Trillium Responds to Wall Street Journal Editorial Regarding Corporate Political Spending Disclosure
An abridged version of Trillium’s response, along with a letter from the Center for Political Accountability, was posted to the Wall Street Journal website, yesterday. ***** In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United there has been increasing concern about corporate dollars flowing into political races via trade associations and other tax exempt organizations. Trillium Asset Management supports transparency and accountability in corporate spending on political activities. We believe that disclosure is in the best interest of companies, their shareholders, our democracy and our economy. Our firm engages companies on these issues …
Op-Ed: Citizens United and the 2012 Election: Bad News and Good News
By JEFFREY CLEMENTS Make no mistake, the impact of the Supreme Court’s fiasco in Citizens United v. FEC on the elections and our government was even worse than predicted. That’s the bad news. The good news is that the forces of reform, led by the growing movement for a 28th Amendment to the US Constitution, also made a forceful showing in November. First, the bad news. There is a lot we will never know due to absence of adequate disclosure rules (the proposed DISCLOSE law went to the Senate to die in 2011). What we do know: Election spending came …
Newsweek Columnist: Getting Money Out of Politics is Good for Business
Rob Cox, U.S. editor for Reuters Breakingviews, highlights Trillium’s advocacy work on corporate political spending in his recent Newsweek column. Cox writes “[I]t will be up to citizen shareholders to blunt the impact of Citizens United. They can start on Tuesday in St. Paul and Wednesday in Charlotte when the shareholders of 3M and BofA, respectively, gather. They’ll be voting on proposals submitted by Trillium Asset Management of Boston to ‘request that the board of directors adopt a policy prohibiting the use of corporate funds for any political election or campaign.’” You can read the entire column here. …
Matt Patsky Testifies on “Citizens United” at MA State House
On February 28, 2012, Trillium’s CEO, Matt Patsky, testified before the Massachusetts Joint Committee on the Judiciary in support of Senate Bill No. 772. The bill calls upon the United States Congress to propose an amendment to the U.S. Constitution reversing the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision. “Citizens United allows corporations to use their enormous wealth to drown out the voices of the American people, and it allows them to do so anonymously”, Mr. Patsky said in his testimony. “The lack of transparency and oversight in corporate political activity encourages behavior that puts corporations and its shareholders …
On 2nd Anniversary of Citizens United, Trillium, Green Century Capital Management & Advocacy Groups Launch Drive to Stem Corporate Political Spending
On the second anniversary of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, Trillium Asset Management, LLC and Green Century Capital Management announce that they have filed shareholder resolutions at three companies, Bank of America, 3M & Target Corporation, urging them to refrain from making political donations in the future. This is the first time institutional shareholders have asked corporations to entirely refrain from political spending. Read more here …
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