These examples are all evidence of the rapidly growing space that commercial culture has come to occupy within our society. As large a space as they may already inhabit in our lives, corporations are seeking still more facets of our society that can be put up “for sale,” never mind the higher values that get trampled in the process – values like family, community, environmental integrity, and democracy. That’s why Commercial Alert, a project of Public Citizen, has no shortage of work to do.

Ralph Nader and Gary Ruskin founded Commercial Alert in 1998, seeking to keep commercial culture within its proper sphere. Since then, Commercial Alert has fought to lay down boundaries that preserve crucial spaces in our culture as commercial-free. Commercial Alert has stood up for children’s rights to be free of commercialism in schools, parks, libraries, and other public spaces. We’ve demanded that government be a vehicle for democracy, not commercial advertising, fighting back against plans to advertise on government vehicles, history-laden bridges and buildings, and in cultural institutions. We’ve decried the number one public health disaster of our times – marketing-related diseases, including obesity, smoking-related illnesses, diabetes, and many more.

Despite successes along the way, the fight is far from over. As those intent on putting everything and everyone up for sale wage their war on our culture, Commercial Alert continues to resist the spread of commercial culture – now as an important part of Public Citizen. We’re confident that supporters of Public Citizen will find that Commercial Alert’s upcoming campaigns address crucial issues that are important to them – issues that fit well with Public Citizen’s historic concerns about unchecked corporate power and consumer protection. And supporters of Commercial Alert who have been eagerly awaiting our return to action after a brief hiatus will be excited to see the powerful connections between Public Citizen’s work and Commercial Alert’s goals, connections that will enable us to combat excessive commercial culture even more effectively.Citizens around the country are expressing outrage at the disproportionate power corporations wield. As most of us in the 99 percent struggle to make ends meet, we watch as corporate executives continue to line their pockets with cash, while shortchanging average citizens. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has held that corporations are entitled to the same First Amendment freedoms of speech protections as real, live, breathing human beings.

The spread of commercial culture into some of our most valued public spaces – from educational institutions to health care facilities – is a stark example of the damaging effects of the unchecked power that corporations have been all too happy to wield. Do corporations have a “right” to infiltrate your kids’ classrooms? Should corporations be free to market unhealthy and dangerous products as they wish to the most vulnerable among us – or to any of us, for that matter? Should we permit corporations to turn our every waking moment into one long advertisement, often using deceptive means to catch us unawares? We don’t think so.

Public Citizen’s Democracy is For People campaign is building momentum in its fight for a constitutional amendment to overturn the disastrous Citizens United decision that granted corporations the right to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections. As more and more citizens speak out against this outrage, they are also in a position to question the virtually unfettered rights corporations claim to advertise. We need to stop commercial interests from overrunning not only our democracy, but our culture.

So how is Commercial Alert fighting back against commercialism? Like Public Citizen, Commercial Alert has its hands in a wide variety of issues. Here’s a sample of what’s on the horizon:

- School Commercialism: We think everyone should have the right to occupy commercial-free spaces, but if any one place deserves special protection, its schools. Schools are supposed to help kids develop their critical thinking skills, foster intellectual curiosity, provide a space for open debate and discussion, and promote civic values. In stark contrast, as kids develop their values and identities, marketers intentionally and unintentionally communicated and inculcate materialistic, superficial values that are most likely to bolster their bottom line. To fight the spread of market values in public schools, we are raising public pressure on school board officials, turning up the heat on corporations that target kids by advertising in schools, and exposing companies that profit off of school commercialism by acting as “middlemen.” We’ve just released a new report on this issue, and there will be petitions, letter-writing campaigns, and corporate campaigns, too.

- Infant formula marketing: Infant formula makers, the majority of which are giant pharmaceutical companies, know that the best way to reach new mothers is to recruit healthcare providers to market and endorse their products. Through these means, marketers are able to undermine the clear facts: breastfeeding is best for babies. The slew of evidence on the health benefits of breastfeeding should be all the information healthcare providers need to banish formula marketers from their offices. But, perhaps it’s no surprise to learn that big bucks and powerful corporate interests combine to push science into the shadows. Women should be free to choose to breastfeed – if they want to, and are able – without being confronted with the misinformation proffered by the formula industry. To fight these destructive forces, Commercial Alert is planning to challenge hospital administrators to take a close look at the ethics of giving out infant formula samples to new moms – a key marketing mechanism for the formula makers. Watch for a multipronged effort to target both healthcare providers and formula makers, with possible legislative approaches to this problem on the horizon.

