Archive for the ‘Open Government’ Category

March22

The truth about the JOBS Act

By: Lisa Gilbert

The toxic JOBS Act has now passed through both the House and Senate. It is a huge and embarrassing failure of the Congress that a measure such as this could pass with such ease."Lisa Gilbert"

Despite the outpouring of expert, investor and public concerns about the bill, several of the important measures that would have fixed some of the flaws in the bill and incorporated changes proposed by Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Mary Schapiro and institutional investors failed, and the underlying flawed legislation passed.

We do applaud the passage of Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Michael Bennett (D-Colo.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Scott Brown (R-Mass.)’s amendment requiring that crowdfunding investments go through an “intermediary” registered with the SEC. We are saddened by the failure of the Senate to pass Sen. Jack Reed’s (D-R.I.) amendment to improve disclosure at public companies.

The underlying legislation opens the door to great risk of fraud, and will strip the accountability and sunshine requirements that make U.S. markets work better for shareholders and businesses.

Following the 2008 Wall Street collapse, it should be blatantly obvious that we need stronger protections against fraud and stronger guarantees of transparency. We celebrate the senators who tried to push for such protections, and are horrified by how many enabled this to happen. As the bill moves back to the House we hope it can be improved further.

 

Posted in: Activism, Campaign Finance, Congress, Financial Reform, Open Government, Regulation, Uncategorized0 comments

March21

DISCLOSE Act stands ready to shine light on $lush funds . . .

By: Craig Holman

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) today introduced a straightforward DISCLOSE Act that would shine light on the sources of secretive corporate slush funds flooding into the 2012 federal elections. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) already has introduced a companion measure in the House. Public Citizen heartily applauds these efforts to lift the veil of secrecy cloaking who is trying to buy our elections.

The DISCLOSE Act closes gaping loopholes in current disclosure laws that allow corporations and wealthy individuals to hide their campaign spending by funneling their money through innocuous-sounding front groups.

It is a well-established norm of American politics that voters have a right to know who is paying how much for campaign ads. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the principle of disclosure over and over again – including in the disastrous 2010 Citizen United v. Federal Election Commission ruling – recognizing that who is paying for campaign advertising is valuable information that helps voters judge the merits of ads.

The transparency measure faces an uphill battle, as the Republican caucus marched in lockstep to kill a similar measure in the last congressional session. Until recently, many of these same senators supported transparency of money in politics.

Public Citizen calls upon all members of Congress, regardless of party, to stand true to their professed principles and bring this new special interest money out of the shadows. The integrity of elections must not be sacrificed to partisan politics.

Craig Holman is Public Citizen’s government reform lobbyist

Posted in: Activism, Campaign Finance, Congress, Ethics, Open Government, Uncategorized0 comments

March8

Keystone obstructionism, like the pipeline itself, defies consumer interests

By: Rachel Lewis

"Tyson Slocum" gasAs Reuters reports: “The U.S. Senate could vote as early as Thursday on a plan to fast-track the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline, a bid that is unlikely to attract enough Democratic support to pass but will give its Republican supporters an opening to criticize President Barack Obama’s energy policies.”

The Keystone pipeline has been added on as an amendment to the House version of the much-debated transportation bill.

Public Citizen Energy Program Director Tyson Slocum, an oil and gas expert, had this to say of the House’s transportation rider:

It’s obstructionism at its worst to add the Keystone pipeline project as an amendment to the transportation bill.  The Keystone pipeline is irrelevant both in terms of domestic energy security and gas prices. The pipeline is designed to import Canadian crude, refine it, then export the U.S.-refined gasoline and diesel for sale to other countries, a pass-through that would do nothing for American consumers.

Slocum, who blogged about the American Petroleum Institute’s PR war framing on this issue for Citizen Vox a month ago,  continued: “In fact, Keystone’s export function will lead to higher gasoline prices for Americans.”

The idea that Keystone would help solve energy needs is a convenient ploy for Republicans to ignore real factors affecting gas prices, like rampant financial speculation on the energy commodity markets, where traders engage in short and long selling splicing and dicing that ought to give anyone who remembers sub-prime mortgage crash the shivers. Obama has not stooped so low himself, but his “reconstitution” of a task-force to look into financial speculation’s effect on gas prices is telling of the widespread cognitive dissonance in Washington, where the deep-pockets of Big Energy companies regularly command elected officials to turn a blind eye.

