Union thug election spending
Image via Wikipedia"Trying to discredit people and issues because some member of big business or another is on their side is very effective," according to Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein. And liberals are right to note that corporate influence of our electoral system visits a host of ills on our democracy.These unions are destroying the solvency of state and local governments the way the auto workers destroyed the solvency of American auto companies. The pension bills are coming due and they will probably want federal tax payers to bail them out again. That could happen if Democrats remain in control of government.
However, big business is hardly the most ideological, let alone the biggest special interest, financing our elections. Guess which outside group has spent the most money on this year's election.
If you've been listening to the White House, congressional Democrats, the Center for American Progress talk tank and much of the major media, you'd probably say the answer is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce or some other corporate interest.
The New York Times said Friday that the chamber was the biggest, too, but that's likely not the whole story since the Times was only reporting on spending reported to the Federal Election Commission. Labor unions legally can conceal many of their political expenditures until well after the election, and communications to union members are totally unregulated.
The Wall Street Journal also reported Friday that the 2010 campaign's champion spender was the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which has pledged to spend $87.5 million.
"We're the big dog," Larry Scanlon, the head of AFSCME's political operations, told the Journal. "But we don't like to brag."
The fact a public-employees union is the "big dog" of partisan campaign spending is disturbing. Add to that the $40 million from the National Education Association (NEA), and you're looking at $127.5 million spent by just two public-sector unions, almost double that of the chamber.
AFSCME and the NEA are public-employee unions that collect dues from workers paid with tax dollars. Their campaign contributions represent government workers giving tax money to politicians in exchange for fatter budgets, protection from public exposure, more generous pay and benefits or whatever. It's such an obvious conflict of interest that even sainted liberal FDR was opposed to public-employee unions.
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While the Democrats have their own outside corporate fat cats like Soros, the union thug component to their campaign finance is ofter over looked as it was this year despite the size of the contributions. One of the differences between the two groups is that Soros did not get rich by backing losing politicians and he is not wasting his money on this year's Democrats.
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