November 27, 2012
Dear members of the Securities and Exchange Commission:
I am writing to strongly 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.
Those corporations that are fighting to keep their political spending secret must be trying to hide it from the public and their shareholders out of fear that their actions will have grave repercussions for themselves or their corporate image if they were revealed. Doesn't that alone constitute corruption of our political process, which had been working much more transparently than it is now and for several decades up until the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision?
If only real people get to vote, why should "corporate people" get to set the agendas of what is debated for the elections? Corporations have the deep pockets to do so; and, without disclosure, corporate leadership has the ability to leverage their own political position by factors of up to one million to one, or more, without any fear of being held responsible by the shareholders they work for or the customers that support their company. This is unfair, this is unjust, this is not democracy.
Thank you for considering my comment.
Sincerely,
Jamie Tietjen