- And much more: We’re planning to take on deceptive product placement schemes, financial product marketing, direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising, the sale of naming rights to public spaces, online marketing, alcohol marketing, and many other issues.

There is a lot to be done. If the ubiquity of advertising has long bothered you, if you’re committed to combating widespread corporate power, if you don’t want to see this generation of children become the next generation of “super-consumers,” if you think marketing poses a serious threat to our physical and mental health, or if you believe we need a vibrant and well-protected noncommercial culture: We need your help! Stay tuned for opportunities to join Public Citizen’s Commercial Alert project in this important struggle.

Elizabeth Ben-Ishai is a senior researcher at Public Citizen and the campaign coordinator for Public Citizen’s Commercial Alert.

Share/Bookmark

With massive state budget cuts, school districts are facing tough times – there’s no doubt about it. So when they claim that allowing school advertising will help them manage their budget shortfalls, many parents and community members believe that, distasteful as advertising to kids may be, such measures might just be worth it. But is it? Our just-released report, School Commercialism: High Costs, Low Revenues, debunks these claims, highlighting the miniscule revenue that these programs actually bring in.

How much money are school districts bringing in? Houston Independent School District (HISD), the seventh-largest in the country, has a total budget of $1.58 billion for 2011-2012. In 2010-2011, HISD raised only $62,250 from a combination of signage, scoreboards and school bus advertising. That’s less than 0.01 percent of its budget – and a far cry from the $100 million in cuts the district faced last year.  Also in Houston, Cypress Fairbanks Independent School District, the eleventh-largest district in the country, raised only 0.03 percent of its annual budget through in-school advertising. And in Florida, Orange County Public Schools has allowed advertising from Pizza Hut, the U.S. Army, Buffalo Wild Wings and other, raising just 0.02 percent of its annual operating budget.

If these unimpressive numbers aren’t enough to completely turn you off of school advertising, keep in mind that revenue raised from such programs – not matter how little – is not “free” money. In fact, it comes at a very high cost: It undermines children’s learning, self-esteem and health. Children exposed to excessive advertising internalize materialistic values that teach them to judge one another by what they have, rather than who they are. Advertisers prey on vulnerable students because they know that children are easily manipulated, particularly as they go through the complex process of developing their values and identities. Those corporations prone to selling unhealthful or otherwise damaging products are among those most likely to jump at the chance to advertise to a captive audience in the schools. Moreover, the values and skills we want our education system to promote – critical thinking, civic virtue, public spiritedness, questioning established ideas – run counter to those advertisers hope children will embrace. Can kids really learn to become the next generation of creative and innovative citizens when one of the key messages they encounter at school, a place that ought to be a sanctuary from commercialism, is “buy this”?

While corporations are eager to make children customers for life by targeting them in schools, another group of businesses also wants to cash in on this troublesome practice. In our research for the report released today, we encountered a growing number of “middleman” agencies that broker agreements between school districts and commercial advertisers. These companies take a healthy cut of the already meager profits that would otherwise go to school districts, with some taking as much as 50 percent of advertising revenues. Dozens of these companies exist across the country, and to make sure their businesses prosper, they actively seek out school districts and try to sell them on the financial benefits of school advertising programs.

Next time you see an article in your local paper (or on Commercial Alert) about a school district that is claiming advertising as the “magical cure” to its budget woes, speak up. Let school district officials know that they are unlikely to solve any problems with such plans – and quite likely to do to harm to the people they are trying to protect in the first place: students. It’s worth speaking up because they, and other members of your community, may not actually know how useless (and damaging) advertising programs in schools actually are. In the course of our research we found a lot of misinformation and lack of clarity at the school district level where advertising is concerned. Many of the increasingly desperate school districts that are now considering allowing advertising in their schools will be sorely disappointed with the financial benefits if they proceed.

We believe most school districts want to do what’s best for their students. These days, they face many challenges in trying to achieve this goal, including significant budgetary obstacles. But allowing advertising in the classroom or on school property is not a good solution. Instead, it is likely to create more problems than it solves, enrich those who don’t need the cash, and hurt the students who count on schools to educate them and foster healthy personal development.

