The Owls' Nest

This is a link to a very interesting site, the site of the Public Advocate for the City of New York, Bill de Blasio. He and his organization are apparently some kind of New York City ombudsman. This particular page asks the question: Where do the largest corporations in the United States stand on CORPORATE SPENDING IN OUR ELECTIONS?

In view of the infamous Citizens United ruling of the shamelessly corporate Roberts Supreme Court, the right of "corporate free speech" was greatly expanded, leaving U.S. elections even more blatantly bought and sold by corporate money than ever before; and political donations need not be disclosed.

Investigations by de Blasio's office have shed some light on the situation. They have compiled a list of major companies' policies toward political donations. Here are two categories of that list:
Pledged to Keep Corporate Treasury Money Out Of Elections:
These companies have policies that protect voters from unrestricted corporate election spending in spite of the rollbacks created by Citizens United. They have adopted policies of refraining from spending money directly from their company treasury on politics.Corporations in this category include:

• Citigroup
• Colgate-Palmolive
• Dell
• General Electric
• Gilead
• Goldman Sachs
• International Business Machines
• JP Morgan Chase & Co.
• Microsoft
• Morgan Stanley
• Xerox Corporation

Another category is Prepared to Spend Corporate Money in Elections:

These companies have taken steps demonstrating that they will not protect voters from unrestricted corporate election spending in spite of the rollbacks created by Citizens United. They are prepared to spend without limits and without disclosure in our elections.

This category includes:

• 3M
• Target
• Best Buy
• Massey Energy
• International Coal

And the third category is:

Has Not Pledged to Keep Corporate Treasury Money Out Of Elections:
These companies’ policies do not address the rollbacks created by Citizens United. They have no policy prohibiting spending their treasury funds on politics.

This is a much longer list. Let's hope that as time goes by, public opinion forces more of these "undecideds" onto the first list, pledging not to spend their treasury money on elections.