Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Shocking, but not surprising

Call the National Guard if your insurrection lasts more than four hours.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Something seems odd about that, but i have been drinking.

How do you get liars to care about the truth?

Too inconsequential to be sued

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

I did not have this on my fuck 2020 bingo card.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Yes we did.

False Scribes! False Scribes!

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

I’m only here for the duck photos.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Naturally gregarious and alpha

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Militantly superior in their own minds…

No one could have predicted…

The willow is too close to the house.

I really should read my own blog.

Women: they get shit done

You are here: Home / Archives for Kay

Kay

Beats working

by | 99 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

Young, well-funded conservative activists hard at work, pretending they are decent people:

Young, bearded, a bit scruffy, a young man walked into a community organizing office in East Harlem, lugging a heavy bag. A little nervous, he said that his name was Melvin Howting, and that he worked for an environmental company in New Jersey and had a few questions about how to organize a union.
He wanted to know how to get higher wages. And, oh yes, he had another question: If he formed a union, could his fellow workers join with the employer to shake down politicians for more money?
At this point, Rhea Byer-Ettinger, an organizer for Manhattan Together, felt her internal baloney detector go on red alert. “Beep, beep, beep,” she said. “I said to him: ‘Well, that’s not how we work. Tell me, why are you asking me about that?’ ”

For several years, young conservatives have made a cottage industry of going undercover and trying to goad people working at perceived liberal institutions — like Acorn, NPR and Planned Parenthood — into saying something stupid. Trained by well-financed foundations, these dirty tricksters pose as pimps, sex traffickers and Muslim activists and record conversations surreptitiously. Then they release videos that have often been heavily edited. Of late, conservatives have set their sights on the Industrial Areas Foundation, a national organizing group founded by a hard-bitten, inventive organizer named Saul Alinsky. He campaigned to clean up the slums around the Chicago meatpacking district and fought segregation and abuses by banks. He has been dead and buried for 40 years, but mention of his name — Alinsky! Alinsky! Alinsky! — sets conservative Republican activists and presidential candidates to twitching.

So. That’s what conservative activists are up to. Bothering liberal organizers who are actually working. Following the organizers around, lying incessantly and transparently, making nuisances of themselves.

On that note, I thought I’d bring you up to speed on voter protection efforts in Ohio. I got the first voter protection organizer contact of the 2012 election today, recruiting volunteer “election protection” lawyers for 2012.

I’m pleased the people who are doing all the work coordinating this are on it so early because I have the feeling 2012 is going to be a very difficult year for democracy enthusiasts in Ohio. I suppose they could be following conservative activists around, surreptitiously recording them and then editing the tape and feeding that deliberately misleading and edited tape to child-like, credulous national media outlets rather than working, but they’re not.

I actually sat down and read Saul Alinsky this past year, because noted conservative intellectual Professor Newt Gingrich recommended I do so (or that’s what I thought he said: it was hard to hear what with all the screaming at those debates) and I really enjoyed Alinsky’s book. I still have no earthly idea why young conservatives are so terrified of community organizers. They’re just not a scary group of people, in my experience.

Beats workingPost + Comments (99)

I heard two things last week, and I loved one of them

by | 145 Comments

This post is in: 

I’ve been reading your comments on the oral arguments on the health care law and I sympathize. I’m a lawyer but I’m not an expert on the Supreme Court nor am I even much of a “court watcher.” I have enough trouble keeping current with state law and local rules in my area of practice. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’ll wait for the decision like everyone else, and like everyone else, I’ll learn to live with it. However, I think those who are disappointed and depressed are justified in feeling disappointed and depressed. I think that’s a completely reasonable reaction to what we heard out of that court last week. I’m with you.

