February 2, 2013
Dear Members of the Securities and Exchange Commission:
***Corporations must not be allowed to leverage their special legal privileges and powers into the political forum. Corporations are special legal fictions, chartered for specific purposes and with specific powers that no flesh and blood human enjoys. SEC must act immediately to prevent a flood of corporate money, acquired through means completely unrelated to any political motivation on the part of any "donors", i.e. the shareholders and customers, from drowning our public discourse.
The specific commercial and contractual relationships for which corporations are established with special powers should are inherently abused when the same corporations repurpose themselves, and their funds thus acquired, to political ends. Allowing publicly traded corporations that have none of the social, physical, psychological, or other limitations of actual human beings to exercise political influence in the human realm is a fundamental confusion of categories that SEC must correct in its role as overseer of corporations. Please pass a robust rule on political spending disclosure, now and prevent the massive commercial powers of for-profit corporations from being leveraged into political powers beyond the reach of any citizen.***
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,
Jim Steitz