February 3, 2013
Dear Members of the Securities and Exchange Commission:
Supreme Court Justice Kennedy wrote that the Citizens United opinion was based on full disclosure of donors. The Citizens United opinion was written in 2010. It's long past time to end undocumented, unitemized, political spending by business enterprises.
Publicly traded business enterprises strive to prevent organized labor from funding political activities and strive to hide their own funding of political activities. Those enterprises should at the very least have to disclose their funding of all political activities to their shareholders and the public at large.
I strongly support the SEC issuing a rule in the near future that would require publicly traded enterprises to publicly disclose all their contributions and spending on all political activities, including a detailed, itemized list of how much money and in kind they gave to whom for what political purpose in their annual statement.
Both shareholders and the public deserve to know how much money and in kind a given enterprise gives to whom for what political purpose.
Thank you for considering my comment.
Sincerely,
Jerry Tobe