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.

Thanks for all you do, Rick Claypool Public Citizen’s Online Action Team action@citizen.org

Corporations have no business in politics because Wall Street and corporations have corrupted the political process.

Anger at corporations is spilling -- literally -- into the streets.

Big businesses are no longer content to wield their considerable influence only through lobbyists. Now they want to use their profits to directly elect and defeat political candidates, and thanks to Citizens United, there's nothing to stop them.

We believe that elections should be decided by "we, the people," not "they, the corporations." That's why we're launching a major campaign calling on publicly traded companies not to spend their profits on politics in the 2012 elections. Their ability to spend huge amounts of money drowns out the rest of our voices.

We need your help to determine where to start. Vote today and tell us who is #1 on your "worst of the worst" list.

Will you vote for Bank of America, which is under investigation for its role in the mortgage collapse and which gave $14 million to PACs (political action committees)? Or will Comcast, a company that pays big bucks to the American Legislative Exchange Council for the privilege of sitting side-by-side with state legislators to draft bills to protect its media monopoly, be your top choice?

See who else made our list and submit your vote today. Think we missed someone? There is even a write-in ballot! (Just in case you're wondering why Koch Industries isn't on our list: We're focusing on publicly traded companies, and Koch is private. But don't worry -- we're keeping the pressure on the Kochs in other ways!)

It's time for corporations to get out of the business of electing our leaders. Please vote today, and stay tuned for more ways you can help take back our democracy.

Sincerely,

Bob Edgar
and the rest of the team at Common Cause
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Common Cause is a national nonpartisan organization with chapters in 35 states. Our mailing address is 1133 19th Street NW, 9th Floor, Washington, DC 20036. Our phone number is (202) 833-1200.