Teamsters ask: Where is Mary Jo White, and why isn't she making corporations disclose their political contributions?

Dark money is destroying our democracy. Corporations are secretly spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy political favors. That money comes from ordinary people and institutional investors -- like pension funds -- that invest in those corporations.

Surely investors have a right to know how the corporations they're investing in spend their political dollars.

A month-long ad campaign launched today by investors and public interest organizations aims to persuade the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to require publicly traded corporations to disclose their political spending. The campaign features comic-book style posters at heavily traveled Union Station, which is near the SEC. In the ads, illustrations of frightened investors and voters call on SEC Chair Mary Jo White to save them from monsters that have taken shareholder democracy hostage.

The Teamsters are supporting the ad campaign -- for good reason. The union invests more than $100 billion in the capital markets through affiliated pension and benefit funds.

“Corporations are secretly spending millions of dollars on political campaigns, and as investors, the Teamsters are concerned that we cannot evaluate potential conflicts or risks,” said Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is supposed to make sure corporations are open and honest with investors about where their money goes. Five years ago, the Supreme Court opened the floodgates for massive, secret political donations in its Citizens United decisions. Ever since then, investors have been clamoring for corporations to be more open about their political spending.

A proposal to require corporations to disclose their political spending has languished before the SEC. The SEC chair, Mary Jo White,  has received more than 1 million comments supporting the proposal. And yet she hasn't done anything about it.

Rep. Michael Capuano, a Massachusetts Democrat, asked Mary Jo White about that in a recent congressional hearing. According to the New York Times, Capuano,

...observed that shareholders have a right to know how corporate cash is spent, and demanded to know why the S.E.C. has not required disclosure. Ms. White gave the same answer she has given since she became chairwoman in 2013 — essentially, that the agency is too busy with more important issues. 

Since then, however, the S.E.C. has added new issues to its agenda, while neglecting to put political-spending disclosure on its to-do list. The omission is indefensible, because the investors’ need to know will only grow as the level of anonymous giving rises.

You can help pressure the SEC to do the right thing. Follow this link to the Where Is Mary Jo White website and do as it suggests.

SEC still dragging its feet on making corporations tell shareholders if they're supporting ALEC

Mary Jo White.

When Mary Jo White took over as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) nearly two years ago, there was hope she'd require publicly traded companies to end the secrecy about their political spending. 

The SEC had been considering such a rule. By last fall, it received more than 1 million comments on the proposal -- a record. Only a handful of those comments were negative. Typically, the SEC gets fewer than 100 comments on its proposed rules.

Despite the overwhelming support for such disclosure, the SEC is still considering the rule. 

Right now, corporations are able to secretly spend billions of dollars to influence politicians on issues that are often controversial. As Teamsters General Secretary-Treasurer Ken Hall pointed out in comments to the SEC, that can hurt investors. It can also go against the investors' self interest.  

Union pension funds that invest in corporations should -- at the very least -- know if they're donating money to anti-worker candidates, stink tanks or ALEC, the escort service for corporations and politicians.

As Zoe Carpenter pointed out in The Nation, 

The point of requiring corporations to disclose their political donations is twofold. First, it’s intended to protect investors, which is the SEC’s responsibility. Shareholders “understand that they have a right to know if the company they invest in is spending money on controversial political causes,” said Lisa Gilbert, the director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch Project. 

Secondly, reformers hope that disclosure will help stanch the flow of secret money in elections, which has increased dramatically since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United. A critical assumption in the majority’s ruling was that “prompt disclosure of expenditures” would allow shareholders to “determine whether their corporation’s political speech advances the corporation’s interest in making profits.” But without a mechanism to ensure that companies are truly transparent about their political spending, the Court’s faith in “the procedures of corporate democracy” is just wishful thinking.

Remember when Target donated $150,000 in cash and in-kind goods and services to a gubernatorial candidate who opposed gay marriage? The problem for Target was that it promoted itself as friendly to people of all sexual orientations. It even bragged that it had been recognized as one of the best places to work for LGBT equality. 

Consumers and shareholders went ballistic when they found out about the donation to the anti-gay marriage candidate.

Imagine the reaction among union pension fund managers if they suddenly learned they invested in companies that spent heavily to promote right-to-work laws. And yet they currently have no right to meaningful information about where corporations spend their political dollars.   

"The financial impact of increased corporate political spending on investors is tangible and significant," wrote Hall in his comments to the SEC. "Meaningful disclosure of corporate political spending is sorely needed."

