Today’s dispatch from Bizarroworld
by digby
Via the AFL-Cio blog:
Some folks have been trying to make political hay with the easy availability of union financial information. As noted in an earlier post, however, The Wall Street Journal’s methodology in “discovering” the levels of labor union spending was fatally flawed and painted a false (and politically advantageous) picture.
And now Steven Law, the president of American Crossroads, a Republican super PAC, is using ridiculous fictions to try to defend the activities of the Karl Rove-backed group, claiming that the hundreds of millions of dollars that American Crossroads will spend on the election will somehow be dwarfed by what unions will spend.
In an attempt to deflect attention away from the blatant attempts of American Crossroads and other right-wing super PACs to buy elections, Law claims that “neither side will have a financial advantage” in the presidential race that’s expected to break campaign finance records. Law says “groups on the left” tend to outspend right-wing and Republican interests, so “just achieving parity for us or something like that, hopefully even a small financial superiority to us is success.”
Gosh, I sure hope they can scratch up some change for the little Romney engine that could. Otherwise, the mighty Goliath that is the American Union Movement will stomp all over the frail little David of Corporate America and the struggling 1%.
Needless to say, these claims are utter bullshit from start to finish:
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, unions spent $85.9 million on the presidential election in 2008 for independent expenditures and electioneering communications, while conservative groups spent $244.1 million. Even before the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) ruling, unions were still vastly outspent.
I can’t even imagine what the numbers will be this time.
it does occur to me that the corporations are going to have a problem quite soon. It’s hard to imagine who their phantom moneybags boogeyman is going to be once they finish reducing union membership to the average number of people at a Cowsills reunion concert. I guess there’s always Hollywood.
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