SCOTUS

Lift the Veil on Corporate Money in Politics

corp politcs
Originally published by Bloomberg

America today is very different from the country that fought the Revolutionary War and framed the Constitution. Then, it was a nation of farmers; today, it’s a nation of corporations. Most Americans now work for corporations, the largest of which command resources and money on a scale beyond that of many nations.

Yet when it comes to public issues like jobs, the distribution of wealth or even plain old politics, we still talk as we did 200 years ago. Remarkably, too few citizens discuss the effects of corporate behavior on jobs, health care and the economy, even though corporations affect all of these through their influence on elections and the actions of government.

As President Theodore Roosevelt noted in his first annual message to Congress:

Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and our duty to see that they work in harmony with those institutions.

The key to doing this is to hold corporations accountable by ensuring that their activities are made visible.

From the end of World War II until about 1980 -- even through the economic travail of the ’70s, as the U.S. faced the Arab oil embargo, rampant inflation, significant growth in foreign competition and the aftermath of the Vietnam War -- it was generally considered normal for large corporations to acknowledge all of their constituencies.

New CBO Immigration Study - 12% of Population Foreign Born, 4% Here Illegally

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The United States Population has the largest percentage of foreign born since 1920, including 10.8 million illegal immigrants and the Supreme Court is taking 'em on. SCOTUS just ruled the lower courts must re-examine their ruling on Hazelton Pennsylvania's laws to verify renters and workers are there legally.

Age Discrimination So Brazen, It's Documented in the New York Times

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You know something is brazen when the New York Times can publish an article where corporations admit to not hiring anyone over 40 years of age.

The biggest obstacle, experts say, is that most companies are reluctant to retain or hire older workers. At the top of the corporate ladder, executive recruiters are routinely told not to seek anyone over 50, notes Peter Cappelli, director of the Center for Human Resources at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.