How do you get around the corporate free speech case? One approach is to amend the Constitution. Another is to require shareholder approval for political expenditures. These measures would require enormous cultivation to create the political will. But requiring disclosure would not be difficult in a remotely moral world. Corporations (and wealthy businessmen) partly in order to escape consumer retaliation are giving money through associations with benign sounding names. See an account of this in the state of Washington.
The disclosure laws are not entirely toothless. So we have learned that Target gave money to a gubernatorial candidate who opposes same sex marriage (see http://www.religiousleftlaw.com/2010/08/moveon-target-and-our-corrupted-public-sphere.html) and that AT&T gives money to the Tea Party (http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/07/members-of-tea-party-caucus-major-r.html), and we can react with the distribution of our dollars if we wish. But we could learn a lot more with better laws and, if we choose to disassociate from corporations who do not advance the public interest, we would have the information to do so.
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