After "Citizens United" you had a situation where corporations can contribute unlimited sums to elect candidates that are favourable to their firms. This has the potential to corrupt the political process in the USA. One solution is to have the shareholders pass resolutions requiring 75% shareholder approval for any campaign funding.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/opinion/15bogle.html?src=rechp
This article argues for just such an approach.
I see a couple of problems. Firstly, even though this is coming up in the case of Home Depot, it is unrealistic to believe that sufficient votes can be gathered to approve such resolutions in a majority of companies. Moreover, insofar as the contributions can be said to improve the finances of the company by electing candidates who are favourable, it seems that that executives can legitimately claim that they are acting to benefit their corporations, and hence are protected by the business judgement rule. Would shareholders want to handcuff management when it is apparent that funds might be usefully spent electing a pro business candidate? To take a simple example. Suppose that there are two candidates, one proposes increasing taxes on fuel, and the other does not. If you are the CEO of an oil company you obviously have a duty to shareholders to oppose the candidate who is going to decrease your profits. Most large shareholders will realize this and act accordingly.
In addition, this might suffer from the same problem with regard to executive pay. It is rare that shareholders can successfully pass restrictions on executive pay despite there being almost universal benefits for doing so.
Having re-read the case I have to conclude that there has to be some merit to the decision. For example, various media companies are linked to certain businesses. A good example is General Electric owning NBC. If they can use their media wing to promote policies that favor the company as a whole, I don't see why other businesses can't do the same. It is worthwhile to keep in mind that prior to Citizens United those elected to both the Senate and the presidency favored big business over the average citizen. It is only in Congress that you have something approaching effective representation. Therefore, I don't see this decision as making a huge difference in the grand scheme of things. More importantly it is unfair for some companies to have influence through ownership of media to spend unlimited amounts, whereas others cannot. It is additionally true that there is currently a breakdown between traditional media, and new media which uses the internet. There is no longer a clear distinction between owners of media and users.
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