Joan Claybrook Shares List of Policy Fixes

At WDN’s Annual Conference in Denver, former Public Citizen President and long-time consumer advocate Joan Claybrook spoke of a list of progressive policy fixes that would irritate large corporations and thus would be good economics. This is only a partial list, mind you, but Claybrook argues if we implemented these reforms we would help restore the balance of power in the economy. Not bad for people who often get accused of not having any ideas!

REFORMS TO TAME GIANT CORPORATIONS

TAXES

• Require public traded companies to make tax returns public
• Vastly reduce corporate tax loopholes (U.S has second lowest corporate taxes as percentage of the economy in the industrialized world)
• Close the offshore incorporation loophole
• Tax securities transactions
• Repeal tax break for companies sending jobs and profits overseas
• Eliminate Bush tax reductions for wealthy—adopt the Buffett rule
• Enact a “bank” tax  reserve fund to bail out banks that are too big to fail
• Ban tax deductions for corporate settlements and penalties

STRUCTURAL

• Reenact Glass Steagall to separate consumer and more risky investment banking and prevent conflicts of interest among financial entities
• Require new federal corporate charter listing company obligations
• Align executive pay with shareholder benefits
• Enact a federal homicide statute
• Enact a corporate death penalty for violation of x number of laws
• Add RICO enforcement/penalties to all relevant federal laws
• Enact behavioral sanctions for corporate executives who violate the law (i.e making the coal mine owner work in his mines cutting coal)
• Enact treble damages for egregious violations
• Create a permanent Justice Department corporate crime division

REGULATORY

• Limit off balance sheet accounting
• Regulate financial derivatives
• Make regulation of investment banks mandatory
• Regulate credit rating firms
• Prevent predatory lending
• Add federal criminal penalties to federal consumer, environmental and worker protection statutes that do not now have them
• Repeal Taft Hartley
• Add a citizen bounty hunter payment to all federal laws
• Vastly increase civil penalties for violation of health, safety and environment laws and give state attorney generals the authority to enforce them
• Require violators to place ads in newspapers explaining their misbehavior
• Outlaw arbitration clauses in  consumer and worker contracts

OTHER

• Enact corporate sunshine laws to disclose corporate record on human rights abuses, environmental actions, worker safety, taxes, criminal and civil litigation records, political campaign gifts, lobbying expenditures by issue
• Rein in executive pay, including golden parachutes
• Crackdown on corporate war profiteering
• Put all government contracts on the web with dollar amounts, and past performance of each contractor.
• Create a centralized corporate crime data base and annual corporate crime report
• SEC should require disclosure of campaign donations by all publicly traded companies
• Ban corporate criminals from qualifying for federal contracts (about $275 billion annually on goods and services)
• Overturn Citizens United Supreme Court case to once again limit corporations fund campaign contributions from their treasuries.
• Require public disclosure of all sources of campaign contributions, including for corporate independent expenditures such as campaign ads
• Upgrade the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and increase enforcement to prevent international corporate bribery
• Reenact strong deterrents to corporate crime to again allow victims to seek redress in the courts, for securities fraud and negligence in product safety and environmental harm.
• Slow down the revolving door between government and the private sector with strong conflict of interest standards