government-provided sugar price supports, which net Flo-Sun an extra $60,000,000 dollars in profits per year despite compelling evidence that the subsidies essentially tax the poor by raising food prices and that Florida sugar plantations are slowly strangling the Everglades by choking off the ecologically sensitive areas water supply (3).The Taft-Hartley law of 1947 specifically prohibits unions from contributing to a campaign. Yet unions donate millions of dollars each election to political parties. Although it is true that corporations out-contribute unions by a ratio of fifteen to one, there is a major difference between the money received from corporations and that of unions. While corporations contribute to both the Republican and Democratic parties, on average ninety-eight percent of union contributions go to the Democratic Party. The worst part of union contributions is that many times the members of that union have their union dues taken from them without any say about where or to whom that money should be spent. Many union members have no choice but to belong to a specific union if they want a specific job. That union will have a set amount that they withdraw from that workers salary annually as union dues. The average amount taken out of a workers salary for union dues today is $500 per year. That five hundred dollars can be given to the Democratic Party even if the particular worker who had it taken out supports the Republican Party. He or she does not have any say in the matter to whom the money should go. According to Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform, the present Supreme Courts ruling protects labor union members particularly from having their union dues taken from them by force. These arent voluntarily contributed, these are union dues that you have to pay as a condition of employment if you are from a non-right-to-work state, and having those spent on politics or other things (Williams 14). Every y...
