even AFP’s own Meridith Turney has touted her organization’s and David Koch’s involvement in the movement. Last year at a national AFP meeting led by Koch, she proudly told him AFP California “helped organize huge tea parties all throughout the state,” including “one of the largest tea parties in the country.” Recently released video even shows David Koch touting his role in supporting AFP and the tea party movement. At the fair Saturday, AFP offered free cocktails to anyone who enlisted in the effort to push the dirty energy referendum that will preserve their profits.

What was unusual about AFP’s fair Saturday was the fact that it occurred during an official RNC event, underscoring the growing nexus between the Republican establishment, the tea party movement, and the secretive corporate backers that bankroll both.

Notably, when asked by ThinkProgress whether their organization would join increasing calls for electoral transparency by disclosing its donors, both Turney and Spady dismissed the idea, even if progressive groups like MoveOn.org were also required to disclose. In defending their secretive donors, Spady trotted out the familiar excuse employed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others that their backers would be subject to “retribution” of some kind if their contributions were made public. He also said he supports unlimited donations to individual candidates.