Lucas,
This is what we're up against:
U.S. Chamber of Commerce: $100 million
Sheldon Adelson: $100 million
Karl Rove's Crossroads groups: $300 million
Charles and David Koch: $400 million
Leave aside which politicians or party these men and institutions -- and others like them -- are backing.
Think about what it means for our democracy and the very future of this nation when so few could spend so much to undermine the bedrock principle of one person, one vote.
Please read my email from earlier this week (copied below in case you missed it) for a sample of what we're able to do together -- on a budget that is beyond modest compared to the resources of the oligarchs -- thanks to the support of people like you.
And please, if you can, chip in $5, $50 or even $500 right now so that Public Citizen can keep fighting to prevent the decimation of democracy. <
Thank you for making possible this critical work we do to overcome corporate power.
Onward,
Robert
Politics aside, there is one thing the Republican and Democratic National Conventions have in common:
Corporate sponsorships.
The Republicans were quite brazen about it. Their convention host committee's website prominently displayed the logos of many of its Big Business funders.
The Democrats aren't accepting corporate cash for their convention itself, but they are allowing in-kind donations from corporations for the event, and they are soliciting corporate funding to cover expenses beyond those accrued at the venue.
Here are just a few of the corporations that have in some way funded the major parties' convention activities.
American Petroleum Institute
Bank of America
Chevron
Coca-Cola
Duke Energy
Ford
Microsoft
UPS
Walmart
Wells Fargo
It's a certainty that other corporate behemoths have funded one or both conventions but don't want their customers and shareholders -- a.k.a. the voting public -- to know about it.
Is this really how our political process is supposed to work?
Public Citizen aspires to a more dignified and less degenerate form of democracy.
And I'm guessing you do, too.
You heard recently from my colleague Rick Claypool about our petition urging both major parties to disclose their current convention funders immediately and ban corporate sponsorships of any kind for future conventions. I hope you had a chance to sign the petition.
Public Citizen is fighting the corrupting influence of corporate money in politics on numerous other fronts:
- We've organized attendees to alert us about any corporate-sponsored events or potentially illegal lobbying activity they come across at the conventions.
- Public Citizen, along with allies in the Corporate Reform Coalition that we co-chair, has so far generated 300,000 public comments urging the Securities and Exchange Commission to require corporations to disclose their political spending. The SEC had previously never received more than 200,000 public comments on any topic.
- Public Citizen activists sent thousands of emails and made hundreds of phone calls to their senators in support of the DISCLOSE Act, which would expose the secret "independent expenditures" that are rotting our democracy from the outside in. Unfortunately, not one Republican in the Senate was willing to defy Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and support this critical campaign finance reform measure.
- Tens of thousands of Public Citizen supporters have contacted their members of Congress to urge passage of the Shareholder Protection Act, which would require corporations to get approval from their shareholders before spending corporate money on elections.
- This spring, shareholders organized by Public Citizen and our partners attended the annual shareholder meetings of 3M, Bank of America and Target to go on record demanding that those corporations adopt resolutions not to spend shareholder money on elections. We're planning more shareholder actions for the spring of 2013.
- If President Obama is re-elected, we will insist that he finally act on the request from 30,000+ Public Citizen activists and sign his proposed executive order requiring government contractors to reveal their election spending.
- And, last but not least, our campaign to win a constitutional amendment overturning the Supreme Court's outlandish Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling is gaining momentum by the day -- including President Obama adding his name to those calling for an amendment.
Public Citizen is able to do so much to bring transparency to our political process -- to drag the dark money into the light -- because we are hundreds of thousands of people like you across the country standing side-by-side to prevent a wholesale corporate takeover.
For millions more of our fellow Americans, the election this fall will be the real eye-opener that reveals the extent to which corporations are corroding our democracy.
I need your help to make sure that Public Citizen has the resources to engage those folks in the indispensable work that you and I have been doing together.
Please contribute $3 or more -- whatever you can -- to Public Citizen right now.
Donate $100 or more and we'll send you a DVD of An Unreasonable Man as our thanks.
Your support is what makes Public Citizen so strong.
Thank you,
Robert Weissman
President, Public Citizen