Political Contributions Offer a Mixed Pedigree

It amazes me how Republicans can attribute all manner of collusion, nepotism and deviousness to Democrats for accepting union money while managing to overlook their own corporate cash cow.

The Center for Responsive Politics reports the top 20 union PACs gave around $40 million to Democrats during the 2010 election cycle and the 20 largest corporate PACs about $26 million to Republicans. Democrats received nearly $286 million in soft money support from 5-27 advocacy groups; Republicans about $241 million. Comme ci, comme Æ'§a.

Regardless of the destination -- Democratic or Republican -- of political vigorish, its impact on the levers of power is tantamount to pillaging our national soul. People didn't just fall off the turnip truck. They know that "access not influence," like every politician who's ever pocketed a check claims, is baloney. Clean it up, sunshine it, regulate it, it still smells.

My druthers, publicly financed elections, the only means to drain our political swamp. But for now we're stuck with what we've got.

However, there's a huge difference between taking money from those pushing some ideological issue -- women's choice, traditional marriage, clean environment, smaller government, economic justice and so on -- and the Ew! factor of taking money from those solely bent on personal gain and special fixes.

Recently, national conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, who gives snarky a bad name, slammed some maneuver or other as "political sabotage by Democrats beholden to unions for the millions they pour into Democratic coffers."

Krauthammer's outrage is facile. He knows full well Democrats and unions tend to represent overlapping constituencies and therefore, just maybe, their legislative agendas might also overlap for more than shameless money grubbing.

For instance economic justice is the correlation between ability, effort, accomplishment and reward. The soldiers, cops, firefighters who risk their lives for us; the construction and factory workers, service and technical employees who generate wealth for their employers; the teachers, public servants, health care workers who keep the system functioning; all need to be appropriately compensated.

The vast majority of union contributions is in the service of insuring that those workers get the economic justice they rightly deserve in environments free of unnecessarily dangerous or unhealthy working conditions.

The same can't be said about corporate contributions to Republicans.

Corporate money pouring into Republican coffers is overwhelmingly for the purpose of procuring earmarks, skirting regulations, eliminating inconvenient trade barriers, securing preferential tax treatment and bolstering competitive advantage -- most often at the expense of the public -- for multinational giants like Exxon, Pfizer and Citigroup.

Most reasonable Americans understand the difference between the largest union donor, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, trying to prevent the erosion of its members' standard of living and the largest corporate donor, the American Bankers Association, seeking special privileges. Ew!