Money Talks, Liberals Walk
by digby
It looks like the Chamber of Commerce has become a fierce advocate of free speech — for corporations. They are very worried about thuggish customers despicably refusing to buy products if they find out that the corporation that sells them are supporting politicians they don’t approve of. I can’t imagine what could be more un-American than that. Surely, the constitution protects them:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has made a controversial campaign contribution in last year’s Minnesota governor’s race a centerpiece in a fight against tougher federal disclosure rules for government contractors.
Target Corp.’s donation of $150,000 to a group backing Republican candidate Tom Emmer led to a store boycott organized by people opposed to Emmer’s stand against gay rights. The Chamber cited the Target case as a prime example of how government contractors could have their right to free speech stifled if President Obama issues an executive order forcing them to reveal their political donations.
“Mandatory disclosure laws, like breaches in privacy laws, can squelch speech,” Chamber spokeswoman Blair Latoff said. “The only reason proponents of these so-called disclosure provisions want to pursue this is because they want to single out organizations like Target, as they did. So what we’re seeing here is the left spending potentially millions of dollars a year harassing the business community.”
The humanity.
Since money equals speech any coordinated attempt by a group of individuals to influence a corporation is a violation of their corporate personhood’s free speech rights. Yet a group of owners (or an individual owner) can coordinate to buy up all the TV and radio time to promote their message over the message of their adversaries and it is also free speech. Interesting. Money really does talk.
It will be interesting to see what the administration decides to do here.I’m guessing that billion dollar campaign might be distorting the decision making just a little, don’t you? And some of the Democratic party’s traditional allies have just about had enough. Here’s Greg Sargent:
It didn’t get the attention it deserved, but one key development from last Friday was that AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka, in an interview with Salon, essentially declared independence from the Democratic Party. Trumka vowed that unions would be putting more of their money into their own organizing and less into defending Obama and Congressional Dems in 2012.
That echoed an earlier vow by the chief of the International Association of Fire Fighters to shift union cash from federal to local contests.
Commentators and political reporters will roll their eyes at these threats. They will point out that such tough talk rarely produces any real break with the Democratic Party; labor’s threat to primary Congressional Dems who bucked Obama on health reform, for instance, largely fizzled.
But while there’s something to that analysis, it overlooks the degree to which the events in Wisconsin have altered the calculus for labor. The surprising organizing success labor and state-level Dems have had there, combined with the fact that Republicans and conservatives are increasingly committed to pursuing anti-union initiatives in multiple states, may produce a real shift in labor’s strategy, in which resources really do get redirected to local organizing and state-level battles.
There’s a lot of talk about various progressive factions retreating to local politics in the face of their disappointment about the Party’s collusion with big money. Labor, of course, is the Big Kahuna. And it’s the single most important Democratic party ground organizing group in the country. Maybe the campaign is counting on their local and state efforts spilling over to the presidential ticket.
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