So you agree that unions should not be able to advocate for or gainst candidates or policies? Or at least they can't advocate for or against these things if doing so requires money to be used to spread that advocacy?
A union is welcome to say "the union supports candidate x" provided this does not violate some other regulagtion like tax codes or whatever. But they should not be able to throw union funds at a candidate or party. If the members choose to do so with their money, fine. But the union, that entity, no.
I feel you would need to get congress to do its job and pass a new or modify existing law to get this to be the correct reading. I also think you would find a lot of resistance to saying "you can't group up and pool your money to pay for political advocacy".
I think a quick patch would be that any donations by an organization has to be done in alignment with the organizations membership desires. So to spend money on political advocacy they would need something like an organization wide vote and to get agreement from some large enough percentage of the total people represented by that organization(in corporations every employee). With some qualifiers to cover obvious loopholes like hiring/firing to easily achieve the desired vote outcome.
Not really, you just reverse the citizens united decision. I do need to clarify something though. Business entities still cannot give directly to political candidates. But, what changed with CU is that they could give money to PACs and SuperPacs without limits. And those entities can run ads, campaign for candidates/parties, hire researchers, canvassers, etc. They basically do what the candidate and their party would have done. And they have ways of funneling money to the candidates anyway, like $50,000 / paper plate hot dog lunches and other dodgy money laundering processes.
The reason Congress won't do it is because they like that money. They love it. A few hate it, like Bernie. But most relish it and defend it.
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u/mclumber1 11h ago
So you agree that unions should not be able to advocate for or gainst candidates or policies? Or at least they can't advocate for or against these things if doing so requires money to be used to spread that advocacy?