Unions.

Editor,

I find this article's equating the participation of unions and corporations in the American electoral process disingenuous in the extreme.

In the American private sector, union membership has fallen from about 20% in 1983 to 7% at present. So let's assume that union dues have fallen by 13/20ths, or 65%. In the same period corporations have increased their profits, which were already orders of magnitude larger in 1983, by a comparable percentage, in large part by off-shoring American jobs and reducing real wages (right-wing economists call this "productivity").

If the NYT supports corporate domination of the American political process as the Roberts Court does, fine. But please don't try to justify this on the basis of nonexistent unions and their nonexistent massive election war chests.

Re: "Court Under Roberts Is Most Conservative in Decades" (7/25/2010)