The Dangers of Corporate Donations to Political Campaigns

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court stunned many when they reversed the nation’s federal campaign finance laws. The new law removes limits on corporations and labor unions to directly spend on political campaigns. In other words, corporations can now support their favorite candidates with donations. (Read more…)

Giving Up on Wal-Mart

Dumbstruck. That’s how I felt after reading Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in the April 2nd edition of The New Yorker entitled “Selling Wal-Mart.”

“The Edelman team assigned to Wal-Mart, I learned, is divided into three groups: ‘promote,’ ‘response,’ and ‘pressure.’ The Jobs and Opportunity Zones notion came from the promotions team. The response-team members – veterans of political campaigns – are supposed to quickly counter criticism in the press or on the Web. The pressure group works on opposition research, focussing on the unions and the press,” Goldberg wrote. (Read more…)

Finding Ammunition and Shields

In early 2004, I received a phone call from a reporter for a major business publication. She wanted to know if I was the Ben Silverman who was donating heavily to Democratic political campaigns. She thought it may make an interesting story considering I wrote a business column, one in which I had been critical of the Bush Administration on more that one occasion, for the right-tilting New York Post. (Read more…)