Public Citizen just sent me a (mass-mailed) email, indicating the following:
At shareholder meetings for Bank of America, Target and 3M, we’ll be calling out CEOs and demanding they stop spending company money on corporate electioneering.
Our basic argument is this: The CEOs of publicly traded corporations shouldn’t be able to use company money as their private political war chests — that money belongs to investors, largely working people with retirement accounts. In other words, corporations aren’t people, but shareholders are — and they have the right to stop corporate political spending (it’s the shareholders — not the executives — who actually own publicly traded corporations).
Demonstrations of public support for reining in corporate political spending and increasing disclosure will also will help build momentum toward longer term solutions, such as a constitutional amendment and public financing of elections.
This sounds like a great idea. If big public corporations want to use shareholder money for swaying public opinion and electioneering, they should have widespread shareholder consent.
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