February 1, 2013
Dear Members of the Securities and Exchange Commission:
It's long past time to end secret political spending by corporations.
We don't have a democracy; we have an auction! As a public school teacher for 30+ years, I taught my students that their representatives were elected by voters. Not corporations. That was the intention of our Founding Fathers. The money driving our elections has compromised the principals our nation was founded on. We must return the nation to the people!
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.
Thank you for considering my comment.
Sincerely,
Paul Mendelsohn