VOICES: A corporate full-body scan
The one redeeming feature of the abominable Supreme Court rulingon corporate electoral expenditures is the majority's retention of therules on disclaimers and disclosure. While opening the floodgates tounlimited business political spending, the Court at least recognizesthat the public has a right to know when a corporation is responsiblefor a particular message and a right to information on a corporation'soverall spending.
Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy states: "The FirstAmendment protects political speech; and disclosure permits citizensand shareholders to react to the speech of corporate entities in aproper way. This transparency enables the electorate to make informeddecisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages."
There's no question that steps must be taken to mitigate theCitizens United ruling, whether through changes in corporation law,shareholder pressure, enhanced public financing of elections, or even aConstitutional amendment.
Yet while these efforts progress, it is also worth taking advantageof the Court's affirmation of the principle of transparency and pushfor even greater disclosure than what we have now. Groups such as theSunlight Foundation are already moving in this direction.
The effort could begin with pressing the Federal Election Commissionto tighten the existing reporting rules on what are known as "electioneering communications" and to enforce them more diligently. But that's not enough.
In the wake of Citizens United, we've got to demand more informationon the many ways corporations exercise undue influence not only onelections but also on legislation, policymaking and public discourse ingeneral. Now that Big Business is a much bigger threat to populardemocracy, we have to subject corporations to intensive full-body scansto find all their hidden weapons of persuasion. The following are someof the areas to consider.
Lobbying. In his State of the Union Address,President Obama said that lobbyists should be required to discloseevery contact with the executive branch or Congress. That's fine, butwhy stop there? Many corporations do their lobbying indirectly, throughtrade associations which disclose little about their sources offunding. How about rules that require those associations to disclosethe fees paid by each of their members and require publicly tradedcompanies to disclose exactly how much they pay to belong to each oftheir various associations?
Front Groups. Corporations also indirectly seek toinfluence legislation and public opinion by bankrolling purportedlyindependent non-profit advocacy groups. Such front groups -- such as thosetaking money from fossil-fuel energy producers to deny the reality ofthe climate crisis -- do not have to publicly disclose their contributorlists. Why not require publicly traded companies, at least, to revealall of their payments to such organizations?
Union-Busting. Encouragement of collectivebargaining is still, in theory, official federal policy. Yet manycompanies violate the principle -- and the rights of their workers -- byusing corporate funds to undermine union organizing campaigns. Theexisting rules on the disclosure of expenditures on anti-union "consultants" are too narrow and not vigorously enforced. That shouldchange.
These are only a few of the ways that undue political influence andother forms of anti-social corporate behavior could be addressedthrough better disclosure. Yet, as we've seen, transparency by itselfdoes not counteract corporate power unless something is done with theinformation.
This came to mind in reading the last portion of the Citizens Unitedruling. Not all five Justices in the majority went along with the ideaof maintaining the disclaimer and disclosure rules. Parting withKennedy, Roberts, Scalia and Alito, Justice Thomas argued not only thatcorporate independent expenditures should be unrestricted, but alsothat they should be allowed to take place under a veil of secrecy.
He bases his argument not on legal precedent, but rather on dubiousanecdotal evidence that some supporters of California'santi-gay-marriage Proposition 8 were subjected to threats of violenceafter their names appeared on public donor lists. Thomas thus suggeststhat corporations should be able to make their political expendituresanonymously to avoid retaliation.
While I am in no way advocating violence, I think activists need touse the information that becomes public as the result of expandeddisclosure to make corporations pay a price for any attempts to buy ourpolitical system. If we can get them to worry about (non-violent)retaliation to the point that they limit their expenditures, then wewill have gone a long way toward neutralizing the pernicious effects ofthe Citizens United ruling.
