February 1, 2013
Dear Members of the Securities and Exchange Commission:
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.
I actually went to the local tv stations to track how much money was being spent by third party SuperPac organizations on politcial ads. These bodies can claim tax free status and not have to divulge their donors. In this way they buy ads that may be misleading and the public does not know who is behind the ads. The Republican leaning superPacs were spending up to 6 times as much money as the Democratic SuperPacs.
Thank you for considering my comment.
Sincerely,
Deanna Rasmussen