Franken: Put Citizens United in the dumpster of bad ideas

January 20 marks the fifth anniversary of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which declared corporations are people and can spend as much as they want to influence elections.

The corporate purchase of many, many politicians soon followed. And now we see them checking off items on the corporate wish list. Right-to-work laws were passed in states and, in Kentucky, even in counties. Congress attacked Social Security on Day One of the 2015 session. Corporate-owned schools are replacing public schools at a sickening pace.

U.S. Sen. Al Franken published a terrific blog post about his dismay over Citizens United. In it, the Minnesota senator calls Citizens United one of the worst decisions ever by the Supreme Court:

It created just the kind of opportunity special interest groups and shadowy billionaires had been hoping for – a legal way to funnel tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars into American elections. And in many cases, the actors are completely anonymous. 

Consider the numbers. 2008 was the last presidential election year before Citizens United, and outside groups spent about $338 million. In 2012 — the first presidential election of the Citizens United era — outside groups spent a staggering $1.03 billion on elections, and nearly all of that increase came from so-called “independent expenditures.” 

The Supreme Court based its decision on the idea that spending by outside groups, including corporations, will not and cannot give rise to corruption — or even to the appearance of corruption. The Court shred decades of established law with that conclusion. And follow-up cases like SpeechNow.org v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC have led us even further down the unlimited-corporate-spending rabbit hole. 

It’s been five years. In those five years, we’ve seen our elections get nastier, and we’ve watched the American people slide from skepticism of Washington to outright contempt. 

And I think they have every right to be upset — corporations pour money into politics, and the policy discussion takes a decidedly pro-corporate tilt, while the voices of middle class families are drowned out. If that’s not corruption, or at least the appearance of corruption, then I don’t know what is. 

As long as Citizens United remains on the books, any campaign finance reforms will be half-measures. We will be lopping off the leaves of the weed, while its roots sink deeper and deeper.

Franken says there are three things we can do:  1. Wait for the Supreme Court to overturn the decision. Not gonna happen anytime soon. 2. Pass a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision. Not gonna happen soon either. 3. Sign a petition to demand Congress overturn Citizens United.

Click here for option 3.

Today's Teamster News 12.15.14

Teamsters
Teamsters Denounce Senate Passage Of Omnibus Spending Bill  teamster.org   …"With the passage of the omnibus spending bill by the Senate, we have witnessed the latest attack by corporate interests on working families...
Trade
Call for release of Trans-Pacific Partnership text  ComputerWorld   ...Forty-eight non-government organisations have issued a call for the release of the draft text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement...
State Battles
Early federal sentencing recommendation for McDonnell: At least 10 years in prison  Washington Post   ...The federal agency that will play a pivotal role in guiding the sentence of former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell has recommended that the onetime Republican rising star spend at least 10 years and a month in prison, according to several people familiar with the matter...
War on Workers
Cromnibus Pension Provisions Gut Forty Years of Policy, Allow Existing Pensions to Be Slashed  naked capitalism   …[The] measure included in Congress’s mammoth spending bill permits benefit cuts for retirees in one type of pension plan, a big shift that lawmakers and others believe could set a precedent for other troubled retirement programs. Lawmakers and experts, while divided over the merits of the change, largely agreed that it could well be the first of many...
Study: For every $1 corporations spend on elections, they get $760 from government  Ring of Fire   …From 2007 to 2012, 200 American corporations spent about $5.8 billion on federal lobbying and campaign contributions, but that number is mere chump change when compared to what those same corporations got in return — about $4.4 trillion in federal business and support, according to a study by the Sunlight Foundation...
What's Complicated About a Government That Works to Benefit Rich People?  Center for Economic Policy and Research   ...we have had a government committed to redistributing income upward for the last three decades...
Congress Again Rewards Tax Dodgers with a Tax Cut  Economic Policy Institute   ...If a $1 budget reduction yields a $10.60 reduction in enforcement collections, then the $191 million reduction in the IRS enforcement budget could prove to be a $2 billion tax cut for tax cheats. There appears to be a disconnect between what Congress enacts and what the American public wants...
Transport strike likely to shut down much of Belgium  Agence France-Press   ...Belgium risks coming to a virtual standstill tomorrow as the biggest national strike for years grounds all flights, halts public transport and severs international train links in a protest over the new government's austerity policies...
Smoke killed Thanksgiving Tower workers trapped in deep tank, officials say  Dallas Morning News   ...Three workers killed in a Thanksgiving Tower fire died of smoke inhalation while trapped in a “dilapidated” 35-foot-deep chiller tank, authorities said Friday. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Dallas Fire-Rescue are investigating Thursday’s blaze. A city official said it appeared that the workers did not follow proper safety procedures, nor did they have the proper permit to do work with a torch, although officials still haven’t confirmed what started the fire...
Miscellaneous
Will cheap oil kill Keystone?  Politico Pro   …The same collapse in oil prices that is pumping dollars into motorists’ wallets also risks undermining the case for building the 1,179-mile pipeline in two crucial ways: It’s squeezing the western Canadian oil industry that has looked to Keystone as its most promising route to the Gulf Coast...
Dancing around data  The Hill   …A recent Pew study found that ninety-one percent of Americans say that they have “lost control” over how their personal information is collected or used by companies...

