Investigative reporter Judd Legum of Popular Info has identified six major corporations who are supporting the state legislators behind the controversial new abortion bans: Coca-Cola, Eli Lilly, Aetna, ATT, Walmart, and Pfizer. He explains in the Twitter thread the laborious process of getting the information, the exact dollar amount of each contribution to each legislator…
Category: Citizens United
Fossil Fuel Subsidies Cost U.S. More than Defense Budget: IMF Report – Rolling Stone
It is vital for investors to be aware of these subsidies, which distort traditional reporting of risk and return. The United States has spent more subsidizing fossil fuels in recent years than it has on defense spending, according to a new report from the International Monetary Fund. The IMF found that direct and indirect subsidies…
Shareholder Proposal Calls on Exxon to Disclose Lobbying Expenses and Policies
To ExxonMobil Shareholders: The United Steelworkers International Union (USW) urges shareholders to vote FOR Item 10, Report on Lobbying at the ExxonMobil Shareholder Meeting on May 29, 2019. The proposal, Item 10, calls on ExxonMobil to prepare a report, to be updated annually, disclosing: 1) ExxonMobil’s policies and procedures governing lobbying, both direct and indirect,…
Most oil giants still fighting shareholder pressure to address climate
VEA Vice Chair Nell Minow is quoted in this article about the disconnect between what fossil fuel companies tell their investors and customers they believe on climate change and what they actually do. The world’s largest oil companies, including Exxon, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and BP, are responding to that pressure in varying degrees. Some are…
Collins receives more donations from Texas fossil fuel industry than from Maine residents | TheHill
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) received nearly $50,000 in campaign donations last quarter from the Texas oil and gas industry, a number more than five times the amount in donations she received from Maine residents.<P><P>In the first quarter of the 2019 funding year, the senator, who is up for reelection in 2020, snagged roughly $49,300 from…
How regulators, Republicans and big banks fought for a big increase in lucrative but risky corporate loans – The Washington Post
Actions by federal regulators and Republicans in Congress over the past two years have paved the way for banks and other financial companies to issue more than $1 trillion in risky corporate loans, sparking fears that Washington and Wall Street are repeating the mistakes made before the financial crisis.The moves undercut policies put in place…
You elected them to write new laws. They’re letting corporations do it instead. – Center for Public Integrity
A two-year investigation by USA TODAY, The Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity reveals for the first time the extent to which special interests have infiltrated state legislatures using model legislation.USA TODAY and the Republic found at least 10,000 bills almost entirely copied from model legislation were introduced nationwide in the past eight years, and…
‘Corporations Are People’ Is Built on a 19th-Century Lie – The Atlantic
Somewhat unintuitively, American corporations today enjoy many of the same rights as American citizens. Both, for instance, are entitled to the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion. How exactly did corporations come to be understood as “people” bestowed with the most fundamental constitutional rights? The answer can be found in a bizarre—even farcical—series…
Fiduciary Blind Spot: The Failure of Institutional Investors to Prevent the Illegitimate Use of Working Americans’ Savings for Corporate Political Spending by Leo E. Strine :: SSRN
A very significant piece by one of the most respected and knowledgable experts on corporate governance, Leo Strine. In recent years, there has been a heartening improvement in the self-awareness of the major mutual fund families — BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, and Fidelity (the “Big 4”) — that have Worker Investors’ capital. This Big 4…
The Corporate Donors Behind a Republican Power Grab – The New York Times
David Leonhardt writes about the corporations behind the unprecedented undermining of democracy in Wisconsin, including Walgreens. Walgreens portrays itself as the friendly neighborhood drugstore. It gives flu shots to children, helps communities after storms, donates to charity — and makes feel-good advertisements trumpeting its various good deeds. But Walgreens also has a tougher side, one…
