Dear Friends,
With the holiday shopping surge off to a roaring start, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio recently took to the national airwaves to release a 2011 holiday shopping guide tracking the transparency and political spending practices of some of the nation's largest companies--including many retail giants.
The guide shows how consumer dollars spent at the mall can end up paying for controversial political ads without shoppers ever knowing.
Since the Supreme Court's controversial Citizens United ruling, which allowed companies to spend unlimited money directly in elections, Public Advocate de Blasio has been pressuring companies to fully disclose and rein in their corporate political spending. De Blasio's success stories include some of the nation's largest financial institutions including Citibank, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan Chase. In August 2010, the Public Advocate founded the national Coalition for Accountability in Political Spending (CAPS) which released the holiday guide.
> Download the Holiday Shopping guide here
Utilizing two indices of company openness, the Shopping Guide highlights retailers, banks and brand names with some of the most opaque political spending practices, including:
- MasterCard
- Amazon.com
- Wal-Mart
- CVS Caremark Corp.
- Costco
- Lowe's Companies, Inc.
- Walgreen Co.
- Sprint Nextel Corp.
- Walt Disney Co.
- NIKE, Inc.
- Berkshire Hathaway (owner of Fruit of the Loom and Russell Athletic)
We hope you find this guide of interest and value. For more details, visit www.politicalspending.org
Best,
Jeff S. Merritt
Senior Advisor
NYC Public Advocate Bill de Blasio