February 19, 2013
American Citizens are constantly being barraged (in particular during the last presidential election) with propaganda from corporations, which is paid for by these corporations to use their largess to improperly influence the public. They are doing this under a coat of secrecy made "lawful" by the Supreme Court's questionable ruling regarding Citizens United. It allows the corporations to do this without publicly disclosing their political spending nor their identity and which gives them unfair advantage over smaller donations made by private citizens,which are openly identified by the donors. I am strongly urging 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 in this way, are a huge disservice and damaging to our country, inasmuch as that money belonged to investors of publicly traded corporations. It should not be spent under a cloak of secrecy to distort our democracy, as this has been.
The Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission created the damaging 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.
Joyce Hammack
Fort Worth, TX