PJens: It is important to remember that most companies spend far more money on advertising their products than they do trying to influence elections. Actually selling beer is far more important to Budweiser, for example, than trying to get a politician elected.

And, on top of the standard opportunity cost is a tax cost, since product advertising is deductible while political advertising is not.

B.D.:
Still, it’d be nice if there was broader acknowledgment that the Supreme Court is supposed to honestly and faithfully interpret the law, even if the results conflict with their own policy preferences.When someone wholly bases their criticism of the decision on its results, I immediately stop giving a crap about what they think.

I’d like to stop giving a crap about what such people think, too. Unfortunately, a lot of them have political power.

I understand why you’re doing this. It makes sense in some way to stamp out results-based disagreement with the decision to undermine the populist outrage on the left. Perhaps it will help us avoid further constitutionally-impermissible legislation to “right the wrong”, or worse, a constitutional amendment.

Still, it’d be nice if there was broader acknowledgment that the Supreme Court is supposed to honestly and faithfully interpret the law, even if the results conflict with their own policy preferences. When someone wholly bases their criticism of the decision on its results, I immediately stop giving a crap about what they think.

Thales: There may be a relatively simple explanation for the disparity in single biggest corporation spending v. single biggest union spending: Unions often represent the workers of a broad field within an industry or across related industries (SEIU being an example), whereas a single corporation represents its own management and (ostensibly) shareholders, and is usually in competitition with other similar corporations.

Good point. Even where they have similar interests, the individual businesses in an industry will be beset by collective action problems, whereas a union that controls all the unionized enterprises in an industry won’t have the same collective action problems.

$ 760,180,444 in total. That’s one campaign, one candidate’s expenditures alone, not counting PAC’s or other spenders of any kind.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/expend.php?cycle=2008&cid=n00009638

Sector Description Total Expenditures
Administrative Travel $60,789,709
Salaries & Benefits $58,831,126
Miscellaneous Administrative $21,127,418
Postage/Shipping $16,841,166
Rent/Utilities $10,620,173
Supplies, Equipment & Furniture $4,790,414
Administrative Consultants $1,432,820
Food/Meetings $437,144
Campaign Expenses Campaign Events $32,023,973
Polling/Surveys/Research $28,048,988
Materials $7,759,859
Political Consultants $3,543,259
GOTV $899,546
Miscellaneous Campaign $550,929
Campaign Direct Mail $110,000
Contributions Parties (Fed & Non-federal) $40,255,727
Contrib Refunds $5,661,816
Committees (Fed & Non-Federal) $9,115
Candidates (Fed & Non-federal) $5,033
Fundraising Fundr Direct Mail/Telemarketing $28,590,559
Miscellaneous Fundraising $1,357,740
Fundraising Events $162,930
Fundraising Consultants $28,100
Media Broadcast Media $244,600,266
Miscellaneous Media $133,212,024
Internet Media $26,555,479
Print Media $20,462,672
Media Consultants $2,739,204
Other Charitable Donations $130,055
Transfers Miscellaneous Transfer $7,500,000
Federal Transfer $7,002
Uncoded not yet coded $477,995
Unknown Insufficient Info $618,203

The biggest single corporate spender I could find, for instance, was ChevronTexaco, which spent a bit over $300K, much less than the biggest union spenders spent.

That is no surprise. Union money is essentially free money in that it has no other use except to influence politics. It is certainly not going back to members if unspent.

As far as energy law, I have no clue of preemption in this area and cannot comment.