street-food: Occupy Wall Street

Evidence: 75 • authority: 72

The financing of electoral campaigns in the United States happens at the federal, state, and local levels by contributions from individuals, corporations, political action committees, and sometimes the government. Campaign spending has risen steadily at least since 1990. For example, a candidate who won an election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990 spent on average $407,600 ($1 million in 2025) while the winner in 2022 spent on average $2.79 million ($3.07 million in 2025); in the Senate, average spending for winning candidates went from $3.87 million ($9.54 million in 2025) to $26.53 million ($29.19 million in 2025). In 2020, nearly $14 billion was spent on federal election camp…

Evidence: 75 • authority: 72

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States ruling that certain campaign finance restrictions are inconsistent with the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. On a 5-4 vote, the court struck down Section 203 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), which prohibited "electioneering communications" paid for by corporations, labor unions, and other organizations in the months just prior to elections. Other parts of the BCRA such as its disclosure provisions were upheld by a larger majority of the court. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, holding that the prohibition of all indepe…

Evidence: 61 • authority: 72

Independent expenditure-only political action committees, commonly known as super PACs, are a type of political action committees (PACs) in the United States. Unlike traditional PACs, super PACs are legally allowed to fundraise unlimited amounts of money from individuals or organizations for the purpose of campaign advertising; however, they are not permitted to either coordinate with or contribute directly to candidate campaigns or political parties. However, in practice, restrictions on such coordination are considered flimsy and poorly enforced. Super PACs are subject to the same organizational, reporting, and public disclosure requirements as traditional PACs. Many super PACs are candid…

Evidence: 47 • authority: 72

Citizens United is an American conservative nonprofit organization founded in 1988. In 2010, the organization won a U.S. Supreme Court case known as Citizens United v. FEC. The Court ruled that corporations and unions could not be prohibited from making independent expenditures in federal elections, citing First Amendment protections of free speech. As of 2025, the organization's president and chairman is David Bossie.

Evidence: 39 • authority: 88

The Constitution, Citizenship, and Corporations – A Critical Look at Citizens United v. FEC. “Associations of citizens” is a phrase the US Supreme Court used in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) to refer to corporations. This notion was, apparently, an important element in shaping the Supreme Court’s judgment that permitted corporations to participate in the democratic process through campaign funding. Presumably, the “citizens” the court had in mind are the shareholders of corporations. Treating corporations as citizens in the collective, the Supreme Court upheld their political rights, and there is evidence of disquiet with the decision in Citizens United. This paper e…

Evidence: 29 • authority: 92

Boards in Information Governance. This Article charts the decline of the two leading twentieth-century paradigms of corporate governance: the agency-cost theory, which produced the limited “monitoring board,” and the “separate realms” theory, which deferred consideration of all matters other than profit to government regulation. Repeated stock market crashes and hedge fund activism have exposed the limits of the agency-cost theory. A global pandemic and financial crisis, investor demands for corporate social responsibility and stewardship, and corporations’ own participation in the political process have made separate realms thinking nearly irrelevant. We argue that, while much of corporate…

Evidence: 29 • authority: 92

Buying the Vote? The Economics of Electoral Politics and Small Business Loans. We study the role of electoral politics in government small business lending, employment, and business formation. We construct novel measures of electoral importance capturing swing and base voters using data from Facebook ad spending, independent political expenditures, the Cook Political Report, and campaign contributions. We find that businesses in electorally important states, districts, and sectors receive more loans following the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, controlling for funding demand and both health and economic conditions. Estimates from survey and observational data show that government funding weak…

Evidence: 21 • authority: 72

In the United States, a political action committee (PAC) is a tax-exempt 527 organization that pools campaign contributions from members and donates those funds to campaigns for or against candidates, ballot initiatives, or legislation. The legal term PAC was created in pursuit of campaign finance reform in the United States. Democracies of other countries use different terms for the units of campaign spending or spending on political competition (see political finance). At the U.S. federal level, an organization becomes a PAC when it receives or spends more than $1,000 for the purpose of influencing a federal election, and registers with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), according to…

Evidence: 21 • authority: 88

Avenues of Influence: On the Political Expenditures of Corporations and Their Directors and Executives. The vast literature on corporate political influence has primarily focused on expenditures made by corporations and their PACs but has largely ignored the political activities of the individuals who lead these firms. In order to understand the role of corporate elites in political advocacy, I introduce a new database of campaign contributions made by corporate directors and executives of Fortune 500 firms. Donating to political campaigns is nearly universal among corporate elites. When compared to corporate PACs, corporate elites are more ideological, more willing to support non-incumbent…

Evidence: 21 • authority: 92

Boards in Information Governance. This Article focuses on the evolving role of the board of directors.It charts the decline of two leading, twentieth-century frameworks shaping boards' roles: agency-cost theory, which produced the limited “monitoring board,” and“separate realms” theory, which ceded board responsibility for all matters other than profit maximization to government regulation. Hedge fund activism and wild stock market swings have exposed the limits of the board’s role in agency-cost theory. A pandemic, economic crises, investor demands for socially-responsible stewardship, and firms' own active political spending have rendered separate realms thinking untenable. Much theorizin…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

In politics, particularly the politics of the United States, dark money refers to spending to influence elections, public policy, and political discourse, where the source of the money is not disclosed to the public. In the United States, some types of nonprofit organizations may spend money on campaigns without disclosing who their donors are. The most common type of dark money group is the 501(c)(4) (often called social welfare organizations). Such organizations can receive unlimited donations from corporations, individuals and unions. Proponents of dark money maintain it is protected under the First Amendment, while critics complain recipients of dark money (as with any contribution) are…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (Pub. L. 107–155 (text) (PDF), 116 Stat. 81, enacted March 27, 2002, H.R. 2356), commonly known as the McCain–Feingold Act or BCRA ( BIK-ruh), is a United States federal law that amended the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, which regulates the financing of political campaigns. Its chief sponsors were senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Russ Feingold (D-WI). The law became effective on November 6, 2002, and the new legal limits became effective on January 1, 2003. As noted in McConnell v. FEC, a United States Supreme Court ruling on BCRA, the Act was designed to address two issues: The increased role of soft money in campaign financing, by prohibi…