February 2, 2013
Dear Members of the Securities and Exchange Commission:
As an accountant, I feel that it is important that companies provide full disclosure of their actual financial position.
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. Failure to do so clearly threatens the rights of investors to have all information needed to make informed decisions.
Beyond the basic need to know if they are investing in a company that faces potential boycotts, such as Chik-Fil-A did briefly 2012, the rights of investors are threatened by a lack of disclosure. As the Supreme Court made clear in Citizen's United, money is speech. Without knowing how their money is being spent, the right of investors to control their own speech is threatened.
Thank you for considering my comment.
Sincerely,
Jason Leisemann