April 28, 2013 5:50 p.m. ET  It's corporate proxy season, which can only mean more political pressure on companies to stop spending money on politics. This year the plan of Big Labor and the George Soros-funded Center for Political Accountability is pressuring business to disclose all spending related to politics as well as to lobby the Securities and Exchange Commission to force companies to do so.  According to the proxy preview report by liberal umbrella group As You Sow, some 125 shareholder proposals on corporate political spending or lobbying will be offered this year, with the greatest number aimed at lobbying. For 2013, 51 lobbying resolutions have been filed, an increase from 40 filings last year and six in 2011.  Among the leading filers are social investing funds and labor unions like Afscme and the AFL-CIO, which want to silence business voices so they can dominate politics even more than they do now. The unions pick targets they think might bend, or at least win some publicity for the cause, and this year they've aimed lobbying proposals at Cigna, Abbott Labs, ABT -0.47 % Verizon and Union Pacific.  Afscme, the giant government workers union, is especially amusing because it argues that such disclosure is in the best interests of shareholders and business. All money spent on lobbying should be disclosed, it says, because it can "create reputational risks for companies," and shareholders have no direct say in how the money is spent. "Shareholders need to understand their companies' expenditures for trade association lobbying and the risks they might represent," the union said this spring.  You have to smile at this union pose as the friend of shareholders because the main "reputational risks" for business are attacks from the likes of Afscme. The union wants the spending disclosed precisely so it can use the information to attack the companies. The risk to shareholders is from disclosure, not from the lobbying.  Last we checked, lobbying is another name for the Constitutional right to petition the government. Another name for it is free speech. Given the degree to which Washington now dominates the American economy, lobbying Congress and regulators is part of the normal cost of doing business, like marketing. Companies that don't pay the extortion that Congress or the White House demand can find their business models damaged or ruined on a whim.  By the way, the Center for Responsive Politics reports that Afscme spent some $60 million on politics in 2012, including on political action committees and outside spending groups as well as $2.68 million on lobbying. Union members have zero say in those spending choices.  Also carrying the spear for the unions is the New York Common Retirement Fund managed by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli. Mr. DiNapoli made headlines earlier this year when he sued Qualcomm QCOM 0.30 % in Delaware and got the company's executives to cave on disclosing its political contributions to trade associations and other tax-exempt groups. That capitulation is now being used to intimidate other companies to follow or risk a political beating.  If the targeted companies won't roll over, the liberal and union fall back is to browbeat the SEC to make it a proxy requirement for all companies. "If we have to go company by company" that "is a very long and drawn out process," Mr. DiNapoli says. "It is the appropriate role for the SEC to set a standard, industry wide so that all of these corporations that are publicly traded will do the right thing in terms of disclosure."  Liberal activists boast they've collected some 500,000 comments in support of an SEC rule to require disclosure, but over 99% of them are form letters originating with the same activists. New SEC Chairman Mary Jo White is under particular lobbying pressure from unions, Democrats and the liberal press, and whether she succumbs will be the first big test of her political independence.  Liberals claim universal disclosure is right for corporations, but they want a different set of rules for their own donors. Take the liberal outfit, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew), which has been resisting an effort to subpoena its donor information. The group, which has lambasted conservative groups for failing to disclose their contributors, claims that its donors are protected from disclosure by the . . . First Amendment.  Disclosing its donors, Crew wrote in response to the subpoena, runs the risk of "chilling the free exercise of political speech and association guarded by the First Amendment." The potential harm "arises from the compelled disclosure of "internal communications and communications among [Crew and] various groups" as well as its staff and "others who affiliate with it."  All we can say is what a crew. The political left poses as shareholder champions to try to embarrass companies into giving up their free speech rights only to invoke the First Amendment to avoid disclosing which unions or liberal billionaires are financing its campaign of political intimidation. Shareholders who care about political freedom and the health of their businesses should tell corporate boards to fight back against this bullying.
The Wall Street Journal writes that SEC chief Mary Jo White faces her first test of political independence.