Read the report here.

Elizabeth Ben-Ishai is a senior researcher at Public Citizen and the campaign coordinator for Public Citizen’s Commercial Alert.

Share/Bookmark

courtesy Small Business Majority

This goes against all the rhetoric spewed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Big Business advocates and their supporters in Congress, all of whom have never allowed facts to get in the way of a convenient talking point. The truth is, the great zeal to roll back the standards and safeguards that protect us from health, safety, environmental and financial disaster is not to help small businesses to create jobs, but to give wealthy corporate interests a free hand to skirt rules in pursuit of larger profits. Jobs for us regular folks, much less our health and well being, is really not part of their equation.

Here’s a look into the numbers from the Small Business Majority:

• Weak demand is small business owners’ biggest problem: 34% of respondents said weak demand is their biggest problem, while 15% cited the cost of health coverage and other benefits. Only 14% said it is the level of government regulation. The level of taxes came in fourth place with 12% and competition with larger companies garnered 10%.
• Small business owners see regulations as a necessary part of a modern economy and believe they can live with them if they’re fair and reasonable: 86% of small business owners agree some regulation of business is necessary for a modern economy, and 93% of them agree their business can live with some regulation if it is fair, manageable and reasonable.

Read the full report here.

Share/Bookmark

Although Occupy movements in various cities have initiated court battles over the extent of their rights, this lawsuit appears to be the first of its kind against Occupy demonstrators. Michelman explains,

By suing demonstrators for a ruling on its own law and seeking to recover fees and costs, the county is trying to impose a monetary penalty on a group of innocent people for their political activity – or, in the case of the defendants who are not associated with the Occupy movement, for other people’s political activity. Allowing this case to proceed would set a dangerous precedent for local governments using the threat of court costs to chill political speech.

For more on this troubling case see our press release.

Meanwhile, Public Citizen’s campaign finance and governmental ethics expert Craig Holman has his fingers crossed, as should all Americans. Holman has lobbied hard for the passage of the STOCK Act. Don’t let acronyms deceive! This isn’t a bill for Wall Street elites. STOCK stands for Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act. The STOCK Act, which would prohibit insider trading by members of Congress and their staffs (yes, right now it’s legal), got a much-needed boost last week when President Barack Obama during his State of the Union speech called on Congress to pass it. The bill, which Public Citizen has been advocating for years, got a shot in the arm late last year after a “60 Minutes” segment. However, lawmakers put it on the back burner – until now. This week, likely on Wednesday or Thursday, the Senate will vote on the STOCK Act.

Also this week, Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines program, is in Los Angeles and San Diego to monitor negotiations for a Trans-Pacific Free Trade Agreement. From what we’ve heard, it likely will include some of the same damaging provisions of NAFTA. The trouble is, officials aren’t releasing the negotiating text – which means they are keeping the public in the dark on a critical international pact. Check out Maybarduk (1:33:15) in this video from today and be sure to follow @PCMedsAccess for the latest on intellectual property debates with real-world applications happening there!

Share/Bookmark

Click the image above to play our YouTube video!

Marking the two-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate spending in our elections, the rapidly growing movement to fight back with a 28th Amendment to the Constitution has seriously stepped out into the national spotlight.

Thousands of Americans, in nearly every state turned out for over 350 events to “celebrate” the anniversary of the Court’s disastrous ruling and the resulting unprecedented leverage of corporate power over politicians. And from courthouse steps to corporate offices, from mock arrests and funerals to rousing rallies to teach-ins and simple one-on-one engagement with neighbors, the (cold) air was thick with the spirit of people-powered democracy that they’d prefer to raise up instead.

Indeed, this wasn’t just another series of protests and demonstrations, but a chance to turn Citizens United into a mechanism that unites citizens. Last weekend was a movement-building moment; an initial “coming out” for the 60-plus organizations, and countless citizens, united by the common purpose of ensuring that democracy is for We the People, not corporations and concentrated wealth.

