PEOPLE FOR BLOG

Not content simply to pass a definitively right-wing budget, in recent weeks the extremist Republicans in control of Ohio’s legislature tacked on a slew of amendments to a substitute budget bill that read like a Radical Right Christmas wish list, including:

• Cracking down on student voting -- Republicans are attacking young people’s ability to cast a ballot by threatening state universities and trying to discourage them from supplying the proof-of-address documentation needed by students to get a voter ID! They’re going after universities’ revenue by requiring that any students to whom the schools provide utility bills or other proof be charged significantly less expensive in-state tuition -- a massive deterrent to keep schools from providing these forms to would-be voters.
• War on women -- The bill would block Planned Parenthood from receiving federal family-planning dollars … You might be thinking, “Ah, that old chestnut… will right-wing attacks on women’s health ever cease?” Well, if you live in Ohio, the answer is clearly, “not this year!”
• Attacking sex ed & teachers -- A provision about sex education opens teachers up a $5,000 fine and lawsuits from parents if their instruction “promotes gateway sexual activity.” Translated, this means that sex education teachers now face stiff penalties for teaching certain evidence-based lessons about health care, and for providing materials or information about contraception or several other topics the Religious Right doesn’t like (ie. doing their job).

If you live in Ohio, please help STOP this budget bill by calling now and urging your state representative to OPPOSE Sub. H.B. No. 59. Click here to find your legislator.

Today People For the American Way joined with 38 ally organizations and individuals in sending a letter to Congress to ask for support of the Shareholder Protection Act.  The Act – sponsored by Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) – would, among other measures, require that publicly traded corporations pre-approve their annual political expenditure budgets with shareholders and promptly disclose those expenditures to the public. 

The letter highlights the need for this type of legislation in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which “brought a flood of new and secretive money into elections.” Since that decision, corporate officers have been able to spend unlimited amounts of corporate treasury funds to influence elections, often under the veil of ‘dark money’ groups that do not disclose their donors.   In essence, this means that millions of Americans who have invested in corporations are having their money used to engage in partisan politics – without their knowledge.

Unsurprisingly, this post-Citizens United landscape of secret spending  is not popular with the public. The letter notes:

A 2012 survey conducted by Bannon Communications for the Corporate Reform Coalition found that more than 8 in 10 Americans (81%) believe that the secret flow of campaign spending is bad for democracy, and 87 percent agree that prompt disclosure of political spending would help voters, customers and shareholders hold companies accountable for political behavior.

PFAW continues to advocate against corporations being able to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence our elections.  Legislation requiring shareholder approval for, and public disclosure of, corporate election spending will help end some of the abuses made possible by Citizens United.

The full text of the joint letter is below.
 

April 25, 2013

U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C.  20515

United States Senate
Washington, D.C.  20510

RE: Support the Shareholder Protection Act

Dear Member of Congress:

We write to you to encourage your support of the Shareholder Protection Act, sponsored by Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ).

Our organizations come from diverse backgrounds, with concerns ranging from constitutional rights to corporate governance to protecting our air and water. We have many different priorities, but we all agree that the unprecedented 2010 Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, requires a strong response.

We are troubled for several reasons by the Supreme Court’s decision to give corporations the right under the First Amendment to spend unlimited funds from their corporate treasuries to support or attack candidates.

In the electoral arena, this decision has brought a flood of new and secretive money into elections, ratcheting up the cost of campaigns and increasing the time and resources needed for fundraising. Spending by outside groups funded largely by corporate interests and intended to influence the 2010 elections was more than four times as high than in 2006, the last mid-term cycle. Outside spending increased another four-fold again in the 2012 election cycle. The sources of much of this new money swamping our elections remains undisclosed, as corporations and other special interests launder their campaign funds through non-profit groups, such as the Chamber of Commerce, which are not required to disclose their donors. The ads funded by unaccountable corporate interests fueled massive attacks that compounded the negative tone of campaigns and added to the public cynicism of our elections.

In the legislative arena, the mere threat of unlimited corporate political spending gives corporate lobbyists a large new club to wield when lobbying lawmakers, and makes it harder for legislators to vote their conscience.

