February 1, 2013
Dear Members of the Securities and Exchange Commission:
Organized labor must account for every penny spent for salaries, overhead, member services and political donations. This is filed with the Department of Labor and is public record for the world to see. Why should the working men and women of this country be held to a different standard than the business community, who outspent labor in some races over 20 to 1. That is a huge amount of dark money that should be public record as well.
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.
Thank you for considering my comment.
Sincerely,
Richard Erickson