August 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.
It also concerns me that many of these publicly traded Corporations are International and hide profits overseas to not pay taxes. With this ability to hide money, isn't it just as possible that International or Foreign money is making it into our domestic and local elections? This is just one reason to not hide the corporate contributions to our public elections of representatives, legislatures, courts, and political officials. Isn't it?
Thank you for considering my comment.
AVT1, Bruce Roberts, United States Coast Guard Reserve (ret)