In corporate governance, unless a company sets its own internal policies otherwise, there are no rules or procedures established in the United States to ensure that shareholders – those who actually own the wealth of corporations – are informed of, or have the right to approve, decisions on spending their money on politics.

The Shareholder Protection Act provides a framework to rein in some of the damage in this troubling, new political landscape.

Specifically, the Act would:

• Mandate prior approval by shareholders for an annual political expenditure budget chosen by the management for a publicly held corporation.
• Require that each specific corporate political expenditure over a certain dollar threshold be approved by the Board of Directors and promptly disclosed to shareholders and the public.
• Require that institutional investors inform all persons in their investment funds how they voted on corporate political expenditures.
• Post on the Securities Exchange Commission web page how much each corporation is spending on elections and which candidates or issues they support or oppose.

American business leaders are concerned about the pressure on business to donate to political campaigns, and the influx of large, undisclosed donations to third party political organizations that are not required to disclose their sources of funding. In a Zogby International poll commissioned by the business-led Committee for Economic Development (CED), two-thirds of business leaders polled agreed with the statement: “the lack of transparency and oversight in corporate political activity encourages behavior that puts corporations at legal risk and endangers corporate reputations.”

In addition to business leaders, the general public at large believes in transparency and giving shareholders a voice. A 2012 survey conducted by Bannon Communications for the Corporate Reform Coalition found that more than 8 in 10 Americans (81%) believe that the secret flow of campaign spending is bad for democracy, and 87 percent agree that prompt disclosure of political spending would help voters, customers and shareholders hold companies accountable for political behavior.  Huge majorities of Americans across the political spectrum condemn corporate political spending and support strong reforms. For example, requiring corporations to get shareholder approval before spending money on politics is supported by 73 percent of both Republicans and Democrats, and 71 percent of Independents. About 84 percent of Americans agree that corporate political spending drowns out the voices of average Americans, and 83 percent believe that corporations and corporate CEOs have too much political power and influence.

Responsible corporate governance requires the involvement of informed shareholders and is not a partisan issue. We believe that holding management accountable and ensuring that political spending decisions are made transparently and in pursuit of sound business is important for both the market and for democracy.

We urge you to support the reasoned response that is the Shareholder Protection Act.

Sincerely,

Brennan Center for Justice at N.Y.U. School of Law
Center for Media and Democracy
Chesapeake Climate Action Network
Citizen Works
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)
Coffee Party USA
Common Cause
Corporate Accountability International
Corporate Ethics International/Business Ethics Network
Democrats.com
Demos
Free Speech for People
Friends of the Earth
Greenpeace
Harrington Investments, Inc.
Holy Cross International Justice Office
Illinois Campaign for Political Reform
Krull and Company, Peter W. Krull, President & Founder
League of Conservation Voters
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns
National Consumers League
New Progressive Alliance
North Carolina Center for Voter Engagement
NorthStar Asset Management, Inc.
Ohio Citizen Action
People For the American Way
Progressive States Network
Public Campaign
Public Citizen
Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
Social Equity Group, Ron Freund and Duncan Meaney
Strategic Counsel on Corporate Accountability, Sanford Lewis
Sunlight Foundation
Torres-Spelliscy, Ciara
U.S. Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG)
United Food and Commercial Workers
West Virginia Citizen Action
Wisconsin Democracy Campaign
Zevin Asset Management, LLC

Yesterday, the Senate unanimously confirmed Iowa’s Jane Kelly to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. Kelly, who currently serves as a federal public defender, becomes “only the second woman, and the first public defender, to serve in the history of the court that was established in 1891,” according to the Iowa City Gazette.

Kelly also makes history by having the quickest confirmation process of any of President Obama’s appeals court nominees so far, according to the Gazette. Kelly waited just 33 days for a confirmation vote, compared to the average 153 day wait for President Obama’s circuit court nominees (as of two weeks ago). Kelly’s quick confirmation, however, would not have been at all noteworthy at this point in George W. Bush administration, when appellate nominees waited an average of just 37 days between committee approval and Senate confirmation.  

Kelly’s speedy confirmation may have something to do with the senators supporting her. Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, who as ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee has been instrumental in obstructing President Obama’s judicial nominees, seemed to put aside his obstruction habits for a nominee from his own state.
 

