Chris Collins, Hochul’s Republican opponent in the race for New York’s 26th congressional district, has come under fire from Hochul and Democrats for allegedly outsourcing American jobs to China.

But a close look at Hochul’s personal financial disclosure form for 2011 shows net assets totaling between about $1 million and $2.25 million, but she could be worth much more, thanks to two blind family trusts, about which she has thus far refused to disclose any details.

Her family wealth comes from the Computer Task Group (CTG), a company that her father cofounded. CTG admitted as recently as last year to outsourcing jobs to Russia.

“In the past few years, more companies started using or are considering using low cost offshore outsourcing centers to perform technology-related work and complete projects,” the company stated in its last annual report to the SEC. “Currently, we have partnered with clients to perform services in Russia to mitigate and reduce this risk to our Company.”

CTG regularly does business with companies like the China Steel Corporation and the Chengdu Seamless Steel Tube Plant.

According to Hochul’s 2011 Financial Disclosure, Hochul also holds up to $45,000 in funds that invest in countries like Japan, China, South Korea and India.

Despite these ties, Hochul has attempted to make an issue of her opponent’s business background and has accused him of trying to “hide” his connection to businesses engaged in outsourcing.

Collins campaign aide Chris Grant said Hochul’s ties to outsourcing “highlights our opponent’s hypocrisy and just how weak her record is on job creation.”

“Voters are disappointed that someone that’s never created a job in the private sector and was part of a company would attack someone who’s created 500 American jobs in the 26th District of New York,” Grant said. “Not only has Chris not done what the Hochul campaign has accused him of, but he’s done the exact opposite.”

Grant pointed to an instance where Collins insourced jobs from Mexico to the United States.

“One of the first things he did as the head of the company, was shut down the facility in Mexico and move those jobs to Buffalo,” Grant said.

The Hochul campaign did not return multiple requests for comment.

The methods employed by anti-ALEC groups could be described as not unlike extortion, experts say.

Color of Change, a “social justice” nonprofit headed by 9/11 Truther and former Obama green jobs czar Van Jones, has been at the front of the “name-and-shame campaign,” which seeks to pressure ALEC’s corporate sponsors into dropping their membership in the organization.

“To date, we have not publicly highlighted [your] involvement with ALEC,” Color of Change executive director Rashad Robinson wrote to a corporate member of ALEC in a June 25 letter obtained by the Free Beacon. “However, we plan to do so and wanted to make you aware of the next steps in our campaign.”

“We have commissioned a series of radio ads to make consumers aware of [your] relationship with ALEC and the policies it supports,” Robinson continues. “We plan to begin running these ads soon on Black radio stations across the country. We will also make the media aware of this ad campaign.”

“If [redacted] is reconsidering its relationship with ALEC, please contact Color of Change’s Director of Strategy, Gabriel Rey-Goodlatte, as soon as possible,” Robinson warns. “We would appreciate a response within one week.”

Rey-Goodlatte was arrested in 2001 for buying merchandise with counterfeit $20 bills, according to news reports. The Jones lieutenant, then 18, was charged with three felony counts of first-degree criminal possession of a forged substance and misdemeanor counts of petty larceny, the Poughkeepsie Journal reported at the time.

When reached on his cell phone and asked if the news report was true, Rey-Goodlatte said, “No,” and then announced he was heading into a meeting and hung up.

Color of Change did not return numerous requests for comment about its funders or its campaign against ALEC.

The anti-ALEC contingent has been effective. Just days before an anti-ALEC forum last Thursday in Arlington, Va., five more large companies, under pressure from left-wing groups, severed their ties with ALEC, bringing the total that have withdrawn their membership in the organization to 25 so far.

“We want to make ALEC toxic to be a part of,” Diallo Brooks, the director of field mobilization for People for the American Way, told the crowd at the town hall-style forum. Brooks was explaining his organization and its allies’ strategy to dismantle the private-public partnership of state legislators and businesses that works to advance free-market legislation.

Around 100 attendees gathered to listen to Brooks and his fellow panelists decry ALEC’s alleged plans to privatize schools and prisons, roll back environmental regulations, and destroy unions.

According to AFL-CIO state government-relations director Naomi Walker, ALEC’s goal is no less than to “destroy our democracy.”

