Posts Tagged ‘money in politics’

April18

Activists to fracking corporation EQT: “Elections are not for shale!”

By: Rick Claypool

Activists gathered and rallied in Pittsburgh outside of EQT Corporation’s April 17 shareholder meeting to call on the multinational gas giant to keep its corporate money out of the people’s elections.

Public Citizen's Rick Claypool holding a sign with organization leaders at EQT political spending rally

Public Citizen’s Rick Claypool (holding the sign) with PIRG’s Blair Bowie (speaking) and Keystone Progress’ Ritchie Tabachnick, Common Cause PA’s Barry Kauffman, PennEnvironment’s Erika Staaf and University of Pittsburgh graduate Eva Resnick-Day

EQT has poured nearly $328,000 into Pennsylvania elections since 2001 and $281,000 into statewide races across the country since 2003. On the whole, the fracking industry has spent $23 million to influence Pennsylvania politics since 2003.

What do EQT and the rest of the industry reap from this political spending?

On the national level, the industry’s influence has resulted in fracking– the process of injecting millions of gallons of toxin-laced water deep underground in order to break up shale rocks and extract “natural” gas – being exempt from major environmental regulations, including the Safe Drinking Water, Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.

In Pennsylvania, 47 percent of state forestlands have been leased to shale drillers and 80 percent of state park mineral rites have been privatized.

The influence is also obvious when you look at EQT’s tax receipts. EQT’s effective federal tax rate over the past five years was -1 percent – meaning that, instead of paying, the corporation actually received $2 million back from the IRS. In Pennsylvania – where EQT is headquartered – the corporation’s five-year effective tax rate was only 0.1 percent.

At the rally, I delivered the petition signed by more than 20,000 Public Citizen activists calling on EQT to stop polluting our elections with its corporate money.

Among the groups rallying outside the meeting were Public Citizen, U.S. PIRG, Common Cause PA, PennEnvironment, Keystone Progress, One Pittsburgh and Clean Water Action. Others supporting the action include Food and Water Watch, Coffee Party and a network of advocates and investors united behind the banner of the Corporate Reform Coalition.

“Corporate spending injects a corrosive agent into our democracy,” said PIRG’s Blair Bowie in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “(It) drowns out the voice of ordinary citizens.”

Before EQT’s shareholders was a resolution, proposed by Clean Yield Asset Management, calling on EQT to study the feasibility of instituting a ban on political spending.

Photo of activists holding signs at EQT rally against corporate political spending

Pittsburgh activists rallying outside of EQT’s shareholder meeting.

EQT’s shareholders did not adopt the resolution, but the demonstration outside the meeting – as well as activists’ departing chant of “We’ll be back! We’ll be back!” – sent the corporation a strong message that the public will not tolerate the industry’s systemic corruption and co-optation of our government, at any level, from local to state to national.

And, as this shareholder season moves on, Public Citizen and the rest of the Corporate Reform Coalition will keep holding corporations accountable and fighting to get corporate money out of our elections.

Rick Claypool is online director for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. Follow him on Twitter at @RickClaypool.

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Posted in: Activism, Campaign Finance, Climate Change, Congress Watch Column, Energy8 comments

April12

Shame on Congress for repealing major provision of STOCK Act; Obama should veto

By: Craig Holman

"Craig Holman"

In a knee-jerk reaction to concerns that too many people may be required to disclose personal financial data, Congress quickly and quietly approved legislation over the past 24 hours to repeal major portions of disclosure requirements designed to ensure enforcement of the nation’s new law against congressional insider trading. President Barack Obama should veto this bad bill, and lawmakers should go back to the drawing board.

Lawmakers should have taken a more reasoned approach and approved a temporary suspension of the disclosure requirement for certain executive branch personnel, rather than an outright repeal. That way Congress could take the time to scrutinize the issue carefully and decide on changes to the congressional insider trading law that would allow for both personal privacy and enough transparency to limit conflicts of interest.

After years of inaction, Congress was finally compelled by public pressure last year to apply laws to itself against insider trading in the stock markets. The “Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge” STOCK Act made congressional insider trading illegal and imposed online disclosure of personal financial activity by Congress and the executive branch so that compliance to the law could be monitored. Without this disclosure, the law will be difficult to enforce.

The STOCK Act mandated disclosure by approximately 28,000 executive branch employees, many not even senior-level employees, and Public Citizen agrees that this level of coverage may have reached too far. In response, we have asked Congress to consider appropriate remedies to change the scope somewhat to apply to appropriate senior-level executive branch employees.

Instead of this more sensible action, lawmakers hastily repealed disclosure for all but presidential appointees and members of Congress. The repeal (S. 716) even covers congressional staff, in an action that is both extreme and crippling to the STOCK Act’s enforcement mechanism. Unlike most executive branch personnel, congressional staffers have no conflict-of-interest restrictions on stock market investments.

