>Doug Henwood:
>
>> Nathan asks where the money's going to come from. Eight
>> of the top ten political givers since 1989 are unions,
>> who've given a total of $200 million, most of it to Dems.
>
>I'm guessing that you already know that direct political contributions come
>only from PAC funds. PAC money -- which is precious and difficult to collect
>in large amounts -- is appropriate to use for that purpose. Your argument on
>these grounds is therefore disingenuous, although it is also cheap and easy,
>which is what we've unfortunately come to expect from you in the course of
>this discussion.
Yeah, I've gotten bored with being serious and I thought I'd try cheap & easy for a while. Road to fame & riches, I'm sure.
But I don't really see why it's cheap and easy to point out that unions spend a lot of money (and human resources) support Democrats who either lose or fuck them over. Stern has made some noises about the futility of this strategy, but they keep writing the checks. I think Fitch has a point when he says they're buying get out of jail cards - as I recall, several unions on that list had some serious legal issues in recent years. But even that aside, this political strategy has been a failure. Laws have not changed and union density continues to fall. The US labor movement is in a crisis, possibly a terminal crisis, as I'm sure you've noticed, and just repeating the same old shit won't do.
So why not spend some of that precious, hard-earned cash on some campaigns that might make a difference - e.g., the single-payer campaign? It's not like the union movement is hitting it out of the park these days with its existing strategy, whatever that is, is it?
Doug