Citizens United Ruling: Corporations vs. Unions.. help me understand.

[Lord Xar]

So, there is this chain email going around to try to reverse the Citizens United Ruling - and it is originating from moveon.org.

Anyways - I am curious what the difference is between Unions using and funnelling hundreds of millions to candidates/causes vs. Corporations?

What are the nuances I am missnig?

[Epic]

So, there is this chain email going around to try to reverse the Citizens United Ruling - and it is originating from moveon.org.

Anyways - I am curious what the difference is between Unions using and funnelling hundreds of millions to candidates/causes vs. Corporations?

What are the nuances I am missnig?

Corporations get their money (mostly*) voluntarily by transacting peacefully with others, while unions use the coercion of the state. However, some misguided individuals think that unions should be able to use their blood money to influence elections, while businesses shouldn't be able to protect themselves against bloodsucking congressmen hell-bent on putting those businesses out of business (unless they play ball with the state, in which case, in our proto-fascist system, they will be helped and bailed out).


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* to whatever extent corporations benefit directly from state plunder and regulations, that's a bad thing (and another drawback of government intervention), but it doesn't lessen the fact that businesses would, in a free market, have profits, while coercive labor unions, are... coercive, and thus in a free market would have no money because they wouldn't exist. Voluntary labor unions could exist though.

[BenIsForRon]

So, there is this chain email going around to try to reverse the Citizens United Ruling - and it is originating from moveon.org.

Anyways - I am curious what the difference is between Unions using and funnelling hundreds of millions to candidates/causes vs. Corporations?

What are the nuances I am missnig?

Well, the Citizens United ruling was beneficial to both corporations AND unions, because they can now funnel money into campaign ads and other promotional activities without disclosing their identity. They can simply make a proxy PAC, with some unused PO Box, and use it to fund the ads. So I don't see any difference between unions and corporations in regard to the ruling.

Citizens united was good from a first amendment standpoint, but it is going to have some serious negative side effects. Imagine the number of commercials that can be run against Ron Paul when Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan can run ads against him without the ads being traceable back to themselves, and with no cap on expenditure.