In January, a narrow Republican 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court ruled Corporations have the right to spend unlimited amounts of money to elect or defeat candidates.
That includes the nation's largest Corporations like BP, which made $25 billion in profits in 2008 and could easily spend $5 billion to defeat every Democrat in Congress who wants to hold BP accountable for its catastrophic Gulf oil spill.
Unlimited Corporate spending on elections will destroy American democracy by overwhelming contributions by voters and drowning their voices in a tsunami of Corporate-funded speech.
It will also destroy the American economy when Corporations stop competing over producing the best products and start competing over buying the most powerful politicians.
Finally, every penny of Corporate campaign spending will come at the expense of dividends to shareholders.
These are three crucial reasons why shareholders must vote on all Corporate election spending, just as they do in England.
As my Representative, I urge you to co-sponsor Rep. Michael Capuano's H.R. 4790, the Shareholder Protection Act of 2010.
