It’s an evil special interest group … unless it’s your special interest group

I chuckle and laugh every time I hear the phrase “special interest group” simply because all of you are part of a special interest group. Some may be large, some may be small but it’s the union “special interest groups” who are the big complainers, always attacking the “bad” special interest groups.

Chuckle. John Hinderaker over at Powerline writes Whose interests are special? where he points out liberal special interest groups are vowing to make life absolutely miserable for any company – really any person – who contributes to GOP candidates this year.

What is really going on here, of course, is that unions and other left-wing groups want their near-monopoly on big-time political money to continue. Historically, the vast majority of special interest dollars that have been contributed to political campaigns have been on the left, and most of the money has come from unions. This chart from Open Secrets shows the top 25 donors to political campaigns from 1989 through 2012. You will note a remarkably consistent pattern.

Click here to check out the interactive spreadsheet over at Open Secrets, but here is a screen shot. Of the top 20 organizations, 76.6 percent of the money goes to Democrats and at least 13 are big union operations. Will the liberals please stop complaining about big money flowing to Republicans now? Doubt it highly…

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Steve McGough

Steve's a part-time conservative blogger. Steve grew up in Connecticut and has lived in Washington, D.C. and the Bahamas. He resides in Connecticut, where he’s comfortable six months of the year.

17 Comments

  1. antiviceisavich on March 13, 2012 at 9:54 am

    One easily forgets what organized labor has done for this country. Least we mention decent wages, working environments, safety protections, paid sick days, paid holidays, paid vacations, 40 hour work week, overtime pay, pensions, health insurance,?etc. Think of the many who fought, suffered, and died,??for these now basic accepted worker rights and privelages. Rights and privelages corporations are eliminating for executive salary and bonuses and perceived shareholder value.?

    How much profit and greed is enough? The suffering has returned.



    • stinkfoot on March 13, 2012 at 10:25 am

      That’s all well and good unless you’re on the outside of the labor market diligently trying to get in- then those benefits make no difference… except where public sector entitlement is sustained at the expense of taxpayers and private sector small businesses who get burdened with job killing mandates along with a record tax increase taking money directly out of the private sector- erasing potential job openings.?? If someone is willing to hire me I say let them have their bonuses and God bless the shareholders whose investment helped make my employment possible.? This from a former liberal… key word being “former” because the greatest recruiting tools conservatives have are liberal policies.? The “interest groups” matter is just another distraction derived from a real issue but pursued selectively on the basis of politics.



    • antiviceisavich on March 13, 2012 at 11:49 am

      The private and public sector hire people as needed. Through automation and technology fewer jobs are needed to produce the same result. Businesses large and small should not be called job creators. If they do not and did not need other people to help them make their goods or services they would not hire. The point is how much profit is enough? Do all executives require muli-million dollar salarys and bonuses??They private sector workers were instilled with company reteric that downsizing was the right thing to do, lucky to have a job, you can be replaced the line is long. Benefits lost profits up, reward the executives, great job! More automation technology please, less?employees. Yet pay less?and remove benefits from those who are still employed. They are lucky I hired them.?



    • Dimsdale on March 14, 2012 at 8:53 am

      Of course they hire people as needed.? Automation has little to do with it, as it usually comes after a long period of hand labor.? You might as well bemoan the computer too.? You might also consider that high taxes drive companies to the “automation” of cheap foreign labor.
      ?
      Your premise that businesses would not hire people to make their products if they didn’t need them is equally superfluous.? Nothing about this post has anything to do with profits.? Do you equally criticize the huge bonuses and salaries of union “leaders”?? You should.? They crush businesses and cost jobs, and still get their bennies.?
      ?
      Yes, people should be lucky that a company hires them, particularly in times like this when unknown tax policies, yet to be enforced ?bamacare costs, and further senseless regulations cause businesses to pause in their hiring until they know what their costs will be.
      ?
      How much profit is enough comes right before they start asking if your salary is too big.?? Think about it.



    • stinkfoot on March 14, 2012 at 1:46 pm

      It is beyond profane to someone like myself who has been fighting to gain employment for six months and is beginning to see very real the? possibility that no job is in my future.? The special interest labor unions (particularly public sector unions) seem to be getting all the legislative attention at the expense of people trying to get a damned job.? Add the numbers games with regard to U3 and the only desire seems to be to make the jobless invisible without the slightest bit of concern for creating jobs.? As far as I’m concerned it is criminal.? The government now is my adversary because it’s doing all it can to prevent me from entering the work force.



