Earlier today, we reported on the developing pay-for-play scandal involving humiliated Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich which allegedly involved offer the SEIU the power to name Barack Obama's replacement as Senator in return for a cushy job with the SEIU's Change to Win coalition or a new SEIU-funded lobby group.

One news source indicated the SEIU official mentioned in the indictment was none other than SEIU president Andrew Stern.  But NPR reports that the official involved was one step down from Stern -- Tom Balanoff, the union's Illinois chief

Our research today indicates that Andy Stern's SEIU has been Blagojevich's biggest financial backer for years. According go the Illinois Sunshine Database, the SEIU Illinois Council PAC was the governor's top contributor in his re-election effort, giving $908,382 in the 2005-2006 cycle. That same cycle, PACs for the Laborers and Teamsters unions, also Change to Win partners, were also among Blagojevich's top 15 contributors.

The relationship between Blagojevich and the SEIU's political fundraising arms go back years. In his first gubernatorial election in 2002, the SEIU PEA International gave his campaign $821,294, making the PAC his second largest contributor that cycle (the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had contributed $900,000 to the then-Congressman).

All told, union PACs poured more than $8 million into Blagojevich's two gubernatorial campaign coffers.

You get what you pay for. But do SEIU members know where their money is going?

[For more on this scandal, see this post: SEIU Bosses Gave Gov. Blagojevich More Than $1.7 Million Already, Not Including Possible Payout for Senate Seat]

By now, many of you have already heard about the pay-for-play scandal enveloping Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Unsurprisingly, Blago's corrupt antics are intimately connected to Big Labor. In return for a cushy appointment at the SEIU's Change to Win coalition, he apparently offered to name SEIU's hand-picked candidate to Barack Obama's newly-vacant senate seat (from the federal complaint .pdf):

Defendants ROD BLAGOJEVICH and [his aide] JOHN HARRIS, together with others, attempted to use ROD BLAGOJEVICH’s authority to appoint a United States Senator for the purpose of obtaining personal benefits for ROD BLAGOJEVICH, including, among other things, appointment as Secretary of Health & Human Services in the President-elect’s administration, and alternatively, a lucrative job which they schemed to induce a union to provide to ROD BLAGOJEVICH in exchange for appointing as senator an individual whom ROD BLAGOJEVICH and JOHN HARRIS believed to be favored by union officials and their associates.

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HARRIS said they could work out a three-way deal with SEIU and the President-elect where SEIU could help the President-elect with ROD BLAGOJEVICH’s appointment of Senate Candidate 1 to the vacant Senate seat, ROD BLAGOJEVICH would obtain a position as the National Director of the Change to Win campaign, and SEIU would get something favorable from the President-elect in the future.

The SEIU, of course, is denying any connection to the Blagojevich bribe, which is a bit hard to swallow given the circumstances. Here's another damning excerpt from the charges (emphasis mine):

On November 12, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH spoke with SEIU Official, who was in Washington, D.C. Prior intercepted phone conversations indicate that approximately a week before this call, ROD BLAGOJEVICH met with SEIU Official to discuss the vacant Senate seat, and ROD BLAGOJEVICH understood that SEIU Official was an emissary to discuss Senate Candidate 1’s interest in the Senate seat. During the conversation with SEIU Official on November 12, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH informed SEIU Official that he had heard the President-elect wanted persons other than Senate Candidate 1 to be considered for the Senate seat.

SEIU Official stated that he would find out if Senate Candidate 1 wanted SEIU Official to keep pushing her for Senator with ROD BLAGOJEVICH. ROD BLAGOJEVICH said that “one thing I’d be interested in” is a 501(c)(4) organization. ROD BLAGOJEVICH explained the 501(c)(4)idea to SEIU Official and said that the 501(c)(4) could help “our new Senator [Senate Candidate 1].” SEIU Official agreed to “put that flag up and see where it goes.”

For those of you wondering, "Senate Candidate 1" is Valerie Jarrett, the SEIU's once-favored choice for the Illinois senate vacancy. As the excerpted segment shows, the feds also have an anonymous SEIU official agreeing on tape to convey Blago's proposed bribe to his superiors.

BREAKING NEWS: Notwithstanding SEIU denials, Politico reports a Democrat source has revealed the unnamed SEIU official is none other than President Andrew Stern himself.

UPDATE: NPR now reports that the SEIU official was actually Tom Balanoff, the union's Illinois chief.

Blago's abortive bargain was a pretty sweet deal. The Illinois governor would have picked up a plum SEIU job funded by forced union dues, while Big Labor would have gotten another bought-and-paid-for senator.

The workers funding Blago's lavish new salary and the SEIU's vast political apparatus may have felt left out of the deal, but that's just the way Big Labor operates.

Just another example of the corruption that goes hand-in-hand with the injustice of forced unionism.

An article in The New Republic points to the tens of millions of dollars being spent by union officials on politics and specifically focuses on the massive involvement by the so-called "Change to Win" union coalition in politics.

The article calls Change to Win's decision to endorse Obama an "about-face," citing Change to Win's early declarations that it would not focus on politics but on organizing. Yet, Change to Win's emphasis on politics (led by SEIU top boss Andy Stern) really wasn't that hard to predict.

In fact, back in 2005 when Change to Win union bosses split from the AFL-CIO union hierarchy National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Stefan Gleason had this to say:

This political posturing within ultra-elite union hierarchies amounts to nothing more than a shell game by power-hungry union officials bent on control over more than $10 billion in compulsory union dues. In the end, it doesn’t matter who is steering Big Labor’s ship as long as individual workers continue to be strapped to the mast.

Ultimately, it is not Change to Win's flip-flop on its rhetoric about that political spending that is the real hypocrisy, but the split itself...

Change to Win left the AFL-CIO because Change to Win union officials objected to how dues money was being spent and they didn't like the representation they were receiving from the AFL-CIO. Yet, everyday individual employees who object to how their dues are being spent and to the representation that they are getting from union bosses are told to just pay up or be fired.

Today's Chicago Sun-Times reports:

The seven-union affiliates of Change to Win labor federation have a long-term goal of organizing 50 million workers.

How do union officials plan to do it" By focusing 75% of their resources on coercive "card check" organizing, a system plagued by workers' rights abuse. And of course, workers not in Right to Work states could be forced to pay dues or be fired once organized.

According to the report, Laborers union officials alone have already promised gobs of cash:

The Laborers', meanwhile, have committed to increasing per capita payments by 25 cents per hour by 2009 to fund organizing. That will create more than $100 million a year for organizing to help it achieve its goal of boosting its membership by 20 percent over the next five years, said General President Terence O'Sullivan.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg:

The federation's affiliates are committing several hundred million dollars annually to organizing, in addition to teaming up on campaigns, said Tom Woodruff, head of the ("Change to Win") organizing center.

If union officials showed a similar enthusiasm for improving their product maybe workers would be soliciting them rather than the opposite.