July 18, 2012
I am writing to urge the Securities and Exchange Commission to issue a rule requiring publicly traded corporations to publicly disclose all their political spending.
Both shareholders and the public must be fully informed as to how much the corporation spends on politics and which candidates are being promoted or attacked. Disclosures should be posted promptly on the SEC's web site.
Shareholders are supposedly the real owners of a corporation, yet they are kept completely in the dark about these contributions. Since shareholders are also consumers, citizens, parents, etc. they have concerns other than corporate profit, and do not want dollars that could be used to reinvest in the company or disbursed as dividends going to promote policies that are in conflict with their own broader interests.
Do the right thing, make corporations accountable to their true owners, not the greedy executives running them.
Kathleen Maher