George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular bi-weekly commentary that aired 8 July 2011 on KVMR-FM.]

What kind of First Amendment rights should institutions have; institutions comprised of people getting together for a purpose?  The question is again coming to public attention as the 2012 election season is now officially off and running.  Actually, the question is really much more focused than that.  The progressive left is pointedly asking about what rights do corporations have to be heard during an election season as they promote candidates and issues.  The conservative right is similarly asking what rights do unions have – especially public service unions – in promoting their candidates and issues.

Both sides have similar views about the critical thinking skills of the average voter – namely that he doesn’t have any critical thinking skills, at least none that will be applied to questions of governance.  Both sides have a gut feeling that the overwhelming slice of voters hold on to a few tenets or beliefs that number less than their fingers.  In popular socio-economics, tenets is the fancy word for ‘slogans’ or ‘sound bites’ that represent some fundamental truths.  There is a smaller fraction of more sophisticated voters that may push the number of their tenets into the mid-teens, but don’t push too hard.

Both sides also know from countless studies that these tenets are malleable, interchangeable, and that only a very few of them rise to influence when the vote is ready to be cast.  In the end, what determines the make-up of lightly anchored ideologies is the ‘credible’ repetition of broadcast slogans as the election approaches.  And therein lies opportunity for the moneyed interests of the land.  Money pays for credible sources and repetition.  If two competing sound bite contents are somewhat equally compelling, then the side with the most money will change and cement more minds, and go on to win.

By law, corporations have most of the rights that a ‘normal person’ has, and free speech under the First Amendment is one of them.  This was most recently confirmed in 2010 by the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case.  Notable differences with a ‘normal person’ are that the corporation cannot vote, be counted in a census, and invoke the self-incrimination protections of the Fifth Amendment in its own defense.  But, under increasingly complex regulations, a corporation can fund the broad repetition of credible sources in support of issues and, even, candidates.  But the overall controversy over institutions using their considerable resources to fund political ads and advocacy documentaries is far from over.

In the 2008 election, candidate Obama received the largest institutional contributions of any candidate, pocketing over $70 million in direct contributions, and over $300M in indirect contributions from both private and public sector unions.  These sums guaranteed unions access at the highest levels of government.  Both Andy Stern of the SEIU and Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO became the hands down most frequent visitors to the White House, often staying overnight.  John McCain was able to muster less than half of this which was attributed to his ‘corporate fat cat’ supporters.

Nevertheless, today the hew and cry from the progressives is that corporations have an undue influence on elections precisely due to the voter attributes described above.  And the hammer being used now is whether the corporation is considered a ‘person’ under the 14th Amendment that was passed to procure civil rights for recently freed slaves.  For some reason the same arguments in the mainstream media don’t include the proscription of unions.  They get a free pass from the left because unions can and do deliver prodigious amounts of money to politicians, but they also deliver reliable lockstep voters for the same causes.  The Republicans are outgunned here on all fronts.

But the question remains, should corporations have an equal political voice with the unions?  If so, why is there a one-sided assault to silence corporations?  If not, what is the basis for elevating the unions to a privileged status?

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on these and other themes in my Union columns, and on georgerebane.com where this transcript appears.  These opinions are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.