Occupying Corporate Offices, Downtowns, and State Capitols

On Saturday, thousands of people joined Public Citizen and our allies to Occupy the Corporations, often demonstrating and engaging in creative actions at Bank of America branches and offices, Chevron gas stations and other corporate outposts in our communities. They ranged from local activists braving snow by the dozens to rouse and educate their community in places like Joliet, Illinois and Prince William, Virginia; to activists with the Rainforest Action Network and Occupy groups who “arrested” Cargill at its Minneapolis headquarters and conducted manhunts for a “person” going by the name of Bank of America in Charlotte and San Francisco; and to the  hundreds who joined Congressman Jim McDermott to rally and march through downtown Seattle in the slippery aftermath of an ice storm.

Grassroots actions like these help build toward another critical component of this movement: adding to the over 50 cities and municipalities on record demanding a constitutional amendment, and getting state legislatures (which will have to ratify any amendment) into the act. Over 100 citizens joined Public Citizen, Move to Amend, Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield, and other allies at the state Capitol to bring a distinct flavor to the Citizens United anniversary and support a legislative resolution challenging corporate constitutional rights (see photo below). Vermonters are also mobilizing in over 70 communities to simultaneously pass pro-amendment resolutions on March 6^th, which is Town Meeting Day throughout the state.

Meanwhile, in Sacramento, over 250 people gathered in the California state Capitol to protest unlimited corporate money in elections and call on the legislature to pass a pending resolution demanding an amendment. Their efforts were heartily endorsed by the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board, specifically noting inspiration from the growing movement rising to challenge unfettered corporate influence in California and throughout the nation.

A rally in Annapolis, Maryland, attended by U.S. Congressmen Chris Van Hollen and John Sarbanes, over a dozen state lawmakers and more than fifty Maryland residents, projected a similar message and momentum.  City councils in Greenbelt and College Park have now joined the call for an amendment. In Massachusetts, where a broad coalition of state and national organizations has been formed to push for a state resolution, much the same is taking place.

And this energy is carrying over Congress, where the number of allies sponsoring constitutional amendment proposals (which now number 12, sponsored by 81 members of the House and Senate) seems to be swelling by the week. Both Senators from Montana—the state whose judiciary’s defied Citizens United’s flawed logic and energized people around the nation earlier this month—have enthusiastically hopped on board the amendment train, as has Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon (where a pro-amendment resolution was passed weeks before by the Portland City Council).

Next Steps: Keep on Keeping On (because Corporate America sure will!)

Click above to see Kansas activists' Funeral for Democracy video!

From Occupy groups, longtime civic activists, and elected officials to people who were simply roused to action by Citizens United, the diverse set of voices aligning themselves with this growing movement was simply inspiring.

And it will only continue to build in the coming months, as grassroots activists continue campaigns to raise awareness and pressure elected officials in many cases, and get organized using last week’s events as an initial jumping off point in others.  Each little bit helps, as one of our citizen organizers reported from Conway, New Hampshire, writing about efforts to publicize the impact of Citizens United and build support for the amendment campaign at the local public library:

Teaching can have a multiplier effect.  One woman I spoke with as she entered the library visited the Ham Room and as she left the library said to me “We were talking about Super Pacs at lunch the other day but we didn’t know what they are.  Now I know.”  Mission accomplished.

A Pew poll released last week bears this lesson out, finding that the more Americans across the nation and the political spectrum become aware of the Citizens United decision and its consequences, the greater their distaste becomes. Additional polling commissioned by the Center for American Progress continued to find 3-to-1 opposition to the doctrine of unlimited corporate spending in elections. Recent polling also shows that small-business owners view the impact of Citizens United (and of the dominant role of money in our politics) as bad for business by a whopping 7 to 1 margin.

The American people intuitively grasp the inescapably weak logic of Citizens United, particularly the central findings that unlimited corporate money should be protected like individual “speech” without any capacity to breed corruption and undermine the democratic process (and citizens’ faith in it). And they’re increasingly determined to make it so that at the end of the day, we won’t need to be holding a New-Orleans-style funeral celebration of democracy like they did in Wichita, Kansas (marching from Bank of America to the federal courthouse) this past weekend.

This movement is instead guided by the simple observation that so eluded the Supreme Court’s narrow majority two years ago, which one Occupy Aurora (Illinois) member perhaps vocalized best while demonstrating and building­­ public support in front of a Bank of America branch (at 2:40 or so into video): “Less money in politics….and more of [a] focus on actual change and growth in our society.”

