Citizens United: Job Creator!
May 21, 2012, 10:26 am
Posted by Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
Apropos of our discussion below on Chief Justice John Roberts and the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizen’s United, here’s a story about the emergence of a whole new category of jobs for political consultants. They don’t need a candidate, they don’t need a platform, and they don’t need to leave home. All they need is rich people to fund their ads for whomever. Nicholas Confessore has a run-down on this new line of work.
Read all about it: NYTimes.
Perhaps you would prefere we return to the days prior to the Citizen’s United decision? In the 2008 elections, the top nine PACs by money spent by themselves, a total of $25,794,807 via their affiliates and subsidiaries as follows:
1.International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers PAC $3,344,650 (union)
2.AT&T Federal PAC $3,108,200 (corporation)
3.American Bankers Association (BANK PAC) $2,918,140 (banks)
4.National Beer Wholesalers Association PAC $2,869,000 (corporations)
5.Dealers Election Action Committee of the National Automobile Dealers Association $2,860,000
6.International Association of Fire Fighters $2,734,900 (union)
7.International Union of Operating Engineers PAC $2,704,067 (union)
8.American Association for Justice PAC $2,700,500 (trial lawyers)
9.Laborers’ International Union of North America PAC $2,555,350 (union)
Source: wikipedia
MikeD, I will give you that it is absolutely outrageous for labor unions to give money to candidates who are not out to destroy them. However, you are talking ancient history, cloutwise, here. One family — family, not big organization — gave $20 million to one candidate in the Republican primaries — not the general election. That is 6-plus times what your biggest giver gave in 2008. And this is from a family that is proud to boast of its largesse, not one of the sneakier contributors hiding behind laws and court decisions to keep their mugs out of it.
2008 already seems like the good old days.
Have we forgotten Tip O’Neill already? Remember his famous maxim, “All politics is local.” The big shots and big mouths with all their hand-picked and wholesale delivered examples of the worst government outrageous sums of misbegotten fortunes can buy . . . is no match for enthusiastic neighbors who have a lot more patriotic love for their country and the willingness to demonstrate it by simply going out banging door bells night after night.
People who have worked that hard and given up that much time to build networks based on mutual (face-to-face) trust with their neighbors and townsfolk are far less likely to shrug their shoulders when the “we have to make workers more accountable” and “keep our workforce levels to reflect our company’s relative competitiveness in today’s ever expanding global economy” use negative statistics coming from the Labor Department not for what they are, our economy’s “butcher bills” … but excuses for yet more “downsizing and outsourcing.” Your neighbors will be outraged enough to take action far more than anybody with a defeatist attidude who allowed his mental outlook to deteriorate no thanks to a steady diet of political junk food served up by Fox News.
Example: Does one actually have to be a corporation, (like Mitt’s believes) to be a “job creator”? The answer is NO. If a company puts out junk, people stop buying from it and it loses the public’s trust and goes belly up. However, if the company produces excellent products and backs it up with terrific service (which in some cases is more valuable than the products themselves) … the people who return with their dollars on a regular basis are helping to create more jobs. Promising the public things will get better if only the rich will get yet another inexcusable tax cut which in turn will benefit (i.e. “stimulate,” LOL) everybody and the economy. Right. Sure: more tax breaks for Alice Walton will only go to her private art-buying purse, not make its way back to the rest of us in the 99 pct. crowd. But more unemployment checks will wind up being spent overnight by the real [individual] job creators who are more intersted in making sure their kids have three squares a day, decent clothes, etc. and maybe the family can have a nice night out on the weekend. Alice Walton’s taxpayer-subsidized welfare-for-elitist-snobs … especially those snobs who’ve long forgotten where they came from or at least where their parents came from originally.