The myth of those "evil, wealthy" unions

It goes without saying that money in politics has been a problem. With the Supreme Court's completely wrongheaded decision in Citizen's United it's likely to become an even bigger one. Given that money equals political power, it would make sense that the wealthy have much more political power than the middle class right?

Not according to this blog by Dr. Scoundrels that' been making the rounds among anti-union conservatives. You see, he insists that the rich really don't have that much power, even going as far as calling the Koch brothers "paupers" compared to those "evil, wealthy" unions.

As proof he cites records kept by Open Secrets that shows over the last eleven years unions have contributed more than $562,000,000 to political campaigns, while Koch industries has contributed more than $10.8 million over that same time span. On the surface this shows that unions have much more political sway right?

Well, there several problems with Dr. Scoundrels analysis. The first one is most obvious. His numbers appear to be wrong. He claims, for instance, that business has spent a little over $1 trillion on political contribution over the last eleven years. In reality they spent $1.3 trillion in 2010 alone, when counting contributions through political action committees (which is the preferred method of laundering corporate money). Secondly, he's counting ALL union contributions, as if they are one entity, and comparing it to an individual corporation. I shouldn't have to point out how incredibly silly that is.

Finally, and most importantly, he's ignoring the fact that unions represent the interests of millions of people (14.7 million to be exact) while Koch industries represents, well Charles and David Koch for the most part. You can't lump millions of people together, and pretend that they are equals to the Koch brothers when it comes to political power. To have a fair comparison you have to compare individuals, with individuals. So with that in mind let's do a little rough math:

According to Dr. Scoundrels numbers over the last eleven years unions have contributed a total of $562,124,612 to political campaigns. Divide that number by the total amount of current union members and you come up with about $38.24 in political contributions per member, over the last 11 years. Divide that by eleven and what do you get?

$3.48

So over the last eleven years, each individual union member has contributed a total of $3.48 per year to political campaigns.

David Koch himself handed out close to $50,000 dollars last year in political contributions. And that's not counting the contributions he made to his various PAC's and through his business.

Who do you think has more political power in this situation? The guy who can throw tens of thousands of dollars around in individual contributions like it's going out of style? Or the millions of union members who's individual contributions over the last eleven years wouldn't even buy them a 12 pack of Koch made paper towels?