Corporations continue to try to pretend they deserve the same Constitutional rights as individuals, here arguing that the kind of disclosure requirements the government has successfully imposed for decades to make sure consumers get the information they need to make informed choices violate the First Amendment freedom of speech. The courts recognized that commercial speech…
Category: Citizens United
Commissioner Jackson on Disclosure of Political Contributions
November 18, 2019 The Honorable Carolyn B. Maloney Chair, Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship, and Capital Markets United States House of Representatives 2308 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515-3212 VIA ELECTRONIC DELIVERY Dear Chair Maloney: Thank you for your July 15 letter regarding my research on the need for transparency in corporate political spending—and…
Big Fund Managers Ripped for Opposing Political Cash Disclosures – Bloomberg
BlackRock Inc., Vanguard Group Inc. and Fidelity Investments are being drawn into a fight over political spending with a top Securities and Exchange Commission official rebuking the fund managers for failing to push corporations to disclose their campaign contributions. As managers of trillions of dollars, BlackRock, Vanguard and Fidelity are among the biggest investors in…
How FedEx Cut Its Tax Bill to $0 – The New York Times
In the 2017 fiscal year, FedEx owed more than $1.5 billion in taxes. The next year, it owed nothing. What changed was the Trump administration’s tax cut — for which the company had lobbied hard. The public face of its lobbying effort, which included a tax proposal of its own, was FedEx’s founder and chief…
Inside TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans From Filing Their Taxes for Free — ProPublica
[T]he success of TurboTax rests on a shaky foundation, one that could collapse overnight if the U.S. government did what most wealthy countries did long ago and made tax filing simple and free for most citizens. For more than 20 years, Intuit has waged a sophisticated, sometimes covert war to prevent the government from doing…
Converging on climate lobbying: aligning corporate practice with investor expectations | Reports/Guides | PRI
PRI’s new guidance for engagement on corporate climate denial and lobbying: nvestors are increasingly scrutinising corporate engagement on climate policy as it plays a critical role in helping governments create practical climate policy solutions. However, corporate engagement on climate policy is a double-edged sword. Negative and resistant corporate interest, often represented by third-party organisations, can…
A ‘Grass Roots’ Campaign to Take Down Amazon Is Funded by Amazon’s Biggest Rivals – WSJ
You’ll have to forgive us for laughing when we first saw this article in the WSJ. After spending a year and a half trying to expose the Main Street Investors Coalition for being a CEO-funded fake dark money front group pretending/purporting to be advocating for the interests of investors while really working to suppress shareholder…
GOP Lobbyists Helping U.S. Companies Exploit the Amazon
The Intercept has an excellent expose of the role of US lobbyists in promoting the catastrophic destruction of the Amazonian rainforest. This summer, fires are being used to clear wide swaths of the Amazon at an unprecedented rate. One-fifth of the Amazon has already been destroyed in the past 50 years; further industrialization of the rainforest risks destroying…
Abortion Likely to Spark Shareholder Activism
The recent adoption of unprecedented restrictions on abortions in states including Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, and Alabama is a legal and political controversy that is likely to become a corporate governance controversy as well. Judd Legum at Popular Information dug through the disclosure of corporate political contributions and revealed that these corporations supported politicians who sponsored…
UCF Leads a Resolution that Generates 79.7% Support from Shareholders « United Church Funds
United Church Funds (UCF) is celebrating the very successful campaign at pharmaceutical company Mallinckrodt, where a resolution that UCF sponsored on lobbying disclosures generated 79.7% support from the company’s shareholders.United Church Funds and Investors for Opioids Accountability (IOA) members congratulate Mallinckrodt for supporting the shareholder proposal regarding a report on lobbying activities and agree with…
