Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Are U.S. companies living up to their commitments to democracy?

Superhero businessman revealing American flag
BrianAJackson/Getty Images

Fordham is a PhD student in political science at the University of Washington. Brumbach is an associate professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

“[A]s a company, we have a responsibility to engage. For this reason, we are working together with other businesses through groups like the Business Roundtable to support efforts to enhance every person’s ability to vote.”

These were the words of AT&T CEO John Stankey, responding to a Georgia law that limited absentee voting. A similar bill proposed in Texas prompted Dell CEO Michael Dell to issue the following statement: “Free, fair, equitable access to voting is the foundation of American democracy. Those rights — especially for women, communities of color — have been hard-earned. Governments should ensure citizens have their voices heard. HB6 does the opposite, and we are opposed to it.”

The pattern is clear: U.S. business leaders are increasingly vocal in support of democratic institutions.


The reasons that business leaders would support democracy are not unclear. Compared to authoritarian regimes, democracies produce greater economic growth, invest more in human capital, and create more stable societies through the rule of law. Consumers are also quick to punish firms that support politicians with extreme or undemocratic views. At the same time, however, democracy means that all segments of society, including business, must engage in compromise and power sharing with those that might have very different interests over taxation, regulation, immigration, and social issues.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

But are major U.S. firms living up to their stated commitments to democracy? This question is at the heart of this report from the Center for Political Accountability. While public statements in support of democracy and the rule of law are laudable, such talk means little if firms’ political spending is at odds with these commitments.

This question has taken on new importance as American democracy has come under strain over the past decade and a half. As the report highlights, large amounts of spending from corporate sources have supported gerrymandering efforts and restrictions on voting rights that have enabled state legislatures to enact unpopular policies across many policy realms, including abortion, LGBT rights, health care, and gun control. More recently, legislatures have even threatened to subvert presidential elections — which, if acted upon, would profoundly destabilize the rule of law in America.

There are two reasons why this report makes an important contribution. The first is that understanding political spending is no easy task. U.S. campaign finance law makes it easy to obscure the flow of money to candidates, parties, and especially to political organizations. So-called 527 organizations like the Republican State Leadership Committee, which this report focuses on, pool together unlimited contributions from many sources, making it difficult to hold specific donors accountable for how the money is spent.

The second reason is that political spending can have complex and unintended consequences for democratic institutions. Uniquely among wealthy countries, the United States puts most of its authority over democratic institutions like elections and legislative districting at the state level, where many big-spending political groups like the RSLC focus their efforts, often with little transparency. The decline of local newspapers and the dominance of national culture wars in media have made it much more difficult to track threats to democracy that arise from the state level — and whose political spending is financing them.

Political spending has long been a challenge for American democracy. But this challenge has become more urgent in recent years as society polarized and political spending grew larger and less transparent. In this light, the Center for Political Accountability’s efforts to shed light on political shareholders’ spending — giving employees, consumers, and citizens the tools to make informed economic and political decisions — have taken on new significance.

The link for those who want to read the Full Report:

https://www.politicalaccountability.net/wp-content...

Read More

Mobile phone listing Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple and Microsoft

Like black holes, the largest companies have a reach seemingly exceeds human capabilities, writes Frazier.

SOPA Images/Getty Images

Corporate black holes prevent fair play in the U.S. economy

Frazier is an assistant professor at the Crump College of Law at St. Thomas University and a Tarbell fellow.

NASA defines a black hole as “a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light can not get out.” This celestial abnormality can even distort space-time. Though invisible to the human eye, a black hole is detectable by the extent to which everything around it is morphed to its will.

The same is true of our biggest corporations. The total reach of companies like Amazon, Meta and Google seemingly exceeds human capabilities. Yet, the extent to which our laws, culture and daily lives revolve around these corporate black holes reveals a hard truth: Fair play does not characterize our economy. The best ideas may never come to fruition and the smartest people may never realize their potential — they lack the escape velocity necessary to operate beyond the pull of the black holes.

Keep ReadingShow less
Young adults shopping for clothes

Members of Gen Z consume at an unsustainable rate: clothes, makeup, technology and every other imaginable product.

RyanJLane/Getty Images

Mass consumerism and the hypocrisy of Gen Z

Pruthi is a professor of entrepreneurship at San Jose State University, where she is a co-founder and director ofHonorsX, and a public voices fellow with The OpEd Project. Kharbanda is a senior at Presentation High School in San Jose, Calif.

California lawmakers recently approved two bills banning grocery and convenience stores statewide from offering customers reusable plastic bags. These bills are the next step in combating plastic waste, but what about the waste from mass consumerism that has come to pervade our lives?

Through the past decades, we have been trained to shop, purchase and consume products to solve our problems. While mending old clothing or refurbishing used goods have become things of the past, new products that are ubiquitously promoted are cramming our stores, screens, mailboxes and nearly every aspect of our lives.

Growing up in the digital age, Gen Z is the prime target for this consumerist culture. Their lives are catered toward finding flaws with what they currently own and buying the next best thing. In the process, our world lays waste, proving the disastrous effects of those spending habits.

Keep ReadingShow less
Iceberg hiding money below
wenmei Zhou/Getty Images

The hidden iceberg: Why corporate treasury spending matters

Freed is president and co-founder of the Center for Political Accountability.

Too much media coverage and other political analyses focus on contributions by corporate political action committees but overlook the serious consequences of political contributions made directly from corporate treasury funds.

In talks with corporate executives, the default too often is almost exclusively on company political engagement through its PAC. This ignores what one political scientist has likened to an iceberg of spending, where disclosure is not required (and hence is “dark money”) or is partial (only by the recipient, not the donor) and totals are much greater than the amounts allowed for PAC spending.

Keep ReadingShow less
hand reaching out over an American flag
Nikolay Ponomarenko/Getty Images

Big Philanthropy to the rescue? Think again.

Cain has served in leadership roles at numerous foundations, nonprofits and for-profit corporations. He was a founding partner of American Philanthropic.

As the media and elites across America take up a fight to “save democracy,” Big Philanthropy is casting itself in the role of superhero. Since 2011, the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for High Impact Philanthropy reports, some $5.7 billion has gone to programs supporting U.S. democracy, with grant announcements that often depict foundations as stepping up to forestall a doomsday.

The Carnegie Corporation, warning of a “fragility of our democracy ... unimaginable just a few years ago,” has pledged to strengthen social cohesion and combat polarization. The MacArthur Foundation is partnering with Carnegie and the Ford and Knight foundations, among others, in the $500 million Press Forward effort to “address the crisis in local news.” As Knight president Alberto Ibargüen put it to the New York Times: “There is a new understanding of the importance of information in the management of community, in the management of democracy in America.”

Keep ReadingShow less
American flag and business imagery
Sean Gladwell/Getty Images

How your company can follow the model for political spending

Freed is president and co-founder, Hanna is research director, and Sandstrom is strategic advisor at the Center for Political Accountability.

With corporate political disclosure and accountability accepted as the norm, the next step for responsible companies is to put in place a framework for approaching, governing and assessing their election-related spending. The framework would establish policies for when or whether to spend and a process for evaluating the benefits and risks associated with a decision to use corporate resources to advance a political cause or candidate.

Keep ReadingShow less