Chamber of Commerce gets most of its $169B in campaign donations from just 64 donors

The Chamber's interest in jobs is outsourcing them. 

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce isn't getting as much attention as it used to, mostly because its attempt to turn America into a feudal serfdom has been dwarfed by the Koch brothers and their greedy billionaire cohorts. But Public Citizen recently shone a light on the Chamber's activities recently, and it's worth taking a look.

Public Citizen issued a report that shows more than half of the Chamber's $169.4 million in political contributions came from just 64 donors in 2012.

The Chamber claims it represents "the interests of more than 3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions. Our members range from mom-and-pop shops and local chambers to leading industry associations and large corporations."

That just isn't true. The Chamber is primarily a front group for multinational corporations. It not only has directors who represent domestic multinational corporations that have sent hundreds of thousands of American jobs overseas, it actually has directors who represent foreign multinationals from Ireland, Switzerland, Germany, Bermuda, Belfium, the U.K. and the Netherlands.

Several years ago, there was a controversy over the possibility the Chamber was using foreign money to influence elections. It actually has an office in india where it helps U.S. companies outsource good American jobs to that country. 

The Chamber hasn't met a corporate-empowering, job-killing trade deal it hasn't loved. And guess where the Chamber stands on Fast Track...

Ruh-roh: Kochs now aiming at winning small-town elections

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

Ya gotta watch this Daily Show video about the Benedict Arnold Koch brothers promoting vicious lies in small-town elections. A candidate for city council in Coralville, Iowa, got support from the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity. He said it was like getting endorsed by the Manson family.

The Kochs are raising and spending money at a blistering pace. They're spending more money than the entire Republican National Committee. Since August, they poured $27 million into commercials hammering Democratic members of Congress, hoping to win more pro-Koch Republican lawmakers to their side. They've signaled that they expect to spend heavily to re-elect anti-worker governors like John Kasich in Ohio, Rick Snyder in Michigan, Rick Scott in Florida and job-killer Scott Walker in Wisconsin.

The Washington Post reported on the massive amounts of money Americans for Prosperity is spending already on the 2014 elections:

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has made just one small ad buy, last summer in Louisiana, while Karl Rove’s super PAC, American Crossroads, buffeted by weak fundraising, is participating in only one Florida special election right now. 

As of this week, Americans for Prosperity has spent more than $27 million on ads since August, putting it on pace to far outstrip its overall $38.5 million budget for the 2010 midterms.

It's part of their campaign to control government at all levels for their own enrichment. They've been successful so far. The Koch brothers' wealth increased $33 billion in three years.

