So, I didn’t note it here on this blog, but last month I got a letter to the editor published in the local newspaper.

Hazard of public sector unions

Bill Bianchi (Letters, April 1) misstated the impact of the Citizens United decision. The Supreme Court did not allow corporations to make unlimited donations to politicians. The ban on corporations (and unions) funding politicians still stands. Citizens United merely allowed corporations (and unions) to spend their own money to independently advocate for the defeat or election of a particular candidate — a situation that was already the law of the land in California regarding state and municipal elections.

The problem that many in the public are beginning to have with public sector unions is that by their very existence they create a moral hazard. Public employee unions, when they become powerful enough, effectively hire their own bosses (elected officials.) Their bosses are then indebted to them and therefore give them more in salary and benefits, to the detriment of the taxpayers. Instead of having two opposing sides with competing interests bargaining, you have “management” and labor conspiring to screw the public.

If a member of the public dislikes how a corporation is lobbying the government, they can stop buying that company’s products or divest themselves of that company’s stock. The same cannot be done when it is the government effectively lobbying itself.

Matthew Hoy

San Luis Obispo

More than a month later, the paper actually prints a response.

Democracy spiked

Matthew Hoy recently wrote in his letter: “The Supreme Court did not allow corporations to make unlimited donations to politicians.” He then goes on to contradict himself: “Citizens United merely allowed corporations (and unions) to spend their own money to independently advocate for the defeat or election of a particular candidate.”

A corporation’s “own” money comes from profits, money that probably should go to investors. How the logic of his argument failed to alert him to the fact that the Supreme Court has given corporate America the same standing as a private citizen escapes me.

A corporation is “an artificial person or legal entity created by or under the authority of the laws of a state,” according to Black’s Law Dictionary. The Supreme Court gave corporations the same rights as human beings in the electoral process. Now, private citizens are supposed to compete in elections with billion-dollar organizations with coffers overflowing with cash.

Hoy argues that public unions can “now hire their own bosses.” Don’t private corporations hire their own advocates when they elect or defeat their choice of elected officials?

Wake up, America. The Supreme Court has put a spike in the throat of democracy.

John Bullaro

Atascadero

I must confess that I’m not sure what to think about what the San Luis Obispo Tribune is  doing here. My letter was published on April 10. Today is May 16. Are they getting so many letters that they’re a month behind or did they come up short and so they dug one out of their reject files?

I’m probably not going to bother submitting a response to Mr. Bullaro’s letter in the paper, but maybe someday if he Googles his name, he’ll find this.

First, there’s no contradiction. If a corporation creates a YouTube video, prints flyers or buys a newspaper ad urging people to give a million dollars to me (and the PayPal link is on the right), that is not the same as the corporation giving me a million dollars.

Second, Bullaro and others like him, forget what Citizens United was – it was a group that took money from likeminded supporters not to turn a profit necessarily, but to espouse a point of view. It was formed as a corporation to take advantage of some of the benefits of corporate structure (limits on liability, etc.) They sought to air a documentary on Hillary Rodham Clinton during the election season, but their speech was squelched by the Federal Election Commission. Curiously, the FEC did not behave similarly when another corporation—this one a media company—distributed Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 in the months and weeks before the 2004 election.

I understand completely that corporations were given the same standing as private citizens. Mr. Bullaro sees no threat to democracy when the uber rich like George Soros can spend tens of millions of dollars to seek to influence the outcome of an election, but if hundreds or thousands of citizens of more modest means band together for similar effect, then a spike has been put in the throat of democracy.

The Supreme Court did not give corporations the same rights as human beings in the electoral process—corporations can’t cast a single vote.

There’s one thing Mr. Bullaro and I can agree on, we both oppose crony capitalism. If the government wasn’t handing out tax breaks and subsidies left and right, then corporations would have little to gain from lobbying efforts.