I'm not one for conspiracy theories. Frankly, I don't think the government could conspire its way out of the Capitol South Metro stop at rush hour.
The thing is conspiracy theories come in three sizes. There is the "you have to be off your rocker" theory. Think birthers, truthers and people who watched too much of The X Files. There are also the historical conspiracy theories. These conspiracy theories revolve around something that happened a long time ago and no one cares if you buy into alternate histories. Think Kennedy's assassination and people who still think Elvis is alive.
Then there are the conspiracies that are so brazen that the best place to hide them is out in the open. Take the firing of all of those attorneys general in 2006. Talking Points Memo uncovered the story that was essentially out in the open for everyone to see. All you had to do was take off the blindfold and realize that you were touching an elephant, so to speak.
The latest round of union busting might have a deeper significance than just political maneuvering. Here's some dots to connect.
Last month, Teamsters president James P. Hoffa wrote an editorial that appeared in the Detroit News.
Citizens United decision at root of war on public union workers
The spark that has fired protests in communities across our great country was actually struck more than a year ago. It wasn't in Wisconsin on Feb. 11, when Gov. Scott Walker filed a bill to strip government workers of their collective bargaining rights, setting off weeks of massive protests in Madison.
Shameful ruling
The real spark was struck in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 21, 2010, when the Supreme Court decided the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case. The high court voted to overturn campaign finance law in a decision as shameful as Dred Scott or Plessy v. Ferguson. Citizens United allowed corporations and other special interests to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns, and to do it in secret.
So the questions are: Who struck the match and why?
Hoffa goes on to point out that somewhere between $600 million and $1 billion was spent at both the state and national levels by outside interest groups during the 2010 election. The Center for Responsive Politics shows us that outside groups (excluding party organizations) dropped almost $300 million just at the national level. The party affiliates (DCCC, DSCC, NRSC, NRCC) only accounted for about $185 million. If you click that link, you will see that, unlike in 2004, 2006 and 2008, liberals got clobbered by outside spending in 2010.
Not only that, the Citizens United ruling allowed about half of all third party campaigning groups to dodge disclosing their donor lists. In all, People for the American Way found that about $126 million of the $298.5 million spent by third parities not affiliated with the Democrats or Republicans on the 2010 midterm legally went unreported.
Granted, official campaigns are still the biggest spenders and that $300 million seems rather paltry compared to the $4 billion that was spent on the midterm.
The difference is that these third party groups have a free hand to say pretty much whatever they want. Think what you will, but the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth were completely independent of the Bush campaign and those were some of the most effective ads of the campaign. Furthermore, with the media obsession with over-the-top campaign ads, a 527 or PAC might only have to post something on YouTube and still get a few days play on the 24/7/365 cable news circuit. It doesn't matter, for example, if those Swiftboaters were actually telling the truth. It set the narrative that a guy who went to Vietnam was somehow less heroic than the guy who might have protected the skies over Alabama in 1972.
Now lets dive a little deeper down that rabbit hole, shall we.
One of the key things a lot of people forget about Citizens United is that they challenged the legality of Michael Moore showing Fahrenheit 9/11 before the 2004 election. According to the provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (also known as McCain-Feingold), groups not affiliated with a campaign or party may not run ads within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary.
Citizens United argued in front of the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) that the film amounted to an attack against Bush's reelection and was thus electioneering. Since Moore was not affiliated with a party or the Kerry campaign, he could not show his movie in the two months before the election. The FEC sided with Moore, ruling that the film was purely commercial and thus could be shown.
Incidentally, Citizens United released a film called Celsius 41.11: The Temperature At Which the Brain Begins to Die. Don't feel bad, I hadn't heard of this tripe until yesterday, myself.
Now the first leap of faith in this grand conspiracy involves another movie.
In 2008, Citizens United released Hillary: The Movie. Apparently, the only thing positive for Mrs. Clinton in the whole 90 minutes is Ann Coulter saying Hillary looks good in a pantsuit. The group wanted to air commercials for it during the primaries and show it on DirecTV. Other than a seven week gap before the rather late Pennsylvania primaries, there would have been no point in the primary season where such an ad would not fall in that 30 day window. Furthermore, it would have to air before Super Tuesday to have more than a negligible impact on the election.
Citizens United argued that, if Fahrenheit 9/11 constituted commercial and not political speech, then Hillary: The Movie ought to be treated the same way.
Rarely is the question asked: Did Citizens United intend for the movie to ever be shown at all? Did they let David Bossie to film his little movie on Citizens United's dime just to force a court battle?
As far as I can tell, the flick never did get ad time or an airing during the campaign. Instead, it landed in court and gave Citizens United the fight they were looking for.
A key, but oft overlooked point in the legal proceedings happened during the first argument before the Supreme Court in March, 2009. FEC Deputy Solicitor Malcolm L. Stewart seems to have been baited into a slippery slope nonsense argument by Justices Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy. At one point, Stewart was asked if the 60-day window could open the door to the government prohibiting the sale or publication of any political book published by a corporation or union -- and all publishers are corporations -- in that window. Stewart said that may be the case, but noted there are exceptions for the media and that the law is silent on publication of books in contrast to television and radio ads.
Edit: For more on the significance on this point, see this comment by coffeetalk.
Kennedy then asked about e-Readers such as the Kindle (okay fine, the Nook, you hippies). Wouldn't the law apply to any book sent to an e-reader that is 1) published by a union or corporation and 2) even one sentence advocates for a candidate?
And Stewart said, "That's correct."
