July 25, 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.
Corporate influence in our elections has already led to a climate of 'Corporate Citizens' where living breathing Americans are being denied their rights by corporations. Our rights are being eroded, subjugated, and diminished by growing corporate power in this nation. I urge you to do what you can to help end corporate control of our election, our laws, our elected officials.
Please help Americans take back our government. We must find a way to eliminate the corporate, secret, corrupt influence infecting our Constitutional Democracy. Do what you can to demand openness, honesty and transparency in American politics.
Ignoring the millions of voiceless citizens in favor of the corporations with money will be the death of our nation. Please don't let America become a fascist, corporatist state, where corporations hold all the power and living breathing citizens are fodder for the schemes, scams and outright gouging currently crippling our nation.
Thank you for considering my comments.
Robert Vaessen
Aurora, CO