Finally, what should be done to prevent corporate interests from unduly influencing the political process?
The largest corporate shareholders are pension funds and mutual funds. Predominantly, they comprise individual employees and investors of modest wealth. Prohibiting less affluent individuals from pooling resources is a recipe for tilting the playing field in favor of the rich. Currently, there are no limits on how much George Soros or Michael Bloomberg can spend of their own money on political speech. Why shouldn’t a few thousand others be able to match them by joining forces through an entity such as a corporation that expresses their policy preferences? Rarely has government been able to prove actual corruption from campaign expenditures. That’s why, to justify its regulations, government has insisted that we must prevent, not just corruption, but the “appearance of corruption.” That artifice will not work. Mere suspicions are no basis for ignoring the Constitution. Notably, half of our states have minimal campaign finance limitations; yet there’s no evidence that politics in those s