GAH! Point, set and match. I have a hard time arguing that logic even if it is irrelevant to the facts in the case. Kindles receive books via a GSM signal. That is the same communications technology that AT&T cell phones use. Nooks have to connect to the internet to download books. The next part of the slippery slope is asking whether television and radio communications for campaigns ought to be treated differently than phones and the internet. The next step in the chain of logic is: should all third-party electioneering disappear from the internet and should they be banned from making GOTV phone calls? As we are well aware, it is impossible to scrub anything from the internet.
So the following January, the Court handed down the Citizens United ruling. Instead of just striking the bit about the 60-day window, the ruling effectively opened the door to corporations and unions to do naked electioneering while keeping those donations quiet. The secret is to funnel the money through a front group that is set up as a 501(c)(4) instead of a 527. The donations are not tax deductible, but what do they care when they are electing a bunch of tea partiers who are falling all over themselves to cut corporate taxes to the sub zero percent range?
(Meanwhile, you lowly citizen, will have your name and employer registered with the FEC if you make a sizable donation to a candidate (more than $200 if memory serves correctly). Granted, you could kick in to a 501(c)(4) and I have a list of solid progressive groups that could use the money, too.)
And then predictable happened. Harry Reid could only get 59 votes on the DISCLOSE Act which would have addressed the more egregious parts of the ruling like forcing disclosure of donors to 501(c)(4) groups and keeping foreign corporate money out of American elections. If you guessed it was a party line vote, you are correct, though Lisa Murkowski and Kay Bailey Hutchison didn't bother with that vote.
And really, why would the Republicans vote for it? This isn't about democracy or freedom of speech. This is about giving one party an advantage over the other party.
Then the Democrats got shellacked in November after a healthy portion of the electorate got duped into voting against their economic interests. Now the big Democratic donors are left to ponder whether or not to be hypocrites and just go with the new rules. Who is going to call them out on it? Republicans? The Koch-fueled Tea Party?
Sure the unions did what they could in 2010. SEIU dropped $15.7 million. AFSCME (the f***ing union that works for you) dropped $12.3 million. Commonsense Ten kicked in another $3.3 million. And that all adds up to less than the total the U.S. Chamber of Commerce alone spent ($32.9 million) and we know that at least $885,000 of the Chamber money came from more than 80 foreign companies.
The sad part is that the Congress of Industrial Organizations (the CIO in AFL-CIO) invented the PAC to get around the Smith-Connally Act a World War II era law that prevented unions from engaging in political activity.
Smith-Connally took political power away from the laborer just as sure as Scott Walker is trying to strip power from public sector employees.
Now for the bigger leap of faith in this grand conspiracy.
It seems just a little bit too convenient that all of these anti-union measures are cropping up all at once. Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Indiana, Arizona, Idaho, Florida, South Carolina, Oklahoma, California, Tennessee, Nebraska and the U.S. Congress.
In fact, the Los Angeles Times reported that about 700 union busting bills have been introduced in virtually every state.
That's not a coincidence. That's a pattern.
And there's more.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that in 1983, the first year they tracked union membership, 20.1 percent of workers were in a union and thus had some protection from arbitrary firings, wage cuts, unsafe working conditions and all of the other things unions have won. In 2010, about 11.9 percent of workers belonged to a union.
Historically, the private sector unions have felt the brunt of the decline in membership. As of 2009, more than half of the unionized workforce were union members. That same year, 16.6 million people worked for some level of the government according to the Census Bureau. The total workforce in 2010 was just a shade under 154 million people. So just over ten percent of Americans worked for "the government" but they accounted for half the country's union membership.
The short story behind those numbers is that the private unions have been broken, whether through outsourcing, right to work laws, or just plain union busting ala Walmart. If you want to join a union anymore, you have to work for the government or join Working America.
More to the point, the only real organized resistance to complete corporate hegemony is the public sector unions. Private unions are dying and the Koch-like products are trying to kill the last of the organized labor in the public sector and end the resistance once and for all.
So if the Donald can demand to see Obama's birth certificate (yet again), here are the questions I want answered:
Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia were attended at least one event funded by the Koch Brothers and Thomas can't quite explain away this incident. So the question is: How closely are Thomas, Scalia and possibly other justices tied to the same campaign financers who are affected by Citizens United? How much did these connections weigh on their opinion in Citizens United? Was there a quid pro quo for that ruling?
Did the Koch brothers or some other rich wingnut collude with Citizens United to make and distribute Hillary: The Movie? Which donors paid the $1.25 million legal bill for the Citizens United vs. FEC case?
Sure it might be a wild conspiracy theory to assume collusion among the governors and legislative leaders of at least 15 states. But then again maybe it's not. Mother Jones reported that a single group, the ironically named Americans United for Life, has managed to get bills introduced in multiple state legislatures that would basically allow people to kill abortion doctors. So the question is: Which group or groups is/are behind the wave of anti-union bills floating around the state legislatures?
Considering the point made it the last question: Are such groups all working together to give red meat to the social conservative base via forced birther laws while nakedly pandering to the corporate interests via union busting?
And now for the tin foil hat question: When and where was the meeting of right wing governors, state legislators, Senate Republicans, major donors, multiple political action committees, and possibly Supreme Court justices? What did they discuss and what is their long term plan for destroying the middle class and returning the other 98 percent to serfdom?
Finally: Why in the name of all that is good and holy are the tea partiers helping corporate America to metaphorically load the gun that will kill off the last of any worker rights?
Hey, don't blame me. I'm just asking questions here.