By Leo Gerard, President, the United Steel Workers In the olden days, buying votes was a risky business.  That’s not because the purchaser faced felony charges.  No, the real peril was that the guy bribing voters wouldn’t get what he wanted. The process was too indirect.  The man with “walking around money” would tell voters what he wanted them to […]

Mid-January of 2014 marks the unhappy fourth anniversary of one of the defining moments in U.S. politics.  No, not an election, but a court ruling.             That’s because in January 2010, the GOP-named 5-man majority on the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Citizens United, the infamous court case.             There, the justices declared “money is speech,” in so many words, and […]

WASHINGTON—Unionists, led by the Communications Workers, blasted the overwhelming influence of corporate and Right Wing money in politics in a demonstration outside the Supreme Court on Oct. 8, as the justices within heard arguments on a case that would open the money floodgates even wider. And the unionists’ point may fall on deaf judicial ears, at least among the court’s […]