Follow POL on Twitter James Copland, director of Manhattan Institute's Center for Legal Policy, seeks to dispel the myths about corporate political expenditures:
It's presidential campaign season, so, predictably, we're seeing lots of media and activist attention on political spending. This year, much of the hype surrounds spending by corporations -- again, predictably, in light of the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision that political expenditures by organizations such as corporations and labor unions constituted free speech protected by the First Amendment. Most of that hype is downright disingenuous.
It simply isn't the case, as is often alleged, that corporate dollars flowing into the super-PACs that have dominated this political season are undisclosed. And the inconvenient truth for critics of corporate political speech is that among the largest such committees spending money during the Republican nominating campaigns, less than 1 percent of the funds came from publicly traded corporations.
Jim builds a strong and comprehensive argument in the full version of his op-ed.
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