I went to the opera for the first time last week, and I sat in front of an older man who is an opera lover. I could tell by how he was pleading with his teenage kids, hoping they would love it. I like fanatics, they’re always so enthusiastic and earnest and they so want you to love what they love, so I made sure to tell him it was my first opera. He approached me at intermission and asked me what I thought and I told him it was “wonderful”, because it was. He was thrilled (a convert, he’s thinking) and he gave me the whole career history of the soprano, and then we talked about other things. On the health care hearing, he said he was worried that the conservative justices were going to “get back” at Obama, because Obama called them out on Citizens in the State of the Union. When I hear things like that, and I hear things like that a lot, I suppose I could leap to the defense of the justices, or the Rule of Law, or the court as an institution, but I find that I don’t have any snappy comebacks or bullet-pointed persuasive arguments for the defense anymore. I’m right there with him, worrying, and I’m no longer wondering what’s wrong with him, us, that we have so little faith because he sounded a little like some very prestigious Reagan-era conservative lawyers:

Fried had confidently predicted the law would be easily upheld. He said he was taken aback by the tone of the arguments. “The vehemence they displayed was totally inappropriate. They seemed to adopt the tea party slogans,” he said.
Pepperdine law professor Douglas W. Kmiec, another top Justice Department lawyer under Reagan, said he hoped the justices would “come to their senses” and uphold the law as a reasonable regulation of interstate commerce.

I’m finding I’m with the opera-lover, nervous and speculating. I’ve been listening to John McCain and Russ Feingold talk about the fall-out from Citizens, and I think they’d sympathize with us, too:

The McCain-Feingold law itself did not take effect until the Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality in McConnell v. FEC in 2003. Seven years later, McCain recalled going with Feingold to the Supreme Court, now under new and more conservative leadership, to hear the Citizens United oral arguments.
“Very seldom in my life have I been more depressed,” McCain said, “because the absolute ignorance of campaign finance reality by many of the judges, especially [Antonin] Scalia, astounded me.”
Feingold, who now heads a PAC dedicated to reversing Citizens United, suggested the Supreme Court may come to regard that ruling in a different light. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer suggested recently that the Citizens United ruling should be revisited.
Feingold said: “I think they’re taking judicial notice of the fact that the court has opened up an incredible loophole in our system and has fundamentally changed the way that our democracy works, in a negative way.”

McCain and Feingold were interviewed together by This American Life and McCain went even further:

Ten years ago, Congress voted to reform campaign finance, after Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold took up the cause. Here they reunite on the radio, to reminisce and lament how that reform failed.

McCain spoke in this interview about Scalia’s inappropriate “sarcasm” and the justices “cluelessness” on the reality of political campaigns, and he spoke with real anger and bitterness. No one does “bitter” better than John McCain, so if you’re upset with the Supreme Court, you’ll feel perhaps your first real connection with John McCain when you listen to it.

Last week, reading that Scalia was spouting political slogans when access to health care for 50 million people was on the line, well, like McCain, I am not amused by Justice Scalia. I’m not laughing. The thing is, I don’t think it’s funny. I think we’re right to expect preparation from the justices, I think we’re right to expect some familiarity with the basic facts. If they were familiar with the basic facts but were just putting on some kind of show, we’re right to expect that they use some restraint and an appreciation for the gravity of the situation in both their statements and their questions, and decline to indulge themselves at the expense of the people hanging on their every word. All they have is credibility, and appearances matter. What they say matters, because they are enormously powerful. When I read this:

Paul Clement said, ‘Well, just strike the whole thing down. Congress can come along and just enact everything that it wants back in a couple of days.’ The entire courtroom burst into laughter.

I’m not chuckling along. I’m either exhausted at the absolute cluelessness or disheartened by the cynicism of that statement, depending on whether Clements believes what he’s saying. I don’t know if he does or not, and I don’t much care. I’m a little taken aback by this blithe and breezy attitude towards 50 million people. I’m wondering how we got here, how so many of got to this place, and who is responsible for that. I suspect it isn’t our job to retain or protect or repair the credibility of that court, and we can’t do it for them anyway, even if we wanted to. Ultimately, that’s their job. if we are disappointed and dismayed when we hear them at their work, and we were, I think the responsibility for that is not with us, it is with them.

I heard two things last week, and I loved one of themPost + Comments (145)

Making lists

by | 74 Comments

This post is in: , ,

We started organizing for 2012 here locally so I’ll give you my initial thoughts. About a month ago, we met with the regional OFA coordinator, and he gave us the broad overview of what they’re planning in Ohio. About two weeks ago, an OFA organizer arrived at out house. We had agreed to host the local organizer, and this first young woman stayed about a week until she was reassigned to a county east of where I live. I think it’s safe to say she was promoted. Immediately after, another organizer arrived, and we’re working with her. We have not had much contact or conversation because I leave in the morning before she does, and she works much, much longer hours than I do, so she returns after I go to bed.