Groups represented on Thursday’s panel included the National Education Association, Common Cause, ProgressVA, and the AFL-CIO. Several former and current progressive Virginia lawmakers also were on hand.

“Anyone who comes to you and says, ‘We have a great new innovative idea,’ stop and question it,” said Kim Anderson, the advocacy director for the National Education Association. “Because I guarantee they’re not interested in equity and equal access for every kid in America.”

“ALEC’s mechanics are second grade arithmetic,” NEA vice-president Lily Eskelsen said at the Netroots Nation panel. “Deregulate, defund, and privatize.”

While Color of Change works to harass ALEC’s corporate sponsors, Common Cause has been leading the fight on the legal front.

The non-profit group, which presents itself as a strictly non-partisan organization, has filed an IRS whistleblower complaint against ALEC, challenging the group’s tax-exempt status and accusing it of lobbying activities. It has also filed requests with more than 45 state attorneys general to investigate ALEC.

Common Cause’s president, Bob Edgar, is a former Democratic congressman. The law firm working with Common Cause in its complaint, Phillips & Cohen, also has a long history of donating generously to Democrats.

The refrain among progressives is that ALEC is “shady” and crafts its laws in the shadows.

“ALEC is not a transparent organization, no matter what its members tell you,” said Anna Scholl, the executive director of ProgressVA.

However, secrecy is the rule, not the exception, among the many groups who oppose ALEC.

When asked to disclose their funders by the Free Beacon during the Q&A session at Thursday’s event, both ProgressVA and People for the American Way declined to answer.

“As I told you before, as a c4 organization our donors aren’t publicly disclosed,” ProgressVA Executive Director Anna Scholl said. “Our funds come from a mix of individuals who support our work and grants funds. We don’t disclose names because that’s what our donors understand when they give us money.”

ProgressVA is part of the national ProgressNow network. The umbrella organization promotes a variety of liberal causes, such as socialized healthcare and higher taxes on the wealthy.

Brooks declined to respond. People for the American Way does not disclose its donors on its website.

As previously reported by the Free Beacon, Color of Change does not disclose its donors, and its tax filings are so vague that the scope of its operations and funding are impossible to determine.

Legally required disclosures show Color of Change is funded by a number of liberal philanthropy groups such as the George Soros-funded Open Society, which gave $250,000 to the Citizen Engagement Laboratory in 2010 “to support Color of Change.”

“We are seeing more money spent than anytime in American history, a lot of it undisclosed, coming from folks who can write $10 million checks,” Obama told supporters in Virginia. “Most of the ads are negative. In fact, almost all of the ads are negative. And it’s understandable as you watch these TV ads, that you start thinking that politics just doesn’t seem to get what’s going on in your lives.”

But despite complaining about the prospect of being “outspent” in campaign fundraising emails, Obama has outraised Mitt Romney by nearly $100 million, or more than 40 percent. The president’s campaign has spent more than $50 million on advertising since April, and has run nearly twice the number of television spots than the Romney campaign.

That’s not all. The Democratic National Committee has outraised its Republican counterpart by more than $20 million, and outspent it by more than 50 percent. Obama-affiliated outside groups and Super PACs have outspent Republican groups.

A recent Bloomberg analysis found that more than 98 percent of Obama-affiliated advertising has had “some negative tone.”

That has not stopped the Obama campaign from suggesting that Romney and Republican groups are entirely responsible for the onslaught of heavily-financed negative advertising.”

“Can super PACs and hundreds of millions of dollars from Republicans and the Romney campaign—through the brute force of negative advertising alone—drown out millions of voices?” Obama deputy campaign manager Julianna Smoot wrote in a recent fundraising email.

In fact, the campaign so far marks a significant about face for a president who not only pledged to eschew “shadowy” Super PACs, but also once claimed that his election would prove “it’s possible to overcome the politics of division and distraction; that it’s possible to overcome the same old negative attacks that are always about scoring points and never about solving our problems.”

Around 100 to 150 sign-wielding activists, roused to action by a cadre of Democrat and left-wing organizations, descended on the site of the fundraiser, held at the home of liberal bete noir David Koch.

Powerline reports:

[L]eftists thought they could make some hay out of connecting Romney to the Koch brothers, perhaps because they assume, wrongly, that most people share their detestation of the Kochs. So for some weeks, a consortium of left-wing groups including MoveOn.org, Occupy Wall Street, the Long Island Progressive Coalition, Greenpeace, Strong For All, United New York, the Teamsters Union and others have been urging their members and supporters to turn out for a protest at David Koch’s home. This “invitation” by the Occupy movement was one of many that went out to liberals across the country. The event’s Facebook page is here.

