[EL] CPA/Zicklin

[Ilya Shapiro]

Only if you lump lobbying in with political spending. For-profit corps don't tend to do much political speaking because they don't want to alienate half of their customers.

To put a finer point on that, much more money is spent on lobbying than campaigning (on the order of 10-12 times I read somewhere recently), so campaign restrictions shut down advocacy groups (which are also corporations, of course), not the Fortune 500.

Ilya Shapiro
Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies
Cato Institute
1000 Mass. Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20001
Tel. 202-218-4600
Cel. 202-577-1134
www.cato.org/people/shapiro.html<http://www.cato.org/people/shapiro.html>
twitter.com/ishapiro<http://twitter.com/ishapiro>

On Sep 24, 2014, at 1:08 PM, David Ely <ely at compass-demographics.com<mailto:ely at compass-demographics.com>> wrote:

To put a finer point on it,  is the political spending of for-profit corporations really just an attempt to buy off the regulatory structure and allow themselves to externalize costs to a maximum extent?

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of David Ely
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 10:58 AM
To: 'Smith, Brad'; 'law-election at UCI.edu<mailto:law-election at UCI.edu>'
Subject: Re: [EL] CPA/Zicklin

Which is why markets do such a poor job of dealing with external effects of economic activity. It’s hard for a consumer to separate worrying about political views and activities from worrying about economic decisions that externalize public costs from the price of a product.

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Smith, Brad
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 9:03 AM
To: law-election at UCI.edu<mailto:law-election at UCI.edu>
Subject: [EL] CPA/Zicklin

CPI writes:


"Watch your Netflix show, wear your Ralph Lauren shirt, brew your Keurig coffee and deposit your paycheck at M&T Bank.

Just know that you're patronizing some of the nation's least politically transparent companies,"

What a horrible, impoverished way to live one's life, worrying about the political views and activities of everyone you come into contact with, and using that to decide whether to do business with them.


Bradley A. Smith

Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault

   Professor of Law

Capital University Law School

303 E. Broad St.

Columbus, OH 43215

614.236.6317

http://law.capital.edu/faculty/bios/bsmith.aspx

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