蜜桃传媒

Why does corporate political spending have the potential to be democracy-ending?

Under corporate law, corporations must relentlessly focus on profit. Democracy requires participation by citizens, equal treatment of voters, politicians who serve limited terms of office and respect for the rule of law.  Corporate political spending can be democracy ending when it enables an authoritarian politician to gain power, keep power, and abuse power. This is part of what happened in 1933 in Germany. Corporate political funding enabled the rise of the Nazi Party.

How has Donald Trump exploited America鈥檚 privately funded campaign finance system?

The campaign finance system was already referred by many campaign finance critics as a system of legalized bribery before Trump entered the stage. Trump has benefited from the campaign finance system in a number of strange and novel ways.  For one, the creation of WinRed, a platform to facilitate small donors from Republicans has been wildly successful at getting small donors to give money to the Trump campaigns in 2020 and 2024. But WinRed has also been a subject of controversy because Trump鈥檚 2020 campaign had prechecked boxed on the platform which turned one time donations into multiple monthly donations. Then close to the 2020 election this turned into weekly donations which the Trump campaign referred to as 鈥渢he money bomb.鈥� Trump has also benefited from campaign funds going to his businesses (as venues for campaign events). Then after the 2020 election, Trump fundraised claiming that the money would go an election defense fund. This election defense fund did not exist. This is why Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, who was on the January 6Th Select Committee, called the Big Lie was also 鈥渢he big rip off.鈥�  Now in the 2024 election, Trump has used campaign donations to pay for his criminal lawyers as if it were a criminal defense fund instead of presidential election campaign.

How did corporate political spending in Germany in the 1930s lead to the rise of the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler?  

In early 1933 the Nazi Party was deeply in debt because a failed attempt to run Hitler to be the president of Germany. Goering invited top German corporate leaders to his house and Hitler gave an anti-democracy speech were he referred to the next upcoming election as the last election. After the speech the corporate executives pledged millions of marks to the Nazi Party. And the money didn鈥檛 just come from these men alone, rather the money came from their respective corporations. This money enabled Nazis to rebound and by the end of 1933, Hitler was in power and German civil rights had been suspended.

How do corporations erode faith in democratic institutions?

Corporations could be neutral or even supportive of democratic institutions. But if we look at American history, often corporations can erode faith in democratic institutions by causing corporate scandals that engulf politicians.  For example, the in Credit Mobilier scandal the highest echelons of American politics were implicated. What happened is when United Pacific (UP) railroad was building the transcontinental railroad members of the board of UP set up Credit Mobilier as a company that would actually build the railroad.  They owned both companies as shareholders and then Credit Mobilier would overcharge UP for all of the work and shareholders of Credit Mobilier got wildly rich. To keep this scam going, members of Congress and even the Vice President of the United States were sold share thereby making them shareholders in Credit Mobilier who were in on the overcharging scam. Add to this that the public was subsidizing the building of the railroad and so if UP when bankrupt it would be largely at public expense. So the profit went into private hands while the tax payer bore all of the risk of the downside. But even after this scandal spilled into public no one was punished. The impression this scandal left was that rich and the powerful could get away with anything. This contributed to the Gilded Age and its reputation for rampant corruption.

What role did dark money and legal structures play in facilitating the events of January 6?  How has it gotten worse since?

Dark money is money that is spent in politics from an undisclosed source.  Two billion dollars in cark money has been used in elections post-Citizens United. Dark money can hide illegal money in elections like the dark money that allowed money from a Malaysian businessman to be injected in 2012 reelection of Obama. Dark money has also been used in the 2020 election in Florida to elect Republicans to the Florida legislature. And unfortunately, dark money groups were also involved in January 6th.  One dark money group called the Rule of Law Defense Fund which is an offshoot of Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) sent out robocalls that said, 鈥淎t 1:00 p.m. [January 6, 2021], we will march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal. We are hoping patriots like you will join us to continue to fight to protect the integrity of our elections.鈥�  The funding of RAGA is 50% from corporations and trade associations. Trade associations are full of dark money.  Dark money has gotten a huge boost on the right when a billionaire gave Leonard Leo control of his $1.6 billion company this has allowed Leo to continue his dark money efforts to impact elections.

What can be done to change the incentives for corporations and other big spenders in their attempts to hijack the democratic process by joining forces with the antidemocratic fringe in order to achieve short-term corporate goals?