The young woman who is the organizer is staying upstairs in what was my daughter’s room, before my daughter grew up and moved away to Pittsburgh. Our house was built in the 1940’s by the small town version of a wealthy industrialist. The upstairs was designed as a suite for the original owner’s twin boys. It has a room with two built in desks along one wall and shelving and drawers lining two walls, a bathroom, and then there’s really large room down the hall for sleeping. There’s also an odd little room up there that houses a giant safe. The safe is about 3 feet high and heavy as hell. I cannot imagine how they got it up the narrow stairs. The wealthy industrialist was perhaps a little eccentric and paranoid, because this is one of several secret stashes in the house. There is an inner cabinet that opens with a key inside a corner kitchen cabinet and a storage area about the size of a bureau drawer dropped in one of the bedroom floors so the lid is flush with the floor. Staying with us,the organizer will have plenty of spots to hide her jewels or stacks of cash, you know, alongside mine.

Last week, she set up an event at the local Steelworkers hall. She had 25 “commits”, or people who said they would attend. Of those 25 commits, ten actually showed up. As a comparison, in 2008 we had about 40 reliable volunteers, so that’s not a bad start. Of the ten who came, I know two. That’s good I don’t know all but two because it means we have different “lists”. She’s not contacting the same people I know and might have called. When we combine our lists, she should be able to double her number. Tonight I will introduce her to the county Labor Council and she will add to her list at their meeting.

Obama For America (OFA) volunteers are making phone calls on health care in a county nearby so that’s the tentative plan here. CNN came out to cover the phone banks, so it’s not a big secret. The phone calls are to Democrats and independents, and they are intended to both inform people on the law and determine which parts of the law (if any) people are familiar with.

Here’s a CNN poll on overturning the health care law:

According to the poll, 43% of Americans approve of the law, up five points from last November, with 50% saying they disapprove, down six points from last autumn. Of those who currently disapprove of the measure, 37% say they oppose the law because it’s too liberal, with 10% saying the give the measure a thumbs down because it’s not liberal enough.
“The views of Republicans and Democrats on the health care law have barely budged since last year,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “But support among independents grew from 32 percent to 41 percent since November.”

Making listsPost + Comments (74)

Love wins

by | 140 Comments

This post is in: , ,

The next time conservatives open their big mouths on Obama “dividing this country” they might want to look within the ranks on the Right:

The leading opponents of same-sex marriage planned to defeat campaigns for gay marriage by “fanning the hostility” between black voters from gay voters and by casting President Obama as a radical foe of marriage, according to confidential documents made public in a Maine court today.
The documents, circulated by the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign, are marked “confidential” and detail the internal strategy of the National Organization for Marriage.
“The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks—two key Democratic constituencies,” says an internal report on 2008 and 2009 campaigns, in a section titled the “Not A Civil Right Project.”
“Find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage, develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots,” advises the document, which is a road map to the successful campaign against same-sex marriage in California.
The document also targets Hispanic voters, whom conservatives have long hoped would join the backlash against gay rights.
“The Latino vote in America is a key swing vote, and will be so even more so in the future, both because of demographic growth and inherent uncertainty: Will the process of assimilation to the dominant Anglo culture lead Hispanics to abandon traditional family values?” the document asks. “We must interrupt this process of assimilation by making support for marriage a key badge of Latino identity – a symbol of resistance to inappropriate assimilation.”
In a “$20 million strategy for victory” keyed to the 2010 midterm elections, the group says its agenda “requires defeating the pro-gay Obama agenda.”
“A pro-marriage president must be elected in 2012,” the document says, although Obama has offered tepid opposition to same-sex marriage.
The same document, an update to the group’s board, described a $1 million plan through the conservative American Principles Project to “expose Obama as a social radical.”
The section, headed “Sideswiping Obama,” suggests raising “side issues” including pornography to attack Democrats’ flanks.
The group also sought to identify “victims” of same-sex marriage — children raised in gay households — and in another document budgeted $120,000 to locate “children of gay parents willing to speak on camera.”
The documents emerged in a dispute over campaign financing under Maine law, and also include detailed 2009 budget plans for the group, whose spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comments on the document.

