March 21, 2012
I am deeply concerned about the influence of corporate money on our electoral process.
My father is a bond trader, and his whole professional life he has conformed to the laws and audits of the SEC on his small brokerage. Once or twice he had to pay large fines for small bookkeeping infractions.
Why not take that level of scrutiny to these donors?
We have already seen that unlimited corporate spending has a divisive and negative effect on political campaigns, and that the candidates and the contributors do not conform to the rules that they may not coordinate-this was already abused by the Romney campaign and nothing was done about it.
Furthermore, this is devastating to the lower and middle classes, who are not being represented fairly due to this corporate influence. It is not "one person, one vote", it is "he who has the gold wins."
In particular, I am appalled that, because of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, publicly traded corporations can spend investor’s money on political activity in secret.
I am writing to urge the Securities and Exchange Commission 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.
Thank you for considering my comment.
Leila Springer
Los Angeles, CA