After January 6th hundreds of corporations said that they would stop giving money to the Republicans who objected to Biden鈥檚 electoral college votes. But few corporations kept this promise.  For some it took mere months to renege on their promise. For others it took years. But when Corporatocracy went to press corporations have given $90 million to Republicans who objected to Biden鈥檚 electoral college votes. Today the number is over $140 million. And these corporations have not been held accountable for this by customers or investors. Thus corporate leaders have no reason to be better. They can keep funding those who do not believe in democracy.

What is the Democracy Litmus test and how could it be used to ensure that politicians and corporations act in ways that support American democracy?  

The lack of accountability for corporations backing election deniers of various stripes is why I urge readers to hold politicians and their corporate backers to Democracy Litmus Test. The basics of the test are: is the actions of politician or the corporate backer good for democracy or not? I argue in the book providing money for the re-election of election deniers, and members of Congress who objected to Biden鈥檚 valid votes, or those who tried to overthrow the 2020 election is not helping democracy.  

Surprisingly, corporate use of prison labor, with the consent of the federal and state governments, is still allowed in this country.  What is the history of this practice and why hasn鈥檛 it been abolished?

There is a dark history of the use of prison labor that dates back to the end of the Civil War when the 13th Amendment ended slavery except as punishment for a crime.  This exception has been exploited ever since by corporations who want labor at below market and certainly below minimum wage levels. Right after the Civil War, southern states had convicts and few prisons to house them. The states decided to enact a system of convict leasing, in which convicts were leased to corporations who could treat the convicts horribly. The practice of convict leasing finally ended around World War II. But the practice of using forced and coerced prison labor continues to this day. Many top corporations benefit from the use of prison labor. The book names names of corporations who do this.

How did corporate funding influence January 6 and how did it keep flowing to the Sedition Caucus of legislators who persisted in objecting to the lawful electors of Joe Biden?

Fortunately for the fate of American democracy January 6th was a failed coup attempt and had little corporate money backing it. There was corporate money in the umbrella group RAGA. And Mike Lindell鈥檚 MyPillow sponsored some of the buses that brought people to the capitol.  As mentioned above, most corporations kept giving money to the Sedition Caucus. As of today that corporate funding is over $140 million.  This is one causal explanation of why the Congress flipped to the right in 2022. And the continued spending will help determine who is in control of congress in 2025 when electoral votes are due to be counted from the 2024 election. Corporations that back election deniers and the Sedition Caucus do not deserve the public鈥檚 financial support as customers or investors.

How have corporations demonstrated enormous inconsistency between their public stances on social issues like abortion and gay rights and their political spending?

Because corporations are such large enterprises with so many employees, one hand may not know what the other hand is doing. Thus corporations are often in the position of make contradictory statements or contradictory actions. For example, after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, many corporations criticized the Supreme Court for gutting abortion rights and some large corporations even offered to pay for travel for women employees who would have to travel out of state to get abortion care.  But some of these very same corporations are also funding anti-abortion Republican law makers. This book calls out this hypocrisy. The same can be true in the area of gay rights. A corporation can say they are for LGBTQ+ equality publicly and then fund politicians who are passing laws that criminalize drag shows or ban care for transgendered youth.  Consumers who care about reproductive health for women and equal rights for gay people should follow the money behind the politicians pushing these regressive policies.

Why do the courts struggle to hold corporations and corrupt politicians accountable?

The inability of courts to hold corporations accountable and the inability of those same institutions to hold corrupt politicians accountable has the same root cause: the U.S. Supreme Court. Especially the Roberts Supreme Court has been deregulating corruption since 2005. The court has done this both in campaign finance cases and white collar crime cases. The end result is that prosecuting corporations and/or corrupt politicians is harder and harder. Many of those found guilty by juries and set free by higher courts including the Supreme Court. This happened in cases like McDonnell, Kelly (the Bridgegate case), and Percoco. And in a case that was just decided by the Supreme Court called Snyder, the Supreme Court did it again. They are redefining was corruption means and making the word cover very little corrupt activity that would horrify the average voter. This Supreme Court seems very comfortable with letting corrupt corporations and politicians off the hook. This undermines the rule of law as it makes a mockery of the concept that no one is above the law.

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Ciara Torres-Spelliscy is Professor of Law at Stetson University and a Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. She is the author of Corporate Citizen?: An Argument for the Separation of Corporation and State and Political Brands. Torres-Spelliscy also serves on the board of directors of the Mertz Gilmore Foundation and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).