We’re in this one for the long haul, folks.

Help Public Citizen keep the momentum going in the fight against out-of-control corporate power!

Sean Siperstein is a Legal Fellow with Public Citizen’s Democracy is For People campaign. Follow the campaign on Twitter @RuleByUs for the latest on the money and politics and the campaign for a constitutional amendment!

Share/Bookmark

Stunning Statistics of the Week:

• $3.27 billion: Amount spent on lobbying in 2011
• $3.51 billion: Amount spent on lobbying in 2010

Note: The drop is attributed to political gridlock.

Citizens United anniversary: Everything it was cracked up to be and more
We’ve been telling you for a while about the momentum that built toward protest events slated for Saturday, Jan. 21, the second anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The anniversary was everything we thought it would be and then some. Citizens and elected officials took to the streets in cities throughout the country to call for a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision. Check out these pieces in Mother Jones, Truthout.org and Firedoglake. If you haven’t joined the movement, it’s not too late. Visit www.DemocracyIsForPeople.org.

Candidates say “Enough already with the Super PACs”
It might not work but it’s worth a shot. U.S. Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and his opponent Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren have signed a “People’s Pledge agreement” designed to keep Super PACs and the negative ads they pay for out of the race. Under the agreement, whichever candidate is aided by an ad paid for by a third party must contribute an amount worth half the ad to his or her opponent’s charity of choice.

House lawmakers draft new DISCLOSE Act
The DISCLOSE Act, designed to mitigate the harmful effects of Citizens United, fell victim in 2011 to GOP intransigence. Now, some lawmakers are making another run at it. U.S. Reps. Bob Brady (D-Pa.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) have drafted a bill that would, among other things, enhance disclosure by Super PACs, corporations and outside groups, and require corporations to tell shareholders about campaign expenditures.

Scalia says, if you don’t like the nasty political ads, turn off your TV
Don’t like all those attack ads, which you are seeing in part because of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision? Turn them off! It’s not the Supreme Court’s fault! So says Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. No, we are not making this up.

Dollars and Cents (even more news bites):

… Want to know how the amount of money spent in U.S. elections compares to the United Kingdom or India? Check out this nifty map …

… New Hampshire celebrated its first “Granny D Day,” named in honor of the grandmother who walked across the country to call attention to the need for campaign finance reform …

… the STOCK Act, which would prohibit inside trading by members of Congress and their staffs and which had stalled in Congress, may be getting jumpstarted after President Barack Obama mentioned it in his State of the Union speech …

Visit DemocracyIsForPeople.org to learn more!

Get the Money & Democracy Update delivered to your inbox! Sign up here.

Share/Bookmark

The last time the president made such an announcement, the BP disaster occurred two weeks later. We all saw how that ended. Obama should not be laying the groundwork for history to repeat itself.

Current law caps accidental spill liability at $75 million, far below what actual spill damages would likely be. This translates into a huge subsidy for the industry and puts the American people on the hook.

Congress has yet to pass reforms in the wake of that disaster – including raising oil companies’ spill liability from the current $75 million cap.

Opening new areas to drilling while failing to hold oil companies accountable for fleecing taxpayers on existing drilling leases is unfair.

Obama should know better than to hold Big Oil’s support above Main Street’s interests.

Tyson Slocum is Public Citizen’s Energy Program director. Follow him on Twitter @TysonSlocum.

Share/Bookmark

Flickr by I-5 Design and Manufacture

Regulators—past and present—including Simon Johnson, Richard Fisher and Thomas Hoenig have offered public support for downsizing and reforming “too big to fail banks.”

The latest to publicly embrace the idea is Sheila Bair, the Republican-appointed FDIC chair who was critical in dealing with the financial crisis.

Politicians also have become supportive of breaking up the big banks. Chief among them is Jon Huntsman, who made this issue the central focus of his presidential campaign, but even Newt Gingrich has expressed sympathy for splitting up financial institutions. The conservative media also has gotten into the act. The idea has garnered support from Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard, Charles Gasparino of the Fox Business News Network and Arnold Kling of National Review, to name a few.

So, how do regulators actually do it?

They can use section 121 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Section 121 gives the Federal Reserve and the Financial Stability Oversight Council the authority to mitigate the “grave threat” that a financial institution poses by limiting the bank’s activities or forcing it to divest assets—in other words, the authority to break up a bank into separate institutions.

