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. Our country has descended far enough into the morass of bribery and influence peddling.
Instead of being an example to the world of fair dealing, we are now recognized as an exemplar of civic corruption and corporate greed. This country was founded with a clear-sighted appreciation of the need for checks and balances. Without transparency, there can be no realistic system of checks and balances, and no hope for turning the corruption around. The public is rapidly and with reason losing faith in the stock market as an arena where ordinary citizens can invest with even modest hopes of security and profit. It is now seen as a playground where the rich and well-connected sell worthless paper to each other (and to hapless retirement funds and poor-fool individual investors), while investing a small portion of their enormous profits into lobbying vociferously against any form of regulation or even disclosure requirements. This must stop. Now.
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.
Thank you for considering my comment.
Sincerely,
Kathryn Kassem