You can read some of the court documents at the link. Conservatives have absolutely nothing positive to run on, and Mitt Romney is the least appealing or inspiring Presidential candidate in my memory. Expect more of this.

Love winsPost + Comments (140)

What we’re fighting about

by | 136 Comments

This post is in: 

The following is from one of the DOJ briefs defending Obamacare. Less than 800 words that describe the whole law:

First, Congress made health insurance available to millions more low-income individuals by expanding eligibility for Medicaid. Beginning in 2014, Medicaid eligibility will extend to anyone under age 65 with income up to 133% of the federal poverty level. Currently, Medicaid beneficiaries are primarily children in low-income families, their parents, low-income pregnant women, and low-income elderly or disabled individuals. The newly eligible persons will consist primarily of low-income non-elderly adults without dependent children.

Second, Congress enacted taxing measures that encourage expansion of employer-sponsored insurance. The Act establishes new tax incentives for eligible small businesses to purchase health insurance for their employees. In addition, the Act’s employer responsibility provision imposes a tax liability under specified circumstances on large employers that do not offer adequate coverage to full-time employees.

Third, Congress provided for creation of health insurance exchanges to enable individuals and small businesses to leverage their collective buying power
and maintain health insurance at rates competitive with those charged for typical large employer plans.

Fourth, Congress enacted market reforms that will make affordable insurance available to millions who cannot now obtain it. Certain reforms have already taken
effect, including provisions that bar insurers from canceling insurance absent fraud or intentional misrepresentation and from placing lifetime caps on benefits, 42 In addition, the Act establishes medical loss ratios for insurers, i.e., minimum percentages of premium revenues that insurers must spend on clinical services and activities that improve health care quality, as opposed to administrative costs or profits. The Act also requires insurers providing family coverage to continue covering adult children until age 26, which has led to an additional 2.5 million young adults gaining coverage. Beginning in 2014, the Act will bar insurers from denying coverage to any person because of medical condition or history,
(guaranteed-issue provision), and from charging higher premiums because of a person’s medical condition or history, (community-rating provision).

Fifth, Congress enacted new tax credits, cost-sharing reduction payments, and tax penalties as incentives for individuals to maintain a minimum level of health insurance. The Act establishes federal premium tax credits to assist eligible individuals with household income up to 400% of the federal poverty level purchase insurance through the new exchanges. These premium tax credits, which are advanceable and fully refundable such that individuals with little or no income tax liability can still benefit, are designed to make health insurance affordable by reducing a taxpayer’s net cost of insurance. The credits will be available even to families with incomes at (and above) the median level, which, in 2010, was $75,148 for a family of four and $42,863 for an individual. For eligible individuals with income up to 250% of the federal poverty level, the Act also authorizes federal payments to insurers to help cover those individuals’ cost-sharing expenses (such as co-payments or deductibles) for insurance obtained through an exchange. CBO projected that 83% of people who buy non-group insurance policies through exchanges will receive premium tax credits, (20 million of 24 million), and that those credits, on average, will cover nearly two-thirds of the premium,

In addition to those incentives through tax and other subsidies to purchase health insurance, Congress assigned adverse tax consequences to the alternative of attempted self-insuring. Congress provided that, beginning in 2014, non-exempted federal income taxpayers who fail to maintain a minimum level of health insurance coverage for themselves or their dependents will owe a tax penalty for each month in the tax year during which minimum coverage is not maintained.

And, just for supporters of the law (I am one), here’s a short, brutal description of the opposing brief that you might find amusing:

The challengers to the health care mandate have filed their Supreme Court brief – the definitive statement of the case against the mandate, drawing on the strongest arguments that have been made against it by advocates and federal judges, and authored by conservative superlawyer Paul Clement. It is astoundingly thin and weak. A standard admonishment to young lawyers is that they should address the very strongest arguments on the other side, instead of substituting weak caricatures of their opponents’ views. Yet the brief does this repeatedly.

Now, it has been clear for some time that the most articulate opponents of the mandate (who include such formidable intellects as Richard Epstein, Randy Barnett, and Gary Lawson) have just this in mind. They despise the modern state and want to blow it up. But the Supreme Court has no such revolutionary ambitions. The challenge for the challengers of the law, then, is to come up with a theory that lets them win this case without committing the Court to the end of American civilization as we know it. Clement evidently could not figure out how to do that (other than – here he shows excellent sense – being coy about the implications of his argument). If you accept his brief’s logic, then it is not clear how, say, the Environmental Protection Agency could survive, since there is no enumerated power to keep the country’s air breathable or its water drinkable.