    • Dimsdale on March 13, 2012 at 10:33 am

      How much profit and greed by the unions is enough?? Instead of union conscription a la the recent “volunteering” of home health care workers, how about letting the workers choose whether to be in a union or not, or right to work?? Card check = communism.? Where is all this “right to choose” pap I hear from liberals.? When a union drives a business out of business, and the workers are all out of work, how did the union help them??? When bad workers are protected to the detriment of the business (see education), who is protected??? What good is higher pay when it is absorbed by union dues??? Are dues “protection money” from the corporation or the union thugs?? You know the real answer to that, and it isn’t corporations.
      ?
      Yes, unions answer a need, INITIALLY, but quickly and inevitably succumb to greed for money and power, and become pawns of politicians, and the tools of criminals (I know, pols and criminals are redundant!).
      ?
      And I say this as a person with considerable “street cred” as a union member: I have been and am (against my will) a union member, steward, vice president, president, and even started a union, and will put those qualifications against those of any union stooge.



    • antiviceisavich on March 13, 2012 at 11:55 am

      If a specific workplace is union only, it is union only. If it is open, it is open. You have the freedom to choose where you would like to work. Communism would tell you where your workplace is and what your job is.?Agreed, unions pushed to hard but it takes two sides to agree and sign a contract.? Dues are protection from the corporations where you have no protection from the whims of management. Corruption is sadly in?all levels of our society.



    • Steve M on March 13, 2012 at 12:28 pm

      @antiviceisavich – your premise is totally wrong. If I own a non-union shop and approach with the same or better product or service, at the same quality for a lower price, I’d be frequently turned away thanks to many prevailing wage laws around the country. Hell, the Obama administration may well outright sue me if I tried. (Boeing in South Carolina.)

      You want to set a “maximum income limit” right? What is that number?

      You realize the number of Americas who earn mult-million dollar salaries is in the thousands right? We’re not talking about a lot of people here.

      At least you’re a good example of outright socialism around here.?



    • Dimsdale on March 13, 2012 at 9:25 pm

      Hmmm.? Then I wonder why they need to use sleazy techniques like card check and what was recently perpetrated on the CT home health care workers?? If you are a teacher in MA (and likely CT), if you want to be a teacher, you are in the union.? No choice.? As for the “two sides to a contract”, you have his upon the crux of the problem with government unions: both sides of the table are actually the same side of the table if it is a Democrat administration.? The adversarial aspect is gone.? See Malloy.



    • Anne-EH on March 13, 2012 at 10:49 am

      The sad reality is that, those men and women who did good, in regards to the union movement, including my late father, would be SPINNING in their graves if they heard what is going on now in the union movement, sad to say.



    • Steve M on March 13, 2012 at 11:41 am

      Can someone come in here and pull antiviceisavich out of the 1930s?



    • antiviceisavich on March 13, 2012 at 11:57 am

      I am alive in 2012?living breathing the same dirty polluted air as you sir or madam. I think maybe you want to go back to earlier times. Remember the founding fathers were the original east coast liberals.



    • teeoff55 on March 13, 2012 at 2:52 pm

      Um Steve…bad news…the guys actually took the time to create a user name of “antiviceisavich” which, I guess, is supposed to be either a bad pun of some sort or the poor guy just can’t spell.?

      Either way he wouldn’t and actually couldn’t agree with ANYTHING said by you or Jim.

      He is obviously the type who, when faced with the arguments of even the most gifted and intelligent would simply say; “Don’t confuse me with facts, I’ve already made up my mind”

      Why waste your time?

      Or as my dad always said, “I never get into a battle of wits with an unarmed man.”

      ?



  2. Truthseeker on March 13, 2012 at 5:23 pm

    I’m confused.? In Illinois the unions have held sway with both parties for as long as I can remember.? Campaign contribution records show unions contributing almost equally to both parties.? In exchage for contributions, government official have traded lucrative worker contracts for wages and benefits?that are bankrupting the State.



    • Dimsdale on March 13, 2012 at 9:21 pm

      Wow!? You should come up here to MA, where the unions are 100% Democrat backers, no matter that the Dems continually and reflexively screw them after they are elected.?



  3. johnboy111 on March 13, 2012 at 9:15 pm

    if i’m forced to pay..i want a say.



  4. ricbee on March 13, 2012 at 10:08 pm

    I’m shocked at AT&T , NADA & the AMA & wonder why?



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