Hey Big Spender.....

[Lord Jim]

(Also Posted At The CSB)



Well lookie there....

After all this verbiage about the evil US Chamber of Commerce trying to "buy" the election, look who the real "Big Dog" is....

Why non-other than the Association of State, Federal and Municipal Employees....

Imagine that....

As I take out my trusty calculator and do the math, looking at the top spenders, I see $140 mil. total for primarily Republican candidates, and 171.5 mil. for primarily Democratic candidates....

About 20% more for Dems than Reps....

The political debate over spending by outside groups has focused largely on advertising buys by those Republican-oriented groups. Unions have mostly escaped attention in that debate, in part because they traditionally have spent much of their cash on other kinds of political activities, including get-out-the-vote efforts.

Previously, most labor-sponsored campaign ads had to be funded by volunteer donations. Now, however, AFSCME can pay for ads using annual dues from members, which amount to about $390 per person. AFSCME said it will tap membership dues to pay for $17 million of ads backing Democrats this election.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 90288.html

[dgs49]

The problem isn't the amount of money, it's the lies and intentional distortions.

The money spent on campaigns isn't all that much as a portion of the economy (probably less per annum than is spent on latte's at Starbucks), and it all goes to good old American business.

And I can't blame the unions or the corporations or the chamber of commerce for knowing which side of the bread is buttered. I read this morning that more than half of all unionized workers in the U.S. work for government. Nice, huh? And which party would you want to be in control if you worked for government? Also Dems continually throw bones to union workers, what with Davis Bacon, the bailout of GM&Chrysler and whatnot.

I'm happy that the Court finally realized that political speech is speech, and allowed corporations to weigh in. After all Corporations are nothing more than a fictitious "person" representing their investors.

But the lies drive me crazy. And there's not much you can do about that.

[Econoline]

It may surprise you, Jim (given my usual knee-jerk liberalism ) but if this is true I'm as appalled as you are. I'm all for unions in the private sector, but I have a BIG problem with public-sector employees' unions (including teachers, policemen, firemen, and others). There is often an inherent conflict of interest between the public good on the one hand and the interests of the union and its members on the other.

I have no problem with private-sector unions being able to counter the political interests of corporate employers, but when unions like AFSCME get in the game it seems like they're not so much countering an opposing interest as much as choosing their own bosses on the basis of whether those bosses will put the employees' interests above the public interest.

I guess it would be unfair to deny public employees some of the advantages unions have gained for their members, but I'm not sure how--or where--to draw the line in order to protect the public interest.

"The president has been crystal clear that third-party groups which spend tens of millions of dollars from anonymous sources are a threat to our democracy—regardless of which candidates they support," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

Right on.

[Lord Jim]

I'm all for unions in the private sector, but I have a BIG problem with public-sector employees' unions (including teachers, policemen, firemen, and others). There is often an inherent conflict of interest between the public good on the one hand and the interests of the union and its members on the other.

I have no problem with private-sector unions being able to counter the political interests of corporate employers, but when unions like AFSCME get in the game it seems like they're not so much countering an opposing interest as much as choosing their own bosses on the basis of whether those bosses will put the employees' interests above the public interest.

This may surprise you Econo, but I really don't disagree with anything you said there....

I've said in the past, that if I could wave a magic wand, I would gladly trade stronger private sector unions for weaker public sector ones...