Today People For the American Way joined with more than eighty other national and state organizations in sending a letter to all members of Congress asking for support of the Student Non-Discrimination Act (SNDA).  SNDA, which was reintroduced in the House today by Reps. Jared Polis (D-CO) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), would prohibit discrimination and harassment based on actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity in public schools. 

As the letter notes, the need for this type of legislation is profound:

“A 2011 study of more than 8,500 LGBT middle and high school students across the US found that eight out of ten reported experiencing harassment at their school within the past year based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, and three-fifths said they felt unsafe at school because of who they are. Nearly three in ten skipped at least one day of school within the previous month because of concerns for their safety. Most tragically, LGBT youth face significantly increased risks for suicide related to mental health issues that often arise from poor treatment and discrimination in schools.”

Today a Florida eighth grader named Bayli put a face on these alarming numbers, telling the Huffington Post that her friends regularly face bullying because of their sexual orientation:

“Watching it tear apart my friends is what scared me the most. It's not right, I don't like it, and I don't [like seeing] my friends going through it.”

PFAW has long spoken out on the pervasive problem of bullying, including tracking the work of right wing anti-anti-bullying activists.  With the majority of LGBT young people reporting that they do not feel safe in their own schools, the need for action only continues to grow.  Discrimination and harassment of LGBT youth has no place in our nation’s classrooms. 
 

Back in September, PFAW senior fellow Jamie Raskin wrote a preview of the major cases coming before the Supreme Court this term, one of which, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, deals with the ability of foreign nationals to sue corporations for human rights abuses in American courts. The Supreme Court today issued a sweeping ruling siding with the multinational corporations accused of abuse. Main Justice sums up the facts of the case:

The plaintiffs accuse Royal Dutch, the Shell Transport and Trading Company and their joint Nigerian subsidy of allowing, indeed encouraging, atrocities by the Nigerian military against people who were protesting environmental damage caused by drilling in the Niger Delta in the 1990s. The companies were complicit in beatings, rapes and mass arrests by paying the soldiers, feeding them and allowing them to use oil company property as staging areas for their attacks, the plaintiffs maintain.

At issue was the application of the Alien Tort Statute, enacted in 1789, that gives United States courts jurisdiction over civil actions brought by aliens alleging torts committed in violation of United States treaties or international law. The seldom-used ATS was enacted partly in response to piracy on the high seas. The Nigerian plaintiffs, now legal residents of the United States, tried to use it in a present-day context.

As Jamie Raskin wrote in his Supreme Court preview, the Second Circuit radically twisted legal precedent in this case to rule that individuals could not sue corporations under the Alien Tort Statute:

Jurisdiction to hear the suit was clear. In 2004, the Supreme Court held, in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, that the Alien Tort Statute gave federal courts jurisdiction to hear claims about torts committed against aliens that violate well-established international norms like the human rights norms implicated in this case. Yet a bitterly divided Second Circuit panel in Kiobel held for the first time that the statute does not allow courts to hear suits against corporations as opposed to individuals. The Kiobel majority’s ruling on this issue was amazing since the issue was never raised, never briefed, never argued and never decided in any of the proceedings below that took place over the course of nearly a decade. (This rings a bell for close observers of the Citizens United majority, which also pulled a rabbit out of a hat to ask and answer a question never raised below.)

Today, the Roberts Court agreed. The Court unanimously ruled against the Nigerians in Kiobel, but disagreed about how far the ruling should go. Justice Roberts, writing for the conservative majority, wrote a broad ruling in favor of the corporations accused of human rights abuses. The four moderate justices concurred with the majority’s ruling on this particular case, but left the door open for similar cases to be tried in U.S. Courts. Main Justice explains:

Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote that the defendants’ “minimal and indirect presence in the United States was not enough to give American courts jurisdiction over the case.”  But he stopped short of declaring that similar cases should never end up in American courts if the abuse at issue “adversely affects an important American national interest.” Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan agreed with him.

Nicole Flatow at ThinkProgress explains the possible implications of the majority’s ruling:

This decision not only means that Nigerians cannot sue foreign corporations for their conduct abroad. On this particular point, the four-justice Breyer concurrence agreed that this case did not pass muster. Roberts’ sweeping pronouncement against extraterritoriality may also mean that foreign nationals subject to abuse, for example, at the hands of a U.S. corporation that houses its factories in places whose laws shield it from liability, or an American citizen who commits human rights violations abroad against foreigners, also could not be subject to suit in the United States.

