Money Talks? (updated)
The democrats have tried to spin the Scott Walker recall election in a number of different ways. Many of GorT’s liberal friends on Facebook like to point out that the Republicans outspent the Democrats in some skewed proportion – some claim as high as 7-to-1. Let’s step back a take a broader look at campaign contributions. The folks at OpenSecrets.org compile much of the freely available data and publish it in different forms and Mike Cornelison put together a piece highlighting the issue. However, I always am skeptical of numbers thrown about, so I did a once over on them and made some adjustments. These adjustments are purely addressing any partial support for democrats vs. republicans. So the numbers below represent the amount of money donated since 1989 with the percentage (as reported via OpenSecrets) towards a political party taken into account.
| Organization (Open Secrets rank) | Total To Dem | Total to Rep | |
| 3 American Fedn of State, County & Municipal Employees | 44,369,104.96 | 482,272.88 | |
| 5 National Education Assn | 30,682,853.84 | 2,073,165.80 | |
| 7 Service Employees International Union | 29,139,860.25 | 777,062.94 | |
| 9 Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers | 34,094,136.00 | 710,294.50 | |
| 10 American Federation of Teachers | 29,629,429.92 | 0.00 | |
| 11 Laborers Union | 28,693,591.80 | 2,308,679.80 | |
| 12 Teamsters Union | 28,470,121.86 | 1,636,213.90 | |
| 13 Carpenters & Joiners Union | 27,214,622.60 | 3,164,491.00 | |
| 14 Communications Workers of America | 29,007,394.84 | 0.00 | |
| 16 United Food & Commercial Workers Union | 26,255,811.15 | 0.00 | |
| 18 United Auto Workers | 27,518,823.36 | 0.00 | |
| 20 Machinists & Aerospace Workers Union | 27,077,622.46 | 276,302.27 | |
| 29 National Assn of Letter Carriers | 19,624,308.88 | 2,153,887.56 | |
| 32 AFL-CIO | 18,520,412.50 | 892,550.00 | |
| 40 Sheet Metal Workers Union | 18,895,994.00 | 397,810.40 | |
| 42 International Assn of Fire Fighters | 15,272,628.54 | 3,328,649.81 | |
| 44 Plumbers & Pipefitters Union | 18,099,154.08 | 778,458.24 | |
| 45 Operating Engineers Union | 15,927,764.16 | 2,654,627.36 | |
| 52 Air Line Pilots Assn | 14,427,597.01 | 2,607,397.05 | |
| 57 United Transportation Union | 13,555,924.80 | 1,694,490.60 | |
| 58 Ironworkers Union | 14,073,676.08 | 917,848.44 | |
| 59 United Steelworkers | 15,128,829.54 | 0.00 | |
| 66 American Postal Workers Union | 13,648,006.85 | 430,989.69 | |
| 69 National Air Traffic Controllers Assn | 9,980,717.76 | 2,633,800.52 | |
| 77 Koch Industries | 1,160,999.91 | 11,609,999.10 | |
| 86 Natl Active & Retired Fed Employees Assn | 8,876,945.00 | 2,536,270.00 | |
| Totals | 559,346,332.15 | 44,065,261.86 |
I did leave out the Club for Growth on the Republican side, but even then, it would only add $13M to the Republican total which would change the ratio of 12:1 spending since 1989 to 10:1. If we were to apply an estimate that 40% of union workers would support Republican candidates (as Mike Cornelison points out), that narrows the margin to $335M towards democrats for all the listed organizations and $267M towards republicans. So, maybe keep these numbers in mind the next time a liberal friend of yours spouts off about spending in elections insinuating that it is the GOP that benefits.
GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.