If regulators do their jobs properly, the resulting institutions should be simpler, smaller, and safer. Those firms would be less likely to fail—and less dangerous in the event that they do.

Take Bank of America, for example. In its current form, it is a “grave threat” by any reasonable definition of that phrase. On Wednesday, Public Citizen filed a petition with financial regulators, calling on them to break up the bank and reform it.

The petition details how Bank of America is a systemically dangerous behemoth, holding $2.1 trillion of assets. That equals roughly 1/7 of U.S. gross domestic product and makes it the second-largest bank holding company in the U.S. Its size and number of different lines of business make it too complex to manage or regulate properly.

In addition, Bank of America’s financial condition is poor and could deteriorate rapidly.  Near- and long- term financial indicators demonstrate the market’s unease with the firm. It likely is undercapitalized, as it faces potential liability and market risks that could severely destabilize it.

In fact, an ongoing study by the Volatility Institute at New York University’s Stern School of Business confirms the danger posed by the bank. Of all U.S. financial institutions, Bank of America contributes the most to systemic risk. This means not only that Bank of America is highly susceptible to financial crises, but also that it could “create or extend” a crisis.

If Bank of America in its current form were to fail, it would devastate the financial system. Regulators would have few options for dealing with an imminent failure, and all of them would be bad. These include bailing out the firm—something prohibited by the Dodd-Frank Act—or trying to put the bank through an orderly liquidation. There are many risks involved in putting such an unwieldy institution through liquidation. Many people think it wouldn’t work. In any event, it’s likely that a liquidation would be anything but “orderly.”

Luckily, these problems can be avoided. The Dodd-Frank law gives financial regulators the authority to act preemptively, safeguarding financial stability by engineering a soft landing for Bank of America well before a crisis materializes. It’s imperative that they use that authority.

We’re not saying that Bank of America is bound for a crisis. We’re saying that the possibility of a crisis is all too real—and it’s a risk we can’t afford to take. That’s why financial regulators must act now.

This blog was co-authored by Micah Hauptman and David Arkush of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division.

Share/Bookmark

Stunning Statistics of the Week:

• $27.5 million: The amount that Super PACs have spent to influence the 2012 presidential election
• $8.1 million: The amount Restore Our Future, the Super PAC backing GOP contender Mitt Romney, has spent
• $5.4 million: The amount candidates have spent on TV ads for the South Carolina primary to date
• $6.9 million: The amount Super PACs have spent on TV ads in South Carolina

Taking to the streets as Jan. 21 Citizens United anniversary approaches
What a week! Saturday, Jan. 21, marks the second anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, and activists have been engaged in – or gearing up for – hundreds of events around the country. Public Citizen and other groups held rallies and press events with state officials in Maryland, Vermont and Massachusetts to call for a constitutional amendment to overturn the court’s decision. Another big rally is scheduled Saturday in Sacramento, Calif. In addition, activists are planning about 300 demonstrations around the country. It’s not too late to get involved in your area! Check out www.DemocracyIsForPeople.org. Or if you are a Facebook fan, check this out. Also worth reading is today’s Huffington Post piece by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Public Citizen President Robert Weissman.

CEOs, investors, others call on SEC to require disclosure of corporate political spending
The Corporate Reform Coalition, made up of institutional investors, CEOs, good government organizations and others, is calling on the Securities and Exchange Commission to require publicly traded corporations to disclose political spending. U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who joined a coalition press call Thursday, released a letter to the SEC from himself and 13 Senate colleagues. “Many shareholders remain in the dark, unaware that their money could be funding political activities, or even political attack ads. The rights of shareholders must be protected and at present, we believe that they are being compromised,” the letter said. A citizens petition to the SEC has already garnered more than 20,000 signatures. Add yours here.

Well, this is a bit awkward: Democrats get more money from Bain than Republicans
Bain Capital has been in the spotlight because of Mitt Romney’s tenure at the private equity firm. But truth be told, Democrats have taken more donations from Bain executives than Republicans over the past three election cycles ($1.2 million vs. $480,000), The Hill reports.

Small business leaders: Citizens United hurts us
Two-thirds of small business leaders say the Citizens United decision has hurt them, and 88 percent say money has a negative role in politics, a new Lake Research poll shows. The poll was commissioned by the American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC), Main Street Alliance and Small Business Majority.

