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Saturday, October 27, 2012

Billionaires Steal Elections: Chamber of Commerce- A century of secrets and lies

The public is fed up.

Activists, led by Public Citizen and our allies, marked the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s 100th anniversary with a rally and a march last Friday on the Chamber’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.

There, in a mock “birthday” celebration, we delivered cards signed by more than 30,000 activists like you.

Our message to the Chamber was clear: End your century of secrets and lies by disclosing which corporations are secretly funding the negative, misleading campaign ads you’re running across the nation.

Check out video and photos from the rally and read more about the event.

No political ads this year will say “Paid for by Chevron” or “I’m Dow Chemical and I approve this message.”

That doesn’t mean Corporate America isn’t spending millions to broadcast deceptive political ads.

As a consequence of the U.S. Supreme Court’s reckless ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, massive corporations, billionaires and other interest groups can launder their political spending through the Chamber and dark money groups like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, concealing the spenders from any accountability to the voting public.

In the coming year, we’ll turn up the pressure on the Chamber — which also distorts the lawmaking process with its legions of corporate lobbyists — in order to inform the public about its efforts to make our government one that’s run by the corporations, for the corporations.

Read our blog for more about the Chamber’s attempts to distort our democracy.

And we’ll continue our fight for bold new reforms, including a new Securities and Exchange Commission rule requiring disclosure of corporate political spending and a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, to make sure lawmakers prioritize human needs over corporate greed.


thumbnail photo of Rick Claypool
Thanks for all you do,

Rick Claypool
Public Citizen’s Online Action Team
action@citizen.org

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