As I’ve noted in a different context, when a lawyer as good as Clement makes arguments this bad, it tells you a lot about how desperate his case is.

What we’re fighting aboutPost + Comments (136)

Opposite-land

by | 43 Comments

This post is in: 

I’d like to elaborate a little on this fight because it’s worse than a lie, it’s exactly the opposite of what actually occurred:

The president jumps into the Trayvon Martin controversy without all the facts being known, essentially calling for the shooter to be arrested and convicted, and yet it is GOP cadidates criticizing the president who are “reprehensible” according to Obama advisor David Plouffe?

I think “essentially” is my very favorite weasel word. When I read it, my weasel-radar pings.

This is the second racial incident in which Obama has jumped the gun and either criticized “stupid” police as he did in the Gates controversy, or local authorities as he did last Friday in the Trayvon Martin tragedy. The former Constitutional law professor doesn’t get it. When the president weighs in on a flashpoint controversy like this, he colors everyone’s perception – including police, local courts, and his own DoJ.

Because all things involving black people are the same? Is that why what Obama said here is “like” what he said in Gates?

Because it’s not.

Here’s Obama’s statement:

“Obviously this is a tragedy. I can only imagine what these parents are going through. When I think about this boy I think about my own kids and I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this and that everybody pulls together, federal, state and local to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.
I’m glad that not only the Justice Department is looking into it, I understand now that the governor of the state of Florida has formed a task force to investigate what is taking place.
I think all of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how something like this happened. That means that we examine the laws and the context for what happened as well as the specifics of the incident.
But my main message is to the parents of Trayvon. If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon. I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves and we will get to the bottom of exactly what happened.”

Actually, the truth is, Republicans, panicked and running from their own law, went WAY too far on the merits of the case.

Here is former Governor Jeb Bush, making a legal determination without “the facts being known”:

“This law does not apply to this particular circumstance… Stand your ground means stand your ground. It doesn’t mean chase after somebody who’s turned their back.”

Wow. Does not apply. Thanks, Judge Bush. We’ll move right to sentencing.

“[The lack of arrest] doesn’t make sense to me… You’ve got to let the judicial process work. Hopefully it’s done at a pace that is respectful for people hurting.”

Less-than-great police work, apparently, in Jeb Bush’s opinion. The lack of arrest doesn’t “make sense”, even to a member of the Bush family, which is saying something.

And here are Florida GOP lawmakers weighing in on the case:

The controversial Stand Your Ground law is also commonly referred to as the “castle doctrine.” It was sponsored by Republican lawmakers Rep. Dennis Baxley and then Sen. Durell Peaden and passed by the Florida state legislature in 2005.
Baxley wrote an op-ed article published by Fox News. In the op-ed Baxley wrote, “There is nothing in the castle doctrine as found in Florida statutes that authenticates or provides for the opportunity to pursue and confront individuals, it simply protects those who would be potential victims by allowing for force to be used in self-defense.”
Peaden reportedly told the Miami Herald that the law does not apply to shooter George Zimmerman because he followed the child. Peadon told the newspaper that the moment Zimmerman told the 911 dispatcher that he was following the boy that he lost any defense under the Stand Your Ground law.

The truth is exactly the opposite of the claim. President Obama said nothing on the legal merits, current and former GOP leaders in Florida, panicked and running away from their own law, did.

I await the right wing editorial condemning Jeb Bush.

Update:

I will acknowledge being guilty of hyperbole and exaggeration – something Washington Monthly engages in when calling me a liar. Writing that Obama was “essentially calling for the arrest and conviction” of the shooter, was, I freely admit, not a quote, but rather reflected my opinion of the consequences of the president’s actions and his ill-timed and ill-chosen remarks.
Only little children and liberals believe that bringing DoJ into this incendiary local matter doesn’t guarantee Zimmerman’s eventual arrest and conviction for…something. Manslaughter, violation of Martin’s civil rights – it only matters in the sense that the hysteria ginned up over this horrible incident will ensure that authorities will shape their investigation to satisfy the howling mob. When so much is unknown – and perhaps unknowable – about what actually happened, prosecutors will find some way to appease those who are emotionally unhinged and might respond to a call for “retaliation” or vigilante action. Like it’s never happened before? Just ask Sacco and Vanzetti.
Mr. Singal prefers to take a politicians words at face value. For myself, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a liberal or conservative, I tend to question the motives and intent of politicians – especially presidents – who inject themselves thoughtlessly into controversies like the Martin tragedy.

