Norquist was at CPAC, the notorious 'Conservative Political Action Conference' in Washington where people like Ann Coulter say vulgar things to get attention and sell their latest book.
As Dave Jamison at the Huffington Post reported, Norquist is expanding his con to union busting from his main scam, shrinking government to the size where he can drown it in a bathtub (or, 'turning America into Somalia'). Norquist campaigned against the UAW at the VW plant in Chattanooga, plastering anti-union messages on billboards throughout the city.
At CPAC he was trying to find customers for his union-busting, but he had a hard time raising the spectre of Big Labor because we're not so big anymore -- not anywhere close to as big or as powerful as the sociopathic billionaires who fund him. As Jamison pointed out,
A successful anti-union discussion therefore needs to strike a delicate balance, celebrating unions' diminished state while simultaneously insisting they pose as grave a threat as ever.So here's what Norquist said:
"They're not dead yet -- they're in decline," Norquist said. "They raise maybe $7 billion a year in dues. Imagine how much they spend of that on politics. They are the largest political player in American politics and will be for some time. What can we do about it?"The truth is the Koch brothers and their friends spend twice as much on politicsas the top 10 unions combined. According to the Republic Report,
Koch groups alone spent more than double the combined political spending (including to undisclosed group) for the top ten unions combined.The chart at the top of the page shows union spending on dark money Democratic groups and Koch spending on dark money groups like Americans for Prosperity. Republic Report says:
This undisclosed campaign system is nothing new for the Koch brothers. In 1995 and 1996, Koch set up a shell company called Triad Management to spend millions in secret money to help the Republican Party. Of course, this type of spending never shows up in databases like the one cited by Strassel.
All NRLB-regulated unions, on the other hand, disclose every outside payment. Payments that cannot be found through the FEC can be found on a database maintained by the Labor Department. Individuals and corporations are under no such similar disclosure rules. The Koch money identified recently by the Washington Post, the $407 million, relates only to they money filtered through foundations and nonprofits. The money Koch spends as a corporate entity, which it has in the past, may have gone unreported.
