A Little Less Corporate Political Corruption

Come on, Obama, do it!

Stand up, stand tall, stand firm! Yes, you can!

The president is thinking about issuing an executive order that would mitigate some of the damage done by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United edict. The ruling unleashes unlimited amounts of secret corporate cash to pervert America’s elections. Obama’s idea is to require that those corporations seeking federal contracts disclose all of their campaign donations for the previous two years, including money they launder through such front groups as the national Chamber of Commerce.

This approach says to those giants sucking up billions of our tax dollars for endless war and privatization of public services: You’re still free to shove trainloads of your shareholders’ money into congressional and presidential races, but, hey, just tell the public how much you’re giving to whom.

Neat. It would be a clean, direct and effective reform. The corporate powers and their apologists are squealing like stuck pigs. Steven Law, a Bush-Cheney operative who is now a Wall Street Journal editorialist and head of a secret corporate money fund, recently decried the idea of public disclosure of contractor campaign contributions: “When I was in the executive branch,” he sniffed, “mixing politics with procurement was
called corruption.”

Yes, Steve, and y’all were corruption experts! Perhaps you’ve forgotten that we remember Halliburton, the Cheney-run corporation that helped put Bush in office and then was handed tens of billions in contracts, becoming the poster child of corrupt, no-bid procurement.

Come on, Obama, don’t back down. Sign that disclosure order! If they’re going to steal our elections, at least make them admit it.