The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will consider a rule to require disclosure of political spending by publicly traded corporations in April. By putting this rule making on its agenda, the SEC is responding to the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, which ended restrictions on independent corporate spending for public communications that influence elections.

The United States should adopt a universal and automatic voter registration system to boost participation and ensure all citizens have the opportunity to participate in the democratic process, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said this morning.

Speaking to the Funders' Committee for Civic Participation (FCCP), Trumka said a strong and growing grassroots democracy movement needs to come together to “push back against the next wave of state-level attacks on the right to vote.”

Election Day is behind us now (someone please tell Rep. Allen West [R-Fla.]), and there’s plenty to be happy about. Nov. 6, 2012, brought a wave of victories for working families and the defeat of some seriously scary candidates backed by billionaires and their deep pockets.

America's workers refused to let their voices be silenced by the nearly $1.5 billion in independent spending that poured into the election and nearly every candidate backed by Karl Rove’s Crossroads conglomerate lost. It’s tempting in this atmosphere to say that Citizens United didn’t matter after all, and that unlimited spending isn’t a problem in U.S. politics.  But let’s not jump to premature conclusions on the basis of a single election. Karl Rove isn’t going anywhere, and there’s no guarantee the GOP and its billionaires will make the same stupid missteps next time around.

San Francisco cab driver Brad Newsham does not believe that corporations are people and that money is free speech. And he wanted to do something big to get his point across. So he went to the beach, brought a helicopter and 1,000 friends. This video shows what happened next.

David Groves of The Stand, a project of the Washington State Labor Council (WSLC) and its affiliated unions, sends us "‘Small’ NFIB Gets GOP Funders’ Big Bucks."

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) promotes itself as a “non-profit, non-partisan organization” that is “the leading small business association representing small and independent business.”

For a business group so focused on “small” it says it twice, the NFIB reportedly gets a lot of its funding from the biggest names in Republican politics, including Karl Rove and the Koch brothers. As for the “independent” part, the NFIB’s political and legislative agendas at both the national and Washington state levels align closely with the Republican Party and big—not small—corporate interests.

What’s the difference between corporations and teachers’ unions, according to Mitt Romney? Apparently corporations are “people”—at least in the Citizens United definition—and should be allowed to give unlimited campaign contributions and other political donations, while teachers' unions are evil influence peddlers who buy politicians’ favor and shouldn’t be allowed to give campaign contributions.

That’s what you’ve got to infer from his comments Tuesday to an education forum sponsored by NBC, where he told moderator Brian Williams:

This is a cross-post from the Alliance for Justice blog, Justice Watch. 

We all know how big business has eroded the American dream by getting Congress and the executive branch to change the rules to favor corporations and the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us. But it hasn’t stopped with two branches of government. Corporate special interests have spent decades working to put their thumb on the scales of justice. The campaign finance decision in Citizens United is only the most prominent example. 

This is an excerpt from The Hill, by John Logan, professor and director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University.

Conservative activists in California are promoting a deceptive ballot proposition that would increase the ability of business groups and billionaires to dominate state elections. The measure, Proposition 32, claims to be an even-handed effort at campaign finance reform—but nothing could be further from the truth. Prop. 32 (or “Stop Special Interest Money Now,” as its big money supporters prefer to call it) would cripple the ability of unions to participate in politics but have little or no impact on unlimited spending by corporate executives and other wealthy individuals.

With less than 100 days until the election, campaign finance is a topic that everybody in Washington, D.C., and on TV is talking about. Yet according to a recent poll by the Washington Post and the Pew Research Center, most Americans are unfamiliar with outside campaign spending and don’t know important terms and concepts.

The top 1% is scared about people like “the nails ladies” having the vote. The wealthy know that economic inequality is rising and the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision is enormously unpopular. Turning unions into bogeymen is inevitable.

And so the right wing is excited today about a Wall Street Journal article purporting union spending on politics is far greater than known and is as big a factor as excessive corporate money in politics.