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.
Spending for political candidates is classified by the courts as free speech and therefore protected by the First Amendment. However, such free speech should not also be allowed to be secret speech. There is nothing wrong with supporting political candidates - I do it all the time. But one should be willing to publicly acknowledge this. In fact, as a citizen, I am required to expect that my campaign contributions are made public. Why should corporations - whose contributions far outstrip those of most citizens - be exempt?
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.
Thank you for considering my comment.
Sincerely,
Katherine Edman