150 billionaire families have spent $1.4B on the 2024 election so far.
On average, each family has doled out $9.2M in political contributions — just 0.06% of their total wealth.
The equivalent donation for a typical household would be ~$120.
We must overturn Citizens United.
@rbreich
Overturn Citizens United ... *and* raise taxes
We have to be honest that even some Democrats are going to fight the overturning of citizens united.
@rbreich It is, and has been, within the power of each individual state to impose spending rules on corporations organized under the laws of that state.
Thus, for instance, a state can require that corporate management obtain unanimous owner/shareholder approval for political expenditures. (This would not stop closely held corporations, but would effectively end such expenditures by large, public corporations.)
Sure, some states like Delaware, Wyoming, one of the Dakotas would not do this in an attempt to lure more corporate registrations to those states. But a partial solution is better than what we have now.
@karlauerbach @rbreich
Are there any initiatives/efforts within any states to do that — i.e., obtain unanimous approval — and, if so, given the unlikelihood of DE's participation, would it impact any of the corporations @rbreich mentions? Alternatively, are there corporations subject to other state's (excl. DE, WY, SD) that contribute significantly to influence election outcomes?
If not, seems like even the partial solution you suggest may not be worth the effort.
@RunRichRun @rbreich States have long had rules - such as accounting rules, bulk sales rules, etc that they impose on corporations. So my proposal breaks no new legal ground.
Is it a patchwork? Yes. And that's good because there are many details that need to be worked out, like whether the assent must be unanimous and, if not, how to handle that.
By-the-way, I proposed my more complete solution to Citizens United more than a decade ago:
Redressing the Distortion of Elections and Political Speech by Corporations
@RunRichRun @rbreich When I try to boil down to find the problem inside Citizens United I find this:
Stock based corporations are an legal/accounting vehicle to combine investments, talent, and risk. The shareholders are the actual owners, yet political donations are done by the hired managers. That means that those managers get to massively leverage their views using the money and property of the shareholders without the clear consent of those shareholders.
So basically my proposal is that if managers want to spent shareholder assets for political purposes they they ought to get clear assent from those shareholders.
There is a lot of room for experimentation about how that assent is obtained. Per donation? Yearly? Assent required for political donations above a certain level, etc.
And in this area of families of interlocking and geographically distributed corporate entities, there is a real question about what is "the" actual corporation.
Robert Reich
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