{"id":1099,"date":"2012-03-20T21:19:20","date_gmt":"2012-03-21T01:19:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.law.harvard.edu\/journals\/hlpr\/?p=1099"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:24:21","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:24:21","slug":"the-wsjs-anonymous-defense-of-anonymous-corporate-political-spending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2012\/03\/20\/the-wsjs-anonymous-defense-of-anonymous-corporate-political-spending\/","title":{"rendered":"The WSJ’s Anonymous Defense of Anonymous Corporate Political Spending"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Anthony Kammer<\/p>\n

<\/em>The Wall Street Journal ran a rather disingenuous and misleading opinion piece on Sunday evening titledThe Corporate Disclosure Assault<\/a>, arguing that \u201c[u]nions and liberal activists are using proxy rules to attack business political speech.\u201d \u00a0The piece\u2014exactly like the undisclosed corporate money it\u2019s pandering to\u2014doesn\u2019t even have an author listed. \u00a0And its main point is that shareholders seeking transparency over the ways their money is spent on politics are committing \u201can abuse of the proxy process\u201d by voting for increased disclosure.<\/p>\n

According to the article\u2019s mystery author, calling for shareholder disclosure of corporate political expenditures is not \u201cthe effort of public-spirited believers in shareholder rights and transparency.\u201d \u00a0No, these are \u201cunions, left-wing activists, and their factotums\u201d who disagree with\u00a0Citizens United<\/em>, who allegedly want to \u201cexpose and then vilify companies that disagree with them.\u201d \u00a0The author claims to have uncovered a left-wing conspiracy, a \u201cbroad network of unions, green investment funds, public pensions and ideological bucket shops.\u201d \u00a0And what is the goal of this nefarious campaign? \u00a0\u201cThe specific target is to get companies to publicly disclose what they spend on politics.\u201d
\n
\nThis defense of secret political spending hardly engages with the arguments that\u00a0disclosure would serve important market functions and help investors make more informed investment decisions<\/a>. \u00a0Nor does it mention that disclosure serves our democracy by \u201cprovid[ing] the electorate with information\u201d or \u201chelp[ing] voters make informed choices in the political marketplace\u201d\u2014a compelling and legitimate state interest recognized even by the conservative majority in\u00a0Citizens United<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The unnamed author also seems to believe that whatever the law allows is therefore what it should always allow, writing \u201c[c]ompanies must already follow the campaign-finance and lobbying laws that provide significant political transparency.\u201d \u00a0He or she seems disinclined to grasp that laws change when legislators and courts make decisions, particularly when decisions overturn settled precedent and lead to new unanticipated problems in the law.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0explosion of SuperPACs and secret donations<\/a>\u00a0that came in the wake of\u00a0Citizens United<\/em>\u00a0was not fully anticipated. \u00a0As Trevor Potter said recently of the Supreme Court\u2019s decisions in\u00a0Buckley v. Valeo<\/em>\u00a0andCitizens United<\/em>, \u201cThey didn\u2019t expect this coordination and this lack of disclosure.<\/a>\u201d \u00a0For this WSJ author to claim that no response is justified, even one like disclosure which serves purely informational interests, is an invitation to accept unaccountable private power as a fact of life. \u00a0This is\u00a0wealth defense<\/a>\u00a0in search of a principle.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s precisely what this piece reeks of:\u00a0privilege finding itself under assault<\/a>. \u00a0This author wants us to see CEOs as victims and paints disclosure as an affront to their imagined right to spend other people\u2019s money influencing elections and swaying legislators. \u00a0Consider this excerpt: \u201cThe data dump serves no one save the political activists who can use it as a PR club to harass companies until they stop donating.\u201d Or his \u201ctranslation\u201d of the disclosure advocates true motivations: \u201cWe\u2019ll make life miserable for CEOs and trash their companies on MSNBC and the like until they shut up.\u201d \u00a0This sounds, as Corey Robin wrote for the Nation, a lot like \u201ca ruling class resting its claim to power upon its sense of victimhood.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

While the issue of shareholder proxy votes doesn\u2019t exactly grab headlines, the underlying principle\u2014that corporate management should be accountable to other constituencies in our society\u2014is a bedrock principle of democracy. This is something the opponents of disclosure certainly\u00a0understand. \u00a0The unnamed author even goes so far as to state, \u201cCorporations are not democracies.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are good reasons to believe that\u00a0more democratic governance models<\/a>\u00a0could have averted some of the excesses that produced the 2008 financial crisis and the explosion in income inequality.\u00a0But beyond the realm of corporate governance, the deeper issue is whether we remain a nation where popular sovereignty can set rules over private forms of power. \u00a0Denying voters crucial information about their political candidates is troublingly antidemocratic. \u00a0No wonder they find secrecy so appealing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Anthony Kammer The Wall Street Journal ran a rather disingenuous and misleading opinion piece on Sunday evening titledThe Corporate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-hJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}