I still await the right wing editorial condemning Jeb Bush.

Opposite-landPost + Comments (43)

Obviously, if people knew what they were up to, people might not like it

by | 25 Comments

This post is in: , ,

As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m helping a long-shot local statehouse candidate with his campaign finance filing. I’m his treasurer. It’s not difficult. There’s the Handbook of Ohio Campaign Finance to refer to, and we file with the Secretary of State online. I enter the donor name and address on a form and once the report is filed, those names are publicly available.

We met with a small business owner 2 weeks ago. He wanted to fire questions at us for 45 minutes and then (possibly) donate. It was like a competition to see which side could speak more quickly, interrupt the other more often, and listen not at all. I thought he won that in a walk, so didn’t expect a donation after that disaster of an inquisition. His name is on the door of the local business he owns and operates, and when I file my next report, his name will also be on the candidate’s donor list, because we seem to have survived the hazing: he wrote us a check. Will that matter to his customers in this overwhelmingly Republican county? I don’t know. I hope not. I know that we had local volunteers for John Kerry in 2004 who work at the for-profit hospital here. They parked across the street in the supermarket lot when we met for phone banking, because they were afraid they’d face repercussions at work if it became known that they were volunteering for that Alinskyite radical Leftist, Senator John Kerry.

Contrast that with the absolute cowardice and incessant, bleating whining of the moneyed few, speaking through an editorial in Rupert Murdoch’s WSJ:

Shareholder proxy season is coming up, and along with it a new batch of politicized shareholder resolutions. The underreported story this year is the flowering of a long-planned political campaign intended to stop companies from exercising their free-speech rights to influence government. Corporate directors need to know what they’re up against.
The campaign is traveling under the assumed name of “disclosure,” which sounds innocuous and is hard for CEOs and corporate boards to oppose. The specific target is to get companies to publicly disclose what they spend on politics—their donations to candidates or PACs, how much they spend on lobbying or government affairs, which industry associations they contribute to, and even in some cases the political contributions of executives.
It’s part of a multiyear campaign by unions, left-wing activists and their factotums to expose and then vilify companies that disagree with them.
The campaign has gained speed since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling that restored First Amendment rights to unions and corporations.

Corporations are not democracies. They are businesses organized for the purpose of making money to increase value for all shareholders, not to serve the narrow goals of some shareholders.
The political left is using this disclosure campaign not to serve the interests of shareholders, but to further its own policy agenda. It is an abuse of the proxy process, and companies would be wise to resist it in the interest of their business, their shareholders, and their country.

And, here’s the great Richard Trumka, in his advocate’s hat, responding:

Your editorial “The Corporate Disclosure Assault” (March 19) falsely claims that disclosure of corporate political expenditures is not in the best interest of all shareholders. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Citizens United, which upheld the First Amendment rights of corporations to make independent political expenditures, explicitly relied in part on the principle that “prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters.”
Current law enables businesses to spend for many political purposes without disclosure, whether to the public or their shareholders. The editorial’s suggestion that businesses should be able to conceal their political spending in order to avoid criticism or controversy disserves shareholders. As Justice Antonin Scalia recently observed in another case, Doe v. Reed, which rejected First Amendment-based claims for keeping secret the identities of ballot-petition signers, “Requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed.”
Unions have long been required to make public disclosures of their political and other spending. Corporations that spend to influence politics have no legitimate gripe against shareholder disclosure resolutions that would require them to publicly disclose that spending—and they have ample opportunity and resources to explain why that spending advances shareholder value and the public interest.
Richard L. Trumka
President
AFL-CIO
Washington

They want what they always want: all of the rewards with none of the risk. Risk is for the people who can least afford it.

h/t Demos blog

Obviously, if people knew what they were up to, people might not like itPost + Comments (25)