… you’ll have to pry it from the cold, dead fingers of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

It says it will go the political equivalent of nuclear before it allows President Obama to force disclosure of corporate spending on political campaigns. The unbridled spending was allowed by the new personhood extended to corporations by the U.S. Supreme Court. The chamber’s baggage handlers in the Republican Party have already declared they are on board with the Chamber.

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They complain the disclosure President Obama seeks could have a chilling effect on stealth funding (without shareholder knowledge or approval) of all kinds of pernicious things. Which is exactly the point of transparency. Instead, the Supreme Court has created a world where corporations have more rights than a garden variety U.S. citizen with a modest bank account. That is the Koch boys’ view of how America should be. And it is embodied in the Ryan budget plan, unanimously endorsed by Arkansas’s Republican members of Congress.

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