The protests were organized by Andy Stepanian, who was convicted of terrorism and sentenced to three years in federal prison for his role in a radical animal-rights terrorist organization.

The protesters hired an airplane to fly overhead with a banner that read “Romney has a Koch problem.” However, the plane soon flew away and returned with another banner promoting Lacoste L!ve.

Two protesters were arrested after trying to sail across a pond to crash the fundraiser, but instead crashed into a police boat.

In a public statement, Koch Industries called the protest shallow and hypocritical.

“We have seen media reports about the protest being organized by a convicted terrorist and a number of fringe organizations,” the company wrote. “It is ironic that the pretext for the protest is supposed ‘outrage’ at the role of money in politics. Considering the record-setting fundraising by President Obama as reported here, here, here, here, here and here, the hypocrisy of the Left and their attempts to mislead the public are obvious. There is a double standard at work here, and the message from the Left is that fundraising for their preferred candidates is fine, but donations to those with differing points of view are somehow immoral. The Left’s outrage is selective and hollow.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee used the opportunity to fundraise.

“Today, Mitt Romney is holding a $50,000-a-head fundraiser in the Hamptons with one of the Big Oil billionaire Koch Brothers,” the DCCC wrote in a fundraising letter Sunday. “They’ll have a lot to celebrate together: Romney’s campaign brought in a whopping $100 million in June and the Kochs have raised millions more for their outside groups. … If Mitt and his SuperPAC backers can bury us under a wave of corporate special interest cash right now, we will lose in November.”

Democrats weren’t the only ones accused of selective outrage. Michael Moynihan, writing for the Washington Post’s Right Turn blog, noted the media’s one-sided obsession with conspicuous wealth:

The Associated Press discovered that donors arrived driving “Mercedes, Bentleys — and, in one case, a candy red 2013 Ferrari Spider.” The Los Angeles Times, also noting that rich people tend to own expensive cars, reported on the “line of Range Rovers, BMWs, Porsche roadstersand one gleaming cherry red Ferrari” waiting to get into the fundraiser. The New York Times spotted—you guessed it!—“a  line of gleaming Bentleys, Porsches and Mercedes-Benzes” queuing outside the venue. This reminded me of a San Francisco Chronicle headline from last year, during the height of the media’s mania for all things Occupy Wall Street-related: “Mercedes hits 2 Occupy Oakland protesters.” Imagine, if you will, a slight twist on that headline: “Ford Focus hits 2 Occupy Oakland protesters.” Yeah, didn’t think so.

But just in case you were still unclear on the income level of those who attend fundraisers for Republican presidential candidates, TPM stresses that they are “rich,” “super-rich,” “mega-rich,” “well-heeled,”and “moneyed,” as distinct from the suburban moms and union stiffs present at Obama recent Manhattan fundraisers.

And while Democrats and progressive groups regularly claim Democracy is subverted by wealthy donors, President Obama himself told a group of such fundraisers they were the key to his re-election.

“You’re the tie-breaker,” President Obama said at a recent fundraiser hosted by Sarah Jessica Parker. “You’re the ultimate arbiter of which direction this country goes.”

McCaskill was one of 53 senators to vote down an amendment introduced by Sen. Jim Inhofe that would have scuttled the Environmental Protection Agency’s new regulations to cut mercury and other toxic emissions at coal-fired power plants.

The EPA estimates the regulations will cost nearly $10 billion a year, and Republicans and energy industry officials predict the rules will lead to the closure of plants around the country.

In Missouri, where 81 percent of the state’s energy comes from coal-fired plants, the cost of compliance could raise consumer electricity bills by as much as 23 percent.

That is the sort of thing McCaskill would normally be against, according to her website.

“Claire knows that rising energy prices are a significant burden on Missouri’s families,” McCaskill’s website states. “That’s why Claire hasn’t been afraid to break with members of her own party to protect Missouri’s coal-fired power plants and fight back against unnecessary EPA regulations.”

McCaskill touts her fights against the EPA under the “accomplishments” section of her website on energy issues.

