10.2 BILLION REASONS WHY UNIONS ARE SPENDING $15 MILLION ON AUGUST ADS FOR SOCIALIZED MEDICINE...

Here's a question: If you could make $10.2 billion by investing $15 million of someone else's money, would you do it?

You'd be a fool not to, right?

Well, this month, pushers of government-run health care will be spending, according to The Hill, between $10 and $20 million to on advertising to twist lawmakers arms to support socialized medicine. Of that, The Hill says that up to $15 million is coming from unions.

Much of the grassroots activity and television ads will be aimed at persuading centrist Democrats and Republicans to support the creation of a robust government-run health insurance program. Many centrists have balked at the cost of pending healthcare proposals and are reluctant to embrace government competition in the insurance markets.

The AFL-CIO and affiliated unions are planning a massive dual offensive on healthcare reform and labor law reform in August, budgeting $10 to $15 million on the effort, according to a senior labor official. The labor unions’ advocacy will consist of mass mailings, running phone banks and distributing policy fliers at worksites. “This is expensive stuff,” said Gerald Shea, Assistant to the President for Governmental Affairs at the AFL-CIO, who provided a rough estimate of the cost of August activities. Shea said the effort would be conducted by the AFL-CIO and affiliated unions and would focus on healthcare reform and the Employee Free Choice Act.

Health Care for America Now, whose members include ACORN, AFL-CIO, Campaign for America’s Future, the Center for American Progress, MoveOn.org, the NAACP, and the Service Employees International Union, will hold national neighborhood canvassing days on Aug. 8 and on Aug. 22.

To date, however, no one has bothered to ask the question: WHY?

What do the unions have to gain from spending money taken from workers (in the form of union dues) and sending ACORN (and allies of their ilk) out canvassing America's neighborhoods to push for government-run health care?

As the saying goes, follow the money.

The answer why unions are spending up to $15 million of their members' is simple: More dues.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

• As the largest industry in 2006, health care provided 14 million jobs—13.6 million jobs for wage and salary workers and about 438,000 jobs for the self-employed.
• 7 of the 20 fastest growing occupations are health care related.
• Health care will generate 3 million new wage and salary jobs between 2006 and 2016, more than any other industry.

Since government workers are the fastest growth area for unions, once health care workers become government workers and, should the private-industry destroying Employee Free Choice Act become law, this lethal combination will mean nearly the entire health care profession will quickly become unionized. (Currently, the industry is less than 20% unionized.)

If you assume union dues will be an average of $50 per month, then multiply it by 17 million workers, you'll find that unions stand to reap an astronomical amount of union dues. In fact, unions stand to rake in around $850,000,000 per month or $10,200,000,000 (that's $10.2 Billion) per year in union dues alone. And that's not even counting the initiation fees many unions will require new health care workers to pay.

So, now you know when that community organizer from ACORN shows up at your doorstep, or you see another union-sponsored sob story ad on your TV trying to convince you socialized medicine is best thing since the atom bomb: Follow the money.