Edward Hum – 2/18/10

This page was last updated on February 18, 2010.

Have taxpayers fund elections; Edward J. Hum; Beaver County Times; February 18, 2010.

Mr. Hum has written at least 48 letters since early 2005, including a 10-month hiatus from September 2007 to July 2008. Mr. Hum came out of the hiatus to bash then-President Bush’s Air National Guard service with two letters in less than two weeks. It will be no surprise most of Mr. Hum’s letters have been no more than exercises in bashing President Bush and/or other Republicans. Mr. Hum’s letters are also flame-throwing exercises. I don’t know if Mr. Hum actually believes what he writes, or if he simply likes to stir things up to call attention to himself.

Mr. Hum frequently includes “fellow Republicans” or something similar in his letters and is one of a group of local Republican impersonators (The group also includes Messrs. William A. Alexander, Arthur Brown, William G. Horter, and George Reese.) who write claiming to be disgruntled Republicans. You have to give Mr. Hum “credit,” however, for going the extra mile to further his impersonation. As of September 2006, Mr. Hum was actually registered as a Republican despite the fact he’s no more a Republican than is Dennis Kucinich.

Given his body of work, for a while I wondered what Mr. Hum would use for subject matter now that Barack Obama is President. Though his previous three letters were in support of a government-run, taxpayer-funded healthcare monopoly (here, here, and here), in his last two letters Mr. Hum reverted to his Bush-bashing habit, as in “Bush earns status as ‘most liberal.’” I guess some addictions are too tough to overcome.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“The average cost of a House seat in 2008 was $8 million, and it cost $12 million to buy a Senate race.”

[RWC] My experience with researching Mr. Hum’s “facts” is you need to be very skeptical. For the purpose of this critique I’ll use them because I’m not motivated to check them out. Correct or not, you will see Mr. Hum uses them incorrectly to pursue a false premise.

“Do the math. For 535 members of Congress, that’s $4.5 billion.”

[RWC] “Do the math?” (435x$8,000,000)+(100x$12,000,000) = $4.68 billion, not $4.5 billion. In any case, Mr. Hum’s simple multiplication and addition doesn’t give a figure that means anything. To mean something, the figure would need to be on an annual, biannual, or six years basis since elections take place every two years (all of the House, 1/3 of the Senate). On a by-election basis the figure would be (435x$8,000,000)+(100x$12,000,000/3) = $3.88 billion, or $1.94 billion annually. Perhaps Mr. Hum (or his data source) needs a math refresher course. <g>

“If we had taxpayer-funded elections, corporations would save $4.5 billion to use for shareholders’ dividends.”

[RWC] Doesn’t Mr. Hum know federal law prohibits corporations from contributing to the campaigns of federal candidates? Even the recent Supreme Court ruling only allows corporations (and labor union management) to fund political advertisements. That ruling did not change the prohibition on making campaign contributions.

“We might even get honest people in Congress.”

[RWC] Using Mr. Hum’s logic, during the 2008 campaign, John McCain was the honest candidate because he went with public campaign financing and Barack Obama did not.

In any case, one problem with “tax-payer funded elections” is an infringement on freedom of speech. If your taxes were used to fund campaign contributions, the effect would be that you were forced to fund the campaigns of candidates with whom you disagreed. In a way, the Supreme Court has already ruled on this topic. In Communication Workers of America v. Beck (1988), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled union management could not forcibly collect dues for activities not directly related to collective bargaining. This decision applies whether or not you work in a closed shop. The basis of the decision is that union management violates workers’ First Amendment rights when union management forces workers to contribute to candidates and charities they oppose. For example, if you are Republican, why must you contribute to Democrat candidates via your dues? Switch “government” for “union management” and “taxes” for “dues” and this is the situation for “taxpayer-funded elections.”