“Claire advocated for delaying the implementation of damaging new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations against power plant emissions,” her site states. “The EPA regulations would result in unfair and burdensome rate increases for states like Missouri that generate most of their electricity from coal.”

EPA estimates the value of the regulations could reach $90 billion per year from reduced heart attacks, asthma, and other health benefits, but a group of Republican senators, all of them doctors, wrote a letter saying the EPA’s estimates are wildly inflated and do not take into account the health effects of unemployment and poverty.

The National Mining Association said McCaskill’s vote was a vote to increase electricity bills for her home state.

“Her’s was a very disappointing vote,” said National Mining Association spokesman Luke Popovich. “By favoring what the White House admits is the costliest power plant rule ever imposed, she has inexplicably helped to lock in higher electricity prices for Missouri’s households and businesses at a time when both are struggling in a weak economy.”

A spokesman for McCaskill did not return a request for comment.

Other groups participating include Campaign for America’s Future, Rebuild the Dream, People for the American Way, Public Campaign, The Other 98%, Health Care for America Now, Alliance for Justice, Public Citizen, and the SEIU. 

According to the event flyer, which includes a picture of Karl Rove in an orange prison jumpsuit, the groups will hold a “march to indict” American Crossroads “for the crimes of trying to buy our elections and keep people from exercising their right to vote.”

However, Common Cause has taken money from liberals willing to buy their way into elected office—and, despite claims of nonpartisanship, it also has a history of supporting progressive causes and affiliating with Democratic party organs.

Common Cause President and CEO Bob Edgar is a former Democratic congressman. Despite its stance on big money in politics, Common Cause’s 2011 donor list includes such figures as Jon Corzine, who is alleged to have misappropriated more than $1 billion as head of investment firm MF Global.

As previously reported by the Free Beacon, Corzine, a former Democratic Senator and Governor of New Jersey, donated $1,000 to Common Cause New York, earning him a “generous donor” status on Common Cause’s annual report.

Corzine spent more than $130 million personally financing his campaigns for office in New Jersey. Meanwhile, Common Cause complains, “big money has long dominated our elections.”

A 2005 Common Cause donor was Fred Baron, a John Edwards fundraiser who provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in secret payments to Edwards’ mistress Rielle Hunter and former campaign aide Andrew Young.

Common Cause applauded Edwards in 2007 “for the substance of his democracy reform proposals and for his candor in making those policy positions explicit and clear.”

In 2011, Common Cause supported Edwards’s indictment, writing that he “appears to have raised nearly $1 million from a pair of political supporters to finance an elaborate cover-up of his affair.” It did not note that Baron was one of those supporters.

Common Cause has also partnered in recent months with a host of progressive groups to attack the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a free-market organization that works with private companies and state lawmakers to craft model legislation.

ALEC has been the target of an intense campaign by progressives for its ties to voter identification and self-defense laws. As previously reported by the Free Beacon, Common Cause was one of several organizations that met on May 10 at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C., to coordinate their campaign against ALEC.

Common Cause has been leading the legal battle against ALEC. The group has filed a whistleblower complaint with the IRS against ALEC, and it is asking attorneys general in all 50 states to investigate ALEC’s alleged lobbying activity.

The law firm working with Common Cause in its IRS complaint, Phillips & Cohen, has a long history of donating generously to Democrats. Firm partner John Phillips was a bundler for Obama.

At the May 10 summit, Common Cause Deputy Programs Director Doug Clopp called the war on ALEC “a very powerful organizing tool” for his group.

“Without question, Common Cause is a partisan front group masquerading as an ethics watchdog,” ALEC legal counsel Alan P. Dye said in an April statement.

Common Cause has been using ALEC to fundraise. “We’re working hard to shine a spotlight on [ALEC’s] nefarious tactics, and to put a stop to their end runs around federal tax and state ethics laws,” the group boasts on its website. “Can you help us by making a gift of $20, $50, $100 or more to support our work today?”

One staffer for Common Cause also appears to have engaged in casual racial stereotyping.

Common Cause deputy director Clopp said in a recent interview with Ad Age that ALEC’s ties to stand-your-ground, anti-immigrant, and voter identification bills caused concern among corporations that market their products to minorities.

“Kraft knows who buys lots of mac and cheese,” Clopp said, referring to Kraft’s recent decision to cancel its membership with ALEC. However, Clopp did not identify the mac and cheese buyer.

