Policy Proposal: Corporate Lobbying

Do corporations need the right to petition government representatives in secret? Does anyone need this right?

Courtesy: The Secret of Life

(EUGENE, Ore.) - The Supreme Court has decreed, to much hand wringing, that the right of Corporate Personhood is the law of the land. It has made the further decree that money is a form of speech, and that in order for Corporate Citizens to exercise their free speech rights, they must be allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence the political process.

Many people rightly recognize the insanity of this extension of legalized corruption to its logical end.

Some are proposing new laws and new constitutional amendments to try and return legalized corruption to its previous regulated and at least partially restrained form. What I would propose is an immediate change of policy on the part of representatives in our State to weed out legalized corruption by its roots.

These proposals set a benchmark standard for what an open and honest government would look like. Subsequently, individual representatives in government can be judged according to their actions as to how closely they are adhering to this model.

Proposals:

1. No public representative or government employee shall meet with any paid lobbyist to discuss any matter related to their office.

2. No public representative or government employee shall meet with any corporate employee to discuss policy formation, other than the ultimate representative of that corporation, whether that be a CEO, President, Chairperson of the Board, Majority Shareholder, or other corporate office holder in which ultimate authority over corporate policy resides.

3. All meetings between a public representative or government employee and a corporate employee where policy formation is discussed shall be recorded in audio and video form. Transcripts of these meetings, or the original recordings, or both, shall become part of the public record and shall be made freely available to the public.

4. For the purposes of these rules corporation is defined broadly as any group of individuals affiliated for common gain with an institutional structure that delegates decision making authority to an executive official, and specifically includes all registered corporations and all employee unions.

Notes:

1. The average citizen does not pay people to lobby government on their behalf. In fact, there is no reason for anyone to pay someone else to lobby on their behalf. If government is to represent its citizens equally, then all citizens must have equal access to government.

If someone is paying another person to speak for them in government, then they are not only asserting their own rights as a citizen, but co-opting the voice of another citizen to speak on their behalf. This co-option is fundamentally corrupting as it places money above genuine citizen participation.

Every person has their own rights as a citizen. However, those rights are not assignable or transferable. Corruption of a citizen is just as dangerous as corruption of a representative in government.

Representatives in government are not allowed to accept bribes in order to promote policies within government, nor should citizens be allowed to accept bribes to promote policies within government. Paid lobbying is fundamentally corrupt, thus it should be banned entirely.

2. If corporations are made Persons according to the law of the land, then they must also be treated as persons in their interactions with government.

If a corporation has a thousand employees, and makes it a duty of their job to petition government on behalf of their employer, then this has the same corrupting influence as allowing paid lobbying.

If corporations are allowed to bribe employees to use their rights as a citizen to speak on the corporation’s behalf, then instead of exercising the rights of one person, the corporation may exercise the rights of a thousand persons or even more.

If corporations are to be treated as persons, then they must be allowed to speak with one voice only. The ultimate representative of a corporation, whether that be a CEO, President, Chairperson of the Board, or Majority Shareholder is the logical person to select as the human representative of the fictitious corporate person.

It should be noted that this rule applies specifically to policy formation, or the process of enacting new policies. It is specifically intended to allow government and corporate employees to engage in normal business relationships where they are executing existing policies.

3. Government representatives are not private individuals but representatives of the people doing public business. The presumption then is that their actions in office will be a matter of public record.

Most citizens petition their government representatives in public forums. Anyone is free to petition a representative by anonymous letter. An anonymous letter can only be judged on the merits of its own content, and thus does not raise the same issues as a petition made in the name of a corporation or individual who may have undue influence over the legislative process.

Do corporations need the right to petition government representatives in secret? Does anyone need this right?

It is the duty of government to enact policies that are for the collective benefit of all citizens. No citizen who is petitioning government to this end should have a need for secrecy. If they do, then they may petition anonymously by letter.

The primary reason for a corporation to petition government in secret is to promote a policy that will give them a competitive advantage against a rival. This is precisely the kind of activity that should be eliminated.

Government, being for the collective benefit of all, should never make any policy designed to interfere in the marketplace to the advantage of one rival over another. The place for competition is in business, not in government, and government must actively resist being used as a tool for advancing the schemes of rivals competing for business.

Since corporations are explicitly concerned with advancing business ends, requiring all corporate lobbying to be a matter of public record, while allowing citizens to petition their representatives in private, is fair and reasonable.

Making all lobbying, both corporate and private, a matter of public record is an option, and may be advisable. However, the need for making corporate lobbying public is evident. Interference with the normal relationships between private citizens and their representatives is not necessary in order to implement this as a policy.

Implementation:

Implementing these rules, or any set of rules on lobbying, does not require new legislation, although it would certainly be desirable.

Every government representative is free to set their own schedule and their own terms for how they will conduct meetings. I will be mailing these recommendations to my own representatives in government, and seeking their feedback.

As a bare minimum for considering voting for a representative, I am personally requiring an explicit and well justified policy from that representative on how they will deal with corporate campaign contributions and corporate lobbying.

Given the long established climate of corruption in government, which has now been pushed to new extremes, a personal policy from every representative on how they will effectively serve in this climate of corruption is a reasonable prerequisite to being considered for office.

Special thanks to The Secret of Life for images in this report.

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Salem-News.com Business/Economy Reporter Ersun Warncke is a native Oregonian. He has a degree in Economics from Portland State University and studied Law at University of Oregon. At a young age, his career spans a wide variety of fields, from fast food, to union labor, to computer programming. He has published works concerning economics, business, government, and media on blogs for several years. He currently works as an independent software designer specializing in web based applications, open source software, and peer-to-peer (P2P) applications.

Ersun describes his writing as being "in the language of the boardroom from the perspective of the shop floor." He adds that "he has no education in journalism other than reading Hunter S. Thompson." But along with life comes the real experience that indeed creates quality writers. Right now, every detail that can help the general public get ahead in life financially, is of paramount importance.

You can write to Ersun at: warncke@comcast.net