Because of the Supreme Court’s infamous, undemocratic Citizens United ruling, corporations can spend as much as they want trying to tilt elections toward candidates who will put profits before people. And the lack of disclosure means the public — and even a corporation’s own shareholders — are kept in the dark when executives funnel corporate money into partisan political attack machines operated anti-democratic forces.
Activists and investors submitted nearly 700,000 comments to the Federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) urging the agency to pass a rule requiring that a corporation’s election spending be disclosed to its shareholders (a.k.a. its actual owners). The public demand was so loud that the agency put issuing such a rule on its official to-do list for 2013. But the SEC never got around to issuing the rule in 2013.
And this year? Guess what disappeared?
Epicureans should support transparency and do what they can to fight back against the prevailing corporatocracy. It is shameful that Obama presides over a government that still overtly backs the corporations against the shareholder, taxpayer and man and woman in the street. Regrettably, President Obama is associated with a growing number of issues where money trumps welfare of the people, Democrats in particular, because they are most vocal about transparency and democracy. A disappointment
Epicurus would cry out for freedom against the corporatocracy!
In a bitter row over campaign funding, the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has accused the billionaire businessmen David and Charles Koch of “actually trying to buy the country”. A recent study by The Washington Post found that 17 Koch-backed groups had spent a combined $400m (£240m) in the 2012 election cycle trying to influence the outcome of various polls, including the presidential election. The figure makes the ultra-conservative Kochs the Republicans’ biggest backers.
Is this truly Constitutional? Epicurus was so disgusted with politics that he would have nothing to do with it. But we today could re-introduce democracy if we all really wanted to. We just have to vote against money in politics, and that is not a party issue; it’s just common sense. What has this to do with Epicurus? Common sense.
Do away with money in politics and you solve a slew of problems, including special interests and the relationship with Israel, to name but two.