February 2, 2013
Dear Members of the Securities and Exchange Commission:
Corporations are fictitious persons set up by an act of a legislature to enjoy some of the benefits of s US Citizen without all of the same responsibilities as legislated by the body that set them up. One of the responsibilities denied Corporations is voting. A Corporation cannot vote, but with the America United vs FEC ruling by the US Supreme Court, they are allowed to secretly use Corporation funds to influence and interfere in our (the US citizen's right to vote for their representatives) political system and elections. Just as churches, to keep their tax free statous, cannot directly encourage their perishoners to vote for a certain candidate, but cann educate them of the church's teachings about the issues at hand, corporations need to be limited in their 1st Amendment rights like churches are today.
Therefore, it's long past time to end secret political spending by corporations.
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.
In the future, Iwould expect rulings to require the same thing of private, family owned corporations to do the same and to limit all corporations to the asme amount a private US citizen can contribute today to a political campaign or intermediary group, like a Super PAC or Political Party.
Just because the Corporations employee thousands of employees, it is illegal for them to collect or to order their employees to give donations to a political campaign, political party, or Super PAC.
It should be illegal for one fictitious person set up by a legislature to be able to give more then one living, voting, US citizen can by law today.
Thank you for considering my comment.
Sincerely,
Bruce Roberts