February 2, 2013
Dear Members of the Securities and Exchange Commission:
Corporations are not people. They are legal constructs that exist solely to protect the personal assets of their owners from liabilities incurred by their management. The whole absurd "corporate personhood" notion grew out of a court ruling, issued at a time when the whole concept of a business entity existing separately from its owners was relatively unfamiliar, that was intended only to allow corporations to sue and be sued.
Corporations are not people. They cannot be imprisoned (and are relatively difficult to execute) for crimes. They don't put their lives on the line in military service. They don't raise children, they don't make sacrifices to protect their families, and they don't feel grief when lunatics with guns murder their loved ones. Thankfully, they don't vote.
But they do command enormous financial resources, far greater than those of all but a tiny handful of individual people, that they can use in ways that bypass the usual rules on campaign spending, and contravene the interests of most of their customers, employees, and even shareholders.
It's long past time to end secret political spending by corporations.
So I strongly support the SEC issuing a rule in the near future that would require publicly traded corporations to publicly disclose all their spending on political activities.
Both shareholders and the public deserve to know how much a given corporation spends on politics (directly and through intermediaries), and which candidates are being promoted or attacked.
Thank you for considering my comment.
Sincerely,
James Lampert