Comments for Trickle Down and Bottom Up at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 3 out of 3 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Sun, 26 May 2013 02:48:52 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/trickle-down-and-bottom-up.html#comment-8116 While I appreciate and agree with the general thrust of White's position and his explanation of Catholic teaching on unions is very clear and accurate, there is a problem with how he uses the data from the Duquesne study on political expenditures of various interest groups. It is true that "labor unions" spend more than any other constituency category, but "Labor" is spread across many economic sectors. If you take just the next five categories in the chart not displayed in the article but referred to, those five economic industries also spend about $500M. Even if one includes "teacher unions" in with labor unions, which the Duquesne researcher does not for some mysterious reason, just adding the next couple of econmic sector spending amounts still leads you to the conclusion that overall labor spending on politics is not that much different than the spending of a lot of groups in the economy across several sectors, added together the way differnt labor unions in different sectos of the economy seem to be. So White's statement about labor union spending way surpassing spending of other sectors is misleading. He does say labor spending is is bigger than any other single lobby, taken alone, but what is included in "union" spending is including spending from several sectors. - Stephen Thu, 15 Sep 2011 05:38:40 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/trickle-down-and-bottom-up.html#comment-8006 It was the French Dominican, Lacordaire, who said "Between the weak and the strong, between the rich and the poor, between the master and the servant, it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free." - Michael Paterson-Seymour Wed, 07 Sep 2011 04:35:53 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/trickle-down-and-bottom-up.html#comment-7998 The union's of today are not the unions of the past. I was in a union for many years and was glad to get away from that atmosphere; they're just greedy and self centered. Listen to Hoffa's speech from yesterday, that's your union of today. The auto bailout was a money laundering scheme, much of it now going back to Obama's campaign through the unions. - Robert Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:36:06 +0100