Common Cause did not respond to a request for comment.

Despite presiding over a crushing economic recession and historic levels of national debt, Obama maintained  that he will uphold a “bargain”: “If you work hard in this country regardless of what you look like, where you come from, what faith you hold, who you love, that you can make it if you try.”

Obama said that he would ensure Americans are “doing their fair share, so that we’re not just relying on cuts to programs for the vulnerable or for our kids.” He also will ask “those of us who have been incredibly blessed to be born in this country, for us to give a little back and to think about the future.”

At the fundraiser, Obama also stated that he agreed with his former political nemesis Sen. John McCain “on the need to control campaign finance spending.”

David Cohen, the embattled head of Comcast, joined Obama at the fundraiser, according to pool reports that depict the cable executive holding court with a gaggle of donors alongside the president. The Justice Department is currently investigating cable companies like Comcast are trying to stifle competition.

The attack comes on the very day that Obama plans to attend two New York City fundraisers sure to be well attended by Wall Street types. One of those fundraisers will be hosted by Obama supporter and private equity mogul Hamilton “Tony” James, the president and chief operating officer of the Blackstone group.

James donated the maximum amount of $35,800 to Obama’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee. His hosting of today’s fundraiser was first reported by the New York Times last month.

The Obama campaign’s inconsistent message on private equity echoes similar inconsistencies when it comes to the financial services industry.

Obama’s campaign has also criticized Romney for depositing some of his fortune in Swiss bank accounts, but that has not stopped the president from playing golf with and accepting more than $500,000 in contributions bundled by Robert Wolf, the chairman of Swiss bank UBS Investment and UBS Americas.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.) took to the social networking website yesterday to pose a question: “ ‘… even if you have a child two years of age, you need to go to work’ Who said it?”

The heavily edited quote comes from Mitt Romney, who discussed the right of women with children to work at a January campaign event.

“I wanted to increase the work requirement,” Romney said at the event, according to MSNBC. “I said, for instance, that even if you have a child two years of age, you need to go to work. And people said, ‘Well that’s heartless,’ and I said ‘No, no, I’m willing to spend more giving daycare to allow those parents to go back to work. It’ll cost the state more providing that daycare, but I want the individuals to have the dignity of work.’ ”

In responding to Ellison’s question, one responder compared Romney to a feminine hygiene product:  “A heartless douchebag who doesn’t like animals or small children. At least that’s what I’ve heard.”

Ellison, a vociferous proponent of civil discourse, subsequently promoted the message despite said calls for civil discourse.

Ellison, for instance, spoke at length about the need greater civility in politics during an event in February 2011. The congressman has also implored citizens from across the nation to sign a tolerance pledge.

He also counts himself as an ally of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a Jewish advocacy group that has urged members of Congress and political commentators to sign a civility pledge—a document that sparked outrage from critics who claimed the organization was trying to stifle robust discussion.

UPDATE: Rep. Keith Ellison has distanced himself from a Twitter user who referred to Mitt Romney as a “douche bag.”

Ellison had promoted that comment as recently as this morning, but apparently in response a Free Beacon report on the matter, the congressman has deleted his association with the message.

Ellison’s office did respond immediately to a request seeking comment. Everyone in the press department, said one of Ellison’s staffers, were “away from their desks.”

Spokesperson Jeremy Slevin did not immediately respond to an email seeking explanation.

UPDATE at 12:24: Rep. Ellison’s Communications Director Jennifer Porter Gore responds, “As with all Twitter accounts a retweet is not an endorsement.  The congressman removed the tweet because it appeared to endorse use of a nasty term, which is not what we wanted.”

As Cutter discussed the struggles of working women and the stay-at-home mothers of the middle class, she sported a $1050 leather jacket. The jacket appears to be from the designer Vince, a brand carried by high-end department stores like Barneys, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Neiman Marcus.

This morning, the Obama campaign sent out an email signed by Cutter, touting the benefits of the Buffett Rule. The letter closes:

This November, it’s one or the other. We either stick with a President who fights for the middle class, or we choose a candidate who fights to protect an unfair status quo that benefits him at the expense of our economy and the middle class. You’ll be hearing a lot about the Buffett Rule in the coming days. But remember this: It’s not about class warfare, and it’s certainly not about some arcane policy disagreement. It’s about common-sense fairness.