January 12, 2013
I am writing to urge the Securities and Exchange Commission to issue a rule requiring publicly traded corporations to publicly disclose all their political spending – and to do so this year.
“Dark money” groups that accept contributions from corporations, but are not required to publicly identify their corporate donors, spent millions of dollars during the 2012 elections. It is a scandal that money from publicly traded corporations – which belongs to investors – can be secretly spent to distort our democracy.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission created the loophole that enables this secret spending, but the SEC has the authority to close it.
Both shareholders and the public must be fully informed as to how much corporations spend on politics and which candidates are being promoted or attacked. Disclosures should be posted promptly on the SEC’s web site.
Thank you for considering my comment.
Since those who gave in secret did not do well in the last election I expect that even more money will be spent in future elections. It will result in our middle class being moved to our lowest class. With no middle class our economy will fail. The rich will then follow their corporations in moving out of the country. I suspect that most of the rich have already bought residences outside the US.They won't worry a bit when our country goes down the tubes.
Please do what is morally right!!
John Giguere
Lakeland, FL