Free Market Carnivore's Blog

Neil Cavuto on Saturday’s “Cavuto on Business,” (Fox News channel, 10/23/10) laid a telling fact on the table:  The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) has so far spent $87.5 million during this 2009-2010 election cycle.  This according to Mark McKinnon, a former George Bush campaign advisor writing at the DailyBeast.com.  We also saw it noted in the Wall Street Journal’s Daily Political Diary (10/25/10).

 On Cavuto’s show, Dagen McDowell  described the “vicious cycle:” “Public tax money pays for their salaries and union dues, which are used to elect Democrats who give those unions more power.”  That is, tax dollars are being used to push for more government programs, more government employees, more government salaries and pensions – requiring more taxes from taxpayers to pay for it all.

 We recently heard Steven Greenhut speak regarding the public unions and the story isn’t pretty.  Greenhut wrote Plunder! about the public employee unions and the ballooning pension obligations alone that will bankrupt many American cities unless something is done.

 Charles Payne noted on Cavuto’s show that of the top 15 political donors over the last 20 years, only three were corporations, the rest were all unions, with most of the money going to Democrats.

 By comparison, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, representing corporations in America, spent $75 million and drew the ire of President Obama, who made unfounded, unproven and false charges that lots of that money came from foreign interests.

 Ben Stein debunked one of the great political myths:  that it’s the Republicans that have all the “fat cat” contributors. 

 “That’s nonsense,” he said.  “In the 2008 campaign cycle, there were 15 million $1 million contributions from individual donors and all but one was a Democrat.  The Democrats have been the party of `fat cats’ for a long time now: union fat cats, Hollywood fat cats, New York-Wall Street fat cats – they’ve got them.”

 Ben left out the trial lawyers, whom we bet made up a big chunk of the 15 million-person list – and that’s not counting the many millions the two trial lawyer associations contribute.  They are always among the top contributors and the more laws, regulations and programs, the more lawsuits they can generate.

 McDowell had the last word, noting that the Democrat’s scream loudest when any of the rules even allow corporations to make contributions, like the Citizens United case.  They only want unions to be allowed to contribute. 

 But of all union growth in recent years, most of it has been in public employee unions, funded by tax dollars.  Another reason this election, fueled by the fury of millions of overburdened taxpayers, is so critical.