Today's Teamster News 02.05.14

Allegheny County, Teamsters reach tentative contract for road workers  Pittsburgh Post-Gazette   ...Teamsters Local Union 249 and the county Public Works Department reached a tentative agreement on a contract Tuesday, according to a statement issued by Teamsters president Joseph Rossi Jr...
Momentum building against Fast Track; thank you, Teamsters!  TeamsterNation   ...Tens of thousands of people are taking action to stop politicians in Congress from pulling a fast one and passing a Fast Track bill...
Corporations See an Income Divide, So Why Doesn’t Congress?  teamster.org   ...Income inequality is an issue that is receiving increased attention, especially after President Obama addressed the matter during his State of the Union speech last week...
Unsealed John Doe filings reveal roots of recall probe  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel   ...From the outset, the probe focused on possible "illegal campaign coordination between (name redacted), a campaign committee, and certain special interest groups," according to a filing signed by the five district attorneys in the case. The campaign committee under the microscope? Almost certainly it's the Friends of Scott Walker, the governor's campaign committee. "Good guess," said one source familiar with the probe. "That's it."...
Scott Walker's big money comes from big donors outside Wisconsin  The Cap Times   ...the governor could at least show a little respect for the intellect of Wisconsinites when he makes claims about the money that he raises — which has, since 2010, tended to come in very large checks from very wealthy people in very distant states such as Texas and Florida...
Right-to-work would be an unnecessary and divisive fight in Ohio: editorial  Cleveland Plain Dealer   ...The divisive measure should not be enacted. Putting aside the likely partisan explosion, Ohio's voters signaled as recently as 2011 that they do not favor such measures...
Fast-Track Opponents Rally Support  Wall Street Journal   ...A coalition opposed to overseas trade agreements is building grassroots support, gathering more than half a million signatures and making tens of thousands of calls to lawmakers to argue against trade legislation in Congress...
Vermont Becomes 12th State With Legislation Targeting NSA Spying  Truthout   ...a transpartisan group of four Vermont state representatives introduced legislation that would block some of the practical effects of mass data collection by the National Security Agency (NSA)...
Trade deal is bad for working Americans (opinion)  Nogales International   ...There are two related issues to worry about. One is the agreement itself, which was written mostly by business lobbyists and helps the corporate bottom line at taxpayer expense. It also harms the environment, weakens labor protections and increases the price of medicines here in the U.S. The other issue to watch is what’s called trade promotion authority, which is often referred to as “fast track.” If the House and Senate approve fast track – and the House and Senate already have bills to do just that – it would make it impossible for members of Congress to offer any changes to the agreement before it’s approved...
Tea Party teams with union leaders to fight Obama’s trade plan  The Hill   ...The groups are at separate poles when it comes to taxes, ObamaCare and who should be the next president, but they agree that making it easier for the administration to negotiate and win congressional approval of trade deals is a bad idea...
The Farm Bill Still Gives Wads of Cash to Agribusiness. It's Just Sneakier About It.  New Republic   ...while the parties argued about how much food to take away from poor people, it’s just as revealing to look at the area where they both agreed. Democrats and Republicans alike have pointed to the repeal of $4.5 billion in annual direct cash payments, a long disfavored policy where farmers received a fixed amount of money for every acre they owned, regardless of whether it was planted...
Only About One-Third of Labor Force Dropouts Will Return  Wall Street Journal   ...Millions of people have dropped out of the labor force since the start of the recession in late 2007, and only about a third of them will come back in the years ahead when the economy is stronger...
Welcome Relief for Homeowners, Then the Tax Bill  New York Times   ...Come tax time, JPMorgan Chase will be able to write off the $1.5 billion in debt relief it must give homeowners to satisfy the terms of a recent settlement. But the homeowners who receive the help will have to treat it as taxable income, resulting in whopping tax bills for many families who have just lost their homes or only narrowly managed to keep them...
USW: Jail nun/nurse was fired for union organizing  Pittsburgh Post-Gazette   ...A nun who worked for five years as a registered nurse at the Allegheny County Jail infirmary was fired last week for spearheading unionization efforts, an organizer for the United Steelworkers union said Monday...

Supreme Court 'a subsidiary of big business,' Warren says

We're glad someone finally told the truth about our highest court.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, speaking to the AFL-CIO convention yesterday, warned them of "corporate capture of the courts."

Politico reports,

Warren assailed the court as an instrument of the wealthy that regularly sides with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. She cited an academic study that called the current Supreme Court’s five conservative-leaning justices among the “top 10 most pro-corporate justices in half a century.”... 

“You follow this pro-corporate trend to its logical conclusion, and sooner or later you’ll end up with a Supreme Court that functions as a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Business,” Warren said, drawing murmurs from the crowd.

Sadly, it isn't just the U.S. Supreme Court. A report last year by the Center for American Progress showed the influence of corporate interests on state courts as well. Since many states elect their judges, corporate money has poured into campaigns for judges. Here are just three scary examples:

1. Between 2001-03, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's preferred candidates won 21 of 24 state court elections. 
2. In 2006, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent $1 million on just two judges' races.
3. In Alabama's most recent election for the state's highest court, 40 percent of all campaign contributions came from the state's chamber of commerce. 

Be very afraid.