Wall Street Journal Publishes Hit Job on Union Political Spending

By: David Dayen Thursday July 12, 2012 9:35 am

One of the ways that supporters of California’s Prop 32, the Trojan horse initiative to silence union activity in elections while facilitating corporate campaign spending, will probably press their case publicly is by claiming that unions spend ungodly amounts of money on politics. And unions in California do represent a counter-balancing of corporate cash. But this Wall Street Journal article takes this claim to the absurd extreme, arguing that union spending is “much larger than expected” by counting every single expenditure ever made as a political activity.

Organized labor spends about four times as much on politics and lobbying as generally thought, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis, a finding that shines a light on an aspect of labor’s political activity that has often been overlooked.