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From: Laura Barmack
To the SEC: You are on the front lines of one of the single most important issue confronting our democracy and the Republic to which we all have been swearing allegiance since childhood. We simply cannot continue without clarity, transparency, and ultimately clearly defined taxpayer and corporate limitations on campaign finance spending -- because no agenda, no issue, no remedy for any necessary initiative can be or will be addressed when the dark money corporate players who can afford to spend millions to make billions and trillions can influence -- or sabotage -- vital national concerns across a vast spectrum of issues. Virtually no issue in American civil society today is unaffected by the steamroller of undisclosed corporate influence, from the food on our plates to the health and safety of our soil, the cost of our pharmaceuticals, the stability of our banking and investment systems, and even the existence of the planet. Corporations are immortal; but shareholders are not. Corporations run only for profit -- oftentimes short-term profit, without any additional accommodation for less mechanistic aspirations, such as health, welfare, sustainability, access, or even ethics -- can fail. If, as a shareholder, you have bought into a company, don't you have a stake in helping to monitor its corporate wisdom and conscience? And how can you do that if you are deliberately sidelined by dark money contributions of which you have no knowledge? How can yo hope to protect your own interests, or the corporation's interests, or follow the dictates of your own conscience? Only mold and rot flourish in darkness. Our democracy is failing. It was severely wounded by Citizens United, but it had already been gored bloody by four decades of wanton abuse and irresponsible management by our elected leaders -- those charged with defending us. Well, they haven't been doing a very good job! A recent study out of Princeton has documented that the wishes and opinions of the electorate are entirely irrelevant -- NO GREATER THAN CHANCE -- to the arc of government and policy -- unless they happen to be among the wealthiest 1% of the population and can buy their way to corporate. In the latter case, the correspondence between enacted policy and desired outcome is pretty good. How ironic it is that even the wealthy, who can afford to invest in the giant money-making machines of Wall Street, don't get to see behind the corporate curtain and see how corporations are manipulating the levers of political power! Yes, the SEC and its commissioners should continue to work on a rule -- or rules -- requiring political disclosure from public companies, in the interests of their shareholders -- not only to protect their financial interests -- but also to protect their human and community interests in the world we share, both as human beings and as living creatures on the planet. It is not a necessary requirement of a good, smart business person that you kill your neighbor or deprive him of a living on the way to success. Such behavior is damnable on fundamental moral grounds. It robs us of community and of awareness and deforms our humanity. Businesses should not be empowered to use backdoor political channels like nonprofits or associations to do their political bidding, and mask their intent; and shareholders have a right to know how executives are using company resources for political purposes - especially if those purposes are against shareholders’ interests. Laura Barmack Bronx, NY
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