Skip to content
Election Overtime Project
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories
Ducks

The 12 worst House districts: Experts label gerrymandering's dirty dozen

Former felon Erica Racz registering to voting

Florida top court ruling on felon voting is hardly the final word

Video: Disinformation and what businesses can do about it

Video: Disinformation and what businesses can do about it
Disinformation & What Businesses Can Do About It
www.youtube.com
Our Staff
By Our StaffNov 16, 2021
Our Staff
The Fulcrum staff.
See More Writings by author

It's no secret: America's electoral system faces a crisis of trust, driven by the proliferation of disinformation that threatens Americans' trust in elections. Businesses have a vested interest in a stable democracy, but what can they do to address these challenges? This Business for America webinar explores the risks facing our democracy, the state-of-play regarding state and federal elections policy, and practical actions the private sector can take to promote trust and transparency in campaigns and elections.

Latest news

Eric Adams
Corruption

Eric Adams is trying on Donald Trump’s playbook

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
© Copyright 2024