Dollars and Cents (even more news bites):

… Members of Congress are taking more privately funded junkets than ever, Roll Call reports, indicating that travel restrictions instituted in 2007 are no longer working …

… a resolution is moving through the California Legislature that would require political ads to identify who paid for them …

… Arizona lawmakers are considering a measure to toughen the state’s campaign finance law by being more explicit about when corporations have to register as political committees and disclose where their money comes from …

… the Portland, Maine, City Council has voted 6-2 in support of a constitutional amendment that would overturn Citizens United …

Visit DemocracyIsForPeople.org to learn more!

Get the Money & Democracy Update delivered to your inbox! Sign up here.

Share/Bookmark

Activists join Maryland legislators and U.S. Representatives, as well as Public Citizen's Mark Hays and other allies, to call for a constitutional amendment at the State House in Annapolis.

“We’re already at a point where the public overwhelmingly opposes the decision ,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, a watchdog group helping to spearhead the efforts. “The goal is to build a grass-roots movement that will eventually be able to shape the debate.”

Public Citizen’s Democracy is For People campaign, as a founding member of the United for the People coalition, is proud to be in the thick of this amazing “movement moment.”

Building on more than 50 cities and towns that have passed resolutions demanding a constitutional amendment that overturns Citizens United and stems the influence of money over elected officials, Public Citizen and our allies have been organizing in four different states vying to have their legislatures follow suit (and in the process declare that they’re ready to ratify an amendment). Rallies supporting those resolutions were held in Massachusetts and Maryland over the last 2 days (with Congressmen Chris Van Hollen and John Sarbanes attending in Maryland). Vermont and California will follow suit tomorrow and Saturday.

And to mark Saturday’s anniversary itself, activists around the nation will “Occupy the Corporations,” and expose the corporate imposters posing as ‘people’ with the constitutional right to buy unprecedented influence over elected officials and public policy. We’ll be focusing on some of the mega-corporations most empowered by Citizens United and most responsible for greedy, disastrously short-sighted policies, to the detriment of the rest of us.

Indeed, new polling shows that small-business owners view the impact of Citizens United (and of the dominant role of money in our politics) as bad for business by a 7 to 1 margin! And Public Citizen is part of a broad coalition of top institutional investors, CEOs, public officials, legal experts and good government groups that is petitioning the Securities & Exchange Commission to mandate transparency in political spending by publicly-traded corporations. (Listen to the coalition’s conference call for more on how the current “Wild West” atmosphere for campaign finance negatively impacts business, and how the kind of disclosure that the Supreme Court incorrectly presumed to exist can at least help mitigate the damage done by Citizens United in the short term.)

Fittingly enough, the anniversary of Citizens United falls on the exact same day as South Carolina’s presidential primary. The ruling that paved the way for the ongoing deluge of money and negative ads that state– like Iowa and New Hampshire before it– is seeing right now has not been lost on disgusted citizen activists around the country, nor on newspaper editorial boards or fellow fans of Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert.

Yet pure anger at the drowning out of grassroots democracy isn’t all that’s driving the 300-plus grassroots actions taking place this week, nor the over 60 national, state and local organizations mobilizing for them.  As Democracy is for People organizer Aquene Freechild relayed at the press conference introducing Vermont’s proposed resolution, the amazing people we’ve met through organizing are often driven by a simple principle: “We do not want a nation organized around greed. We want a nation [and a politics] organized around democratic principles, and strength of character.”

And as Maryland State Senator and constitutional law professor Jamie Raskin, the author of that state’s legislative resolution calling for an amendment, told The Nation‘s editorial board, “American citizens have repeatedly amended the Constitution to defend democracy when the Supreme Court acts in collusion with democracy’s enemies, whether they are slavemasters, states imposing poll taxes on voters or the opponents of woman suffrage.”

The road to a constitutional amendment won’t be easy, and established conventional wisdom says that our efforts have the deck stacked against them. But we’re in this one for the long haul, because as Americans throughout the nation are declaring this week, people-powered democracy is a cause well worth fighting for.

Sean Siperstein is a Legal Fellow with Public Citizen’s Democracy is For People campaign.

Share/Bookmark