 

Posted in: Activism, Campaign Finance, Climate Change, Congress, Consumer Protection, Energy, Environment, Ethics, Open Government, Regulation, Social Justice, Trade, Transportation, Uncategorized0 comments

March8

Will the SEC stand up to the financial industry’s disingenuous smokescreen?

By: Bartlett Naylor

The Securities a"Bart Naylor" "Financial policy"nd Exchange Commission (SEC) should respond immediately to twin letters from U.S. senators and representatives, sent this week, calling on the agency to “prioritize” the implementation of important disclosure about CEO pay. Approved as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the section 953(b) provision requires publicly traded companies to disclose the ratio of CEO pay as a proportion of the median-paid employee at the firm.

In the face of intense industry lobbying, the SEC has yet to propose a rule for public comment. A simple disclosure figure should be well within the SEC’s ability. Corporate America’s antagonism may be revealing but should not be compelling.

The financial industry argues that identifying median pay will be difficult. Such claims either constitute an embarrassing confession about widespread mismanagement of a central financial issue, or a disingenuous smokescreen. The idea that firms have no idea what they pay their staff is ludicrous.

CEO pay has swollen from 42 times that of average factory workers in 1980 to 319 times in 2010. Studies show morale and productivity problems in the face of disproportionate CEO pay.

The congressional letter states that: “Income inequality is a growing concern among many Americans. … Incomes at the very top have skyrocketed in recent years while workers’ wages and incomes have stagnated. … And while comprehensive data will not be available until this provision takes effect, there is no question that CEO pay is soaring compared to that of average workers.”

A Public Citizen report last year found that industry lobbyists contesting this rule have spent more than $4.5 million trying to avoid disclosure. In addition, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has sent two letters to the SEC opposing this measure.

Rather than fight to block it, the industry should embrace it. Investors would benefit from this type of disclosure.

The letters are available at http://www.citizen.org/documents/House-SEC-Letter-on-953b-rulemaking.pdf and http://www.citizen.org/documents/Senate-SEC-letter-on-953b-rulemaking.pdf.

Posted in: Congress, Ethics, Financial Reform, Open Government, Uncategorized1 comments

March1

On #SuperPACTuesday it’s #DemocracyForSale

By: Editor

Tuesday saw the Republican presidential primary in Michigan come down to the wire, with the final push to the finish line determining the undisputed winners, which were  . . . the funders of Mitt Romney’s SuperPAC, easily the top spender in the state, and other high-powered donors (some of them unknown). Most of that spending, of course, was on negative ads.

Just as with Florida (which saw the worst of it) and other competitive primary states before, the people of Michigan are now cleaning off a heavy dose of slime– one enabled by the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission and paid for by super-rich CEOs and, increasingly, corporations.

This spending and slime, of course, has nothing to do with backers’ substantial congressional lobbying expenditures, a connection that led our own campaign-finance guru Craig Holman to observe that “Citizens United has elevated lobbying entities to kingmaker status.” (Oh, and as for the cottage industry that has sprung up denying that the Citizens United ruling has anything to do with this mess, see useful correctives from the Sunlight Foundation and from election-law scholar Rick Hasen.)

Now that primaries in Iowa, South Carolina and other early primary states are over, it’s onward to next week’s “Super Tuesday” primaries in states like Georgia and beyond, with casino magnate Sheldon Adelson making another “substantial donation” to the pro-Newt-Gingrich “Winning Our Future” Super PAC and those bankrolling other candidates following suit. Super PACs are also playing a growing role in congressional races, so as depressing as it is to note, this upcoming Tuesday is really only the beginning of a long election season.

In fact, you just might as well call this coming series of primaries “Super PAC Tuesday” given the dominant role they’ve come to play. So that’s what we’re going to do, using social media to amplify and harness Americans’ disgust with the auctioning and debasement of our democracy.

Starting today and through Tuesday, Public Citizen, our Democracy Is For People campaign (Twitter: @RuleByUs), and allied organizations, elected officials and citizen activists will be tweeting about ongoing money-in-politics news with the hashtag #SuperPACTuesday.

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Posted in: Activism, Campaign Finance, Congress, Open Government5 comments

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