April 28, 2012
Dear members of the Securities and Exchange Commission:
I am writing to urge the SEC 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.
We, supposedly, live in a country of the PEOPLE, by the PEOPLE, and for the PEOPLE and NOT the corporation and with EQUAL PROTECTION under the law. If corporations were supposed to be regarded as people then it would have been explicitly stated as such in our constitution. In fact, the equal protection clause in our constitution EMPHATICALLY FORBIDS the government to make and set aside any SPECIAL CLASS of people as more protected by certain laws than the rest which is EXACTLY what corporate law is meant to do and is doing in our country today. I have a voice in our public discourse and so do you and so does every person who owns and/or manages a public or private corporation so why and since when does this person or people who own/run these contraptions called corporations suddenly have to have MUCH, MUCH MORE amplified voice (effectively shouting us down) in the public discourse in this country than you or I do? This is nothing less than a BOLD POWER GRAB by some of the wealthiest individuals in our country to wrest constitutionally mandated control of our government out of the hands of the public and into theirs.
Thank you for considering my comment.
Sincerely,
Stephen Haspel