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“Outside radical groups,” squawked Rep. Scott Garrett at a recent Republican inquisition into a citizens’ petition that’s been submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Garrett is foaming at the mouth on behalf of corporate chieftains who’re pouring unlimited (and untold) amounts of their shareholders’ money into our elections. The great majority of Americans agree that, at the very least, shareholders have a right to be told how much of their money is being spent on behalf of which candidates. So, more than 500,000 citizens have petitioned the SEC for such a disclosure rule.
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Who are these scary citizens, considered such a threat to corporate power that a Congress critter is tarring them publicly as outside radicals? They’re professors from leading law schools, state and national elected officials, pension fund directors, public interest advocates, and corporate shareholders. Not exactly outsiders, much less radicals.
And that’s what makes them so dangerous to the autocratic elites who run corporations as their own fiefdoms. Top executives want no accountability for the hundreds-of-millions of shareholder dollars they’re spending to elect corporate lickspittles like Garrett. Don’t question us, they demand, just trust us.
Uh… no. Far from earning trust, they’ve already wrecked our economy and betrayed our nation’s egalitarian ideals – while feathering their own plutocratic nests. Now they want free reign to pervert America’s democratic process with clandestine election campaigns secretly financed with other people’s money.
This is Jim Hightower saying… NO! These kleptocrats are the real radicals. It’s time to stop them, not only by disclosing their thievery, but ultimately by outlawing it – and retuning elections to the people. To join the effort, contact Public Citizen: www.citizen.org.
http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=183
“Investors urging openness on political spending,” The Washington Post, May 18, 2013.
“SEC pressed to abandon rule on political disclosure,” The Washington Post,
May 17, 2013.
“Angry outbursts raise risk of heart attacks,” Washington Post, May 21, 2013.