February 2, 2013
Dear Members of the Securities and Exchange Commission:
It's long past time to end secret political spending by corporations.
So I strongly support the SEC issuing a rule in the near future that would require publicly traded corporations to publicly disclose all their spending on political activities. The U.S. Supreme Court's disastrous Citizens United v. FEC ruling has allowed corporate CEOs to unleash a torrent of secret corporate spending into our political system.
Indefensibly, CEOs are able to keep both the public and their own shareholders in the dark about the use of company funds for political ends.
And the results have been absolutely corrosive to our democracy.
Fortunately, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is empowered to enact disclosure requirements for publicly traded corporations.
And recently, after unprecedented amounts of public pressure, including over 150,000 public comments submitted by CREDO activists, the SEC announced it is working on a rule requiring corporations to disclose their political spending. o be clear, what we really need is to get all corporate money out of politics, to roll back Citizens United, end corporate personhood and institute public financing of elections. And we are working hard toward those long-term goals.
But in the short term, given how corrupt the system is, disclosure of corporate political spending would be a meaningful, though small, step forward. And it's one we can achieve.
While the likes of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board are opposed to this idea, it's actually a commonsense idea that is not especially ideological.
In fact, nearly 60% of the S&P 100 companies already voluntarily disclose their political spending to investors. And in 2011, of the remaining S&P 100 corporations, 25 had shareholder votes about political spending issues.
Both shareholders and the public deserve to know how much a given corporation spends on politics (directly and through intermediaries), and which candidates are being promoted or attacked. Corporate giants routinely launder their political spending by funneling it through politically active intermediaries like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute.
So it's no surprise that these political heavyweights and other right-wing groups are fighting back and pushing hard for the SEC to abandon its plan to issue a disclosure rule on corporate political spending.
Thank you for considering my comment.
Sincerely,
Yvette Tapp