About Kelly Ngo

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Disconnect on display: Google shareholders pressure the data-collection giant to be more transparent at annual meeting

Today Google’s shareholders will once again press the company at its annual shareholder meeting with a resolution to be more transparent about its lobbying expenditures. Though the company opposes the proposal, investors are right to request the tech giant to disclose this information.

Google has embraced old-school lobbying and political spending as a means to advance its policy positions: The tech giant has already spent more than $5.4 million on federal lobbying this year.

Good governance groups applauded the company’s decision last year to leave the controversial and regressive American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), but have rightly pushed the company to do more. Exiting a group you disagree with on many issues isn’t necessarily a bold move, and Google’s shareholders are looking for the company to transition to a leader on political spending and lobbying transparency. Google notably lags behind many of its tech peers like Microsoft and Intel when it comes to this issue.

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Duke Energy makes North Carolina look like the Wild West

One year after nearly half of Duke’s shareholders voted in favor of the company disclosing its political contributions, the company has made little progress to address the shareholder concerns. According to the Center for Political Accountability, from 2013 to 2014 the company made small changes to its political spending policies, like adding board oversight, but it has still fallen far short of the full disclosure that shareholders want.

Given Duke’s track record, shareholders are right to be concerned about the company’s political contributions. In fact, it’s hard to overstate Duke’s role in making North Carolina politics feel like the Wild West. In a recent report, the Institute for Southern Studies (ISS) rated the utility giant as the No. 1 corporate power-broker in the state of North Carolina. ISS ranked Duke fifth in state election spending for dropping $944,250 into state elections in 2012 and 2014, and it rated Duke second in lobbying clout. Taken together ISS writes that Duke is, “a clear leader in its ability to both elect and pressure state lawmakers.” More

Political Spending Shareholder Resolutions: The Big Ten

Spring is in the air and that can only mean one thing: Investors across the country are gearing up to take on corporate executives at annual shareholder meetings.

Shareholders have filed more than 100 resolutions at companies asking for more information about electioneering and lobbying spending. Year after year, these types of resolutions are the most popular type of social resolutions that companies see. Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate political spending, investors have filed more than 500 resolutions calling for more transparency in corporate political activity.

This is also the time of year that the Corporate Reform Coalition, a group of investors, good governance advocates, elected officials and labor organizations (chaired by Public Citizen) steps up to make some serious hay around political spending resolutions.

This year, the coalition is highlighting ten companies’ political spending proposals. These companies represent a diverse set of industries, but they all have one thing in common: a lack of true transparency when it comes to how they influence policy in Washington. These companies are some of the biggest spenders on politics, and their influence peddling has gridlocked important issues like climate change, net neutrality and financial reform.

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Corporate CEO Compares Transparency Advocates to Neo-Nazis

Our friends at Think Progress posted a gem on their blog this week describing Corporate America’s griping at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event about its supposedly waning “free speech” privileges. Apparently, the huge momentum behind requiring disclosure has dark money political spenders quaking in their boots!

At one point during the event, Paul Atkins, the CEO of Patomak Global Partners LLC, actually compared shareholders who want companies to be more transparent to neo-Nazis. Now that you’ve finished choking on your coffee, consider his actual words:

 When I was a staffer at the SEC [U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission] back in the early 90s, a group of Neo-Nazis came up with a proposal for AT&T… it had to go into the proxy statement because of the way the rules were. That’s pretty bad but carry it forward now — we have issues here like disclosure of political spending or lobbying or general political spending and these disclosures are not material at all.

Sure Paul, advocating for transparency is just the natural outgrowth of neo-Nazism. And neo-Nazism is just “pretty bad” anyway. (Yeah, right!)

If you think Paul Atkins is plain wrong and so is corporations buying lawmakers, send a message to the SEC today asking for immediate disclosure of corporate political spending.

Kelly Ngo is the online advocacy organizer for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division.

12 solutions to our dumb, big-money elections that will restore your faith in America

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Welcome to the 2014 Meh-terms, America.

Sure, the attack ads are blanketing the airwaves, and sure, some guys from Kansas are spending millions for your vote, but all the mainstream media wants to talk about is how much no one actually cares about the midterms. America has had enough red meat rhetoric to send a grizzly bear into cardiac arrest, and that appears to be what has happened.

Steeped in nearly $4 billion dollars’ worth of campaign spending – most of it on vapid, sleazy campaign ads – it’s really no wonder that Americans are tuning out the midterms in droves.

To alleviate your despair, here’s an (almost) exhaustive list, in no particular order, of solutions to America’s big dumb, big-money elections.

1. Pass a Constitutional Amendment

The Supreme Court’s delusional ruling in Citizens United helped to demolish the last vestiges of sanity in the system that politicians use to finance their campaigns. For elections to be less dumb we have to make sure that everybody has a say in who gets elected, not just the people with $150 million dollars to blow on elections. The 28th Amendment would simply state that Congress has the authority to bar corporate spending in elections and place reasonable limits on campaign contributions and spending for the sake of leveling the playing field for those of us who aren’t pulling down nine figures this year.

2. The DISCLOSE Act

Organizations that do not disclose their donors, known as dark money groups, can spend millions to influence elections without disclosing to voters who is actually funding the ads. That sort of makes accountability hard to come by. The DISCLOSE Act would simply require organizations that spend $10,000 or more on election-related ads to disclose their donors.

3. Fair Elections Now Act / Democracy Is For People Act / Empowering Citizens Act

These bills would provide matching public funds to candidates who are able to collect large numbers of small donations. The first two would effect House and Senate Races, and the last one would be for both congressional and presidential races. Public financing would empower small donors by encouraging candidates to chat it up with regular people instead of spending four hours a day on the phone chasing millionaires (which can really skew your perspective on the important things in life).

4. Real Time Transparency Act

Nothing fancy here unless you count retiring filing cabinets and putting data on computers as fancy. The Real Time Transparency act would require campaigns, parties, and committees to disclose contributions online within 48 hours of receiving them. And before you tell me that this should already be a thing, please ruminate on the fact that in the year 2014 the Senate still files its contribution reports on paper.

5. Shareholder Protection Act

Don’t skip this one just because you’re not a well-heeled investment guru. The Shareholder Protection Act would require companies that spend money in elections to disclose that spending to their shareholders, which also includes anyone with a retirement account. And even if you don’t have a retirement account, no one likes to miss out on a good boycott. More

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