Novenmber 26, 2012
Dear members of the Securities and Exchange Commission:
I am writing to urge the SEC to issue a rule requiring publicly traded corporations to publicly disclose all their political spending.
Both shareholders and the public must be fully informed as to how much the corporation spends on politics and which candidates are being promoted or attacked. Disclosures should be posted promptly on the SEC's web site.
It is both morally wrong and socially dangerous for corporations to hide behind a cloak of anonymity when engaging in political speech. The legal right to do this, an unfortunate consequence of the Citizens United ill-advised and radical decision, must be accompanied by the social responsibility to identify oneself as speaker.
The recent political campaign, should, if nothing else, have gone a very long way to convince you that something is very very wrong with the body politic. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent to gain access to and speak on the public airwaves with NOONE able to identify the speakers in real time. How can that possibly be in the public interest??
Such levels of spending with the assurance of anonymity distorted public discourse by shielding the speaker from any responsibility to claim ownership of the speech. This promoted a very dangerous level of irresponsibility and dishonesty, far too many examples of which accumulated one on top of the other during the fall.
You have to seize the initiative here and correct this structural defect.
Thank you for considering my comment.
Sincerely,
ben lichtin