…

The scope of the opinion will not become clear until it is interpreted by courts. Extraterritoriality is a legal concept that asks not just whether conduct took place abroad, but also whether the claims “touch and concern the territory of the United States” such that a plaintiff can overcome the presumption against them. The only hint the court gives is that lawsuits against corporations will face a particularly heavy burden, noting, “Corporations are often present in many countries, and it would reach too far to say that mere corporate presence suffices.”

What is clear is that the presumption is exceedingly difficult to overcome, and that both individuals and corporations have a high chance of skirting liability simply by doing their dirty work elsewhere.

Earlier today, PFAW criticized Sen. Chuck Grassley's transparent plan to prevent President Obama from ever being able to restore balance to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, which tilts heavily to the far right after eight years of ideological appointments by George W. Bush. Senate Republicans have not allowed President Obama to get even one judge on this circuit, because they recognize it as a powerful tool to issue sweeping rulings unmoored from the law or common sense and against the interests of ordinary people. As a result, judges who depart or take senior status have not been replaced, and not more than a third of its 11 seats are vacant.

Grassley claims the DC Circuit's caseload is so low that three of its vacant seats should simply be eliminated, thereby enshrining the current far right majority. His "reasoning," if it can be called that, is that if you calculate how many cases there are per judgeship – not per actual judge, but per judgeship, even if it is vacant – then the resulting number is so low that some of those judgeships must be eliminated.

What Grassley leaves out is that the cases heard by the DC Circuit are on balance far, far more complex than cases in other circuits. So it makes no sense to compare the number of cases without looking at other factors. Congress has deliberately created a unique role for the DC Circuit, making it the exclusive court to consider appeals of a wide variety of federal actions. Even when the law allows parties to go to a different circuit, they often choose the DC Circuit because of its recognized expertise in complex administrative matters. So the cases heard by the DC Circuit are, on average, far more complex than the cases heard by other circuits.

Not surprisingly, then, it takes longer for a case to be decided in the DC Circuit than it takes in the majority of other circuits. For instance, according to the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts, it takes nearly 50% longer on average for a case to go through the DC Circuit than the Eleventh Circuit, yet Grassley's bill would give one of the former's stolen judgeships to the latter. And he calls this the Court Efficiency Act!

With a vacancy crisis of historic proportions closing the doors of justice to more and more Americans, none of our circuits should be stripped of judgeships.

If you want to know the real reason Grassley is trying to freeze the DC Circuit into place, read PFAW's report America's Progress at Risk: Restoring Balance to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. It talks about how in areas ranging from environmental protection to workers' rights to Wall Street reform to consumer health and safety, the skewed DC Circuit can be counted on to issue ideological rulings reflecting deep hostility to the ability of the American people to use the power of government to address major problems that cannot effectively be addressed otherwise. No wonder Grassley's bill is being co-sponsored by Republicans senators like Orrin Hatch, Jeff Sessions, Mike Lee, and Ted Cruz.

The West Virginia Legislature has approved a resolution calling on Congress to propose a constitutional amendment overturning the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC and related cases.  This makes West Virginia the twelfth state to call for such an amendment.

People For the American Way has been working with activists in West Virginia to help rally support for the resolution.  As PFAW Legislative Representative Calvin Sloan noted in a recent action alert, many West Virginians already understood the need to get big money out of politics:

“West Virginia has already seen the drastic need for a constitutional amendment to enact free and fair elections. In 2010, West Virginia’s congressional races attracted more than $15 million from outside groups such as American Crossroads and FreedomWorks, organizations that can, in the wake of Citizens United, raise and spend unlimited amounts of money in our elections.”

As a West Virginian, I am especially proud to see this resolution pass in my home state.  While the states that have called for an amendment are diverse – stretching from Hawaii to Rhode Island – protecting the integrity of our democratic process is a core American value.  As one West Virginia delegate pointed out,

“One of government's roles within this great democracy is making sure everyone has a voice.”

West Virginians are now formally joining the proliferation of voices across the country calling for a democracy of, by, and for the people.