{"id":267013,"date":"2010-02-02T10:17:21","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T15:17:21","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.southernstudies.org,2010:\/\/5.12124"},"modified":"2010-02-05T11:56:58","modified_gmt":"2010-02-05T16:56:58","slug":"voices-a-corporate-full-body-scan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/267013","title":{"rendered":"VOICES: A corporate full-body scan"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Phil Mattera, Dirt Diggers Digest<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

The one redeeming feature of the abominable Supreme Court ruling<\/a>
\non corporate electoral expenditures is the majority’s retention of the
\nrules on disclaimers and disclosure. While opening the floodgates to
\nunlimited business political spending, the Court at least recognizes
\nthat the public has a right to know when a corporation is responsible
\nfor a particular message and a right to information on a corporation’s
\noverall spending.<\/p>\n

Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy states: “The First
\nAmendment protects political speech; and disclosure permits citizens
\nand shareholders to react to the speech of corporate entities in a
\nproper way. This transparency enables the electorate to make informed
\ndecisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.”<\/p>\n

There’s no question that steps must be taken to mitigate the
\nCitizens United ruling, whether through changes in corporation law,
\nshareholder pressure, enhanced public financing of elections, or even a
\nConstitutional amendment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yet while these efforts progress, it is also worth taking advantage
\nof the Court’s affirmation of the principle of transparency and push
\nfor even greater disclosure than what we have now. Groups such as the
\nSunlight Foundation are already moving<\/a> in this direction.<\/p>\n

The effort could begin with pressing the Federal Election Commission
\nto tighten the existing reporting rules on what are known as “electioneering communications”<\/a> and to enforce them more diligently.  But that’s not enough.<\/p>\n

In the wake of Citizens United, we’ve got to demand more information
\non the many ways corporations exercise undue influence not only on
\nelections but also on legislation, policymaking and public discourse in
\ngeneral. Now that Big Business is a much bigger threat to popular
\ndemocracy, we have to subject corporations to intensive full-body scans
\nto find all their hidden weapons of persuasion. The following are some
\nof the areas to consider.<\/p>\n

Lobbying<\/strong>. In his State of the Union Address,
\nPresident Obama said that lobbyists should be required to disclose
\nevery contact with the executive branch or Congress. That’s fine, but
\nwhy stop there? Many corporations do their lobbying indirectly, through
\ntrade associations which disclose little about their sources of
\nfunding. How about rules that require those associations to disclose
\nthe fees paid by each of their members and require publicly traded
\ncompanies to disclose exactly how much they pay to belong to each of
\ntheir various associations?<\/p>\n

Front Groups<\/strong>. Corporations also indirectly seek to
\ninfluence legislation and public opinion by bankrolling purportedly
\nindependent non-profit advocacy groups. Such front groups — such as those
\ntaking money from fossil-fuel energy producers to deny the reality of
\nthe climate crisis — do not have to publicly disclose their contributor
\nlists. Why not require publicly traded companies, at least, to reveal
\nall of their payments to such organizations?<\/p>\n

Union-Busting<\/strong>. Encouragement of collective
\nbargaining is still, in theory, official federal policy. Yet many
\ncompanies violate the principle — and the rights of their workers — by
\nusing corporate funds to undermine union organizing campaigns. The
\nexisting rules on the disclosure of expenditures on anti-union “consultants” are too narrow and not vigorously enforced. That should
\nchange.<\/p>\n

These are only a few of the ways that undue political influence and
\nother forms of anti-social corporate behavior could be addressed
\nthrough better disclosure. Yet, as we’ve seen, transparency by itself
\ndoes not counteract corporate power unless something is done with the
\ninformation.<\/p>\n

This came to mind in reading the last portion of the Citizens United
\nruling. Not all five Justices in the majority went along with the idea
\nof maintaining the disclaimer and disclosure rules. Parting with
\nKennedy, Roberts, Scalia and Alito, Justice Thomas argued not only that
\ncorporate independent expenditures should be unrestricted, but also
\nthat they should be allowed to take place under a veil of secrecy.<\/p>\n

He bases his argument not on legal precedent, but rather on dubious
\nanecdotal evidence that some supporters of California’s
\nanti-gay-marriage Proposition 8 were subjected to threats of violence
\nafter their names appeared on public donor lists. Thomas thus suggests
\nthat corporations should be able to make their political expenditures
\nanonymously to avoid retaliation.<\/p>\n

While I am in no way advocating violence, I think activists need to
\nuse the information that becomes public as the result of expanded
\ndisclosure to make corporations pay a price for any attempts to buy our
\npolitical system. If we can get them to worry about (non-violent)
\nretaliation to the point that they limit their expenditures, then we
\nwill have gone a long way toward neutralizing the pernicious effects of
\nthe Citizens United ruling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Phil Mattera, Dirt Diggers Digest The one redeeming feature of the abominable Supreme Court ruling on corporate electoral expenditures is the majority’s retention of the rules on disclaimers and disclosure. While opening the floodgates to unlimited business political spending, the Court at least recognizes that the public has a right to know when a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4533,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-267013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4533"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}