What: Citizen Works, investors, and activists will protest the SEC’s continued weakening of the regulations that came out of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the only reform Congress passed in response to the corporate scandals.

When: Thursday, January 30, 12:00 p.m.

Where: SEC Headquarters, 450 5th St., NW, Washington, D.C.

Who: Charlie Cray, director, Citizen Works’ Campaign for Corporate Reform
Arianna Huffington, author, Pigs at the Trough
Brent Blackwelder, executive director, Friends of the Earth
Will Thomas, director, Gray Panthers’ Corporate Accountability Project
Deborah Pastor, vice president, eRaider.com
and plenty of outraged investors…

Why: Because the SEC continues to act against the public interest.

• Instead of requiring that auditors be independent of the companies they audit, the SEC is allowing them to harvest fat consulting contracts from the companies in areas like tax strategy. Now the same accountants who are figuring out how to cheat the government through tax shelters will be supposedly providing independent audits of their own work.
• Instead of requiring that corporate lawyers who observe possible fraud alert the public via the SEC, the SEC voted to allow lawyers to keep such observations internal, even if nobody fixes the problem.
• Although the SEC held its ground against pressure from big mutual funds, requiring them to disclose how they vote their proxies, the commission needs to further expand disclosure requirements related to companies' social and environmental track records, which are currently kept off the books.
• Finally, although he quit in November, Harvey Pitt remains at the SEC.

Photo-Op: A giant inflatable corporate pig will demonstrate the influence corporate lobbyists continue to wield over the SEC.

For press release click here.