From the folks at Race to the Bottom:
The petitioners contend further that the shareholders most likely to use the rules [governing proxy access] are union and government pension funds, which have a history of using shareholder activism to pursue non-investment-related objectives that depart from other shareholders’ interests. The petitioners fault the Commission for claiming that the rules further shareholder rights, when the mandatory rules instead disenfranchise the vast majority of shareholders, who may wish to avoid the tremendous costs that proxy access would impose on their company.
The rules violate not only the APA, the petitioners explain, but also the First Amendment by forcing corporations to carry the campaign-related speech of others who necessarily oppose the company’s position, even when that speech is false and misleading. The Commission was obligated to tailor its rules to avoid infringing constitutional rights, but the Commission failed to take First Amendment rights into account when crafting the rules.
While we sputter, a few points.
First. When the Supremes gave corporations free speech rights, they necessarily gave certain shareholders the power to force others to "carry the campaign-related speech of others." Unless, of course, the Court meant that shareholders should always vote unanimously. Shareholders elect directors. Directors decide how corporate free speech is exercised. If shareholders don't like the speech, they can vote out the directors. But it's majority rule. Someone's going to feel like their voice got drowned out. That's the nature of the beast.
Second. Ostensibly, a corporation's right to free speech hinges on the free speech rights of individual investors. If this is the case, since when must those investors confine their speech to investment-only objectives? Because that's what the Biz Round says when it bristles at shareholders voting for "non-investment related objectives."
It's sort of like telling people they cay only vote according to their tax interests.
That certain special-interests lobbies "drown out" (or, in the Biz Round's parlance, "disenfranchise") the voices of other voters is nothing new in democracy. Can we really call society undemocratic because AARP gets more lunch dates with congressmen than does Mr. Smith writing to Washington? The squeaky wheel gets the oil. It is, at the very least, amusing -- and blatantly hypocritical -- to hear the corporate lobby whining about the power of "special interests" lobbies, when they represent the biggest and most powerful of them.
