By Paul Jossey
In typical Warren fashion, the senator recently urged the SEC to ignore its mission and the dangers of partisan capture because disclosure is the “right thing.” The professor-petitioners have sought to buttress Ms. Warren’s moralizing with arguments about protecting minority-shareholder rights and possible misuse of funds by self-interested corporate executives. The professors fail, however, to validate their concerns with substantive empirical evidence.
The shareholders clamoring for “transparency” in corporate spending are not political neutrals. They often have agendas anathema to their fellow shareholders and corporate bottom lines. As Center for Competitive Politics scholars Brad Smith and Allen Dickerson discovered, special-interest funds use their standing as shareholders to pursue ideological agendas, not necessarily corporate profits.
