Outside corporate groups are spending way, way, way more than labor unions. Most importantly, while unions must disclose their donors, groups like Crossroads GPS can use virtually unlimited funds from anonymous sources for the sole purpose of undermining the public sector, which of course includes things like federal workers and unions.
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This isn't my first time at the rodeo; I anticipated where you were going, because right-wingers have been trying to equate unions with corporations since the 1930s. Right-wingers have been arguing that liberals are being hypocritical. Why, they ask, does the left complain about the influence of corporations but not that of unions? When unions spend so much money on lobbying?
Obviously, the answer lies in the nature of each type of organization. A union, as an institution, is an aggregate of sorts; it's an aggregate of actual human beings who have constitutional rights to free speech. There is no conflict between our right to hear a union's message and our right to free speech. A corporation on the other hand is a legally defined entity, fundamentally it is not an aggregation of people. It is a legal fiction which determines the parameters within which those who control the corporation may operate. Our right to hear their message is in conflict with our right to free speech, and the latter is guaranteed to us under the constitution. Our "right to hear" could be said to flow from our right to speak; but our right to hear whom? A legal fiction or other citizen's? Our right to hear is threatened when rights are granted to legal fictions (far less democratic than unions in their internal operating structure), which, cleverly disguised as it is, is what the Citizen's United decision does by denying these non-citizen legal fictions the role of speaker equivalent to that of a citizen in order to make impossible any restriction on the speech of these non-citizen, legal fiction entities we call corporations.
No one is arguing for a blanket censure of speech through organizations and institutions, including corporations. But our right to hear does not guarantee others the right to participate in the process of elections in any manner they choose, nor is the former lost through the denial of the latter. If the logic of the Citizen's United decision were applied generally to all rights, enumerated in the Constitution or otherwise, no laws or regulations at all would be constitutional. The end result, the endgame of this line of thinking, is of course post-fascism, the abrogation the legal and political system we "enjoy" today in favor total domination at the hand of the corporate state, rule by the corporate oligarchy. "Libertarian" Goebbels-type propoganda notwithstanding.
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Speech isn't free, and corporations aren't people.
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Democrats aren't saying that. Obama and Democrats are falling all over Republicans on this, doing mea culpa after mea culpa. Like I said, both parties would love less regulation and scrutiny, and that's what's going to be the result. Democratic politicians refuse to engage in this "war" - It's "can't we all just get along", with Obama, as usual, pushing "bipartisanship".
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