Gutting a popular and much-needed law is unconscionable. Obama should veto this measure, and lawmakers instead should temporarily delay implementation of the disclosure provision for executive branch personnel below presidential appointees. Such a delay would provide Congress with an opportunity to scrutinize the issue more closely and offer more appropriate remedies.

Posted in: Congress, Uncategorized1 comments

December20

New report shows tectonic shifts in campaign spending

By: Editor

a photo of Karl Rove on television

Flickr photo by Dutchlad

By Adam Crowther

The U.S. Supreme Court was so determined to treat outside groups fairly in its 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) decision that it put these groups on course to supplant the candidates themselves as the dominant voices in our elections.

That is the finding of a newly released Public Citizen report, Outside Money Takes the Inside Track. The report compares spending by outside groups, which were permitted as a result of Citizens United to use unlimited contributions to influence elections, with that of candidates and national parties, which are subject to contribution limits.

Our findings: There is a tectonic shift in how American campaigns are being funded. Outside groups surpassed candidate spending in four of the 10 most expensive U.S. Senate races this year. That had only happened once in the last four election cycles (in 2010, which also postdated Citizens United). Outside groups’ spending this year nearly equaled that of the national parties. In no election cycle since 2004 had outside groups spent as much as a third as the parties (and that was also in 2010). Meanwhile, outside groups spent more money in the 2012 election cycle than the past four cycles combined.

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Posted in: Campaign Finance, Congress0 comments

December5

Keep up the pressure on the president (even if you’re sick of politics)

By: Rick Claypool

a photo of Rick ClaypoolPeople who are engaged in saving our country from the corporate takeover of our democracy have mixed (and strong) feelings about our recently re-elected president, Barack Obama, judging from some of the replies I received to the latest emails I sent to Public Citizen’s grassroots activists.

The email I sent was about Public Citizen’s campaign encouraging President Obama to refuse offers of corporate money to help pay for his inauguration in January, just as he refused corporate money for his first inauguration. The campaign was launched after The Wall Street Journal reported that some advisors close to the Obama campaign were considering accepting corporate money for the January 21, 2013 event, which coincidentally falls on the three-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s atrocious ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

Interestingly, several of the emails I received in response fell into two camps – those who think we should trust that the president will stand up and do the right thing on his own, and those who think the president will inevitably betray the general public to corporate interests, no matter what anyone says. Email responders in both camps used these reasons to abstain from participating in the petition.

Now, I don’t want to exaggerate the significance of these emails. After all, I received probably only a dozen or so like this, which, compared to the 30,576 (and counting!) activists who have signed the petition so far, isn’t exactly statistically significant.

Nevertheless, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that large segments of the public agree with these activism abstainers.

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Posted in: Activism, Congress Watch Column0 comments

November28

Corporate and labor union political spending disclosure requirements compared in new Public Citizen publication

By: Editor

By Adam Crowther and Taylor Lincoln

Money Tunnel

Flickr photo by Keith Ramsey

Today, Public Citizen released an in-depth fact sheet on the similarities and discrepancies in reporting requirements imposed on unions and corporations for their political spending.

Given all the hand wringing by Republicans over allegations that the rules are tilted in favor of unions, the information will likely surprise you. In fact, unions already are subject to significant public reporting requirements that pertain solely to them, whereas corporations are not.

The sources of about one-fourth of outside spending in all 2012 federal races—and about half of  outside spending in key Senate races—were kept secret. The DISCLOSE Act (S. 3369) would fix most of this. But here too, the solution is being held up by Republican complaints that the measure is stacked against corporations.

The rational invoked by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is a key example of this type of complaint. Even McCain, a longstanding champion of campaign finance reform and a vocal critic of Citizens United v. Federal Election commission (he has called it “the worst decision of the United States Supreme Court in the 21st century”), has opposed this seemingly common-sense bill.

McCain’s explanation for voting against the bill was that its $10,000 threshold (per two-year election cycle) for disclosure of political contributions represented a “a clever attempt at political gamesmanship” by forcing “some entities to inform the public about the origins of their financial support, while allowing others—most notably those affiliated with organized labor—to fly below the Federal Election Commission’s regulatory radar.”

The $10,000 threshold would unfairly target corporations, McCain argued, because union funds tend to represent a portion of aggregated union dues of far smaller amounts. “What is the final difference between one $10,000 check and 1,000 $10 checks?” McCain asked in a statement accompanying his vote against the bill. “Other than the impact on trees, very little.”

But the difference is very significant, as McCain no doubt is well aware.

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Posted in: Campaign Finance, Congress0 comments

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