February 2, 2013
Dear Members of the Securities and Exchange Commission:
In recent years the voting public has come to realize, as never before, the extent to which monied interests have taken over almost every aspect of our Nation's policy-making as well as our legislative and electoral processes. It's shameful. Certainly the Corporations and other Special Interests are not putting country first as citizens can. That said, citizens can't fix what they don't know about--so it seems logical to me that transparency (naming names and amounts) is the way to let flesh-and-blood voters know about secret political spending by corporations.
There may be stronger or more immediate actions that can be taken by the SEC -- but at a minimum I would strongly support the SEC issuing a rule 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,
Caroline Ellis